Here is where you can see the advantage of having Frenchmen for your enemies. Germans, Swiss, or English, do their thinking through their fists, and are so thickheaded that it takes them till Christmas to understand what was told them on All Saints’ Day. I would not have given a button for poor Pluviaut’s chance with such people as these. They would have thought we were playing a joke on them, but no words are necessary between us. If we come from Lorraine, Touraine, Champagne, or Bretagne, geese from Beauce, asses from Beaune, or rabbits from Vézelay, a good joke hits us all in the right spot, no matter how much we may pound and beat each other. When they caught sight of our old Silenus, their whole camp burst out laughing. They laughed all over their faces, with their throats, with all their hearts, and even their stomachs, and by St. Rigobert! to see the way they laughed set us off too, all along our line. Like Ajax, and Hector the Trojan, we hurled gay defiance at each other across the moat. Our remarks, however, had much more snap than theirs. If I were not so busy, I would write them down, but if you can put up with it, I mean to include them in a collection I have been making for the last dozen years of the best jokes, quips, and witticisms that I have heard, said, or read, in the course of my pilgrimage through this vale of tears. I would not lose it for a kingdom. It makes me crack my old sides only to think of it. There now! I have made a great blot on my paper. When the noise had subsided, it was time to fight; (nothing is so restful when one has been talked to death), but neither side was keen for it. Their surprise had failed, and we were well protected. They did not care much about scrambling up our walls (you may break your bones at that game) but something had to be done at any cost; it did not matter much what, so a little powder was burned, some petards let off at random, from which the sparrows were the only sufferers. We sat with our backs to the wall inside the parapet, waiting while their plums flew over our heads for the right moment to discharge our own without taking aim, (there is no sense in exposing one’s self too much).