Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

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made to me. "I knew it would be so," he said, kindly; "I told my father you wouldn't. A man
with the blood of the Fogarties, Phil my boy, doesn't wheel about like those fellows of
yesterday." So, when Cambaceres came out, which he did presently, with a more furious air
than before, I handed him at once over to Eugene, who begged him to name a friend, and an
early hour for the meeting to take place.
"Can you make it before eleven, Phil?" said Beauharnais. "The Emperor reviews the troops
in the Bois de Boulogne at that hour, and we might fight there handy before the review."
"Done!" said I. "I want of all things to see the newly-arrived Saxon cavalry manoeuvre:" on
which Cambaceres, giving me a look, as much as to say, "See sights! Watch cavalry
manoeuvres! Make your soul, and take measure for a coffin, my boy!" walked away,
naming our mutual acquaintance, Marshal Ney, to Eugene, as his second in the business.
I had purchased from Murat a very fine Irish horse, Bugaboo, out of Smithereens, by
Fadladeen, which ran into the French ranks at Salamanca, with poor Jack Clonakilty, of the
13th, dead, on the top of him. Bugaboo was too much and too ugly an animal for the King
of Naples, who, though a showy horseman, was a bad rider across country; and I got the
horse for a song. A wickeder and uglier brute never wore pig-skin; and I never put my leg
over such a timber-jumper in my life. I rode the horse down to the Bois de Boulogne on the
morning that the affair with Cambaceres was to come off, and Lanty held him as I went in,
"sure to win," as they say in the ring.
Cambaceres was known to be the best shot in the French army; but I, who am a pretty good
hand at a snipe, thought a man was bigger, and that I could wing him if I had a mind. As
soon as Ney gave the word, we both fired: I felt a whiz past my left ear, and putting up my
hand there, found a large piece of my whiskers gone; whereas at the same moment, and
shrieking a horrible malediction, my adversary reeled and fell.
"Mon Dieu, il est mort!" cried Ney.
"Pas de tout," said Beauharnais. "Ecoute; il jure toujours."
And such, indeed, was the fact: the supposed dead man lay on the ground cursing most
frightfully. We went up to him: he was blind with the loss of blood, and my ball had carried
off the bridge of his nose. He recovered; but he was always called the Prince of Ponterotto
in the French army, afterwards. The surgeon in attendance having taken charge of this
unfortunate warrior, we rode off to the review where Ney and Eugene were on duty at the
head of their respective divisions; and where, by the way, Cambaceres, as the French say,
"se faisait desirer."