"'Mais a present que je suis loin de toi, Je mange de tout sur la terre.'" "What, monsieur, you don't understand?" "No, I don't." "It is very plain it seems to me, but soldiers are so unfeeling." "But think a moment, Mother Barbancon; here is a girl who, in her despair at poor Jacques's absence, sets about eating everything on the face of the earth." "Of course, monsieur, any child could understand that." "But I do not, I must confess." "What! you can't understand that this unfortunate young girl is so heart-broken, after her lover's departure, that she is ready to eat anything and everything--even poison, poor thing! Her life is of so little value to her,--she is so wretched that she doesn't even know what she is doing, and so eats everything that happens to be within reach--and yet, her misery doesn't move you in the least." The veteran listened attentively to this explanation, which did not seem to him so entirely devoid of reason, now, after all. "Yes, yes, I understand," he responded, nodding his head; "but it is like all love songs--extremely far-fetched." "'Poor Jacques' far-fetched? The idea!" cried Madame Barbancon, indignantly. "'Every one to his taste,' as you remarked a moment ago," answered the veteran. "I like our old sea songs very much better. A man knows what he is singing about when he sings them." And in a voice as powerful as it was discordant, the old captain began to sing: "Pour aller a Lorient pecher des sardines, Pour aller a Lorient pecher des harengs--" "Monsieur!" exclaimed Madame Barbancon, interrupting her employer, with a highly incensed and prudish air, for she knew the end of the ditty, "you forget there are ladies present." "Is that so?" demanded the veteran, straining his neck to see outside of the arbour. "There is no need to make such an effort as that, it seems to me," remarked the housekeeper, with great dignity. "You can see me easy enough, I should think." "That is true, Mother Barbancon. I always forget that you belong to the other sex, but for all that I like my song much better than I do yours. It was a great favourite on the _Armide_, the frigate on which I shipped when I was only fourteen, and afterwards we sang it many a time on dry land when I was in the Marine Corps. Oh, those were happy days! I was young then." "Yes, and then Bu-u-onaparte"--it is absolutely necessary to spell and accent the word in this way, to give the reader any idea of the disdainful and sneering manner in which Mother Barbancon uttered the name of the great man who had been the cause of her brave soldier boy's death--"Bu-u-onaparte was your leader." "Yes, the Emperor, that 'Corsican ogre,' the Emperor you revile so, wasn't far off, I admit." "Yes, monsieur, your Emperor was an ogre, and worse than an ogre." "What! worse than an ogre?"