Thinking that the poor recruits must be leaving, with regret, their
own country and their beloved customs, to die, perhaps, in foreign
lands, they involuntarily excused a tardiness their feelings
comprehended. Then, with the generosity natural to soldiers, they
disguised their indulgence under an apparent desire to examine into
the military position of the land. But Hulot, whom we shall henceforth
call the commandant, to avoid giving him the inharmonious title of
"chief of a half-brigade" was one of those soldiers who, in critical
moments, cannot be caught by the charms of a landscape, were they even
those of a terrestrial paradise. He shook his head with an impatient
gesture and contracted the thick, black eyebrows which gave so stern
an expression to his face.

"Why the devil don't they come up?" he said, for the second time, in a
hoarse voice, roughened by the toils of war.

"You ask why?" replied a voice.

Hearing these words, which seemed to issue from a horn, such as the
peasants of the western valleys use to call their flocks, the
commandant turned sharply round, as if pricked by a sword, and beheld,
close behind him, a personage even more fantastic in appearance than
any of those who were now being escorted to Mayenne to serve the
Republic. This unknown man, short and thick-set in figure and
broad-shouldered, had a head like a bull, to which, in fact, he bore
more than one resemblance. His nose seemed shorter than it was, on
account of the thick nostrils. His full lips, drawn from the teeth
which were white as snow, his large and round black eyes with their
shaggy brows, his hanging ears and tawny hair,--seemed to belong far