"Stay where you are, curse you," the serjeant shouted after him.
"What can he do to me here?" thought Fabrizio, and he continued to gallop towards the cantinière. When he put spurs to his horse, he had had some hope that it might be his good cantinière of the morning; the horse and the little cart bore a strong resemblance, but their owner was quite different, and our hero thought her appearance most forbidding. As he came up to her, Fabrizio heard her say: "And he was such a fine looking man, too!" A very ugly sight awaited the new recruit; they were sawing off a cuirassier's leg at the thigh, a handsome young fellow of five feet ten. Fabrizio shut his eyes and drank four glasses of brandy straight off.
"How you do go for it, you boozer!" cried the cantinière. The brandy gave him an idea: "I must buy the goodwill of my comrades, the hussars of the escort."
"Give me the rest of the bottle," he said to the vivandière.
"What do you mean," was her answer, "what's left there costs ten francs, on a day like this."
As he rejoined the escort at a gallop:
"Ah! You're bringing us a drop of drink," cried the serjeant. "That was why you deserted, was it? Hand it over."
The bottle went round, the last man to take it flung it in the air after drinking. "Thank you, chum!" he cried to Fabrizio. All eyes were fastened on him kindly. This friendly gaze lifted a hundredweight from Fabrizio's heart; it was one of those hearts of too delicate tissue which require the friendship of those around it. So at last he had ceased to be looked at askance by his comrades; there was a bond between them! Fabrizio breathed a deep sigh of relief, then in a bold voice said to the serjeant:
"And if Captain Teulier has been killed, where shall I find my sister?" He fancied himself a little Machiavelli to be saying Teulier so naturally instead of Meunier.
"That's what you'll find out to-night," was the serjeant's reply.