Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/123

 CHAPTER XI.

ONE OF HALF A MILLION.

T was evening in a crowded barrack-room in Paris. Recruits, not yet clad in uniform, but wearing the blouses or the coarse fustian jackets they had brought from their native villages, chatted, drank, quarrelled, or dozed upon the benches or about the floor. One noisy fellow was singing the Marseillaise at the top of his voice, another was defying any man in France to beat him at single-stick, but by far the greater number seemed dispirited and utterly weary.

A young lad had seated himself at the table, beneath one of the lamps which, at long distances, lit up the darkness of the great bare room. Writing materials were before him, and he had begun a letter, but paused, as if unable to proceed, and shaded his face with his hand. Presently the tears dropped slowly down between his fingers, blistering the paper; then once more he seized the pen, and wrote eagerly and rapidly:—

"Dearest mother, forgive me. I could not—no, I could not expose you and Clémence to the terrible sufferings inflicted upon the families of the refractory, even if, for myself, I was strong enough to encounter the horrors of a convict prison. There was no way but the way I took. M. le Curé answered for me