III.
COLONEL BOISSOT’S SYSTEM.
Colonel Boissot was an old brother-in-arms of my father, who, like him, had retired from the army, and settled down to a quiet life at Loches.
After the first few words of welcome and politeness had passed, my father asked the colonel, if he happened to know of any animal that was more timid than a hare.
“An animal more timid than a hare?” replied the colonel thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said my father.
“By Jove, certainly!” answered the colonel, “a frog is more cowardly, because in the old fable of La Fontaine we are told that the frogs were afraid of a hare.”
“Very well,” said my father, pointing at me with the newspaper, “there you see a frog then; I have only to put him in a glass bottle with a little ladder, to act as a barometer,” and as he uttered these words, he looked at me with a vexed and mortified expression, and made me a sign to go out of the room.
The colonel looked at me, with his great round eyes wide open, and making a slight grimace, asked, “Is he——”
“Good gracious! yes,” replied my father with a deep sigh. The colonel whistled softly, as he looked at my father, and he rolled his eyes back to me with an astonished expression in them, pretended or real. This warlike man felt surprised, apparently, to find a coward in the son of a brother-in-arms. All the time he stared at me I did not dare to move.
At last he shook his head several times and said, grinding his teeth the while, “You know, Bicquerot, I belong to the old school. For such fancies as these (for they are pure fancies), I know but of one remedy,” and he made suggestive and disagreeable movements with his cane as if chastising an imaginary coward.
“Oh, no!” my father answered quickly, “no, the remedy would be worse than the malady. And think, too, of his mother: she, the poor dear mother, would go mad. No! no! certainly not.”
“You are wrong,” drily replied the advocate of violent measures, “it is an infallible remedy.”
“That is possible,” said my father; “but I could never resort to it.” Then turning to me he said in a more gentle tone of voice, “Now go, my poor boy, run and find your mother.”
There was something so sad, so touching in the tone of my father’s voice, the expression of his face was so kind, that if the odious colonel had not been present I should have thrown my arms round his neck and kissed him.
But I dared not, and as I awkwardly shut the door after me, with trembling hands, I again heard these words issue, one by one, from between the clenched teeth of the terrible colonel: “Bicquerot, you are wrong.”