ontluc, and I will do him justice to say that he died
hard also.

But it was the papers--always the papers--of which I thought. I opened
his tunic and I felt in his shirt. Then I searched his holsters and his
sabre-tasche. Finally I dragged off his boots, and undid his horse's
girth so as to hunt under the saddle. There was not a nook or crevice
which I did not ransack. It was useless. They were not upon him.

When this stunning blow came upon me I could have sat down by the
roadside and wept. Fate seemed to be fighting against me, and that is an
enemy from whom even a gallant hussar might not be ashamed to flinch. I
stood with my arm over the neck of my poor wounded Violette, and I tried
to think it all out, that I might act in the wisest way. I was aware
that the Emperor had no great respect for my wits, and I longed to show
him that he had done me an injustice. Montluc had not the papers. And
yet Montluc had sacrificed his companions in order to make his escape. I
could make nothing of that. On the other hand, it was clear that, if he
had not got them, one or other of his comrades had. One of them was
certainly dead. The other I had left fighting with Tremeau, and if he
escaped from the old swordsman he had still to pass me. Clearly, my work
lay behind me.

I hammered fresh charges into my pistols after I had turned this over in
my head. Then I put them back in the holsters, and I examined my little
mare, she jerking her head and cocking her ears the while, as if to tell
me that an old soldier like herself did not make a fuss about a scratch
or two. The first shot had merely grazed her off-shoulder, leaving a
skin-mark, as if she had brushed a wall. The second was more serious. It
had passed through the muscle of her neck, but already it had ceased to
bleed. I reflected that if she weakened I could mount Montluc's grey,
and meanwhile I led him along beside us, for he was a fine horse, worth
fifteen hundred francs at the least, and it seemed to me that no one had
a better right to him than I.

Well, I was all impatience now to get back to the others, and I had just
given Violette her head, when suddenly I saw something glimmering in a
field by the roadside. It was the brass-work upon the chasseur hat which
had flown from Montluc's head; and at the sight of it a thought made me
jump in the saddle. How could the hat have flown off? With its weight,
would it not have simply dropped? And here it lay, fifteen paces from