One evening, while in the kitchen of a small house, round the cheerful blaze of a crackling wood-fire, partaking of our dinner, and the servant girls standing behind us feeding the cattle, we were suddenly aroused by the cackling of the poultry in a large out-house—where the soldiers were quartered; and, on ascending the ladder, we observed some feathers scattered about the floor. The soldiers stood up and saluted, as if no depredations had been committed. One soldier alone remained sitting, and feigning to be in great pain from the effects of a sore foot. The officer with me having shrewd suspicions of this individual, said, "Get up,—surely you can stand upon one leg."—"Oh no!" answered this piece of innocence, (possessing a muscular frame, and a face as brown as a berry), "no indeed Sir, I cannot; for, besides the pain in my foot, I am otherwise much indisposed." Finding however that we were determined, he slowly and reluctantly arose from his crouching posture, by which he had concealed a half-plucked goose. This was death by martial law, and we put on a most ferocious aspect, and threatened I know not what. However, as soon as the lecture was over, and we were out of the soldier's sight, we could no longer refrain from giving way to our hilarity, at the old marauder being so fully detected. Who could kill an old soldier for plucking a goose? The bird being duly paid for, the kind-hearted woman not only gave it back to the soldiers, but, we understood, cooked it for their supper. We now halted at St. Simon and pushed our advanced posts within two miles of Toulouse, situated on the right bank of the Garonne; but the enemy still held the Faubourg of St. Ciprien, facing us on the left of the river. One day we passed in a handsome chateau, with all the rooms on the _parterre_; it was well furnished, and the doors and windows opened on a spacious lawn, from which descended a flight of stone steps of about thirty feet in breadth, to an extensive garden laid out _à l'Anglaise_, in broad and serpentine walks, labyrinths, fish ponds, fruit trees, exotics, rose trees and flower beds, which in the summer must altogether have formed a lovely retreat. The inhabitants had fled from the chateau, and all its windows, and doors, were flapping, and jarring in the wind; the knapsacks were suspended in the gilded ornaments of its mirrors, and the soldiers reposed on the silken covering of the chairs and couches. On the night of the 3rd of April, our division broke up from before Toulouse, (the second division taking our station), crossed the river Touch and marched northerly down the Garonne, as a corps of communication between the right and left wings of the army—in readiness to move to either flank. On the morning of the 4th the left wing under Lord Beresford crossed the Garonne, just above the town of Grenade, by a pontoon-bridge.