and I went straight up to him and held out my paper. He took it, and smiled and said, 'I will read it, mon enfant.' And he did too, and the mother got a pension of 1200 francs! Don't you suppose I'll die for the Little Corporal after that?"

"I have never seen the Emperor," said Pierre, who had been listening with close attention to the reminiscences of the old campaigners.

"Well, don't be fool enough to get killed until you have," said old Legrand. "You'll see him. He'll come riding along the ranks and look at you and order the charge, and you'll be ready enough to go wherever he says and do whatever he wants. Ah! it was a fine sight at Tilsit to see the Russian Emperor and the German King and all those Princes, Counts, and Barons, taking off their hats to the Little Corporal, and he the greatest of all."

"They were all born on thrones," said Andre Marceau, "but our Little Corporal was only a poor souslieutenant once, and that's the best of it. We've made him Emperor, and he'll make us all Marshals and Dukes as soon as we deserve it! Why, one day at Milan, I remember it as though it were yesterday, we were all in the great square. The Little Corporal was there on his horse, and up came a dragoon with a dispatch. The Little Corporal read it and gave him an answer and said, 'Hurry.' 'But,' said the dragoon,

my horse fell dead from hard riding, and I have no other.' Well, what do you suppose the Little Corporal did? He got off his own horse and said, 'Take mine.' Mon Dieu, but that dragoon was amazed! You could have knocked him over with one finger! 'Perhaps you think he's too fine,' said the Little Corporal.

'Never mind, comrade, there is nothing too good for a French soldier!'"

"Vive 1'Empereur!" shouted old Francois Legrand excitedly. The others took it up, and on the cool night air rang out, in tumultuous chorus many times repeated, the shout, "Vive 1'Empereur!"

It was nine o'clock and the tattoo sounded for the soldiers to extinguish their fires, and soon the camp of Boudet division was wrapped in darkness and silence a silence broken only by the stamping of the horses of the cuirassiers and the measured tread of the sentries on their beats. As Pierre lay on his straw, he reached out and felt the knapsack lying beside him, and thought again of what Andre Marceau had told them the Emperor said, "Tout soldat franqais porte dans sa giberne le baton de Marechal de France!" He wondered if there would be one in his, and, holding tightly to its straps, he fell asleep, to dream that he too had met "le petit caporal."

CHAPTER XI

Place Aux Dames

Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums,
That beat to battle where he stands;
Thy face across his fancy comes,

And gives the battle to his hands.

—Tennyson, The Princess.

WHAT were the women of France doing while their husbands, brothers, sons, and lovers, high-hearted, eager for glory, proud of their country's greatness, marched onward toward Vienna? The women hoped and waited. Hoped that this campaign, like that of 1805, would be short and glorious; hoped that fortune would again grant France her favors; hoped that death once more would spare the dear ones upon whom their thoughts were centered; waited for the bulletins to tell them of hopes realized, or destroyed—those bulletins which brought joy or sorrow to so many homes!

At the Tuileries Palace the Empress Josephine forgot the multiplying demands of her toilet to scan eagerly the short, hieroglyphic notes that, from camp and battlefield, came to her from the Emperor. And throughout France, the wives of Dukes, Princes, Marshals, Generals, Majors, Barons, Captains, Corporals, Sergeants, Privates—the grand lady of the Imperial Court, who lived in her great hotel on the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and the humble peasant

woman, who watched her children, planted her grain, and did her chores in rustic Dauphine, or flowery Touraine all watched, waited, and hoped. How many widows there were! One could see them everywhere. In the lofty aisles of Notre Dame, or before the little altar of the Church of St. Etienne du Mont, or in the grand cathedral of Tours, or at Amiens, kneeling in that Gothic marvel of Robert de Luzarche, where the arched and pinnacled facade, the flying buttresses, the wealth of sculpture, and the great rose windows—purpling and gilding with their rays the saints, apostles, martyrs, carved on every side with wondrous skill—set forth the Bible epic in a blaze of glory.

There was in the France of 1809 an anxiety, a discontent, which was new to the France of the Empire. Public opinion had, from the first, disapproved the Spanish war, and the stubborn national resistance encountered by the French in Spain—a resistance which could be summed up in the one word, Saragossa—could but deepen this disapproval.

The levy of 1809 had been called out, and also that of 1810 required in advance, while, in addition, the new levies upon the classes of 1806, 1807, 1808, which had supposed themselves free, caused dismay in many families. But for the present, although there were signs of discontent and disapprobation among high and low, France on the whole was hopeful, even cheerful. For France was marching, and at her head the greatest military captain of the world.

The Grand Army knew no doubts or fears; they left such things to diplomats, to merchants, to bankers, to courtiers, or to women. They looked straight ahead,

eager to behold upon the crest of some hill the white coats of the enemy; to see in some valley the gleam of their camp-fires. In the morning, as they faced the Austrian cannon, or at evening, as they threw themselves upon the rain-soaked ground, they had but one cry, which ever and always expressed their thoughts, their hopes, and their devotion—“ Vive l'Empereur!" To Marie Jodelle it seemed the most natural thing in the world to see France marching thus to war. She could never remember any other state of affairs. When she came into the world in 1792, the throne of the Bourbons had fallen, the Revolution—" that manyheaded monster thing "—had looked forth with bloody eyes upon the monarchies of Europe, the champions of "Royalty by right divine" had cried "To arms!" and the youth of France, keeping time to the "Marseillaise," were marching forth to battle for their newfound tricolor. When Marie was five years old, the pere Henri came back from Italy, minus the leg he had lost at Castiglione. Then her mother died, and she had only the pere Henri. He was a gruff old soldier—the pere Henri—but he was a father good and kind. When she was older, she passed many an evening sitting on his knee before the fireplace in the Cafe Jodelle, listening with wide-open eyes, while he told her of the dangers and adventures through which he had passed. As he talked, she heard the rolling drums, sounding the charge at Valmy; she saw the brave Jourdan, sword in hand at Fleurus; she heard the "Allons enfants de la patrie" of the "Marseillaise"; and next, she saw upon the plains of Italy the young recruits of France, hungry, ragged, lacking everything but courage, to whom that little olive