"Not at all. I am about to petition for employment upon active service. I don't seek promotion till I have deserved it."
"Better still, lad. I was eight years myself in the ranks before they gave me the stripe on my arm. Parbleu! the Germans had given me some three or four with the sabre before that time."
"Do you think they'll refuse me, Tronchon?"
"Not if thou go the right way about it, lad. Thou mustn't fancy it's like asking leave from the captain to spend the evening in a guinguette, or to go to the play with thy sweetheart. No, no, boy. It must be done 'en regle.' Thou'lt have to wait on the general at his quarters at four o'clock, when he 'receives,' as they call it. Thou'lt be there, mayhap, an hour, ay, two, or three belike, and after all, perhaps, won't see him that day at all! I was a week trying to catch Kellerman, and, at last, he only spoke to me going down stairs with his staff.
"'Eh, Tronchon, another bullet in thy old carcass; want a furlough to get strong again, eh?'
"'No, colonel; all sound this time. I want to be a sergeant—I'm twelve years and four months corporal.'
"'Slow work, too,' said he, laughing, 'ain't it, Charles?' and he pinched one of his young officers by the cheek. 'Let old Tronehon have his grade; and I say, my good fellow,' said he to me, 'don't come plaguing me any more about promotion, till I'm General of Division. You hear that?'
"Well, he's got his step since; but I never teased him after."
"And why so, Tronchon?" said I.
"I'll tell thee, lad," whispered he, in a low, confidential tone, as if imparting a secret well worth the hearing. "They can find fellows every day fit for lieutenants and chefs d'escadron. Parbleu! they meet with them in every café, in every 'billiard' you enter; but a sergeant, Maurice, one that drills his men on parade—can dress them like a wall—see that every kit is well packed, and every cartouch well filled—who knows every soul in his company as he knows the buckles of his own sword-belt—that's what one should not chance upon, in haste. It's easy enough to manœuvre the men, Maurice; but to make them, boy, to fashion the fellows so that they be like the pieces of a great machine, that's the real labor—that's soldiering, indeed."