'Pardon, my good young friend. I will tell it you. On the day of Mont St. Jean, the 18th of June, 1815, I was a sub-lieutenant of artillery in the column of our glorious Ney—the laurel to his ashes! Ah! your Wellington let him be slain like a dog; that was not soldierly. The Emperor directed a false attack on the château of Goumont; while the Englishman was gathering the best of his forces to its defence, the Man stood, pale and weary, with the same quiet, steady gaze, a smile fixed into the earnestness of a frown, which my comrades told me he had worn at Austerlitz, hands behind his back, and his gray great-coat lying moist over his boots. My battery was near, and I was on its right, quite close to the staff. "Messieurs," said he, as he saw the scarlet masses pressing around Goumont, "we make our game. Where is Ney?" An aide-de-camp galloped off for the Marshal, who was close at hand. The Man, surveying Goumont with his glass, and occasionally looking intently at La Haie-Sainte, gradually approached to where I stood. A soldier of the battery lay dead on the ground before me—a veteran whom we all loved. Feeling that we should shortly get the order to advance, I resolved to secure some souvenir of Tampon, as we called him. I found a horn snuff-box in his hand, clenched in death. The Man happened to turn towards me, and observed the act.
'"Comrade, a pinch," he said, and I handed him the box—that box; look at it,' and the old soldier, the fire of foughten fields in his eyes, hung over it with tenderness as over a loved living object—'that box was in his fingers—out of it he took a pinch of snuff on the day of Mont St. Jean.'
'Did you see him after?'
'Not that day. We advanced on La Haie-Sainte ten minutes after and gave them a hail of hell-fire. Our heavy artillery crashed through their ranks like bolts of thunder. They shook; Ney seized the moment to bring our guns right into the enemy's position, but we had a ravine to traverse; our pieces of twelve settled down in the muddy rye, a regiment of infantry came up from the rear to cover us, but Wellington was quicker. He saw our difficulty and poured a host of dragoons in on us in the valley. They cut our traces, overturned our guns, sabred our men. But, sapristi! they paid for it—paid for it dearly. Our cuirassiers rushed to the rescue like a whirlwind and swept them from earth to the last man. Brave fellows they were! No, I did not see him after, until all Paris turned out, six-and-twenty years ago, to welcome his remains to the Church of the Invalides. You know his will, Monsieur O'Hara: "I desire that my dust may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I loved so well."'
The enthusiastic young Irishman could not but be affected at this reminiscence of an era which appeals to all that is romantic in our nature, told, too, by one who was an actor in it, and who carried in his heart, still vivid and strong, the proud affection for Napoleon with which that genius of war inspired his followers to the humblest. Nor was his sole motive that of gratifying the captain when he demanded the horn-box for another pinch, and, to the exuberant delight of the old man, with it in his hand sung Les Souvenirs du Peuple of Béranger.
'Thanks, thanks, my young friend!' cried the captain, the tears streaming down his cheeks; 'what a happy evening!'
'But, captain, you don't enjoy yourself; you don't drink, you won't smoke. True, you told me there was a reason for it.'
'Yes, and as we are together in free friendship, I'll tell you, my dear child, you who have sung such a beautiful song for the old soldier.'
But we must reserve the captain's story for another chapter.