us your opinion. Are the
positions occupied by Ducrot as strong as they pretend? Is it victory for
to-day?"

The corporal turned around suddenly; with a face the color of boxwood,
and his blue eyes shining with rage and defiance, he cried in a hoarse
voice:

"Go and see for yourselves, you stay-at-homes!"

Saddened and heart-broken at the demoralization of the soldiers, the
National Guards withdrew.

"Behold the army which the Empire has left us!" said the dressmaker's
husband, who was a fool.

Upon the road leading from Paris, pressing toward the cannon's mouth
which was commencing to grumble again in the distance, a battalion of
militia arrived, a disorderly troop. They were poor fellows from the
departments in the west, all young, wearing in their caps the Brittany
coat-of-arms, and whom suffering and privation had not yet entirely
deprived of their good country complexions. They were less worn out than
the other unfortunate fellows whose turn came too often, and did not feel
the cold under their sheepskins, and still respected their officers, whom
they knew personally, and were assured in case of accident of absolution
given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first
company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes.
These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their
ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a
firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste.
Anne! They looked like soldiers in earnest.

When they passed by the National Guard, the big blond waved his cap in
the air, furiously shouting at the top of his lungs:

"Long live the Republic!"

But once more the fanatical patriot's enthusiasm fell flat. The Bretons
were marching into danger partly from desire, but more from duty and
discipline. At the very first shot these simple-minded creatures reach
the supreme wisdom of loving one's country and losing one's life for it,
if necessary, without interesting themselves in the varied mystifications
one calls government. Four or five of the men, more or less astonished at
the cry which greeted them, turned their placid, countrified faces toward
the National Guard, and the battalion passed by.

The dressmaker's husband--he did nothing at his trade, for his wife
adored him, and he spent at cafes all the money which she gave him--was
extremely scandalized. During this time Amedee Violette w