The "boy" stood resigned, as a man does to listen to an old gossip.
"In 1809," said the captain, "we were covering the flank of the main
army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor's command. We came to a
bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a
sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the
bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was
Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns
held one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three
times they tried for the bridge, and three times they were driven
back. 'Go and find Hulot!' said the Marshal; 'nobody but he and his
men can bolt that morsel.' So we came. The General, who was just
retiring from the bridge, stopped Hulot under fire, to tell him how to
do it, and he was in the way. 'I don't want advice, but room to pass,'
said our General coolly, marching across at the head of his men. And
then, rattle, thirty guns raking us at once."
"By Heaven!" cried the workman, "that accounts for some of these
crutches!"
"And if you, like me, my boy, had heard those words so quietly spoken,
you would bow before that man down to the ground! It is not so famous
as Arcole, but perhaps it was finer. We followed Hulot at the double,
right up to those batteries. All honor to those we left there!" and
the old man lifted his hat. "The Austrians were amazed at the dash of
it.--The Emperor made the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by
honoring our leader; and the King of to-day was very right to make him
a Marshal.
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