her is my son; and so that he is alive and well, I care little if a
general or simple soldier.'

Not a word was said in answer to this speech, and each seemed to feel
reluctant to tell the sad tidings. At last the elder clerk said, 'You
have lost a good son, and France one of her greatest captains. The
General Kleher is dead.'

'Dead!' said the old man slowly.

'In the very moment of his greatest glory, too, when he had won the
country of the Pyramids, and made Egypt a colony of France.'

'When did he die?' said the peasant.

'The last accounts from the East brought the news; and this very day the
Council of State has accorded a pension to his family of ten thousand
livres.'

'They may keep their money. I am all that remains, and have no want of
it; and I should be poorer still before I'd take it.'

These words he uttered in a low, harsh tone, and pushed his way back
through the crowd.

One moment more was enough for my inquiry.

'Maurice Tiernay, of the 9th--_destitue_,' was the short and stunning
answer I received.

'Is there any reason alleged---is there any charge imputed to him?'
asked I timidly.

'_Ma foi!_ you must go to the Minister of War with that question.
Perhaps he was paymaster, and embezzled the funds of the regiment;
perhaps he liked Royalist gold better than Republican silver; or perhaps
he preferred the company of the baggage-train and the ambulances, when
he should have been at the head of his squadron.'

I did not care to listen longer to this impertinence, and making my way
out I gained the street. The old peasant was still standing there, like
one stunned and overwhelmed by some great shock, and neither heeding the
crowd that passed, nor the groups that halted occasionally to stare at
him.

'Come along with me,' said I, taking his hand in mine. 'Your calamity is
a heavy one, but mine is harder to bear up against.'

He suffered himself to be led away like a child, and never spoke a word
as we walked along towards the _barriere_, beyond which, at a short
distance, was a little ordinary, where I used to dine. There we had our
dinner together, and as the evening wore on, the old man rallied enough
to tell me of his son's early life, and his departure for the army. Of
his great career I could speak freely, for Kleber's name was, in soldier
esteem, scarcely second to that of Bonaparte himself. Not all the
praises I could bestow, however, were sufficient to turn the old man
from his ste