Note 44 — Chapter XXIII · RESIDENCE IN FLORENCE—CHARLES LEVER—REVOLUTION, AND THE BROWNINGS

The parody was “Terence Deuville”-“Putting spurs to my horse I rode at him boldly, and with one bound cleared him, horse and all. A shout of indignation arose from the assembled staff. I wheeled suddenly, with the intention of apologising, but my mare misunderstood me, and again dashing forward, once more vaulted over the head of the officer, this time, unfortunately, uncovering him by a vicious kick of her hoof. ‘Seize him!’ roared the entire army. I was seized. As the soldiers led me away, I asked the name of the gray-haired officer. ‘That?—why that’s the Duke of Wellington!’ I fainted.”

A somewhat similar episode is recorded in another parody, the fighting “Onet y Oneth,” by W. M. Thackeray, written many years before Bret Harte (who, I am sure, was no plagiarist) wrote “Terence Deuville.”