[3] In the Burgundy countryside during the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Neuville of the hussars gets engaged to Pauline Beaugrand, whose elder sister Élisabeth has quickly realised that the man is a liar and a fraud.

Once the Austrian campaign is over, Élisabeth's letters say he has been posted to India where, as well as fighting the British, he is growing tobacco and raising elephants.

In town one day, Élisabeth is furious to see a stinking vagrant who is Neuville and, when he admits that he is a penniless deserter, gives him money to go away and stay away.

An artillery regiment arrives in the area to stop a unit of marauding Cossacks and the general comes to lunch with Élisabeth's parents.

The charge ends abruptly when the artillery find their range and destroy the Russians, leaving Neuville a hero who is reinstated in his regiment.