I hammered fresh charges into my pistols after I had turned this over in my head.  Then I put them back in the holsters, and I examined my little mare, she jerking her head and cocking her ears the while, as if to tell me that an old soldier like herself did not make a fuss about a scratch or two.  The first shot had merely grazed her off-shoulder, leaving a skin-mark, as if she had brushed a wall.  The second was more serious.  It had passed through the muscle of her neck, but already it had ceased to bleed.  I reflected that if she weakened I could mount Montluc’s grey, and meanwhile I led him along beside us, for he was a fine horse, worth fifteen hundred francs at the least, and it seemed to me that no one had a better right to him than I.

Well, I was all impatience now to get back to the others, and I had just given Violette her head, when suddenly I saw something glimmering in a field by the roadside.  It was the brass-work upon the chasseur hat which had flown from Montluc’s head; and at the sight of it a thought made me jump in the saddle.  How could the hat have flown off?  With its weight, would it not have simply dropped?  And here it lay, fifteen paces from the roadway!  Of course, he must have thrown it off when he had made sure that I would overtake him.  And if he threw it off—­I did not stop to reason any more, but sprang from the mare with my heart beating the pas-de-charge.  Yes, it was all right this time.  There, in the crown of the hat was stuffed a roll of papers in a parchment wrapper bound round with yellow ribbon.  I pulled it out with the one hand and, holding the hat in the other, I danced for joy in the moonlight.  The Emperor would see that he had not made a mistake when he put his affairs into the charge of Etienne Gerard.

I had a safe pocket on the inside of my tunic just over my heart, where I kept a few little things which were dear to me, and into this I thrust my precious roll.  Then I sprang upon Violette, and was pushing forward to see what had become of Tremeau, when I saw a horseman riding across the field in the distance.  At the same instant I heard the sound of hoofs approaching me, and there in the moonlight was the Emperor upon his white charger, dressed in his grey overcoat and his three-cornered hat, just as I had seen him so often upon the field of battle.

‘Well!’ he cried, in the sharp, sergeant-major way of his.  ’Where are my papers?’

I spurred forward and presented them without a word.  He broke the ribbon and ran his eyes rapidly over them.  Then, as we sat our horses head to tail, he threw his left arm across me with his hand upon my shoulder.  Yes, my friends, simple as you see me, I have been embraced by my great master.

‘Gerard,’ he cried, ‘you are a marvel!’

I did not wish to contradict him, and it brought a flush of joy upon my cheeks to know that he had done me justice at last.

‘Where is the thief, Gerard?’ he asked.