and my voice, he told me, were strangely altered, although I had
neither hair, teeth, nor eyebrows, and was as colorless as an Albino,
he at last recognized his Colonel in the beggar, after a thousand
questions, which I answered triumphantly.

"He related his adventures; they were not less extraordinary than my
own; he had lately come back from the frontiers of China, which he had
tried to cross after escaping from Siberia. He told me of the
catastrophe of the Russian campaign, and of Napoleon's first
abdication. That news was one of the things which caused me most
anguish!

"We were two curious derelicts, having been rolled over the globe as
pebbles are rolled by the ocean when storms bear them from shore to
shore. Between us we had seen Egypt, Syria, Spain, Russia, Holland,
Germany, Italy and Dalmatia, England, China, Tartary, Siberia; the
only thing wanting was that neither of us had been to America or the
Indies. Finally, Boutin, who still was more locomotive than I,
undertook to go to Paris as quickly as might be to inform my wife of
the predicament in which I was. I wrote a long letter full of details
to Madame Chabert. That, monsieur, was the fourth! If I had had any
relations, perhaps nothing of all this might have happened; but, to be
frank with you, I am but a workhouse child, a soldier, whose sole
fortune was his courage, whose sole family is mankind at large, whose
country is France, whose only protector is the Almighty.--Nay, I am
wrong! I had a father--the Emperor! Ah! if he were but here, the dear
man! If he could see /his Chabert/, as he used to call me, in the
state in which I am now, he would be in a rage! What is to be done?
Our sun is set, and we are all out in the cold now. After all,
political events might account for my wife's silence!