He
turned and saw the stranger looking at him intently, his eyes alight.
"Sing it," he said softly, yet with an air of command. Parpon hesitated,
shrank back.
"Sing it," he insisted, and the request was taken up by others, till
Parpon's face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance. The stranger
stooped and whispered something in his ear. There was a moment's pause,
in which the dwarf looked into the other's eyes with an intense
curiosity--or incredulity--and then Medallion lifted the little man on to
the railing of the veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts of the
people there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet coming
as a new revelation to them all:
"My mother promised it,
O gai, rive le roi!
My mother promised it,
O gai, vive le roi!
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive le roi, la reine!
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoleon!"
This was chanted lightly, airily, with a sweetness almost absurd, coming
as it did from so uncouth a musician. The last verses had a touch of
pathos, droll yet searching:
"Oh, say, where goes your love?
O gai, rive le roi!
Oh, say, where goes your love?
O gai, vive le roi!
He rides on a white horse,
Vive le roi, la reine!
He wears a silver sword,
Vive Napoleon!
"Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
Gold and silver he will bring,
Vive le roi, la reine;
And eke the daughter of a king
Vive Napoleon!"
The crowd--women and men, youths and maidens--enthusiastically repeated
again and again the last lines and the refrain, "Vive le roi, la reine!
Vive Napoleon!"
Meanwhile the stranger stood, now looking at the singer with eager eyes,
now searching the faces of the people, keen to see the effect upon them.
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