THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD(吉拉德历险记)

VIP免费

2024-12-26 0 0 628.54KB 168 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

THE ADVENTURES OF

GERARD

BY A. CONAN DOYLE

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

PREFACE

I hope that some readers may possibly be interested in these little tales

of the Napoleonic soldiers to the extent of following them up to the

springs from which they flow. The age was rich in military material,

some of it the most human and the most picturesque that I have ever read.

Setting aside historical works or the biographies of the leaders there is a

mass of evidence written by the actual fighting men themselves, which

describes their feelings and their experiences, stated always from the point

of view of the particular branch of the service to which they belonged.

The Cavalry were particularly happy in their writers of memoirs. Thus

De Rocca in his "Memoires sur la guerre des Francais en Espagne" has

given the narrative of a Hussar, while De Naylies in his "Memoires sur la

guerre d'Espagne" gives the same campaigns from the point of view of the

Dragoon. Then we have the "Souvenirs Militaires du Colonel de

Gonneville," which treats a series of wars, including that of Spain, as seen

from under the steel-brimmed hair-crested helmet of a Cuirassier. Pre-

eminent among all these works, and among all military memoirs, are the

famous reminiscences of Marbot, which can be obtained in an English

form. Marbot was a Chasseur, so again we obtain the Cavalry point of

view. Among other books which help one to an understanding of the

Napoleonic soldier I would specially recommend "Les Cahiers du

Capitaine Coignet," which treat the wars from the point of view of the

private of the Guards, and "Les Memoires du Sergeant Bourgoyne," who

was a non-commissioned officer in the same corps. The Journal of

Sergeant Fricasse and the Recollections of de Fezenac and of de Segur

complete the materials from which I have worked in my endeavour to give

a true historical and military atmosphere to an imaginary figure.

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

I. How Brigadier Gerard Lost His

Ear

It was the old Brigadier who was talking in the cafe.

I have seen a great many cities, my friends. I would not dare to tell

you how many I have entered as a conqueror with eight hundred of my

little fighting devils clanking and jingling behind me. The cavalry were

in front of the Grande Armee, and the Hussars of Conflans were in front of

the cavalry, and I was in front of the Hussars. But of all the cities which

we visited Venice is the most ill-built and ridiculous. I cannot imagine

how the people who laid it out thought that the cavalry could manoeuvre.

It would puzzle Murat or Lassalle to bring a squadron into that square of

theirs. For this reason we left Kellermann's heavy brigade and also my

own Hussars at Padua on the mainland. But Suchet with the infantry

held the town, and he had chosen me as his aide- de-camp for that winter,

because he was pleased about the affair of the Italian fencing-master at

Milan. The fellow was a good swordsman, and it was fortunate for the

credit of French arms that it was I who was opposed to him. Besides, he

deserved a lesson, for if one does not like a prima donna's singing one can

always be silent, but it is intolerable that a public affront should be put

upon a pretty woman. So the sympathy was all with me, and after the

affair had blown over and the man's widow had been pensioned Suchet

chose me as his own galloper, and I followed him to Venice, where I had

the strange adventure which I am about to tell you.

You have not been to Venice? No, for it is seldom that the French

travel. We were great travellers in those days. From Moscow to Cairo

we had travelled everywhere, but we went in larger parties than were

convenient to those whom we visited, and we carried our passports in our

limbers. It will be a bad day for Europe when the French start travelling

again, for they are slow to leave their homes, but when they have done so

no one can say how far they will go if they have a guide like our little man

to point out the way. But the great days are gone and the great men are

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

dead, and here am I, the last of them, drinking wine of Suresnes and

telling old tales in a cafe.

But it is of Venice that I would speak. The folk there live like water-

rats upon a mud-bank, but the houses are very fine, and the churches,

especially that of St. Mark, are as great as any I have seen. But above all

they are proud of their statues and their pictures, which are the most

famous in Europe. There are many soldiers who think that because one's

trade is to make war one should never have a thought above fighting and

plunder. There was old Bouvet, for example--the one who was killed by

the Prussians on the day that I won the Emperor's medal; if you took him

away from the camp and the canteen, and spoke to him of books or of art,

he would sit and stare at you. But the highest soldier is a man like

myself who can understand the things of the mind and the soul. It is true

that I was very young when I joined the army, and that the quarter- master

was my only teacher, but if you go about the world with your eyes open

you cannot help learning a great deal.

