“In 1809,” said the captain, “we were covering the flank of the main army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor’s command. We came to a bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns held one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three times they tried for the bridge, and three times they were driven back. ‘Go and find Hulot!’ said the Marshal; ‘nobody but he and his men can bolt that morsel.’ So we came. The General, who was just retiring from the bridge, stopped Hulot under fire, to tell him how to do it, and he was in the way. ‘I don’t want advice, but room to pass,’ said our General coolly, marching across at the head of his men. And then, rattle, thirty guns raking us at once.” “By Heaven!” cried the workman, “that accounts for some of these crutches!” “And if you, like me, my boy, had heard those words so quietly spoken, you would bow before that man down to the ground! It is not so famous as Arcole, but perhaps it was finer. We followed Hulot at the double, right up to those batteries. All honor to those we left there!” and the old man lifted his hat. “The Austrians were amazed at the dash of it.--The Emperor made the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by honoring our leader; and the King of to-day was very right to make him a Marshal.” “Hurrah for the Marshal!” cried the workman. “Oh, you may shout--shout away! The Marshal is as deaf as a post from the roar of cannon.” This anecdote may give some idea of the respect with which the _Invalides_ regarded Marshal Hulot, whose Republican proclivities secured him the popular sympathy of the whole quarter of the town. Sorrow taking hold on a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with a woman’s ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful truth from her brother-in-law. In the course of this miserable morning, the Marshal, who, like all old men, slept but little, had extracted from Lisbeth full particulars as to his brother’s situation, promising to marry her as the reward of her revelations. Any one can imagine with what glee the old maid allowed the secrets to be dragged from her which she had been dying to tell ever since she had come into the house; for by this means she made her marriage more certain. “Your brother is incorrigible!” Lisbeth shouted into the Marshal’s best ear. Her strong, clear tones enabled her to talk to him, but she wore out her lungs, so anxious was she to prove to her future husband that to her he would never be deaf. “He has had three mistresses,” said the old man, “and his wife was an Adeline! Poor Adeline!”