use by the
roadside, and I went round by the fields to avoid it. At another time
two men came out into the moonlight (for by this time it was a cloudless
night) and shouted something in German, but I galloped on without
heeding them, and they were afraid to fire, for their own hussars are
dressed exactly as I was. It is best to take no notice at these times,
and then they put you down as a deaf man.

It was a lovely moon, and every tree threw a black bar across the road.
I could see the countryside just as if it were daytime, and very
peaceful it looked, save that there was a great fire raging somewhere in
the north. In the silence of the night-time, and with the knowledge that
danger was in front and behind me, the sight of that great distant fire
was very striking and awesome. But I am not easily clouded, for I have
seen too many singular things, so I hummed a tune between my teeth and
thought of little Lisette, whom I might see in Paris. My mind was full
of her when, trotting round a corner, I came straight upon half-a-dozen
German dragoons, who were sitting round a brushwood fire by the
roadside.

I am an excellent soldier. I do not say this because I am prejudiced in
my own favour, but because I really am so. I can weigh every chance in a
moment, and decide with as much certainty as though I had brooded for a
week. Now I saw like a flash that, come what might, I should be chased,
and on a horse which had already done a long twelve leagues. But it was
better to be chased onwards than to be chased back. On this moonlit
night, with fresh horses behind me, I must take my risk in either case;
but if I were to shake them off, I preferred that it should be near
Senlis than near Soissons.

All this flashed on me as if by instinct, you understand. My eyes had
hardly rested on the bearded faces under the brass helmets before my
rowels had touched Violette, and she was off with a rattle like a
pas-de-charge. Oh, the shouting and rushing and stamping from behind us!
Three of them fired and three swung themselves on to their horses. A
bullet rapped on the crupper of my saddle with a noise like a stick on a
door. Violette sprang madly forward, and I thought she had been wounded,
but it was only a graze above the near fore-fetlock. Ah, the dear little
mare, how I loved her when I felt her settle down into that long, easy
gallop of hers, her hoofs going like a Spanish girl's castanets. I could
not hold myself. I turned on my sa