Lagroin and Parpon were busy, each in his own
way--Lagroin, open, bluff, imperative; Parpon, silent, acute, shrewd. Two
days before the feast of St. John the Baptist, the two made a special
tour through the parish for certain recruits. If these could be enlisted,
a great many men of this and other parishes would follow. They were, by
name, Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Lajeunesse the
blacksmith, and Garotte the limeburner, all men of note, after their
kind, with influence and individuality.
Lagroin chafed that he must play recruiting-sergeant and general also.
But it gave him comfort to remember that the Great Emperor had not at
times disdained to be his own recruiting-sergeant; that, after Friedland,
he himself had been taken into the Old Guard by the Emperor; that Davoust
had called him brother; that Ney had shared his supper and slept with him
under the same blanket. Parpon would gladly have done this work alone,
but he knew that Lagroin in his regimentals would be useful.
The sought-for comrades were often to be found together about the noon
hour in the shop of Jose Lajeunesse. They formed the coterie of the
humble, even as the Cure's coterie represented the aristocracy of
Pontiac--with Medallion as a connecting link.
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