"Pardon, M'sieur," says the waiter, "c'est trop gros pour un chat."
"Chat," repeats Manners; "Chat THOMAS!" he adds, in a sepulchral voice, and with a frowning brow. The waiter shrinks abashed, the company laugh, and Manners's observation counts for a joke.
By this time conversation begins to buzz pretty freely around. Everybody drinks champagne, and tongues soon become loosened by the exhilarating fluid. Various topics are discussed, including a new beauty that has just arrived from Smyrna, of French extraction, and supposed to possess a fortune that sounds perfectly fabulous when calculated in francs. Manners listens attentively, for he has not totally abandoned the idea of combining the excitement of war with the pursuit of beauty--properly gilded, of course--and his maxim is that "None but the brave deserve the fair." Her praises, however, as also her name and address, are intercepted by the voluble comments of two stout gentlemen, his neighbours, on the utter incapacity of the Turkish Government, and the hopeless imbecility of "the people of this unhappy country, Sir,--a people without a notion of progress---destined to decay, Sir, from the face of the earth," as the stouter of the two, a British merchant, who is about investing in land here, remarks to his neighbour, a jovial Frenchman, who has already bought many a fertile acre in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, under the new Hatti-Sheriff;[#] and who replies, fixing his napkin securely in his button-hole--
[#] An act empowering foreigners to hold land in Turkey.
"Pourri, voyez-vous, mon cher. Crac! ça ne durera pas trois ans."
Opposite these worthies, an ensign in the Guards, and the Queen's messenger, who is of a theatrical turn, are busy with the character, private as well as professional, of a certain star of the Opera, whom the latter has already criticised in the execution of his duty at Vienna, and an ardent desire to hear whom haunts the former enthusiast to such a degree, even in the very trenches, that he longs to attack and take Sebastopol single-handed, in order to get home again before she leaves London for the winter. The Turkish Ministry, changing as it does about once a week; the policy of Austria; the Emperor Napoleon's energy; the inefficiency of our own Commissariat; the ludicrous blunders of the War Office, and the last retort courteous of Lord Stratford, all come in for their share of remark from prejudiced observers of every party and every opinion; but by degrees one voice rises louder than the rest, one individual attracts the notice of the whole dinner-table, and nowise abashed, but rather encouraged by the attention he commands, details volubly his own account of the capture of the Mamelon. He is a Frenchman, and a civilian, but somehow he has a red ribbon on his breast, and belongs to the Legion of Honour, so he "assisted," as he calls it, at the attack; and if he speaks truth, it must indeed have been an awful sight, and one in which his countrymen outdid themselves for valour, and that quality peculiar to the soldiers of France which they term élan, a word it is hopeless to think of translating. His opinions are decided, if not satisfactory; his plan of storming the place an excellent one, if it could only be carried out.
"We have taken the Mamelon!" says he, "and what remains? Bah! The Malakhoff Tower is the key to the whole position. What would you have? Every simple soldier in the army knows it as well as you and I do. I tell you I 'assisted' at the capture of the Mamelon Vert. They received us with a fire, well sustained, of grape and small arms. Our ammunition failed us at the critical moment. I was in the ditch--me!--when the Zouaves came on with their yell--the 152nd of the line were in front of them. It must be carried with the bayonet!--Pflan!--our little red pantaloons were swarming up the work and over the parapet ere you could count ten--the tricolor was hoisted and the guns spiked in a twinkling--that is the only way to arrange these affairs. Now, see here--you have your Redan, you others--you have sapped up to it, as near as you can get. There must be a combined attack. You cannot hold it till we have silenced that little rogue of a Malakhoff. What to do? One of these 'four mornings,' as it was with the Mamelon so will it be with the Malakhoff! Give me a thick column, with the Zouaves in front and rear. These are not follies. I advance my column under cover--I pour in a volley!--I rush on with the bayonet! At the same moment the Redan falls. Your Guards and Scotchmen run in with their heads, a thousand cannon support you with their fire, the Allies hold the two most important defences, the Garden Batteries are silenced. Chut! the place is ours! France and England are looking on. I do not say that this will be done; but this is how it ought to be done. If your generals are fools, what is that to me? I am not a general--I!--but a simple civilian!--Waiter, a cigar! Qui vivra, verra."
It is all pipe-clay, as the soldiers call it, now. The one engrossing topic silences every other. Alma, Inkermann, Lord Raglan's flank march, and the earlier incidents of the siege, are related by the very men who took an active share in those deeds of glory. Two cavalry officers, both wounded on the fatal day, recapitulate once more the pros and cons of the immortal charge at Balaklava--a question that has been vexed and argued till the very actors themselves in that most brilliant of disasters scarcely know how they got in, and still less how they ever got out. Though struck down by the same shell, and within ten yards of one another, each takes a diametrically opposite view of the whole transaction from his comrade. They differ materially as to time, position, pace, and results; above all, as to the merits of the leader whose wreath of laurels faded as undeservedly as it bloomed prematurely.
"I was close behind him the whole way," says the one; "I never saw a fellow so cool in my life, or so well 'got up.' He regulated every stride of that good chestnut horse like clock-work. When we came into fire, our line was dressed as if on parade. I know it by my own squadron. Will you tell me that man lost his head?"
"But where was he after we rode through the guns?" replied the other. "Answer me that! I grant you he took us in like a brick. But why didn't he bring us out? I never saw him after I was hit, and I must have seen him if he had rallied the first line, and been in his proper place to look out for his support. You were close to me, old fellow! I never knew before that bob-tailed Irish horse of yours could gallop a mile and a half. You were sickish, my boy, for I saw your face; but your eyesight was unimpaired. Tell me, did you see him, and what was he doing?"