"Does he come to tell me that I have been appointed his aide-de-camp?" I inquired, laughing at my own little joke.
"No, my fine fellow," cried a corporal of some line regiment in a corner; "he has come to ask you to be so kind as to marry his daughter, who has a fortune of only one hundred thousand francs."
"Ah," said a cuirassier—I forget his rank, "the request is that our friend the sergeant-major will consent to act as the general's second in a duel with the Tsar of Russia."
A chasseur believed that that was not true, as he had learned from a morning paper that I was to be ambassador to His Holiness the Pope, "who knows," he went on to say, "how moral and virtuous are the lives the legionaries lead, they being, in fact, monks in uniform." This settled the matter; nobody could invent a more improbable—let me say impossible—reason for the general's visit. I was asked continually afterwards how the Pope was. Did he still hold the idea of asking France to give him the sanctified legionaries as a new army? If we went to Rome, should we have to soldier with the Swiss and other guards? And a number of other questions were asked, all of which I answered to the best of my ability, trying in every case to give a "Roland for an Oliver," and often succeeding. I told the chasseur one day that the Pope would not take us of the Legion as his guards; he preferred the chasseurs: by converting them to decent practices he would gain greater glory in heaven. The cuirassier learned that His Holiness would soon send him the shield of faith—he already had the breastplate of caution. The cuirassier did not like this. He indignantly protested that he would rather fight in his shirt sleeves.
"Very well," I answered. "Do as the Austrians do—take off your cuirass in time of war."
He asked me how I knew that. I replied: "Easily enough. I have many Austrian comrades, but I have no French ones. We legionaries are seemingly in the French army, but not, in real truth, soldiers of it." Truth to tell, I was getting a little angry, because all wished to unite against the solitary soldier of the Legion in the room. I let the rest see that I was tired of their jokes, and afterwards they left me alone.
Well, the general came in a short time into the room and called out my name and rank. I stepped forward and stood to attention.
"You the sergeant-major?" he asked, in a tone of surprise.
"Yes, sir."
"Why, you are only a boy. How long have you been in the Legion?"