it
made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy
in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service
before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have
foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it
if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my
hair would turn white.

Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to
myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along
with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took
my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and
grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his
regiment, and away we went to the field.

And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything
but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody
had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance
every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations
of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make
a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and
rave too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of
apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased
the lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high
that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling
out of the sky.

He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his
superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of... down
went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby
was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten
minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over
the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder
now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this
immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a
charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an
enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'

And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the
insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?
An entire and unsuspected Russian army in rese