"'You do?"
"'Yes—as well as I know you, M. le Comte.'
"'Pray give me his name, that I may make him an example to all France, by tearing the epaulettes from his shoulders, and disgracing him in front of his regiment.'
"'Excuse me, M. le Comte,' replied the brave but gentle Desbrissay, 'I know his corps—I know his name, and I know his rank in the French service, but I beg to decline pointing him out to you, contenting myself with the hope, that one day I may meet him hand to hand on the field of honour, and then, like a true English gentleman, shall I avenge the savage wrong he and his soldiers did me on that fatal day at Rocaux.'
"'Monsieur, you are most generous—I shall press you no further,' said Count Saxe.
"So spoke the gallant Desbrissay, of the old 38th; but the day he longed for never came; he was sent to serve in other lands, and thirteen years after that shameful defeat near Liege, he perished in Guadaloupe, and lies there interred in the church of the Carmelites."
And now, with this anecdote, we have brought the reader to the rising ground which looks down on the town of Basse Terre, the capital of the Isle of Alto, Guadaloupe, as it was named by the Spaniards, because its high mountains resembled those of the same name, which rise in all their solemn beauty between the Tagus and the Guadiana in the Estramadura of old Spain.
Many of those hills, towards which we marched, were covered by waving woods, that drew down the clouds, and added to the charms of the scenery; but when the morning sun arose, the shadows fell deep on every rugged pass and wide and fair savannah.
And now if the reader will look back with me, from our line of march, he may see the city of Basse Terre, with its churches of the Carmelites and Jesuits, and its whitewashed houses, clustering round the little bay; on the south, its old mishapen and irregular castle, perched on a rock so lofty, that when viewed from it, our ships of the line seemed no larger than bumboats; on the north, the heavy bastions of Le Morne Rouge; to the eastward, wide fields of sugar, cotton, and indigo, studded with groves, mills, and houses; to the westward the Caribean sea, with its blue waves running merrily on sands of silvery whiteness.
Above this border of sand, there rose green belts of sugarcane, and over these were the hills towards which we were marching, shrouded in the dark foliage of old primeval forests; and higher still, the rarefied clouds that floated like gossamer webs about their peaks.