2G BRITANNY AND THE CHASE. 



do not flare up at this and begin to swear, but laugh rather, 

 as you can well afford to do at such nonsense ; merely re- 

 memberins!; for the future to be more moderate towards 

 your Gallic neighbours, who can no more help their na- 

 tional feelings than they can add a cubit to their stature. 



For example, as to poison and assassination. Take up 

 any French history of the last war, and you will find 

 repeated fifty times the assumed fact that the English go- 

 vernment had constantly in its pay a band of men to poison 

 or murder Bonaparte. Every Frenchman devoutly believes 

 this. An epidemic wdnch prevailed in 1810 in Britanny 

 was ascribed by the- " Moniteur," the official newspaper, to 

 the people eating a lot of infected sheep which were stated 

 to have been landed by the British government on the coast, 

 for the express purpose of poisoning those whom they 

 could not otherwise subdue. Napoleon carefully fostered 

 all this credulity, as it materially assisted him, and the 

 people believed it more than the Bible. I have had re- 

 peated complaints of the treatment of French prisoners in 

 England, though from my own knowledge I can say, that 

 as such they were very well treated. It is, perhaps, useless 

 to retort, but I have never omitted telling them that one 

 of my uncles, an officer who was a prisoner of war at 

 Brest and L' Orient, was marched about the country with- 

 out shoes, and almost without clothes, and was fed chiefly 

 on black bread and water; and I remember him saying, 

 that in one prison the rats were so numerous as to oblige 

 one of their number to momit guard at night to save the 

 others from being devoured alive. But how strong is 

 national prejudice? Facts take their appearance from it as 



