London, April to September, 1822.

THE CAMP MARKET.

A KIND of market had been formed behind our camp. The peasants had brought quarter-casks of white Moselle wine, which remained on the waggons; the horses were unyoked and fed quietly, attached by a string to one end of the cart, while people drank at the other. The fires for bat-fowling gleamed here and there. Sausages were fried in saucepans, puddings boiled in basins, pancakes tossed on iron plates, and omelettes raised on baskets. Cakes covered with aniseed, rye-loaves a penny a-piece, cakes of Indian meal, green apples, red and white eggs, pipes and tobacco, were sold beneath a tree from whose branches hung coarse cloth caps, bargained for by the passers-by. Peasant-girls, seated astride on wooden stools, were employed in milking cows; every one gave his cup and awaited his turn. Sutlers in their blouses, soldiers in their uniforms, hovered about the ovens. Vivandières passed hither and thither, calling out in French and German. Some stood in groups, others were seated round deal tables standing unevenly on the rough ground; various inventions for shelter were made, some with a piece of packing-cloth, others with branches cut in the forest, as on Palm-Sunday. I think, too, that there were weddings performed in the covered waggons, in remembrance of the Frankish kings. The patriots might easily have followed the example of Majorian, and carried off the chariot containing the bride: Rapit esseda victor, nubentemque nurum. The people sang, laughed, and talked, and the scene was extremely gay at night, lighted up by the fires gleaming on the ground, and the stars shining overhead.

When I was neither on guard at the batteries, nor on service in the tent, I was fond of supping at this fair; there all the camp stories were revived, the battles fought over again; but embellished by good cheer and merriment, their attraction was much increased.

One of our comrades, a brevet-captain, was celebrated for his faculty of story-telling; I have forgotten his real name, as we gave him that of Dinarzade, and always called him by it; it

should have been Scheherazade, but we were not so particular. As soon as we caught sight of him we ran to him, and disputed him among ourselves; it was a contest who should get him into their mess. Dinarzade was a short man, with long legs, a fallen-in face, gloomy moustachios, eyes whose pupils had a decided preference for the outward angle, a hollow voice, a large sword with a light brown scabbard, and the air of a military poet; a serious and solemn joker, who never laughed at any thing, and at whom one could not look without laughing. He was a witness to all the duels, and the lover of all the ladies at the counters. He took every thing he said in a tragic light, and only interrupted his narrative to drink with the same air from a bottle, to re-kindle his pipe, or to swallow a sausage.

One night, when a small fine rain was falling, we formed ourselves into a circle near the tap of a cask, which leaned over towards us on a cart, whose shafts were in the air. A candle fastened to the cask lighted us, and a piece of coarse cloth, stretched from the shafts of the cart to two posts, served us as a roof. Dinarzade, with his sword awry, in the fashion of Frederick II., standing between the wheel of the cart and the side of a horse, related a story to our great satisfaction. The vivandières, who brought us our allowance, remained to listen to our Arab, and the attentive group of Bacchantes and Silenuses who formed the chorus, accompanied the narrative with marks of surprise, approbation, or disapproval.

"Gentlemen," said the orator, "You all knew the Green Knight, who lived in the time of King John?"

"Yes, yes," replied the chorus. Dinarzade gulped down a rolled pancake and burned himself.

"This Green Knight, gentlemen, was, as you must know, since you have seen him, extremely handsome; when the wind blew back his red hair over his helmet, it looked like a wreath of hemp round a green turban."

"Bravo!" cried the chorus.

"One evening in May, he blew his horn at the drawbridge of a castle in Picardy, or Auvergne, no matter which. In this castle lived la Dame des grandes compagnies. She received the knight well; the attendants removed his armour and conducted him to the bath: the lady then sat down with him to a magnificent repast; but she ate nothing, and the attendants were dumb."

"Oh! oh!" groaned the chorus.

"The lady, gentlemen, was tall, thin, and ungainly, like the major's wife; but she had a great deal of expression and a coquettish air. When she laughed and showed her long teeth below her short nose, it was so enchanting that one would not know what he was about. Well, the lady fell in love with the knight, and the knight with the lady, although he was afraid of her."

Dinarzade here emptied the ashes of his pipe on the wheel, and was about to replenish it, but the company, eager for the story, obliged him to go on.

"The Green Knight, quite in a desperate state, resolved to quit the castle; but before his departure he demanded an explanation of several very strange things from the lady, and made her a formal offer of marriage, providing she was not a

sorceress.

