le
entertainments with cake and punch, while Lucie's mother, a cousin of the
captain, did the honors. M. Violette immediately observed the young girl,
seated under a "Bataille des Pyramides" with two swords crossed above it,
a carnation in her hair. It was in midsummer, and through the open window
one could see the magnificent moonlight, which shone upon the esplanade
and made the huge cannon shine. They were playing charades, and when it
came Lucie's turn to be questioned among all the guests, M. Violette, to
relieve her of her embarrassment, replied so awkwardly that they all
exclaimed, "Now, then, that is cheating!" With what naive grace and
bashful coquetry she served the tea, going from one table to another, cup
in hand, followed by the one-armed captain with silver epaulets, carrying
the plum-cake! In order to see her again, M. Violette paid the captain
visit after visit. But the greater part of the time he saw only the old
soldier, who told him of his victories and conquests, of the attack of
the redoubt at Borodino, and the frightful swearing of the dashing Murat,
King of Naples, as he urged the squadrons on to the rescue. At last, one
beautiful Sunday in autumn, he found himself alone with the young girl in
the private garden of the veteran of the Old Guard. He seated himself
beside Lucie on a stone bench: he told her his love, with the profound
gaze of the Little Corporal, in bronzed plaster, resting upon them; and,
full of delicious confusion, she replied, "Speak to mamma," dropping her
bewildered eyes and gazing at the bed of china-asters, whose boxwood
border traced the form of a cross of the Legion of Honor.

And all this was effaced, lost forever! The captain was dead; Lucie's
mother was dead, and Lucie herself, his beloved Lucie, was dead, after
giving him six years of cloudless happiness.

Certainly, he would never marry again. Oh, never!

No woman had ever existed or ever would exist for him but his poor
darling, sleeping in the Montparnasse Cemetery, whose grave he visited
every Sunday with a little watering-pot concealed under his coat.

He recalled, with a shiver of disgust, how, a few months after Lucie's
death, one stifling evening in July, he was seated upon a bench in the
Luxembourg, listening to the drums beating a retreat under the trees,
when a woman came and took a seat beside him and looked at him steadily.
Surprised by her significant look, he replied, to the question that she
addressed