“Colonel Fontenoy,” he said, with the coldness of the grave: “my friend here has something to say to you on my behalf.”
The colonel began to speak; but Tournier at once silenced him.
“I have nothing to say to you, sir,” and passed on.
Then Villemet proceeded to execute his commission with all frigid politeness and particularity. It is not worth while to relate what such a man as Fontenoy said on the occasion. But the challenge was accepted. The seconds were to arrange all the rest.
As the day drew near when, as Tournier learned, the colonel would again be out on parole, he felt a strong desire to make his confession to the bishop. There might be but a step between him and death. Besides, he was not easy in his mind. He was not quite sure he was doing right in thus seeking the life of his enemy.
So he sought and, as always, found a ready hearer in the chaplain. But when he came to tell him what he contemplated doing, the good man looked pained and surprised.
“And do you really think, my son, that the minister of God can forgive a sin before it is committed? and that sin wilful murder?”
“Murder?”
“Yes, murder!”
“How can that be, when each has an equal chance?”
“Of committing murder!”
“There are many who fight duels.”
“There are many who do wrong, my son.”
“Then is killing in battle murder?”
“No, for it is not done in revenge. It is the motive that makes killing murder. Your motive is revenge.”
And then he went on to urge Tournier, for whom he had entertained the tenderest regard, that he would give up his bloody intention, and leave his enemy to God. He expostulated with him, used the most affectionate entreaties, appealed to the authority of his holy office.
But all in vain. Tournier stoutly, but in the most respectful language, refused to comply, and the bishop refused to grant him absolution.
But Tournier was most unhappy. Let those who remonstrate with another, apparently in vain, remember to their comfort, that oftentimes the remonstrance has not been entirely thrown away. The first blow of the hammer does not drive home the nail, but it begins to do so.
One more evening before the fatal day: That evening he would spend with his friends at the Manor House. He had treated them badly for several weeks, and never gone near them; but they received him just as cordially as ever, and took no notice of his absence, only expressed their pleasure at seeing him, which touched him all the more; and then the thought caused a lump in his throat that, perhaps, he might never see them again. He did not like to speak of what he was about to do before Alice, because it was an unpleasant subject for ladies’ ears, but when she went out of the room, he began at once to tell her brother all, from first to last.
Never had he seen Cosin so greatly disturbed. He listened with open mouth and staring eyes to all that Tournier said without uttering a word. Not a remark did he make: not a question did he ask. Then, when the tale was told, and Tournier was waiting for some reply, Cosin started from his chair, and began to pace up and down the room in extreme agitation. At length he stopped in front of the other, and said, sternly but sorrowfully,—
“Then, after all, you have given up God.”
“I hope not.”
“But you have, on your own shewing: and taken up with the devil.”
Tournier writhed under this, and was about to say something sharp, but Cosin went on,—
“I will prove it to you. God says, ‘Vengeance is mine: I will repay’; and you say, ‘Not so, I will avenge myself.’ And whenever we contradict God, we take up with the devil.”
Then Cosin sat down again, and in his old gentle tone of voice, said,—
“Which do you think has sinned most against the other: Fontenoy against you, or you against God?”
Tournier was silent. He was thinking of all the misery that man had brought upon him. How happy he might have been, if he had not come between him and his love. He thought of his future, and how, even if ever he were set at liberty again, life would be a blank to him. And he ground his teeth with rage.
And then he heard his friend Cosin saying with quiet voice, like the voice of conscience,—
“When once you had given up God, in years gone by, and you scouted Him who had given you every comfort and blessing you possessed, who had preserved you every day and night, so that you would have dropped down dead had He withheld His hand any moment, and who had covered your head in the day of battle—did He take vengeance on you? or did He open your eyes and make you see some glimpse of His goodness?”
Then, after a pause, he went on in the same quiet way,—
“And when, in the madness of your distress, you tried again and again to drown yourself, as if there were no God, no life after death, no power to help in the Almighty; whose voice was it in your heart that bade you stop each time, and bade you hope?
