battle of Quatre Bras, and a still more astonished witness of the crushing defeat of the boasting Bonaparte at Waterloo. Although I had no great reason to love England, I yet longed to see her victorious over the bloodthirsty, unprincipled conqueror of Europe. What terrible emotions did the thunder of the guns create in my breast!—every discharge carrying destruction to dozens of brave and healthy men, and for nothing but to gratify the fiendish lust of worldly power and glory: rivers of blood flowing on the fields of battle, and bitter cries of want and sorrow ascending from every side to the Judgment-seat of God! And for all this is a man exalted to be a hero and a demigod, by his vainglorious and fickle fellow mortals.
'I went to Paris with the army, and saw the prodigious number of four hundred thousand soldiers collected there, Meeting also with my friend of the Foreign Office, I received orders to proceed to Warsaw, and was furnished with a further supply of money to defray expenses. Instead of going, however, like a gentleman of honour, I went to a gambling hell, merely to see how they managed such matters in France, and with strong resolutions not to play. But the temptation became irresistible. I won at first, but the tide turned, and I lost for several nights, my employer thinking that I had started on my journey. Very soon I was without a farthing; I sold the shirt off my back to a sergeant for seven francs, in cold December, and buttoning up my coat, bade adieu to Paris, and set out for Warsaw on foot.
'I now entered upon a course of minor adventures which might have furnished Smollet or Fielding with materials for some excellent novels, although I managed to get on without Narcissa and Amelia. Like a good many other adventurers, I discovered that something was to be always gained by a timely exhibition of cool, audacious impudence. Nothing lowers a poor wretch in this world so much as a
