From Arras we proceeded the morning after the review to Hazebrook, where our regiment lay in barracks throughout the remainder of .the winter. Of these, however, we did not take possession, till some delay had occurred, of which, as I myself was, to a certain extent, the cause, it becomes me to speak somewhat more at length. The circumstances were these:--I was sent on with a party to take over the barracks from the Queen's Bays, and to make them ready for the reception of the regiment. I proceeded accordingly; but on arriving at the station, I found the rooms in such a state that I positively refused to take possession. They were not only filthy in the extreme, but the miasmata proceeding from them was horrible; and to add to the evil, I discovered in an apartment, the door of which I was obliged to force, the corpse of a dead man. How he died, or why his comrades had thus abandoned him, we were never able to ascertain; but the effect of my report, first upon the surgeon, and afterwards upon the commanding officer, was such, that the latter refused to introduce his men into a place of which the air seemed to be putrid. The consequence was, that for several weeks we occupied billets in the town; nor were we removed into the station originally intended for us till every room in the place, as well as the stables attached to them, had undergone a complete fumigation.

While we occupied this station, it was my fortune to witness one of those shocking exhibitions from which every feeling of humanity urges us to shrink but on which a curiosity, which is almost always resistless, compels us to attend; I mean the public execution of several persons, whom the law had condemned to die by the guillotine. There were in all four victims to offended justice: three of whom had been concerned in a burglary, attended by circumstances of gross cruelty; while the fourth stood convicted of the offence of arson, for which, in France as well as in England, death was in those days the penalty. The miserable men were conducted on foot from the prison to the scaffold, which stood in the great square or centre of the town; and being without shirts, and having their hair closely cropped behind, they looked, with their pale faces, ghastly enough. When they arrived at the appointed place, round which an enormous crowd was collected, three of them were halted, while the fourth, mounting by a ladder, was received at the top by two executioners. These men, a father and son, wearing dark red frocks, but not otherwise disguised, took their victim and bound him, belly downwards, upon a board, which they thrust forward in such a way, that his head passed through a groove in a broad upright beam, and lay over a bag, which was suspended there to receive it. In the groove was the knife, which, on a signal being given by the elder of the two, fell, and ere we could so much as draw a breath, the head was severed from the body. It dropped at once into the bag, whereupon the executioners untying the trunk, cast it through a trapdoor into a hole beneath; and then scattering sawdust over their horrid platform, made ready to deal in like manner with the next that should come. I shall never forget the sense of faintness which came over me, when I beheld the blood pour like water out of a pipe, from the palpitating trunk; yet, if any judgment might be formed from the ceaseless chattering of the people round us, none except my countrymen shared in the feeling. Moreover, it horrified me to observe, that here, as is said to be the case in London, a large portion of the spectators were women. How extraordinary it is, that they, the most delicate of nature's handiwork, should thrust themselves into situations of such frightful interest. I declare that their conduct throughout altogether shocked me: they never ceased to chatter, no, not at the moment when the knife was falling; and so soon as one dead body had been committed to its temporary hiding place, they appeared impatient till another should be stretched out before them.

In this place we spent the winter, miserably enough. The weather was cold, with much rain; the convent in which we were quartered was in a state of great dilapidation; fuel proved to be both scarce and bad; and provisions of all kinds were wretched. But these, though serious drawbacks to our comforts, did not constitute the worst evil of which we had to complain. A reduction in the army having taken place, volunteers from the disbanded corps were permitted to enlist in the 11th Light Dragoons; and these, most of whom came from the corps of Artillery Drivers, proved to be, in point of character, of the worst description. The consequence was that our regiment, which, up to the date of this unhappy occurrence, had maintained an excellent name, now fell off, both in morals and reputation, and a system of pilfering arose, such as compelled the commanding officer, however naturally averse to the proceeding, to tighten the cords of his discipline exceedingly. There were more punishments in the regiment during four months after the volunteers joined us than I had ever seen in all the years during which I had been a member of it; and I am reluctantly forced to admit that they were all richly merited.

Out of the very worst of these recruits two separate troops were formed; and to one of the two, which had its quarters at an inconsiderable village on the great chaussée of Lisle, I found myself attached. It was a source of extreme annoyance to me, for I knew none of the men; and, besides that, the quarter was a bad one, the whole country being flat, was laid under water, as if it had been a lake instead of a plain. Indeed, there was no passing from one farm-house to another (and it was among the farm-houses that we were distributed), except by the aid of huge stepping-stones, each of which measured not less than from five to six feet in height, though its top barely surmounted the surface of the inundation. Now, though the natives, from long practice, found it easy enough to pass to and fro, the operation proved for awhile exceedingly hazardous to us; and to the last there needed great self-possession, and a state of brain perfectly clear, to carry us through. Fate so ordered it that I should be one of those to whom the difficulty of the passage should be rendered experimentally manifest; and the circumstances under which my mishap befel were these:

