But there was a movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering with
orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall,
and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous Joachim Murat.
“We are hardly pressed, methinks,” Napoleon said sternly. “I must
exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;” and Murat loaded, and the
Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twenty-four-pounder that had not
been silenced by our fire.
“Hurray, Killaloo boys!” shouted I. The next moment a sensation of
numbness and death seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the rampart.
II.
“Hush!” said a voice, which I recognized to be that of the Marquis d'
O'Mahony. “Heaven be praised, reason has returned to you. For six weeks
those are the only sane words I have heard from you.”
“Faix, and 'tis thrue for you, Colonel dear,” cried another voice, with
which I was even more familiar; 'twas that of my honest and gallant
Lanty Clancy, who was blubbering at my bedside overjoyed at his master's
recovery.
“O musha, Masther Phil agrah! but this will be the great day intirely,
when I send off the news, which I would, barrin' I can't write, to
the lady your mother and your sisters at Castle Fogarty; and 'tis his
Riv'rence Father Luke will jump for joy thin, when he reads the letther!
Six weeks ravin' and roarin' as bould as a lion, and as mad as Mick
Malony's pig, that mistuck Mick's wig for a cabbage, and died of atin'
it!”
“And have I then lost my senses?” I exclaimed feebly.
“Sure, didn't ye call me your beautiful Donna Anna only yesterday,
and catch hould of me whiskers as if they were the Signora's jet-black
ringlets?” Lanty cried.
At this moment, and blushing deeply, the most beautiful young creature
I ever set my eyes upon, rose from a chair at the foot of the bed, and
sailed out of the room.
“Confusion, you blundering rogue,” I cried; “who is that lovely lady
whom you frightened away by your impertinence? Donna Anna? Where am I?”
“You are in good hands, Philip,” said the Colonel; “you are at my house
in the Place Vendome, at Paris, of which I am the military Governor. You
and Lanty were knocked down by the wind of the cannon-ball at Burgos. Do
not be ashamed: 'twas the Emperor pointed the gun;” and the Colonel took
off his hat as he mentioned the name darling to France. “When our troops
returned from the sally in which your gallant storming party was driven
back, you were found on the glacis, and I had you brought into the
City. Your reason had left you, however, when you returned to life; but,
unwilling to desert the son of my old friend, Philip Fogarty, who saved
my life in '98, I brought you in my carriage to Paris.”
“And many's the time you tried to jump out of the windy, Masther Phil,”
said Clancy.
“Brought you to Paris,” resumed the Colonel, smiling; “where, by the
soins of my friends Broussais, Esquirol, and Baron Larrey, you have been
restored to health, thank heaven!”
“And that lovely angel who quitted the apartment?” I cried.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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