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Yes, there in truth were the blues, now immediately under the house they were occupying: file after file of sturdy, grizzled veteran soldiers, hurried through the streets in quick, but regular time. Men quite unlike their own dear peasant soldiers; men with muskets in their hands, shakos on their heads, and cartouche boxes slung behind their backs.
But you make me think of a time when you were indeed wonderful to behold when the little French soldiers wore white cockades in their shakos when the diligence was forty hours going to Paris; and the great-booted postilion, as surveyed by youthful eyes from the coupe, with his jurons, his ends of rope for the harness, and his clubbed pigtail, was a wonderful being, and productive of endless amusement.
Napoleon was among them, and I thought I saw him, though I was not certain, he went so swiftly, and so many men raised their shakos on the points of their bayonets that I hardly had time to distinguish his round shoulders and gray coat in the midst of the laced uniforms. When the captain had shouted, "Carry arms! present arms!" it was over.
More than ten thousand men, cavalry and infantry, passed me, but I had no longer strength to call out to them. At last the long line ended; I saw knapsacks and shakos disappear behind the hill, and I lay down to sleep forever, when once more I was aroused by the rolling of five or six pieces of artillery along the road. The cannoneers sat sabre in hand, and behind came the caissons.
Our own impatience at not being of the number was quickly merged in intense anxiety for the result. It was a gorgeous thing, indeed, to see that mighty mass unravelling itself, the guns galloping madly to the front, supported on either flank by cavalry; while, masked behind, marched the black columns of infantry, their tall shakos nodding like the tree-tops of a forest.
Unhappily the wretches from Bois-de-Chênes, the big Horni, Zaphéri Roller, Nicholas Cochart, the carder, Pinacle, whom they had made mayor to pay him for having shown the way to Falberg and Graufthal to the allies during the siege, all these rascals and others who were with them, who wanted the fleur-de-lis as if the fleur-de-lis could make them any better unhappily, I say, all that bad set who lived by stealing fagots from the forest, had discovered the old tri-colored cockade in the tops of their shakos, and "now," they thought, "is the time to prove ourselves the real supporters of the throne and the altar."
The argument was irresistible; they declared that if the Body-guard would assume the tricolor, they would stand by them as brothers. And, by a reaction not uncommon at such times of excitement, the two regiments became reconciled in a moment. As no tricolor cockades could be procured, they exchanged shakos, and, in many cases, arms.
But that confused me altogether, for the two things belonged in my mind to wholly different categories. Soldiers were beautiful, gay- coloured men with shakos, who kept guard and marched in step to the sound of drums and fifes and music, till you longed to go with them. That was why soldiers were copied in tin and you got them on your birthday in boxes.
I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line, and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace, it was seething yesterday, to-day it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment. You are abandoned."
As the hour for the review drew near, the proportion of these to the throng with which they mingled, perceptibly increasing, seemed, little by little, to leaven the whole lump. The dress-uniform of the Ninth was everywhere, the black shakos and epaulettes, white pompons, cross-belts and gloves, and multiplicity of brass buttons, lending the immense assemblage a singular spirit and vivacity.
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