It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in
captivity; that he had started on this fatal journey from so
cordial a farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter:
that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could
continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue,
the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope. I
did for him what I was able,--nursed him, kept him covered, watched
over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough
places of the road. 'Champdivers,' he once said, 'you are like a
son to me--like a son.' It is good to remember, though at the time
it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were
travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to
another destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent.
An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech,
from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words
of the patois, too: Ouistreham, matrasse, and others, the sense of
which we were sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he
began again his eternal story of the cross and the Emperor. The
Major, who was particularly ill, or at least particularly cross,
uttered some angry words of protest. 'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le
commandant, mais c'est pour monsieur,' said the Colonel: 'Monsieur
has not yet heard the circumstance, and is good enough to feel an
interest.
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