All eyes were fixed on me; I particularly noticed Augustine; she looked more serious than I had ever seen her; she did not shed a tear or yet smile during the whole narrative of her young French lover; but I could plainly perceive by the heaving of her bosom, she was more deeply affected than the rest. He extolled me to the skies, but he knew not the interest he was exciting in favour of an unknown rival. The French I have observed to be a people fond of glory and sentiment, and a story of la Gloire et l’Amour will always excite their admiration. He then related to me the cruelty he had received from the Portuguese soldiers who conducted him with the remainder of the garrison of Badajoz on their march to Lisbon, where he was put on board a ship and conveyed to England. After Bonaparte had been conducted to Elba, he with some thousand other prisoners, returned to his native home. He took no part, he said, in the battle of Waterloo. After dinner I and my old companion parted, having both enjoyed mutual good cheer. The attention of Augustine after this accidental interview was redoubled, and what I before suspected I now plainly discovered, I had won her heart. From this time, we were more frequently alone; and although her father wished her married to the Frenchman, he being a relation as well as in good circumstances, she had never herself been seriously attached to him. The affection that subsisted between us became no secret in the family, and it was rumoured even about the village; at length it burst out in songs composed by the “Troubadours” of the neighbourhood. Her father thought it prudent to get my quarters changed: he accordingly applied to the Colonel, and I was sent to another hamlet in charge of tailors making clothing for the regiment; it was at a pretty neat little village called Saint les Marquion, on the main road to Cambray. At the house of an old widow who lived at Mouvres I still corresponded with Augustine, and enjoyed many stolen interviews. At length, harassed with the remonstrances of her family, who insisted on diverting her affections from me, she determined on leaving her father’s roof, and in the dusk one evening met me at the widow’s, where we betrothed ourselves to each other. On hearing of her elopement, her father unrelentingly pursued her; he went to Cambray and applied to the executor to deprive her of her patrimony, but the law prevented him doing so. He then appealed to the military authorities, and one morning, about ten o’clock, four gensdarmies, to my surprise, entered my quarters in search of her. I was about to give them a very rough reception, and some of my comrades, who were quartered with me, proposed giving them a threshing; but the corporal who commanded the party warning me I should be held responsible for any ill-usage they might receive, then produced a written order for her return to her father’s house, signed by General Sir John Lambert,