They had left the sunken road and were crossing a small meadow, they were going hell for leather, shots were coming over again, the Marshal headed for a division of cavalry.
The escort found themselves surrounded by dead and wounded men; but this sight had already ceased to make any impression on our hero; he had other things to think of.
While the escort was halted, he caught sight of the little cart of a cantiniere, and his affection for this honourable corps sweeping aside every other consideration, set off at a gallop to join her.
"Stay where you are, curse you," the serjeant shouted after him.
"What can he do to me here?" thought Fabrizio, and he continued to gallop towards the cantiniere.
When he put spurs to his horse, he had had some hope that it might be his good cantiniere of the morning; the horse and the little cart bore a strong resemblance, but their owner was quite different, and our hero thought her appearance most forbidding.
As he came up to her, Fabrizio heard her say:
"And he was such a fine-looking man, too!"
A very ugly sight awaited the new recruit; they were sawing off a cuirassier's leg at the thigh, a handsome young fellow of five feet ten.
Fabrizio shut his eyes and drank four glasses of brandy straight off.
"How you do go for it, you boozer!" cried the cantiniere.
The brandy gave him an idea:
"I must buy the goodwill of my comrades, the hussars of the escort."
"Give me the rest of the bottle," he said to the vivandiere.
"What do you mean," was her answer, "what's left there costs ten francs, on a day like this."
As he rejoined the escort at a gallop :
"Ah!
You're bringing us a drop of drink," cried the serjeant.
"That was why you deserted, was it?
Hand it over."
The bottle went round, the last man to take it flung it in the air after drinking. "Thank you, chum!" he cried to Fabrizio.
All eyes were fastened on him kindly.
This friendly gaze lifted a hundredweight from Fabrizio's heart; it was one of those hearts of too delicate tissue which require the friendship of those around it.
So at last he had ceased to be looked at askance by his comrades; there was a bond between them!
Fabrizio breathed a deep sigh of relief, then in a bold voice said to the serjeant:
"And if Captain Teulier has been killed, where shall I find my sister?"
He fancied himself a little Machiavelli to be saying Teulier so naturally instead of Meunier.
"That's what you'll find out to-night," was the serjeant's reply.
The escort moved on again and made for some divisions of infantry.
Fabrizio felt quite drunk; he had taken too much brandy, he was rolling slightly in his saddle: he remembered most opportunely a favourite saying of his mother's coachman:
"When you've been lifting your elbow, look straight between your horse's ears, and do what the man next you does."
The Marshal stopped for some time beside a number of cavalry units which he ordered to charge; but for an hour or two our hero was barely conscious of what was going on round about him.
He was feeling extremely tired, and when his horse galloped he fell back on the saddle like a lump of lead.
Suddenly the serjeant called out to his men:
"Don't you see the Emperor, curse you!"
Whereupon the escort shouted:
"Vive l'Empereur!" at the top of their voices.
It may be imagined that our hero stared till his eyes started out of his head, but all he saw was some generals galloping, also followed by an escort.
The long floating plumes of horsehair which the dragoons of the bodyguard wore on their helmets prevented him from distinguishing their faces.
"So I have missed seeing the Emperor on a field of battle, all because of those cursed glasses of brandy!"
This reflexion brought him back to his senses.
They went down into a road filled with water, the horses wished to drink.
"So that was the Emperor who went past then?" he asked the man next to him.
"Why, surely, the one with no braid on his coat.
How is it you didn't see him?" his comrade answered kindly.
Fabrizio felt a strong desire to gallop after the Emperor's escort and embody himself in it.
What a joy to go really to war in the train of that hero!
It was for that that he had come to France.
"I am quite at liberty to do it," he said to himself, "for after all I have no other reason for being where I am but the will of my horse, which started galloping after these generals."
What made Fabrizio decide to stay where he was was that the hussars, his new comrades, seemed so friendly towards him; he began to imagine himself the intimate friend of all the troopers with whom he had been galloping for the last few hours.