'Yes; but would you laugh at an old man?' 'Captain Chauvin!' 'Pardon, my good young friend. I will tell it you. On the day of Mont St. Jean, the 18th of June, 1815, I was a sub-lieutenant of artillery in the column of our glorious Ney--the laurel to his ashes! Ah! your Wellington let him be slain like a dog; that was not soldierly. The Emperor directed a false attack on the château of Goumont; while the Englishman was gathering the best of his forces to its defence, the Man stood, pale and weary, with the same quiet, steady gaze, a smile fixed into the earnestness of a frown, which my comrades told me he had worn at Austerlitz, hands behind his back, and his gray great-coat lying moist over his boots. My battery was near, and I was on its right, quite close to the staff. "Messieurs," said he, as he saw the scarlet masses pressing around Goumont, "we make our game. Where is Ney?" An aide-de-camp galloped off for the Marshal, who was close at hand. The Man, surveying Goumont with his glass, and occasionally looking intently at La Haie-Sainte, gradually approached to where I stood. A soldier of the battery lay dead on the ground before me--a veteran whom we all loved. Feeling that we should shortly get the order to advance, I resolved to secure some souvenir of Tampon, as we called him. I found a horn snuff-box in his hand, clenched in death. The Man happened to turn towards me, and observed the act. '"Comrade, a pinch," he said, and I handed him the box--that box; look at it,' and the old soldier, the fire of foughten fields in his eyes, hung over it with tenderness as over a loved living object--'that box was in his fingers--out of it he took a pinch of snuff on the day of Mont St. Jean.' 'Did you see him after?' 'Not that day. We advanced on La Haie-Sainte ten minutes after and gave them a hail of hell-fire. Our heavy artillery crashed through their ranks like bolts of thunder. They shook; Ney seized the moment to bring our guns right into the enemy's position, but we had a ravine to traverse; our pieces of twelve settled down in the muddy rye, a regiment of infantry came up from the rear to cover us, but Wellington was quicker. He saw our difficulty and poured a host of dragoons in on us in the valley. They cut our traces, overturned our guns, sabred our men. But, sapristi! they paid for it--paid for it dearly. Our cuirassiers rushed to the rescue like a whirlwind and swept them from earth to the last man. Brave fellows they were! No, I did not see him after, until all Paris turned out, six-and-twenty years ago, to welcome his remains to the Church of the Invalides. You know his will, Monsieur O'Hara: "I desire that my dust may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I loved so well."'