The new recruit rejoined his regiment, which was quartered at Laon, towards the end of the month of June 1786. My father, as already stated, was twenty-four, and as handsome a young fellow as could be found anywhere. His complexion was dark, his eyes of a rich chestnut colour, and his well-shaped nose was of the kind only found in the crossing of Indian and Caucasian races. His teeth were white, his lips mobile, his neck well set on his powerful shoulders, and, in spite of his height of five feet nine inches, he had the hands and feet of a woman. These feet were the envy of his mistresses, whose shoes he was very rarely able to put on. At the time of his marriage the calf of his leg was the same width as my mother's waist. His free colonial life had developed his strength and prowess to an extraordinary degree; he was a veritable American horse-lad, a cowboy. His skill with gun or pistol was the envy of St. Georges and Junot. And his muscular strength became a proverb in the army. More than once he amused himself in the riding-school by passing under a beam, grasping it with his arms, and lifting his horse between his legs. I have seen him do it, and I recollect my childish amazement when I saw him carry two men standing up on his bent knee and hop across the room with these two men on him. I saw him once in a rage take a branch of considerable toughness in both his hands and break it between them by turning one hand to the right and the other to the left. Another time I remember going out one day from the little château des Fossés where we lived, and my father found he had forgotten the key of a gate: I recollect seeing him get out of the carriage, take up the gate crosswise, and at the second or third attempt break down the stone pillar in which it was fixed. Dr. Ferus, who served under my father, has often told me that when about eighteen he, Ferus, was sent as assistant-surgeon to the Alpine army. On the first evening of his arrival, by the camp firelight he watched a soldier who, among other trials of strength, amused himself by putting his finger into the mouth of a heavy musket and lifting it up not by, his arm but on his extended finger. A man wrapped in a cloak mingled among the onlookers and watched with them: then, laughing and flinging back his cloak, he said: "That is not bad--but now bring four guns." He was obeyed, for he was recognised as the commander-in-chief. He then put his four fingers in the four gun holes and lifted the four guns with as much ease as the soldier had lifted one. "See how easy it is," said he, placing them gently on the ground--"when one is in training for such exercises." When Ferus told me this incident, he said he still marvelled how any man's muscles could bear such a weight.