"Eh! how can you think that I know it, La Pipe? Your mother must have
died of old age before my grandfather came into the world."

"Well, greenhorn, I will tell you! You shall know, first of all, that my
mother was a respectable Bohemian, as much attached to the regiment of
carabineers of La Roque as my dog Canon there. She carried brandy round
her neck in a barrel, and drank better than the best of us. She had
fourteen husbands, all soldiers, who died upon the field of battle."

"Ha! that was a woman!" interrupted the soldiers, full of respect.

"And never once in her life did she speak to a townsman, unless it was to
say to him on coming to her lodging, 'Light my candle and warm my soup.'"

"Well, and what was it that your mother said to you?"

"If you are in such a hurry, you shall not know, greenhorn. She said
habitually in her talk, 'A soldier is better than a dog; but a dog is
better than a bourgeois.'"

"Bravo! bravo! that was well said!" cried the soldier, filled with
enthusiasm at these fine words.

"That," said Grand-Ferre, "does not prove that the citizens who made the
remark to me that it burned the tongue were in the right; besides, they
were not altogether citizens, for they had swords, and they were grieved
at a cure being burned, and so was I."

"Eh! what was it to you that they burned your cure, great simpleton?"
said a sergeant, leaning upon the fork of his arquebus; "after him