"I am a hunter."
"Thank God for that!" went on the corporal with a loud sigh. "Whatever you do, don't fire till I give the order."
And he moved away.
Fabrizio was supremely happy.
"Now I'm going to do some real fighting," he said to himself, "and kill one of the enemy. This morning they were sending cannonballs over, and I did nothing but expose myself and risk getting killed; that's a fool's game."
He gazed all round him with extreme curiosity.
Presently he heard seven or eight shots fired quite close at hand.
But receiving no order to fire he stood quietly behind his tree.
It was almost night; he felt he was in a look-out, bear-shooting, on the mountain of Tramezzina, above Grianta.
A hunter's idea came to him: he took a cartridge from his pouch and removed the ball.
"If I see him," he said, "it won't do to miss him," and he slipped this second ball into the barrel of his musket.
He heard shots fired close to his tree; at the same moment he saw a horseman in blue pass in front of him at a gallop, going from right to left.
"It is more than three paces," he said to himself, "but at that range I am certain of my mark."
He kept the trooper carefully sighted with his musket and finally pressed the trigger: the trooper fell with his horse.
Our hero imagined he was stalking game: he ran joyfully out to collect his bag.
He was actually touching the man, who appeared to him to be dying, when, with incredible speed, two Prussian troopers charged down on him to sabre him.
Fabrizio dashed back as fast as he could go to the wood; to gain speed he flung his musket away.
The Prussian troopers were not more than three paces from him when he reached another plantation of young oaks, as thick as his arm and quite upright, which fringed the wood.
These little oaks delayed the horsemen for a moment, but they passed them and continued their pursuit of Fabrizio along a clearing.
Once again they were just overtaking him when he slipped in among seven or eight big trees.
At that moment his face was almost scorched by the flame of five or six musket shots fired from in front of him.
He ducked his head; when he raised it again he found himself face to face with the corporal.
"Did you kill your man?" Corporal Aubry asked him.
"Yes; but I've lost my musket."
"It's not muskets we're short of.
You're not a bad b———; though you do look as green as a cabbage you've won the day all right, and these men here have just missed the two who were chasing you and coming straight at them.
I didn't see them myself.
What we've got to do now is to get away at the double; the Regiment must be half a mile off, and there's a bit of a field to cross, too, where we may find ourselves surrounded."
As he spoke, the corporal marched off at a brisk pace at the head of his ten men.
Two hundred yards farther on, as they entered the little field he had mentioned, they came upon a wounded general who was being carried by his aide-de-camp and an orderly.
"Give me four of your men," he said to the corporal in a faint voice, "I've got to be carried to the ambulance; my leg is shattered."
"Go and f—— yourself!" replied the corporal, "you and all your generals.
You've all of you betrayed the Emperor to-day."
"What," said the general, furious, "you dispute my orders.
Do you know that I am General Comte B——, commanding your Division," and so on.
He waxed rhetorical.
The aide-de-camp flung himself on the men.
The corporal gave him a thrust in the arm with his bayonet, then made off with his party at the double.
"I wish they were all in your boat," he repeated with an oath; "I'd shatter their arms and legs for them.
A pack of puppies!
All of them bought by the Bourbons, to betray the Emperor!"
Fabrizio listened with a thrill of horror to this frightful accusation.
About ten o'clock that night the little party overtook their regiment on the outskirts of a large village which divided the road into several very narrow streets; but Fabrizio noticed that Corporal Aubry avoided speaking to any of the officers.
"We can't get on," he called to his men.
All these streets were blocked with infantry, cavalry, and, worst of all, by the limbers and wagons of the artillery.
The corporal tried three of these streets in turn; after advancing twenty yards he was obliged to halt.
Everyone was swearing and losing his temper.
"Some traitor in command here, too!" cried the corporal: "if the enemy has the sense to surround the village, we shall all be caught like rats in a trap.
Follow me, you."
Fabrizio looked round; there were only six men left with the corporal.