“They’re like a flock of sheep running away,” said Fabrizio with a guileless air to the corporal.
“Will you shut your mouth, you young fool!” said the corporal, greatly indignant. And the three soldiers who with Fabrizio composed his whole force scowled angrily at our hero as though he had uttered blasphemy. He had insulted the nation.
“That is where their strength lies!” thought our hero. “I noticed it before with the Viceroy at Milan; they are not running away, oh, no! With these Frenchmen you must never speak the truth if it shocks their vanity. But as for their savage scowls, they don’t trouble me, and I must let them understand as much.” They kept on their way, always at an interval of five hundred yards from the torrent of fugitives that covered the high road. A league farther on, the corporal and his party crossed a road running into the high road in which a number of soldiers were lying. Fabrizio purchased a fairly good horse which cost him forty francs, and among all the sabres that had been thrown down everywhere made a careful choice of one that was long and straight. “Since I’m told I’ve got to stick them,” he thought, “this is the best.” Thus equipped, he put his horse into a gallop and soon overtook the corporal who had gone on ahead. He sat up in his stirrups, took hold with his left hand of the scabbard of his straight sabre, and said to the four Frenchmen:
“Those people going along the high road look like a flock of sheep … they are running like frightened sheep. …”
In spite of his dwelling upon the word “sheep,” his companions had completely forgotten that it had annoyed them an hour earlier. Here we see one of the contrasts between the Italian character and the French; the Frenchman is no doubt the happier of the two; he glides lightly over the events of life and bears no malice afterwards.
We shall not attempt to conceal the fact that Fabrizio was highly pleased with himself after using the word “sheep.” They marched on, talking about nothing in particular. After covering two leagues more, the corporal, still greatly astonished to see no sign of the enemy’s cavalry, said to Fabrizio:
“You are our cavalry; gallop over to that farm on the little hill; ask the farmer if he will sell us breakfast: mind you tell him there are only five of us. If he hesitates, put down five francs of your money in advance; but don’t be frightened, we’ll take the dollar back from him after we’ve eaten.”
Fabrizio looked at the corporal; he saw in his face an imperturbable gravity and really an air of moral superiority; he obeyed. Everything fell out as the commander in chief had anticipated; only, Fabrizio insisted on their not taking back by force the five francs he had given to the farmer.
“The money is mine,” he said to his friends; “I’m not paying for you, I’m paying for the oats he’s given my horse.”
Fabrizio’s French accent was so bad that his companions thought they detected in his words a note of superiority; they were keenly annoyed, and from that moment a duel began to take shape in their minds for the end of the day. They found him very different from themselves, which shocked them; Fabrizio, on the contrary, was beginning to feel a warm friendship towards them.
They had marched without saying a word for a couple of hours when the corporal, looking across at the high road, exclaimed in a transport of joy: “There’s the Regiment!” They were soon on the road; but, alas, round the eagle were mustered not more than two hundred men. Fabrizio’s eye soon caught sight of the vivandière: she was going on foot, her eyes were red and every now and again she burst into tears. Fabrizio looked in vain for the little cart and Cocotte.
“Stripped, ruined, robbed!” cried the vivandière, in answer to our hero’s, inquiring glance. He, without a word, got down from his horse, took hold of the bridle and said to the vivandière: “Mount!” She did not have to be told twice.
“Shorten the stirrups for me,” was her only remark.
As soon as she was comfortably in the saddle she began to tell Fabrizio all the disasters of the night. After a narrative of endless length but eagerly drunk in by our hero who, to tell the truth, understood nothing at all of what she said but had a tender feeling for the vivandière, she went on:
“And to think that they were Frenchmen who robbed me, beat me, destroyed me. …”
“What! It wasn’t the enemy?” said Fabrizio with an air of innocence which made his grave, pale face look charming.
“What a fool you are, you poor boy!” said the vivandière, smiling through her tears; “but you’re very nice, for all that.”
“And such as he is, he brought down his Prussian properly,” said Corporal Aubry, who, in the general confusion round them, happened to be on the other side of the horse on which the cantinière was sitting. “But he’s proud,” the corporal went on. … Fabrizio made an impulsive movement. “And what’s your name?” asked the corporal; “for if there’s a report going in I should like to mention you.”
“I’m called Vasi,” replied Fabrizio, with a curious expression on his face. “Boulot, I mean,” he added, quickly correcting himself.
Boulot was the name of the late possessor of the marching orders which the gaoler’s wife at B⸺ had given him; on his way from B⸺ he had studied them carefully, for he was beginning to think a little and was no longer so easily surprised. In addition to the marching orders of Trooper Boulot, he had stowed away in a safe place the precious Italian passport according to which he was entitled to the noble appellation of Vasi, dealer in barometers. When the corporal had charged him with being proud, it
