'Madam,' said I, 'your handkerchief.The wind brought it me.'
I met her eyes fully.
'I thank you, sir,' said she.
'The wind brought it me,' I repeated.'May I not take it for an omen? You have an English proverb, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good."'
'Well,' she said, with a smile, '"One good turn deserves another."
I will see what you have.'
She followed me to where my wares were spread out under lee of a piece of cannon.
'Alas, mademoiselle!' said I, 'I am no very perfect craftsman.
This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry.
You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything.FAILURES FOR SALE should be on my signboard.I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.' I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave.'Strange, is it not,' I added, 'that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a sad heart produce anything so funny to look at?'
An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of Flora, and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party.
A few days after she came again.But I must first tell you how she came to be so frequent.Her aunt was one of those terrible British old maids, of which the world has heard much; and having nothing whatever to do, and a word or two of French, she had taken what she called an INTEREST IN THE FRENCH PRISONERS.A big, bustling, bold old lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable airs of patronage and condescension.She bought, indeed, with liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass, and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any gratitude.She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an oracle.'This one can really carve prettily: is he not a quiz with his big whiskers?' she would say.'And this one,' indicating myself with her gold eye-glass, 'is, I assure you, quite an oddity.' The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth.She had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and addressing us in what she imagined to be French: 'BIENNE, HOMMES! CA VABIENNE?' I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: BIENNE, FEMME! CA VA COUCI-COUCI TOUT D'MEME, LA BOURGEOISE!' And at that, when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was entirely civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in triumph.Needless to say, these passages were before I had remarked the niece.
The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more than usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the market and lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with rather less than her accustomed tact.I kept my eyes down, but they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain.The aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the crowd and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at last as she had come, without a sign.Closely as I had watched her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant;
and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness.I tore out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the night.How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind them to his merits.I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering countrymen.I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future should have the chance to think I had looked at her with admiration.You cannot imagine any one of a more resolute and independent spirit, or whose bosom was more wholly mailed with patriotic arrogance, than I.Before I dropped asleep, I had remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an overwhelming column to Flora.
The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was some one standing near; and behold, it was herself! I kept my seat, at first in the confusion of my mind, later on from policy;
and she stood, and leaned a little over me, as in pity.She was very still and timid; her voice was low.Did I suffer in my captivity? she asked me.Had I to complain of any hardship?
'Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,' said I.'I am a soldier of Napoleon.'
She sighed.'At least you must regret LA FRANCE,' said she, and coloured a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a pretty strangeness of accent.
'What am I to say?' I replied.'If you were carried from this country, for which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains and winds seem to become you like ornaments, would you regret, do you think? We must surely all regret! the son to his mother, the man to his country; these are native feelings.'
'You have a mother?' she asked.
'In heaven, mademoiselle,' I answered.'She, and my father also, went by the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and brave: they followed their queen upon the scaffold.So, you see, I am not so much to be pitied in my prison,' I continued: 'there are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world.'Tis a different case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap.His bed is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself.
He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments;
and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart.Do you know what made him take me for a confidant?'
She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak.The look burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.
