Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/126

116 ought to shout, if only by way of drowning their foolish voices."

For the first time since the day of the conscription Henri laughed; and Féron presently continued, "But as for me, I do not shout 'Vive l'Empereur!' like a fool. I know very well what I am about. I am only a conscript, it is true, but I am a soldier. The whole world is before me, and if I am brave, active, and resolute, the marshal's bâton is no impossible dream for me. If we had lived in the old times, M. de Talmont, you would have ridden a fine horse and worn a beautiful sword; and I should have been like the dust beneath your feet—a private all my days, and no more. Thanks to the Revolution and the Empire, we have changed all that; so now we can be good comrades, as you have been kind enough to say."

Good comrades they were through many a dreary day of drill and marching. At first the physical hardships of his life weighed so heavily upon Henri that thought and feeling were almost crushed into silence. When he halted for the night, after a long day's march, he was scarcely conscious of anything except weary limbs and blistered feet. During his stay at the depôt in Metz, where the conscripts had to go through some preliminary training, things were scarcely better. The moral and the mental atmosphere of the barrack-room were alike abhorrent to his refined, sensitive nature; while the cruel and degrading punishments that followed any failure in skill or quickness on the parade-ground, forced him to bend all his remaining energies to the task of avoiding them. No answer to his letter from Paris ever reached him, and this added to the dull apathy that was creeping over his soul. His mother, he feared, was implacable. And Clémence?—perhaps his mother would not allow her to write, perhaps she herself was too deeply offended to make the attempt.

At last marching orders came once more. Strange to say, from that day the heavy cloud of gloom that hung over Henri