Thus I was able to admire the pictures in Venice, and to know the

names of the great men, Michael Titiens, and Angelus, and the others, who

had painted them. No one can say that Napoleon did not admire them

also, for the very first thing which he did when he captured the town was

to send the best of them to Paris. We all took what we could get, and I

had two pictures for my share.

One of them, called "Nymphs Surprised," I kept for myself, and the

other, "Saint Barbara," I sent as a present for my mother.

It must be confessed, however, that some of our men behaved very

badly in this matter of the statues and the pictures. The people at Venice

were very much attached to them, and as to the four bronze horses which

stood over the gate of their great church, they loved them as dearly as if

they had been their children. I have always been a judge of a horse, and I

had a good look at these ones, but I could not see that there was much to

be said for them. They were too coarse-limbed for light cavalry charges

and they had not the weight for the gun-teams.

However, they were the only four horses, alive or dead, in the whole

town, so it was not to be expected that the people would know any better.

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

They wept bitterly when they were sent away, and ten French soldiers

were found floating in the canals that night. As a punishment for these

murders a great many more of their pictures were sent away, and the

soldiers took to breaking the statues and firing their muskets at the stained-

glass windows.

This made the people furious, and there was very bad feeling in the

town. Many officers and men disappeared during that winter, and even

their bodies were never found.

For myself I had plenty to do, and I never found the time heavy on my

hands. In every country it has been my custom to try to learn the

language. For this reason I always look round for some lady who will be

kind enough to teach it to me, and then we practise it together. This is

the most interesting way of picking it up, and before I was thirty I could

speak nearly every tongue in Europe; but it must be confessed that what

you learn is not of much use for the ordinary purposes of life. My

business, for example, has usually been with soldiers and peasants, and

what advantage is it to be able to say to them that I love only them, and

that I will come back when the wars are over?

Never have I had so sweet a teacher as in Venice. Lucia was her first

name, and her second--but a gentleman forgets second names. I can say

this with all discretion, that she was of one of the senatorial families of

Venice and that her grandfather had been Doge of the town.

She was of an exquisite beauty--and when I, Etienne Gerard, use such

a word as "exquisite," my friends, it has a meaning. I have judgment, I

have memories, I have the means of comparison. Of all the women who

have loved me there are not twenty to whom I could apply such a term as

that. But I say again that Lucia was exquisite.

Of the dark type I do not recall her equal unless it were Dolores of

Toledo. There was a little brunette whom I loved at Santarem when I

was soldiering under Massena in Portugal--her name has escaped me.

She was of a perfect beauty, but she had not the figure nor the grace of

Lucia. There was Agnes also. I could not put one before the other, but I

do none an injustice when I say that Lucia was the equal of the best.

It was over this matter of pictures that I had first met her, for her father

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

owned a palace on the farther side of the Rialto Bridge upon the Grand

Canal, and it was so packed with wall-paintings that Suchet sent a party of

sappers to cut some of them out and send them to Paris.

I had gone down with them, and after I had seen Lucia in tears it

appeared to me that the plaster would crack if it were taken from the

support of the wall. I said so, and the sappers were withdrawn. After

that I was the friend of the family, and many a flask of Chianti have I

cracked with the father and many a sweet lesson have I had from the

daughter. Some of our French officers married in Venice that winter, and

I might have done the same, for I loved her with all my heart; but Etienne

Gerard has his sword, his horse, his regiment, his mother, his Emperor,

and his career. A debonair Hussar has room in his life for love, but none

for a wife. So I thought then, my friends, but I did not see the lonely

days when I should long to clasp those vanished hands, and turn my head

away when I saw old comrades with their tall children standing round their

chairs. This love which I had thought was a joke and a plaything--it is

only now that I understand that it is the moulder of one's life, the most

solemn and sacred of all things-- Thank you, my friend, thank you! It

is a good wine, and a second bottle cannot hurt.

And now I will tell you how my love for Lucia was the cause of one of

the most terrible of all the wonderful adventures which have ever befallen

me, and how it was that I came to lose the top of my right ear. You have

often asked me why it was missing. To-night for the first time I will tell

you.

