United States or Eritrea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Another Frenchman who came from Montmartre found lying within a yard of him a Luxembourgeois whom he had known as his chasseur in a big hotel in Paris. The young German wept to see his old acquaintance. "It is stupid," he said, "this war. You and I were happy when we were good friends in Paris. Why should we have been made to fight with each other?"
It may be done once, but it could never be done twice running. An antelope makes a very small target at 600 yards distance; but, then, all these stories belong by right divine to the chasseur who travels to Africa for the sake only of sport.
The bustle which the arrival of this celebrated personage occasioned in the consular establishment was a diversion from the reserve, or the gloom, which had so long prevailed there. Lord Bohun was a young, agreeable, and somewhat affected individual. He had a German chasseur and a Greek page.
"My lord the marquis, say it say, 'And both are charming." "And both are charming," was spoken aloud by another voice. I turned, and saw the wily cat-like chasseur, prompting his master to make civil speeches. The ladies bowed with that kind of haughty acknowledgment which shows that compliments from such a source are distasteful.
"Yet for that day or two," continued the chasseur, "you will have the humiliation of begging your bread. What signifies seven years of honorable service to three days of mendicancy and distress? We are well cared for by the nation; we are respected over the world. It is a mean thing to be a soldier in other lands; here we are the gentlemen of France."
Her approach caused some uneasiness; for the clattering of a troop of horse, at dead of night, up the avenue of a lonely chateau, in those unsettled times, and in a troubled part of the country, was enough to occasion alarm. "A tall, broad-shouldered chasseur, armed to the teeth, galloped ahead, and announced the name of the visitor. All uneasiness was dispelled.
Victor!" she went on, calling to the chasseur without pausing for any reply, "stop at some place where they sell candy. Mr. Farquhar will get out and buy us some." Obediently to her order, we stopped at a confectioner's. I was directed to put my hand into the carriage-pocket, where I should find some "loose change," kept there for candy and the hurdy-gurdy boys.
It appeared that General Pierson had finally been attacked, on the question of his resistance to every endeavour to restore Wilfrid to his rank, by Count Lenkenstein, and had barely spoken the words that if Wilfrid came to Countess Lena of his own free-will, unprompted, to beg her forgiveness, he would help to reinstate him, when Wilfrid's name was brought up by the chasseur.
"That is bad," said the old General sententiously. "There are four people who should have no personal likes or dislikes; they are an innkeeper, a schoolmaster, a ship's skipper, and a military chief." With which axiom he called for some more vert-vert. Meanwhile, the Chasseur went his way through the cosmopolitan groups of the great square.
At that time the Khalifa and the Chasseur met in many a skirmish; hot, desperate struggles, where men fought horse to horse, hand to hand; midnight frays, when, in the heart of lonely ravines, Arab ambuscades fell on squadrons of French cavalry; terrible chases through the heat of torrid suns, when the glittering ranks of the charging troops swept down after the Bedouins' flight; fiery combats, when the desert sand and the smoke of musketry circled in clouds above the close-locked struggle, and the Leopard of France and the Lion of Sahara wrestled in a death-grip.
Word Of The Day