e.

Junot exclaimed: "Napoleon had no need for ancestors; 'twas enough for
him his soldiers had acclaimed him Corporal at the Bridge of Lodi."

The wines had the dry smack of gunflint and the bouquet of powder, and
the company imbibed freely. Lieutenant Thezard was soon in a condition
that rendered him incapable of concealing his sentiments. Proud of the
wounds and the kisses of women he had enjoyed in lavish abundance in
this campaign, at once so heroic and so gallant and gay, he informed the
Canon without more ado, that following in the steps of Bonaparte, the
French were going to march round the world, upsetting Thrones and Altars
in every land, giving the girls bastards and ripping up the bellies of
all fanatics.

The old Priest only went on smiling, and replied he was willing enough
to sacrifice to their noble rage, not indeed the pretty girls, whom he
besought them rather to treat cannily, but the Fanatics, the chiefest
foes, he said, of Holy Church.

Junot promised him to deal leniently with the Nuns; he could heartily
commend some of them, having found them to possess tender hearts and the
whitest of skins.

Orderly Officer Chauvet maintained we should take account of the
influence exercised by the cloistered life on the complexion of young
women; you see, he was a student of natural philosophy.

"Between Genoa and Milan," he went on, "we tasted largely of this sort
of forbidden fruit. One may profess to be without prejudices; still, a
pretty bosom does look prettier half hid by the Veil. I set no value on
religious vows, yet I am free to confess I attach a very special value
to a fine leg if it belongs to a Nun. Strange contradictions of the
human heart!"

"Fie! fie!" put in Berthier; "what pleasure can you find in upsetting
the wits and troubling the senses of these unhappy victims of
fanaticism? What! are there no women of condition in Italy, to whom you
could offer your vows at fetes, under the Venetian cloak that favours
little intrigues so admirably? Is it nothing that Pietra Grua Mariani,
Madame Lambert, Signora Monti, Signora Gherardi of Brescia, are fair and
gallant dames?"

As he ran over the names of these Italian toasts, he was thinking of the
Princess Visconti. This great lady, finding herself unable to enthral
Bonaparte, had given herself to his Chief of the Staff, whom she loved
with a fire of wantonness and a refined sensuality which left their mark
on the weak-kneed Berthier for the re