Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor
hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after
night round the streets of every garrison town in Europe. And up the
heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag
a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also
must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades,
batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.

Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this
trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in life,
and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this
state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin
reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a
man's heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses
which we, in our big way of talking nickname Heroism:--is there not
something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's persecutors? Of
old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale, and I must
endure; but now that I am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely
audible in country lanes have become stirring music in front of the
brigade; and for every blow that you lay on my old great-coat you will
see a comrade stumble and fall.

Not long after the drums had passed the _cafe_ the _Cigarette_ and the
_Arethusa_ began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was
only a door or two away. But although we had been somewhat indifferent
to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us. All day, we
learned, people had been running out between the squalls to visit our
two boats. Hundreds of persons, so said report, although it fitted ill
with our idea of the town--hundreds of persons had inspected them where
they lay in a coal-shed. We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had
been only pedlars the night before in Pont.

And now, when we left the _cafe_, we were pursued and overtaken at
the hotel door by no less a person than the _Juge de Paix:_ a
functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots
Sheriff-Substitute. He gave us his card and invited us to sup with
him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do
these things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he; and
although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place,
we must have been churlish fellows