“The poor fellow himself only returned from Wilna in 1814, to find the Bourbons restored to power.  General Eble (of whom Gondrin cannot speak without tears in his eyes) was dead.  The pontooner was deaf, and his health was shattered; and as he could neither read nor write, he found no one left to help him or to plead his cause.  He begged his way to Paris, and while there made application at the War Office, not for the thousand francs of extra pension which had been promised to him, nor yet for the Cross of the Legion of Honor, but only for the bare pension due to him after twenty-two years of service, and I do not know how many campaigns.  He did not obtain his pension or his traveling expenses; he did not even receive his arrears of pay.  He spent a year in making fruitless solicitations, holding out his hands in vain to those whom he had saved; and at the end of it he came back here, sorely disheartened but resigned to his fate.  This hero unknown to fame does draining work on the land, for which he is paid ten sous the fathom.  He is accustomed to working in a marshy soil, and so, as he says, he gets jobs which no one else cares to take.  He can make about three francs a day by clearing out ponds, or draining meadows that lie under water.  His deafness makes him seem surly, and he is not naturally inclined to say very much, but there is a good deal in him.

“We are very good friends.  He dines with me on the day of Austerlitz, on the Emperor’s birthday, and on the anniversary of the disaster at Waterloo, and during the dessert he always receives a napoleon to pay for his wine very quarter.  Every one in the Commune shares in my feeling of respect for him; if he would allow them to support him, nothing would please them better.  At every house to which he goes the people follow my example, and show their esteem by asking him to dine with them.  It is a feeling of pride that leads him to work, and it is only as a portrait of the Emperor that he can be induced to take my twenty-franc piece.  He has been deeply wounded by the injustice that has been done to him; but I think regret for the Cross is greater than the desire for his pension.

“He has one great consolation.  After the bridges had been constructed across the Beresina, General Eble presented such of the pontooners as were not disabled to the Emperor, and Napoleon embraced poor Gondrin —­perhaps but for that accolade he would have died ere now.  This memory and the hope that some day Napoleon will return are all that Gondrin lives by.  Nothing will ever persuade him that Napoleon is dead, and so convinced is he that the Emperor’s captivity is wholly and solely due to the English, that I believe he would be ready on the slightest pretext to take the life of the best-natured alderman that ever traveled for pleasure in foreign parts.”

“Let us go on as fast as possible!” cried Genestas.  He had listened to the doctor’s story with rapt attention, and now seemed to recover consciousness of his surroundings.  “Let us hurry!  I long to see that man!”