I have never been very friendly with this Charpentier; and now for twenty miles of the way I could not draw a word from him.  He rode with his brows puckered and his chin upon his breast, like a man who is heavy with thought.  More than once I asked him what was on his mind, thinking that, perhaps, with my quicker intelligence I might set the matter straight.  His answer always was that it was his mission of which he was thinking, which surprised me, because, although I had never thought much of his intelligence, still it seemed to me to be impossible that anyone could be puzzled by so simple and soldierly a task.

Well, we came at last to Bazoches, where he was to take the southern road and I the northern.  He half turned in his saddle before he left me, and he looked at me with a singular expression of inquiry in his face.

‘What do you make of it, Brigadier?’ he asked.

‘Of what?’

‘Of our mission.’

‘Surely it is plain enough.’

‘You think so?  Why should the Emperor tell us his plans?’

‘Because he recognized our intelligence.’

My companion laughed in a manner which I found annoying.

’May I ask what you intend to do if you find these villages full of Prussians?’ he asked.

‘I shall obey my orders.’

‘But you will be killed.’

‘Very possibly.’

He laughed again, and so offensively that I clapped my hand to my sword.  But before I could tell him what I thought of his stupidity and rudeness he had wheeled his horse, and was lumbering away down the other road.  I saw his big fur cap vanish over the brow of the hill, and then I rode upon my way, wondering at his conduct.  From time to time I put my hand to the breast of my tunic and felt the paper crackle beneath my fingers.  Ah, my precious paper, which should be turned into the little silver medal for which I had yearned so long.  All the way from Braine to Sermoise I was thinking of what my mother would say when she saw it.

I stopped to give Violette a meal at a wayside auberge on the side of a hill not far from Soissons—­a place surrounded by old oaks, and with so many crows that one could scarce hear one’s own voice.  It was from the innkeeper that I learned that Marmont had fallen back two days before, and that the Prussians were over the Aisne.  An hour later, in the fading light, I saw two of their vedettes upon the hill to the right, and then, as darkness gathered, the heavens to the north were all glimmering from the lights of a bivouac.

When I heard that Blucher had been there for two days, I was much surprised that the Emperor should not have known that the country through which he had ordered me to carry my precious letter was already occupied by the enemy.  Still, I thought of the tone of his voice when he said to Charpentier that a soldier must not choose, but must obey.  I should follow the route he had laid down for me as long as Violette could move a hoof or I a finger upon her bridle.  All the way from Sermoise to Soissons, where the road dips up and down, curving among fir woods, I kept my pistol ready and my sword-belt braced, pushing on swiftly where the path was straight, and then coming slowly round the corners in the way we learned in Spain.