"I tried fifty things--to teach riding, and when I mounted into the saddle, I forgot everything but my own enjoyment, and caracolled, and plunged, and passaged, till the poor beast hadn't a leg to stand on; fencing, and I got into a duel with a rival teacher, and ran him through the neck, and was obliged to fly from Halifax; French, I made love to my pupil, a pretty looking Dutch fraulein, whose father didn't smile on our affection; and so on I descended from a dancing-master to a waiter, a _laquais de place_, and at last settled down as a barber, which brilliant speculation I had just determined to abandon this very night; for to-morrow morning, Maurice, I start for New York and France again; ay, boy, and you'll go with me. This is no land for either of us."
"But I have found happiness, at least contentment, here," said I, gravely.
"What! play the hypocrite with an old comrade! shame on you, Maurice," cried he. "It is these confounded locks have perverted the boy," added he, jumping up; and before I knew what he was about, he had shorn my hair, in two quick cuts of the scissors, close to the head. "There," said he, throwing the cut-off hair toward me, "there lies all your saintship; depend upon it, boy, they'd hunt you out of the settlement if you came back to them cropped in this fashion."
"But you return to certain death, Santron," said I; "your crime is too recent to be forgiven or forgotten."
"Not a bit of it; Fouche, Cassaubon, and a dozen others now in office, were deeper than I was. There's not a public man in France could stand an exposure, or hazard recrimination. It's a thieves' amnesty at this moment, and I must not lose the opportunity. I'll show you letters that will prove it, Maurice; for, poor and ill-fed as I am, I like life just as well as ever I did. I mean to be a general of division one of these days, and so will you too, lad, if there's any spirit left in you."
Thus did Santron rattle on, sometimes of himself and his own future; sometimes discussing mine; for while talking, he had contrived to learn all the chief particulars of my history, from the time of my sailing from La Rochelle for Ireland.
The unlucky expedition afforded him great amusement, and he was never weary of laughing at all our adventures and mischances in Ireland. Of Humbert, he spoke as a fourth or fifth-rate man, and actually shocked me by all the heresies he uttered against our generals, and the plan of campaign; but, perhaps, I could have borne even these better than the sarcasms and sneers at the little life of "the settlement." He treated all my efforts at defense as mere hypocrisy, and affected to regard me as a mere knave, that had traded on the confiding kindness of these simple villagers. I could not undeceive him on this head; nor what was more, could I satisfy my own conscience that he was altogether in the wrong; for, with a diabolical ingenuity, he had contrived to hit on some of the most vexatious doubts which disturbed my mind, and instinctively to detect the secret cares and difficulties that beset me. The lesson should never be lost on us, that the devil was depicted as a sneerer! I verily believe the powers of temptation have no such advocacy as sarcasm. Many can resist the softest seductions of vice: many are proof against all the blandishments of mere enjoyment, come in what shape it will; but how few can stand firm against the assaults of clever irony, or hold fast to their convictions when assailed by the sharp shafts of witty depreciation.