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The English assailed him, burning to slay or to take him; but he resisted them so wondrously, that he brought down five much wounded to the ground, and the other seven took to flight. Big Ferre, returning in triumph to his bed, and heated again by the blows he had dealt, again drank cold water in abundance, and fell sick of a more violent fever.
I remembered she was none other than the Baroness de Ferre; and thinking of her and of the grateful feeling of the sheets of soft linen, I fell asleep. The doctor came that night, and took out of my back a piece of flattened lead. It had gone under the flesh, quite half round my body, next to the ribs, without doing worse than to rake the bone here and there and weaken me with a loss of blood.
It is your first duty to ask yourself, quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent? we cannot all be brilliant men in this life. And it is for your interest to be contented rather with a humble station well filled, than to shock every body with failures, the more conspicuous by contrast with the ostentation of their promises."
He had for servant, and held as with bit and bridle, a certain peasant of lofty stature, marvellous bodily strength, and equal boldness, who had joined to these advantages an extreme modesty: he was called Big Ferre. These folks settled themselves at this point to the number of about two hundred men, all tillers of the soil, and getting a poor livelihood by the labor of their hands.
But as the flames caught the great wooden porch of the Prefecture, the screams of the women were heart-rending; They even disturbed Ferré, who sent orders "to stop their squalling." One warder, Braquond, ventured to remonstrate. "Bah!" said Ferré, "they are only women belonging to gendarmes and sergents de ville; we shall be well rid of them."
A week after his arrival he was surprised by being told that an officer wished to see him, and a minute later Major Ferre entered the apartment. "I only arrived an hour ago," he said, "and learned that you were prisoner here. Who would have thought when we parted last, and you gave me my liberty, that on my arrival here I should find that you had already been a week a prisoner?
Nunc autem visum est mihi de senectute aliquid ad te conscribere. 2 Hoc enim onere, quod mihi commune tecum est, aut iam urgentis aut certe adventantis senectutis et te et me ipsum levari volo: etsi te quidem id modice ac sapienter, sicut omnia, et ferre et laturum esse certo scio.
The English, hearing that Big Ferre was sick, rejoiced greatly, and for fear he should get well they sent privily, round about the place where he was lodged, twelve of their men bidden to try and rid them of him.
Grevenkop to do it for me; but that letter was directed to Berlin. My pain is now much abated, though I have still some fine remains of it in my shoulder, where I fear it will tease me a great while. I must be careful to take Horace's advice, and consider well, 'Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent'.
There is probably some exaggeration about the exploits of Big Ferre and the number of his victims. The story just quoted is not, however, a legend; authentic and simple, it has all the characteristics of a real and true fact, just as it was picked up, partly from eye-witnesses and partly from hearsay, by the contemporary narrator.
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