“Upon my word,” said Colonel Laporte,
“although I am old and gouty, my legs as stiff
as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to
tell me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe
I should take a jump at it, like a clown through a
hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the blood.
I am an old beau, one of the old school, and the sight
of a woman, a pretty woman, stirs me to the tips of
my toes. There!
“We are all very much alike in France in this
respect; we still remain knights, knights of love
and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard
we really were. But nobody can ever get woman
out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will
remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love
her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on
her account as long as there is a France on the map
of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off
the map, there would always be Frenchmen left.
“When I am in the presence of a woman, of a
pretty woman, I feel capable of anything. By
Jove! when I feel her looks penetrating me, her confounded
looks which set your blood on fire, I should like to
do I don’t know what; to fight a duel, to have
a row, to smash the furniture, in order to show that
I am the strongest, the bravest, the most daring and
the most devoted of men.
“But I am not the only one, certainly not; the
whole French army is like me, I swear to you.
From the common soldier to the general, we all start
out, from the van to the rear guard, when there is
a woman in the case, a pretty woman. Do you remember
what Joan of Arc made us do formerly? Come.
I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken
command of the army on the eve of Sedan, when Marshal
MacMahon was wounded, we should have broken through
the Prussian lines, by Jove! and had a drink out of
their guns.
“It was not a Trochu, but a Sainte-Genevieve,
who was needed in Paris; and I remember a little anecdote
of the war which proves that we are capable of everything
in presence of a woman.
“I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time,
and I was in command of a detachment of scouts, who
were retreating through a district which swarmed with
Prussians. We were surrounded, pursued, tired
out and half dead with fatigue and hunger, but we
were bound to reach Bar-sur-Tain before the morrow,
otherwise we should be shot, cut down, massacred.
I do not know how we managed to escape so far.
However, we had ten leagues to go during the night,
ten leagues through the night, ten leagues through
the snow, and with empty stomachs, and I thought to
myself:
“‘It is all over; my poor devils of fellows
will never be able to do it.’
“We had eaten nothing since the day before,
and the whole day long we remained hidden in a barn,
huddled close together, so as not to feel the cold
so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping
by fits and starts, as one does when worn out with
fatigue.
