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whose parents were too ashamed to keep them at home. We're not like that in France, we welcome our children.
    Domino told me that we were rumoured to be digging a tunnel ready to pop up like moles in the Kentish fields. 'It took us an hour to dig a foot pit for your friend.'
    Other stories concerned a balloon landing, a man-firing cannon and a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament just as Guy Fawkes had nearly done. The balloon landing was the one the English were taking the most seriously and, to prevent us, they built tall towers along the Cinque Ports, to spot us and to shoot us down.
    All folly, but I think if Bonaparte had asked us to strap on wings and fly to St James's Palace we would have set off as confidendy as a child lets loose a kite.
    Without him, during nights and days when affairs of state took him back to Paris, our nights and days were different only in the amount of light they let in. For myself, with no one to love, a hedgehog spirit seemed best and I hid my heart in the leaves.
    I have a way with priests, so it came as no surprise that along with Domino, my friend should be Patrick, the de-frocked priest with the eagle eye, imported from Ireland.
    In 1799, when Napoleon was still vying for power, General Hoche, a schoolboys' hero and onetime lover of Madame Bonaparte, had landed in Ireland and almost succeeded in defeating John Bull outright. During his stay he heard a story about a certain disgraced priest whose right eye was just like yours or mine, but whose left eye could put the best telescope to shame. Indeed he had been forced out of the church for squinting atyoung girls from the bell tower. What priest doesn't? But in Patrick's case, thanks to the miraculous properties of his eye, no bosom was safe. A girl might be undressing two villages away, but if the evening was clear and her shutters were back she might just as well have gone to the priest and lain her underclothes at his feet.
    Hoche, a man of the world, was sceptical of old wives' tales, but soon found that the women were wiser than he. Though Patrick at first denied the charge and the men laughed and said women and their fantasies, the women looked at the earth and said they knew when they were being watched. The Bishop had taken them seriously, not because he believed the talk about Patrick's eye, but preferring the smooth shapes of his choirboys he found the affair exceedingly repulsive.
    A priest should have better things to do than look at women.
    Hoche, caught in this web of hearsay, took Patrick drinking till the man could hardly stand, then half-walked, half-carried him to a hillock that afforded a clear view across the valley for some miles. They sat together and, while Patrick dozed, Hoche pulled out a red flag and waved it for a couple of minutes. Then nudging Patrick awake he commented, as one would, on the splendid evening and the beautiful scenery. Out of courtesy to his host Patrick forced himself to follow the sweep of Hoche's arm, muttering something about the Irish having been blessed with their portion of paradise on earth. Then he propped himself forward, screwed up one eye, and in a voice as hushed and holy as the Bishop's at communion said, 'Would you look at that now?'
    'At what, that falcon?'
    'Never mind the falcon, she's as strong and brown as a cow.' Hoche could see nothing, but he knew what Patrick could see. He had paid a tart to undress in a field some fifteen miles away, and placed his men at regular intervals with their red flags.
    When he left for France he took Patrick with him.
    At Boulogne, Patrick was usually to be found, like Simeon Stylites, on the top of a purpose-built pillar. From there he could look out across the Channel and report on the whereabouts of Nelson's blockading fleet and warn our practising troops of any English threat. French boats that strayed too far out of the harbour radius were likely to be picked off with a sharp broadside if the English were in the mood for patrolling. In