A silence in which a small boy shudders and says firmly: 

“I could not have eaten that dog.”

And his grandmother remarks with a smile: 

“Perhaps you don’t know what it is to be hungry.”

I have learned something of it since.  Not that I have been reduced to eat dog.  I have fed on the emblematical animal, which, in the language of the volatile Gauls, is called la vache enragee; I have lived on ancient salt junk, I know the taste of shark, of trepang, of snake, of nondescript dishes containing things without a name—­but of the Lithuanian village dog—­never!  I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is not I but my grand-uncle Nicholas, of the Polish landed gentry, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, &c. &c., who, in his young days, had eaten the Lithuanian dog.

I wish he had not.  The childish horror of the deed clings absurdly to the grizzled man.  I am perfectly helpless against it.  Still if he really had to, let us charitably remember that he had eaten him on active service, while bearing up bravely against the greatest military disaster of modern history, and, in a manner, for the sake of his country.  He had eaten him to appease his hunger no doubt, but also for the sake of an unappeasable and patriotic desire, in the glow of a great faith that lives still, and in the pursuit of a great illusion kindled like a false beacon by a great man to lead astray the effort of a brave nation.

Pro patria!

Looked at in that light it appears a sweet and decorous meal.

And looked at in the same light my own diet of la vache enragee appears a fatuous and extravagant form of self-indulgence; for why should I, the son of a land which such men as these have turned up with their ploughshares and bedewed with their blood, undertake the pursuit of fantastic meals of salt junk and hard tack upon the wide seas?  On the kindest view it seems an unanswerable question.  Alas!  I have the conviction that there are men of unstained rectitude who are ready to murmur scornfully the word desertion.  Thus the taste of innocent adventure may be made bitter to the palate.  The part of the inexplicable should be allowed for in appraising the conduct of men in a world where no explanation is final.  No charge of faithlessness ought to be lightly uttered.  The appearances of this perishable life are deceptive like everything that falls under the judgment of our imperfect senses.  The inner voice may remain true enough in its secret counsel.  The fidelity to a special tradition may last through the events of an unrelated existence, following faithfully too the traced way of an inexplicable impulse.