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A BEGINNING.
There may be some who refuse to take seriously a person like Albert de Chantonnay because, forsooth, he happened to possess a sense of the picturesque.

There are, as a matter of fact, thousands of sensible persons in the British Isles who fail completely to understand the average Frenchman.

To the English comprehension it is, for instance, surprising that in time of stress--when Paris was besieged by a German army--a hundred franc-tireur corps should spring into existence, who gravely decked themselves in sombreros and red waist-cloths, and called themselves the "Companions of Death," or some claptrap title of a similar sound.

Nevertheless, these "Companions of Death" fought at Orleans as few have fought since man walked this earth, and died as bravely as any in a government uniform.