rangers occupying
a table near his own that General Feraud, included in the batch of
superior officers arrested after the second return of the king, was in
danger of passing before the Special Commission. Living all his spare
moments, as is frequently the case with expectant lovers a day
in advance of reality, as it were, and in a state of bestarred
hallucination, it required nothing less than the name of his perpetual
antagonist pronounced in a loud voice to call the youngest of Napoleon's
generals away from the mental contemplation of his betrothed. He looked
round. The strangers wore civilian clothes. Lean and weather-beaten,
lolling back in their chairs, they looked at people with moody and
defiant abstraction from under their hats pulled low over their eyes. It
was not difficult to recognise them for two of the compulsorily retired
officers of the Old Guard. As from bravado or carelessness they chose to
speak in loud tones, General D'Hubert, who saw no reason why he should
change his seat, heard every word. They did not seem to be the personal
friends of General Feraud. His name came up with some others; and
hearing it repeated General D'Hubert's tender anticipations of a
domestic future adorned by a woman's grace were traversed by the harsh
regret of that warlike past, of that one long, intoxicating clash of
arms, unique in the magnitude of its glory and disaster--the marvellous
work and the special possession of his own generation. He felt an
irrational tenderness toward his old adversary, and appreciated
emotionally the murderous absurdity their encounter had introduced into
his life. It was like an additional pinch of spice in a hot dish. He
remembered the flavour with sudden melancholy. He would never taste
it again. It was all over.... "I fancy it was being left lying in the
garden that had exasperated him so against me," he thought indulgently.

The two strangers at the next table had fallen silent upon the third
mention of General Feraud's name. Presently, the oldest of the two,
speaking in a bitter tone, affirmed that General Feraud's account was
settled. And why? Simply because he was not like some big-wigs who loved
only themselves. The royalists knew that they could never make anything
of him. He loved the Other too well.

The Other was the man of St. Helena. The two officers nodded and touched
glasses before they drank to an impossible return. Then the same who had
spoken before remarked with a sardon