CHAPTER II--A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS
I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that
discharged our visitors into the street. Our little market was no
sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and
received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according
to fancy in any part of our quarters.
I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably
offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed--as the sight-
seers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite
without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the
bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were
susceptible beyond reason. Some of these old whiskerandos,
originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies,
and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations,
could ill brook their change of circumstance. There was one man of
the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed
no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had
risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was
otherwise unfitted--that of marechal des logis in the 22nd of the
line. In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good
soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in
all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a
brawling, bruising ignorant pillar of low pothouses. As a
gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the
type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the
mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of
annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest
victim, and too often on myself.
It was so now. Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just
withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing
near. He wore an air of hateful mirth; a set of young fools, among
whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation;
and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable
pleasantries. He took a place beside me, spread out his rations,
drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.
What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who
believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among
the gravel. For my part, I thought at first I should have died. I
had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the
ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by
her name. Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a
volume of living anger that surprised myself.
'Are you nearly done?' I asked. 'Because if you are, I am about to
say a word or two myself.'
'Oh, fair play!' said he. 'Turn about! The Marquis of Carabas to
the tribune.'
'Very well,' said I. 'I have to inform you that I am a gentleman.
You do not know what that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It
is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of
creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other
vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a
gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I
cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit
still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I
shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us.
Here is your health!' said I, and pledged him in the prison beer.
'You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,' I
continued, 'who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to
me and some others of us mendicants. If the Emperor'--saluting--
'if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from
your gross body. I cannot do that; I cannot take away what His
Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you--I promise you,
Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.'
I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought
there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed.
But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had
pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a
hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself. Whatever the cause,
at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing
(to do him justice) handsomely.
'And I promise you, by the devil's horns, that you shall have the
chance!' said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him
scrupulous honour.
The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the
speed of wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of
the spectators at a horse-race; and indeed you must first have
tasted the active life of a soldier, and then mouldered for a while
in the tedium of a jail, in order to understand, perhaps even to
excuse, the delight of our companions. Goguelat and I slept in the
same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee
of honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates. They chose for
president a sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the
army, an excellent military subject, and a good man. He took the
most serious view of his functions, visited us both, and reported
our replies to the committee. Mine was of a decent firmness. I
told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken had on several
occasions given me alms. I reminded him that, if we were now
reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill-boxes for charity, it
was something very new for soldiers of the Empire. We had all seen
bandits standing at a corner of a wood truckling for copper
halfpence, and after their benefactors were gone spitting out
injuries and curses. 'But,' said I, 'I trust that none of us will
fall so low. As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child
gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support
that of the army. You are my elder and my superior: tell me if I
am not right.'
He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three
fingers on the back. 'C'est bien, mon enfant,' says he, and
returned to his committee.
Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself. 'I do not like
apologies nor those that make them,' was his only answer. And
there remained nothing but to arrange the details of the meeting.
So far as regards place and time we had no choice; we must settle
the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round had passed by, and
in the open middle of the shed under which we slept. The question
of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which
we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of
them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being
nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of
the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a
couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one
blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined
twine--the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the
green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe. It
was a strange thing to feel in one's hand this weapon, which was no
heavier than a riding-rod, and which it was difficult to suppose
would prove more dangerous. A general oath was administered and
taken, that no one should interfere in the duel nor (suppose it to
result seriously) betray the name of the survivor. And with that,
all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment.
The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first
round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the
ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the
murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its
further passage. Leclos, the sergeant-major, set us in our
stations, engaged our wands, and left us. To avoid blood-stained
clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the
chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man
was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I,
being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In
the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes;
and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a
parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my
defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself
down and lunge at the same moment. It was to play my life upon one
card: should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left
me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my
own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults,
and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most
readily expose.
'Allez!' said the sergeant-major.
Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my
manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted. As it was, he did no
more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the
girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling
from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.
When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and
could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads
crowded around me. I sat up. 'What is it?' I exclaimed.
'Hush!' said the sergeant-major. 'Blessed be God, all is well.' I
felt him clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice. ''Tis
but a scratch, my child; here is papa, who is taking good care of
you. Your shoulder is bound up; we have dressed you in your
clothes again, and it will all be well.'
At this I began to remember. 'And Goguelat?' I gasped.
'He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; 'tis a bad
business,' said the sergeant-major.
The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a
pair of scissors seemed to turn my stomach. I am sure I might have
killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted
weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse. And to
this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the
darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on
the twine, appeared to contribute. I ran to my fallen adversary,
kneeled by him, and could only sob his name.
He bade me compose myself. 'You have given me the key of the
fields, comrade,' said he. 'Sans rancune!'
At this my horror redoubled. Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen
engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts.
Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in
a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with
something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted that the guards
should be summoned and a doctor brought. 'It may still be possible
to save him,' I cried.
The sergeant-major reminded me of our engagement. 'If you had been
wounded,' said he, 'you must have lain there till the patrol came
by and found you. It happens to be Goguelat--and so must he!
Come, child, time to go to by-by.' And as I still resisted,
'Champdivers!' he said, 'this is weakness. You pain me.'
'Ay, off to your beds with you!' said Goguelat, and named us in a
company with one of his jovial gross epithets.
Accordingly the squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they
certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late.
The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of
wheels and feet and lively voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of
the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the
eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a
multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay
Goguelat, and could not always withhold himself from groaning.
We heard the round far off; heard it draw slowly nearer. Last of
all, it turned the corner and moved into our field of vision: two
file of men and a corporal with a lantern, which he swung to and
fro, so as to cast its light in the recesses of the yards and
sheds.
'Hullo!' cried the corporal, pausing as he came by Goguelat.
He stooped with his lantern. All our hearts were flying.
'What devil's work is this?' he cried, and with a startling voice
summoned the guard.
We were all afoot upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers
crowded in front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in. In
the midst was the big naked body, soiled with blood. Some one had
covered him with his blanket; but as he lay there in agony, he had
partly thrown it off.
'This is murder!' cried the officer. 'You wild beasts, you will
hear of this to-morrow.'
As Goguelat was raised and laid upon a stretcher, he cried to us a
cheerful and blasphemous farewell.
