"It is very proper that his wife should know. And next month or so
will be your time to learn from him anything you ought to know, my dear
child."

Later on when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the
bride, Madame la Generale D'Hubert made no difficulty in communicating
to her beloved old uncle what she had learned without any difficulty
from her husband. The Chevalier listened with profound attention to the
end, then took a pinch of snuff, shook the grains of tobacco off the
frilled front of his shirt, and said calmly: "And that's all what it
was."

"Yes, uncle," said Madame la Generale, opening her pretty eyes very
wide. "Isn't it funny? _C'est insense_--to think what men are capable
of."

"H'm," commented the old _emigre_. "It depends what sort of men. That
Bonaparte's soldiers were savages. As a wife, my dear, it is proper for
you to believe implicitly what your husband says."

But to Leonie's husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion.
"If that's the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the
honeymoon, too, you may depend on it no one will ever know the secret of
this affair."

Considerably later still, General D'Hubert judged the time come, and the
opportunity propitious to write a conciliatory letter to General Feraud.
"I have never," protested the General Baron D'Hubert, "wished for your
death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me to give
you back in all form your forfeited life. We two, who have been partners
in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly."

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was
alluding to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village
on the banks of the Garonne:

"If one of your boy's names had been Napoleon, or Joseph, or even
Joachim, I could congratulate you with a better heart. As you have
thought proper to name him Charles Henri Armand I am confirmed in my
conviction that you never loved the emperor. The thought of that sublime
hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so
little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to
blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred.
But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer."

Madame la Generale D'Hubert lifted up her hands in horror after perusing
that letter.

"You see? He won't be reconciled," said her husband. "We must take care
that he never, by