"Il Signor Luigi Rivoli would be sorry to have to come and fetch you, English pig," said he. "Sorry for you, that is. Do you wish to find yourself au grabat,[#] you scurvy, mangy, lousy cur of a recruit? ... What reply shall I take Il Signor Luigi Rivoli?"
[#] On a sick bed.
"That!" replied the Englishman, and therewith smote the fat Austrian a most tremendous smack across his heavy blue jowl with the open hand, sending him staggering several yards. Without paying further attention to the great man's ambassador, he strode in the direction of the great man himself, with blazing eyes and clenched jaw.
"You want me, do you?" he shouted at the astonished Luigi, who was rising open-mouthed from his bed; and, putting the whole weight of his body behind the blow, drove most skilfully and scientifically straight at the point of his jaw.
It must be confessed that the Italian was taken unawares, and in the very act of getting up, so that his hands were down, and he was neither standing nor sitting.
He was down and out, and lay across his bed stunned and motionless.
Into the perfect silence of the chambrée fell the voice of the Bucking Bronco. Solemnly he counted from one to ten, and then with a shout of "OUT!" threw his képi to the roof and roared "Hurrah!" repeatedly.
"Il ira loin," remarked Monsieur Tou-tou Boil-the-Cat, viewing Rupert's handiwork with experienced, professional eye.
Exclamatory oaths went up in all the languages of Europe.
"Il a fait de bon boulet," remarked a grinning greybeard known as "Tant-de-Soif" to the astounded and almost awe-stricken crowd.