care what the reader or any other man may think of the act) of a
deal box, containing jewels to the amount of three millions
sterling, the property of herself and husband.

Three millions in money and jewels! And what the deuce were money
and jewels to me or to my poor garrison? Could my adorable Miss
Bulcher eat a fricassee of diamonds, or, Cleopatra-like, melt down
pearls to her tea? Could I, careless as I am about food, with a
stomach that would digest anything--(once, in Spain, I ate the leg
of a horse during a famine, and was so eager to swallow this morsel
that I bolted the shoe, as well as the hoof, and never felt the
slightest inconvenience from either)--could I, I say, expect to
live long and well upon a ragout of rupees, or a dish of stewed
emeralds and rubies? With all the wealth of Croesus before me I
felt melancholy; and would have paid cheerfully its weight in
carats for a good honest round of boiled beef. Wealth, wealth,
what art thou? What is gold?--Soft metal. What are diamonds?--
Shining tinsel. The great wealth-winners, the only fame-achievers,
the sole objects worthy of a soldier's consideration, are
beefsteaks, gunpowder, and cold iron.

The two latter means of competency we possessed; I had in my own
apartments a small store of gunpowder (keeping it under my own bed,
with a candle burning for fear of accidents); I had 14 pieces of
artillery (4 long 48's and 4 carronades, 5 howitzers, and a long
brass mortar, for grape, which I had taken myself at the battle of
Assaye), and muskets for ten times my force. My garrison, as I
have told the reader in a previous number, consisted of 40 men, two
chaplains, and a surgeon; add to these my guests, 83 in number, of
whom nine only were gentlemen (in tights, powder, pigtails, and