While he was lost in these meditations, the chaise was making its way through the clouds of dust which constantly blow up from the side paths of this much-trodden road.
“What a dust!” said Mistigris.
“King Henri is dead,” retorted his comrade. “If you said it smelt of vanilla now, you would hit on a new idea!”
“You think that funny,” said Mistigris. “Well, but it does now and then remind me of vanilla.”
“In the East—” Georges began, meaning to concoct a story.
“In the least—” said Mistigris’ master, taking up Georges.
“In the East, I said, from whence I have just returned,” Georges repeated, “the dust smells very sweet. But here it smells of nothing unless it is wafted up from such a manure-heap as this.”
“You have just returned from the East?” said Mistigris, with a sly twinkle.
“And, you see, Mistigwis, the gentleman is so tired that what he now wequires is west,” drawled his master.
“You are not much sunburnt,” said Mistigris.
“Oh! I am but just out of bed after three months’ illness, caused, the doctors say, by an attack of suppressed plague.”
“You have had the plague?” cried the Count, with a look of horror.—“Pierrotin, put me out.”
“Get on, Pierrotin,” said Mistigris.—“You hear that the plague was suppressed,” he went on, addressing Monsieur de Sérizy. “It was the sort of plague that goes down in the course of conversation.”
“The plague of which one merely says, ‘Plague take it!’ ” cried the artist.
“Or plague take the man!” added Mistigris.
“Mistigris,” said his master, “I shall put you out to walk if you get into mischief.—So you have been in the East, monsieur?” he went on, turning to Georges.
“Yes, monsieur. First in Egypt and then in Greece, where I served under Ali Pasha of Janina, with whom I had a desperate row.—The climate is too much for most men; and the excitements of all kinds that are part of an Oriental life wrecked my liver.”
“Oh, ho! a soldier?” said the burly farmer. “Why, how old are you?”
“I am nine-and-twenty,” said Georges, and all his fellow-travelers looked at him. “At eighteen I served as a private in the famous campaign of 1813; but I only was present at the battle of Hanau, where I won the rank of sergeant-major. In France, at Montereau, I was made sublieutenant, and I was decorated by—no spies here?—by the Emperor.”
“And you do not wear the Cross of your Order?” said Oscar.
“A Cross given by the present set? Thank you for nothing. Besides, who that is anybody wears his decorations when traveling? Look at monsieur,” he went on, indicating the Comte de Sérizy, “I will bet you anything you please—”
“Betting anything you please is the same thing in France as not betting at all,” said Mistigris’ master.
“I will bet you anything you please,” Georges repeated pompously, “that he is covered with stars.”
“I have, in fact,” said Monsieur de Sérizy, with a laugh, “the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the Grand Cross of Saint-Andrew of Russia, of the Eagle of Prussia, of the Order of the Annunciada of Sardinia, and of the Golden Fleece.”
“Is that all?” said Mistigris. “And it all rides in a public chaise?”
“He is going it, is the brick-red man!” said Georges in a whisper to Oscar. “What did I tell you?” he remarked aloud.—“I make no secret of it, I am devoted to the Emperor!”
“I served under him,” said the Count.
“And what a man! Wasn’t he?” cried Georges.
“A man to whom I am under great obligations,” replied the Count, with a well-affected air of stupidity.
“For your crosses?” said Mistigris.
“And what quantities of snuff he took!” replied Monsieur de Sérizy.
“Yes, he took it loose in his waistcoat pockets.”
“So I have been told,” said the farmer, with a look of incredulity.
“And not only that, but he chewed and smoked,” Georges went on. “I saw him smoking in the oddest way at Waterloo when Marshal Soult lifted him up bodily and flung him into his traveling carriage, just as he had seized a musket and wanted to charge the English!”
“So you were at Waterloo?” said Oscar, opening his eyes very wide.
“Yes, young man, I went through the campaign of 1815. At Mont Saint-Jean I was made captain, and I retired on the Loire when we were disbanded. But, on my honor, I was sick of France, and I could not stay. No, I should have got myself into some scrape. So I went off with two or three others of the same sort, Selves, Besson, and some more, who are in Egypt to this day in the service of Mohammed Pasha, and a queer fellow he is, I can tell you! He was a tobacconist at la Cavalle, and is on the high way to be a reigning prince. You have seen him in Horace Vernet’s picture of the Massacre of the Mamelukes. Such a handsome man!—I never would abjure the faith of my fathers and adopt Islam; all the more because the ceremony involves a surgical operation for which I had no liking. Besides, no one respects a renegade. If they had offered me a hundred thousand francs a year, then, indeed—and yet, no.—The Pasha made me a present of a thousand talari.”
“How much is that?” asked Oscar, who was all ears.
“Oh, no great matter. The talaro is much the same as a five-franc piece. And, on my honor, I did not earn
