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Updated: June 6, 2025
As they moved across the patio, Gathon Dard caught snatches of conversations about deals in slaves, and horse trades, about bandit raids and blood feuds, about women and horses and weapons. An old man with a white beard and an unusually clean robe came over to intercept them. "Ha, lord of my daughter, you're back at last. We had begun to fear for you," he said.
One fine afternoon, about four o'clock, this pair burst remorselessly through a fence, and landed in the road opposite Bigot's Auberge; a long low house, with "ICI ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL," written all across it in gigantic letters. Riviere was for moving homeward, but Dard halted and complained dismally of "the soldier's gripes."
He wrote a few lines in pencil, folded them, and Dard went off with them, little dreaming that the colonel of his brigade was taking the trouble to save his life, because he came from Beaurepaire. Colonel Dujardin then went into his tent, and closed the aperture, and took the good book the priest had given him, and prayed humbly, and forgave all the world.
"No matter," said the colonel. "Give me a piece of bread instead." La Croix went for it himself, and on his return found Cadel sitting on one side of Death's Alley, and Dard with his head bound up on the other.
"Drop that, Jacintha," said Dard, angrily; "do you think that is encouraging? Sergeant, I told this poor girl all about glory before you came, but she was not ripe for it: say something to cheer her up, for I can't." "I can," cried this trumpet of battle, emptying its glass. "Attention, young woman." "Oh, dear! oh, dear! yes, sir." "A French soldier is a man who carries France in his heart"
His eye fell upon private Dard, as luck would have it. "Come here," said he. Dard came and saluted. "Have you anybody at Beaurepaire that would be sorry if you were killed?" "Yes, colonel! Jacintha, that used to make your broth, colonel." "Take this line to Colonel Raynal. You will find him with the 12th brigade."
At last Rose heard some news of the truant lover. The fact is, this young lady was as intelligent as she was inexperienced; and she had asked Jacintha to tell Dard to talk to every soldier that passed through the village, and ask him if he knew anything about Captain Dujardin of the 17th regiment.
The inside of the oak was hollow as a drum; and on its east side yawned a fissure as high as a man and as broad as a street-door. Dard used to wheel his wheelbarrow into the tree at a trot, and there leave it. Yet in spite of excavation and mutilation not life only but vigor dwelt in this wooden shell.
"M. Dard," said that worthy man, "is an estimable youth, whose attachment for us has never diminished in spite of our wretchedness; and I am certain he prefers virtue in a wife above all other riches." Some days after, our benefactor came to tell us he had disembarked all his effects, and that he had resumed his functions as director of the French school at Senegal.
"You think that might have something to do with it?" the Calera asked. "It could. I think that these people might not have been born slaves, but people taken captive. Suppose, at some time, there had been sold to Nebu-hin-Abenoz, and sold elsewhere by him, one who was a person of consequence the son of a king, or the priest of some god," Gathon Dard suggested. "By Safar, yes!
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