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Updated: June 1, 2025
However, when Morrel went down to his dinner, he appeared very calm. This calmness was more alarming to the two women than the deepest dejection would have been. After dinner Morrel usually went out and used to take his coffee at the Phocaean club, and read the Semaphore; this day he did not leave the house, but returned to his office. As to Cocles, he seemed completely bewildered.
At last, one day, Emmanuel came to his wife, who had just finished making up the accounts. 'Julie, said he to her, 'Cocles has just given me the last rouleau of a hundred francs; that completes the 250,000 francs we had fixed as the limits of our gains. Can you content yourself with the small fortune which we shall possess for the future? Listen to me.
Some days after, being at the Theatre des Arts, at the second representation of 'Horatius Cocles', although he was sitting at the back of a box in the second tier, the audience discovered that he was in the house.
Then Cocles said, "Father Tiberinus, holy one, I pray thee, receive these arms, and this thy soldier, in thy favouring stream." So, in full armour, just as he was, he leapedinto the Tiber, and, amid showers of darts that fell upon him, swam across unharmed to his comrades, having dared a deed which is likely to obtain more fame than belief with posterity.
Those to whom Rome owed most for services of this sort, were Horatius Cocles, Mutius Scævola, the two Decii, Atilius Regulus, and divers others, whose rare excellence and generous example wrought for their city almost the same results as might have been effected by ordinances and laws.
At this critical juncture, the brave Horatius Cocles, with one on either hand, kept the enemy at bay while willing arms swung the axes against the supports of the structure, and when it was just ready to fall uttered a prayer to Father Tiber, plunged into the muddy torrent, fully armed as he was, and swam to the opposite shore amid the plaudits of the rejoicing people, as related in the ballad of Lord Macaulay.
They extolled his bravery, which almost vied with the fabulous achievement of Horatius Cocles, and adored the genius which saw safety and victory for his discouraged army amidst swamps and dykes.
"I have given my word to the French, I shall die with them," replies the bold chief. Already some stakes were torn up, and the Iroquois were about to rush like an avalanche through this breach, when a new Horatius Cocles, as brave as the Roman, made his body a shield for his brothers, and soon the axe which he held in his hand dripped with blood. He fell, and was at once replaced.
Nothing had as yet occurred to shake Cocles' belief; the last month's payment had been made with the most scrupulous exactitude; Cocles had detected an overbalance of fourteen sous in his cash, and the same evening he had brought them to M. Morrel, who, with a melancholy smile, threw them into an almost empty drawer, saying: "Thanks, Cocles; you are the pearl of cashiers."
The young man, wishing to spare his employer the pain of this interview, questioned the new-comer; but the stranger declared that he had nothing to say to M. Emmanuel, and that his business was with M. Morrel in person. Emmanuel sighed, and summoned Cocles. Cocles appeared, and the young man bade him conduct the stranger to M. Morrel's apartment. Cocles went first, and the stranger followed him.
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