corporal just about to eat his stew, as if he were questioning an old
tactician or a man skilled like Turenne or Davoust; "do you see? you hit
it in this affair of day before yesterday. Give us your opinion. Are
the positions occupied by Ducrot as strong as they pretend? Is it
victory for to-day?"

The corporal turned around suddenly; with a face the color of boxwood,
and his blue eyes shining with rage and defiance, he cried in a hoarse
voice:

"Go and see for yourselves, you stay-at-homes!"

Saddened and heart-broken at the demoralization of the soldiers, the
National Guards withdrew.

"Behold the army which the Empire has left us!" said the dressmaker's
husband, who was a fool.

Upon the road leading from Paris, pressing toward the cannon's mouth
which was commencing to grumble again in the distance, a battalion of
militia arrived, a disorderly troop. They were poor fellows from the
departments in the west, all young, wearing in their caps the Brittany
coat-of-arms, and whom suffering and privation had not yet entirely
deprived of their good country complexions. They were less worn out than
the other unfortunate fellows whose turn came too often, and did not feel
the cold under their sheepskins, and still respected their officers, whom
they knew personally, and were assured in case of accident of absolution
given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first
company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes.
These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their