_Parbleu_! gentlemen, if you saw me naked, you would laugh! Look at
my hand, a saber-cut across the palm, to the bone, to save my head,
taken up with three stitches, and five days afterwards I was playing
ball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall of
the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great
devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed
as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in this room! I
received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape
shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a
piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage
of my right ribs, a cut-cut that carried away a pound of flesh from my
chest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Pretty
well, ha, ha! and all while you'd say bah! and in eight days and a half
I was making a forced march, without shoes, and only one gaiter, the
life and soul of my company, and as sound as a roach!"
"Bravo! Bravissimo! Per Bacco! un gallant' uomo!" exclaimed, in a
martial ecstasy, a fat little Italian, who manufactured toothpicks and
wicker cradles on the island of Notre Dame; "your exploits shall resound
through Europe! and the history of those wars should be written in your
blood!"
"Never mind! a trifle!" exclaimed the soldier.
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