A SOLDIER’S JOKE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 11, 18 March 1893, Page 263

A SOLDIER’S JOKE.

BY

DAVID KER.

Nearly a hundred years ago when the French Directory was just beginning to establish some sort of order in France after the dreadful overturn of the Revolution, a line of soldiers stood ranged with levelled muskets right across one of the narrower streets of Paris, behind two small brass guns, as if expecting to be attacked.

This was just what they were expecting, and with very good reason.

Fighting and killing just as they pleased for two or three years together, the hosts of thieves, burglars, cutthroats, and other rascals of every kind who swarmed in the dens of the great city were not at all pleased at the thought of seeing order restored, the streets again made secure by the police, ami their own knavish tricks punished and put an end to. So these worthy people had been getting up a series of formidable riots against the new Government, one of the most violent of which had broken out that very morning in the Faubourg St. Antoine, at that time the most lawless and ruffianly district in all Paris. It was already known that the mob intended to march straight upon the town-hall to destroy it and all those who were within it, and the only way of checking them seemed to be to occupy with soldiers and cannon this narrow street through which the rioters must pass, and where they might more easily be kept at bay by a few. At best, however, it was a perilous post. The rioters were sure to outnumber them by at least twenty to one ; they were even said to have cannon of their own ; and they undoubtedly had hundreds of muskets and thousands of pikes. But every man of these soldiers had faced death many a time before, and there was no sign of flinching either in them or in their commander.

That commander, however, was certainly the veiy last man whom a stranger would have thought fit for so dangerous a charge. Instead of a tall, scarred, sunburned, hardy-looking veteran, he was a pale, sickly young man of twenty-four, barely five feet high, and so thin that he was little more than a walking skeleton. But there was something in that worn, hollow face which impressed all who saw it in spite of themselves; and the glances of reverent awe east at him by his men as he paced slowly up and down in front of their line—with his hands behind his back, ami a dreamy, jar off look in his deep gray eyes -showed that they, at least, held him in as higli respect as if be had been the biggest man of them all, small and slight though he was.

All at once there came rolling through the dead hush of expectation a distant clamour of trampling feet, and hoarse shouts (or rather yells), at which the little officer's face changed so suddenly and startlingly that his men whispered to each other with smiles of grim approval : ‘ See how the "Little One" brightens up at the first sound of fight ! He’s a born soldier, if ever lheie was one.’ And then came surging round the street corner a great wave of wild figures and hideous faces—bare armed butchers smeared with grease and blood, armed with cleavers aud chopping-knives, sooty smiths brandishing huge hammers, tattered rag-pickers with their long steel hooks, thieves, coiners, burglars, and all the worst rabble of the quarter. But at sight of the levelled muskets and pointed guns, the rabble stopped short. This was more thau they had bargained for, and a pause of rather sheepish hesitation followed, amid which the youug leader stepped forward and said, firmly : ‘Good people, you had much better go quietly home again, ere worse conies of it. We do not wish to take your lives' unless you force us to it, but we have orders from the Government not to let you pass,and we mean to obey them. These guns are well loaded with grape, and will kill fifty of you with each shot ; and after them we have our muskets. Take my advice, and be off at once !’ But just then a huge, grimy, bloated, fierce eyed fishwoman from the great market, elbowed her way through the crowd right in front of the speaker, and stopped short with a volley of foul abuse : ‘ Hold your lying tongue, you little sparrow ! she screamed at the full pitch of a voice as harsh as a steamwhistle. ‘ Much you care for our lives ! Do you think I don’t know that you and your idle rogues of soldiers are fattening on government pay while we honesi folks are starving for want of work !’ 'Fattening'.’ echoed the little officer with a meaning smile, as he brought his own dwarfish aud skeleton figure close to the vast, unwieldy bulk of the bloated scold. ‘ You say I’ve been fattening while you’ve been starving, do you? Now, citizens’ (and he took oil his cap to tire mob), ‘ I appeal to you to decide for yourselves which of us looks most like being starved, this good lady or I !’ The roar of laughter that ensued made the very air tremble ; and the mob, thus put in a good humour in spite of themselves, began to melt away at once, their shouts of merriment over the young soldier’s telling joke being still audible even aftei the last of the grim swarm had passed out of sight. ‘That young man will go far,’ said the General in command, when he heard the story ; and he was right, for that young man was Napoleon Bonaparte.