moment when it was taken, the persons for whom such pictures are
not without charm will have an imperfect image of the magic scene which
delighted the still impressionable souls of the young officers.

Thinking that the poor recruits must be leaving, with regret, their own
country and their beloved customs, to die, perhaps, in foreign lands,
they involuntarily excused a tardiness their feelings comprehended.
Then, with the generosity natural to soldiers, they disguised their
indulgence under an apparent desire to examine into the military
position of the land. But Hulot, whom we shall henceforth call the
commandant, to avoid giving him the inharmonious title of "chief of a
half-brigade" was one of those soldiers who, in critical moments,
cannot be caught by the charms of a landscape, were they even those of
a terrestrial paradise. He shook his head with an impatient gesture and
contracted the thick, black eyebrows which gave so stern an expression
to his face.

"Why the devil don't they come up?" he said, for the second time, in a
hoarse voice, roughened by the toils of war.

"You ask why?" replied a voice.

Hearing these words, which seemed to issue from a horn, such as the
peasants of the western valleys use to call their flocks, the commandant
turned sharply round, as if pricked by a sword, and beheld, close behind
him, a personage even more fantastic in appearance than any of those who
were now being escorted to Mayenne to serve the Republic. This unknown
man, short and thick-set in figure and broad-shouldered, had a head like
a bull, to which, in fact, he bore more than one resemblance. His nose
seemed shorter than it was, on account of the thick nostrils. His full
lips, drawn from the teeth which were white as snow, his large and
round black eyes with their shaggy brows, his hanging ears and tawny
hair,--seemed to belong far less to our fine Caucasian race than to
a breed of herbivorous animals. The total absence of all the usual
characteristics of the social man made that bare head still more
remarkable. The face, bronzed by the sun (its angular outlines
presenting a sort of vague likeness to the granite which forms the
soil of the region), was the only visible portion of the body of this
singular being. From the neck down he was wrapped in a "sarrau" or
smock, a sort of russet linen blouse, coarser in texture than that of
the trousers of the less fortunate conscripts. This "sarrau," in which
an antiquary wo