e said intimacy., and to teach the
offender his place."

The general flushed with indignation as he spoke.

"Oh, but Lebedeff cannot have been in Moscow in 1812. He is much too
young; it is all nonsense."

"Very well, but even if we admit that he was alive in 1812, can one
believe that a French chasseur pointed a cannon at him for a lark, and
shot his left leg off? He says he picked his own leg up and took it away
and buried it in the cemetery. He swore he had a stone put up over
it with the inscription: 'Here lies the leg of Collegiate Secretary
Lebedeff,' and on the other side, 'Rest, beloved ashes, till the morn of
joy,' and that he has a service read over it every year (which is simply
sacrilege), and goes to Moscow once a year on purpose. He invites me to
Moscow in order to prove his assertion, and show me his leg's tomb, and
the very cannon that shot him; he says it's the eleventh from the
gate of the Kremlin, an old-fashioned falconet taken from the French
afterwards."

"And, meanwhile both his legs are still on his body," said the prince,
laughing. "I assure you, it is only an innocent joke, and you need not
be angry about it."

"Excuse me--wait a minute--he says that the leg we see is a wooden one,
made by Tchernosvitoff."

"They do say one can dance with those!"

"Quite so, quite so; and he swears that his wife never found out that
one of his legs was wooden all the while they were married. When I
showed him the ridiculousness of all this, he said, 'Well, if you were
one of Napoleon's pages in 1812, you might let me bury my leg in the
Moscow cemetery.'

"Why, did you say--" began the prince, and paused in confusion.

The general gazed at his host disdainfully.

"Oh, go on," he said, "finish your sentence, by all means. Say how odd
it appears to you that a man fallen to such a depth of humiliation as
I, can ever have been the actual eye-witness of great events. Go on, I
don't mind! Has he found time to tell you scandal about me?"

"No, I've heard nothing of this from Lebedeff, if you mean Lebedeff."

"H'm; I thought differently. You see, we were talking over this period
of history. I was criticizing a current report of something which then
happened, and having been myself an eye-witness of the occurrence--you
are smiling, prince--you are looking at my face as if--"

"Oh no! not at all--I--"

"I am rather young-looking, I know; but I am actually older than I
appear to be. I was ten or eleven in