officer
could have directed the expedition without going an inch astray.

As the captain had but eighteen men under him, and it was not possible
to surround the monastery completely with that number, or rather, to
guard the two exits and make a thorough search through the interior,
and, as it would have taken three or four days to bring in all the men
of the brigade scattered throughout the neighborhood, the officer, by
Roland's order, went to the colonel of dragoons, garrisoned at Bourg,
told him of the matter in hand, and asked for twelve men, who, with his
own, made thirty in all.

The colonel not only granted the twelve men, but, learning that
the expedition was to be commanded by Colonel Roland de Montrevel,
aide-de-camp to the First Consul, he proposed that he himself should
join the party at the head of his twelve men.

Roland accepted his co-operation, and it was agreed that the colonel (we
employ the words colonel and chief of brigade indifferently, both being
interchangeable terms indicating the same rank) and his twelve dragoons
should pick up Roland, the captain, and his eighteen men, the barracks
being directly on their road to the Chartreuse. The time was set for
eleven that night.

At eleven precisely, with military punctuality, the colonel of dragoons
and his twelve men joined the gendarmes, and the two companies, now
united in one, began their march. Roland, in his sergeant's uniform,
made himself known to his brother colonel; but to the dragoons and
gendarmes he remained, as agreed upon, a sergeant detached from the
brigade at Sons-le-Saulnier. Only, as it might otherwise have seemed
extraordinary that a sergeant, wholly unfamiliar with these localities,
should be their guide, the men were told that Roland had been in his
youth a novice at Seillon, and was therefore better acquainted than most
persons with the mysterious nooks of the Chartreuse.

The first feeling of these brave soldiers had been a slight humiliation
at being guided by an ex-monk; but, on the other hand, as that ex-monk
wore the three-cornered hat jauntily, and as his whole manner and
appearance was that of a man who has completely forgotten that he
formerly wore a cowl, they ended by accepting the humiliation, and
reserved their final judgment on the sergeant until they could see how
he handled the musket he carried on his arm, the pistols he wore in his
belt, and the sword that hung at his side.

The party was supplied with to