p it!"

Could I endure such a humiliation? Death were better than to be disarmed
in such a fashion. The word

"Fire!" was on my lips when in an instant the English man vanished
from before my face, and in his place was a great pile of hay, with a
red-coated arm and two Hessian boots waving and kicking in the heart of
it. Oh, the gallant landlady! It was my whiskers that had saved me.

"Fly, soldier, fly!" she cried, and she heaped fresh trusses of hay from
the floor on to the struggling Englishman. In an instant I was out in
the courtyard, had led Violette from her stable, and was on her back.
A pistol bullet whizzed past my shoulder from the window, and I saw a
furious face looking out at me. I smiled my contempt and spurred out
into the road. The last of the Prussians had passed, and both my road
and my duty lay clear before me. If France won, all well. If France
lost, then on me and my little mare depended that which was more than
victory or defeat--the safety and the life of the Emperor. "On, Etienne,
on!" I cried.

"Of all your noble exploits, the greatest, even if it be the last, lies
now before you!"

II. THE STORY OF THE NINE PRUSSIAN HORSEMEN

I told you when last we met, my friends, of the important mission from
the Emperor to Marshal Grouchy, which failed through no fault of my own,
and I described to you how during a long afternoon I was shut up in the
attic of a country inn, and was prevented from coming out because the
Prussians were all around me. You will remember also how I overheard the
Chief of the Prussian Staff give his instructions to Count Stein, and
so learned the dangerous plan which was on foot to kill or capture
the Emperor in the event of a French defeat. At first I could not have
believed in such a thing, but since the guns had thundered all day, and
since the sound had made no advance in my direction, it was evident that
the English had at least held their own and beaten off all our attacks.

I have said that it was a fight that day between the soul of France and
the beef of England, but it must be confessed that we found the beef
was very tough. It was clear that if the Emperor could not defeat the
English when alone, then it might, indeed, go hard with him now that
sixty thousand of these cursed Prussians were swarming on his flank. In
any case, with this secret in my possession, my place was by his side.

I had made my way out of the inn in the dashing manner which I have
desc