be given and repeated by five hundred voices, by five hundred men
drunk with joy.

We believed the glorious hour was at last come, which we had been
awaiting with so much impatience since the opening of the campaign.
The charge! That indescribable thing which is the _raison d'être_ of
the trooper, that sublime act which pierces, rends, and crushes by a
furious onslaught--wild gallop, with uplifted sword, yelling mouth,
and frenzied eyes. The charge! The charge of our great ancestors, of
those demi-gods, Murat, Lasalle, Curély, Kellermann and so many
others! The charge we had been asking for, with all our hearts, ever
since the opening of the campaign, and which had always been denied
us!

Ah! that famous German cavalry, that set up its doctrine of pushing
the attack to the death, what hatred and what contempt had we
conceived for them! We had one desire, and one only--to measure
ourselves with them. And every time we had seen their squadrons the
result had been either that they had turned and retired in good order
behind their lines of infantry, or they had drawn us into some
ambuscade under the pitiless fire of their deadly machine-guns.

Were we at last to meet them and measure our swords with their lances?

* * * * *

The regiment moved off in one body behind the Colonel, who, riding a
big chestnut horse and as calm as at manoeuvres, led us at a gentle
trot skirting the little clumps of trees that dotted the plain. A
troop had gone forward in a halo of glittering dust to act as an