"Well, captain, I can hardly tell you. We were very excited in Paris; in fact, off our heads with rage at having been unable to save Paris. We had a considerable number of cannon and ammunition, which we were not allowed to use against the Prussians. We felt like a sportsman who, after a whole day's wandering through the country, has not had an opportunity of discharging his gun at any game, and who, out of spite, shoots his dog, just to be able to say on returning home that he had killed something."
On the 14th of April, 1871, my regiment received the order to attack the Neuilly bridge, a formidable position held by the Communists.
What the Prussians had not done some compatriot of mine succeeded in doing. I fell severely wounded.
After my spending five months in the Versailles military hospital, and three more at home in convalescence, the army surgeons declared that I should no longer be able to use my right arm for military purposes, and I was granted a lieutenant's pension, which would have been just sufficient to keep me in segars if I had been a smoker.
But of this I do not complain. Poor France! she had enough to pay!
[ At ] the end of the year of grace, 1871, my position was very much like that of my beloved country: all seemed lost, fors l'honneur.
Through my friends, however, I was soon offered a choice between two "social positions."
The first was a colonel's commission in the Egyptian army (it seemed that the state of my right arm was no objection).