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But they were less inclined to laugh when a shell burst only ten yards from them and sent a shower of earth flying over the company; Loubet affected to make light of it by ordering his comrades to get out their brushes from the knapsacks, but Chouteau suddenly became very pale and had not a word to say.
There was a pious man for you! Couldn't he oblige him, Chouteau, by interceding with God to give him a hundred thousand francs or some such small trifle? But Pache, an insignificant little fellow with a head running up to a point, who had come to them from some hamlet in the wilds of Picardy, received the other's raillery with the uncomplaining gentleness of a martyr.
There had been a time when Chouteau, thanks to his facundity of the faubourg, had interested and almost convinced him, but now he had come to detest that apostle of falsehood, that snake in the grass, who calumniated honest effort of every kind in order to sicken others of it. "Why do you talk such nonsense?" he exclaimed. "You know very well there is no truth in it." "What, not true?
"Monsieur," he added, turning in his most irresistible manner to Monsieur Gratiot, "if I have delayed the departure of your boat, I am exceedingly sorry. But I appeal to you if I have not the best of excuses." And he bowed to Suzanne, who stood beside him coyly, looking down. As for 'Polyte and Gaspard, they were quite breathless between rage and astonishment. But Colonel Chouteau began to laugh.
If Badinguet and Bismarck have a quarrel, let 'em go to work with their fists and fight it out and not involve in their row some hundreds of thousands of men who don't even know one another by sight and have not the slightest desire to fight." "Of course, let 'em fight it out, and take a drink together afterward." But Chouteau had turned to Pache, whom he now proceeded to take in hand.
Suzanne is a sad coquette," said Colonel Auguste Chouteau, laughing, as we set out for the ball. The sun was hanging low over the western hills as we approached the barracks, and out of the open windows came the merry, mad sounds of violin, guitar, and flageolet, the tinkle of a triangle now and then, the shouts of laughter, the shuffle of many feet over the puncheons.
Lapoulle, observing what all his comrades were doing, must have supposed the performance to be some recent innovation in the manual, and followed suit, while Pache, in the confused idea of duty that he owed to his religious education, refused to do as the rest were doing and was loaded with obloquy by Chouteau, who called him a priest's whelp. "Look at the sniveling papist!
We left them, Lenoir, Suzanne, and her two suitors, standing at the pond, and made our way through the path in the forest. It was not until we reached the road and had begun to climb out of the valley that the silence was broken between us. "Monsieur," said Colonel Chouteau, slyly, "do you have many such escapes?" "It might have been closer," said Nick. "Closer?" ejaculated the Colonel.
Chouteau, who was noisily absorbing the last drops in his porringer, bellowed his opinion of the generals, without mentioning names: "The pigs! what miserable boobies they are, hein! A pretty pack of dunghill-cocks the government has given us as commanders!
"Well, well!" said Loubet, "their fireworks are a fizzle!" "They ought to take them in out of the rain," sneered Chouteau. Even Rochas thought it necessary to say something. "Didn't I tell you that the dunderheads don't know enough even to point a gun?"
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