As to Mr. Nicholas B., sub-lieutenant of 1808, lieutenant of 1813 in the French Army, and for a short time Officier d’Ordonnance of Marshal Marmont; afterwards Captain in the 2nd Regiment of Mounted Rifles in the Polish Army—­such as it existed up to 1830 in the reduced kingdom established by the Congress of Vienna—­I must say that from all that more distant past, known to me traditionally and a little de visu, and called out by the words of the man just gone away, he remains the most incomplete figure.  It is obvious that I must have seen him in ’64, for it is certain that he would not have missed the opportunity of seeing my mother for what he must have known would be the last time.  From my early boyhood to this day, if I try to call up his image, a sort of mist rises before my eyes, a mist in which I perceive vaguely only a neatly brushed head of white hair (which is exceptional in the case of the B. family, where it is the rule for men to go bald in a becoming manner, before thirty) and a thin, curved, dignified nose, a feature in strict accordance with the physical tradition of the B. family.  But it is not by these fragmentary remains of perishable mortality that he lives in my memory.  I knew, at a very early age, that my grand-uncle Nicholas B. was a Knight of the Legion of Honour and that he had also the Polish Cross for valour Virtuti Militari.  The knowledge of these glorious facts inspired in me an admiring veneration; yet it is not that sentiment, strong as it was, which resumes for me the force and the significance of his personality.  It is overborne by another and complex impression of awe, compassion and horror.  Mr. Nicholas B. remains for me the unfortunate and miserable (but heroic) being who once upon a time had eaten a dog.

It is a good forty years since I heard the tale, and the effect has not worn off yet.  I believe this is the very first, say, realistic, story I heard in my life; but all the same I don’t know why I should have been so frightfully impressed.  Of course I know what our village dogs look like—­but still . . .  No!  At this very day, recalling the horror and compassion of my childhood, I ask myself whether I am right in disclosing to a cold and fastidious world that awful episode in the family history.  I ask myself—­is it right?—­especially as the B. family had always been honourably known in a wide countryside for the delicacy of their tastes in the matter of eating and drinking.  But upon the whole, and considering that this gastronomical degradation overtaking a gallant young officer lies really at the door of the Great Napoleon, I think that to cover it up by silence would be an exaggeration of literary restraint.  Let the truth stand here.  The responsibility rests with the Man of St. Helena in view of his deplorable levity in the conduct of the Russian campaign.  It was during the memorable retreat from Moscow that Mr. Nicholas B., in company of two brother officers—­as to whose morality