By the next morning Colonel Lasalle had recovered sufficiently to amaze the whole regiment by putting under arrest the man who had saved his life; but the moment it was done, the Colonel mounted his horse, and rode off to head-quarters at full gallop. In about an hour he was seen coming back again, side by side with a short, square-built man in a gray coat and cocked hat, at sight of whom the soldiers burst into deafening cheers, for he was no other than the Emperor Napoleon.
"Let me see this fellow," said Napoleon, sternly; and two grenadiers led forward Pierre Dubois, so weak from his wounds that he could hardly stand.
"So, fellow, thou hast dared to disobey orders, ha?" cried the Emperor, in his harshest tones.
"I have, sire. And if it were to be done again, I'd do it."
"And what if we were to shoot thee for insubordination?"
"My life is your Majesty's, now as always," answered the grenadier, boldly. "And if I must choose between dying myself and leaving my Colonel to die, the old regiment can better spare a common fellow like me than a brave officer like him."
A sudden spasm shook the old Colonel's iron face as he listened, and even Napoleon's stern gray eyes softened as few men had ever seen them soften yet.
"Thou'rt wrong there," said he, "for I would not give a 'common fellow' of thy sort for twenty Colonels, were every one of them as good as my old Lasalle here. Take this, Sergeant Dubois"—and he fastened his own cross of the Legion of Honor to Pierre's breast. "I warrant me thou'lt be a Colonel thyself one of these days."
And sure enough, five years later, Pierre Dubois was not only a Colonel, but a General.