Brigadier Gerard Stories quotes

but I galloped on without heeding them, and they were afraid to fire, for their own hussars are dressed exactly as I was.

It is best to take no notice at these times, and then they put you down as a deaf man.

It was a lovely moon, and every tree threw a black bar across the road. I could see the country side just as if it were daytime, and very peaceful it looked, save that there was a great fire raging somewhere in the north.

My mind was full of her when, trotting round a corner, I came straight upon half-a-dozen German dragoons, who were sitting round a brushwood fire by the roadside.

I am an excellent soldier. I do not say this because I am prejudiced in my own favour, but because I really am so.

I can weigh every chance in a moment, and decide with as much certainty as though I had brooded for a week.

“

A soldier does not choose⁠—he obeys,

” said I, just as I had heard Napoleon say it.

He had ordered me to go through Sermoise, Soissons, and Senlis, little dreaming that they were all three occupied by the enemy. And yet I had done it. I had borne his letter in safety through each of these towns.

Hussars, dragoons, lancers, Cossacks, and infantry⁠—I had run the gauntlet of all of them, and had come out unharmed.

When I had got as far as Dammartin I caught a first glimpse of our own outposts. There was a troop of dragoons in a field, and of course I could see from the horsehair crests that they were French.

Word had got about from the dragoons (two of whom had come with me), and everybody knew about my adventures and how I had come by my uniform. It was a triumph—men shouting and women waving their handkerchiefs and blowing kisses from the windows.

Although I am a man singularly free from conceit, still I must confess that, on this one occasion, I could not restrain myself from showing that this reception gratified me.

The Russian’s coat had hung very loose upon me, but now I threw out my chest until it was as tight as a sausage-skin.

He took up his pen, and, tapping his forehead with the handle of it, he pursed up his lips and looked out of the corner of his eyes at the roof of the grotto.

“I suppose,” said he at last, speaking very excellent French, “that you are not able to suggest a rhyme for the word Covilha.”

I answered him that my acquaintance with the Spanish language was so limited that I was unable to oblige him.

“My career has been an eventful one.”

“Tut, that makes it the sadder,” said he, with his bland smile.

I made no answer to that, but I tried to show him by my bearing that I was ready for the worst which could befall me.

“But before you buried him?”

“You misunderstand me, Colonel. He was not dead before we buried him.”

For a moment I was too stunned to act.

It is astonishing—and I have heard many make the same remark—how acute one’s senses become at such a crisis as this.

I am convinced that at no moment is one living so vividly, so acutely, as at the instant when a violent and foreseen death overtakes one.

I could smell the resinous fagots, I could see every twig upon the ground, I could hear every rustle of the branches, as I have never smelled or seen or heard save at such times of danger.

“Fight for your skin, froggy,” said he.

Ah, it was so fine to have a horse between my thighs and a weapon in my grip.

I waved it above my head and shouted in my exultation. The chief had come forward with that odious smiling face of his.

“Two hundred and ten pounds,” said I.

“Then you load them deucedly badly,” said Lord Wellington. “Remove the prisoner to the rear.”

His Lancers closed in upon me, and I—I was driven mad, as I thought that the game had been in my hands, and that I ought at that moment to be a free man. I held the cards up in front of the General.

For the first time a slight smile softened his gaunt face.

“On the contrary,” said he, as he mounted his horse, “it was I who won, for, as you perceive, my king holds you.”

I slipped down my rope, and, leaving it hanging, I ran at the top of my speed across the moor.

Heavens, how I ran! The wind buffeted my face and buzzed in my nostrils.

The rain pringled upon my skin and hissed past my ears. I stumbled into holes. I tripped over bushes. I fell among brambles. I was torn and breathless and bleeding.

I stumbled into holes. I tripped over bushes. I fell among brambles. I was torn and breathless and bleeding. My tongue was like leather, my feet like lead, and my heart beating like a kettledrum.

Still I ran, and I ran, and I ran.

But I had not lost my head, my friends. Everything was done with a purpose. Our fugitives always made for the coast. I was determined to go inland, and the more so as I had told Beaumont the opposite.

“Perhaps I can be of some assistance to madame,” said I, scrambling out from among the bushes into the glare of the lamps.

A woman in distress is a sacred thing to me, and this one was beautiful.

You must not forget that, although I was a colonel, I was only eight-and-twenty years of age.

Then I rolled myself up in my cloak and considered seriously what I should do.

One lesson which I have learned in my roaming life, my friends, is never to call anything a misfortune until you have seen the end of it.

Is not every hour a fresh point of view? In this case I soon perceived that accident had done for me as much as the most profound cunning.

