nto question, and with offensive words. I gave him his
choice of taking a hundred kicks in the stomach or having his ears cut
off. He chose the latter, and I sliced one of them off; he begged so
hard for the other one that I let it stay on his head.

The second time was with young Gaston Cheverny, who afterward became a
devoted adherent of my master--and whose strange story will be told in
these pages. I will say, however, it is pretty generally understood
when Babache, captain of Count Saxe's body-guard of Uhlans, sometimes
known as the Clear-the-way-boys, or the Storm-alongs, and also as the
Devil's Own, is in the neighborhood, that Count Saxe is the greatest
man that ever lived.

I am supposed to be a Tatar prince, by birth, that is; but in truth
the only claim I have to either the race or the title is, that I am
very ugly. God could have made an uglier man than I am, because He is
omnipotent, but I am sure He never did. I accept my ugliness. I can
say as the actor at the Theatre Francais said, when the audience
hissed him on account of his ugliness--it will be a great deal easier
for people to get used to my face than for me to change it.

As to my birthplace, I was born in the Marais, in the cursed town of
Paris, and my father was a notary in a small way. So was the father of
Monsieur Francois Marie Arouet, who now calls himself Voltaire--and
Count Saxe always swore I could write tragedies and national epics as
well as Arouet had I but tried. Especially, as I ever wrote, with the
greatest readiness imaginable, a much better hand than Arouet, or
Voltaire, or whatever his name is--we knew the fellow well in Paris.
But I never laid claim to more than what the English call mother-wit,
the Spanish call freckled grammar, and the French call, being born
with one's shirt on. It was, however, my readiness with the pen that
first won for me the highest fortune that could befall a man--the
patronage, the friendship and the affection of Maurice, Count of
Saxe.

I did not turn my hand to writing for money, and paying my court to
the great, as Arouet did; but being left penniless and an orphan at
fourteen, and his Majesty's recruiting officers coming after me, I
went to serve as a foot soldier in Flanders. I carried a musket for
twelve years. Of those years I like neither to speak nor to think. At
the end of that time came what I supposed would be the end of Babache:
standing up before a file of soldiers, to be shot down and