“Drink to your sweethearts, my children, if you have any and don’t forget to drink to the glory of France.  Them’s my sentiments, so vive la joie!”

“That’s right, Lieutenant.  Here’s to your health, and everybody else’s!”

They all drank, and their hearts were warmed and peace reigned once more.  The “nip” had much of comfort in it, in the chill morning, just as they were going into action, and Maurice felt it tingling in his veins, giving him cheer and a sort of what is known colloquially as “Dutch courage.”  Why should they not whip the Prussians?  Have not battles their surprises? has not history embalmed many an instance of the fickleness of fortune?  That mighty man of war, the lieutenant, added that Bazaine was on the way to join them, would be with them before the day was over:  oh, the information was positive; he had it from an aid to one of the generals; and although, in speaking of the route the marshal was to come by, he pointed to the frontier of Belgium, Maurice yielded to one of those spasmodic attacks of hopefulness of his, without which life to him would not have been worth living.  Might it not be that the day of reckoning was at hand?

“Why don’t we move, Lieutenant?” he made bold to ask.  “What are we waiting for?”

Rochas made a gesture, which the other interpreted to mean that no orders had been received.  Presently he asked: 

“Has anybody seen the captain?”

No one answered.  Jean remembered perfectly having seen him making for Sedan the night before, but to the soldier who knows what is good for himself, his officers are always invisible when they are not on duty.  He held his tongue, therefore, until happening to turn his head, he caught sight of a shadowy form flitting along the hedge.

“Here he is,” said he.

It was Captain Beaudoin in the flesh.  They were all surprised by the nattiness of his appearance, his resplendent shoes, his well-brushed uniform, affording such a striking contrast to the lieutenant’s pitiful state.  And there was a finicking completeness, moreover, about his toilet, greater than the male being is accustomed to bestow upon himself, in his scrupulously white hands and his carefully curled mustache, and a faint perfume of Persian lilac, which had the effect of reminding one in some mysterious way of the dressing room of a young and pretty woman.

“Hallo!” said Loubet, with a sneer, “the captain has recovered his baggage!”

But no one laughed, for they all knew him to be a man with whom it was not well to joke.  He was stiff and consequential with his men, and was detested accordingly; a pete sec, to use Rochas’s expression.  He had seemed to regard the early reverses of the campaign as personal affronts, and the disaster that all had prognosticated was to him an unpardonable crime.  He was a strong Bonapartist by conviction; his prospects for promotion were of the brightest; he had several important salons looking