He Started Out At Ten A.M. By
Being An Officer Of Volunteers In The Franco-Prussian War; But
Every Time He Slipped Away And Took A Nip Out Of His Private
Bottle, Which Was Often, He Advanced In Rank Automatically.
Before
the dusk of evening came he was a corps commander, who had been
ennobled on the field of battle by the hand of Napoleon the Third.
He took us to Versailles. We did not particularly care to go to
Versailles that day, because it was raining; but he insisted and
we went. In spite of the drizzle we might have enjoyed that
wonderful place had he not been constantly at our elbows, gabbling
away steadily except when he excused himself for a moment and
stepped behind a tree, to emerge a moment later wiping his mouth
on his sleeve. Then he would return to us, with an added gimpiness
in his elderly legs, an increased expansion of the chest inside
his tight and shiny frock coat, and a fresh freight of richness
on his breath, to report another deserved promotion.
After he had eaten luncheon - all except such portions of it as he
spilled on himself - the colonel grew confidential and chummy. He
tried to tell me an off-color story and forgot the point of it,
if indeed it had any point. He began humming the Marseillaise
hymn, but broke off to say he expected to live to see the day when
a column of French troops, singing that air, would march up Unter
den Linden to stack their arms in the halls of the Kaiser's palace.
I did not take issue with him.
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