She doesn't get it from me." "Would mademoiselle understand, for instance, these lines from one of our Corsican songs in which a shepherd says to his shepherdess: "S'entrassi 'ndru paradisu santu, santu, E nun truvassi a tia, mi n'escriria." ("If I entered the holy land of paradise and found thee not, I would depart!") -- _Serenata di Zicavo_.
Miss Lydia did understand.

She thought the quotation bold, and the look which accompanied it still bolder, and replied, with a blush, "Capisco." "And are you going back to your own country on furlough ?" inquired the colonel.
"No, colonel, they have put me on half-pay, because I was at Waterloo, probably, and because I am Napoleon's fellow-countryman.

I am going home, as the song says, low in hope and low in purse," and he looked up to the sky and sighed.
The colonel slipped his hand into his pocket, and tried to think of some civil phrase with which he might slip the gold coin he was fingering into the palm of his unfortunate enemy.
"And I too," he said good-humouredly, "have been put on half-pay, but your half-pay can hardly give you enough to buy tobacco! Here, corporal!" and he tried to force the gold coin into the young man's closed hand, which rested on the gunwale of the gig.
The young Corsican reddened, drew himself up, bit his lips, and seemed, for a moment, on the brink of some angry reply.

Then suddenly his expression changed and he burst out laughing.

The colonel, grasping his gold piece still in his hand, sat staring at him.
"Colonel," said the young man, when he had recovered his gravity, "allow me to offer you two pieces of advice--the first is never to offer money to a Corsican, for some of my fellow-countrymen would be rude enough to throw it back in your face; the second is not to give people titles they do not claim.