



Produced by David Widger








"A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE."

By Thomas Nelson Page

1891

It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier--a soldier
of the empire. (He was known simply as "The Soldier," and it is probable
that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not a
child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, erect old Sergeant
with his white, carefully waxed moustache, and his face seamed with two
sabre cuts. One of these cuts, all knew, had been received the summer
day when he had stood, a mere boy, in the hollow square at Waterloo,
striving to stay the fierce flood of the "men on the white horses"; the
other, tradition said, was of even more ancient date.)

Yes, they all knew him, and knew how when he was not over thirteen, just
the age of little Raoul the humpback, who was not as tall as Pauline, he
had received the cross which he always wore over his heart sewed in the
breast of his coat, from the hand of the emperor himself, for standing
on the hill at Wagram when his regiment broke, and beating the
long-roll, whilst he held the tattered colors resting in his arm, until
the men rallied and swept back the left wing of the enemy. This the
children knew, as their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and
grandmothers before them had known it, and rarely an evening passed that
some of the gamins were not to be found in the old man's kitchen,
which was also his parlor, or else on his little porch, listening with
ever-new delight to the story of his battles and of the emperor. They
all knew as well as he the thrilling part where the emperor dashed by
(the old Sergeant always rose reverently at the name, and the little