“And, as you lay on that sick bed, and your life trembled in the balance, whose power was it that gave the turn to your distempered mind, instead of dealing with you after your sin, and rewarding you after your iniquity?”
Once more he paused. Then said in a yet lower tone of voice, almost in a whisper, but with perfect naturalness, “And far, far above all, when we were yet without strength, ungodly sinners, who was it signalized His love towards us by dying for us on the cross?”
More passed between the two friends that night. But Cosin could elicit no definite promise from the other. He only said, with great emotion, as they parted,—
“Truest and best of friends, I shall think all night of these things.”
And he did turn and twist about for hours in his berth, so that more than once his fellow prisoners cried out angrily, “What is the matter with you, Tournier?” But he fell asleep towards morning, as soon as he had at last made up his mind that Fontenoy might kill him if he could, but he himself would fire into the ground.
As he went out in the morning he met the chaplain. He stopped him and said, “You are going, I see, to keep your appointment. Spare yourself the trouble. Your enemy has been struck down by another hand than yours. The Almighty has smitten him with paralysis. He is never likely to recover.”
But he did recover; and so we take our leave of him with the greatest possible pleasure.
The retreat of Napoleon, after the battle of Leipsic, was as disastrous to him as his retreat from Moscow. On the 9th of November, 1813, he reached Paris, and on the 21st of the following month the allied armies crossed the Rhine, and carried the war into France. Soon after, the English, under Wellington, defeated the French, under Soult—“the bravest of the brave,” in several engagements in the South of France, until the knell of Napoleon’s arms was sounded in the bloody battle of Toulouse, fought on Easter Sunday, the 11th of April, 1814. Six days before the battle, Napoleon had abdicated at Fontainebleau. If the electric telegraph had been known in those days, all the lives lost in that fearful fight might have been saved. But that would have been a small matter to Napoleon.
The war was ended. That long, weary war—so wanton, so unnecessary, save for Europe’s liberty, and England’s existence—that had left its trail of blood almost everywhere, and desolated so many thousands of homes, was ended.
To many and many a poor prisoner, the year 1814 must have been like the blessed year of jubilee. Two hundred thousand Frenchmen were set free in Russia alone: but they had not been in confinement for very long. In continental countries there must have been many more. Some fifty thousand were located in various parts of England and Scotland, of whom a large number had been imprisoned for several years, and they were no doubt the most joyous of all.
But it must have been anything but an easy matter even to get rid of such numbers of men, all in a state of more or less excitement, intoxicated with a sense of newly gained liberty. Without proper precautions an emancipation on so large a scale would have led to much disorder, at least in the neighbourhood where prisoners had been confined. To avoid this they were marched off in detachments to the sea-coast, where ships were ordered to attend and embark them for conveyance to their own dear France.
Such necessary arrangements of course took time, and it was not until August that the last batch of prisoners left Norman Cross.
Of course, the poor fellows were aware of the great change in their condition that was coming by what they gathered from the current news of the day; yet, whenever the actual proclamation of liberty reached them, we can but faintly imagine the delirium of excitement that followed. Then, in the place where for so many years the sighing of the prisoners had been heard, mingled, it might be, with the sound of revelry, in which the wretched tried to drown their misery, pealed forth the shouts of those who sang for very joy and gladness of heart.
Poivre was still among them. That man of the revolution, like many others of the older prisoners, had learned something by his captivity. He used to think, and with too much reason, that the rich and high-born were the vultures that preyed on the poor; but now he had discovered that one risen from the ranks might be as heartless and oppressive as “Monsieur” of old, and be utterly indifferent how many lives were lost, and how many imprisoned for years, to gain his own selfish ends.
They were sitting together at supper, some of them, a few evenings before their turn came to leave, when the remark was made that “the little corporal” would never have another chance, but was driven into a hole at last.
