Falou picked up his cavalry sabre and showed it to Bonaparte. He was much astonished to find a general's sword in the possession of a quartermaster-general.
"It was on that occasion that General Pichegru, who is as good as any man"—and he emphasized this characterization—"seeing the state to which my poor sabre had been reduced, made me a present of his, which is not altogether according to orders, as you see."
"Go on," said Bonaparte; "for I see that you have something more to tell me."
"I have this to tell you also, general. If you had been at Froeschwiller, on the day that General Hoche offered six hundred francs on the Prussian cannon, you would have seen me capture one of those cannon, and also have seen me made quartermaster for it."
"And did you receive those six hundred francs?"
Falou shook his head.
"We gave them up to the widows and children of the poor fellows who died on the day of Dawendorff, and I took only my pay, which was in one of the Prince de Condé's chests."
"Brave, disinterested fellow! Go on," said the general; "I like to see such men as you, who have no journalists to sound their praises or to decry them, pronouncing their own panegyrics."
"And then," continued Falou, "had you been at the storming of the lines of Weissembourg, you would have known that when three Prussians attacked me I killed two. True, I did not parry in time to escape a blow from the third, of which this is the scar—you see where I mean—to which I replied with a thrust with the point that sent my man to rejoin his two comrades. I was made quartermaster-general for that."