The old gentleman seemed to me, and still seems in the
retrospect, the salt of the earth. I had occasion to see him in
the extremes of hardship, hunger and cold; he was dying, and he
looked it; and yet I cannot remember any hasty, harsh, or impatient
word to have fallen from his lips. On the contrary, he ever showed
himself careful to please; and even if he rambled in his talk,
rambled always gently--like a humane, half-witted old hero, true to
his colours to the last. I would not dare to say how often he
awoke suddenly from a lethargy, and told us again, as though we had
never heard it, the story of how he had earned the cross, how it
had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent-
-and, indeed, foolish--sayings of his daughter when he returned
with it on his bosom. He had another anecdote which he was very
apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond
endurance with dispraises of the English. This was an account of
the braves gens with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he
was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common
civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain
written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but
conclusive indications, I gathered that this family had really
loved him, and loaded him with kindness.
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