“Think you so?” replied Poivre; “I am not so sure of that. It must be a curious hole that man cannot get out of sooner or later. He has the cleverness of the devil, if there be one.”
“Would you fight again for him, Poivre, if he did come out of his hole?”
“Not I,” said he, “if I could help it. Some of us have had enough of him. We begin to think we have not been fighting for “France and glory,” but for him, and he does not care two pins for us. But there are thousands of fellows who are such fools that, if the emperor were only able to shew himself again, they would flock to him, and be ready to become food for powder the next moment. I am going to prophecy, my friends. Mark what I say. When all our countrymen have been set free, Napoleon will have an army, a grand army, ready to hand. Depend on it, he has his eye on this, and will make use of the opportunity; but he will not find Marc Poivre in the ranks!”
Human prophecies are acute guesses, and when they come true, correct guesses. Such was Poivre’s prophecy. But was it not a fatal mistake, though, perhaps, one that could not be avoided, to place an army within Napoleon’s grasp, even as we had given him back the sailors that manned his navy by the bogus peace of Amiens?
This at least is certain, that the volcano which had desolated Europe for so many years but had become quiescent when Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau, burst forth again with an awful blaze in 1815, and was only extinguished for ever at Waterloo. So, some at least of the prisoners at Norman Cross may again have fought gallantly against us.
Captain Tournier, like the rest, was longing to see once more his old home, but had first to pay a farewell visit to his friends at the Manor House. He was with them only a couple of nights, and Villemet was invited to stay also. The meeting could not be otherwise than mingled with sadness to each of them. They had known each other now for nearly six years, and those years had been made interesting by intercourse of no ordinary kind.
At dinner, Cosin was the most cheerful of them all. He was really very sorry to part with his friends, especially with Tournier, whom he loved as a brother; but he could not for the life of him make out why two men who had just obtained the freedom they had so long pined for, and were on the point of starting for the homes they had dreamt of every night for years, should be so awfully down. And least of all, like a stupid fellow that he was, and as most men are in such matters, could he imagine why Alice should take upon herself to look so supremely wretched, and hardly open her mouth all dinner time.
Nothing could exceed the minute attention which Villemet paid to her, though all in good taste, but with an anxious, if not mournful air, as if he were appointed to watch over her health, and was not quite happy about it.
Alice received his attentions with perfect politeness, but her ears were evidently occupied with something else.
Tournier took no more notice of her than any gentleman would naturally do to the lady of the house at a party of four. Almost all his conversation was addressed to Cosin, and consisted chiefly of references to happy days gone by, during their intercourse with each other. Each allusion ended with a sort of sigh, as if to say, “Ah, there will be no more of that now!”
“Upon my word, Cosin,” he cried, “if it were not for my sweet old mother, I would almost be a prisoner again to live near you.”
The blue eyes brightened a little. And there was someone who noticed it, and, oh! how he wished he had made the same remark.
To understand Tournier’s enthusiasm, we must know something of how a deeply sensitive nature is drawn toward the one who has saved his soul from death.
“Come, my friends,” said Cosin, “let us be merry while we can, which to my thinking is always, if we cast our future upon God. There is no happiness unalloyed with sorrow in this world. We must wait for that. I drink to the perpetual amity of our two countries. God has made us neighbours: why should we quarrel? We have been fighting, but we have not been quarrelling. Let French and English be better friends than ever. And when the devil of ambition next arises in either country, and tempts us to disagree, let us bid him leave his foul work alone, for we, the people, are fast friends for ever.”
Next morning, the four went out for their last ride together. Alice and Villemet went first, and the others followed. As they passed the familiar spot where Villemet had spent so many weary days and nights, Alice remarked, how glad he must be that he was a free man once more.
“Yes, Miss Cosin,” he replied in a very dissatisfied tone; “yet I am not free altogether, my body is, but I shall leave my heart behind me.”
