Cartouche, although thrilled with happiness, did not feel the least oppressed or embarrassed at talking with the Emperor. No private soldier did—for was not the Emperor theirs? Had they not known him when he was a slim, sallow young general, who knew exactly what every man ought to have in his knapsack, and promised to have the company cooks shot if they did not give the soldiers good soup? Did he not walk post for the sleeping sentry that the man’s life might be saved? And although the lightning bolts of his wrath might fall upon a general officer, was he not as soft and sweet as a woman to the rugged moustaches who trudged along with muskets in their hands? And Cartouche answered quite easily and promptly—the Emperor meanwhile studying him with that penetrating glance which could see through a two-inch plank.
“So you know me,” said the Emperor. “Well, I know you, too. It is not likely that I can forget the hour in which I saw your honest, ugly face. You were the first man across at the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi.”
“Yes, Sire. And your Majesty was the second man across at the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi.”
“Ah, was it not frightful! We were shoulder to shoulder on the bridge that day, you and I. Your legs were longer than mine, else I should have been across first,” the Emperor continued, smiling. “Berthier, here, was on the bridge, too. We had a devil of a time, eh, Berthier?”
Marshal Berthier, short of stature and plain of face, and the greatest chief of staff in Europe, smiled grimly at the recollection of that rush across the bridge. The Emperor again turned to Cartouche; he loved to talk to honest, simple fellows like Cartouche, and encouraged them to talk to him; so Cartouche replied, with a broad grin:
“Your Majesty was on foot, struggling with us tall fellows of the Thirty-second Grenadiers. At first we thought your Majesty was some little boy-officer who had got lost in the mêlée from his command; and then we saw that it was our general, and a hundred thousand Austrians could not have held us back then. We ate the Austrians up, Sire.”
“Yes, you ate the Austrians up. Afterward, I never could recall without laughing the expression on the faces of my old moustaches when they saw me on the bridge.”
“Ah, Sire, when the soldiers came to themselves and began to think about things, they were in transports of rage at your Majesty for exposing your life so.”
The Emperor smiled—that magic and seductive smile which began with his eyes and ended with his mouth, and which no man or woman could resist. He began to pull Cartouche’s ear meditatively.
“You old rascals of moustaches have no business to think at all. Besides, you made me a corporal for it. One has to distinguish himself to receive promotion.”