One lesson which I have learned in my roaming life, my friends, is never to call anything a misfortune until you have seen the end of it.

Is not every hour a fresh point of view?

In this case I soon perceived that accident had done for me as much as the most profound cunning.

In making that remark, Napoleon was showing the insight for which he was so famous.

He disfigured his sentence, however, by adding something about the thickness of my head. We will pass that over.

It is ungenerous to dwell upon the weaker moments of a great man.

He was very civil to us always, for he knew where his power came from. We knew also, and showed it by the way in which we carried ourselves.

We were agreed, you understand, that he was the finest leader in the world, but we did not forget that he had the finest men to lead.

Well, one day I was seated in my quarters playing cards with young Morat, of the horse chasseurs, when the door opened and in walked Lasalle, who was our Colonel.

“In the next place, I do not want your opinions or conjectures, and I wish you to do exactly what you are told.”

“It is your sword that I need, and not your brains. I will do the thinking. Is that clear to you?”

“You know the Chancellor’s Grove, in the forest?”

But when I meet a Chamberlain and a Marshal of the Palace, and have to pick my words with an Emperor, and find that everybody hints instead of talking straight out, I feel like a troop-horse who has been put in a lady’s calèche.

It is not my trade, all this mincing and pretending. I have learned the manners of a gentleman, but never those of a courtier.

I was right glad then to get into the fresh air again, and I ran away up to my quarters like a schoolboy who has just escaped from the seminary master.

There I had him in full sight, and knew that he could not escape me. He ran well, it is true—ran as a coward runs when his life is the stake.

But I ran as Destiny runs when it gets behind a man’s heels.

Yard by yard I drew in upon him. He was rolling and staggering. I could hear the rasping and crackling of his breath.

… of the last of those wonderful men, the men who were veterans when they were yet boys, who learned to use a sword earlier than a razor, and who during a hundred battles had never once let the enemy see the colour of their knapsacks.

For twenty years we were teaching Europe how to fight, and even when they had learned their lesson it was only the thermometer, and never the bayonet, which could break the Grand Army down.

Berlin, Naples, Vienna, Madrid, Lisbon, Moscow—we stabled our horses in them all.

For twenty years we were teaching Europe how to fight, and even when they had learned their lesson it was only the thermometer, and never the bayonet, which could break the Grand Army down.

Berlin, Naples, Vienna, Madrid, Lisbon, Moscow⁠—we stabled our horses in them all.

Yes, my friends, I say again that you do well to send your children to me with flowers, for these ears have heard the trumpet calls of France, and these eyes have seen her standards in lands where they may never be seen again.

It is true that it came at an inconvenient moment, for the keeper of the post-house had a daughter—one of those ivory-skinned, black-haired Polish girls—whom I had hoped to have some further talk with.

Still, it is not for the pawn to argue when the fingers of the player move him from the square;

so down I went, saddled my big black charger, Rataplan, and set off instantly upon my lonely journey.

It did not surprise me, therefore, to see no signs of cattle and no smoke from the silent houses.

A weal had been left across the country where the great host had passed, and it was said that even the rats were starved wherever the Emperor had led his men.

By midday I had got as far as the village of Saalfeldt, but as I was on the direct road for Osterode, where the Emperor was wintering, and also for the main camp of the seven divisions of infantry, the highway was choked with carriages …

Well, it was never in my nature to refuse an adventure, and, besides, I had every sympathy with the lad’s feelings.

It is very well to forgive one’s enemies, but one wishes to give them something to forgive also.

I held out my hand to him, therefore.

“What would you have?” cried Massena, impatiently. “

When one is in check, it is necessary to move the king.

”

On the other hand, it is well known that the English tunics were too tight for the sword-arm, which gave our men an advantage. As to bravery, foolish, inexperienced people of every nation always think that their own soldiers are braver than any others.

There is no nation in the world which does not entertain this idea. But when one has seen as much as I have done, one understands that there is no very marked difference, and that although nations differ very much in discipline, they are all equally brave⁠—except that the French have rather more courage than the rest.

Well, the cork was drawn and the glasses ready, when suddenly the English officer raised his sword to me as if in a challenge, and cantered his horse across the grassland.

Etienne Gerard may have his faults, but, my faith, he was never accused of being backward in taking his own part. The old horse, Rataplan, knew me so well that he had started off before ever I gave the first shake to the bridle.

There are two things in this world that I am very slow to forget, the face of a pretty woman, and the legs of a fine horse.

Well, as we drew together, I kept on saying, “Where have I seen those great roan shoulders? Where have I seen that dainty fetlock?”

