m, and was
bidden to carry the order to the 14th. M. Froissard galloped off; we
lost sight of him in the midst of the Cossacks, and never saw him again
nor heard what had become of him. The marshal, seeing that the 14th did
not move, sent an officer named David; he had the same fate as
Froissard: we never heard of him again. Probably both were killed and
stripped, and could not be recognised among the many corpses which
covered the ground. For the third time the marshal called, "The officer
for duty." It was my turn.

'Seeing the son of his old friend, and I venture to say his favourite
aide-de-camp, come up, the kind marshal's face changed and his eyes
filled with tears, for he could not hide from himself that he was
sending me to almost certain death. But the Emperor must be obeyed. I
was a soldier; it was impossible to make one of my comrades go in my
place, nor would I have allowed it; it would have been disgracing me. So
I dashed off. But though ready to sacrifice my life I felt bound to take
all necessary precautions to save it. I had observed that the two
officers who went before me had gone with swords drawn, which led me to
think that they had purposed to defend themselves against any Cossacks
who might attack them on the way. Such defence, I thought, was
ill-considered, since it must have compelled them to halt in order to
fight a multitude of enemies, who would overwhelm them in the end. So I
went otherwise to work, and leaving my sword in the scabbard, I regarded
myself as a horseman who is trying to win a steeplechase, and goes as
quickly as possible and by the shortest line towards the appointed goal,
without troubling himself with what is to right or left of his path.
Now, as my goal was the hillock occupied by the 14th, I resolved to get
there without taking any notice of the Cossacks, whom in thought I
abolished. This plan answered perfectly. Lisette, lighter than a swallow
and flying rather than running, devoured the intervening space, leaping
the piles of dead men and horses, the ditches, the broken gun-carriages,
the half-extinguished bivouac fires. Thousands of Cossacks swarmed over
the plain. The first who saw me acted like sportsmen who, when beating,
start a hare, and announce its presence to each other by shouts of "Your
side! Your side!" but none of the Cossacks tried to stop me, first, on
account of the extreme rapidity of my pace, and also probably because,
their numbers being so great, each