‘I only said I should like to see them under arms,’ stammered he, in the confusion of one who saw himself exposed to public obloquy.
This half-apology came too late---the mischief was done! and we shunned each other like men who were afraid to read the accusation of even a shrewd glance. As for myself, I can compare my feelings only to those of the worthy alderman, who broke out into a paroxysm of grief on hearing that _Robinson Crusoe_ was a fiction. I believe, on that sudden revulsion of feeling, I could have discredited any and everything. If there was no Army of the North, was I quite sure that there was any expedition at all? Were the generals mere freebooters, the chiefs of a marauding venture? Were the patriots anything but a disorderly rabble eager for robbery and bloodshed? Was Irish Independence a mere phantom? Such were among the shocking terrors that came across my mind as I sat in my quarters, far too dispirited and depressed to mix among my comrades.
It had been a day of fatiguing duty, and I was not sorry, as night fell, that I might betake myself to bed, to forget, if it might be, the torturing doubts that troubled me. Suddenly I heard a heavy foot upon the stair, and an orderly entered with a command for me to repair to the headquarters of the general at once. Never did the call of duty summon me less willing, never found me so totally disinclined to obey. I was weary and fatigued; but worse, than this, I was out of temper with myself, the service, and the whole world. Had I heard that the Royal forces were approaching, I was exactly in the humour to have dashed into the thick of them, and sold my life as dearly as I could, out of desperation.
Discipline is a powerful antagonist to a man’s caprices, for with all my irritability and discontent I arose, and resuming my uniform, set out for General Humbert’s quarters. I followed ‘the orderly,’ as he led the way through many a dark street and crooked alley till we reached the square. There, too, all was in darkness, save at the mainguard, where, as usual, the five windows of the first storey were a blaze of light, and the sounds of mirth and revelry, the nightly orgies of our officers, were ringing out in the stillness of the quiet hour. The wild chorus of a soldier-song, with its rataplan accompaniment of knuckles on the table, echoed through the square, and smote upon my ear with anything but a congenial sense of pleasure.