He replied: “Affairs are beginning to change, and, moreover, it is now necessary that the soldiers should know they will be taken proper care of in the event of being wounded, and not left to die like dogs. We send as many as we can at night to Bayonne by the boats; thus we clear out the hospitals a little.” In conversations with many of the officers they detailed acts committed by their soldiers in Spain so revolting to human nature that one refuses to commit them to paper. A _chef de bataillon_ once asked him how the English managed with their soldiers when they wanted them to advance and attack an enemy. The reply was simply, “Forward!” “Ah! that way will not do with us. We are obliged to excite our men with spirits, or to work upon their feelings by some animating address; and very often, when I have fancied I had brought them up to the fighting pitch, some old hand would make a remark which in an instant spoilt all I had said, and I had to begin my speech all over again.” The Colonel asked how they managed to provision their men when they went out on expeditions that lasted ten or twenty days. The answer was: “Our biscuits are made with a hole in the centre. Each biscuit is the ration for a day. Sometimes twenty are delivered to each soldier, who is given to understand that he has no further claim on the commisariat for those days.” “But it is impossible for the soldier to carry twenty.” “We know that very well, but he has no claim; and how he lives in the meanwhile we do not ask. Perhaps he lives on the country.” In other words, he steals! In the hospital he was attended by a Spanish barber. As he could speak Spanish fluently, they had a good deal of talk. The barber used to tell all he heard and saw of what was passing both inside and outside the fortress. When he learnt that the Colonel was an engineer, he offered to bring him a plan of all the underground drains and of the aqueduct. The attendant, although a good-natured man, kept a sharp eye on the barber; so it was a difficult matter for him to give anything without being detected. At last, one morning when preparing to shave him, he succeeded in shoving a plan under the bedclothes. The Colonel seized the earliest opportunity of examining it, and from the knowledge he had before acquired of the place he soon mastered the directions of the drains, etc. From that moment his whole attention was fixed on the means of making his escape. He knew that the hospital was situated in the principal street, the ends of which terminated upon the fortifications bounding the harbour. If once he could gain the street he had only to turn to the right or left to gain the ramparts, and so make his escape from the town in the best manner he could.