Belle-Rose — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

his face for him. The Hungarian had received a saber cut es left they shaathod their sabers. The captain extended his hand to the soldier. “Vou have conducted yourself well, Jacques,’’ he said tohim. ‘‘Mordieu! you were right to wish to measure yourself against these robbers. “You have paid them the price of your valise!”’ ‘Faith, sir, | have done what I could.”’ “Eh? my comrade, those men running will tell you that you have done too much.’ % SERS eae THE SKIRMISH. | mae aes The battle-field was encumbered with dead and | : | wounded: the enemy had left three hundred of their men upon the eround ; a hundred had remained in the hands of the French, so that the freebooters had lost ’the half of their troop. Meanwhile the clarions sounded, -and the soldiers scattered in all directions gathered together under their guidons. “You have not yet joined the regiment, my boy,’’ said Monsieur d’Assonville to Jacques; ‘‘therefore go about your business. Think that you have lost one valise, and do not hesitate to reimburse yourself with two.”’ He took his way toward the river, head bowed and soul sick. How far away already was the peace of the cottage. It had not taken two days for Jacques to kill four or five men and wound seven or eight others. - While walking in the midst of dead bodies, his eyes fell upon his hands. They were still moist and red, and a shiver traversed him. What a route then he was going to follow to reach Su- - gzanne, and what a bloody beginning his love had just offered him! Jacques was standing at this moment where the mélée had been most furious. The ground was. heaped with corpses, and in the midst of the extended Hungarians his vague and absent looks encountered a soldier who, fallen at twenty steps from the Ternoise, was trying to reach the bank. The Hungarian was crawling upon his hands and knees; he dragged himself the space of some feet, then sank down. Jacques ran to him and raised him. | “Water! water!’’ said the Hungarian, whose face was bathed in coagulated blood. ‘‘Water! lam burning!”’ Jacques transported him to the bank of the Ternoise, and presented to his burning lips a hat filled with water. __ The Hungarian bathed his face in this cold water and drank eagerly. “My throat is on fire, and my lips are like two hot - irons,’’ said he, licking the dripping brim of the hat. Jacques leaned him against the trunk of a tree and washed a (G0) EOmichbooks