Rochas stood there listening, agape, with his eyes wide open and his terrible nose contracted. Suddenly, however, he made up his mind to laugh, with a huge laugh that distended his jaws from ear to ear. 'What are you cackling there? What does all this humbug mean?' he shouted. 'There's no sense in it; it is too stupid for anyone to trouble his head about. Go and tell it to the marines if you like, but not to me; no, not to me. I've seen twenty-seven years' service!'
So saying, he struck his chest with his clenched hand. The son of a journeyman mason from the Limousin country, Rochas had been born in Paris, and not caring for his father's calling had enlisted when he was only eighteen. A true soldier of fortune, he started off with his knapsack, gaining a corporal's stripes in Algeria, rising to the rank of a sergeant at Sebastopol, and promoted to a lieutenancy after Solferino. Fifteen years of hardship and heroic bravery was the price he had paid to become an officer, but he was so painfully ignorant that it was certain he would never be made a captain.
'Come, sir,' said he to Weiss, 'although you know everything, here's something you don't know. At Mazagran--I was barely nineteen at the time--we were only one hundred and twenty-three men, neither more nor less, yet we held out during four days against twelve thousand Arabs. Yes, indeed, for years and years out there in Africa, at Mascara, Biskra, and Dellys, then too in Khabylia, and later on at Laghouat, if you had only been with us, sir, you would have seen how all those dirty blackamoors skedaddled as soon as ever we appeared. And at Sebastopol, sir--ah! dash it, it can't be said that we had an easy time of it out there. Gales strong enough to tear the very hair out of your head, such bitter cold and ceaseless alerts, and then, at the very end, everything blown into the air by those savages! But all the same we made them dance--dance to our tune in our own frying pan. And then Solferino--you were not there, sir, so why do you speak of it? Ah! it _was_ warm at Solferino--though there fell more water from the sky that day than you have seen fall in all your life--and a nice dressing we gave the Austrians. You should have seen how they ran away from our bayonets, how they galloped and pushed one another aside to run the faster, as if they were on fire!'