The world thought him dead; as such the
journals recorded him, with the shameful outlines of imputed crime, to
make the death the darker; as such his name was forbidden to be uttered
at Royallieu; as such the Seraph mourned him with passionate, loving
force, refusing to the last to accredit his guilt:--and he, leaving
them in their error, was drafted into the French army under two of his
Christian names, which happily had a foreign sound--Louis Victor--and
laid aside forever his identity as Bertie Cecil.
He went at once on service in the interior, and had scarcely come in any
of the larger towns since he had joined. His only danger of recognition,
had been once when a Marshal of France, whom he had used to know well in
Paris and at the court of St. James, held an inspection of the African
troops.
Filing past the brilliant staff, he had ridden at only a few yards'
distance from his old acquaintance, and, as he saluted, had glanced
involuntarily at the face that he had seen oftentimes in the Salles
de Marechaux, and even under the roof of the regiment, ready to note a
chain loose, a belt awry, a sword specked with rust, if such a sin there
were against "les ordonnances" in all the glittering squadrons; and
swept over him, seeing in him but one among thousands--a unit in the
mighty aggregate of the "raw material" of war.
The Marshal only muttered to a General beside him, "Why don't they all
ride like that man? He has the seat of the English Guards.
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