Oft-times have I seen a perspiring and blasphemous trooper pursuing the winged Antonio Giuseppe round the lines with a stable broom; but when the broom descended Antonio Giuseppe was not there to receive it. He would nip under the breast-rope, slip in under one horse's belly and out between the legs of another, dodging through and round the astounded animals like a half-back through a loose scrum or a greased pig at a fair, snatching a generous contribution from each hay-net as he passed. Under this method Antonio throve and throve; but the tale of splintered brooms grew and grew and the Quartermaster loved me not.
Yesterday the General intimated that he'd like to inspect us. Always eager to oblige, we licked, polished, brushed and burnished ourselves, pipeclayed our head-ropes, pomaded our moustaches, powdered our noses and paraded.
We paraded to-day in regimental column in a field west of our palace-workhouse and sat stiff in our saddles, the cheerful sunshine glowing on leather-work, glinting on brass and steel, conscious that we could give any Beauty Chorus a run for its money.
There sounded a shrill fanfaronade of trumpets, tootling the salute, and a dazzle of gold and scarlet like a Turner sunset, blazed into view—the General and his Staff.
At the same moment Antonio Giuseppe espied us from his observation post and, getting it into his head that we were picnicing out (it was about lunch-time), hastened to join us. As the General reached the leading squadron Antonio Giuseppe reached the near squadron and, sliding unobtrusively into its ranks, looked about for the hay-nets.
However the Second in Command noticed his arrival and motioned to his trumpeter. The trumpeter spurned forward and pinked Antonio Giuseppe in the hindquarters with his sword-point as a hint to him to move on. Antonio, thinking the line-guards were upon him and with a new type of broom, loosed a squeal of agony and straightway commenced his puss-in-the-corner antics in and out and round about the horses' legs. They didn't like it at all; it tickled and upset them; they changed from the horizontal to the vertical, giggled and pawed the air.
Things were becoming serious. A hee-hawing tatterdemalion donkey, playing "ring o' roses" with a squadron of war-horses, tickling them into hysterics, detracts from the majesty of such occasions and is no fit spectacle for a General. A second trumpeter joined in the chase and scored a direct prick on the soft of Antonio Giuseppe's nose as he dived out under the tail of a plunging gun-mare. Antonio whipped about and fled towards the centre squadron, ears wobbling, braying anguished S.O.S.'s. The two trumpeters, young and ardent lads, thundered after him, swords at the engage, racing each other, knee to knee for first blood. They scored simultaneously on the butt of his tail, and Antonio, stung to the quick, shot clean through (or rather under) the centre squadron into the legs of the General's horse, tripping up that majestic animal and bringing the whole stately edifice down into a particularly muddy patch of Italy.
Tremendous and awful moment! As my groom and countryman expressed it, "Ye cud hear the silence for miles." The General did not break it. I think his mouth was too full of mud and loose teeth for words. He arose slowly out of the ooze like an old walrus lifting through a bed of seaweed black as death, slime dripping from his whiskers, and limped grimly from the field, followed by his pallid staff proffering handkerchiefs and smelling-salts. But I understand he became distinctly articulate when he got home, and the upshot of it is that we are to be put in the forefront of the nastiest battle that can be arranged for us.
And Antonio Giuseppe the donkey, author of all the trouble, what of him? you ask.
Antonio Giuseppe the donkey will never smile again, dear reader. With his edges trimmed and "Welcome" branded across his back he may serve as a mangy door-mat for some suburban maisonette, but at the present moment he lies in the mud of the parade-ground, as flat as a sole on a sand-bank, waiting for someone to roll him up and carry him away.