as I stood in the doorway of the inn at Alamo,
on the 1st of July, in the year 1810, you would then have known what the
hussar may attain to.

For a month I had lingered in that accursed village, and all on account
of a lance-thrust in my ankle, which made it impossible for me to put my
foot to the ground. There were three besides myself at first: old
Bouvet, of the Hussars of Bercheny, Jacques Regnier, of the Cuirassiers,
and a funny little voltigeur captain whose name I forget; but they all
got well and hurried on to the front, while I sat gnawing my fingers and
tearing my hair, and even, I must confess, weeping from time to time as
I thought of my Hussars of Conflans, and the deplorable condition in
which they must find themselves when deprived of their colonel. I was
not a chief of brigade yet, you understand, although I already carried
myself like one, but I was the youngest colonel in the whole service,
and my regiment was wife and children to me. It went to my heart that
they should be so bereaved. It is true that Villaret, the senior major,
was an excellent soldier; but still, even among the best there are
degrees of merit.

Ah, that happy July day of which I speak, when first I limped to the
door and stood in the golden Spanish sunshine! It was but the evening
before that I had heard from the regiment. They were at Pastores, on the
other side of the mountains, face to face with the English--not forty
miles from me by road. But how was I to get to them? The same thrust
which had pierced my ankle had slain my charger. I took advice both from
Gomez, the landlord, and from an old priest who had slept that night in
the inn, but neither of them could do more than assure me that there was
not so much as a colt left upon the whole countryside.

The landlord would not hear of my crossing the mountains without an
escort, for he assured me that El Cuchillo, the Spanish guerilla chief,
was out that way with his band, and that it meant a death by torture to
fall into his hands. The old priest observed, however, that he did not
think a French hussar would be deterred by that, and if I had had any
doubts, they would of course have been decided by his remark.

But a horse! How was I to get one? I was standing in the doorway,
plotting and planning, when I heard the clink of shoes, and, looking up,
I saw a great bearded man, with a blue cloak frogged across in military
fashion, coming towards me. He was riding a big black ho