The garrison, of course, had its fireworks, its salute from the ramparts, and its _feu de joie_. But, in the midst of the festivity, I observed Pantoufle's countenance loaded with some mighty secret. He broke it to me with the air of a man revealing a conspiracy. Taking me on one side, while the ramparts were blazing with blue-lights, and every man, woman, and child of the garrison were chattering, huzzaing, and waltzing round us; he communicated to me the solemn fact, that his heart had been pierced again. This execution had been done while he was waiting in Elnathan's counting-house: a young Rachel or Rebecca had accidentally glanced across his sight, with such inimitable eyes, that his fate was decided for life. The world was valueless without her; and my particular advice was requested as to the way in which he was to make his approaches. I advised a sonnet. He smiled, and acknowledged that he had anticipated my advice, and had spent an hour of that twilight, dear to love and the muses, during which he had kept me in all the discomforts of suspense, devoting all the energies of his soul to the composition of a song to the beauties of the irresistible Israelite. Boileau has told the world, that a poet once insisted on his listening to an ode of his composition, while they were kneeling together at high mass. Our situation might not be quite as solemn, but the doctor was quite as pressing; and seated on the corner of a bastion, while the guns were roaring above our heads, I listened to an effusion in the most established style of sexagenarian poetry. "Rachel est sans desirs, C'est un bouton de rose, Que la nature arrose, Et dispose a s'ouvrir. Dans son cour sans detour, Il n'est pas jour encore; Il attend pour eclore Un rayon de l'amour!"