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Show A FIRE EATING GENERAL An amazing anecdote is told of a well known French general, who played a conspicuous part in a cavalry charge. The gallant warrior had been severely wounded on that occasion, having received a saber cut on the head and a bullet in his left thigh. Such an allowance might have satisfied a man of quiet tastes, but was far from sufficient for the fire-eating general. In relating the charge, which he did at every dinner party, he was in the habit of throwing in half a dozen bayonet thrusts, and a couple of stray splinters from a shell, and he invariably appealed for a corroboration of his narrative to an aid-de-camp who had ridden by his side. On one occasion, having imbibed more than his usual allowance of wine, he drew a more than usually startling picture of his riddled and perforated condition. A cannon-ball had killed his horse, a dozen sabers had descended at once on his head, a couple of lances had passed through each of his arms, and all the bullets and bayonets of Germany seemed to have given each other a rendezvous in his body. "You remember it well, don't you?" he added, turning to his aide de camp. The well-trained subaltern had suffered long in silence. The bayonets, bullets, lances, he had got used to by long practice, but the cannon-ball was the last straw that broke the camels back, "No, general, I don't remember it, how could you expect me to? You know as well as I do that the very cannon-ball that killed your horse struck the breast plate of a cuirassier behind us, and then bounded back and took my head off." |