darling was seventeen hands high at the very least) "no, Monsieur: it is
but a young creature this; his grandfather served me well!"

"I need not ask you, Monsieur, if you have borne arms: the soldier is
stamped upon you!"

"Sir, you flatter me highly!" said the old gentleman, blushing to the
very tip of his long lean ears, and bowing as low as if I had called him
a Conde. "I have followed the profession of arms for more than fifty
years."

"Fifty years! 'tis a long time."

"A long time," rejoined my companion, "a long time to look back upon
with regret."

"Regret! by Heaven, I should think the remembrance of fifty years'
excitement and glory would be a remembrance of triumph."

The old man turned round on his saddle, and looked at me for some
moments very wistfully. "You are young, Sir," he said, "and at your
years I should have thought with you; but--" (then abruptly changing his
voice, he continued)--"Triumph, did you say? Sir, I have had three
sons: they are dead; they died in battle; I did not weep; I did not shed
a tear, Sir,--not a tear! But I will tell you when I did weep. I came
back, an old man, to the home I had left as a young one. I saw the
country a desert. I saw that the /noblesse/ had become tyrants; the
peasants had become slaves,--such slaves,--savage from despair,--even
when they were most gay, most fearfully gay, from constitution. Sir, I
saw the priest rack and grind, and the seigneur exact and pillage, and