I had learned that, in a farm-house some way removed from mine, a serjeant lay, with whom, as well as with his wife, I had long been acquainted. As may be imagined, the intelligence gave me great delight, and I resolved that no delay should occur ere I paid them a visit. Accordingly I proceeded one day to their quarters, and, being there informed that they had crossed the inundation to a village not far off, I followed them thither. The meeting was affectionate on all sides, and led to an adjournment into the back parlour of a linen-draper's house, the master of which dealt in contraband as well as in exciseable articles, and was famous for his well-flavoured and potent eau de vie. We chatted over old times, drank largely, and by-and-by became musical as well as talkative. The lady, in particular, favoured us with a ditty, in the chorus of which we were expected to join; and, as the children of the family slept in cribs round the room, the effect, as our music grew momentarily louder and louder, was somewhat ludicrous. First, the little urchins opened their eyes, and lifted their heads with a curious look over their cradles. Next, they began to scream, as if to increase the melody of our canzonette; and, finally, they sprang out of bed with one accord, and ran, as if the spirit of evil had pursued them, calling aloud for their mother. For myself, I was in fits of laughter; for the mother came presently, to entreat that we would be quiet; and the whole of her little troop, accounting themselves safe only beside her apron-string, bore her company. Never was a more ludicrous scene presented. The landlady now coaxed, now remonstrated for silence: the serjeant's wife continued to pour forth her song, till it reached the twenty-sixth stanza; while the serjeant, on whom the liquor had taken considerable effect, beat time with amazing energy on the table, and the children, whimpering all the while that the solo was in progress, broke out into perfect yells so soon as the chorus began. I must confess that I was never more amused in the whole course of my life; for there was terror mixed up with our landlady's indignation, which gave to it a very comical turn; and though I knew that her alarm was not groundless, I confess that I saw nothing in it that did not savour of the grotesque.

At last, however, my friend the serjeant's wife fairly broke down. She could not recollect the twenty-seventh stanza of her canzonette; and, as the night was wearing apace, and roll-call near at hand, we judged it expedient to depart. And now came the thought, how were we, in our existing state of brain, and in a dark and stormy night,--for the wind blew a hurricane,--to cross the swamp? I confess that, as far as I was myself concerned, I made up my mind to a ducking; but my friends took a different view of the case; so away we set in high glee, the lady jeeringly telling me to keep close to her, and she would guide me through all difficulties. The event proved, that in this, as in many other instances, there may be excess of hardihood as well as its opposite. We got, indeed, as far as the point where the water was well known to be deepest,--the serjeant in front, carrying a paper lantern in his hand, his wife following, and I bringing up the rear; but there we came to a stand-still: the lady's courage failed her; she stopped short--declared that she could go no further--and our situation became as pitiable as can well be imagined. At last we each gave her a hand, but neither entreaty nor objurgation could prevail upon her to take another step. "Stoop down," cried I, "and make the attempt to scramble from stone to stone:" she tried to do so; but the effort proved fatal, for her foot slipped, and down she fell, dragging both her supporters into the water. As a matter of course, we were all soused overhead, yet there our troubles ended. By sheer strength of arm I contrived to keep her mouth clear of the flood, while her husband, who was a tall man, dragged her forward: and thus, at the expense of a severe wetting from top to toe, we managed in the end to reach their quarters. A change of habiliments was here given to me: supper too was provided; and, by the help of a little more brandy, we managed to pass the night merrily enough. Nor was the slightest inconvenience experienced either then or afterwards by any of the party in consequence of the rash attempt and its ludicrous, though most uncomfortable issue.

It is not worth while to continue a detailed narration of the many little adventures that befel me during the remainder of our sojourn in France. They were precisely such as those who understand what a soldier's life is will be able to conceive for themselves, while, to the mere civilian, I feel that it would be impossible to convey any accurate notion of them. For example, I was on one occasion quartered with a party of harum-scarum youths, at a farm-house near Lisle, of which the owners appeared to have made up their minds to treat us with as little regard to our comfort as possible. They not only never offered to share with us any of the petty luxuries which they themselves enjoyed, but they made a point of refusing us the accommodation of their cooking utensils, and never failed to extinguish the fire in the kitchen, as soon as they themselves were done with it. For all this, my wild scapegraces took care to pay them off to their heart's content. In the first place, a hot loaf would disappear from the oven, no human being could tell how; then a lump of butter made its way in some mysterious manner from the larder, though the good woman had taken care to lock the door and put the key in her pocket. The honest man's clover, too, which he had stowed away with infinite care in the loft, made its way somehow or other into our horses' racks, and the animals grew fat and sleek in consequence, even while the allowance of forage served out to them by the legitimate authorities was admitted to be inadequate to their necessities. All this both astonished and chafed our hosts, who never could bring home a charge of pilfering against any one, and came at last to the conclusion that we were in league with the enemy of mankind. But the circumstance which brought these curmudgeons at last to their senses was this.

