Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/161

Rh it in the fire, in order to destroy all record of sentiments which did me but little honour. The words "glory" and "profit," he added, should never come together, either in the mouth or under the pen of a French officer, and he begged that I would never write him anything of the same kind again. This paternal rebuke, which was not undeserved, was all that I ever got out of the proposed expedition, which came to nothing.

As I had leave of absence, and was not obliged to rejoin my regiment then in garrison at Auch, I went to Auvergne and visited my father, who, now that he had given me a bit of his mind, was no longer angry with me. Finding myself, after an interval of three years, within a hundred miles of my former political residence, the castle of Pierre-en-Cize, of which I was no longer in fear, I one day proposed to our worthy neighbour M. d'Al——, whose friendship had been so useful to me, that we should take a ride over to Lyon. I wanted him to see with his own eyes the scene of the events I had narrated to him,