Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation and
rushed out to inform his master. "It is all over," he shrieked to Jos.
"Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed; the British
army is in full flight; there is only one man escaped, and he is in the
kitchen now--come and hear him." So Jos tottered into that apartment
where Regulus still sate on the kitchen table, and clung fast to his
flagon of beer. In the best French which he could muster, and which
was in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hussar to
tell his tale. The disasters deepened as Regulus spoke. He was the
only man of his regiment not slain on the field. He had seen the Duke
of Brunswick fall, the black hussars fly, the Ecossais pounded down by
the cannon. "And the --th?" gasped Jos.
"Cut in pieces," said the hussar--upon which Pauline cried out, "O my
mistress, ma bonne petite dame," went off fairly into hysterics, and
filled the house with her screams.
Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for safety.
He rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and cast an
appealing look at Amelia's door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had closed and
locked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the latter had
received him, and after pausing and listening for a brief space at the
door, he left it, and resolved to go into the street, for the first
time that day. So, seizing a candle, he looked about for his
gold-laced cap, and found it lying in its usual place, on a
console-table, in the anteroom, placed before a mirror at which Jos
used to coquet, always giving his side-locks a twirl, and his cap the
proper cock over his eye, before he went forth to make appearance in
public. Such is the force of habit, that even in the midst of his
terror he began mechanically to twiddle with his hair, and arrange the
cock of his hat. Then he looked amazed at the pale face in the glass
before him, and especially at his mustachios, which had attained a rich
growth in the course of near seven weeks, since they had come into the
world. They WILL mistake me for a military man, thought he,
remembering Isidor's warning as to the massacre with which all the
defeated British army was threatened; and staggering back to his
bedchamber, he began wildly pulling the bell which summoned his valet.
Isidor answered that summons. Jos had sunk in a chair--he had torn off
his neckcloths, and turned down his collars, and was sitting with both
his hands lifted to his throat.
"Coupez-moi, Isidor," shouted he; "vite! Coupez-moi!"
Isidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished his
valet to cut his throat.