In a small but richly furnished chamber sat four officers round a table covered with a magnificent display of silver cups and plate, and upon which a dessert was spread, with flasks of French and Spanish wine, and a salver holding cigars; a book, apparently an orderly book, was before them, from which one of the party was reading as I came in. As the aide-de-camp announced me they all looked up, and the general, for I knew him at once, fixing his eyes steadily on me, desired me to approach.
As I obeyed his not very courteous order, I had time to perceive that the figure before me was that of a stout, square-built man of about fifty-five or sixty. His head was bald; his eyebrows, of a bushy grey, were large and meeting. A moustache of the same grizzly appearance shaded his lip, and served to conceal two projecting teeth, which, when he spoke, displayed themselves like boar's tusks, giving a peculiarly savage expression to his dark and swarthy countenance. The loose sleeve of his coat denoted that he had lost his left arm high up; but whenever excited, I could see that the short stump of the amputated limb jerked convulsively in a manner it was painful to look at.
'What, a deserter! a spy! Eh, what is it, Alphonse?'
The aide-de-camp, blushing, whispered some few words rapidly, and the general resumed—
'Ha! Be seated, monsieur.' The officers of the imperial army know how to treat their prisoners; though, pardieu, they can't teach their enemies the lesson! You have floating prisons, they tell me, in England, where my poor countrymen die of disease and starvation. Sacré Dieu! what cruelty!'
'You have been misinformed, General. The nation I belong to is uniformly humane to all whom chance of war has made its prisoners, and never forgets that the officers of an army are gentlemen.'
'Ha! what do you mean?' said he, becoming dark with passion, as he half rose from his seat; then, stopping suddenly short, he continued in a voice of suppressed anger, 'Where are your troops? What number of men has your Villainton got with him?'
'Of course,' said I, smiling, 'you do not expect me to answer such questions.'
'Do you refuse it?' said he, with a grim smile.
'I do distinctly refuse,' was my answer.