



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
audience also stood,--one or two nervous younger ones sometimes bobbing
up a little ahead of time, but sitting down again in confusion under
the contemptuous scowls and pluckings of the rest),--where the emperor
dashed by, and reined up to ask an officer what regiment that was
that had broken, and who was that drummer that had been promoted
to ensign;--they all knew how, on the grand review afterwards, the
Sergeant, beating his drum with one hand (while the other, which had
been broken by a bullet, was in a sling), had marched with his company
before the emperor, and had been recognized by him. They knew how he had
been called up by a staff-officer (whom the children imagined to be
a fine gentleman with a rich uniform, and a great shako like Marie's
uncle, the drum-major), and how the emperor had taken from his own
breast and with his own hand had given him the cross, which he had never
from that day removed from his heart, and had said, "I would make you a
colonel if I could spare you."

This was the story they liked best, though there were many others which
they frequently begged to be told--of march and siege and battle, of
victories over or escapes from red-coated Britishers and fierce German
lancers, and of how the mere presence of the emperor was worth fifty
thousand men, and how the soldiers knew that where he was no enemy could
withstand them. It all seemed to them very long ago, and the soldier of
the empire was the only man in the Quarter who was felt to be greater
than the rich nobles and fine officers who flashed along the great
streets, or glittered through the boulevards and parks outside. More
than once when Paris was stirred up, and the Quarter seemed on the eve
of an outbreak, a mounted orderly had galloped up to his door with
a letter, requesting his presence somewhere (it was whispered at the
prefect's), and when he returned, if he refused to speak of his visit
the Quarter was satisfied; it trusted him and knew that when he advised
quiet it was for its good. He loved France first, the Quarter next. Had
he not been offered--? What had he not been offered! The Quarter knew,
or fancied it knew, which did quite as well. At least, it knew how he
always took sides with the Quarter against oppression. It knew how he
had gone up into the burning tenement and brought the children down out
of the garret just before the roof fell. It knew how he had jumped into
the river that winter when it was full of ice, to save Raoul's little
lame dog which had fallen into the water; it knew how he had reported
the gendarmes for arresting poor little Aimee just for begging a man in
the Place de L'Opera for a franc for her old grandmother, who was blind,
and how he had her released instead of being sent to ------. But what
was the need of multiplying instances! He was "the Sergeant," a soldier
of the empire, and there was not a dog in the Quarter which did not feel
and look proud when it could trot on the inside of the sidewalk by him.

Thus the old Sergeant came to be regarded as the conservator of order in
the Quarter, and was worth more in the way of keeping it quiet than all
the gendarmes that ever came inside its precincts. And thus the children
all knew him.

One story that the Sergeant sometimes told, the girls liked to hear,
though the boys did not, because it had nothing about war in it, and
Minette and Clarisse used to cry so when it was told, that the Sergeant
would stop and put his arms around them and pet them until they only
sobbed on his shoulder.

It was of how he had, when a lonely old man, met down in Lorraine his
little Camille, whose eyes were as blue as the sky, and her hand as
white as the flower from which she took her name, and her cheeks as pink
as the roses in the gardens of the Tuileries. He had loved her, and she,
though forty years his junior, had married him and had come here to live
with him; but the close walls of the city had not suited her, and she
had pined and languished before his eyes like a plucked lily, and, after
she bore him Pierre, had died in his arms, and left him lonelier than
before. And the old soldier always lowered his voice and paused a moment
(Raoul said he was saying a mass), and then he would add consolingly:
"But she left a soldier, and when I am gone, should France ever need
one, Pierre will be here." The boys did not fancy this story for the
reasons given, and besides, although they loved the Sergeant, they did
not like Pierre. Pierre was not popular in the Quarter,--except with the
young girls and a few special friends. The women said he was idle and
vain like his mother, who had been, they said, a silly lazy thing with
little to boast of but blue eyes and a white skin, of which she was too
proud to endanger it by work, and that she had married the Sergeant for
his pension, and would have ruined him if she had lived, and that Pierre
was just like her.

The children knew nothing of the resemblance. They disliked Pierre
because he was cross and disagreeable to them, and however their older
sisters might admire his curling brown hair, his dark eyes, and delicate
features, which he had likewise inherited from his mother, they did not
like him; for he always scolded when he came home and found them there;
and he had several times ordered the whole lot out of the house; and
once he had slapped little Raoul, for which Jean Maison had beaten him.
Of late, too, when it drew near the hour for him to come home, the old
Sergeant had two or three times left out a part of his story, and had
told them to run away and come back in the morning, as Pierre liked to
be quiet when he came from his work--which Raoul said was gambling.

