n all other men."

Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was a self-seeking
man, and one whose personal character was not altogether admirable in
other respects, and whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's
ideal of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing for
himself, was a man of great nobility of character, and was in perfection
a Virginia gentleman. At the end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was
that of an aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was that
of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire South as almost
holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt itself martyred, and came to
look upon its great general with a love and veneration unequaled in
history, and much more resembling the feeling of France for the
canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican.

When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in Norfolk, that
Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of the Marine Bank of that city, had
served through the Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became
very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that Colonel Taylor,
though at the time indisposed and confined to his home, was so kind as
to receive us.

He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of
his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned brick house at the corner of
York and Yarmouth Streets--a slender man, not very tall, I judged
(though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but
with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his
seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner,
delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men
and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual
youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is
most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign
of it is usually to be read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark,
observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though,
indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed
white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction.

Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because
she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for their sins) was also present:
a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she
received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger.

And why not? Do