Napoleon (looking as if he would say, "D- your candour, Major
Gahagan"). "Well, well; it was so. Your brother was a Count, and
died a General in my service."

Gahagan. "He was found lying upon the bodies of nine-and-twenty
Cossacks at Borodino. They were all dead, and bore the Gahagan
mark."

Napoleon (to Montholon). "C'est vrai, Montholon: je vous donne ma
parole d'honneur la plus sacree, que c'est vrai. Ils ne sont pas
d'autres, ces terribles Ga'gans. You must know that Monsieur
gained the battle of Delhi as certainly as I did that of
Austerlitz. In this way:- Ce belitre de Lor Lake, after calling up
his cavalry, and placing them in front of Holkar's batteries, qui
balayaient la plaine, was for charging the enemy's batteries with
his horse, who would have been ecrases, mitrailles, foudroyes to a
man but for the cunning of ce grand rogue que vous voyez."

Montholon. "Coquin de Major, va!"

Napoleon. "Montholon! tais-toi. When Lord Lake, with his great
bull-headed English obstinacy, saw the facheuse position into which
he had brought his troops, he was for dying on the spot, and would
infallibly have done so--and the loss of his army would have been
the ruin of the East India Company--and the ruin of the English
East India Company would have established my Empire (bah! it was a
republic then!) in the East--but that the man before us, Lieutenant
Goliah Gahagan, was riding at the side of General Lake."

Montholon (with an accent of despair and fury). "Gredin! cent