y account either
for the glory or safety of France," he snapped viciously. "You don't
pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do--who have been with him
half a dozen times on the ground--do you?"

His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced. Colonel Feraud walked up
and down the room.

"This is not a time to mince matters," he said. "I can't believe that
that man ever loved the emperor. He picked up his general's stars under
the boots of Marshal Berthier. Very well. I'll get mine in another
fashion, and then we shall settle this business which has been dragging
on too long."

General D'Hubert, informed indirectly of Colonel Feraud's attitude, made
a gesture as if to put aside an importunate person. His thoughts were
solicited by graver cares. He had had no time to go and see his family.
His sister, whose royalist hopes were rising higher every day, though
proud of her brother, regretted his recent advancement in a measure,
because it put on him a prominent mark of the usurper's favour which
later on could have an adverse influence upon his career. He wrote
to her that no one but an inveterate enemy could say he had got his
promotion by favour. As to his career he assured her that he looked no
farther forward into the future than the next battlefield.

Beginning the campaign of France in that state of mind, General D'Hubert
was wounded on the second day of the battle under Laon. While being
carried off the field he heard that Colonel Feraud, promoted that moment
to general, had been sent to replace him in the command of his brigade.
He cursed his luck impulsively, not being able, at the first glance,
to discern all the advantages of a nasty wound. And yet it was by this
heroic method that Providence was shaping his future. Travelling slowly
south to his sister's country house, under the care of a trusty old
servant, General D'Hubert was spared the humiliating contacts and the
perplexities of conduct which assailed the men of the Napoleonic empire
at the moment of its downfall. Lying in his bed with the windows of his
room open wide to the sunshine of Provence, he perceived at last the
undisguised aspect of the blessing conveyed by that jagged fragment of
a Prussian shell which, killing his horse and ripping open his thigh,
saved him from an active conflict with his conscience. After fourteen
years spent sword in hand in the saddle and strong in the sense of his
duty done to the end, General D'Hubert found resigna