One party, of four men and an old sergeant, pulled up and dismounted, close to the spot where the lads where hidden.
"It is all very well, comrades," their leader said, "but for my part, I would rather be on the frontier fighting the Austrians.
That is work for soldiers.

Here we are to fight Frenchmen, like ourselves; poor chaps who have done no harm, except that they stick to their clergy, and object to be dragged away from their homes.

I am no politician, and I don't care a snap for the doings of the Assembly in Paris--I am a soldier, and have learned to obey orders, whatever they are--but I don't like this job we have in hand; which, mind you, is bound to be a good deal harder than most of you expect.

It is true that they say there are twenty thousand troops round the province--but what sort of troops?
There are not five thousand soldiers among them.

The others are either National Guards, or newly-raised levies, or those blackguards from the slums of Paris.