NANT LARE'S MARRIAGE

Since the beginning of the campaign Lieutenant Lare had taken two cannon
from the Prussians. His general had said: "Thank you, lieutenant," and
had given him the cross of honor.

As he was as cautious as he was brave, wary, inventive, wily and
resourceful, he was entrusted with a hundred soldiers and he organized a
company of scouts who saved the army on several occasions during a
retreat.

But the invading army entered by every frontier like a surging sea. Great
waves of men arrived one after the other, scattering all around them a
scum of freebooters. General Carrel's brigade, separated from its
division, retreated continually, fighting each day, but remaining almost
intact, thanks to the vigilance and agility of Lieutenant Lare, who
seemed to be everywhere at the same moment, baffling all the enemy's
cunning, frustrating their plans, misleading their Uhlans and killing
their vanguards.

One morning the general sent for him.

"Lieutenant," said he, "here is a dispatch from General de Lacere, who
will be destroyed if we do not go to his aid by sunrise to-morrow. He is
at Blainville, eight leagues from here. You will start at nightfall with
three hundred men, whom you will echelon along the road. I will follow
you two hours later. Study the road carefully; I fear we may meet a
division of the enemy."

It had been freezing hard for a week. At two o'clock it began to snow,
and by night the ground was covered and heavy white swirls concealed
objects hard by.

At six o'clock the detachment set out.

Two men walked alone as scouts about three yards ahead. Then came a
platoon of ten men commanded by the lieutenant himself. The rest followed
them in two long columns. To the right and left of the little band, at a
distance of about three hundred feet on either side, some soldiers
marched in pairs.

The snow, which was still falling, covered them with a white powder in
the darkness, and as it did not melt on their uniforms, they were hardly
distinguishable in the night amid the dead whiteness of the landscape.

From time to time they halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable,
nameless flutter of falling snow--a sensation rather than a sound, a
vague, ominous murmur. A command was given in a low tone and when the
troop resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of white phantom
standing in the snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared.
It was the echelons who were to lead