taclysms. But nothing happened. The leaden weight of an
irremediable idleness descended upon General Feraud, who, having no
resources within himself, sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude.
He haunted the streets of the little town gazing before him with
lack-lustre eyes, disregarding the hats raised on his passage; and the
people, nudging each other as he went by, said: "That's poor General
Feraud. His heart is broken. Behold how he loved the emperor!"

The other living wreckage of Napoleonic tempest to be found in that
quiet nook of France clustered round him infinitely respectful of
that sorrow. He himself imagined his soul to be crushed by grief. He
experienced quickly succeeding impulses to weep, to howl, to bite his
fists till blood came, to lie for days on his bed with his head thrust
under the pillow; but they arose from sheer _ennui_, from the anguish
of an immense, indescribable, inconceivable boredom. Only his mental
inability to grasp the hopeless nature of his case as a whole saved him
from suicide. He never even thought of it once. He thought of nothing;
but his appetite abandoned him, and the difficulty of expressing the
overwhelming horror of his feelings (the most furious swearing could do
no justice to it) induced gradually a habit of silence:--a sort of death
to a Southern temperament.

Great therefore was the emotion amongst the _anciens militaires_
frequenting a certain little cafe full of flies when one stuffy
afternoon "that poor General Feraud" let out suddenly a volley of
formidable curses.

He had been sitting quietly in his own privileged corner looking through
the Paris gazettes with about as much interest as a condemned man on
the eve of execution could be expected to show in the news of the day.
A cluster of martial, bronzed faces, including one lacking an eye and
another lacking the tip of a nose frost-bitten in Russia, surrounded him
anxiously.

"What's the matter, general?"

General Feraud sat erect, holding the newspaper at arm's length in order
to make out the small print better. He was reading very low to himself
over again fragments of the intelligence which had caused what may be
called his resurrection.

"We are informed... till now on sick leave... is to be called to the
command of the 5th Cavalry Brigade in..."

He dropped the paper stonily, mumbled once more... "Called to the
command"... and suddenly gave his forehead a mighty slap.

"I had almost forgotten him,"