VIII.
THE COLONEL’S HORSE.
The tormentor chosen by Montézuma to succeed Croquemitaine, was the horse belonging to the colonel of my father’s regiment. It was a beautiful white horse with a splendid mane, and a grand thick tail which swept the ground. When he stamped and snorted, and turned his graceful head from side to side, he looked so intelligent, that I easily believed everything that Montézuma told me about him. This marvellous horse, according to Montézuma, knew all that passed, and repeated it to the colonel; also, if I did not take care, all my particular misdeeds to my father. For instance, Montézuma would say, “So you won’t eat your soup?”
“No! I won’t eat my soup! and pray, what of that?” I would reply.
“Very well,” was the answer, “the colonel’s horse will tell your father to-morrow on parade!”
I would have eaten my soup if it had been boiling, rather than expose myself to the tale-bearing of that white horse. I learnt, little by little—as Montézuma found me more difficult to manage—all sorts of horrible peculiarities belonging to the colonel’s terrible horse. I heard that he would bite most cruelly all little boys who refused to go to bed at eight o’clock, who kicked their father’s orderly, or who preferred to sail their boats on the pond in the Palais Royal (where Montézuma did not happen to meet his friends) to taking a walk in the Jardin des Plantes (where Montézuma always met his friends). It seemed, according to Montézuma, that this much-to-be-dreaded animal had devoured the little son of the master shoemaker, because he fought with his schoolmistress: nothing had been found of this unfortunate but his shoes, his cap, and a letter in which he declared that he thought he quite deserved his fate.
With a sigh of anguish I would anxiously ask, “And what did his mamma say?”
Montézuma replied, “She was in great grief.”
“I will never kick you again, Montézuma,” would I cry. “Oh! pray of the horse not to eat me, because it would make mamma so sad.”
“Very well; this time you are safe,” Montézuma then gravely replied. “But remember, if you ever do so again, he will not listen to my entreaties.”
With what an eye of curiosity and distrust did I gaze upon that anthropophagus of a horse, when I was taken to reviews. If I was placed near the colonel, curvetting in pride at the head of the regiment on his splendid white charger, I was seized with a terrible panic.
“Let us go further, Montézuma. Oh! do come away!” I used to pray, “he knows me, he is looking at me!”
“Don’t be afraid; while you are with me, and I do not sign to him, he will say and do nothing,” replied Montézuma.
“But,” I persisted, “don’t you see how he looks at me, and how he shakes his head? What does he mean?”
“Well, he means,” answered Montézuma, “he just means, ‘I have my eye on you: you must remember that, and take care how you behave.’”