“Oh, that will never do,” said Alice, with more vivacity than he quite liked: “you will want your heart. You could never be a heartless man I am quite sure,” and she looked archly at the handsome young fellow as she said it, and smiled so provokingly.
“It is true however,” he said, but in such a melancholy way, that Alice felt sure something serious was coming.
“If I might only leave my heart with you,” he added, “I should be quite content to go away without it.”
“But what on earth should I do with it?” she said, purposely disregarding the sentimental, and sticking to the literal meaning of his words.
“Keep it close to your own,” was his reply.
“Then should I be queen of hearts indeed!”
“You are that already to me.”
It was time, she thought, to put a stop to this; so, after riding on a little further, Alice said very demurely, “I thought, sir, you were more in jest than earnest, but, at all events, I am altogether in earnest when I say, that you must never repeat to me what you uttered just now. I wish always to regard you as a friend—a friend found under circumstances of deep interest to my brother and myself—but nothing more; never anything more! Let us join the others.”
And she turned her horse’s head, and met her brother and Tournier, her face slightly flushed; while Villemet rode after her much more disturbed than ever he had been when charging a whole battery of guns.
They too had been talking together as they followed the others along the familiar road that passed by the barracks. It was on the old subject that Tournier seemed never to weary of.
“There,” he said, pointing to the spot where he had first met Cosin, “that is where I first set eyes on your sunny English face. I remember it by that blighted tree in the hedge-row. I often thought, when I passed it afterwards, that it was exactly like me at that time—half-dead for want of God—fungus everywhere.”
Then, as they passed the barracks, he said, “Stop a moment, Cosin. Look at that gate yonder. How well I remember coming out of that gate in an awful state of mind—nearly mad—determined, as a last resource, to see if you, or anybody, really believed in God; and I found you did, for you lived as if you did. And then began those blessed years of teaching, not so much by words as by example, which have made me a happy man, though, God knows, and you know too well, a very faulty one.”
“Say no more, my good friend,” replied Cosin; “only let not our separation now be an end to our intercourse. You shall ever be to us a welcome visitor.”
“And I, for my part, shall ever be delighted to renew my acquaintance with the place which has been at once, the saddest and the happiest in my life.”
The others had now joined them.
“Tournier will soon be here again!” cried Cosin to his sister, unable to repress the pleasure that he felt, but entirely, dull fellow that he was, on his own account.
And all, saving Villemet, finished their ride in the best of spirits.
Next day came the parting.
Who could describe the pleasure felt by the Frenchmen as they gazed once more on the shores of their own dear country after so long an absence! Even Villemet lost his lugubrious looks, while his friend, brimming over with joy, seemed almost ready to leap into the sea to get there. He sprung about the deck, sang snatches of songs, laughed at every remark Villemet made even when there was nothing to laugh at, in fact, made himself somewhat ridiculous.
As soon as they landed, they instantly made arrangements to post straight away to their homes, which were not far apart from each other. Villemet’s came first; and there, as they drove up, a perfect swarm of younger brothers and sisters came out to devour him; his old father and mother looking on behind with calmer but not less real delight. It was a pretty sight, and as Tournier drove away amid their joyful greetings, he could not help for the moment envying him, and contrasting the scene with that which was awaiting himself, with only one welcome—only one—but then that was the welcome of a mother!
He had to pass a well-known house; but as he drew near, he dashed down the blind, and turned away fiercely, till it was passed. “Dead!” he muttered.
The nearer he drew to his old home the more familiar were the objects that met his eye, till at last he spun through the gates, and up the drive, and almost leaping into the house, cried to the smiling servants, “Is she in her old room?”
And there he found her. She was pretty as ever, prettier than ever, as he thought.
“Mother, I have come to take care of you at last,” he said; “and to the last, thank God.”
“Thank God,” she murmured in reply.
