“’To everyone their due, Madame.  A small glass of brandy costs two sous, and two glasses cost four.’

“She understood my meaning, and put a gold ten-franc piece into my hand.  I do not like that coin, because it is so small that if your pockets are not very well made, and come at all unsewn, one is apt to find it in one’s boots, or not to find it at all, and so, while I was looking at it, she was looking at me.  She got red in the face, as she had misunderstood my looks, and she said:  ‘Is not that enough?’

“‘I did not mean that, Madame,’ I replied; ’but if it is all the same to you, I would rather have two five-franc pieces.’  And she gave them to me, and I took my leave.  This has been going on for a year and a half, Captain.  I go every Tuesday evening, when you give me leave to go out of barracks; she prefers that, as her servant has gone to bed then, but last week I was not well, and I had to go into the infirmary.  When Tuesday came, I could not get out, and I was very vexed, because of the ten francs which I had been receiving every week, and I said to myself: 

“’If anybody goes there, I shall be done; and she will be sure to take an artilleryman, and that made me very angry.  So I sent for Paumelle, who comes from my part of the country, and I told him how matters stood: 

“‘There will be five francs for you, and five for me,’ I said.  He agreed, and went, as I had given him full instructions.  She opened the door as soon as he knocked, and let him in, and as she did not look at his face, she did not perceive that it was not I, for, you know, Captain, one dragoon is very like another, with their helmets on.

“Suddenly, however, she noticed the change, and she asked, angrily:  ’Who are you?  What do you want?  I do not know you.’

“Then Paumelle explained matters; he told her that I was not well, and that I had sent him as my substitute; so she looked at him, made him also swear to keep the matter secret, and then she accepted him, as you may suppose, for Paumelle is not a bad-looking fellow, either.  But when he came back, Captain, he would not give me my five francs.  If they had been for myself, I should not have said a word, but they were for my father, and on that score, I would stand no nonsense, and I said to him: 

“’You are not particular in what you do, for a dragoon; you are a discredit to your uniform.’

“He raised his fist, Captain, saying that fatigue duty like that was worth double.  Of course, everybody has his own ideas, and he ought not to have accepted it.  You know the rest.”

“Captain d’Anglemare laughed until he cried as he told me the story, but he also made me promise to keep the matter a secret, just as he had promised the two soldiers.  So, above all, do not betray me, but promise me to keep it to yourself.”

“Oh!  You may be quite easy about that.  But how was it all arranged, in the end?”

“How?  It is a joke in a thousand!...  Mother Bonderoi keeps her two dragoons, and reserves his own particular day for each of them, and in that way everybody is satisfied.”