"It is, I swear to you, a hideous life; the like of which nobody but Don Quixote ever led before me. All this tumbling and toiling, and bother and confusion that never ceases, has made me so old that you would scarcely know me again. On the right side of my head the hair is all gray. My teeth break and fall out. I have got my face wrinkled like the falbalas of a petticoat, my back bent like a fiddle bow, and spirit sad and cast down like a monk of La Trappe. I forewarn you of all this lest, in case we should meet again in flesh and bone, you might feel yourself too violently shocked by my appearance. There remains to me nothing but the heart, which has undergone no change; and which will preserve, as long as I breathe, its feelings of esteem and of tender friendship for my good Mamma.
"Adieu."
Fergus knew nothing of the concluding scenes of the battle of Torgau until some little time afterwards. He was not with the king when the grenadiers first made their attack on the hill, having been despatched to find and bring up Hulsen's column. Having discovered it, he guided it through the forest to the point where Frederick was so anxiously expecting its arrival; and when it advanced, with the survivors of the grenadiers, to the second attack, he took his place behind the king. They were halfway up the ascent when a cannon ball struck him on the left arm, carrying it away just above the elbow.
As he fell from his horse, Karl, who was riding behind him, leapt from his saddle with a hoarse cry of rage. Then, seeing the nature of the wound, he lifted him in his arms, mounted Fergus's horse, and rode down through an interval between the regiments of the second line; and then into the wood, to the spot where the surgeons were dressing the wounds of those hurt in the first charge. One who had just finished attending one of the grenadiers, seeing that the trooper was carrying a colonel of the king's staff, at once helped Karl to lower him to the ground.
"You have done well to bring him down at once, my man," he said. "It may be the saving of his life."
As he spoke, he was cutting off the tunic.
"There is not much flow of blood. You see, the contusion has closed the main artery. If we can keep it from bursting out, he will do."
He took out from his case some stout tape, passed it round the arm, asked Karl for a ramrod out of one his pistols and, with this, twisted the tape until it almost cut into the skin. Then he gave a few more turns, to hold the ramrod securely in its place. Then he called a young surgeon to him.