“On the day that you marry her,” muttered Prepere
(With a pistol he quietly played),
“I’ll scatter the brains in your noddle, I swear,
All over the stony parade!”
“I cannot do that to you,” answered La Guerre,
“Whatever events may befall;
But this I can do—if you wed her, mon cher!
I’ll eat you, moustachios and all!”
The rivals, although they would never engage,
Yet quarrelled whenever they met;
They met in a fury and left in a rage,
But neither took pretty Fillette.
“I am not afraid,” thought Makredi Prepere:
“For country I’m ready to fall;
But nobody wants, for a mere Vivandière,
To be eaten, moustachios and all!
“Besides, though La Guerre has his faults, I’ll allow
He’s one of the bravest of men:
My goodness! if I disagree with him now,
I might disagree with him then.”
“No coward am I,” said La Guerre, “as you guess—
I sneer at an enemy’s blade;
But I don’t want Prepere to get into a mess
For splashing the stony parade!”
One day on parade to Prepere and La Guerre
Came Corporal Jacot Debette,
And trembling all over, he prayed of them there
To give him the pretty Fillette.
“You see, I am willing to marry my bride
Until you’ve arranged this affair;
I will blow out my brains when your honours decide
Which marries the sweet Vivandière!”
“Well, take her,” said both of them in a duet
(A favourite form of reply),
“But when I am ready to marry Fillette.
Remember you’ve promised to die!”
He married her then: from the flowery plains
Of existence the roses they cull:
He lived and he died with his wife; and his brains
Are reposing in peace in his skull.