John Bull, Junior: or, French as She is Traduced

We took a small appartement de garçon at Versailles, and I shall never forget the delightful evenings we spent together while in garrison there. He was a splendid violinist, and I was a little of a pianist.

Short, fair, and almost beardless, Gajeski was called the "Petit Lieutenant" by the soldiers, who all idolized him.

At the battle of Wörth, after holding our ground from nine in the morning till five in the evening, against masses of Prussian troops six times as numerous as our own, we were ordered to charge the enemy, with some other cavalry regiments, in order to protect the retreat of the bulk of the army.

A glance at the hill opposite convinced us that we were ordered to go to certain death.

My dear friend grasped my hand, as he said with a sad smile: "We shall be lucky if we get our bones out of this, old fellow."

Down the hill we went like the wind, through a shower of bullets and mitraille. Two minutes later, about two-thirds of the regiment reached the opposite ascent. We were immediately engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight. A scene of hellish confusion it was. But there, amidst the awful din of battle, I heard Gajeski's death-cry, as he fell from his horse three or four yards from me, and I saw a horrible gash on his fair young head.

The poor boy had paid France for the hospitality she had extended to his father.

I fought like a madman, seeing nothing but that dear mutilated face before my eyes. I say "like a madman," for it was not through courage or bravery. In a mêlée you fight like a madman – like a savage.

I had no brother, but he had been more than a brother to me. I had had no other companion or friend, but he was a friend of a thousand.

Poor fellow!

I had been in captivity in a stronghold on the Rhine for five months, when the preliminaries of peace were signed between France and Germany in January, 1871, and the French prisoners were sent back to their country.

About five hundred of us were embarked at Hamburg on board one of the steamers of the Compagnie Transatlantique, and landed at Cherbourg.

Finding myself near home, I immediately asked the general in command of the district for a few days' leave, to go and see my mother.

Since the day I had been taken prisoner at Sedan (2d of September, 1870), I had not received a single letter from her, as communications were cut off between the east and the west of France; and I learned later on that she had not received any of the numerous letters I had written to her from Germany.

This part of Normandy had been fortunate enough to escape the horrors of war, but, for months, the inhabitants had had to lodge soldiers and militia-men.

At five o'clock on a cold February morning, clothed, or rather covered, in my dirty, half-ragged uniform, I rang the bell at my mother's house.

Our old servant appeared at the attic window, and inquired what I wanted.

"Open the door," I cried; "I am dying of cold."

"We can't lodge you here," she replied; "we have as many soldiers as we can accommodate – there is no room for you. Go to the Town Hall, they will tell you we are full."

"Sapristi, my good Fanchette," I shouted, "don't you know me? How is mother?"

"Ah! It is Monsieur!" she screamed. And she rushed down, filling the house with her cries: "Madame, madame, it is Monsieur; yes, I have seen him, he has spoken to me, it is Monsieur."

A minute after I was in my mother's arms.

Was it a dream?

She looked at me wildly, touching my head to make sure I was at her side, in reality, alive; when she realized the truth she burst into tears, and remained speechless for some time. Such scenes are more easily imagined than described, and I would rather leave it to the reader to supply all the exclamations and interrogations that followed.

I could only spend two days at home, as my regiment was being organized in Paris, and I had to join it.

On the 18th of March, 1871, the people of Paris, in possession of all the armament that had been placed in their hands to defend the French capital against the Prussians, proclaimed the Commune, and, probably out of a habit just lately got into by the French army, we retreated to Versailles, leaving Paris at the mercy of the Revolutionists.

This is not the place to account for this revolution.

An explanation of it, which always struck me as somewhat forcible, is the one given by a Communist prisoner to a captain, a friend of mine, who was at the time acting as juge d'instruction to one of the Versailles courts-martial.

"Why did you join the Commune?" he asked a young and intelligent-looking fellow who had been taken prisoner behind some barricade.

"Well, captain, I can hardly tell you. We were very excited in Paris; in fact, off our heads with rage at having been unable to save Paris. We had a considerable number of cannon and ammunition, which we were not allowed to use against the Prussians. We felt like a sportsman who, after a whole day's wandering through the country, has not had an opportunity of discharging his gun at any game, and who, out of spite, shoots his dog, just to be able to say on returning home that he had killed something."

On the 14th of April, 1871, my regiment received the order to attack the Neuilly bridge, a formidable position held by the Communists.

What the Prussians had not done some compatriot of mine succeeded in doing. I fell severely wounded.

After my spending five months in the Versailles military hospital, and three more at home in convalescence, the army surgeons declared that I should no longer be able to use my right arm for military purposes, and I was granted a lieutenant's pension, which would have been just sufficient to keep me in segars if I had been a smoker.

But of this I do not complain. Poor France! she had enough to pay!

At the end of the year of grace, 1871, my position was very much like that of my beloved country: all seemed lost, fors l'honneur.

Through my friends, however, I was soon offered a choice between two "social positions."

The first was a colonel's commission in the Egyptian army (it seemed that the state of my right arm was no objection).

I was to draw a very good salary. My friends in Cairo, however, warned me that salaries were not always paid very regularly, but sometimes allowed to run on till cash came into the Treasury. It was during the good times of Ismail Pacha. This made me a little suspicious that my salary might run on so fast that I should not be able to catch it.

The other post offered me was that of London correspondent to an important Parisian newspaper.

I had had enough of military "glory" by this time. Yet the prospect of an adventurous life is always more or less fascinating at twenty-three years of age.

Being the only child of a good widowed mother, I thought I would take her valuable advice on the subject.

I am fortunate in having a mother full of common sense. With her French provincial ideas, she was rather startled to hear that a disabled lieutenant could all at once become an active colonel. She thought that somehow the promotion was too rapid.

Alas! she, too, had had enough of military "glory."

Her advice was to be followed, for it was formulated thus: "You speak English pretty well; we have a good many friends in England; accept the humbler offer, and go to England to earn an honest living."

This is how I was not with Arabi Pacha on the wrong side at Tel-el-Kebir, and how it became my lot to make one day the acquaintance of the British school-boy of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by.

On the 8th of July, 1872, I took the London train at the Gare du Nord, Paris.

Many relations and friends came to the station to see me off. Some had been in England, some had read books on England, but all seemed to know a great deal about it. Advice, cautions, suggestions, were poured into my ears.

"Be sure you go and see Madame Tussaud's to-morrow," said one.

"Now," said another, "when you get to Charing Cross, don't fail to try and catch hold of a fellow-passenger's coat, and hold fast till you get to your hotel. The fog is so thick in the evening that the lamp-lights are of no use, you know."

All information is valuable when you start for a foreign country. But I could not listen to more. Time was up.