CHAPTER XIII.
HISTORY OF COLONEL FOUGAS, RELATED BY HIMSELF.
"Do not expect that I will ornament my story with those flowers, more agreeable than substantial, which Imagination often uses to gloss over truth.

A Frenchman and a soldier, I doubly ignore deception.

Friendship interrogates me, Frankness shall answer.
"I was born of poor but honest parents at the beginning of the year which the _Jeu de Paume_[5] brightened with an aurora of liberty.

The south was my native clime; the language dear to the troubadours was that which I lisped in my cradle.

My birth cost my mother's life.