Those careless cold words from
a woman's lips had cut him deeper than the stick could have cut him,
though it had bruised his loins and lashed his breast; they showed all
he had lost.
"What a fool I am still!" he thought, as he made his way out of the
barrack room. "I might have fairly forgotten by this time that I ever
had the rights of a gentleman."
So the carvings had won him one warm heart and one keen pang that day;
the vivandiere forgave, the aristocrat stung him, by means of those
snowy, fragile, artistic toys that he had shaped in lonely nights under
canvas by ruddy picket-fires, beneath the shade of wild fig trees, and
in the stir and color of Bedouin encampments.
"I must ask to be ordered out of the city," he thought, as he pushed his
way through the crowds of soldiers and civilians. "Here I get bitter,
restless, impatient; here the past is always touching me on the
shoulder; here I shall soon grow to regret, and to chafe, and to look
back like any pining woman. Out yonder there, with no cares to think of
but my horse and my troop, I am a soldier--and nothing else; so best. I
shall be nothing else as long as I live. Pardieu, though! I don't know
what one wants better; it is a good life, as life goes. One must not
turn compliments to great ladies, that is all--not much of a deprivation
there. The chessmen are the better for that; her Maltese dog would have
broken them all the first time it upset their table!"
He laughed a little as he went on smoking; the old carelessness,
mutability, and indolent philosophies were with him still, and were
still inclined to thrust away and glide from all pain, as it arose.
Pages:
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409