h it."

--(Shrugging her shoulders) "and that at the battle of
Rapata--Ratapa--or Patara--I can't remember exactly what, but it was a
frightful battle--where the Arabs bit the dust--That's it, word for
word, as papa read it aloud the other day out of the paper."

"Why did they bite the dust?"

"Why, because they were so angry. You know when you are in a
passion--Well, in this battle the colonel received a cannon-ball or
bullet--I don't remember which--in his left shoulder, and they could not
extract it, so he returned to France very ill."

"How terrible those battles must be!"

"It is the day after a battle that is terrible. Just think of it! They
found this poor colonel under a mountain of dead men at the very moment
the wild beasts were going to devour him like the missionary in the
_Propagation of the Faith_. Being swallowed by a crocodile is indeed
terrible."

"That's nothing. When you think you have before you a man with an iron
machine in his shoulder that you could hardly lift, you can't help
shivering. Oh, it's fine to be a soldier: in fact, you may call it the
noblest profession. To begin with, every one respects them, and their
life is full of triumph."

"Yes, in time of war, but in time of peace--in time of peace--well, they
talk over the way they got their wounds, and the band plays while they
are at dinner. It seems the colonel can have the band play whenever he
wants to."

"Naturally, since it's his band."

"Well, all that is very nice, and besides that you make calls on the
wife of the prefect, the receiver-general and the bishop."

"On the bishop's wife? What are you talking about? Ha! ha!" (She takes
off her gloves and begins to bite her nails.)

"I did not say the bishop's wife: you are a naughty girl."

"Besides, it's only a general's wife who makes calls on the prefect's
wife, like that."

"I only began with the colonel: one soon gets to be general. Do you
suppose that Colonel C----, for instance, won't be a general soon?"

"As for me, I would rather marry a general at once."

"Yes, but a general does not get married in uniform."

"Why not, if you ask him to? That is something fine--a general at the
altar. There is nothing more imposing than the military at church. Their
gold epaulettes seem to go well with the organ. At the church of the
Carmelites there are always one or two officers, but they are little
ones, and they do not have the same effect. You did not know I was at
the