“But, Sir,” demanded the complainant petulantly, through the interpreter, “what did the Lieutenant say?” To which the evidence answered with a Portuguese shrug—“that he did not understand a word of English, but that he supposed the Lieutenant to have been enquiring after the state of the General’s health!”
Further evidence in favour of the officer than the prosecutor’s own witness was needless—the Lieutenant was released from his arrest, and the General obliged to “pocket the affront.”
A VOLUNTEER OF FORTY.
——“Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon’s mouth.”
Shakspeare.
Cæsar was forty years of age before he fought his first battle; or, indeed, before he could be fairly said to have been a soldier: yet he became one of the most able and successful generals the Roman empire ever produced. This age in a general is by no means out of keeping with the wisdom and energy required to constitute a good commander: it may be rather considered as not sufficiently advanced, by at least from five to ten years. But an ensign of forty is a thing quite out of character—a monstrous absurdity, as the army is now constituted; and if Cæsar himself had had to enter the Roman army in that grade, judging by our British scale of promotion, he never would have arrived at a brevet-majority. An Ensign is the boy of the colours—the page to regimental victory, whose chin should never bear a beard while he holds the post—a youthful soldier,—a Mars of fifteen, with the staff of his country’s flag fixed firmly in the earth, supporting and supported by him, while the rough mustachioed band like rocks surround and shield him from the tempest of the fight. But a Volunteer of forty!—Is not that an odd production? I do not mean a “City Volunteer,” nor a “County Volunteer;” but an individual who joins a regiment of the line on service in the field, by permission of its Colonel—clothes himself—and, although avowedly for the purpose of becoming soon an Ensign—and although received as a gentleman by the officers of the corps he joins, is drilled in the ranks, and fights as a private soldier. Such a man, I say, “begins at the beginning” of his profession, and has a tolerably long road to travel ere he obtain his first commission—that of Ensign. A Volunteer of forty, then, is a ridiculous anomaly, a rara avis in exercitu, and (thank Minerva!) was even more scarce during the Peninsular war, than is a French Eagle in “this piping time of peace.” However, we had one of those odd birds, nigroque simillima cygno, who flew out from his native hills in Cambria to the more classic mountains of the Pyrenees, at the very latter end of the very last campaign which the Anglo-Lusitanian army accomplished. Considering, then, this hero’s age, and the time at which he joined the standard of war, every one must allow that he did not “begin at the beginning;” and it must appear equally evident that he never could have become a Cæsar, even though he had lived to the age of old Parr.
This military aspirant arrived at Passages a little after the siege of San Sebastian, and I happened to be on the verge of the quay, as the vessel which contained him brought up:—it was a wretched-looking schooner, and not at all engaged in the service; but contained, in addition to the Volunteer, a cargo of butter, cheese, and ready-made slops.
When her anchor was dropped, and the master of the vessel, with his passenger, jumped on shore beside me, I thought the latter was the former, and the former a mate. Without hesitation I asked them had they come from England, and what news. The hero immediately furnished me with an abridgement of the preceding month’s “Times” and “Chronicle,” in such a peculiar way, and with such familiarity, that I immediately concluded I had caught hold of as odd a fish as ever came from the ocean; and I should have had no objection to examine him further, but the time which I had to spare was expired; and as he had concluded his report, I wished him good morning, stepped into the ferry-boat, and passed to the other side of the gut which divides the town.
When I had made the purchases of various articles of provision for which I had come to Passages, I went back to Renteria, the town in which I was quartered, and which is situated about a league from the former.
I had dined at home—(home! where is the soldier’s home?) I had dined at my quarters at Renteria, and had strolled along the beach, listening to the boat-women singing as they crossed the lake of Leso, when I saw the “new arrival” approaching the shore in a ferry-boat.