On
their right was a Paris regiment made up mostly of short, but
thick-chested men, all very dark. Its numbers were only one-third what
they had been a week before, and its colonel was Pierre Louis
Bougainville, late Apache, late of the Butte Montmartre. All the
colonels, majors and captains of this regiment had been killed and he
now led it, earning his promotion by the divine right of genius. He, at
least, could look into his knapsack and see there the shadow of a
marshal's baton, a shadow that might grow more material.
John watched him and he wondered at this transformation of a rat of
Montmartre into a man. And yet there had been many such transformations
in the French Revolution. What had happened once could always happen
again. Napoleon himself had been the son of a poor little lawyer in a
distant and half-savage island, not even French in blood, but an Italian
and an alien.
Crash! Another shell burst near, and told him to quit thinking of old
times and attend to the business before him. The past had nothing more
mighty than the present. The speed of the Strangers was increased a
little, and the French regiments on either side kept pace with them.
More shells fell. They came, shrieking through the air like hideous
birds of remote ages. Some passed entirely over the advancing troops,
but one fell among the French on John's right, and the column opening
out, passed shudderingly around the spot where death had struck.
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