Suchet's head-quarters at that time was the old palace of the Doge

Dandolo, which stands on the lagoon not far from the place of San Marco.

It was near the end of the winter, and I had returned one night from the

Theatre Goldini, when I found a note from Lucia and a gondola waiting.

She prayed me to come to her at once as she was in trouble. To a

Frenchman and a soldier there was but one answer to such a note. In an

instant I was in the boat and the gondolier was pushing out into the dark

lagoon.

I remember that as I took my seat in the boat I was struck by the man's

great size. He was not tall, but he was one of the broadest men that I

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

have ever seen in my life. But the gondoliers of Venice are a strong

breed, and powerful men are common enough among them. The fellow

took his place behind me and began to row.

A good soldier in an enemy's country should everywhere and at all

times be on the alert. It has been one of the rules of my life, and if I have

lived to wear grey hairs it is because I have observed it. And yet upon

that night I was as careless as a foolish young recruit who fears lest he

should be thought to be afraid. My pistols I had left behind in my hurry.

My sword was at my belt, but it is not always the most convenient of

weapons. I lay back in my seat in the gondola, lulled by the gentle swish

of the water and the steady creaking of the oar. Our way lay through a

network of narrow canals with high houses towering on either side and a

thin slit of star-spangled sky above us. Here and there, on the bridges

which spanned the canal, there was the dim glimmer of an oil lamp, and

sometimes there came a gleam from some niche where a candle burned

before the image of a saint. But save for this it was all black, and one

could only see the water by the white fringe which curled round the long

black nose of our boat. It was a place and a time for dreaming. I

thought of my own past life, of all the great deeds in which I had been

concerned, of the horses that I had handled, and of the women that I had

loved. Then I thought also of my dear mother, and I fancied her joy

when she heard the folk in the village talking about the fame of her son.

Of the Emperor also I thought, and of France, the dear fatherland, the

sunny France, mother of beautiful daughters and of gallant sons. My

heart glowed within me as I thought of how we had brought her colours so

many hundred leagues beyond her borders. To her greatness I would

dedicate my life. I placed my hand upon my heart as I swore it, and at

that instant the gondolier fell upon me from behind.

When I say that he fell upon me I do not mean merely that he attacked

me, but that he really did tumble upon me with all his weight. The

fellow stands behind you and above you as he rows, so that you can

neither see him nor can you in any way guard against such an assault.

One moment I had sat with my mind filled with sublime resolutions,

the next I was flattened out upon the bottom of the boat, the breath dashed

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

out of my body, and this monster pinning me down. I felt the fierce pants

of his hot breath upon the back of my neck. In an instant he had torn

away my sword, had slipped a sack over my head, and had tied a rope

firmly round the outside of it.

There I was at the bottom of the gondola as helpless as a trussed fowl.

I could not shout, I could not move; I was a mere bundle. An instant later

I heard once more the swishing of the water and the creaking of the oar.

This fellow had done his work and had resumed his journey as quietly

and unconcernedly as if he were accustomed to clap a sack over a colonel

of Hussars every day of the week.

I cannot tell you the humiliation and also the fury which filled my

mind as I lay there like a helpless sheep being carried to the butcher's. I,

Etienne Gerard, the champion of the six brigades of light cavalry and the

first swordsman of the Grand Army, to be overpowered by a single

unarmed man in such a fashion! Yet I lay quiet, for there is a time to

resist and there is a time to save one's strength. I had felt the fellow's

grip upon my arms, and I knew that I would be a child in his hands. I

waited quietly, therefore, with a heart which burned with rage, until my

opportunity should come.

How long I lay there at the bottom of the boat I can not tell; but it

seemed to me to be a long time, and always there were the hiss of the

waters and the steady creaking of the oar. Several times we turned

corners, for I heard the long, sad cry which these gondoliers give when

they wish to warn their fellows that they are coming. At last, after a

considerable journey, I felt the side of the boat scrape up against a landing-

place. The fellow knocked three times with his oar upon wood, and in

answer to his summons I heard the rasping of bars and the turning of keys.

A great door creaked back upon its hinges.

"Have you got him?" asked a voice, in Italian.

My monster gave a laugh and kicked the sack in which I lay.

