martial ecstasy, a fat little Italian, who manufactured toothpicks and
wicker cradles on the island of Notre Dame; "your exploits shall resound
through Europe! and the history of those wars should be written in your
blood!"

"Never mind! a trifle!" exclaimed the soldier. "At Ligny, the other day,
where we smashed the Prussians into ten hundred thousand milliards of
atoms, a bit of a shell cut me across the leg and opened an artery. It
was spouting as high as the chimney, and in half a minute I had lost
enough to fill a pitcher. I must have expired in another minute, if I
had not whipped off my sash like a flash of lightning, tied it round my
leg above the wound, whipt a bayonet out of the back of a dead Prussian,
and passing it under, made a tourniquet of it with a couple of twists,
and so stayed the haemorrhage and saved my life. But, _sacrebleu_!
gentlemen, I lost so much blood, I have been as pale as the bottom of a
plate ever since. No matter. A trifle. Blood well spent, gentlemen." He
applied himself now to his bottle of _vin ordinaire_.

The Marquis had closed his eyes, and looked resigned and disgusted,
while all this was going on.

"_Garcon_," said the officer, for the first time speaking in a low
tone over the back of his chair to the waiter; "who came in that
traveling carriage, dark yellow and black, that stands in the middle of
the yard, with arms and supporters emblazoned on the door, and a red
stork, as red as my facings?"

The waiter could not say.

The eye of the eccentric officer, who had suddenly grown grim and