Yes--that you may understand me better, I will relate to you an extraordinary adventure, which happened to your father during his last French campaign.

He had been ordered by the Emperor to carry a battery, which was playing heavily on our army; after several unsuccessful efforts, the general put himself at the head of a regiment of cuirassiers, and charged the battery, intending, as was his custom, to cut down the men at their guns.

He was on horseback, just before the mouth of a cannon, where all the artillerymen had been either killed or wounded, when one of them still found strength to raise himself upon one knee, and to apply the lighted match to the touchhole--and that when your father was about ten paces in front of the loaded piece." "Oh! what a peril for our father!" "Never, he told me, had he run such imminent danger for he saw the artilleryman apply the match, and the gun go off--but, at the very nick, a man of tall stature, dressed as a peasant, and whom he had not before remarked, threw himself in front of the cannon." "Unfortunate creature! what a horrible death!" "Yes," said Dagobert, thoughtfully; "it should have been so.

He ought by rights to have been blown into a thousand pieces.

But no--nothing of the kind!" "What do you tell us ?" "What the general told me.