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Updated: May 18, 2025
Alice walked quickly past him without speaking; for down in the space where some women were huddled aside from the crowd, looking on, she had seen little Adrienne Bourcier. She made haste to descend. Now that her impulsively chosen enterprise was completed her boldness deserted her and she slipped out through a dilapidated postern opposite the crowd.
Meantime the entertainment to be given by Gaspard Roussillon occupied everybody's imagination to an unusual extent. Rene de Ronville, remembering but not heeding the doubtful success of his former attempt, went long beforehand to claim Alice as his partenaire; but she flatly refused him, once more reminding him of his obligations to little Adrienne Bourcier. He would not be convinced.
It is probable that Father Beret would have pretended to betray Alice's source of mingled delight and embarrassment, had not the rest of the Bourcier household returned in time to break up the conversation. A little later Alice gave Adrienne a vividly dramatic account of the whole scene. "Ah, mon Dieu!" exclaimed the petite brunette, after she had heard the exciting story.
I bought a new horse, which was not as good as the Navarrais, but the general inspections, which had been reintroduced by the First Consul, were approaching, and it was essential that I was quickly remounted, the more so because we were to be inspected by General Bourcier, who had the reputation of being a stern disciplinarian. I was detailed to go with thirty men to form an escort for him.
Nor was Oncle Jazon wrong. Rene de Ronville never came back to little Adrienne Bourcier, although, being kept entirely ignorant of her lover's fate, she waited and dreamed and hoped throughout more than two years, after which there is no further record of her life.
The General, like his predecessor General Bourcier, knew much more about remounts and organisation than he did about war, in which he had rarely been involved. He did his utmost to fulfil the difficult task which the Emperor had given him; but as he could not improvise horses or equipment, and as he would not send out detachments until they were fully organised, departures were not very frequent.
Alice, on the other hand, had her bookish ideal to reckon with, despite the fact that she daily dashed it contemptuously down. She was different from Adrienne Bourcier, who bewailed the absence of her un-tamable lover; she wished that Beverley had not, as she somehow viewed it, weakly surrendered to Hamilton.
During the whole of the 26th and 27th the army crossed. To say that the army has need of being redisciplined and reformed, and of being re-equipped in cavalry, artillery, and supplies, is to be inferred from the statement just made. Rest is its principal want. Supplies and horses are arriving. General Bourcier has already more than 20,000 new horses in the different depots.
This was all very fine. We went on manoeuvres, to which General Bourcier had invited General Suchet, the inspector of infantry, and General Gudin, the commander of the territorial division, and was accompanied by a numerous and brilliant staff. The exercises were very long. Almost all the movements, carried out at the gallop, ended with several charges at top speed.
He lifted her and bore her as far toward Roussillon place as he could; but his strength fell short just in front of the little Bourcier cottage, and half dead he staggered across the veranda to the door, where he sank exhausted. After a breathing spell he knocked. The household, fast asleep, did not hear; but he persisted until the door was opened to him and his burden.
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