"That is quite bad enough! Your service must be severe?"
"In Africa, Milady, one cannot expect indulgence."
"I suppose not. You have served long?"
"Twelve years, madame."
"And your name?"
"Louis Victor." She fancied there was a slight abruptness in the reply,
as though he were about to add some other name, and checked himself.
She entered it in the little book from which she had taken her
banknotes.
"I may be able to serve you," she said, as she wrote. "I will speak
of you to the Marshal; and when I return to Paris, I may have an
opportunity to bring your name before the Emperor. He is as rapid as his
uncle to reward military merit; but he has not his uncle's opportunities
for personal observation of his soldiers."
The color flushed his forehead.
"You do me much honor," he said rapidly, "but if you would gratify me,
madame, do not seek to do anything of the kind."
"And why? Do you not even desire the cross?"
"I desire nothing, except to be forgotten."
"You seek what others dread then?"
"It may be so. At any rate, if you would serve me, madame, never say
what can bring me into notice."
She regarded him with much surprise, with some slight sense of
annoyance; she had bent far in tendering her influence at the French
court to a private soldier, and his rejection of it seemed as ungracious
as it was inexplicable.
At that moment the Moor joined them.
"Milady has told me, M.
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