But though his mother seemed almost like her old self under the exhilaration of that happy meeting, Tournier could not but observe how feeble she was in every way. And when the first gush of joy was over, he saw it more plainly; and every day he noticed it increasingly. Where some stamina is left, a sudden stimulus may lead to permanent improvement, but when there is none, excitement only revives for the moment, and leaves the patient weaker than ever. So was it with the dear old lady. Those years of lonely sorrow, aggravated by uncertainty and bitter disappointment, had killed her; and Tournier had only come in time to make the last few months of her life her happiest ones for many a day past.
One evening, as the end was drawing near, she suddenly said, “My son, what will you do when I am gone?”
“Sweet mother,” was his reply, “I shall trust in God to help me bear my sorrow patiently. I know He will.”
“Why not marry a wife? It is God’s own remedy for man’s loneliness.”
“Where shall I find one? I know no woman that I could trust now.” Then, after a pause, he added, “And yet there is one I could trust. Yes, those blue eyes could be trusted. I would spurn the man who dared to say they could not.”
Then he told his mother all about Alice; and she listened with deepest interest, and a little flush came over her delicate pale face. But it became pale as before when he said, “Ah! mother mine, Alice Cosin is not for me, nor for anyone: she is bound for life to her good brother, and I would not break that lovely bond even if I could.”
In the autumn of 1815 she died, her eyes fixed to the last on her son. And when they closed for ever, it seemed to him that love unutterable was extinguished. But he took refuge in his God.
It was hard work, however, to keep on living in the old place where everything reminded him so much of the past, both of joy and pain. He would have asked his friend, Villemet, to take compassion on his loneliness, and come and stay with him awhile; but the irrepressible fellow had gone off to the wars some time ago, and joined the army of Napoleon, distinguishing himself greatly at Waterloo. Again and again had Tournier’s thoughts reverted to Alice Cosin, but each time he had repelled the pleasing idea as an impossibility. “How could I,” he repeated, as the fair vision floated away, “for my selfish ends spoil the happiness of a friend like him?”
Fortified by this resolution, he determined at length to find consolation in fulfilling his promise of a visit to England. There was no reason why he should not enjoy the immense pleasure of seeing his friend again, and of course his sister. It would do him all the good in the world.
So he started with gladness to visit once more the land to which he had been unwillingly conveyed as a prisoner some seven years before. The old welcome was renewed with yet greater heartiness, and Tournier felt for the first time at home since his mother’s death. Only, at their first greeting, he thought it proper to shew a little sort of restraint in addressing Alice, and he could not but notice that this assumed restraint made her beaming face look rather grave.
One of the first things Tournier said he must see was the barracks.
“They have just finished pulling them all down,” said Cosin. “Every building except Major Kelly’s house, and the officers’ quarters has been removed and the material sold by auction. However, you would like to see the old spot. I am sorry I cannot go with you to-morrow, but Alice can shew you the way if you have forgotten it!”
So they rode there the next morning.
“It seems like a dream,” said Tournier, as he gazed for a long while upon the site where, as he too well knew, so many hearts had ached for years. “Who is going to live in the house of Major Kelly?”
“He has bought it for himself, but he is not there now.”
“How I should have liked to see him. He was a fine officer and an excellent man. And now, Miss Cosin, will you mind going with me to another spot more interesting to me than even this, I mean the prisoners’ burial ground, where my body would now have been laid but for your dear brother and you?”
That last word would have made Alice willing to go anywhere, and she cheerfully consented to pay the rather doleful visit.
When they reached the portion of the field where the interments had taken place, they let their horses nibble the grass, and silently surveyed the scanty mounds.
Tournier was lost in thought, and Alice watched him.
“Poor fellows, poor fellows,” he said at length: “how many of them I have known! Some of them were in my squadron. Nearly all young, or in the prime of life—all dead before their time, worn out or broken-hearted.”
“How many, do you think, are buried here?” asked Alice.
“Roughly speaking, I should say at least three or four hundred.”
