“There’s no colonel here now!” cried one of them, and pressed on his horse. The colonel in exasperation broke off the reprimand he was giving them, and with his wounded right hand seized the rein of this horse on the off side.
“Halt! You bad soldier,” he said to the hussar; “I know you, you’re in Captain Henriot’s squadron.”
“Very well, then! The captain can give me the order himself! Captain Henriot was killed yesterday,” he added with a snigger, “and you can go and f⸺ yourself!”
So saying, he tried to force a passage, and pushed the old colonel who fell in a sitting position on the roadway of the bridge. Fabrizio, who was a couple of yards farther along upon the bridge, but facing the inn, pressed his horse, and, while the breast-piece of the assailant’s harness threw down the old colonel who never let go the off rein, Fabrizio, indignant, bore down upon the hussar with a driving thrust. Fortunately the hussar’s horse, feeling itself pulled towards the ground by the rein which the colonel still held, made a movement sideways, with the result that the long blade of Fabrizio’s heavy-cavalry sabre slid along the hussar’s jacket, and the whole length of it passed beneath his eyes. Furious, the hussar turned round and, using all his strength, dealt Fabrizio a blow which cut his sleeve and went deep into his arm: our hero fell.
One of the dismounted hussars, seeing the two defenders of the bridge on the ground, seized the opportunity, jumped on to Fabrizio’s horse and tried to make off with it by starting at a gallop across the bridge.
The serjeant, as he hurried from the inn, had seen his colonel fall, and supposed him to be seriously wounded. He ran after Fabrizio’s horse and plunged the point of his sabre into the thief’s entrails; he fell. The hussars, seeing no one now on the bridge but the serjeant, who was on foot, crossed at a gallop and rapidly disappeared. The one on foot bolted into the fields.
The serjeant came up to the wounded men. Fabrizio was already on his feet; he was not in great pain, but was bleeding profusely. The colonel got up more slowly; he was quite stunned by his fall, but had received no injury. “I feel nothing,” he said to the serjeant, “except the old wound in my hand.”
The hussar whom the serjeant had wounded was dying.
“The devil take him!” exclaimed the colonel. “But,” he said to the serjeant and the two troopers who came running out, “look after this young man whose life I have risked, most improperly. I shall stay on the bridge myself and try to stop these madmen. Take the young man to the inn and tie up his arm. Use one of my shirts.”
V
The whole of this adventure had not lasted a minute. Fabrizio’s wounds were nothing; they tied up his arm with bandages torn from the colonel’s shirt. They wanted to make up a bed for him upstairs in the inn.
“But while I am tucked up here on the first floor,” said Fabrizio to the serjeant, “my horse, who is down in the stable, will get bored with being left alone and will go off with another master.”
“Not bad for a conscript!” said the serjeant. And they deposited Fabrizio on a litter of clean straw in the same stall as his horse.
Then, as he was feeling very weak, the serjeant brought him a bowl of mulled wine and talked to him for a little. Several compliments included in this conversation carried our hero to the seventh heaven.
Fabrizio did not wake until dawn on the following day; the horses were neighing continuously and making a frightful din; the stable was filled with smoke. At first Fabrizio could make nothing of all this noise, and did not even know where he was: finally, half-stifled by the smoke, it occurred to him that the house was on fire; in the twinkling of an eye he was out of the stable and in the saddle. He raised his head; smoke was belching violently from the two windows over the stable; and the roof was covered by a black smoke which rose curling into the air. A hundred fugitives had arrived during the night at the White Horse; they were all shouting and swearing. The five or six whom Fabrizio could see close at hand seemed to him to be completely drunk; one of them tried to stop him and called out to him: “Where are you taking my horse?”
When Fabrizio had gone a quarter of a league, he turned his head. There was no one following him; the building was in flames. Fabrizio caught sight of the bridge; he remembered his wound, and felt his arm compressed by bandages and very hot. “And the old colonel, what has become of him? He gave his shirt to tie up my arm.” Our hero was this morning the coolest man in the world; the amount of blood he had shed had liberated him from all the romantic element in his character.
“To the right!” he said to himself, “and no time to lose.” He began quietly following the course of the river which, after passing under the bridge, ran to the right of the road. He remembered the good cantinière’s advice. “What friendship!” he said to himself, “what an open nature!”
After riding for an hour he felt very weak. “Oho! Am I going to faint?” he wondered. “If I faint, someone will steal my horse, and my clothes, perhaps, and
