ved wood,
white-and-gold, still in very good preservation. The Marshal had found
some good old furniture in the same style; in the coach-house he had
a carriage with two batons in saltire on the panels; and when he was
expected to appear in full fig, at the Minister's, at the Tuileries, for
some ceremony or high festival, he hired horses for the job.

His servant for more than thirty years was an old soldier of sixty,
whose sister was the cook, so he had saved ten thousand francs, adding
it by degrees to a little hoard he intended for Hortense. Every day the
old man walked along the boulevard, from the Rue du Mont-Parnasse to the
Rue Plumet; and every pensioner as he passed stood at attention, without
fail, to salute him: then the Marshal rewarded the veteran with a smile.

"Who is the man you always stand at attention to salute?" said a young
workman one day to an old captain and pensioner.

"I will tell you, boy," replied the officer.

The "boy" stood resigned, as a man does to listen to an old gossip.

"In 1809," said the captain, "we were covering the flank of the main
army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor's command. We came to a
bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a
sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the
bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was
Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns held
one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three times they
tried for the bridge, and three times they were driven back. 'Go and
find Hulot!' said the Marshal; 'nobody but he and his men can bolt that
morsel.' So we came. The General, who was just retiring from the bridge,
stopped Hulot under fire, to tell him how to do it, and he was in the
way. 'I don't want advice, but room to pass,' said our General coolly,
marching across at the head of his men. And then, rattle, thirty guns
raking us at once."

"By Heaven!" cried the workman, "that accounts for some of these
crutches!"

"And if you, like me, my boy, had heard those words so quietly spoken,
you would bow before that man down to the ground! It is not so famous as
Arcole, but perhaps it was finer. We followed Hulot at the double, right
up to those batteries. All honor to those we left there!" and the old
man lifted his hat. "The Austrians were amazed at the dash of it.--The
Emperor made the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by hon