s. Mr. Nicholas B.
concluded his bald narrative with the word "Imbecile," uttered with the
utmost deliberation. It testified to his indignation at the loss of so
many thousands of lives. But his phlegmatic physiognomy lighted up when
he spoke of his only wound, with something resembling satisfaction. You
will see that there was some reason for it when you learn that he was
wounded in the heel. "Like his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon himself," he
reminded his hearers, with assumed indifference. There can be no
doubt that the indifference was assumed, if one thinks what a very
distinguished sort of wound it was. In all the history of warfare there
are, I believe, only three warriors publicly known to have been wounded
in the heel--Achilles and Napoleon--demigods indeed--to whom the
familial piety of an unworthy descendant adds the name of the simple
mortal, Nicholas B.

The Hundred Days found Mr. Nicholas B. staying with a distant relative
of ours, owner of a small estate in Galicia. How he got there across the
breadth of an armed Europe, and after what adventures, I am afraid will
never be known now. All his papers were destroyed shortly before his
death; but if there was among them, as he affirmed, a concise record
of his life, then I am pretty sure it did not take up more than a
half sheet of foolscap or so. This relative of ours happened to be
an Austrian officer who had left the service after the battle of
Austerlitz. Unlike Mr. Nicholas B., who concealed his decorations, he
liked to display his honourable discharge in which he was mentioned as
un schreckbar (fearless) before the enemy. No conjunction could seem
more unpromising, yet it stands in the family tradition that these two
got on very well together in their rural solitude.

When asked whether he had not been sorely tempted during the Hundred
Days to make his way again to France and join the service of his beloved
Emperor, Mr. Nicholas B. used to mutter: "No money. No horse. Too far to
walk."

The fall of Napoleon and the ruin of national hopes affected adversely
the character of Mr. Nicholas B. He shrank from returning to his
province. But for that there was also another reason. Mr. Nicholas B.
and his brother--my maternal grand father--had lost their father early,
while they were quite children. Their mother, young still and left
very well off, married again a man of great charm and of an amiable
disposition, but without a penny. He turned out an affectio