“Will not the Government mark the spot, or at least raise some memorial to these brave men?”
“I should think so,” replied Tournier; “or if the English Government failed to do so, ours will not forget them. And yet, the shameful butchery of Marshal Ney does not favour the idea. They may look on them, as they did him, as soldiers of Napoleon, not of France.”
Then they slowly wended their way homeward, Tournier turning round on his saddle to take a last look at the place that interested him so deeply, and again exclaiming, “There should I be lying now, in a dishonoured grave, but for God’s great mercy.”
That night, poor Alice could not sleep, but watered her pillow with tears.
“He does not care for me a bit,” she said; “he is just the same as he used to be, only stiffer in his manner. But what does it matter? I could never leave my darling brother; and what is more, I never will. But he is so nice, nicer than ever.” And the tears came again, with a wee bit of vexation in them, and kept on at intervals, till kindly sleep at length fell on those dear blue eyes, and dried them up.
And while this was going on, her brother and his friend were smoking and talking together below.
“You must find it very wearysome, Tournier, to live by yourself now. You are not the man to like that sort of thing. You are too unselfish to be a confirmed bachelor. Excuse me for touching on a painful subject, I use the privilege of a friend.”
“I thank you for doing so. But the fact is, and you cannot be surprised at it, I have lost all faith in a woman’s constancy. No doubt there are many of my countrywomen who would make me a happy man, but I don’t know them, and do not mean to search them out.”
Cosin was silent.
What good angel put it into Tournier’s mind to come out with it? but he did burst forth, after a pause, with the imprudent assertion, “The only woman in the world I know in whom anybody might place entire reliance is your sister. Sure am I that the blue sky of Heaven does not more truly reflect the love of God than her blue eyes reflect constancy and truth!”
Tournier felt he had betrayed himself, and was vexed.
As to Cosin, he opened his eyes with amazement at the other’s vehemence of manner. Then a bright smile of surprise lighted up his face, and he said, “Why on earth then do you not ask her to be your wife?”
“My dear fellow,” replied Tournier, in his turn amazed, “you surely know why. Did you not tell me years ago that she would always be your companion through life? and do you think I could be such a base scoundrel as to breathe one single syllable to her that might tempt her for even a moment to think of leaving you?”
Cosin seemed really angry instead of pleased at this, and said severely, “And so you thought me such a selfish brute, that I would rather keep her sweet companionship to myself, and be her gaoler more than her brother, than give her a free woman’s choice to marry anyone that was worthy of her, and on whom (lucky dog!) she had set her dear heart? I do not thank you for the compliment.”
Tournier looked on his irritated friend with admiring surprise. It was like the harsh grating of a heavy door that had hitherto barred his way to happiness, but was now opening.
“The thing is,” said Cosin in a milder tone, “does Alice like you?”
“I cannot say. She never did anything to make me suppose it. But I was not observant, for I did not think about it.”
“And yet, silly fellow that I am,” said Cosin, “I now remember how her face always lighted up when she heard about you, or we talked of your coming. What a blind bat I have been! Oh, how I hope she does like you. I am sure she must. But you must find it out, and if she has any scruples left, tell her to come to me and I will satisfy her.”
And Tournier, nothing loth, did find it out next day. The interview shall not be described, for such things are sometimes related with admirable taste and effect, but much more often are made ridiculous; and as this was pre-eminently sensible, natural and real, it shall not run the risk of being spoilt by any attempt of the kind. It must be sufficient to say that the interview was perfectly successful, only Alice persisted in saying that, although she entirely and joyfully believed what Tournier told her about her brother, yet she must speak to him herself, and hear from his own lips that he gave a willing consent. And Tournier only admired her the more for it.
