z_, and asked me what it meant. I replied by a loud neigh
like a horse. The rest of the party took the joke and laughed, as I
intended they should; but he, not understanding the cause of this, and
thinking that they were laughing at him, seized my nose and gave it a
tweak, which made me fancy he was pulling it off. In the impulse of the
moment I sprang on the table, and seizing his nasal promontory, hauled
away at it with hearty goodwill, and there we sat, he sending forth with
unsurpassable rapidity a torrent of "Sa-c-r-r-es," which almost
overwhelmed me; neither of us willing to be the first to let go. At
last, from sheer exhaustion and pain, we both of us fell back. I might
have boasted of the victory, for, though I felt acute pain, my nose did
not alter its shape, while the Frenchman's swelled up to twice its usual
proportions. The contest, however, very nearly put an end to our French
lessons. However, as our master was really a good-natured man, he was
soon pacified, and we set to work again as before.

CHAPTER TEN.

We made wonderful progress with our French, in spite of our want of
books. Indeed, I have reason to believe that information attained under
difficulties, is not only acquired more rapidly, but most certainly more
completely mastered, than with the aid of all the modern appliances of
education, which, like steam-engines at full speed, haul us so fast
along the royal road to knowledge, that we have no time to take in half
the freight prepared for us. We found, too, that the old colonel knew
considerably more about English than we had at first suspected, and at
last we ascertained that he had before been captured, and shut up in a
prison in England. He did not seem to have any pleasing recollections
of that period of his existence. One day, after we had annoyed him more
than usual with our pranks, and stirred up his bile, he gave vent to his
feelings--

"Ah, you betes Anglais," he exclaimed. "You have no sympathe vid des
miserables. Vous eat ros beef vous-memes, and vous starve vos
_prisonniers_."

He then went on gravely to assure us, that when the inspector of prisons
one day rode into the yard of the prison, and left his horse there while
he entered the building, the famished prisoners rushed out in a body and
surrounded the animal. Simultaneously they made a rush at the poor
beast, and stabbed it with their knives. In an instant it was skinned,
cut up, and carried off piecemeal