The captain shrieked, for he did not see for the moment the state the snake was in.
When he had recovered himself and was somewhat reassured, Captain d'Horbourg took the snake to Cairo, skinned it and had the skin made into a sword-belt as a souvenir of his narrow escape.
But the whole way back he kept reiterating to my father—
"Ah! General—didn't I tell you that devil of a rider would bring us ill luck!"
As a matter of fact the two hunters shot nothing but the snake, and it could not be described as a good bag.
In the month of July 1843, on my return from Florence, I lodged at the hotel de Paris, in the rue de Richelieu, where I received a letter signed "Ludovic d'Horbourg," wherein the writer begged an interview with me to unburden his mind of a dying request made him by his father.
The next day was to be the first representation of Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr, so I put off the interview till the day after.
General Dumas's old Egyptian aide-de-camp had, on his deathbed, as a sign of his gratitude, ordered his son Ludovic d'Horbourg to give me after his death the skin of the serpent my father had killed so quickly and cleverly on the isle of Rhodes. It seems he had often related this adventure with the Nile serpent to his son, for, amidst the innumerable dangers Count d'Horbourg had encountered throughout his long military career, this one had remained the most deeply imprinted on his memory.
Thanks to this verbal account, I am able to give the story here in all its details.
My father had hardly rejoined his regiment before an occasion for displaying his skill as a pupil of Laboissière presented itself.