lightning stroke separated us from each other at the moment when Law
and Religion were about adding their sanction to our sweet communion. I
departed before I was able to give my name to her who had given me her
heart. I promised to return; she promised to wait for me; and, all
bathed in her tears, I tore myself from her arms, to rush to the laurels
of Dresden and the cypresses of Leipzic. A few lines from her hand
reached me during the interval between the two battles. 'You are to be a
father,' she told me. Am I one? God knows! Has she waited for me? I
believe she has. The waiting must have appeared to be a long one since
the birth of this child, who is forty-six years old to-day, and who
could be, in his turn, my father.

"Pardon me for having troubled you so long with misfortunes. I wished to
pass rapidly over this sad history, but the unhappiness of virtue has in
it something sweet to temper the bitterness of grief.

"Some days after the disaster of Leipzic, the giant of our age had me
called into his tent, and said to me:

"'Colonel, are you a man to make your way through four armies?'

"'Yes, sire.'

"'Alone, and without escort?'

"'Yes, sire.'

"'There must be a letter carried to Dantzic.'

"'Yes, sire.'

"'You will deliver it into General Rapp's own hands?'

"'Yes, sire.'

"'It is probable you will be taken, or killed.'

"'Yes, sire.'

"'For that reason I send two other officers with copies of the same
despatch. There are three of you; the enemy will kill two, the third
will get there, and France will be saved.'

"'Yes, sire.'

"'The one who returns shall be a brigadier-general.'

"'Yes, sire.'

"Every detail of this interview, every word of the Emperor, every
response which I had the honor to address to him, is still engraved upon
my memory. All three of us set out separately. Alas! not one of us
reached the goal aimed at by his valor, and I have learned to-day that
France was not saved. But when I see these blockheads of historians
asserting that the Emperor forgot to send orders to General Rapp, I
feel a terrible itching to cut their ---- story short, at least.

"'When a prisoner in the hands of the Russians in a German village, I
had the consolation of finding an old philosopher, who gave me the
rarest proofs of friendship. Who would have told me, when I succumbed to
the numbness of the cold in the tower of Liebenfeld, that that sleep
would not be the last? God is my witness, that in