"One of mine is at your service."
"Mille baionettes! You quite overwhelm me."
In half an hour after this, Grant, with Souham and two other French officers had crossed the wooden drawbridge of Bayonne, and left the citadel of M. Vauban with all its little redoubts in their rear, as they all rode merrily en route to Paris; Souham by the way telling twenty incredible stories of Wellington's prince of scouts, the Scottish Captain Grant. In a house of entertainment in the Rue Royale at Orleans, Grant fortunately made the acquaintance of a man who proved to be an agent in the secret service of the British Government. This person furnished him with money and a letter to another secret agent who lived in an obscure part of Paris, where he arrived, still disguised as an officer in the suite of General Souham, and as such, for a time, he visited all the theatres, the gardens, the operas; and all splashed and travel-stained, as fresh from the seat of war, was presented to the great Emperor, who patronizingly spoke to him of the probability of restoring Lacy's Irish Regiment, "by recruiting for it among the Irish in the prisons of Bitche and Verdun, in which case his services would not be forgotten," &c, "and his promotion to a majority would be duly remembered," &c. &c. Grant could not foresee that in three years after this, the old Black Watch, after raising the cry of "Scotland for ever" at Waterloo, would make the Tuileries ring to their Highland pipes, and that he would actually compose the well-known parody—
"Wha keep guard at Versailles and Marli,
Wha, but the lads wi' the bannocks of barley?"
He spoke French with fluency, having been a pupil of the famous Jean Paul Marat, when that notable ruffian taught French in Edinburgh, where, in 1774 he published a work entitled "The Chains of Slavery."
Grant thanked the Emperor, and thinking that the daring joke had been carried quite far enough, he doffed his French uniform, sabre and all, and making a bundle thereof, flung the whole into the Seine one night. Then, attiring himself in an unpretending blouse, he repaired to the house of the secret agent, presented his letter, and obtained more money to enable him to reach Britain.
"Monsieur is in luck," said the agent; "I have just ascertained that a passport is lying at the foreign office for an American who died, or was found dead this morning."
"How is your American named?"
"Monsieur Jonathan Buck."
"Very good—thanks! From this very hour I am Jonathan Buck," said the reckless Grant. He reloaded his pistols, concealed them in his breast, and repairing to the Foreign Office, demanded his passport with the coolness of a prince incog.