You four are to march in advance
and beat up both sides of this road. The detachment will hang fire
here. Keep your eyes about you; don't get picked off; and bring me
news of what you find--quick!"
So saying he waved his hand towards the suspected heights along the
road. The four men, by way of thanks raised the backs of their hands
to their battered old three-cornered hats, discolored by rain and
ragged with age, and bent their bodies double. One of them, named
Larose, a corporal well-known to Hulot, remarked as he clicked his
musket: "We'll play 'em a tune on the clarinet, commander."
They started, two to right and two to left of the road; and it was not
without some excitement that their comrades watched them disappear.
The commandant himself feared that he had sent them to their deaths,
and an involuntary shudder seized him as he saw the last of them.
Officers and soldiers listened to the gradually lessening sound of
their footsteps, with feelings all the more acute because they were
carefully hidden. There are occasions when the risk of four lives
causes more excitement and alarm than all the slain at Jemmapes. The
faces of those trained to war have such various and fugitive
expressions that a painter who has to describe them is forced to
appeal to the recollections of soldiers and to leave civilians to
imagine these dramatic figures; for scenes so rich in detail cannot be
rendered in writing, except at interminable length.
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