Colonel Chabert [15]
"To be sure, monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury here. It is a camp lodging, tempered by friendship, but----" And the soldier shot a deep glance at the man of law--"I have done no one wrong, I have never turned my back on anybody, and I sleep in peace."
Derville reflected that there would be some want of delicacy in asking his client to account for the sums of money he had advanced, so he merely said:
"But why would you not come to Paris, where you might have lived as cheaply as you do here, but where you would have been better lodged?"
"Why," replied the Colonel, "the good folks with whom I am living had taken me in and fed me /gratis/ for a year. How could I leave them just when I had a little money? Besides, the father of those three pickles is an old /Egyptian/--"
"An Egyptian!"
"We give that name to the troopers who came back from the expedition into Egypt, of which I was one. Not merely are all who get back brothers; Vergniaud was in my regiment. We have shared a draught of water in the desert; and besides, I have not yet finished teaching his brats to read."
"He might have lodged you better for your money," said Derville.
"Bah!" said the Colonel, "his children sleep on the straw as I do. He and his wife have no better bed; they are very poor you see. They have taken a bigger business than they can manage. But if I recover my fortune . . . However, it does very well."
"Colonel, to-morrow or the next day, I shall receive your papers from Heilsberg. The woman who dug you out is still alive!"
"Curse the money! To think I haven't got any!" he cried, flinging his pipe on the ground.
Now, a well-colored pipe is to a smoker a precious possession; but the impulse was so natural, the emotion so generous, that every smoker, and the excise office itself, would have pardoned this crime of treason to tobacco. Perhaps the angels may have picked up the pieces.
"Colonel, it is an exceedingly complicated business," said Derville as they left the room to walk up and down in the sunshine.
"To me," said the soldier, "it appears exceedingly simple. I was thought to be dead, and here I am! Give me back my wife and my fortune; give me the rank of General, to which I have a right, for I was made Colonel of the Imperial Guard the day before the battle of Eylau."
"Things are not done so in the legal world," said Derville. "Listen to me. You are Colonel Chabert, I am glad to think it; but it has to be proved judicially to persons whose interest it will be to deny it. Hence, your papers will be disputed. That contention will give rise to ten or twelve preliminary inquiries. Every question will be sent under contradiction up to the supreme court, and give rise to so many costly suits, which will hang on for a long time, however eagerly I may push them. Your opponents will demand an inquiry, which we cannot refuse, and which may necessitate the sending of a commission of investigation to Prussia. But even if we hope for the best; supposing that justice should at once recognize you as Colonel Chabert--can we know how the questions will be settled that will arise out of the very innocent bigamy committed by the Comtesse Ferraud?
"In your case, the point of law is unknown to the Code, and can only be decided as a point in equity, as a jury decides in the delicate cases presented by the social eccentricities of some criminal prosecutions. Now, you had no children by your marriage; M. le Comte Ferraud has two. The judges might pronounce against the marriage where the family ties are weakest, to the confirmation of that where they are stronger, since it was contracted in perfect good faith. Would you be in a very becoming moral position if you insisted, at your age, and in your present circumstances, in resuming your rights over a woman who no longer loves you? You will have both your wife and her husband against you, two important persons who might influence the Bench. Thus, there are many elements which would prolong the case; you will have time to grow old in the bitterest regrets."
"And my