"Ribeaupierre!" said the bantering Monkton; "there is a name for an intelligent young man to go to bed with! It smacks of Anne Radcliffe's mysterious romances of 'Sicily' and 'The Forest.'"
"Yet it is the name of an officer as brave as any in France," said Quentin; "the general who bears it was a subaltern with Napoleon in the Regiment of La Fere, a town on an island of the Oise, where it was originally raised."
"Like that corps, the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval were originally under the monarchy," said Warriston.
"Their uniform is light green, faced and lapelled with white?"
"Exactly, Quentin—the same uniform worn by the Emperor on almost every occasion," replied Warriston; "the 24th were long known as the Disinterested Regiment of Chartres."
"An honourable title," said Askerne; "how came they to win it, thou man of anecdote?"
"About nineteen years ago, when the troubles of the Revolution were first beginning, the regiment was quartered at Le Mans, a town of France situated on the river Sarthe, if you have not forgotten your geography, Rowland. The corps then belonged—such was the French aristocratic term—to Louis Philip Joseph, Duke of Orleans,* the notorious 'Egalité' who was guillotined by the mob in 1793; but it was denominated 'of Chartres,' from the county of the name gifted to his ancestor by Louis XIV.
* Father of Louis Philippe I., late King of the French.
"The outrages of the Revolutionists were at their height around the whole of Mans. Day and night the dragoons of Chartres remained with their accoutrements on and their horses saddled ready to assist the magistrates and all peaceable citizens. Every day brought tidings of new horrors in the rural districts, and every night saw the sky reddened by the flames of burning chateaux, convents, and abbey-churches, whose occupants were given to pillage and death.
"So resolute and orderly were the dragoons of Chartres, so sturdily and bravely did they protect the weak against the strong, enforce the public peace, and conduct the transit of corn for the poor, that the magistrates deemed it necessary to make some acknowledgment of their services. A vote of thanks from the municipality preceded a gratuity of eight hundred livres (no great sum among us certainly, but a handsome one on the other side of the Channel) to be distributed among the three hundred Chasseurs of the corps.