‘This is my Paradise, Tiernay, only wanting an Eve to be perfect,’ said Latrobe, as he set me down beneath a spreading lime-tree. ‘Yonder are your English friends; there they stretch away for miles beyond that point. That’s the Monte Creto, you may have heard of; and there’s the Bochetta. In that valley, to the left, the Austrian outposts are stationed; and from those two heights closer to the shore, they are gracious enough to salute us every evening after sunset, and even prolong the attention sometimes the whole night through. Turn your eyes in this direction, and you’ll see the “cornice” road, that leads to la belle France, but of which we see as much from this spot as we are ever like to do. So much for the geography of our position; and now to look after your breakfast. You have, of course, heard that we do not revel in superfluities. Never was the boasted excellence of our national cookery more severely tested, for we have successively descended from cows and sheep to goats, horses, donkeys, dogs, occasionally experimenting on hides and shoe-leather, till we ended by regarding a rat as a rarity, and deeming a mouse a delicacy of the season. As for vegetables, there would not have been a flowering plant in all Genoa, if tulip and ranunculus roots had not been bitter as aloes. These seem very inhospitable confessions, but I make them the more freely since I am about to treat you _en gourmet_. Come in now, and acknowledge that juniper bark isn’t bad coffee, and that commissary bread is not to be thought of “lightly.”’ In this fashion did my comrade invite me to a meal, which, even with this preface, was far more miserable and scanty than I looked for. CHAPTER XXXV. A NOVEL COUNCIL OP WAR I had scarcely finished my breakfast, when a group of officers rode up to our quarters to visit me. My arrival had already created an immense sensation in the city, and all kinds of rumours were afloat as to the tidings I had brought. The meagreness of the information would, indeed, have seemed in strong contrast to the enterprise and hazard of the escape, had I not the craft to eke it out by that process of suggestion and speculation in which I was rather an adept. Little in substance as my information was, all the younger officers were in favour of acting upon it. The English are no bad judges of our position and chances, was the constant argument. They see exactly how we stand; they know the relative forces of our army and the enemy’s; and if the ‘cautious islanders’--such was the phrase--advised a _coup de main_, it surely must have much in its favour. I lay stress upon the remark, trifling as it may seem; but it is curious to know, that with all the immense successes of England on sea, her reputation at that time among Frenchmen was rather for prudent and well-matured undertaking than for those daring enterprises which are as much the character of her courage.