"I do not know how to use a sabre."
"Ah, that is the case, is it? You insult me because, you fancy yourself supported by your comrades, and that I am alone; but your comrades are brave men; they know me, and would not wish to insult me."
"No, no!" several voices exclaimed.
"While you are a miserable coward, unworthy longer to belong to the company. I dismiss you; you are no Frenchman; be off!"
Then, with a strength he little thought he possessed, the officer seized the man by the collar of his coat, and hurled him twenty paces. He jumped up, and ran off at full speed followed by a general yell.
The officer was not mistaken. The fellow was not a Frenchman. But why need we divulge his nationality? A whole nation must not be responsible for the villainy of a single man.
When the officer turned round again after this summary execution, he saw that all the adventurers had fallen in, and were standing motionless and silent. The commandant reproached nobody, and did not appear to remember any longer the resistance offered to him. All men are alike. To subdue them, you must prove to them that you possess a decided superiority over them.
Colonel Florés was stupefied. He understood nothing of what was taking place.
"Hum!" he muttered to himself; "what energy! What courage! I fancy we shall not find it an easy matter to master men like these."
The commandant, after assuring himself by a glance that the company had really returned to its duty, gave the order for starting. This order, at once repeated by the subaltern officers, was obeyed without the slightest murmur; and the adventurers set out on their march, preceded by a long file of mules, carrying the baggage, and two or three carts, conveying invalids. The guns (for the count had judged it necessary to augment his artillery), were in the centre, dragged by mules. The march was closed by the cavalry, a detachment of ten men having been previously told off to form the vanguard.