Short Fiction

keep him company.’

“The girl looked at me with her handsome dark eyes, and said, smiling:

“ ‘I have no objection, if he wishes it.’

“I could not possibly refuse, and merely said: ‘Of course I shall be very glad of your company.’

“Her mother pushed her out. ‘Go and get dressed directly; put on your blue dress and your hat with the flowers, and make haste.’

“⁠—As soon as she had left the room the old woman explained herself: ‘I have two others, but they are much younger. It costs a lot of money to bring up four children. Luckily the eldest is off my hands at present.’

“Then she told all about herself, about her husband, who had been an employee on the railway, but who was dead, and she expatiated on the good qualities of Carlotta, her second girl, who soon returned, dressed, as her sister had been, in a striking, peculiar manner.

“Her mother examined her from head to foot, and, after finding everything right, she said:

“ ‘Now, my children, you can go.’ Then, turning to the girl, she said: ‘Be sure you are back by ten o’clock tonight; you know the door is locked then.’

“ ‘All right, mamma; don’t alarm yourself,’ Carlotta replied.

“She took my arm, and we went wandering about the streets, just as I had done the previous year with her sister.

“We returned to the hotel for lunch, and then I took my new friend to Santa Margarita, just as I had done with her sister the year previously.

“During the whole fortnight which I had at my disposal I took Carlotta to all the places of interest in and about Genoa. She gave me no cause to regret the other.

“She cried when I left her, and the morning of my departure I gave her four bracelets for her mother, besides a substantial token of my affection for herself.

“One of these days I intend to return to Italy, and I cannot help remembering, with a certain amount of uneasiness, mingled with hope, that Mme. Rondoli has two more daughters.”

What the Colonel Thought

“I’m an old man now,” said Colonel Laporte. “I’ve got the gout, and my legs are as stiff as the posts in a fence, but, damme, if a woman, a pretty woman, ordered me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I’d jump into it like a clown through a hoop. That’s how I shall die; it’s in the blood. I’m a veteran ladies’ man, I am, an old buffer of the old school. The sight of a woman, a pretty woman, stirs me to my boots. I give you my word it does.

“And we’re all like that, gentlemen, we Frenchmen. We remain knights to our dying day, the knights of love and hazard, now that they’ve done away with God, Whose real bodyguard we used to be.

“But no one can take woman from our hearts. She’s there and she’ll stay there. We love her, and we’ll go on loving her; we’ll do any sort of madness for her, so long as France remains on the map of Europe. And even if France is wiped out, there will always be Frenchmen.

“As for me, when a woman, a pretty woman, looks at me, I feel capable of anything. Why, damme, when I feel her eyes, her damned wonderful eyes, peering into me, sending a flame through my veins, I want to do Lord knows what, to fight, to struggle, to smash the furniture, to show that I’m the strongest, bravest, boldest, and most devoted of mankind.

“And I’m not the only one, not by a long way; the whole French army’s just the same, I swear it. From the private up to the general, we all go forward to the end when there’s a woman, a pretty woman, in the case. Remember what Joan of Arc made us do in the old days. Well, I bet you that if a woman, a pretty woman, had taken command of the army the night before Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon was wounded, we’d have crossed the Prussian lines, by God! and drunk our brandy from their cannons.

“We didn’t need a Trochu in Paris, but a St. Geneviève.

“That reminds me of a little story of the war which proves that, in a woman’s presence, we’re capable of anything.

“I was a plain captain in those days, and was commanding a detachment of scouts fighting a rear guard action in the middle of a district overrun by the Prussians. We were cut off and constantly pursued; we were worn out in body and mind, perishing of exhaustion and hunger.

“Well, before the next day we had to reach Barsur-Tain or we were done for, cut off and wiped out. How we had escaped so long I don’t know. We had twelve leagues to march during the night, on empty stomachs, through the snow, which was thick on the ground and still falling. I thought: ‘This is the end; my poor lads will never get through.’

“We had eaten nothing since the previous day. All day long we stayed hidden in a barn, huddled against one another for greater warmth, incapable of motion or speech, sleeping by fits and starts, as a man does when utterly exhausted with fatigue.

“It was dark by five o’clock, with the livid darkness of a snowy day. I shook my men; many refused to rise, unable to move or to stand up, their joints stiff with the cold and so forth.

“In front of us stretched the plain, a perfect swine of a plain, without a scrap of cover, with the snow coming down. It fell and fell, like a curtain, in white flakes, hiding everything under a heavy mantle, frozen, thick and dead, a coverlet of icy wool. It was like the end of the world.

“ ‘Come on, boys. Fall in.’

“They looked at it, the white dust coming down from the sky, and seemed to think: ‘We’ve had enough; as well die here.’

“So I pulled out my revolver, saying:

“ ‘I shoot the first man