“And you, Mr. Veteran, you must have been often wounded?”

“I?” said the soldier, “ah! not to amount to anything. At Marengo, I received two sabre-blows on the back of my neck, a bullet in the right arm at Austerlitz, another in the left hip at Jéna. At Friedland, a thrust from a bayonet, there⁠—at the Moskowa seven or eight lance-thrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a splinter of a shell crushed one of my fingers. Ah! and then at Waterloo, a ball from a biscaïen in the thigh, that’s all.”

“How fine that is!” exclaimed the hairdresser, in Pindaric accents, “to die on the field of battle! On my word of honor, rather than die in bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs, cataplasms, syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive a cannonball in my belly!”

“You’re not over fastidious,” said the soldier.

He had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The show-window had suddenly been fractured.