abit which only a minute before I was in the act of
imitating, Arthur burst out laughing again. Marcasse turned toward
him and after surveying him intently bowed with imperturbable gravity.
Arthur, suddenly recovering his serious mood, rose and, with comic
dignity, bowed in return almost to the ground.

We returned to the camp together. On the way Marcasse told me his story
in that brief style of his, which, as it forced his hearer to ask a
thousand wearisome questions, far from simplifying his narrative, made
it extraordinarily complicated. It afforded Arthur great amusement; but
as you would not derive the same pleasure from listening to an exact
reproduction of this interminable dialogue, I will limit myself to
telling you how Marcasse had come to leave his country and his friends,
in order to give the American cause the help of his sword.

M. de la Marche happened to be setting out for America at the very time
when Marcasse came to his castle in Berry for a week, to make his
annual round among the beams and joists in the barns. The inmates of
the chateau, in their excitement at the count's departure, indulged
in wonderful commentaries on that far country, so full of dangers and
marvels, from which, according to the village wiseacres, no man ever
returned without a vast fortune, and so many gold and silver ingots that
he needed ten ships to carry them all. Now, under his icy exterior,
Don Marcasse, like some hyperborean volcano, concealed a glowing
imagination, a passionate love of the marvellous. Accustomed to live in
a state of equilibrium on narrow beams in evidently loftier regions than
other men, and not insensible to the glory of astounding the bystanders
every day by the calm daring of his acrobatic movements, he let himself
be fired by these pictures of Eldorado; and his dreams were the more
extravagant because, as usual, he unbosomed himself to no one. M. de
la Marche, therefore, was very much surprised when, on the eve of his
departure, Marcasse presented himself, and proposed to accompany him to
America as his valet. In vain did M. de la Marche remind him that he was
very old to abandon his calling and run the risks of a new kind of life.
Marcasse displayed so much firmness that in the end he gained his point.
Various reasons led M. de la Marche to consent to the strange request.
He had resolved to take with him a servant older still than the
weasel-hunter, a man who was accompanying him only with great
r