Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/188

 158 TRANSACTIONS - .. CHAP, soldiery, that the clear incisive words in which he XII ' described to me the mechanism of the ' movable ' column/ were a model of military diction ; but his keen, handsome, eager features so kindled with the mere stir and pomp of war — he seemed so to love the swift going and coming of his aides- de-camp, and the rolling drums, and the joyful appeal of the bugles — he was so content with the gleam of his epaulettes, half-hidden and half-re- vealed by the graceful white cabaan — so happy in the bounding pride of his Arab charger — that lie did not seem like a man destined to be chosen from out of all others as the instrument of a scheme requiring grave care and secrecy. Yet of secrecy he was most capable ; and at that very time he had upon his mind,* and was concealing, not from me only (for that would be only natural), but from every oiHcer and man around him, a deed of such a kind that few men perhaps have ever done the like of it in secret. We saw that, before the December of 1851, the enterprising and resolute Fleury was in Algeria, seeking out a fit African officer, who would take the post of JVIinister of War, with a view of join- ing the President in his plans for the overthrow of the Republic. ^Tonsieur St Arnaud formerly Le Roy had not so lived as to occasion any diffi- culty in approaching him with dishonouring pro- posals ; and there was ground for inferring that jilacc aljont six weeks before the time when I first saw Colonel St Arnaud.
 * Tlic act here alluih.'il to is spoken of fuithcr on. It took