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“Know this, nephew,” he finished by saying, “our Florentine ancestors well deserved their name. They were ever of the bon parti, and steadfast defenders of Mother Church.”

At these words, which the old fellow had uttered in a high, clear voice, the General, who so far had been scarcely listening, gathered his wandering wits together, and raising his pale, thin face, with its classically moulded features, threw a piercing look at his interlocutor, which closed his lips instantly.

“Nay! uncle,” he cried, “let us have done with these follies! the rats of your garret are very welcome to these moth-eaten parchments for me.”

Then he added in a voice of brass:

“The only nobility I vaunt is in my deeds. It dates from the 13th Vendémiaire of Year IV, the day I swept the Royalist Sections with cannon-shot from the steps of St. Roch. Come, let us drink to the Republic! ‘Tis the arrow of Evander, which falls not to earth again, and is transformed into a star!”

The officers answered the appeal with a shout of enthusiasm. It was a moment when Berthier himself felt a Republican’s and a Patriot’s fire.

Junot exclaimed: “Napoleon had no need for ancestors; ’twas enough for him his soldiers had acclaimed him Corporal at the Bridge of Lodi.”

The wines had the dry smack of gunflint and the bouquet of powder, and the company imbibed freely. Lieutenant Thézard was soon in a condition that rendered him incapable of concealing his sentiments. Proud of the wounds and the kisses of women he had enjoyed in lavish abundance in this campaign, at once so heroic and so gallant and gay, he informed the Canon without more ado, that following in the steps of Bonaparte, the French were going to march round the world, upsetting Thrones and Altars in every land, giving the girls bastards and ripping up the bellies of all fanatics.

The old Priest only went on smiling, and replied he was willing enough to sacrifice to their noble rage, not indeed the pretty girls, whom he besought them rather to treat cannily, but the Fanatics, the chiefest foes, he said, of Holy Church.

Junot promised him to deal leniently with the Nuns; he could heartily commend some of them, having found them to possess tender hearts and the whitest of skins.

Orderly Officer Chauvet maintained we should take account of the influence exercised by the cloistered life on the complexion of young women; you see, he was a student of natural philosophy.

“Between Genoa and Milan,” he went on, “we tasted largely of this sort of forbidden fruit. One may profess to be without prejudices; still, a pretty bosom does look prettier half hid by the Veil. I set no value on religious vows, yet I am free to confess I attach a very special value to a fine leg if it belongs to a Nun. Strange contradictions of the human heart!”

“Fie! fie!” put in Berthier; “what pleasure can you find in upsetting the wits and troubling the senses of these unhappy victims of fanaticism? What! are there no women of condition in Italy, to whom you could offer your vows at fêtes, under the Venetian cloak that favours little intrigues so admirably? Is it nothing that Pietra Grua Mariani, Madame Lambert, Signora Monti, Signora Gherardi of Brescia, are fair and gallant dames?”

As he ran over the names of these Italian toasts, he was thinking of the Princess Visconti. This great lady, finding herself unable to enthral Bonaparte, had given herself to his Chief of the Staff, whom she loved with a fire of wantonness and a refined sensuality which left their mark on the weak-kneed Berthier for the rest of his days.

“For my own part,” interrupted Lieutenant Thézard, “I shall never forget a little water-melon seller on the steps of the Duomo, who….”

The General rose from his chair with a gesture of impatience. A bare three hours was left them for sleep, as they were to start at dawn.