f the
Fifty-first Demi-brigade of the Army of Italy who is commemorated on the
frieze of the Pantheon, and who is known and honoured as the "Tambour
d'Arcole" all over France. It was delightful to listen to old Jan's
telling of the brave story: how this Andre, their own kinsman, swam the
stream under the enemy's fire at Arcolo with his drum on his back and
then drummed his fellow-soldiers on to victory; how the First Consul
awarded him the drum-sticks of honour, and later--when the Legion of
Honour was founded--gave him the cross; how they carved him in stone,
drumming the charge, up there on the front of the Pantheon in Paris
itself; how Mistral, the great poet of Provence, had made a poem about
him that had been printed in a book; and how, crowning glory, they had
set up his marble statue in Cadenet--the little town, not far from
Avignon, where he was born!

Old Jan was not content with merely telling this story--like a true
Provencal he acted it: swinging a supposititious drum upon his back,
jumping into an imaginary river and swimming it with his head in the
air, swinging his drum back into place again, and then--_Zou!_--starting
off at the head of the Fifty-first Demi-brigade with such a rousing play
of drum-sticks that I protest we fairly heard the rattle of them, along
with the spatter of Italian musketry in the face of which Andre Etienne
beat that gallant _pas-de-charge_!

It set me all a-thrilling; and still more did it thrill those other
listeners who were of the Arcolo hero's very blood and bone. They
clapped their hands and they shouted. They laughed with delight. And the
fighting spirit of Gaul was so stirred within them that at a word--the
relations between France and Italy being a little strained just then--I
verily believe they would have been for marching in a body across the
south-eastern frontier!

Elizo's old father was rather out of the running in this matter. It was
not by any relative of his that the drum-sticks of honour had been won;
and his thoughts, after wandering a little, evidently settled down upon
the strictly personal fact that his thin old legs were cold. Rising
slowly from the table, he carried his plate to the fire-place; and when
he had arranged some live coals in one of the baskets of the waist-high
andirons he rested the plate above them on the iron rim: and so stood
there, eating contentedly, while the warmth from the glowing yule-log
entered gratefully into his lean old body