You may think that it made us sniff something in the wind when we found three such men called together into one room.

You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.

“Name of a pipe!” said Tremeau, in his barrack-room fashion. “Are we then expecting three champions of the Bourbons?”

“Enough,” he cried, sternly. “You take an undue advantage of your position.”

That was always the way with the Emperor. He would chat with you as with a friend and a brother, and then when he had wiled you into forgetting the gulf which lay between you, he would suddenly, with a word or with a look, remind you that it was as impassable as ever.

When I have fondled my old hound until he has been encouraged to paw my knees, and I have then thrust him down again, it has made me think of the Emperor and his ways.

Still, lean and crippled as we were, we had much to be thankful for when we thought of our poor comrades whom we had left behind, and of the snowfields—the horrible, horrible snowfields.

To this day, my friends, I do not care to see red and white together.

Even my red cap thrown down upon my white counterpane has given me dreams in which I have seen those monstrous plains, the reeling, tortured army, and the crimson smears which glared upon the snow behind them.

Four buttons of my pelisse were open, and it did not need me to put my hand up to know that my precious papers were gone.

Oh! the depth of cunning that lurks in a woman’s heart.

She had robbed me, this creature, robbed me as she clung to my breast. Even while I smoothed her hair, and whispered kind words into her ear, her hands had been at work beneath my dolman.

I had cause to hate her, for she had cheated and befooled me, and yet it thrilled me then and thrills me now to think that my arms have embraced her, and that I have felt the scent of her hair in my nostrils.

I know not whether she lies under her German earth, or whether she still lingers, a grey-haired woman in her Castle of Hof, but she lives ever, young and lovely, in the heart and the memory of Etienne Gerard.

“For shame!” she cried, sweeping up to me, and tearing with her own hands the noose from my neck. “You are fighting in God’s own quarrel, and yet you would begin with such a devil’s deed as this.

Ah, how we dreamed, we foolish fellows, young, and drunk with success! Could I have foreseen that night as I rode, the chosen man of sixty thousand, that I should spend my life planting cabbages on a hundred francs a month!

Oh, my youth, my hopes, my comrades! But the wheel turns and never stops.

Forgive me, my friends, for an old man has his weakness.

But courage, my friends! We have these moments of weakness, the bravest of us; but

I have a spirit like a slip of steel, for the more you bend it the higher it springs.

One spasm of despair, and then a brain of ice and a heart of fire. All was not yet lost. I who had come through so many hazards would come through this one also.

There was no cover there. Besides, I should want some food and water before another night had come. I hurried wildly onward through the waning darkness, trusting that chance would be my friend. And I was not disappointed.

Chance is a woman, my friends, and she has her eye always upon a gallant Hussar.

Well, then, as I stumbled through the vineyard, something loomed in front of me, and I came upon a great square house with another long, low building upon one side of it.

And then, as I lay and watched, I saw a sight which filled me with surprise.

It is incredible the insolence of these English!

What do you suppose Milord Wellington had done when he found that Massena had blockaded him and that he could not move his army? I might give you many guesses.

In an instant I had seen the chance which Fate had brought to me. Were I in that saddle I should be better off than when I started. Even Voltigeur could not compare with this magnificent creature.

To think is to act with me.

In one instant I was down the ladder and at the door of the stable. The next I was out and the bridle was in my hand. I bounded into the saddle. Somebody, the master or the man, shouted wildly behind me.

… a crowd, some well-mounted, some ill, but all flying along as best they might, the subaltern as good as the general, jostling and pushing, spurring and driving, with every thought thrown to the winds save that they should have the blood of this absurd fox!

Truly, they are an extraordinary people, the English!

But I had little time to watch the hunt or to marvel at these islanders, for of all these mad creatures the very horse upon which I sat was the maddest.

He was uneasy for me, this good old man, but I reassured him by a wave and a smile. The dogs opened in front of me. One or two may have been hurt, but what would you have?

The egg must be broken for the omelette.

I could hear the huntsman shouting his congratulations behind me. One more effort, and the dogs were all behind me. Only the fox was in front.

So I thought then, my friends, but I did not see the lonely days when I should long to clasp those vanished hands, and turn my head away when I saw old comrades with their tall children standing round their chairs.

This love which I had thought was a joke and a plaything⁠—it is only now that I understand that it is the moulder of one’s life, the most solemn and sacred of all things.

… Thank you, my friend, thank you! It is a good wine, and a second bottle cannot hurt.

Some of our French officers married in Venice that winter, and I might have done the same, for I loved her with all my heart; but Etienne Gerard has his sword, his horse, his regiment, his mother, his Emperor, and his career.

