with me,
wrapped in my own clothes. One night my fingers froze to it. See!"
He lifted his maimed hands. "But I held on. I crossed the Nieman
before Marshal Ney. He threw away his musket, but I kept the Eagle.
He was the last man, I was just before him," said the man proudly.

"It was Marteau who saved it at Leipsic," said Lestoype, "and again
after he had hurled it into the Aube at Arcis he found it and brought
it back. And it is here."

Tears glistened in the eyes of the veterans and the youth alike.
Hearts beat more rapidly, breaths came quicker, as these brave and
fragmentary reminiscences of the part the Eagle had played in past
glories were recited.

"What shall we do with it now?" asked Lestoype at last.

CHAPTER XX

WHEN THE VIOLETS BLOOM AGAIN

Now there was not a man in the room who had not heard of the order to
return the Eagles to Paris, where they were to be broken up and melted
down, not a man in the army for that matter. Nor was there a man who
had not heard some account of the resistance of other regiments to the
order, which had been nevertheless enforced wherever possible, although
in cases not a few Eagles had been hidden or disappeared mysteriously
and had not been given up. There was scarcely a man in the
regiment--unless some royalist officer or new recruit--who had not been
glad that their own Eagle had been lost honorably in battle and buried,
as they believed, in the river. It was more fitting that it should
meet that end than be turned back to Paris to be broken up, melted down
and cast into metal for ignoble use--and any other use would be ignoble
in the estimation of the regiment.

"I would rather throw it into the Isere," growled old Grenier, "than
send it back."

"And I, and I, and I," came from different voices.

"Perhaps," said Lestoype, speaking slowly and with deep meaning, for he
realized that his words were in the highest degree treasonable, "if we
can preserve it by some means we may see it once again at the head of
the regiment when----" he stopped. The silence was positively ghastly.
He looked about him. The men thrilled to his glance. "----'when the
violets bloom again,'" he said, using the mystic poetic phrase which
had become so widely current.

"God speed the day!" burst out some deep voiced veteran.

"Amen, amen!"

"_Vive l'Empereur_!"

"Let us save the Eagle!"

The whole room was in tumult of nervous cries.

"_Vive le brave Marteau_!" fi