"He is gallant, certainly, but a bit of an actor. Would not one say that flourish was meant for the ladies in the orchestra-stalls?"
"Because he has kissed a medal or a relic?" the King muttered, tugging at his white whisker. "Doubtless he is Catholic.... We ourselves have many brave soldiers of the Roman faith!"
For as his squadrons ever thinned and dwindled, every instant paying toll to the great swords of the Prussian Dragoons and the blood-thirsty Uhlan lances, they had seen the little Brigadier take from the breast of his green dolman something white and press his bearded lips to it, and thrust it back again, and sign himself with the Cross.
"Hurrah Preussen! Immer vorwärts!" yelled the Uhlans, as their dripping lance-points flickered in and out between the red-stained sword-blades, and the bodies of dead Chasseurs and dead horses rose in a mound about the knoll where stood the little Brigadier.
Paunchy possessed a great voice. His "Chargez!" had reached the ears of the King and his Chancellor through all the pandemonium of battle. When his Staff trumpeter's instrument, bullet-pierced, gave forth no sound but a strangled screeching, the little Colonel's thundering "Feu!" needed no trumpet to make the order plain. Now, his "Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur!" boomed out like the roar of a dying lion. His melting squadrons gave back the rallying-cry.
But they were lost. Prisoned within the ring of piercing steel that tirelessly revolved about them, they could kill, but they could not break through the barrier. Fresh squadrons rushed with hoarse shouts to the aid of the German cavalry. The Chasseurs were hopelessly outnumbered, and must inevitably be crushed.
The subaltern who bore the Imperial standard got a lance-thrust in the shoulder. At the same moment, his horse was shot dead. As the beast reared in the death-throe and went down under the plunging hoofs of the maddened horses round him, the Colonel leaned from his saddle, seized the hand that gripped the staff of the standard, drew the fainting officer upward, and laid him across his own saddle-bow. Then, as his gallant horse braced itself to bear the double burden, the rider lifted high the glistening folds of the tricolor topped by the golden Imperial eagle, and as the Uhlans charged the knoll he shouted again in terrible tones the slogan of the dying Empire:
"Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur!"
War has many of these sublime moments mingled with her squalid hideousness. Upon this day many a soldier, French and German, died as finely as the father of Juliette. You are to see him—bareheaded, for the fur talpack with the plume of green and scarlet had been sheared from his head by a glancing sword-cut—lifting a war-flushed forehead to the sky all sunset-red. Then a mortal lance-thrust reached him over the body that lay across his horse's withers, and he reeled upon his saddle, and fell backward, partly swathed in the Flag for which so many heroes have died.
Through the tricolored folds yet other Uhlan lance-points reached him. Did any thought of his daughter pass through the brain of the dying soldier between the sharp pangs of the probing steel?