A debonnaire hussar has room in his life for love, but none for a wife.

So I thought then, my friends, but I did not see the lonely days when I should long to clasp those vanished hands, and turn my head away when I saw old comrades with their tall children standing round their chairs.

“Tut! I have not killed him.

Dead men do not bite, and his cursed teeth met in my thumb as I pulled the sack over his head.

”

There was an appalling silence to my appeal.

It is not pleasant to have twelve masked faces turned upon you and to see twelve pairs of vindictive Italian eyes fixed with fierce intentness upon your face.

But I stood as a debonnaire soldier should, and I could not but reflect how much credit I was bringing upon the Hussars of Conflans by the dignity of my bearing.

Did we invite you to Venice? By what right are you here? Where are our pictures? Where are the horses of St. Mark? Who are you that you should pilfer those treasures which our fathers through so many centuries have collected?

We were a great city when France was a desert.

Your drunken, brawling, ignorant soldiers have undone the work of saints and heroes. What have you to say to it?”

There were three peasants with red montero caps loading the barrels, and they had completed one wagon and the lower tier of the other. A number of empty barrels still lay outside the wine-house waiting to be put on.

Fortune was my friend⁠—I have always said that she is a woman and cannot resist a dashing young Hussar.

As I watched, the three fellows went into the inn, for the day was hot and they were thirsty after their labour. Quick as a flash I darted out from my hiding-place, climbed on to the wagon, and crept into one of the empty casks.

All who were within hearing looked round, and when they saw those broken men, those ruined regiments, those fur-capped skeletons who were once the Guard, they laughed, and the laugh crackled down the column like a feu de joie.

I have heard many a groan and cry and scream in my life, but nothing so terrible as the laugh of the Grand Army.

But why was it that these helpless men were not destroyed by the Russians? Why was it that they were not speared by the Cossacks or herded into droves, and driven as prisoners into the heart of Russia?

To think that only a few hours before we had left this very spot with such high hopes and all fair prospects for our mission, and now the remnants of us waited as beaten and humiliated men for whatever lot a brutal enemy might ordain!

But such is the fate of the soldier, my friends⁠—kisses today, blows tomorrow.

Tokay in a palace, ditch-water in a hovel, furs or rags, a full purse or an empty pocket, ever swaying from the best to the worst, with only his courage and his honour unchanging.

but these people, these English, had neither spirit nor soul, but only solid, immovable beef, against which we broke ourselves in vain. That was it, my friends!

On the one side, poetry, gallantry, self-sacrifice⁠—all that is beautiful and heroic. On the other side, beef.

Our hopes, our ideals, our dreams—all were shattered on that terrible beef of Old England.

but these people, these English, had neither spirit nor soul, but only solid, immovable beef, against which we broke ourselves in vain. That was it, my friends! On the one side, poetry, gallantry, self-sacrifice—all that is beautiful and heroic. On the other side, beef.

Our hopes, our ideals, our dreams⁠—all were shattered on that terrible beef of Old England.

You have read how the Emperor gathered his forces, and then how he and I, with a hundred and thirty thousand veterans, hurried to the northern frontier and fell upon the Prussians and the English.

So elated was I that I no longer waited to be asked, but as I rode through the army I shouted to right and left, “General Blucher! General Blucher!” and every man pointed me onwards and cleared a path to let me pass.

There are times when the most supreme impudence is the highest wisdom.

But discretion must also be used, and I must admit that I became indiscreet.

In evil dreams there comes back to me the memory of that flowing stream of livid, staring, screaming faces upon which I looked down. It was a nightmare.

In victory one does not understand the horror of war. It is only in the cold chill of defeat that it is brought home to you.

I remember an old Grenadier of the Guard lying at the side of the road with his broken leg doubled at a right angle. “Comrades, comrades, keep off my leg!” he cried, but they tripped and stumbled over him all the same.

he cried. Gladly would I have gone with him, but my duty lay elsewhere. He did not, as you know, find the death he sought, but he met it a few weeks later in cold blood at the hands of his enemies.

There is an old proverb that in attack the French are more than men, in defeat they are less than women.

I knew that it was true that day. But even in that rout I saw things which I can tell with pride. Through the fields which skirt the road moved Cambronne’s three reserve battalions of the Guard, the cream of our army.

My hand felt for my sword, but you can imagine my feelings, my friends, when I came upon an empty scabbard. It had been shaken out when the horse had tripped over that infernal pig.

On what absurd trifles do our destinies hang⁠—a pig on one side, Etienne Gerard on the other!

