Page:A French volunteer of the war of independence (the chevalier de Pontgibaud).djvu/23

Rh 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 dis- liked 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 upon me, for, almost from the beginning, my life has been adventurous. The narration of all that I have suffered, seen, done, and noticed, from Pierre-en-Cize to New York, from Boston to Coblentz, by sea or by land, in both hemispheres, will not be without interest and profit to my friend the reader, whoever he may be, or whatever his age. Fortune set me adrift in a rudderless boat, but I managed to steer it somehow, and am now safe in port, and not dissatisfied on the whole with my long voyage. My bad luck did not astonish me greatly, or my good luck either for that matter; from whence I conclude, that whoever reads me will be more sur- prised than I either was, or am. My trials began when I was sixteen years old, and I defy M. Azais to classify them in his system of compensations.