ws. My English, which had
brought me into that scrape, now helped me very materially to bear it. I
had a thousand advantages. I was often called to play the part of an
interpreter, whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in
relations, sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the
officers in charge. A young lieutenant singled me out to be his
adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and
would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars. The major of the
battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast, and was
sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal. Chevenix was
his name. He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as an Englishman, but
a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly upright man. Little did I
suppose that his ramrod body and frozen face would, in the end, step in
between me and all my dearest wishes; that upon this precise, regular,
icy soldier-man my fortunes should so nearly shipwreck! I never liked,
but yet I trusted him; and though it may seem but a trifle, I found his
snuff-box with the bean in it come very welcome.

For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back in
life; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after all the
next thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in the most
pitiful, childish interests, and a sugar-biscuit or a pinch of snuff
become things to follow after and scheme for!

We made but a poor show of prisoners. The officers had been all offered
their parole, and had taken it. They lived mostly in suburbs of the
city, lodging with modest families, and enjoyed their freedom and
supported the almost continual evil tidings of the Emperor as best they
might. It chanced I was the only gentleman among the privates who
remained. A great part were ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had
suffered heavily in Catalonia. The rest were mere diggers of the soil,
treaders of grapes, or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and
violently preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but the
one interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers
passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and
_articles of Paris_; and the prison was daily visited at certain hours
by a concourse of people of the country, come to exult over our
distress, or--it is more tolerant to suppose--their own vicarious
triumph. Some moved among us with a decency of shame