“Oh, the devil!” cried the governor.

The wounded man put his rusty coat on again, and stood erect, and haughty, and silent.

The general eyed him, and saw his great spirit shining through this man.  The more he looked the less could the scarecrow veil the hero from his practised eye.  He said there must be some mistake, or else he was in his dotage; after a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Be seated, if you please, and tell me what you have been doing all these years.”

“Suffering.”

“Not all the time, I suppose.”

“Without intermission.”

“But what? suffering what?”

“Cold, hunger, darkness, wounds, solitude, sickness, despair, prison, all that man can suffer.”

“Impossible! a man would be dead at that rate before this.”

“I should have died a dozen deaths but for one thing; I had promised her to live.”

There was a pause.  Then the old soldier said gravely, but more kindly, to the young one, “Tell me the facts, captain” (the first time he had acknowledged his visitor’s military rank).

An hour had scarce elapsed since the rusty figure was stopped by the sentinels at the gate, when two glittering officers passed out under the same archway, followed by a servant carrying a furred cloak.  The sentinels presented arms.  The elder of these officers was the governor:  the younger was the late scarecrow, in a brand-new uniform belonging to the governor’s son.  He shone out now in his true light; the beau ideal of a patrician soldier; one would have said he had been born with a sword by his side and drilled by nature, so straight and smart, yet easy he was in every movement.  He was like a falcon, eye and all, only, as it were, down at the bottom of the hawk’s eye lay a dove’s eye.  That compound and varying eye seemed to say, I can love, I can fight:  I can fight, I can love, as few of you can do either.

The old man was trying to persuade him to stay at Bayonne, until his wound should be cured.

“No, general, I have other wounds to cure of longer standing than this one.”

“Well, promise me to lay up at Paris.”

“General, I shall stay an hour at Paris.”

“An hour in Paris!  Well, at least call at the War Office and present this letter.”

That same afternoon, wrapped in the governor’s furred cloak, the young officer lay at his full length in the coupe of the diligence, the whole of which the governor had peremptorily demanded for him, and rolled day and night towards Paris.

He reached it worn with fatigue and fevered by his wound, but his spirit as indomitable as ever.  He went to the War Office with the governor’s letter.  It seemed to create some little sensation; one functionary came and said a polite word to him, then another.  At last to his infinite surprise the minister himself sent down word he wished to see him; the minister put several questions to him, and seemed interested in him and touched by his relation.