not know you. Here is my brother--you can know him; this is the way
to me--follow it."

CHAPTER II

A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS

I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that
discharged our visitors into the street. Our little market was no sooner
closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and received our
rations, which we were then allowed to eat according to fancy in any
part of our quarters.

I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably
offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed--as the sightseers
at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning
it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no
doubt but some of my compatriots were susceptible beyond reason. Some of
these old whiskerandos, originally peasants, trained since boyhood in
victorious armies, and accustomed to move among subject and trembling
populations, could ill brook their change of circumstance. There was one
man of the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed
no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had risen
by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was otherwise
unfitted--that of _marechal des logis_ in the 22nd of the line. In so
far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good soldier; the Cross
was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in all things outside his
line of duty the man was no other than a brawling, bruising, ignorant
pillar of low pothouses. As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste
and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most
detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a
transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the
nearest victim, and too often on myself.

It was so now. Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just
withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near.
He wore an air of hateful mirth, a set of young fools, among whom he
passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I
was about to be the object of some of his insufferable pleasantries. He
took a place beside me, spread out his rations, drank to me derisively
from his measure of prison beer, and began. What he said it would be
impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed their wit to have
surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel. For my part, I
thought at