Oh, that I had but five minutes' start, with such an animal under me as that ridden by Trebitski, which was a beautiful and powerful Arab, whose actions were full of lightness and grace!
To increase my annoyance, this bearded commander got tipsy more than once on brandy and absinthe; and then he would shake his crooked sabre at me with many "strange oaths," of which I could make nothing; but I thought that, if some of those "wives and daughters of England," who think foreigners so interesting, had been with us in the Crimea, their ideas of continentals might have changed in favour of their more prosaic countrymen.
"Ouf! pst! pst!" I heard the wounded Frenchman muttering, as he raised himself from an uneasy doze, and looked about him with one eye, that glared wildly, for bandages concealed the other. "But for this devilish Crimean business, I should have been flirting in the Bois de Boulogne, lounging in the Gardens of the Tuileries, eating ices at Tortoni's, or drinking lemonade at a café chantant with la belle Rogolboche. Pst! pst! c'est le diable!" Then, addressing himself to me, he said, "Ah, le Cossaque!—yon devil of a Trebitski—is a shocking ruffian—a veritable brigand! Luckily, the Russian savage does not understand a word we say. He has stolen your rations, and left you—pah! what a dog wouldn't eat; but I have something better, and you shall dine with me."
"I thank you, monsieur," said I.
"Comrades in glory, we shall be friends in misfortune!" exclaimed the Frenchman, with great emphasis. While he ran on thus, something in his voice seemed familiar to me.
"You are, monsieur—you are——"
"Exactly, my friend; Victor Baudeuf, at your service—Captain of the French line."
"I thought you were killed at Alma!"
"Only half killed, as you may see. Pardieu! but who told you so?"
"Mademoiselle Sophie."