dying, and he looked it; and yet I
cannot remember any hasty, harsh, or impatient word to have fallen from
his lips. On the contrary, he ever showed himself careful to please; and
even if he rambled in his talk, rambled always gently--like a humane,
half-witted old hero, true to his colours to the last. I would not dare
to say how often he awoke suddenly from a lethargy, and told us again,
as though we had never heard it, the story of how he had earned the
Cross, how it had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the
innocent--and, indeed, foolish--sayings of his daughter when he returned
with it on his bosom. He had another anecdote which he was very apt to
give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond endurance
with dispraises of the English. This was an account of the _braves gens_
with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he was a man so simple and
grateful by nature, that the most common civilities were able to touch
him to the heart, and would remain written in his memory; but from a
thousand inconsiderable but conclusive indications, I gathered that this
family had really loved him, and loaded him with kindness. They made a
fire in his bedroom, which the sons and daughters tended with their own
hands; letters from France were looked for with scarce more eagerness by
himself than by these alien sympathisers; when they came, he would read
them aloud in the parlour to the assembled family, translating as he
went. The Colonel's English was elementary; his daughter not in the
least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I conceived these
scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest centred in the Colonel
himself, and I thought I could feel in my own heart that mixture of the
ridiculous and the pathetic, the contest of tears and laughter, which
must have shaken the bosoms of the family. Their kindness had continued
till the end. It appears they were privy to his flight; the camlet cloak
had been lined expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from
the daughter of the house to his own daughter in Paris. The last
evening, when the time came to say good-night, it was tacitly known to
all that they were to look upon his face no more. He rose, pleading
fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who had been his chief ally: "You
will permit me, my dear--to an old and very unhappy soldier--and may God
bless you for your goodness!" The girl threw her arms about his neck and
sobbed upon