Could I spring over the wall and get the sword? Impossible! The Prussians were already in the yard. I turned my Arab and resumed my flight.

He was flushed, and his small eyes were as vicious as those of a bulldog. There was hatred on his face. For my part I carried myself lightly and gaily.

A French gentleman fights but he does not hate.

I drew myself up before him, and I bowed as I have done in the duello. There can be grace and courtesy as well as defiance in a bow;

The colonel was looking toward my antagonist, expecting to see him drop. His face was sideways to me, his long cigar projecting from his lips with an inch of ash at the end of it. Quick as a flash I raised my pistol and fired.

“Permit me to trim your ash, sir,” said I, and I bowed with a grace which is unknown among these islanders.

I am convinced that the fault lay with the pistol and not with my aim. I could hardly believe my own eyes when I saw that I had snapped off the cigar within half an inch of his lips.

He stood staring at me with the ragged stub of the cigar-end sticking out from his singed mustache. I can see him now with his foolish, angry eyes and his long, thin, puzzled face. Then he began to talk.

I have always said that the English are not really a phlegmatic or a taciturn nation if you stir them out of their groove.

No one could have talked in a more animated way than this colonel. Lady Jane put her hands over her ears.

I can see the ring of faces, the mocking eyes, the open mouths—Olivier with his great black bristles, Pelletan thin and sneering, even the young sublieutenants convulsed with merriment. Heavens, the indignity of it! But my rage had dried my tears.

I was myself again, cold, quiet, self-contained, ice without and fire within.

“May I ask, sir,” said I to the major, “at what hour the regiment is paraded?”

But already I was myself once more.

“Sir,” said I, “permit me to remark that the greater the danger the greater the glory, and that I could only repent of volunteering if I found that there were no risks to be run.”

It was a noble speech, and my appearance gave force to my words. For the moment I was a heroic figure.

I began to realize how odious was our task as I looked upon the motley but ferocious groups who were gathered round the watchfires in the garden of the Convent of the Madonna.

It was not for us soldiers to think about politics, but from the beginning there always seemed to be a curse upon this war in Spain.

However, at the moment I had no time to brood over such matters as these. There was, as I have said, no difficulty in getting as far as the convent garden, but to pass inside the convent unquestioned was not so easy.

Up to this time our fighting all over Europe had always been done between one army and another.

It was only here in Spain that we learned how terrible a thing it is to fight against a people.

On the one hand there is no glory, for what glory could be gained by defeating this rabble of elderly shopkeepers, ignorant peasants, fanatical priests, excited women, and all the other creatures who made up the garrison?

But a sudden inspiration showed me how the thing might be done. In the garden was a well, and beside the well were a number of empty buckets. I filled two of these and approached the door.

The errand of a man who carries a bucket of water in each hand does not need to be explained.

The guard opened to let me through. I found myself in a long, stone-flagged corridor lit with lanterns, with the cells of the nuns leading out from one side of it. Now at last I was on the high road to success.

For an instant I could not believe my own eyes. They were paying me homage, these, the men who had jeered me! Then I understood it all. I saw the effect that I had made upon them and their desire to make reparation.

When a man is weak he can steel himself against danger, but not against emotion.

“Comrades,” I cried, “comrades—!” but I could say no more. Something seemed to take me by the throat and choke me.

There all who have known me are in their grave. And yet the southwest wind as it rattles on my windows seems always to be the strong voice of the motherland calling her child back to that bosom into which I am ready to sink.

I have played my part in my time. The time has passed. I must pass also.

Nay, dear friends, do not look sad, for what can be happier than a life completed in honour and made beautiful with friendship and love?

I have played my part in my time. The time has passed. I must pass also.

Nay, dear friends, do not look sad, for what can be happier than a life completed in honour and made beautiful with friendship and love?

And yet it is solemn also when a man approaches the end of the long road and sees the turning which leads him into the unknown. But the Emperor and all his Marshals have ridden round that dark turning and passed into the beyond.

… willingly have laid down the remainder of their lives to bring him a little ease, and yet all that we could do was to sit and grumble in our cafés and stare at the map, counting up the leagues of water which lay between us.

It seemed that he might have been in the moon for all that we could do to help him. But that was only because we were all soldiers and knew nothing of the sea.

Of course, we had our own little troubles to make us bitter, as well as the wrongs of our Emperor. There were many of us who had held high rank and would hold it again if he came back to his own.

I said that I had not.

“I thought not,” said he. “You’ll never come again for that reason, anyhow.”

Some three days after my arrival we untied the ropes by which the ship was tethered and we set off upon our journey.