While he spoke, he looked inquiringly from the arbour in which they conversed, and his eyes seemed to rest on a man with a wooden leg, wearing a cocked hat, with a sword by his side, who was slowly ascending the lower slopes of the garden. 66 "Who is this man?" Philip inquired: "he looks at us as if we were known to him. He seems to make signs to us." "He does," replied Monsieur Le Blanc. You have met some of your school-fellows in Boulogne, and I have most unexpectedly stumbled on one of mine. Louis Fitz-James, who has fixed your attention, is an old soldier, a sergeant; and, as you dream of nothing but war and victory, I have asked him to attend and recount, for your entertainment, some of the scenes in which he has acted a part." By this time the sergeant had joined them. "I ought," said Monsieur Le Blanc, "to have come down to you, instead of allowing you to climb up to me." "A soldier must not complain of a fatiguing march," was the veteran's answer; "but I should not be sorry if I had another leg to perform it with." Invited by Monsieur Le Blanc, he took his seat between the father and son. Friendly greetings were exchanged, and Fitz-James wanted little pressing to enter on that narrative which the senior Le Blanc wished his son to hear. With brief preface, the veteran commenced his story. "My father was a respectable tradesman at Abbeville; and when I was a boy, he brought me to see the camp at Boulogne. The great Napoleon was then about to invade England; and I only lamented that I was too young to enter the ranks with those who expected shortly to be quartered |