king of offence, I am but
too sorry for the words I have already spoken. I should have remembered,
and remembering, should have made allowance for, the strength of
partisan feelings, which have their origin in a noble, but, as I
believe, a mistaken source."

"Indeed!" interrupted he, in mockery. "Is it, then, come to this? Am
I, a Frenchman born, to be lectured on my loyalty and allegiance by a
foreign mercenary?"

"Not even that taunt, De Beauvais, shall avail you anything. I am firm
in my resolve."

"_Pardieu!_ then," cried he, with savage energy, "there remains but
this!"

As he spoke, he leaped from his chair, and sprang towards me. In so
doing, however, his knee struck the table, and with a groan of agony,
he reeled back and fell on the floor, while from his reopened wound a
torrent of blood gushed out and deluged the room.

For a second or two he motioned me away with his hand; but as his
weakness increased, he lay passive and unresisting, and suffered me to
arrest the bleeding by such means as I was able to practise.

It was a long time ere I could stanch the gaping orifice, which had been
inflicted by a sabre, and cut clean through the high boot and deep into
the thigh. Fortunately for his recovery, he had himself succeeded in
getting off the boot before, and the wound lay open to my surgical
skill. Lifting him cautiously in my arms, I laid him on the bed, and
moistened his lips with a little wine. Still the debility continued,--no
signs of returning strength were there; but his features, pale and
fallen, were glazed with a cold sweat that hung in heavy drops upon his
brow and forehead.

Never was agony like mine. I saw his life was ebbing fast; the
respiration was growing fainter and more irregular; his pulse could
scarce be felt; yet dare I not leave my post to seek for assistance. A
hundred thoughts whirled through my puzzled brain, and among the rest,
the self-accusing one that I was the cause of his death. "Yes," thought
I, "better far to have stood before his pistol, at all the hazard of my
life, than see him thus."

In an instant all his angry speeches and his insulting gestures were
forgotten. He looked so like what I once knew him, that my mind was
wandering back again to former scenes and times, and all resentment was
lost in the flood of memory. Poor fellow! what a sad destiny was his!
fighting against the arms of his country,--a mourner over the triumphs
of his native land! Alien that I wa