The old pontooner drew himself up at the words, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and put it in his pocket.

“I only did my duty, sir,” he said, with his head bent down; “but others have not done their duty by me.  They asked for my papers!  Why, the Twenty-ninth Bulletin, I told them, must do instead of my papers!”

“But you must make another application, comrade.  You are bound to have justice done you in these days, if influence is brought to bear in the right quarter.”

“Justice!” cried the veteran.  The doctor and the commandant shuddered at the tone in which he spoke.

In the brief pause that followed, both the horsemen looked at the man before them, who seemed like a fragment of the wreck of great armies which Napoleon had filled with men of bronze sought out from among three generations.  Gondrin was certainly a splendid specimen of that seemingly indestructible mass of men which might be cut to pieces but never gave way.  The old man was scarcely five feet high, wide across the shoulders, and broad-chested; his face was sunburned, furrowed with deep wrinkles, but the outlines were still firm in spite of the hollows in it, and one could see even now that it was the face of a soldier.  It was a rough-hewn countenance, his forehead seemed like a block of granite; but there was a weary expression about his face, and the gray hairs hung scantily about his head, as if life were waning there already.  Everything about him indicated unusual strength; his arms were covered thickly with hair, and so was the chest, which was visible through the opening of his coarse shirt.  In spite of his almost crooked legs, he held himself firm and erect, as if nothing could shake him.

“Justice,” he said once more; “there will never be justice for the like of us.  We cannot send bailiffs to the Government to demand our dues for us; and as the wallet must be filled somehow,” he said, striking his stomach, “we cannot afford to wait.  Moreover, these gentry who lead snug lives in government offices may talk and talk, but their words are not good to eat, so I have come back here again to draw my pay out of the commonalty,” he said, striking the mud with his spade.

“Things must not be left in that way, old comrade,” said Genestas.  “I owe my life to you, and it would be ungrateful of me if I did not lend you a hand.  I have not forgotten the passage over the bridges in the Beresina, and it is fresh in the memories of some brave fellows of my acquaintance; they will back me up, and the nation shall give you the recognition you deserve.”

“You will be called a Bonapartist!  Please do not meddle in the matter, sir.  I have gone to the rear now, and I have dropped into my hole here like a spent bullet.  But after riding on camels through the desert, and drinking my glass by the fireside in Moscow, I never thought that I should come back to die here beneath the trees that my father planted,” and he began to work again.