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Updated: May 1, 2025
Within a fortnight after his letter on this subject, the last echoes of the French drum-beat and bugle-blast had died away. The red trousers of the Emperor's servants were numbered among Rome's mighty list of things vanished. In the Eternal City itself, Carleton attended mass at St. Peter's, and then re-read and retold the story of both the Roman and the Holy Roman Empire.
In the midst of this, a part broke off and took up, discordantly, the refrain, "Polly, put the kettle on, we'll all have tea;" others complicated the confusion further with, "Cruel, cruel Polly Hopkins, treat me so, oh, treat me so!" till they fell, at last, into an indistinguishable jumble and clamor, from which extricated themselves now and again and prevailed, the choruses of "Upidee," and "Bum-bum-bye," with an occasional drum-beat of emphasis given upon the door.
Not finding the sticks, which were kept by the drummer, they seized a piece of wood and began to beat. The first to respond to the drum-beat was the drummer, a tall man with but one eye, but a frightfully sleepy one for all that. "Who dares to beat the drum?" he shouted. "Hold your tongue! take your sticks, and beat when you are ordered!" replied the drunken men.
He was stone dead, a bullet having pierced his heart, not leaving the least sign of the twitching of a muscle to tell of the shock he had received. He had fought his last battle, fired his last gun, and was now waiting for the last great drum-beat. A story is told at the expense of Major Stackhouse, afterwards the Colonel of the Eighth, during this battle.
These so-called strollers were, in fact, certain members of the English colony in Toulouse, and their performances were among the first of those "amateur theatrical" entertainments which now-a-days may be said to rival the famous "morning drum-beat" of Daniel Webster's oration, in marking the ubiquity of British boredom, as the reveil does that of British power over all the terrestrial globe.
The chief burgomaster, sleeping heavily after Sir William's hospitable banquet, aroused himself at last, and sent a militia-captain to inquire the cause of the unseasonable drum-beat and monstrous proclamation. Day was breaking as the trusty captain made his way to the scene of action.
The distant but incessant rumbling of thunder was a chorussed growling of storm voices against a background of muffled drum-beat, and the girl said, a shade anxiously, "Gran'pap's goin' ter git drenched ter ther skin." While the inky pall spread and lowered until it held the visible world in a gray-green corrosion of gloom the stillness became more pulseless.
The chief burgomaster, sleeping heavily after Sir William's hospitable banquet, aroused himself at last, and sent a militia-captain to inquire the cause of the unseasonable drum-beat and monstrous proclamation. Day was breaking as the trusty captain made his way to the scene of action.
To my genuine annoyance, however, Dorn called the drummer to the front and insisted on his playing the accents with the prescribed sharpness. When, after the rehearsal, I told the musical director of my misgivings about this important fact, I could not get him to promise a milder interpretation of the fatal drum-beat; he stuck to it that the thing would sound very well as it was.
As this drum-beat stood out alone, the drummer, who continually thought he was making a mistake, got confused, and did not give the right sharpness to the accent as prescribed by the score. Listening from my hidden corner, and frightened at my original intention, this accidentally different rendering did not displease me.
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