Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French III).djvu/162

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
152
LAURETTE OR THE RED SEAL.

was to see the yellow skin of his face flush to a deep red. He undid his coat on his breast, and threw it violently open, baring it to the rain and the wind.

"I can well understand," said I, as though he had finished his story, "how, after so cruel an adventure, you should have taken an abhorrence to yourbusiness."

"Oh! as for the business, are you crazy?" said he, quickly; "it is not the business. No captain of a vessel will ever be forced to turn executioner, except when governments of assassins and thieves get on foot, who will take advantage of the habit a poor man has of always obeying, blindly obeying with a miserable mechanical compulsion in spite of his very self."

At the same time he drew out of his pocket a red handkerchief, and began to weep like a child. I stopped for a moment, as if to arrange my stirrup, and hanging back behind his wagon, walked some time after him, for I felt that he would be mortified if I perceived too plainly his streaming tears.

I had judged rightly, for in about a quarter of an hour he also came behind the poor little wagon, and asked me if I had any razors in my portmanteau; to which I simply answered, that, as I had no beard yet, they would be very unnecessary to me. But he did not care about that; it was to speak of something else. I soon