"Yes," said Louise, "that is it, Marie; I am Michel Prevost."
"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed old Pierre; "is it so indeed, Louise?"
"It is so, father; I am Private Michel Prevost; you shall have your desire at last; by my own will I am going forth. I shall be in good company, my father, for my regiment is attached to the _corps d'armée_ of Marshal Ney himself; hear you that? I shall fight under his colours, the Bravest of the brave. Are you satisfied, father, have I done well? And you, Marie, are you satisfied?"
"Sister, you cannot, you shall not; it is ridiculous--you jest!" cried Marie.
"God forbid. I do not jest! Let no one dare thwart me by revealing my secret"--Louise looked round with smiling face but blazing eye--"You, Karl, or you, Georges, for I swear I will split with my rapier him who so does! I am a soldier of Ney's army, remember that, _mes amis_!" Louise ended with a loud laugh; she saluted the company military fashion and left the room.
For a moment a silence fell upon all present, then old Pierre's voice was heard repeating the "Nunc Dimittis" in Latin.
Neither argument nor entreaty availed to shake the determination of Louise. Her father was entirely on her side, enthusiastically backing and applauding her resolve. Marie and her fiancé, though at first shocked that Louise should thus sacrifice herself for their sake, soon realised that the sacrifice only played a part in the comedy.
"Do you not see a second reason?" Marie asked Karl one day. "It has occurred to me that she has another motive besides that of serving us. Louise, too, is in love. I suspected it, now I know it. I accidentally saw her parting with the Baron d'Estreville; they kissed, _mon ami_; imagine Louise kissed by a man; that reveals an extraordinary state of affairs. Well, the Baron has already gone to the war. Louise, poor soul, cannot bear to be parted; _eh bien_! she will go also; perhaps, she tells herself, she will see him from time to time, at any rate she will be near him."
"_Sapristi_, it may be as you say," said Karl; "If so I am glad of it. Then we can allow her to go with minds more at rest."
However this may have been, Louise attended the conscript drill for a month with the rest, and assuredly Michel Prevost there acquitted himself as well as any recruit upon the ground. Accustomed to male attire, which she had worn for some seventeen out of the full tally of the years of her life, she betrayed no awkwardness, whether in plain clothes or in uniform. Accustomed no less to every athletic exercise which went towards the training of the young men of her day, she satisfied the drill sergeant as easily as the most active of her companions, not one of whom ever showed the slightest suspicion as to her sex.