"Tush, Joram; mayest thou be turned into a gaping oyster, as the play-book saith, and drink nothing but salt water all the days of thy life! You were talking of a shower of petards, Doctor: I remember when we marched with Condé into Tranche Compte with displayed banners, we beleaguered the castle of a certain seigneur, which resembled one of our Scottish peel-houses; and therein a brave cavalier of Spain commanded a corps of tall Irish pikemen. For three days they abode the salvoes of the demi-cannon, which battered their outer ravelins, and breached the great barbican. I led a hundred of our Scottish lads and sixteen German reformadoes to the assault, with pike and pistol bent. By my faith, Doctor, the loons fought like so many peers of Charlemagne. Each man flung a petard as we advanced. Crush me! a shower of petards. Pho! my fellows were blown to ribbons—their very entrails were twisted round the trees and ramparts; but Condé took the place at push of pike—put all the Irishry to the sword, and placed in the châtelet a garrison of the Compté de Bulliones Scottish pikemen, and the good old Regiment de Picardie."
"Doctor Joram," said Walter, "I have heard much of your famous duel with a chevalier of that regiment, but never the particulars. About some fair damoiselle was it not?"
"You were never more mistaken in your life, Master Fenton. We measured swords in the purest spirit of esprit du corps. I will tell you how it was. We were with the army that invested Doesburg, where the famous Adjutant Martinet was killed by a cannon-ball within a pike's length of me. We had long been at feud with that Regiment de Picardie, anent certain points of precedence and posts of honour, which was a state of matters not to be borne by us, who represent les Gardes-Ecossais of the sainted Louis, while the Battalion de Picardie was but one of the mere vieux corps of Charles the Ninth's time. The Sieur de Guichet, their captain-lieutenant, and I came to high words about it, in a certain house —— of —— of ——."
"Ay, ay, Doctor, we all know the place," said two or three cavaliers, amid loud laughter. "Madame Papillotes' little château on the banks of the Issel: she always accompanied the army. A nice billet for your reverence truly."
"De Guichet quarrelled with me about precedence and right of entrée, though, as Chaplain of the Scots Royals, in the line of battle I rode next to Dunbarton himself. 'Tush, monsieur,' said I, laying hand on my sword, 'remember I am a Scottish cavalier, and Chaplain to the Guards of Pontius Pilate.' 'Nombril de Beelzebub!' said the irreverend rascal, 'I believe you rightly name yourselves the Guards of Monseigneur Pilate, for had the old routiers of the Regiment de Picardie kept guard on the Holy Sepulchre, they would not have slept on their posts as the Scots Musqueteers must have done.' 'This to a clergyman?' I exclaimed. 'Have at thee, d——d runnion!' and attacking him, sword in hand, I disarmed him at the third pass; and ever afterwards Messieurs the Regiment de Picardie cocked their beavers the other way when passing us in the breach or on the Boulevards."
"'Tis a brave old band," said Gavin of that ilk. "I saw them on the plains of Nordlingien. You remember how gallantly they repulsed a charge of the Count de Merci's steel-clad Lancers. We had just formed square, with Sweyns' feathers in front, to repel their onfall, when Monsieur de Martinet (whom all the world knows of), Adjutant of the Regiment du Roi, galloped up, rapier in hand, with an order from Monseigneur le Duc d'Enghien to form line in battalion with the horse and dragoons on the wings; but my Lord of Dunbarton was too old a soldier to hear him amid the roar of such a battle; and luckily a cannon-ball took Martinet's charger in the crupper, on which he scrambled away. But only conceive, sirs, to form line in face of a horse brigade! By my sooth, wild Hielandmen would have known better, and I marvel that Monseigneur d'Enghien and Monsieur de Martinet so greatly forgot their boasted tactiques de guerre; but, as I said to my Lord Dunbarton," et cetera, and so forth.
Such was the tiresome small talk with which those "hunger and cold beaten soldiers" (to use a camp phrase of the day) maintained a cross-fire at table, and it differed very little from what one may hear in a similarly constituted party of the present day. The younger members of the company, whose whole experience of war had been confined to repelling a foray on the Highland frontier, a brawl in a whig district, or a review on the links of Leith before Sir Thomas Dalyel, his grace the Lord High Commissioner, and the ladies of his mimic court, were somewhat more peaceable in the tenor of their conversation, which went not beyond a duel at St. Anne's Yard or in Hugh Blairs, the Leith races (where yesterday the long pending match between Jack Holster's horse and Clermistonlee's mare had ended in the defeat of the latter), of Reid the mountebank, and the feats of his famous "tumbling lassie" at the Tennis Court Theatre, where they had all been the preceding night to behold "The Soldier's Fortune" by the celebrated Otway, for whom they had a fellow-feeling, as he had lately been a cornet of dragoons in Flanders. The merits of the new-fashioned iron hat-piece covered with velvet, which the English were now substituting for the old helmet, were warmly discussed. Mistress Annie Laurie, Jean Gordon, Lady Dunbarton, and other fair belles, new tawny beavers, silver-hilted swords, horses and wines, and various frivolities were all descanted upon, while the bright wine flowed and the laughter increased apace.
Dinner was over, and the vast wilderness of viands had undergone a great and melancholy change; the collared pigs were minus heads and legs; the great platters of turkeys, geese, and ducks, stewed hares and fricasseed rabbits, the lordly baron and the knightly sirloin, and everything else were in the same plight; while the noble Castle of Tangier had been completely sacked, demolished, and its garrison of baked and spiced cardinals, capuchins, and fan tails given up to the conquerors. The servants cleared the polished tables, and one placed before Gibbie, the host, a great chased silver tankard, the pride of his heart, for it was the production of George Heriot. It was mantling with purple port, and Gibbie (whose orb-like visage, by eating and drinking, was flushed like the setting October sun), laid his hand upon the cup, and looked round the board with his great saucer eyes to see that every guest's horn was filled; for the toast he was about to propose was,
"The health of His Sacred Majesty James VII., with peace at home, and war and confusion to his enemies abroad."
Gibbie, we say, with a rubicund visage beaming with loyalty and hospitality, had just upheaved his ponderous bulk for this purpose, when the rapid and ominous clatter of hoofs in the inn-yard attracted the attention of all; and the reverend Doctor Joram exclaimed,