not the only one, certainly not; the whole French army is like
me, I swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we all start
out, from the van to the rear guard, when there is a woman in the case,
a pretty woman. Do you remember what Joan of Arc made us do formerly?
Come. I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken command of the
army on the eve of Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon was wounded, we should
have broken through the Prussian lines, by Jove! and had a drink out of
their guns.

"It was not a Trochu, but a Sainte-Genevieve, who was needed in Paris;
and I remember a little anecdote of the war which proves that we are
capable of everything in presence of a woman.

"I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time, and I was in command
of a detachment of scouts, who were retreating through a district which
swarmed with Prussians. We were surrounded, pursued, tired out and half
dead with fatigue and hunger, but we were bound to reach Bar-sur-Tain
before the morrow, otherwise we should be shot, cut down, massacred. I
do not know how we managed to escape so far. However, we had ten leagues
to go during the night, ten leagues through the night, ten leagues
through the snow, and with empty stomachs, and I thought to myself:

"'It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do
it.'

"We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we
remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel
the cold so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping by fits and
starts, as one does when worn out with fatigue.

"It was dark by five o'clock, that wan darkness of the snow, and I shook
my men. Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable of
moving or of standing upright; their joints were stiff from cold and
hunger.

"Before us there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow was
still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed
everything under a thick, frozen coverlet, a coverlet of frozen wool One
might have thought that it was the end of the world.

"'Come, my lads, let us start.'

"They looked at the thick white flakes that were coming down, and they
seemed to think: 'We have had enough of this; we may just as well die
here!' Then I took out my revolver and said:

"'I will shoot the first man who flinches.' And so they set off, but
very slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and
I sent fou