Dei he carved on it! No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba’tiste the fighter, as brave as Caroche is a coward! He doesn’t remember the verse on Ba’tiste’s tombstone, does he?"
François heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in the crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he would not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant nothing against François, the young man recited the words slowly—an epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid bully.
Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot’s Memory, he said:
"Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken,
Wrestling I’ve fallen, and I’ve rose up again;
Mostly I’ve stood—
I’ve had good bone and blood;
Others went down, though fighting might and main.
Now death steps in—
Death the price of sin.
The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain,
One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken."
"Good enough for Baptiste," said Duclosse the mealman.
The wave of feeling was now altogether with François, and presently he walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd dispersed. Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening she was unhappy, for she saw François going towards the house of the Seigneur; and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every three or four days she saw the same thing.
