to recur at any length to the somewhat famous person
to whom I owed my life, I may as well state that her name has since
occupied no inconsiderable share of attention in France, and her
history, under the title of _Memoires d'une Contemporaine_, excited a
degree of interest and anxiety in quarters which one might have fancied
far above the reach of her revelations. At the time I speak of, I
little knew the character of the age in which such influences were
all powerful, nor how destinies very different from mine hung upon the
favouritism of 'La belle Nathalie.' Had I known these things, and, still
more, had I known the sad fate to which she brought my poor friend,
Colonel Mahon, I might have scrupled to accept my life at such hands,
or involved myself in a debt of gratitude to one for whom I was
subsequently to feel nothing but hatred and aversion. It was indeed
a terrible period, and in nothing more so than the fact that acts of
benevolence and charity were blended up with features of falsehood,
treachery, and baseness, which made one despair of humanity, and think
the very worst of their species.

CHAPTER XV. SCRAPS OF HISTORY

Nothing displays more powerfully the force of egotism than the simple
truth that, when any man sits himself down to write the events of his
life, the really momentous occurrences in which he may have borne a part
occupy a conspicuously small place, when each petty incident of a merely
personal nature is dilated and extended beyond all bounds. In one sense,
the reader benefits by this, since there are few impertinences less
forgivable than the obtrusion of some insignificant name into the
narrative of facts that are meet for history. I have made these remarks
in a spirit of apology to my reader; not alone for the accuracy of my
late detail, but also, if I should seem in future to dwell but passingly
on the truly important facts of a great campaign, in which my own part
was so humble.

I was a soldier in that glorious army which Moreau led into the heart
of Germany, and whose victorious career would only have ceased when
they entered the capital of the Empire, had it not been for the unhappy
mistakes of Jourdan, who commanded the auxiliary forces in the north.
For nigh three months we advanced steadily and successfully, superior
in every engagement; we only waited for the moment of junction with
Jourdan's army, to declare the Empire our own; when at last came the
terrible tidings that h