“If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of us?” said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.

The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late imperial guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a formidable footing.  By dint of searching out and questioning his friends and many officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former quartermaster at headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of those men whom troopers call “hard-to-cook,” a nickname derived from the mess kitchen where refractory beans are not uncommon.  Michaud picked out from among his friends and acquaintances, three other men fit to be his helpers, and able to guard the estate without fear and without reproach.

The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son of the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte’s first victories with the army of Italy.  Tall and strong, he belonged to the class of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively and absolutely.  Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty; he would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders.  He ignored danger.  Perfectly fearless, he had never received the smallest scratch during his sixteen years’ campaigning.  He slept in the open air or in his bed with stoical indifference.  At any increased labor or discomfort, he merely remarked, “It seems to be the order of the day.”

The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs, gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if ordered to execute him.  With no future before him and not knowing how to employ himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in the functions of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the Emperor had hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore to serve the brave Montcornet against and through all and everything.  His nature was of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life without enemies seems dull and objectless,—­the nature, in short, of a litigant, or a policeman.  If it had not been for the presence of the sheriff’s officer, he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood at the Grand-I-Vert, snapping his fingers at the law on the inviolability of a man’s domicile.

The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of mechanical soldiers.  The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and he became indifferent to everything else.  With the care of a natural daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to him as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken service in a regiment.