Lieutenant Lare's Marriage
Since the beginning of the campaign Lieutenant Lare had taken two cannon from the
Prussians. His general had said: "Thank you, lieutenant," and had given him the cross of
honor.
As he was as cautious as he was brave, wary, inventive, wily and resourceful, he was
entrusted with a hundred soldiers and he organized a company of scouts who saved the
army on several occasions during a retreat.
But the invading army entered by every frontier like a surging sea. Great waves of men
arrived one after the other, scattering all around them a scum of freebooters. General
Carrel's brigade, separated from its division, retreated continually, fighting each day, but
remaining almost intact, thanks to the vigilance and agility of Lieutenant Lare, who
seemed to be everywhere at the same moment, baffling all the enemy's cunning,
frustrating their plans, misleading their Uhlans and killing their vanguards.
One morning the general sent for him.
"Lieutenant," said he, "here is a dispatch from General de Lacere, who will be destroyed
if we do not go to his aid by sunrise to-morrow. He is at Blainville, eight leagues from
here. You will start at nightfall with three hundred men, whom you will echelon along the
road. I will follow you two hours later. Study the road carefully; I fear we may meet a
division of the enemy."
It had been freezing hard for a week. At two o'clock it began to snow, and by night the
ground was covered and heavy white swirls concealed objects hard by.
At six o'clock the detachment set out.
Two men walked alone as scouts about three yards ahead. Then came a platoon of ten
men commanded by the lieutenant himself. The rest followed them in two long columns.
To the right and left of the little band, at a distance of about three hundred feet on either
side, some soldiers marched in pairs.
The snow,,which was still falling, covered them with a white powder in the darkness, and
as it did not melt on their uniforms, they were hardly distinguishable in the night amid the
dead whiteness of the landscape.
From time to time they halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable, nameless flutter
of falling snow--a sensation rather than a sound, a vague, ominous murmur. A command
was given in a low tone and when the troop resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of
white phantom standing in the snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared. It
was the echelons who were to lead the army.
