On the bandage being removed, I found myself in a large vaulted room of the old castle. It was roofed with stone, and I heard the tramp of feet and rumble of gun-slides on the bartizan above. The groined arches sprang from twelve dilapidated corbels, representing the apostles. A bare wooden table, a few chairs and trunks, cloaks and sabres hanging on the wall, spurred boots, empty bottles, and cigar boxes lying in a corner, constituted the furniture of the room. The light streamed into it between the stone mullions and corroded iron bars of three deeply embayed windows; through which a view was obtained of the Gulf of Tarento stretching away to the north, and the dark wooded ridges of La Syla to the westward, rising five thousand feet above the sea's level.
Coffee, wine, cigars, French army lists, Parisian Moniteurs, and the last grand bulletin, lay on the table; at which De Bourmont, a fat but pleasant-looking old man, dressed in a blue frogged surtout and scarlet trousers, with a crimson forage cap, was seated with another officer, at breakfast.
"Monsieur le Commandant," said the officer who introduced me, "a flag of truce from the trenches—an officer of the enemy."
"Ah! they have come to terms at last!" said the little commandant, nodding with a very satisfied air to the officer who sat opposite him; and then rising, he handed me a chair. "Proud to see you, monsieur," he added, uncovering his bald head; "be seated—the wine is close to you. There is Muscatelle, or, if you like it better, far-famed Lachryma Christi and Greco, from grapes raised on the slopes of Vesuvius. We can get these things, you see, notwithstanding that the Scots colonel does push the trenches so vigorously. Mille bombes! ah, what a man he is! Yes, and we can get that which warms our hearts better than even Falernian wine or Greco—eh, Pepe?" he added, rubbing his nose, and giving a sly glance at his morose companion, who intently broke the shell of his third egg, without deigning to notice me.
"Would you prefer chocolate to wine, monsieur?" continued the colonel. "We will talk over matters during breakfast. I am glad you have come to terms—very!"
I accepted his invitation; but could not resist smiling at the complacent manner in which the Frenchman spoke of besiegers coming to terms with the garrison of a place which their cannon had almost reduced to ruins.
"How did your free Calabrians like the way we scoured the trenches the other night?" asked Captain Pepe, while handing me coffee.
"You taught them a good lesson. The marmalade? Thank you. An hour in the trenches has given me quite an appetite."
"And how did your old tub of a frigate, and her fry of gun-boats, like the chain-shot, the cross-bars, and stang-balls we favoured them with this morning?"
"Monsieur, I did not come here to answer insolent questions, but to deliver this despatch to Colonel Bourmont; who I have the pleasure to perceive is a French officer of the old school—a gentleman, and not a Parisian bully."