Thus it was that Pierre was not popular in the Quarter.

He was nineteen years old when war was declared.

They said Prussia was trying to rob France,--to steal Alsace and
Lorraine. All Paris was in an uproar. The Quarter, always ripe for any
excitement, shared in and enjoyed the general commotion. It struck off
from work. It was like the commune; at least, so people said. Pierre was
the loudest declaimer in the district. He got work in the armory.

Recruiting officers went in and out of the saloons and cafes, drinking
with the men, talking to the women, and stirring up as much fervor as
possible. It needed little to stir it. The Quarter was seething. Troops
were being mustered in, and the streets and parks were filled with the
tramp of regiments; and the roll of the drums, the call of the bugles,
and the cheers of the crowds as they marched by floated into the
Quarter. Brass bands were so common that although in the winter a couple
of strolling musicians had been sufficient to lose temporarily every
child in the Quarter, it now required a full band and a grenadier
regiment, to boot, to draw a tolerable representation.

Of all the residents of the Quarter, none took a deeper interest than
the soldier of the empire. He became at once an object of more than
usual attention. He had married in Lorraine, and could, of course, tell
just how long it would take to whip the Prussians. He thought a single
battle would decide it. It would if the emperor were there. His little
court was always full of inquirers, and the stories of the emperor were
told to audiences now of grandfathers and grandmothers.

Once or twice the gendarmes had sauntered down, thinking, from seeing
the crowd, that a fight was going on. They had stayed to hear of the
emperor. A hint was dropped by the soldier of the empire that perhaps
France would conquer Prussia, and then go on across to Moscow to settle
an old score, and that night it was circulated through the Quarter that
the invasion of Russia would follow the capture of Berlin. The emperor
became more popular than he had been since the _coup d'etat_. Half the
Quarter offered its services.

The troops were being drilled night and day, and morning after morning
the soldier of the empire locked his door, buttoned his coat tightly
around him, and with a stately military air marched over to the park to
see the drill, where he remained until it was time for Pierre to have
his supper.

The old Sergeant's acquaintance extended far beyond the Quarter. Indeed,
his name had been mentioned in the papers more than once, and his
presence was noted at the drill by those high in authority; so that he
was often to be seen surrounded by a group listening to his accounts of
the emperor, or showing what the _manuel_ had been in his time. His air,
always soldierly, was now imposing, and many a visitor of distinction
inquiring who he might be, and learning that he was a soldier of the
empire, sought an introduction to him. Sometimes they told him that they
could hardly believe him so old, could hardly believe him much older
than some of those in the ranks, and although at first he used to
declare he was like a rusty flint-lock, too old and useless for service,
their flattery soothed his vanity, and after a while, instead of shaking
his head and replying as he did at first that France had no use for old
men, he would smile doubtfully and say that when they let Pierre go,
maybe he would go too, "just to show the children how they fought then."

The summer came. The war began in earnest. The troops were sent to the
front, the crowds shouting, "On to Berlin." Others were mustered in
and sent after them as fast as they were equipped. News of battle
after battle came; at first, of victory (so the papers said), full and
satisfying, then meagre and uncertain, and at last so scanty that only
the wise ones knew there had been a defeat. The Quarter was in a fever
of patriotism.

Jean Maison and nearly all the young men had enlisted and gone, leaving
their sweethearts by turns waving their kerchiefs and wiping their
eyes with them. Pierre, however, still remained behind. He said he was
working for the Government. Raoul said he was not working at all; that
he was skulking.

Suddenly the levy came. Pierre was conscripted.

That night the Sergeant enlisted in the same company. Before the week
was out, their regiment was equipped and dispatched to the front, for
the news came that the army was making no advance, and it was said that
France needed more men. Some shook their heads and said that was not
what she needed, that what she needed was better officers. A suggestion
of this by some of the recruits in the old Sergeant's presence drew from
him the rebuke that in his day "such a speech would have called out a
corporal and a file of grenadiers."

The day they were mustered in, the captain of the company sent for him
and bade him have the first sergeant's chevrons sewed on his sleeve. The
order had come from the colonel,