“Well, you see, madame,” said the forester, who asked no better than to tell the tale, “Farrabesche may have had good reason for what he did. He was the last of the Farrabesches,--an old family of the Correze, don’t you know! His elder brother, Captain Farrabesche, died ten years earlier in Italy, at Montenotte, a captain when he was only twenty-two years old. Wasn’t that ill-luck? and such a lad, too! knew how to read and write, and bid fair to be a general. The family grieved terribly, and good reason, too. As for me, I heard all about his death, for I was serving at that time under L’AUTRE. Oh! he made a fine death, did Captain Farrabesche; he saved the army and the Little Corporal. I was then in the division of General Steingel, a German,--that is, an Alsacian,--a famous good general but rather short-sighted, and that was the reason why he was killed soon after Captain Farrabesche. The younger brother--that’s this one--was only six years old when he heard of his brother’s death. The second brother served too; but only as a private soldier; he died a sergeant in the first regiment of the Guard, at the battle of Austerlitz, where, d’ye see, madame, they manoeuvred just as quietly as they might in the Carrousel. I was there! oh! I had the luck of it! went through it all without a scratch! Now this Farrabesche of ours, though he’s a brave fellow, took it into his head he wouldn’t go to the wars; in fact, the army wasn’t a healthy place for one of his family. So when the conscription caught him in 1811 he ran away,--a refractory, that’s what they called them. And then it was he went and joined a party of _chauffeurs_, or maybe he was forced to; at any rate he _chauffed_! Nobody but the rector knows what he really did with those brigands--all due respect to them! Many a fight he had with the gendarmes and the soldiers too; I’m told he was in seven regular battles--” “They say he killed two soldiers and three gendarmes,” put in Champion.