r broken regarding it, I was obliged to be satisfied
with my own guesses on the subject. I had been about two months at
Komorn when I was invited to join a shooting-party on the north bank of
the river at a place called Ercacs, or, as the Hungarians pronounce
it, Ercacsh, celebrated for the blackcock, or the auerhahn, one of the
finest birds of the east of Europe. All my companions had been promising
me great things, when the season for the sport should begin, and I was
equally anxious to display my skill as a marksman. The scenery, too,
was represented as surpassingly fine, and I looked forward to the
expedition, which was to occupy a week, with much interest. One
circumstance alone damped the ardour of my enjoyment: for some time back
exercise on horseback had become painful to me, and some of those evil
consequences which my doctor had speculated on, such as exfoliation of
the bone, seemed now threatening me. Up to this the inconvenience had
gone no further than an occasional sharp pang after a hard day's ride,
or a dull uneasy feeling which prevented my sleeping soundly at night.
I hoped, however, by time, that these would subside, and the natural
strength of my constitution carry me safely over every mischance. I was
ashamed to speak of these symptoms to my companions, lest they should
imagine that I was only screening myself from the fatigues of which they
so freely partook; and so I continued, day after day, the same habit of
severe exercise; while feverish nights, and a failing appetite, made me
hourly weaker. My spirits never flagged, and perhaps in this way damaged
me seriously, supplying a false energy long after real strength had
begun to give way. The world, indeed, 'went so well' with me in all
other respects, that I felt it would have been the blackest ingratitude
against Fortune to have given way to anything like discontent or
repining. It was true, I was far from being a solitary instance of a
colonel at my age; there were several such in the army, and one or two
even younger; but they were unexceptionably men of family influence,
descendants of the ancient nobility of France, for whose chivalric names
and titles the Emperor had conceived the greatest respect; and never, in
all the pomp of Louis the Fourteenth's Court, were a Gramont, a Guise, a
Rochefoucauld, or a Tavanne more certain of his favourable notice. Now,
I was utterly devoid of all such pretensions; my claims to gentle blood,
such as they were