There was a tame rat who was a vieille moustache, and who had lived
many years in a Lignard's pocket, and munched waifs and strays of the
military rations, until, the enormous crime being discovered that it
was taught to sit up and dress its whiskers to the heinous air of the
"Marseillaise," the Lignard got the stick, and the rat was condemned
to be killed, had not Cigarette dashed in to the rescue and carried the
long-tailed revolutionist off in safety.
There was a big white cat curled in a ball, who had been the darling
of a Tringlo, and had traveled all over North Africa on the top of his
mule's back, seven seasons through; in the eighth the Tringlo was picked
off by a flying shot, and an Indigene was about to skin the shrieking
cat for the soup-pot, when a bullet broke his wrist, making him drop
the cat with a yell of pain, and the Friend of the Flag, catching it
up, laughed in his face: "A lead comfit instead of slaughter-soup, my
friend!"
There were little Bouffarick and three other brother-dogs of equal
celebrity; one, in especial, who had been brought from Chalons, in
defiance of the regulations, inside the drum of his regiment, and had
been wounded a dozen times; always seeking the hottest heat of the
skirmish. And there was, besides these, sleeping serenely on straw,
a very old man with a snowy beard. A very old man--one who had been a
conscript in the bands of Young France, and marched from his Pyrenean
village to the battle tramp of the Marseillaise, and charged with the
Enfants de Paris across the plains; who had known the passage of
the Alps, and lifted the long curls from the dead brow of Dessaix at
Marengo, and seen in the sultry noonday dust of a glorious summer the
Guard march into Paris, while the people laughed and wept with joy;
surging like the mighty sea around one pale, frail form, so young by
years, so absolute by genius.
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