last, from sheer exhaustion and pain, we both of us fell back. I might have boasted of the victory, for, though I felt acute pain, my nose did not alter its shape, while the Frenchman's swelled up to twice its usual proportions. The contest, however, very nearly put an end to our French lessons. However, as our master was really a good-natured man, he was soon pacified, and we set to work again as before. CHAPTER TEN. We made wonderful progress with our French, in spite of our want of books. Indeed, I have reason to believe that information attained under difficulties, is not only acquired more rapidly, but most certainly more completely mastered, than with the aid of all the modern appliances of education, which, like steam-engines at full speed, haul us so fast along the royal road to knowledge, that we have no time to take in half the freight prepared for us. We found, too, that the old colonel knew considerably more about English than we had at first suspected, and at last we ascertained that he had before been captured, and shut up in a prison in England. He did not seem to have any pleasing recollections of that period of his existence. One day, after we had annoyed him more than usual with our pranks, and stirred up his bile, he gave vent to his feelings-- "Ah, you betes Anglais," he exclaimed. "You have no sympathe vid des miserables. Vous eat ros beef vous-memes, and vous starve vos _prisonniers_." He then went on gravely to assure us, that when the inspector of prisons one day rode into the yard of the prison, and left his horse there while he entered the building, the famished prisoners rushed out in a body and surrounded the animal. Simultaneously they made a rush at the poor beast, and stabbed it with their knives. In an instant it was skinned, cut up, and carried off piecemeal. When the inspecting officer came back, he found only the stirrups and bit and hoofs. The prisoners were busily occupied cooking their dinners, and had already produced most delicious fricassees, so that the English officer could not believe that they were formed out of the animal on whose back he had galloped up to the prison not an hour before. "That's pretty well up to one of Mr Johnson's yarns," observed Grey to me. "I wish the old fellow could understand him; the boatswain would take the shine out of him I suspect." "Bah, dat is noting," said the colonel. "I vill tell you many more curieuse tings. You talk much of de Anglish ladies. Vel, des are passablement bien; but des all get dronk ven des can. Je sais bien vy des go upstairs before de gentlehommes!--it is dat des may drink at dere ease. Ha, ha, dat is vot des do; you drink downstairs, des drink upstairs."