his bosom; the lady of the house burst into tears; "_et je
vous le jure, le pere se mouchait_!" quoth the Colonel, twisting his
moustaches with a cavalry air, and at the same time blinking the water
from his eyes at the mere recollection.

It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in
captivity: that he had started on this fatal journey from so cordial a
farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter: that he should ever
live to reach her sick-bed, that he could continue to endure to an end
the hardships, the crushing fatigue, the savage cold, of our pilgrimage,
I had early ceased to hope. I did for him what I was able,--nursed him,
kept him covered, watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my
arms at the rough places of the road. "Champdivers," he once said, "you
are like a son to me--like a son." It is good to remember, though at the
time it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were
travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to another
destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent. An old rustic
accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech, from which it had
long been banished, and grew stronger; old words of the _patois_, too:
_Ouistreham_, _matrasse_, and others, the sense of which we were
sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he began again his
eternal story of the Cross and the Emperor. The Major, who was
particularly ill, or at least particularly cross, uttered some angry
words of protest. "_Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le commandant, mais c'est
pour monsieur_," said the Colonel; "monsieur has not yet heard the
circumstance, and is good enough to feel an interest." Presently after,
however, he began to lose the thread of his narrative; and at last:
"_Que que j'ai? Je m'embrouille!_" says he. "_Suffit: s'm'a la donne, et
Berthe en etait bien contente._" It struck me as the falling of the
curtain or the closing of the sepulchre doors.

Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as gentle
as an infant's, which insensibly changed into the sleep of death. I had
my arm about his body at the time and remarked nothing, unless it were
that he once stretched himself a little, so kindly the end came to that
disastrous life. It was only at our evening halt that the Major and I
discovered we were travelling alone with the poor clay. That night we
stole a spade from a field--I think near Market Bosworth--and a little
farther o