nce.

CHAPTER XIII.

HISTORY OF COLONEL FOUGAS, RELATED BY HIMSELF.

"Do not expect that I will ornament my story with those flowers, more
agreeable than substantial, which Imagination often uses to gloss over
truth. A Frenchman and a soldier, I doubly ignore deception. Friendship
interrogates me, Frankness shall answer.

"I was born of poor but honest parents at the beginning of the year
which the _Jeu de Paume_[5] brightened with an aurora of liberty. The
south was my native clime; the language dear to the troubadours was that
which I lisped in my cradle. My birth cost my mother's life. The author
of mine was the humble owner of a little farm, and moistened his bread
in the sweat of labor. My first sports were not those of wealth. The
many-colored pebbles which are found by the brooks, and that well-known
insect which childhood holds fluttering, free and captive at the same
time, at the end of a thread, stood me in stead of other playthings.

"An old minister at Devotion's altar, enfranchised from the shadowy
bondage of fanaticism, and reconciled to the new institutions of France,
was my Chiron and Mentor. He nourished me with the strong lion's marrow
of Rome and Athens; his lips distilled into my ears the embalmed honey
of wisdom. Honor to thee, learned and venerable man, who gavest me the
first precepts of wisdom and the first examples of virtue!

"But already that atmosphere of glory which the genius of one man and
the valor of a nation had set floating over the country, filled all my
senses, and made my young heart throb. France, on the edge of the
volcano of civil war, had collected all her forces into a thunderbolt to
launch upon Europe, and the world, astounded if not overwhelmed, was
shrinking from the surge of the unchained torrent. What man, what
Frenchman, could have heard with indifference that echo of victory
reverberating through millions of hearts?

"While scarcely leaving childhood, I felt that honor is more precious
than life. The warlike music of the drums brought to my eyes brave and
manly tears. 'And I, too,' said I, following the music of the regiments
through the streets of Toulouse, 'will pluck laurels though I sprinkle
them with my blood.' The pale olive of peace had from me nothing but
scorn. The peaceful triumphs of the law, the calm pleasures of commerce
and finance, were extolled in vain. To the toga of our Ciceros, to the
robe of our magistrates, to the curule chair of our l