"I might agitate, taunt,
grieve her I love, but I could not shake her. No! God and the saints to
my aid! they saved me from a crime I now shudder at. And they have given
me the good chaplain: he prays with me, he weeps for me. His prayers
still my beating heart. Yes, poor suffering angel! I read your will in
these tender, but bitter, words: you prefer duty to love. And one day
you will forget me; not yet awhile, but it will be so. It wounds me when
I think of it, but I must bow. Your will is sacred. I must rise to your
level, not drag you to mine."
Then the soldier that had stood between two armies in a hail of bullets,
and fired a master-shot, took a little book of offices in one hand,--the
chaplain had given it him,--and fixed his eyes upon the pious words,
and clung like a child to the pious words, and kissed his lost wife's
letter, and tried hard to be like her he loved: patient, very patient,
till the end should come.
"Qui vive?" cried the sentinel outside to a strange officer.
"France," was his reply. He then asked the sentinel, "Where is the
colonel commanding the brigade?"
The sentinel lowered his voice, "Asleep, my officer," said he; for the
new-comer carried two epaulets.
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