Dinarzade's rapier was planted straight and stiff between his knees; seated below him and leaning forward, we made a kind of circle of sparks round him with our pipes, resembling the ring of Saturn. Suddenly he cried out, as if beside himself, "Now, gentlemen, this Dame des grandes compagnies was Death!"

And the captain, breaking the ranks and crying, "Death! death!" put the vivandières to flight. The sitting was closed; the applause was loud and the laughter prolonged.

We returned to our posts nearer Thionville, to the sound of its cannon.

London, April to September, 1822.

A NIGHT BY THE TRENCH-DUTCH DOG-RECOLLECTION OF THE MARTYRS-MY COMPANIONS AT THE OUTPOSTS-EUDORUS-ULYSSES.

THE siege continued, or rather there was no siege, for we did not open the trenches, and we had not troops enough regularly to invest the place. Intelligence from other quarters was reckoned upon, and news was expected of the success of the Prussian army, or of that of Clairfayt, with which was the Duke of Bourbon's French corps. Our small resources were becoming exhausted, and Paris seemed to grow more distant. The bad weather was unceasing; we were insulated in the midst

of our labours. I awoke sometimes in a ditch, with water up to my neck; and next day I was unable to do any thing.

We

Among my fellow-countrymen who were in the army was Ferron de la Sigonière, my old class-fellow at Dinan. slept in the same tent, and were by no means comfortable; our heads, getting beyond the canvas, received the rain from the tent as from a sort of spout; I got up and went with Ferron to walk by the trench in front of the encampment; for all our nights were not as merry as those spent in the company of Dinarzade. We walked in silence, listening to the voices of the sentinels, and watching the lights in the streets of tents, as we had formerly watched the lamps in our corridors at college. We talked of the past and of the future, of the faults which had been and would be committed; we deplored the blindness of the princes, who thought to return to their country with a handful of followers, and fix the crown on their brother's head by the arm of the foreigner. I remember having said to my comrade in one of these conversations, that France was following the example of England, that the king would perish on the scaffold, and that probably our attempt on Thionville would be made one of the principal heads of accusation against Louis XVI.

Ferron was struck with my prediction; it was the first I had ever made; since that time I have made many, as true and as unheeded; when the evil arrived others took shelter and left me to struggle with the misfortune I had foreseen. When the Dutch are caught in a gale of wind out at sea, they retire into the hold of the ship, close the hatches, and drink punch, leaving a dog on deck to bark at the tempest; the danger passed, they send back Fidèle to his berth in the hold, and the captain comes up to enjoy the fine weather on the poop. I was the Dutch dog in the vessel of Legitimacy.

The recollections of my military life are graven in my memory; I have traced them in the sixth book of the Martyrs.

An Armorican barbarian in the camp of the princes, I carried Homer with my sword; I preferred my country, the poor little island of Aaron, to the hundred cities of Crete. I said with Telemachus, "The barren country which supports only goats is pleasanter to me than those which rear horses." My words would have made the candid Menelaus, agathos Menelaos, laugh.

London, from April to September, 1822.

PASSAGE OF THE MOSELLE-ENGAGEMENT-LIBBA, THE DEAF AND DUMB GIRL-ATTACK UPON THIONVILLE.

A REPORT at length gained ground that an action was about to be fought; the Prince of Waldeck was to try an assault, whilst we, having crossed the river, should make a diversion by a false attack on the place from the French side. The party ordered on this service consisted of five Breton companies, mine included, the company of the officers of Picardy and Navarre, and the regiment of volunteers, composed of young peasants from Lorraine, and deserters from different regiments. This force was to be supported by the Royal Germans, some squadrons of musketeers, and various corps of dragoons, which were to cover our left. My brother was in this cavalry division, with the Baron de Montboissier, who had married a daughter of M. de Malesherbes, a sister of Madame de Rosambo, and consequently my sister-in-law's aunt. We escorted three companies of Austrian artillery with very heavy guns and a battery of three mortars.

Orders were given to march at six o'clock in the evening; at ten the troops crossed the Moselle, above Thionville, by means of copper pontoons :

"Amoena fluenta

Subter labentis tacito rumore Mosellæ."

(Ausonius.)

At break of day we were in order of battle on the left bank; the heavy cavalry were placed on the wings, and the light cavalry in front. On our second movement we formed in columns and began to file off.

About nine o'clock we heard the sound of firing to the left. An officer of carbineers, at full speed, came to inform us that a detachment of Kellermann's army was close at hand, and that the action had already commenced between the respective parties of light infantry. The officer's horse had been struck by a bullet in the forehead; he reared and dashed out the foam from his mouth and blood from his nostrils: this carbineer, sword in hand, upon a wounded horse, was a grand sight. The troops,