blew fit to take a man’s hair out by the roots, it was cold enough to freeze a brass monkey, and those beggars kept us on a continual dance with their feints and sorties.  Never mind; we made them dance in the end; we danced them into the big hot frying pan, and to quick music, too!  And Solferino, you were not there, sir! then why do you speak of it?  Yes, at Solferino, where it was so hot, although I suppose more rain fell there that day than you have seen in your whole life, at Solferino, where we had our little brush with the Austrians, it would have warmed your heart to see how they vanished before our bayonets, riding one another down in their haste to get away from us, as if their coat tails were on fire!”

He laughed the gay, ringing laugh of the daredevil French soldier; he seemed to expand and dilate with satisfaction.  It was the old story:  the French trooper going about the world with his girl on his arm and a glass of good wine in his hand; thrones upset and kingdoms conquered in the singing of a merry song.  Given a corporal and four men, and great armies would bite the dust.  His voice suddenly sank to a low, rumbling bass: 

“What! whip France?  We, whipped by those Prussian pigs, we!” He came up to Weiss and grasped him violently by the lapel of his coat.  His entire long frame, lean as that of the immortal Knight Errant, seemed to breathe defiance and unmitigated contempt for the foe, whoever he might be, regardless of time, place, or any other circumstance.  “Listen to what I tell you, sir.  If the Prussians dare to show their faces here, we will kick them home again.  You hear me? we will kick them from here to Berlin.”  His bearing and manner were superb; the serene tranquillity of the child, the candid conviction of the innocent who knows nothing and fears nothing. “Parbleu! it is so, because it is so, and that’s all there is about it!”

Weiss, stunned and almost convinced, made haste to declare that he wished for nothing better.  As for Maurice, who had prudently held his tongue, not venturing to express an opinion in presence of his superior officer, he concluded by joining in the other’s merriment; he warmed the cockles of his heart, that devil of a man, whom he nevertheless considered rather stupid.  Jean, too, had nodded his approval at every one of the lieutenant’s assertions.  He had also been at Solferino, where it rained so hard.  And that showed what it was to have a tongue in one’s head and know how to use it.  If all the leaders had talked like that they would not be in such a mess, and there would be camp-kettles and flannel belts in abundance.

It was quite dark by this time, and Rochas continued to gesticulate and brandish his long arms in the obscurity.  His historical studies had been confined to a stray volume of Napoleonic memoirs that had found its way to his knapsack from a peddler’s wagon.  His excitement refused to be pacified and all his book-learning burst from his lips in a torrent of eloquence: