The next instant he had seen something that brought grief back again – something that reminded him of his burden. For, marching valiantly over the shelves, storming wooden boxes flanked with cannon, were toy soldiers. There were, too, all the necessary trappings of combat – swords, guns, soldier suits, arrayed in which youthful generals could marshal their forces and sweep the enemy's army before them – while their fathers elsewhere learned the tragedy of war.
Behind the counter was a pretty, young-faced woman, who looked her fifty years only from the softness sometimes brought by the records of many days. She smiled at him in friendly fashion and, unhurried, waited his request. While she reached for the toys the son had asked for, the Man, bent over the counter, fingered the dolls left lying there from the last small purchaser with clumsy, gentle fingers.
"Who makes that 'dolly' furniture?" he asked, idly. "I wish I could get any one to work for me one-half so well. Carved, too. I didn't know there were tools fine enough to make those tiny wreaths."
Mrs. Schotz shook her head at him good-humoredly.
"My man, he speak English. I – not – can." Following her gesture, the stranger saw, in the back part of the shop, a patient figure at work.
Joseph Schotz was sitting in an invalid-chair, a table littered with tools and bits of wood by his side. One leg, bandaged and swathed, rested on a cushion. His strong peasant face was seamed and drawn with pain.
The Man was beside him in an instant.
"Yes, I make the dolls' houses and carve the furniture – great work, that, for a man, sir? I used to be a cabinet-maker at Annapolis – before my leg got so bad. No, sir, I did not learn my trade there. I was apprenticed to Cadieux, who was cabinet-maker to Napoleon. Yes, the Emperor. Who else could it have been? But that was after those pigs of Russians shot me in the leg. It was their ball that brought me here," with a contemptuous glance at his bandaged leg. "I was color-bearer – you see, I was too young to go in any other way. I was sixteen when I was wounded."
The Man found himself a chair.
"Why, no, sir, it isn't much of a story. It is only that I could never stay still. I don't believe men were ever meant to. That's why it's – " He checked himself with a glance at his wife. "I was born in the Tyrol, but the name of Buonaparte pulled me to France. Why, sir, I don't know what it was, but he is the only great man I have ever known. He made you drop everything and go with him, that is all. We never stopped to ask what it was, but – he knew his soldiers, he didn't know what it was to be afraid – and where he wanted to go he went."
The Man, who had been listening thus far with sympathy, started – at these last words – into tenseness.
"Did your Napoleon never – doubt?" he asked, with rather a breathless voice.
"If he did, no one ever saw him," chuckled the cabinet-maker, indulgently. "That was why we followed him. It sounds like very little, but – if he could call me to-day, I'd jump up and hop on one leg after him."
Had Joseph Schotz not been lost in the one story that never failed to thrill him – of his shattered dreams and his hero – he would have noticed that the face of the tall man who sat before him had lapsed into hopelessness. This time there was even something desperate in the eyes. But Napoleon's color-bearer went on:
"But you see – instead of that I'm here." He glanced at his leg again with a repressed passion of bitterness, which made him in some dark way kin to the man who listened. "It was when I couldn't fight for him that I learned to carve the wreaths on the chairs at the Tuileries – after all, that was near the end… It is never as the Emperor on his throne that I think of him – I have seen him so – or as the general on horseback; but as the soldier in his gray overcoat going about among us. He had a way of standing, sir, as if you couldn't dislodge him – that was Buonaparte."
Mrs. Schotz had gone back to the counter with the toys the stranger sought. With an irresolute effort he moved listlessly toward them. There was a whole regiment of little men in blue, and with them a gorgeous officer in gold-decked uniform waving his sword above a prancing steed. The Man laid his hand upon the toy and moved it absently into position at the head of the men. The brave general toppled spinelessly over when the great gnarled hand was removed. The woman shook her head.
"He not – can – stand," she said, in her hesitating English. "Too heavy – of the – head. This" – substituting a plain little captain with modest sword held at attention – "this stand so you – not – can – dis – lodge him."
The Man raised his head alertly as the woman echoed so unconsciously her husband's words. The movement was a quicker one than could have been expected from the languor of the whole figure. He gave a quick glance from the man to the woman and then at the toy soldiers. Then he squared his shoulders. His hand closed again upon the top-heavy little general and, half-absently, swept him aside. The plain little officer was moved into position. The officer stood. A light that was half humor and half inspiration broke upon the rugged face of the Man who bent over them both.
"No more generals on horseback," he muttered. "My man may ride when it is necessary, but he must know how to walk, too. I want one – I wonder if I know him – who 'stands so you can't dislodge him' and who 'knows his men.' Perhaps they have given me the answer to it all. Perhaps, after all, I can find him. Perhaps. And 'where he wants to go' – was that the word?" He pored over the toys. The woman went back to her knitting. The click of needles or the noise of a tool raised or laid down was the only sound heard in the shop.
"Are you buying the soldiers for your boys? It's wonderful how they take to them these days." The voice of the cabinet-maker broke the stillness. He repeated the question before the Man heard. And even then the answer was slow in coming.
"I have but one boy to buy toys for – now," said the man, at length. "The other one – that is left – is too old. And, in spite of all, the child must be made happy."
He turned again to the soldiers as if they contained the answer to some question. His eyes fell again upon the captain. He nodded as though he recognized some one. "I believe I – know," he thought, half-fearfully. "He 'stands so you can't dislodge him' – he 'doesn't know what it is to be afraid' – he 'walks about among his men' – he 'knows them.'" The man seized the officer almost fiercely and held it in his big hand.
"I will put him there. He will stand. And" – his face lit up with sudden fire – "and 'where he wants to go' he shall go, please God!"
He swept the soldiers into a heap and pushed them from him, waiting impatiently while Mrs. Schotz deftly made them up into a parcel. But when that was done he still lingered. Suddenly he turned to Joseph Schotz with a sort of desperation.
"Did he never – waver – your Napoleon – even when he watched thousands of you – even men with children – die, and die because he placed you there – bound in the shambles?"