in his own thorough intimacy with their most minute traits, and that
facility with which, by a single word, he could address himself to
the cherished feeling of a particular corps. And the tact by which
the monarch wins over and fascinates the nobles of his court was here
exercised in the great world of a camp,--and with far more success too;
a phrase, a name, some well-known battle, the date of a victory, would
fall from his lips as he rode along the line, and be caught up with
enthusiasm by thousands, who felt in the one word a recognition of
past services. "Thou"--he always addressed the soldiers in the second
person--"thou wert with me at Cairo," "I remember thee at Arcole," were
enough to reward wounds, suffering, mutilation itself; and he to whom
such was addressed became an object of veneration among his fellows.

Certain corps preserved more studiously than others the memories of
past achievements,--the heirlooms of their glory; and to these Bonaparte
always spoke with a feel ing of friendship most captivating to the
soldier's heart, and from them he selected the various regiments that
composed his "Guard." The cuirassiers belonged to this proud force; and
even an unmilitary eye could mark, in their haughty bearing and assured
look, that they were a favored corps.

Among those with whose faces I had now grown familiar there was one whom
I regarded with unusual interest; he seemed to me the very type of his
class. He was a man of gigantic size, towering by half a head above the
very tallest of his fellows, while his enormous breadth of chest and
shoulder actually seemed to detract from his great height. The lower
part of his face was entirely concealed by a beard of bright red hair
that fell in a huge mass over the breast of his cuirass, and seemed by
its trim and fashion to be an object of no common pride to the wearer;
his nose was marked by a sabre-cut that extended across one entire
cheek, leaving a deep blue welt in its track. But saving these traits,
wild and savage enough, the countenance was singularly mild and
pleasing. He had large and liquid blue eyes, soft and lustrous as any
girl's,--the lashes, too, were long and falling; and his forehead, which
was high and open, was white as snow. I was not long in remarking
the strange influence this man seemed to possess over the rest,--an
ascendency not in any way attributable to the mark on his sleeve which
proclaimed him a corporal. It seemed as though his s