As to Maurice Roger, at the beginning of the campaign he sent his mother,
wife, and child into the country, and, wearing the double golden stripe
of a lieutenant upon his militia jacket, he was now at the outposts near
his father's old friend, Colonel Lantz.

Owing to a scarcity of officers, they had fished up the old Colonel from
the depths of his engineer's office, and had torn him away from his
squares and compasses. Poor old fellow! His souvenirs of activity went as
far back as the Crimea and Sebastopol. Since that time he had not even
seen a pickaxe glisten in the sun, and, behold, they asked this worthy
man to return to the trench, and to powder his despatches with earth
ploughed up by bombs, like Junot at Toulon in the fearless battery.

Well, he did not say "No," and after kissing his three portionless
daughters on the forehead, he took his old uniform, half-eaten up by
moths, from a drawer, shook the grains of pepper and camphor from it,
and, with his slow, red-tapist step, went to make his excavators work as
far as possible from the walls and close by the Prussians. I can tell
you, the men of the auxiliary engineers and the gentlemen with the
American-caps had not joked for some time over his African cape or his
superannuated cap, which seemed to date from Pere Bugeaud. One day, when
a German bomb burst among them, and they all fell to the ground excepting
Colonel Lantz, who had not flinched. He tranquilly settled his glasses
upon his nose and wiped off his splashed beard as coolly as he had, not
long since, cleaned his India-ink brushes. Bless me! it gave you a
lesson, gentlemen snobs, to sustain the honor of the special army, and
taught you to respect the black velvet plastron and double red bands on
the trousers. In spite of his appearance of absence of mind and deafness,
the Colonel had just before heard murmured around him the words "old
Lantz," and "old dolphin." Very well, gentlemen officers, you know now
that the old army was composed of good material!

Maurice Roger was ordered from his battalion to Colonel Lantz, and did
his duty like a true soldier's son, following his chief into the most
perilous positions, and he no longer lowered his head or bent his
shoulders at the whistling of a bomb. It was genuine military blood that
flowed in his veins, and he did not fear death; but life in the open air,
absence from his wife, the state of excitement produced by the war, and
this eagerness for pleasure