wn way of managing.

We officers, however, lived in a separate wing, and a very singular
group of people we were. They had left us our uniforms, so that there
was hardly a corps which had served under Victor, or Massena, or Ney,
which was not represented there, and some had been there from the time
when Junot was beaten at Vimiera. We had chasseurs in their green
tunics, and hussars, like myself, and blue-coated dragoons, and
white-fronted lancers, and voltigeurs, and grenadiers, and the men of
the artillery and engineers. But the greater part were naval officers,
for the English had had the better of us upon the seas. I could never
understand this until I journeyed myself from Oporto to Plymouth, when
I lay for seven days upon my back, and could not have stirred had I seen
the eagle of the regiment carried off before my eyes. It was in
perfidious weather like this that Nelson took advantage of us.

I had no sooner got into Dartmoor than I began to plan to get out again,
and you can readily believe that, with wits sharpened by twelve years of
warfare, it was not very long before I saw my way.

You must know, in the first place, that I had a very great advantage in
having some knowledge of the English language. I learned it during the
months that I spent before Danzig, from Adjutant Obriant, of the
Regiment Irlandais, who was sprung from the ancient kings of the
country. I was quickly able to speak it with some facility, for I do not
take long to master anything to which I set my mind. In three months I
could not only express my meaning, but I could use the idioms of the
people. It was Obriant who taught me to say 'Be jabers,' just as we
might say 'Ma foi'; and also 'The curse of Crummle!' which means 'Ventre
bleu!' Many a time I have seen the English smile with pleasure when they
have heard me speak so much like one of themselves.

We officers were put two in a cell, which was very little to my taste,
for my room-mate was a tall, silent man named Beaumont, of the Flying
Artillery, who had been taken by the English cavalry at Astorga.

It is seldom I meet a man of whom I cannot make a friend, for my
disposition and manners are--as you know them. But this fellow had never
a smile for my jests, nor an ear for my sorrows, but would sit looking
at me with his sullen eyes, until sometimes I thought that his two years
of captivity had driven him crazy. Ah, how I longed that old Bouvet, or
any of my comrades of the hussars,