Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/137

 THK VTVANDlfeRE. 107 In order to reach the last covert from which chap. v. they would make their spring, they were first to. advance some way down by the bed of the Dock- yard Ravine, next file up its right bank, and pro- ceed to line the Third Parallel — the foremost entrenchment then stretching across the Victoria Ridge. There ensconced, they would have but to wait till unleashed by the promised signal, and then at once storm the Lunette. After hearing General Bosquet's harangues the Their ad- i iii n vance in a French troops advanced, and began to move down state of war. -r^ p i-i ir like efferves. the Ravine in a state or most brisk ellerveseenee, cence. and a temper so eagerly warlike that to the eyes of a staid English critic their march seemed al- most tumultuous.* The more any regiment was agitated by per- TheVi- . . vandiere turbmg emotions, the more its men seemed to contrast with the fair one who rode at their head in her panoply of fearless, calm pride. To onr people — descended of men who never had learnt to revere the beauteous goddess of Reason — this time-honoured scene of a drama in which the Vivandiere acts was beyond measure strange ; but to one who — first having been reared in the genuine French School of High Art — be- holds her riding serenely at the head of her regi- ment in the moments preceding a fight she repre- sents an Idea; and, it being divined, though but dimly, that this march against the Lunette would involve heavy slaughter, she now more than ever
 * Hamley, p. 2^9.