United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I was not erased until November 1797, upon the reiterated solicitations of General Bonaparte. It was during my absence from France that Bonaparte, in the rank of 'chef de bataillon', performed his first campaign, and contributed so materially to the recapture of Toulon. Of this period of his life I have no personal knowledge, and therefore I shall not speak of it as an eye-witness.
Be that as it may, he was perfectly satisfied with M. Bernard's information respecting Elyria; and when the chef de bataillon had finished speaking Napoleon said, "Colonel Bernard, I am now acquainted with Ragusa."
Cruelty, heroism, vanity, and bravery were all on fire, and all fed to their uttermost, most eager, most ardent flame, now that she came back at the head of her Spahis; while all who remained of the soldiers who, but for her, would have been massacred long ere then, without one spared among them, threw themselves forward, crowded round her, caressed, and laughed, and wept, and shouted with all the changes of their intense mercurial temperaments; kissed her boots, her sash, her mare's drooping neck, and, lifting her, with wild vivas that rent the sky, on to the shoulders of the two tallest men among them, bore her to the presence of the only officer of high rank who had survived the terrors of the day, a Chef de Bataillon of the Zouaves.
The gate was immediately opened, and Lieutenant Roche, accompanied by M. Leseur, chef de bataillon, bearing a flag of truce, followed the commandant to the Pavillon de l'Horloge, where stood the Duke of Nemours, pale with excitement, surrounded by generals. "Monseigneur," said the commandant, "suffer me to present a deputation from the people."
This was about a hundred yards; and then, after halting them for a moment, the Emperor cried, 'Allez, mes enfants! nous ne sommes pas tous perdus! sending the fourth bataillon close upon their heels.
After making my way up a staircase crowded with recruits, who were mostly muscular women from five-and-twenty to forty years of age, the older ones sometimes being unduly stout, and not one of them, in my youthful opinion, at all good-looking, I managed to squeeze my way into the private office of the projector of the Legion, or, as he called himself, its "Provisional Chef de Bataillon."
He then sent for General Dejean, who had succeeded M. de Marescot as first inspector of the Engineers. "Have you any one among your officers," he asked, "who is well acquainted with Ragusa?" Dejean, after a little reflection, replied, "Sire, there is a chef de bataillon who has been a long time forgotten, but who knows Elyria perfectly." "What's his name?" "Bernard." "Ah! stop . . . Bernard!
"The young man who, by his decorations, seems a chef de bataillon of the Spahis," replied Debray, "I cannot make out. But, be he whom he may, he is effectually disguised from his most intimate friends by his luxuriant beard and moustache. As for the lady there is but one woman in the world I have ever had the good fortune to behold who could be mistaken for her." "And that is?" said Beauchamp.
The recent discovery of M. Bataillon is this, viz. that you can make the frog's egg develop in a perfectly regular way and become a tadpole and then a young frog without the admission to it of a sperm-filament or of any substance derived from the male frog. The slight artificial puncture acts as does the natural puncture by the swimming sperm-filament, and is sufficient!
Be that as it may, he was perfectly satisfied with M. Bernard's information respecting Elyria; and when the chef de bataillon had finished speaking Napoleon said, "Colonel Bernard, I am now acquainted with Ragusa."
Word Of The Day