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But behind the thunder of the guns there rose a sharper, shriller noise, whirring and rattling, the wildest, jauntiest, most stirring kind of sound. "It's the pas-de-charge!" cried an officer. "They mean business this time!" And as he spoke we saw a strange thing. A Frenchman, dressed as an officer of hussars, came galloping towards us on a little bay horse. He was screeching "Vive le roi!
A great danger puts no more strain upon the nerves of a man of good fibre than does a great joy; and it seemed to me that Esperit's absolute steadiness, under this sudden fire of happiness, showed him to be made of as fine and as manly stuff as went to the making of his kinsman who beat the pas-de-charge up the slope at Arcolo at the head of the Fifty-first Demi-brigade.
Old Jan was not content with merely telling this story like a true Provençal he acted it: swinging a supposititious drum upon his back, jumping into an imaginary river and swimming it with his head in the air, swinging his drum back into place again, and then Zóu! starting off at the head of the Fifty-first Demi-brigade with such a rousing play of drum-sticks that I protest we fairly heard the rattle of them, along with the spatter of Italian musketry in the face of which André Étienne beat that gallant pas-de-charge!
All this flashed on me as if by instinct, you understand. My eyes had hardly rested on the bearded faces under the brass helmets before my rowels had touched Violette, and she was off with a rattle like a pas-de-charge. Oh, the shouting and rushing and stamping from behind us! Three of them fired and three swung themselves on to their horses.
And here it lay, fifteen paces from the roadway! Of course, he must have thrown it off when he had made sure that I would overtake him. And if he threw it off I did not stop to reason any more, but sprang from the mare with my heart beating the pas-de-charge. Yes, it was all right this time.
I beat harder, and the drums of the grenadiers answered me. All right now, thought I, as, springing forward, I called out, 'This way, boys; the wall of the orchard has scarcely a man to defend it; and I rattled out the 'pas-de-charge' with all my force.
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