La Grenadiere

The sight of this vivid remembrance of his dead mother moved him so deeply that he wept. In his fortitude, he had not even thought of this supreme piety; and he flung his arms round the old woman’s neck. Then the three set out down the beaten path, and the stone staircase, and so to Tours, without turning their heads.

“Mamma used to come there!” Marie said when they reached the bridge.

Annette had a relative, a retired dressmaker, who lived in the Rue de la Guerche. She took the two children to this cousin’s house, meaning that they should live together thenceforth. But Louis told her of his plans, gave Marie’s certificate of birth and the ten thousand francs into her keeping, and the two went the next morning to take Marie to school.

Louis very briefly explained his position to the headmaster, and went. Marie came with him as far as the gateway. There Louis gave solemn parting words of the tenderest counsel, telling Marie that he would now be left alone in the world. He looked at his brother for a moment, and put his arms about him, took one more long look, brushed a tear from his eyes, and went, turning again and again till the very last to see his brother standing there in the gateway of the school.

A month later Louis-Gaston, now an apprentice on board a man-of-war, left the harbor of Rochefort. Leaning over the bulwarks of the corvette Iris, he watched the coast of France receding swiftly till it became indistinguishable from the faint blue horizon line. In a little while he felt that he was really alone, and lost in the wide ocean, lost and alone in the world and in life.

“There is no need to cry, lad; there is a God for us all,” said an old sailor, with rough kindliness in his thick voice.

The boy thanked him with pride in his eyes. Then he bowed his head, and resigned himself to a sailor’s life. He was a father.

ANGOULEME, August, 1832.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy

Brandon, Lady Marie Augusta

The Member for Arcis

The Lily of the Valley

La Grenadiere

Gaston, Louis

La Grenadiere

Letters of Two Brides

Gaston, Marie

La Grenadiere

Letters of Twgo Brides

The Member for Arcis