A Woman of Thirty | Page 7

sped from line to line like echoes.
The whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of "Long live the
Emperor!"
Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent masses
of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming, the
Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
emotion into all faces.
The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"
There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
image of a reign itself so fugitive.
And /he/ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-
waiting on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his
presence not a feature of his face appeared to alter.
"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber /he/ is!" said
the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of
that face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor

noticed Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to
Duroc, which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review
began.
If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer
rode a splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked
him out amid the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor's orderly
staff-officers. His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up
the aigrette on his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have
compared him to a will-o'-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating
from the Emperor to infuse movement into those battalions whose
swaying bayonets flashed into flames; for, at a mere glance from his
eyes, they broke and gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves
in a bay, or again swept before him like the long ridges of high-crested
wave which the vexed Ocean directs against the shore.
When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from
Julie as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in
Gerard's /Battle of Austerlitz/. The young girl could behold her lover in
all his soldierly splendor.
Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall, slender,
and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to better
advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the restive
animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider's weight.
His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of perfectly
regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the broad
forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like white
ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate curve
of an eagle's beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black moustache
enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades which
overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual vigor,
and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was the
very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical hero of

Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with sweat, the
animal's quivering head denoted the last degree of restiveness; his hind
hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a line, he shook his long
thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a
visible presentment of that master's devotion to the Emperor.
Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's glances, and felt
a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a look.
Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse's flanks
and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow cast by a
post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider was all but