certainly not; the whole French army is like
me, that I will swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we
all go forward, and to the very end, when there is a woman in the case,
a pretty woman. 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 Mac-Mahon was wounded, we should have
broken through the Prussian lines, by Jove! and have had a drink out of
their guns.

"It was not Trochu, but Saint-Genevieve, who was required in Paris, and
I remember a little anecdote of the war which proves that we are capable
of everything in the 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, and by the next day we were bound to reach
Bar-sur-Tain, otherwise we should be done for, cut off from the main
body and killed. 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 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, and huddled close together, so as not to feel
the cold so much; we did not venture to speak or even move, and we slept
by fits and starts, like one sleeps when one is worn out with fatigue.

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

"In front of 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 heavy, thick, frozen mantle, a mattress of
ice. One might have thought that it was the end of the world.

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

"They looked at the thick, white dust which was 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 us