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The French went forward almost at the charge, the Germans waiting for them from behind the hedges, whence poured a hail of lead. Gougeard's horse was shot under him, a couple of bullets went through his coat, and another or, as some said, a splinter of a shell knocked off his kepi.
Among the harvesters were a number of middle-aged men with the soldiers' kepi, who had been given leave to make the crop, which was unusually abundant. The fields of old Champagne, watered with the best blood of France, had yielded their richest returns. Outside the charred and crumbled ruins of the villages one might have forgotten the fact of war were it not for the graves.
It was indeed Jean, who, when he saw in the distance the Cure and Paul de Lavardens, waved in the air his kepi adorned with two golden stripes. Jean was lieutenant in the regiment of artillery quartered at Souvigny.
In rapid succession, one after the other, two more shells fell; Lieutenant Rochas had his kepi carried away by a fragment. The men huddled closer together and began to crowd forward, the movement gathering strength as it ran from rear to front. Inarticulate cries were heard, Lapoulle shouted furiously to go ahead.
He managed, by creeping and crawling, "toujours tenant mes entrailles dans mon kepi" to reach a peasant's house, where the good people took care of him until he was able to be transported to a hospital. There he stayed through a dismal year of suffering. In order to keep the above-mentioned entrailles in their proper place, the doctors covered them with a silver plate.
Lenient, who was short and stout, took off his kepi, laid himself on his stomach, and, putting his face on the floor, looked at the black cavity under the bed, and then, suddenly, he exclaimed: "All right, here we are!" "What have you got? The rabbit?" "No, the thief." "The thief! Pull him out, pull him out!"
All he could do was to indite perfervid manifestoes, and subsequently, in "L'Annee terrible," commemorate the doings and sufferings of the time. For the rest, he certainly enrolled himself as a National Guard, and I more than once caught sight of him wearing kepi and vareuse. I am not sure, however, whether he ever did a "sentry-go."
"At this, the men raised a hearty laugh, and we felt quite light-hearted, while Pratique, who was walking by the side of the litter, waved his kepi, and shouted: "Vive la France! And I felt really moved. I do not know why, except that I thought it a pretty and gallant thing to say.
Everyone was familiar with the personal appearance of both riders, and recognized them, but until now Mademoiselle de Vermont had always ridden alone, and now to see her accompanied by the gallant General, whose embroidered kepi glittered in the sunlight, was a new spectacle for the gallery.
Algerine warfare was not like the campaigns of the armies of Italy or the Rhine, and there was no Napoleon here to discern with unerring omniscience a leader's genius under the kepi of a common trooper.
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