They are most of them rather _tête montée_ just now, with their exaltation spick and span on them, these demi-gods of war of ours! Just see them in the field, or on the march; away from the Emperor. They stalk ahead in solitary grandeur; each with his own _pas seul_, keeping the lesser creation at arms’ length, wrapped up in his own dignified importance. Yet only six months since their lofty Excellencies were mere generals of division, “Citoyen Général” this or that, each one; just units among a hundred and twenty odd others! Nowadays, on the march, your Marshal rides by himself, forty yards ahead of everybody; his staff have to tail off well in rear and keep back! M. le Maréchal doesn’t deign to open his lips, except to give an order. He lives by himself: nobody now is good enough to ask to dinner, except perhaps another marshal! No off-duty pleasantries nowadays; no more _bon camaraderie_; no more telling of Palais-Royal stories, as it used to be; no more cracking of jokes beside the bivouac fire. You might as well expect a bishop to have a game of marbles! Let a former brother-officer _tutoyer_ a marshal! Poor fellow! Let him try, if he wants to know what a paralysing, rasping, cold-blooded snub is, to get a flattening backhander he’ll remember as long as he wears the uniform. [Sidenote: TWO FAMOUS HARD FIGHTERS] That tall, bull-necked, heavy-featured man is Augereau; “gros comme un tambour-major”; absolutely fearless under fire, kind-hearted to those he takes a fancy to, they say, but ordinarily a coarse-tongued swashbuckler, with barrack-room manners. There too is Lannes, that keen-eyed, short man, holding his head as if he had a crick in his neck! He has one, a permanent one, the result of a bullet under the jaw from a British marine’s musket in the trenches at Acre. A hot-tempered, fiery, devil-may-care fellow is Lannes; but as cold as ice on the battlefield when things look like going wrong! Among friends, chivalrous and generous-hearted to a degree, his men worship Lannes; “the Roland of the Grand Army,” some call him. That is Moncey: and that very tall and erect, dry, rather dense-looking, hawk-nosed marshal with the shaggy eyebrows, Mortier. Mark Bernadotte there, that shifty-eyed Gascon with a sharp nose and thick hair; of medium height,--nobody really trusts him. An ingrained Jacobin--strip his arm and you will find tattooed on it, indelibly, for life, “Mort aux rois”--and a schemer, Napoleon named him a Marshal for political reasons mainly; although, no doubt, he has the same soldier-qualifications as the rest; has won a pitched battle or taken two fortresses. A cunning, plausible fellow is Bernadotte; with ready smile and a smooth tongue. He calls everybody “Mon ami” whether he is talking to a brigadier or a bugler. “Que diable fait il dans cette galère?” say a good many people of the Commander of the First Army Corps. Over yonder stands Bessières, Murat’s great friend; a gentlemanly enough fellow, but at