for a reward, and those who had opposed us had come to try and escape
their punishment.

And all the time our little man, with his pale face and his cold, grey
eyes, was riding to the hunt every morning, silent and brooding, all of
them following in his train, in the hope that some word would escape
him. And then, when the humour seized him, he would throw a hundred
square miles to that man, or tear as much off the other, round off one
kingdom by a river, or cut off another by a chain of mountains. That was
how he used to do business, this little artilleryman, whom we had raised
so high with our sabres and our bayonets. He was very civil to us
always, for he knew where his power came from. We knew also, and showed
it by the way in which we carried ourselves. We were agreed, you
understand, that he was the finest leader in the world, but we did not
forget that he had the finest men to lead.

Well, one day I was seated in my quarters playing cards with young
Morat, of the horse chasseurs, when the door opened and in walked
Lasalle, who was our Colonel. You know what a fine, swaggering fellow he
was, and the sky-blue uniform of the Tenth suited him to a marvel. My
faith, we youngsters were so taken by him that we all swore and diced
and drank and played the deuce whether we liked it or no, just that we
might resemble our Colonel! We forgot that it was not because he drank
or gambled that the Emperor was going to make him the head of the light
cavalry, but because he had the surest eye for the nature of a position
or for the strength of a column, and the best judgment as to when
infantry could be broken, or whether guns were exposed, of any man in
the army. We were too young to understand all that, however, so we
waxed our moustaches and clicked our spurs and let the ferrules of our
scabbards wear out by trailing them along the pavement in the hope that