d Renard by the arm,
and laid him crosswise before me on my horse like a sack of wheat.

"'Good-bye, captain,' Renard said; 'it is all over with me.'

"'Not yet,' I answered; 'I must have a look at you.' We had reached the
town by that time; I dismounted, and propped him up on a little straw
by the corner of the house. A wound in the head had laid open the brain,
and yet he spoke!... Oh! he was a brave man.

"'We are quits,' he said. 'I have given you my life, and I had taken
Judith from you. Take care of her and of her child, if she has one. And
not only so--you must marry her.'

"I left him then and there sir, like a dog; when the first fury of anger
left me, and I went back again--he was dead. The Cossacks had set fire
to the town, and the thought of Judith then came to my mind. I went in
search of her, took her up behind me in the saddle, and, thanks to my
swift horse, caught up the regiment which was effecting its retreat. As
for the Jew and his family, there was not one of them left, they had all
disappeared like rats; there was no one but Judith in the house, waiting
alone there for Renard. At first, as you can understand, I told her not
a word of all that had happened.

"So it befell that all through the disastrous campaign of 1813 I had a
woman to look after, to find quarters for her, and to see that she was
comfortable. She scarcely knew, I think, the straits to which we were
reduced. I was always careful to keep her ten leagues ahead of us as
we drew back towards France. Her boy was born while we were fighting
at Hanau. I was wounded in the engagement, and only rejoined Judith at
Strasburg; then I returned to Paris, for, unluckily, I was laid up all
through the campaign in France. If it had not been for that wretched
mishap, I should have entered the Grenadier Guards, and then the Emperor
would have promoted me. As it was, sir, I had three broken ribs and
another man's wife and child to support! My pay, as you can imagine, was
not exactly the wealth of the Indies. Renard's father, the toothless
old shark, would have nothing to say to his daughter-in-law; and the old
father Jew had made off. Judith was fretting herself to death. She cried
one morning while she was dressing my wound.

"'Judith,' said I, 'your child has nothing in this world----'

"'Neither have I!' she said.

"'Pshaw!' I answered, 'we will send for all the necessary papers, I will
marry you; and as for the child, I will look on him as m