just published a
very circumstantial account of that insignificant skirmish which cost
Lieutenant Winslow his life, and in which the French had taken a couple
of prisoners. "They" (the prisoners), suggested an able editor, "ought
to be brought to Paris and publicly exhibited as an example." "And, what
is more," said my friend who had read the paragraph to me, "he means
what he says. These are the descendants of a nation who prides herself
on having said at Fontenoy, 'Messieurs, les Anglais tirez les premiers,'
which, by-the-by, they did not say.[79] If you care to come with me,
I'll show you what would be the probable fate of such prisoners if the
writer of that paragraph had his will."

[Footnote 79: It was, in fact, an English officer who shouted,
"Messieurs des gardes francaises, tirez;" to which the French
replied, "Messieurs, nous ne tirons jamais les premiers; tirez
vous memes." But it was not politeness that dictated the reply;
it was the expression of the acknowledged and constantly
inculcated doctrine that all infantry troops which fired the
first were indubitably beaten. We find the doctrine clearly
stated in the infantry instructions of 1672, and subsequently
in the following order of Louis XIV. to his troops: "The
soldier shall be taught not to fire the first, and to stand the
fire of the enemy, seeing that an enemy who has fired is
assuredly beaten when his adversary has his powder left." At
the battle of Dettingen, consequently, two years before
Fontenoy, the theory had been carried _beyond_ the absurd by
expressly forbidding the Gardes to fire, though they were raked
down by the enemy's bullets. Maurice de Saxe makes it a point
to praise the wisdom of a colonel who, in order to prevent his
troops from firing, constantly made them shoulder their
muskets.--EDITOR.]

So said; so done. In about a quarter of an hour we were seated at the
Cafe de l'Horloge, in the Champs Elysees, and my friend was holding out
five francs fifty centimes in payment for two small glasses of so-called
"Fine Champagne," _plus_ the waiter's tip. The admission was gratis; and
the difference between those who went in and those who remained outside
was that the latter could hear the whole of the performance without
seeing it, and without disbursing a farthing; while