This explains the effect of darkness on danger.  “Let Ajax perish in the face of day.”  Who has not shuddered over the description of that Arkansas duel, fought by two naked combatants, with pistol and bowie-knife, in a dark room?  One thrills to think of those first few moments of breathless, sightless, hopeless, hushed expectation, —­then the confused encounter, the slippery floor, the invisible, ghastly terrors of that horrible chamber.  Many a man would shrink from that, who would march coolly up to the cannon’s mouth by daylight.

It is probably this mingling of imaginative excitement which makes the approach of peril often more terrible than its actual contact.  “A true knight,” said Sir Philip Sidney, “is fuller of gay bravery in the midst than at the beginning of danger.”  The boy Conde was reproached with trembling, in his first campaign.  “My body trembles,” said the hero, “with the actions my soul meditates.”  And it is said of Charles V., that he often trembled when arming for battle, but in the conflict was as cool as if it were impossible for an emperor to be killed.

These stray glimpses into the autobiography of heroism are of inestimable value, and they are scanty at best.  It is said of Turenne, that he was once asked by M. de Lamoignon, at the dinner-table of the latter, if his courage was never shaken at the commencement of a battle?  “Yes,” said Turenne, “I sometimes undergo great nervous excitement; but there are in the army a great multitude of subaltern officers and soldiers who experience none whatever.”  This goes to illustrate the same point.

To give to any form of courage an available or working value, it is essential that it have two qualities, promptness and persistency.  What Napoleon called “two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage” is rare.  It requires great enthusiasm or great discipline to be proof against a surprise.  It is said that Suwarrow, even in peace, always slept fully armed, boots and all.  “When I was lazy,” he said, “and wanted to enjoy a comfortable sleep, I usually took off one spur.”  In regard to persistency, history is full of instances of unexpected reverses and eleventh-hour triumphs.  The battle of Marengo was considered hopeless, for the first half of the day, and a retreat was generally expected, on the part of the French; when Desaix, consulted by Bonaparte, looked at his watch and said,—­“The battle is completely lost, but it is only two o’clock, and we shall have time to gain another.”  He then made his famous and fatal cavalry-charge, and won the field.  It was from a noble appreciation of this quality of persistency, that, when the battle of Cannae was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to the defeated general, Consul Terentius Varro, for not having despaired of the republic.