pension, and the honors of the Legion. Goguelat is his name. He was an

infantry man, who exchanged into the Guard in 1812. He is Gondrin's
better half, so to speak, for the two have taken up house together.

They both lodge with a peddler's widow, and make over their money to
her. She is a kind soul, who boards them and looks after them, and

their clothes as if they were her children.
"In his quality of local postman, Goguelat carries all the news of the

countryside, and a good deal of practice acquired in this way has made
him an orator in great request at up-sittings, and the champion teller

of stories in the district. Gondrin looks upon him as a very knowing
fellow, and something of a wit; and whenever Goguelat talks about

Napoleon, his comrade seems to understand what he is saying from the
movement of his lips. There will be an up-sitting (as they call it) in

one of my barns to-night. If these two come over to it, and we can
manage to see without being seen, I shall treat you to a view of the

spectacle. But here we are, close to the ditch, and I do not see my
friend the pontooner."

The doctor and the commandant looked everywhere about them; Gondrin's
soldier's coat lay there beside a heap of black mud, and his

wheelbarrow, spade, and pickaxe were visible, but there was no sign of
the man himself along the various pebbly watercourses, for the wayward

mountain streams had hollowed out channels that were almost overgrown
with low bushes.

"He cannot be so very far away. Gondrin! Where are you?" shouted
Benassis.

Genestas first saw the curling smoke from a tobacco pipe rise among
the brushwood on a bank of rubbish not far away. He pointed it out to

the doctor, who shouted again. The old pontooner raised his head at
this, recognized the mayor, and came towards them down a little

pathway.
"Well, old friend," said Benassis, making a sort of speaking-trumpet

with his hand. "Here is a comrade of yours, who was out in Egypt, come
to see you."

Gondrin raised is face at once and gave Genestas a swift, keen, and
searching look, one of those glances by which old soldiers are wont at

once to take the measure of any impending danger. He saw the red
ribbon that the commandant wore, and made a silent and respectful

military salute.
"If the Little Corporal were alive," the officer cried, "you would

have the Cross of the Legion of Honor and a handsome pension besides,
for every man who wore epaulettes on the other side of the river owed

his life to you on the 1st of October 1812. But I am not the Minister
of War, my friend," the commandant added as he dismounted, and with a

sudden rush of feeling he grasped the laborer's hand.
The old pontooner drew himself up at the words, he knocked the ashes

from his pipe, and put it in his pocket.
"I only did my duty, sir," he said, with his head bent down; "but

others have not done their duty by me. They asked for my papers! Why,
the Twenty-ninth Bulletin, I told them, must do instead of my papers!"

"But you must make another application, comrade. You are bound to have
justice done you in these days, if influence is brought to bear in the

right quarter."
"Justice!" cried the veteran. The doctor and the commandant shuddered

at the tone in which he spoke.
In the brief pause that followed, both the horsemen looked at the man

before them, who seemed like a fragment of the wreck of great armies
which Napoleon had filled with men of bronze sought out from among

three generations. Gondrin was certainly a splendid specimen of that
seemingly indestructible mass of men which might be cut to pieces but

never gave way. The old man was scarcely five feet high, wide across
the shoulders, and broad-chested; his face was sunburned, furrowed

with deep wrinkles, but the outlines were still firm in spite of the
hollows in it, and one could see even now that it was the face of a

soldier. It was a rough-hewn countenance, his forehead seemed like a
block of granite; but there was a weary expression about his face, and

the gray hairs hung scantily about his head, as if life were waning
there already. Everything about him indicated unusual strength; his

arms were covered thickly with hair, and so was the chest, which was
visible through the opening of his coarse shirt. In spite of his

almost crooked legs, he held himself firm and erect, as if nothing
could shake him.

"Justice," he said once more; "there will never be justice for the
like of us. We cannot send bailiffs to the Government to demand our

dues for us; and as the wallet must be filled somehow," he said,
striking his stomach, "we cannot afford to wait. Moreover, these

gentry who lead snug lives in government offices may talk and talk,
but their words are not good to eat, so I have come back here again to

draw my pay out of the commonalty," he said, striking the mud with his
spade.

"Things must not be left in that way, old comrade," said Genestas. "I
owe my life to you, and it would be ungrateful of me if I did not lend

you a hand. I have not forgotten the passage over the bridges in the
Beresina, and it is fresh in the memories of some brave fellows of my

acquaintance; they will back me up, and the nation shall give you the
recognition you deserve."

"You will be called a Bonapartist! Please do not meddle in the matter,
sir. I have gone to the rear now, and I have dropped into my hole here

like a spent bullet. But after riding on camels through the desert,
and drinking my glass by the fireside in Moscow, I never thought that

I should come back to die here beneath the trees that my father
planted," and he began to work again.

"Poor old man!" said Genestas, as they turned to go. "I should do the
same if I were in his place; we have lost our father. Everything seems

dark to me now that I have seen that man's hopelessness," he went on,
addressing Benassis; "he does not know how much I am interested in

him, and he will think that I am one of those gilded rascals who
cannot feel for a soldier's sufferings."

He turned quickly and went back, grasped the veteran's hand, and spoke
loudly in his ear:

"I swear by the Cross I wear--the Cross of Honor it used to be--that I
will do all that man can do to obtain your pension for you; even if I

have to swallow a dozen refusals from the minister, and to petition
the king and the dauphin and the whole shop!"

Old Gondrin quivered as he heard the words. He looked hard at Genestas
and said, "Haven't you served in the ranks?" The commandant nodded.

The pontooner wiped his hand and took that of Genestas, which he
grasped warmly and said:

"I made the army a present of my life, general, when I waded out into
the river yonder, and if I am still alive, it is all so much to the

good. One moment! Do you care to see to the bottom of it? Well, then,
ever since SOMEBODY was pulled down from his place, I have ceased to

care about anything. And, after all," he went on cheerfully, as he
pointed to the land, "they have made over twenty thousand francs to me

here, and I am taking it out in detail, as HE used to say!"
"Well, then, comrade," said Genestas, touched by the grandeur of this

forgiveness, "at least you shall have the only thing that you cannot
prevent me from giving to you, here below." The commandant tapped his

heart, looked once more at the old pontooner, mounted his horse again,
and went his way side by side with Benassis.

"Such cruelty as this on the part of the government foments the strife
between rich and poor," said the doctor. "People who exercise a little

brief authority have never given a serious thought to the consequences
that must follow an act of injustice done to a man of the people. It

is true that a poor man who needs must work for his daily bread cannot
long keep up the struggle; but he can talk, and his words find an echo