The cowled grandfather was very much entertained
somewhere within his hood.
He had not joined in the shouting of jokes, neither had he moved the
least bit. He had remained quietly in his place against the foot of the
mast. I had been given to understand long before that he had the rating
of a second-class able seaman (matelot leger) in the fleet which sailed
from Toulon for the conquest of Algeria in the year of grace 1830. And,
indeed, I had seen and examined one of the buttons of his old brown,
patched coat, the only brass button of the miscellaneous lot, flat and
thin, with the words Equipages de ligne engraved on it. That sort of
button, I believe, went out with the last of the French Bourbons.
"I preserved it from the time of my navy service," he explained, nodding
rapidly his frail, vulture-like head. It was not very likely that he had
picked up that relic in the street. He looked certainly old enough to
have fought at Trafalgar--or, at any rate, to have played his little
part there as a powder monkey. Shortly after we had been introduced he
had informed me in a Franco-Provencal jargon, mumbling tremulously with
his toothless jaws, that when he was a "shaver no higher than that" he
had seen the Emperor Napoleon returning from Elba.
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