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Updated: June 6, 2025
His shoulders and haunches were so muscular, and yet his legs so fine, that it thrilled me with joy just to gaze upon him. A fine horse or a beautiful woman I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood. You can think how it was in the year '10. "This," said Massena, "is Voltigeur, the swiftest horse in our army.
Were I in that saddle I should be better off than when I started. Even Voltigeur could not compare with this magnificent creature. To think is to act with me. In one instant I was down the ladder and at the door of the stable. The next I was out and the bridle was in my hand. I bounded into the saddle. Somebody, the master or the man, shouted wildly behind me. What cared I for his shouts!
To surprise the post and hold it until the main columns came up, was the object of the voltigeur attack; and for this purpose small bodies of men were assembling secretly and stealthily under cover of the brushwood, to burst forth on the word being given. There was something which surprised me not a little in the way all these movements were effected.
The effect was most singular, for the sounds came from various quarters at the same instant, and, as they all chanted the same air, the refrain rang out and filled the valley; beating time with their feet, they stepped to the tune, and formed themselves to the melody, as though it were the band of the regiment. I had often heard that this was a voltigeur habit, but never was witness to it before.
I heard him refuse to send a reinforcement when the Prussians made their second attack. 'No, no, said he; 'that hussar fellow yonder does his work so well, he wants no help from us. When he said that, my friend, be assured your promotion is safe enough. You were made for a voltigeur." "Come, François, it's no use; all your flattery won't make me desert.
"The great guns thunder on yonder hill, Closer than that they durst not go; But the voltigeur comes nearer still, With his bayonet fixed he meets the foe. "The hussar's coat is slashed with gold; He rides an Arab courser fleet: But is the voltigeur less bold Who meets his enemy on his feet?
And first of all it was certain that I could not get back. Long before I could pass the lines it would be broad daylight. I must hide myself for the day, and then devote the next night to my escape. I took the saddle, holsters, and bridle from poor Voltigeur, and I concealed them among some bushes, so that no one finding him could know that he was a French horse.
In a minute or two Hawtrey came back and lifted Agatha down. "It's the trace broken. I had to make the holes with my knife, and the string's torn through," he explained. "Voltigeur got it round his feet, and, as usual, tried to bolt. We'll make the others pull up and take you in." They went back to the trail together, and reached it just as Hastings reined in his team.
The honest young country squires, who talked all breakfast time of Flying Dutchman fillies and Voltigeur colts; of glorious runs of seven hours' hard riding over three counties, and a midnight homeward ride of thirty miles upon their covert hacks; and who ran away from the well-spread table with their mouths full of cold sirloin, to look at that off pastern, or that sprained forearm, or the colt that had just come back from the veterinary surgeon's, set down Robert Audley, dawdling over a slice of bread and marmalade, as a person utterly unworthy of any remark whatsoever.
The air was one well known in that suburb of Paris whence the wildest and most reckless of our soldiers came, and which they all joined in celebrating in this rude verse: "Picardy first, and then Champagne, France to the battle! on boys, on! Anjou, Brittany, and Maine, Hurrah for the Faubourg of St. Antoine I "How pleasant the life of a voltigeur!
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