"Here he is," said he.

"They are waiting." He added something which I could not

understand.

"Take him, then," said my captor. He raised me in his arms, ascended

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

some steps, and I was thrown down upon a hard floor. A moment later

the bars creaked and the key whined once more. I was a prisoner inside a

house.

From the voices and the steps there seemed now to be several people

round me. I understand Italian a great deal better than I speak it, and I

could make out very well what they were saying.

"You have not killed him, Matteo?"

"What matter if I have?"

"My faith, you will have to answer for it to the tribunal."

"They will kill him, will they not?"

"Yes, but it is not for you or me to take it out of their hands."

"Tut! I have not killed him. Dead men do not bite, and his cursed

teeth met in my thumb as I pulled the sack over his head."

"He lies very quiet."

"Tumble him out and you will find that he is lively enough."

The cord which bound me was undone and the sack drawn from over

my head. With my eyes closed I lay motionless upon the floor.

"By the saints, Matteo, I tell you that you have broken his neck."

"Not I. He has only fainted. The better for him if he never came

out of it again."

I felt a hand within my tunic.

"Matteo is right," said a voice. "His heart beats like a hammer. Let

him lie and he will soon find his senses."

I waited for a minute or so and then I ventured to take a stealthy peep

from between my lashes. At first I could see nothing, for I had been so

long in darkness and it was but a dim light in which I found myself.

Soon, however, I made out that a high and vaulted ceiling covered with

painted gods and goddesses was arching over my head. This was no

mean den of cut-throats into which I had been carried, but it must be the

hall of some Venetian palace. Then, without movement, very slowly and

stealthily I had a peep at the men who surrounded me. There was the

gondolier, a swart, hard-faced, murderous ruffian, and beside him were

three other men, one of them a little, twisted fellow with an air of authority

and several keys in his hand, the other two tall young servants in a smart

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD

livery. As I listened to their talk I saw that the small man was the

steward of the house, and that the others were under his orders.

There were four of them, then, but the little steward might be left out

of the reckoning. Had I a weapon I should have smiled at such odds as

those. But, hand to hand, I was no match for the one even without three

others to aid him. Cunning, then, not force, must be my aid. I wished

to look round for some mode of escape, and in doing so I gave an almost

imperceptible movement of my head. Slight as it was it did not escape

my guardians.

"Come, wake up, wake up!" cried the steward.

"Get on your feet, little Frenchman," growled the gondolier. "Get up,

I say," and for the second time he spurned me with his foot.

Never in the world was a command obeyed so promptly as that one.

In an instant I had bounded to my feet and rushed as hard as I could to the

back of the hall. They were after me as I have seen the English hounds

follow a fox, but there was a long passage down which I tore.

It turned to the left and again to the left, and then I found myself back

in the hall once more. They were almost within touch of me and there

was no time for thought. I turned toward the staircase, but two men were

coming down it. I dodged back and tried the door through which I had

been brought, but it was fastened with great bars and I could not loosen

them. The gondolier was on me with his knife, but I met him with a kick

on the body which stretched him on his back. His dagger flew with a

clatter across the marble floor. I had no time to seize it, for there were

half a dozen of them now clutching at me. As I rushed through them the

little steward thrust his leg before me and I fell with a crash, but I was up

in an instant, and breaking from their grasp I burst through the very middle

of them and made for a door at the other end of the hall. I reached it well

in front of them, and I gave a shout of triumph as the handle turned freely

in my hand, for I could see that it led to the outside and that all was clear

for my escape. But I had forgotten this strange city in which I was.

Every house is an island. As I flung open the door, ready to bound out

into the street, the light of the hall shone upon the deep, still, black water

which lay flush with the topmost step.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEADVENTURESOFGERARD1THEADVENTURESOFGERARDBYA.CONANDOYLETHEADVENTURESOFGERARD2PREFACEIhopethatsomereadersmaypossiblybeinterestedintheselittletalesoftheNapoleonicsoldierstotheextentoffollowingthemuptothespringsfromwhichtheyflow.Theagewasrichinmilitarymaterial,someofitthemosthumanandthemostpicturesqu...

展开>> 收起<<

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD(吉拉德历险记).pdf

共168页,预览34页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD(吉拉德历险记)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: