Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/54

26 their backs and the bayonet they carried in front. They stood with pursed-up mouths, looking curiously and attentively at the commandant.

"Very well," went on Hulot, who in an eminent degree possessed the art of speaking in the soldier's picturesque language, "stout fellows, such as we are, must never allow the Chouans to make fools of us; and there are Chouans about, or my name is not Hulot. Be off, the four of you, and beat up either side of the road. The detachment is going to slip its cable; keep well alongside of it. Try not to hand in your checks, and clear up this business for me. Sharp!"

He pointed out the dangerous heights above the road. By way of thanks, all four raised the backs of their hands before their old cocked hats; the turned-up brims, weather-beaten now and limp with age, had fallen over the crowns. One of them, Larose by name, a corporal that Hulot knew, said as he made the muzzle of his gun ring on the ground:

"They shall have a solo on the clarionet, commandant."

They set out, two of them to the right, and the others to the left. It was not without an inward tremor that the company saw them disappear on either side of the way. The commandant shared in this anxiety; he believed that he had sent them to a certain death. He shuddered in spite of himself when he saw their hats no longer, and both officers and men heard the sound of their footsteps on the dead leaves gradually dying away with a feeling all the more acutely painful for being hidden so far beneath the surface. In war there are scenes like these, when four men sent into jeopardy cause more consternation than the thousands of corpses stretched upon the field at Jemappes. So many and so fleeting are the expressions of the military physiognomy, that those who would fain depict them are obliged to call up memories of soldiers in the past, and to leave it to non-comliatants to study their dramatic figures, for these stormy times were so rich in detail that any complete description of them could only be made at interminable length.