approve of the red breeches of the
infantry. It was in white breeches that the infantry used to fight. Red
is for the cavalry. A little more, and they would ask our busbies and
our spurs! Had I been seen at a review they might well have said that I,
Etienne Gerard, had condoned it. So I have stayed at home. But this war
of the Crimea is different. The men go to battle.

It is not for me to be absent when brave men gather.

My faith, they march well, those little infantrymen!

They are not large, but they are very solid and they carry themselves
well. I took off my hat to them as they passed. Then there came the
guns. They were good guns, well horsed and well manned. I took off my
hat to them. Then came the Engineers, and to them also I took off my
hat. There are no braver men than the Engineers. Then came the cavalry,
Lancers, Cuirassiers, Chasseurs, and Spahis. To all of them in turn I
was able to take off my hat, save only to the Spahis.

The Emperor had no Spahis. But when all of the others had passed, what
think you came at the close? A brigade of Hussars, and at the charge!

Oh, my friends, the pride and the glory and the beauty, the flash and
the sparkle, the roar of the hoofs and the jingle of chains, the tossing
manes, the noble heads, the rolling cloud, and the dancing waves of
steel! My heart drummed to them as they passed. And the last of all,
was it not my own old regiment? My eyes fell upon the grey and silver
dolmans, with the leopard-skin shabraques, and at that instant the years
fell away from me and I saw my own beautiful men and horses, even as
they had swept behind their young colonel, in the pride of our youth and
our strength, just forty years ago. Up flew my cane. "Chargez! En avant!
Vive l'Empereur!"

It was the past calling to the present. But oh, what a thin, piping
voice! Was this the voice that had once thundered from wing to wing of
a strong brigade? And the arm that could scarce wave a cane, were these
the muscles of fire and steel which had no match in all Napoleon's
mighty host? They smiled at me. They cheered me. The Emperor laughed and
bowed. But to me the present was a dim dream, and what was real were my
eight hundred dead Hussars and the Etienne of long ago.

Enough--a brave man can face age and fate as he faced Cossacks and
Uhlans. But there are times when Montrachet is better than the wine of
Bordeaux.

It is to Russia that they go, and so I will tell you a story of Russia.