Among those with whose faces I had now grown familiar there was one whom I regarded with unusual interest; he seemed to me the very type of his class. He was a man of gigantic size, towering by half a head above the very tallest of his fellows, while his enormous breadth of chest and shoulder actually seemed to detract from his great height. The lower part of his face was entirely concealed by a beard of bright red hair that fell in a huge mass over the breast of his cuirass, and seemed by its trim and fashion to be an object of no common pride to the wearer; his nose was marked by a sabre-cut that extended across one entire cheek, leaving a deep blue welt in its track. But saving these traits, wild and savage enough, the countenance was singularly mild and pleasing. He had large and liquid blue eyes, soft and lustrous as any girl's,--the lashes, too, were long and falling; and his forehead, which was high and open, was white as snow. I was not long in remarking the strange influence this man seemed to possess over the rest,--an ascendency not in any way attributable to the mark on his sleeve which proclaimed him a corporal. It seemed as though his slightest word, his least gesture, was attended to; and though evidently taciturn and quiet, when he spoke I could detect in his manner an air of promptitude and command that marked him as one born to be above his fellows. If he seemed such in the idle hours, on parade he was the beau ideal of a cuirassier. His great warhorse, seemingly small for the immense proportions of the heavy rider, bounded with each movement of his wrist, as if instinct with the horseman's wishes. I waited with some impatience for the invalid's arrival, to ask who this remarkable soldier was, certain that I should hear of no common man. He came soon after, and as I pointed out the object of my curiosity, the old fellow drew himself up with pride, and while a grim effort at a smile crossed his features, replied,-- “That 's Pioche,--le gros Pioche!” “Pioche!” said I, repeating the name aloud, and endeavoring to remember why it seemed well known to me. “Yes,--Pioche,” rejoined he, gruffly. “If monsieur had ever been in Egypt, the name would scarcely sound so strange in his ears.” And with this sarcasm he hobbled from the room and closed the door, while I could hear him grumbling along the entire corridor, in evident anger at the ignorance that did not know “Pioche!” Twenty times did I repeat the name aloud, before it flashed across me as the same Madame Lefebvre mentioned at the soiree in the Palace. It was Pioche who shouldered the brass fieldpiece, and passed before the general on parade. The gigantic size, the powerful strength, the strange name,--all could belong to no other; and I felt as though at once I had found an old acquaintance in the great cuirassier of the Guard.