"And did he?"
"Most assuredly. We found it safe and brought it back with the Austrian standard. The Emperor saluted it and commended us. 'I knew I could trust you,' he said, smiling."
"He loved his Eagles," said another voice.
"That did he," answered a veteran. "I have even seen him get out of his traveling-carriage and stand at attention as an Eagle at the head of a regiment marched by."
"I carried the Eagle in Marshal Macdonald's column at Wagram, messieurs," said the old Eagle-bearer, stepping forward. "It was there the bullet struck the wing tip, here." He laid his hand tenderly upon it. "Mon Dieu, that was a march! Twenty thousand men in solid columns going across the plain at steady step, with drums beating, the Austrians pouring shot and shell into us. You could hear the bullets crash through the breasts of the division like glass. My arm was numb from the bullet which struck the Eagle, but I changed hands and carried it forward. I can see the big Marshal still. The Emperor was looking on. It was terrible. It didn't seem that mortal man could make it, but we kept on, still, silent, until we came in touch with the Austrians and then we cut them in two. It was magnificent."
"I was with Marshal Mortier when we were caught in the pass of Durrenstein," broke out one of the privates, an old Eagle-guard. "We fought all day and all night in that trap against awful odds, waiting, hoping, until toward morning we heard the thunder of Dupont's guns. We were so close together that we seized the throats of the Russians, and they ours. We begged the Marshal to use a boat we had found to cross over the Danube and escape. 'No,' he said, 'certainly not! I will not desert my brave comrades! I will save them or die with them.' Ah, he was a brave man that day."
"And that such a man could betray the Emperor!" exclaimed another.
"I never could understand it," said one of the soldiers.
"That was the day," said a third, "when our drums were shot to pieces and we had to beat the long roll on the iron cooking cans."
"You remember it well, comrade."