A hearty cheer welcomed this speech, and many a rude hand was stretched forth to grasp mine; at the same instant the host, accurately divining the necessity of the moment, entered with a basket containing six bottles, whose cobwebbed necks and crusted surface bespoke the choicest bin of his cellar.
“Macon! gentlemen,” said he, drawing the cork of a flask with all the steadiness of hand of one accustomed to treat Burgundy properly.
“Ah, parbleu! a generous grape, too,” said the short sailor, who spoke first, as he drained his glass and refilled it. “Allons, Comrades, 'The Emperor! '”
“The Emperor!” repeated each voice in turn, even to the poor landlord, whose caution was stronger than his loyalty.
“The Emperor, and may Heaven preserve him!” said the dark-whiskered fellow.
“The Emperor, and may Heaven forgive him!” said the host, who this time uttered the true sentiments of his heart, without knowing it.
“Forgive him!” roared three or four together,—“forgive him what?”
“For not making thee an admiral of the fleet,” said the landlord, slapping the stout sailor familiarly on the shoulder.
A burst of rude laughter acknowledged the success of this speech, and by common consent the host was elected One of the company. As the wine began to work upon the party, the dark fellow, whose grade of sergeant was merely marked by a gold cord on his cuff, and which had hitherto escaped my notice, assumed the leadership, and recounted some stories of his life; which, treating of a service so novel to me in all its details, were sufficiently interesting, though the materials themselves were slight and unimportant.
One feature struck me in particular through all he said, and gave a character most distinctive to the service he belonged to, and totally unlike what I had observed among the soldiers of the army. With them the armies of all Europe were accounted the enemy,—the Austrian, the Russian, the Italian, and the Prussian were the foes he had met and conquered in so many fields of glory. The pride he felt in his triumphs was a great but natural sentiment; involving, however, no hatred of his enemy, nor any desire to disparage his courage or his skill. With the sailor of the Empire, however, there was but one antagonist, and that one he detested with his whole heart: England was a word which stirred his passion from its very inmost recesses, and made his blood boil with intense excitement. The gay insolence of the soldier, treating his conquest as a thing of ease and certainty, had no resemblance to the collected and impassioned hate of the sailor, who felt that his victories were not such as proclaimed his superiority by evidence incontestable. The victories on land contrasted, too, so strongly with even what were claimed as such at sea, that the sailors could not control their detestation of those who had robbed them of a share of their country's praise, and made the hazardous career they followed one of mere secondary interest in the eyes of France.