there, when I told him my name, Boutin's
mouth opened from ear to ear in a roar of laughter, like the bursting
of a mortar. That mirth, monsieur, was one of the keenest pangs I have
known. It told me without disguise how great were the changes in me! I
was, then, unrecognizable even to the humblest and most grateful of my
former friends!

"I had once saved Boutin's life, but it was only the repayment of a debt
I owed him. I need not tell you how he did me this service; it was at
Ravenna, in Italy. The house where Boutin prevented my being stabbed was
not extremely respectable. At that time I was not a colonel, but, like
Boutin himself, a common trooper. Happily there were certain details of
this adventure which could be known only to us two, and when I recalled
them to his mind his incredulity diminished. I then told him the story
of my singular experiences. Although my eyes and my voice, he told
me, were strangely altered, although I had neither hair, teeth, nor
eyebrows, and was as colorless as an Albino, he at last recognized his
Colonel in the beggar, after a thousand questions, which I answered
triumphantly.

"He related his adventures; they were not less extraordinary than my
own; he had lately come back from the frontiers of China, which he
had tried to cross after escaping from Siberia. He told me of the
catastrophe of the Russian campaign, and of Napoleon's first abdication.
That news was one of the things which caused me most anguish!

"We were two curious derelicts, having been rolled over the globe as
pebbles are rolled by the ocean when storms bear them from shore to
shore. Between us we had seen Egypt, Syria, Spain, Russia, Holland,
Germany, Italy and Dalmatia, England, China, Tartary, Siberia; the only
thing wanting was that neither of us had been to America or the Indies.
Finally, Boutin, who still was more locomotive than I, undertook to go
to Paris as quickly as might be to inform my wife of the predicament in
which I was. I wrote a long letter full of details to Madame Chabert.
That, monsieur, was the fourth! If I had had any relations, perhaps
nothing of all this might have happened; but, to be frank with you, I
am but a workhouse child, a soldier, whose sole fortune was his courage,
whose sole family is mankind at large, whose country is France, whose
only protector is the Almighty.--Nay, I am wrong! I had a father--the
Emperor! Ah! if he were but here, the dear man! If he could see _his
Chabert