These thoughts came into my mind as I finished dressing, and I said to myself that Father Chaufour had a right to reparation from me.  To make amends for the feeling of ill-will I had against him just now, I owed him some explicit proof of sympathy.  I heard him humming a tune in his room; he was at work, and I determined that I would make the first neighborly call.

Eight o’clock P.M.—­I found Father Chaufour at a table lighted by a little smoky lamp, without a fire, although it is already cold, and making large pasteboard boxes; he was humming a popular song in a low tone.  I had hardly entered the room when he uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure.

“Eh! is it you, neighbor?  Come in, then!  I did not think you got up so early, so I put a damper on my music; I was afraid of waking you.”

Excellent man! while I was sending him to the devil he was putting himself out of his way for me!

This thought touched me, and I paid my compliments on his having become my neighbor with a warmth which opened his heart.

“Faith! you seem to me to have the look of a good Christian,” said he in a voice of soldierlike cordiality, and shaking me by the hand.  “I do not like those people who look on a landing-place as a frontier line, and treat their neighbors as if they were Cossacks.  When men snuff the same air, and speak the same lingo, they are not meant to turn their backs to each other.  Sit down there, neighbor; I don’t mean to order you; only take care of the stool; it has but three legs, and we must put good-will in place of the fourth.”

“It seems that that is a treasure which there is no want of here,” I observed.

“Good-will!” repeated Chaufour; “that is all my mother left me, and I take it no son has received a better inheritance.  Therefore they used to call me Monsieur Content in the batteries.”

“You are a soldier, then?”

“I served in the Third Artillery under the Republic, and afterward in the Guard, through all the commotions.  I was at Jemappes and at Waterloo; so I was at the christening and at the burial of our glory, as one may say!”

I looked at him with astonishment.

“And how old were you then, at Jemappes?” asked I.

“Somewhere about fifteen,” said he.

“How came you to think of being a soldier so early?”

“I did not really think about it.  I then worked at toy-making, and never dreamed that France would ask me for anything else than to make her draught-boards, shuttlecocks, and cups and balls.  But I had an old uncle at Vincennes whom I went to see from time to time—­a Fontenoy veteran in the same rank of life as myself, but with ability enough to have risen to that of a marshal.  Unluckily, in those days there was no way for common people to get on.  My uncle, whose services would have got him made a prince under the other, had then retired with the mere rank of sub-lieutenant.  But you should have seen him in his uniform, his cross of St. Louis, his wooden leg, his white moustaches, and his noble countenance.  You would have said he was a portrait of one of those old heroes in powdered hair which are at Versailles!