ore the week
was out, their regiment was equipped and dispatched to the front, for
the news came that the army was making no advance, and it was said that
France needed more men. Some shook their heads and said that was not
what she needed, that what she needed was better officers. A suggestion
of this by some of the recruits in the old Sergeant's presence drew from
him the rebuke that in his day "such a speech would have called out a
corporal and a file of grenadiers."

The day they were mustered in, the captain of the company sent for him
and bade him have the first sergeant's chevrons sewed on his sleeve. The
order had come from the colonel, some even said from the marshal. In
the Quarter it was said that it came from the emperor. The Sergeant
suggested that Pierre was the man for the place; but the captain simply
repeated the order. The Quarter approved the selection, and several
fights occurred among the children who had gotten up a company as to
who should be the sergeant. It was deemed more honorable than to be the
captain.

The day the regiment left Paris, the Sergeant was ordered to report
several reliable men for special duty; he detailed Pierre among the
number. Pierre was sick, so sick that when the company started he would
have been left behind but for his father. The old soldier was too proud
of his son to allow him to miss the opportunity of fighting for France.
Pierre was the handsomest man in the regiment.

The new levies on arrival in the field went into camp, in and near some
villages and were drilled,--quite needlessly, Pierre and some of the
others declared. They were not accustomed to restraint, and they could
not see why they should be worked to death when they were lying in camp
doing nothing. But the soldier of the empire was a strict drill-master,
and the company was shortly the best-drilled one in the regiment.

Yet the army lay still: they were not marching on to Berlin. The sole
principle of the campaign seemed to be the massing together of as many
troops as possible. What they were to do no one appeared very clearly to
know. What they were doing all knew: they were doing nothing. The men,
at first burning for battle, became cold or lukewarm with waiting;
dissatisfaction crept in, and then murmurs: "Why did they not fight?"
The soldier of the empire himself was sorely puzzled. The art of war had
clearly changed since his day. The emperor would have picked the best
third of these troops a