The Country Doctor | Page 5

of Bayard. There
was nothing romantic nor picturesque about him--he was too
thoroughly commonplace. His ways of living were those of a
well-to-do man. Although he had nothing beside his pay, and his
pension was all that he had to look to in the future, the major always
kept two years' pay untouched, and never spent his allowances, like
some shrewd old men of business with whom cautious prudence has
almost become a mania. He was so little of a gambler that if, when in
company, some one was wanted to cut in or to take a bet at ecarte, he
usually fixed his eyes on his boots; but though he did not allow himself
any extravagances, he conformed in every way to custom.
His uniforms lasted longer than those of any other officer in his

regiment, as a consequence of the sedulously careful habits that
somewhat straitened means had so instilled into him, that they had
come to be like a second nature. Perhaps he might have been suspected
of meannesss if it had not been for the fact that with wonderful
disinterestedness and all a comrade's readiness, his purse would be
opened for some harebrained boy who had ruined himself at cards or by
some other folly. He did a service of this kind with such thoughtful tact,
that it seemed as though he himself had at one time lost heavy sums at
play; he never considered that he had any right to control the actions of
his debtor; he never made mention of the loan. He was the child of his
company; he was alone in the world, so he had adopted the army for his
fatherland, and the regiment for his family. Very rarely, therefore, did
any one seek the motives underlying his praiseworthy turn for thrift; for
it pleased others, for the most part, to set it down to a not unnatural
wish to increase the amount of the savings that were to render his old
age comfortable. Till the eve of his promotion to the rank of
lieutenant-colonel of cavalry it was fair to suppose that it was his
ambition to retire in the course of some campaign with a colonel's
epaulettes and pension.
If Genestas' name came up when the officers gossiped after drill, they
were wont to classify him among the men who begin with taking the
good-conduct prize at school, and who, throughout the term of their
natural lives, continue to be punctilious, conscientious, and
passionless--as good as white bread, and just as insipid. Thoughtful
minds, however, regarded him very differently. Not seldom it would
happen that a glance, or an expression as full of significance as the
utterance of a savage, would drop from him and bear witness to past
storms in his soul; and a careful study of his placid brow revealed a
power of stifling down and repressing his passions into inner depths,
that had been dearly bought by a lengthy acquaintance with the perils
and disastrous hazards of war. An officer who had only just joined the
regiment, the son of a peer of France, had said one day of Genestas,
that he would have made one of the most conscientious of priests, or
the most upright of tradesmen.
"Add, the least of a courtier among marquises," put in Genestas,

scanning the young puppy, who did not know that his commandant
could overhear him.
There was a burst of laughter at the words, for the lieutenant's father
cringed to all the powers that be; he was a man of supple intellect,
accustomed to jump with every change of government, and his son took
after him.
Men like Genestas are met with now and again in the French army;
natures that show themselves to be wholly great at need, and relapse
into their ordinary simplicity when the action is over; men that are little
mindful of fame and reputation, and utterly forgetful of danger. Perhaps
there are many more of them than the shortcomings of our own
characters will allow us to imagine. Yet, for all that, any one who
believed that Genestas was perfect would be strangely deceiving
himself. The major was suspicious, given to violent outbursts of anger,
and apt to be tiresome in argument; he was full of national prejudices,
and above all things, would insist that he was in the right, when he was,
as a matter of fact, in the wrong. He retained the liking for good wine
that he had acquired in the ranks. If he rose from a banquet with all the
gravity befitting his position, he seemed serious and pensive, and had
no mind at such times to admit any one into his confidence.
Finally, although he was sufficiently acquainted with the customs of
society and with the laws of politeness, to