The commissioner of police gave the
round box a touch, and as it turned round some six or seven times one
might almost have heard a raindrop fall. "Now," said he laughing,
"good luck to you!" and the peasant, plunging his hand into the trap
of the box, drew out a little piece of card-board rolled into a curl.
"No. 17," shouted the infantry captain, taking it from his hands and
reading it, whilst a loud roar of laughter from the mob hailed the
dismal face with which the unhappy lad heard of his ill-success.
"Oh, what a head for a soldier!" cried some wag in the crowd. "Yes,"
screamed another, "he'll make the Russians run." "Have you chosen your
regiment yet?" barked a third. "Why, of course!" yelped a fourth: "he
is to be fife-player in the second battalion of the pope's
horse-beadles."
And amid a shower of jokes equally witty No. 17 came down, and a
second name was called. After him came a third, and then a fourth, and
so on, all equally unlucky; and no wonder, since all the numbers up to
one hundred were losing ones. There were great differences in the way
in which the youths bore their discomfiture: some went up crying to
the urn and trembled as in an ague whilst it was rolling round; three
stamped and sobbed like children when they had lost, and the crowd,
ever charitable in its doings, threw about their ears by way of
comfort a volley of epigrams which pricked them like so many wasps;
others, on the contrary, went up laughing, and upon drawing a bad
number stuck the card in their hats and came down bandying jokes with
the mob as unconcernedly as though they had been only taking a pinch
of snuff instead of selling seven long years of their lives.
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