It is the custom in that part of France for the women to keep themselves warm by placing under their garments, while they sit at their needlework, pots filled with the ashes of charcoal. Nobody would have noticed this, had our landlady afforded us the comfort of a fire in the grate; but this, as I have said, she regularly raked out after dinner, and if any of us complained of cold, she contented herself by remarking "that she could not sympathize with his distress." One day she had, as usual, sneered at our want of hardihood, when all at once an explosion took place beneath her, and she jumped up, unhurt, it is true, but the very image of rage and consternation. The fact is, that one of my lads had tied a small quantity of gunpowder very tightly in a worsted bag, and contrived dexterously to bury it in the hot ashes just as she drew her feu-pot towards her. Some time was, of course, required to burn through the flannel, during the progress of which my lady sat in her glory; but no sooner was the train fired, than all her courage forsook her. From that instant both she and her husband were subdued: they expressed great regret to me at the line which they had previously taken; they promised, in case we would cease to molest them, that they would change their bearing towards us; and as we really did not desire at their hands more than we conceived to be reasonable, I engaged, on the part of my comrades, that all tricks and annoyances should cease. The farmer and his wife kept their word, and so did we, of which the result was, that during the remainder of our sojourn beneath their roof there was the best understanding between us.

Another little frolic in which we indulged greatly astonished the good people of Baillieul and its vicinity. The 5th of November overtaking us here, we resolved to burn a Guy Fawkes, after the manner of our boyish days at home. A man of straw was soon made, dressed up, and duly painted, which, with a bag of gunpowder in his interior, we mounted upon a little cart, and dragged with much laughter through the place. At first the inhabitants seemed totally at a loss what to make of our proceedings; but, by-and-by, having stumbled upon an itinerant Flemish fiddler, and persuaded him, by dint of large potations, to mount the car beside our Guy, the sound of his music, and the ludicrous grimaces which he made, drew a crowd of delighted natives to follow in our train. It would be tedious to speak of the antics which were played off--all of them laughable at the moment, though unworthy of description,--till in the end an adequate number of fagots was collected, and the last scene alone remained to be enacted. Our intention was to burn our Guy in the little square or place of the town; but the mayor, apprehensive lest the thatched roofs might be ignited by sparks from the bonfire, entreated us to remove into a field of his own, a little way off. We complied with his request at once; and a dark night having happily set in, we proceeded, by the light of half-a-dozen torches, to erect the gallows and to suspend Guy, with his fagots gathered round him. There was great shouting and merriment all this while; the fiddler played as if he had possessed the power of twenty fiddlers; men, and women, and children danced to his strains; and when the torches were applied, and the fagots began to blaze, the mirth of all classes among the lookers-on seemed only to increase. So it was till the flames reached the mine which the man of straw bore about with him in his stomach. But the effect of the explosion I shall never forget. Nothing of the sort had been anticipated by the French people; the catastrophe seemed to come upon them like some convulsion of nature; for they uttered a wild scream, took to their heels one and all, and never stopped to look about till they found themselves safe in their respective domiciles. This was, of course, the very point of the joke to us; and as no human being suffered from it further than by the fright at the moment, it did not interrupt the excellent terms on which we had hitherto lived with our hosts.

Besides these frolics, peculiar to our calling and situation, we found entertainment, as well as instruction, in several grand reviews; camps being formed during the summer months, in which the troops of England and her allies were assembled. Moreover, we were yet in France when the Waterloo prize-money was issued to us;--and as it certainly went further there than it could have done at home, so were French shopkeepers and publicans principally the gainers by it.--We had also our fairs, our races, our fox-hunts, and other manly sports; some of which appeared to irritate, and all to astonish, the people among whom they were enacted yet let me do them justice,--except in a very few instances they exhibited no disposition to pick quarrels, or molest us, though a regard to truth compels me to acknowledge that we were not on all occasions over-careful to study either their prejudices or their customs.

At last, however, the period came when the army of occupation was to be broken up. We were stationed in and around Cambray when the order to this effect arrived, and we received our route to march upon Calais; which we reached, unless my memory be at fault, early in November of 1818, and not long afterwards embarked for England. A joyous day it was to all when once again we found ourselves, amid a crowd of our countrymen, forming in the streets of Ramsgate. W e landed there on the 20th, were billeted for the night, and proceeded next day to Canterbury. But ours was destined to be no more than a passing visit to the beloved land of our birth; and the reader, if he think fit to pursue my narrative further, will find whither it was that the fortune of war next carried us.