Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/30

6 her pardon, and eat your spinach like a good boy."

The louis met with the same fate as the plate, for I threw it in the old man's face.

"Does my grandmother think," I cried, "that I can be bribed into making an apology?"

I suppose I was very proud of this reply, for I often used to think of it afterwards, and do still sometimes, though now I estimate it at what it is worth. As for the little domestic drama, it probably finished like all others of the same kind; the little chevalier made an apology, ate his spinach, and was pardoned by his grandmother,—but I have disliked spinach from that day to this.

But this picture of my youth is only a page from universal history;—an event which might, or does, occur to everybody of the same age and condition.

In 1773 I laid aside the toga praetexta, and put on the toga virile,—or, in other words, I attained my sixteenth year.

Here the storms of life began to beat