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"Remember, sir," the other said, "we can cock our pistols in a moment, and use them too: they are all loaded." "Look here, my friend," said Tournier, calmly, "we have no wish to attend your funeral at Yaxley, or to have you shut up in the barracks all the rest of your time.
And then the light-hearted fellow for a light heart is often a kind one seeing that open raillery was powerless, tried gentler means to cheer his companion up. "Look, Tournier," he whispered, after a pause, "what a charming view is on the left there. We must be on high ground. What a panorama for poor flat England!
"I should think so," replied Tournier; "or if the English Government failed to do so, ours will not forget them. And yet, the shameful butchery of Marshal Ney does not favour the idea. They may look on them, as they did him, as soldiers of Napoleon, not of France."
In the course of the evening, Cosin suddenly said with great gravity, amounting almost to solemnity, and looking first at Tournier, and then at Alice: "There is a matter that still remains to be settled. You have run away, Tournier, with my wife, and it is only fit and right that you should make what compensation is in your power."
There was a tone of impatience in her voice, which Tournier, however, noticed not, but passed from his former eagerness of manner into a sort of dreamy abstraction, as if talking to himself. "And yet the man seems happy is happy; goes about as cheerful as the day; laughs and jokes, and enjoys his life. I cannot comprehend it!" Alice was indeed in "Wonderland." He seemed lost in thought.
When Tournier returned to the barracks after his meeting with Cosin, he fell in with his young friend, who has already been alluded to, and whose name was Villemet. "Somebody has been asking after you, Tournier." "Who was he?" but not the slightest curiosity was in the tone of enquiry. "Our bishop." The interest fell lower, if possible. "You mean the chaplain. What does he want?" "To see you."
He did not like to speak of what he was about to do before Alice, because it was an unpleasant subject for ladies' ears, but when she went out of the room, he began at once to tell her brother all, from first to last. Never had he seen Cosin so greatly disturbed. He listened with open mouth and staring eyes to all that Tournier said without uttering a word.
"Truest and best of friends, I shall think all night of these things." And he did turn and twist about for hours in his berth, so that more than once his fellow prisoners cried out angrily, "What is the matter with you, Tournier?" But he fell asleep towards morning, as soon as he had at last made up his mind that Fontenoy might kill him if he could, but he himself would fire into the ground.
A few days afterwards, the bishop came up to Tournier as he was taking exercise in the paved portion of the yard, and shaking him with gentle courtesy by the hand, said, "Captain Tournier, will you oblige me by letting us have a short walk together?"
Yet it so happened that the next time Tournier aroused, Villemet was out of the room, and Cosin had taken his place. The afternoon sun was lighting up his face with a slanting ray as he sat by the bedside and looked toward the window; and when he turned his eyes again on his friend, he could hardly refrain from starting. Tournier was gazing on him with a look of intense earnestness. "Where am I?"
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