Away, therefore, she went with radiant face to seek her brother; nor did it take long to get his consent. As she came into the room he forestalled her object, and folding her to his breast said, “Dear Alice, I know what you are going to say. Your face tells the tale. You have fulfilled, more than fulfilled, your loving duty to me. Do one thing more to make me happy—go and make that dear good fellow happy all the rest of his days. And remember,” he added, as he held her a little from him, and looked into her blushing face with pretended severity, “you shall never come under my roof again if you disobey me! Come, I will give you to him myself.”
And they found Tournier awaiting the verdict without the slightest degree of suspense.
“I have brought you your wife,” Cosin cried.
What followed may well be imagined by all but ill-natured people, who see no chance of their ever being placed in a similar predicament themselves.
In the course of the evening, Cosin suddenly said with great gravity, amounting almost to solemnity, and looking first at Tournier, and then at Alice: “There is a matter that still remains to be settled. You have run away, Tournier, with my wife, and it is only fit and right that you should make what compensation is in your power.”
Both the others were taken rather aback, especially as Cosin continued to seem very much in earnest.
“There must be a marriage-settlement of some sort.”
“Assuredly,” Tournier replied, relieved, but still somewhat puzzled.
“Whatever you think right, I shall be delighted to do.”
“Do you really mean that?” said Cosin, still very seriously.
“Indeed I do. Everything I possess I would joyfully give to my sweet love,” looking at her with intense affection. “She is worth more than all I have beside.”
“But I want more than money and lands,” persisted Cosin. “Mind, you have agreed to do whatever I may propose.”
“Yes. Anything you require. I trust you as my own soul.”
“Then the marriage-settlement must be this: That so long as we all three live, you two shall come and spend a good part of the summer with me every year, and that you will let me spend a good part of every winter with you in your sunny home. Provided always—here comes the lawyer—that if we do at any time wish to turn summer into winter, or winter into summer, we may do so by mutual agreement.”
“Could anything be better!” cried the others in great delight. “Agreed, agreed.”
Then Cosin, no longer able to look grave, laughingly exclaimed, “Signed, sealed, and delivered.”
A few weeks after, Captain Tournier went over to France to prepare his house for the reception of his bride. He did not stop long, but returned with a heart full of gratitude to God, and joyful expectation of a happy future.
They were married in Yaxley Church in the presence of a crowded congregation. More than half the people who attended could see nothing because of the bullock-boxes: but they were there, and their hearts too. And when the grand old bells pealed forth a joyous welcome, the bridegroom could hardly repress a tear (only one!) for they reminded him how often the merry sound that now so truly harmonized with his over-brimming joy, had seemed of old to mock his misery as he listened to them from within his prison walls.
* * * * *
Their happy union, to compare small things with great, may be taken as an emblem of the entente cordiale that ought ever to subsist between the two countries of France and England, and which can only be jeopardized by that rabid journalism which, with slight occasion, or none at all, seems always to take delight in doing its utmost to “let loose the dogs of war.”
One word more.
The two stone bosses which for many years have capped the piers of the west gateway of Yaxley Churchyard, formerly occupied the same position on the piers of the principal entrance to the Norman Cross Barracks. And when the poor prisoners of old passed between them, they were entering the place of captivity and grief and hopelessness. But now, as the good Yaxley people pass between the same bosses to go into their noble House of Prayer, they may rejoice in the thought that they are entering the place where liberty and peace and everlasting hope await them as the gift of God, through Jesus Christ their Saviour.
THE END.
[17] See account of the battle of Vimiero in Napier’s History of the Peninsular War, Book II, Chapter V.
[44] This is fact, not fiction. It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in 1814. One thing is certain, that he must ever have enjoyed a feast of memory to his dying day in having been a shepherd and bishop of souls to these poor prisoners.
[133] It is much to be regretted that the ravenous curiosity of a former vicar has since made this very hole. A wooden box was found with a heart inside in perfect form, but which instantly crumbled to dust when exposed to the air. The dust was returned to the cavity, and the box is kept at the Vicarage; but an aromatic odour still impregnates the box, just as the church William of Yaxley built still preserves the holy use to which it was devoted.