shortly after the retreat began he was sent back to the town where some divisions of the French Army (and amongst them the Polish corps of Prince Joseph Poniatowski), jammed hopelessly in the streets, were being simply exterminated by the troops of the Allied Powers.  When asked what it was like in there Mr. Nicholas B. muttered the only word “Shambles.”  Having delivered his message to the Prince he hastened away at once to render an account of his mission to the superior who had sent him.  By that time the advance of the enemy had enveloped the town, and he was shot at from houses and chased all the way to the river bank by a disorderly mob of Austrian Dragoons and Prussian Hussars.  The bridge had been mined early in the morning and his opinion was that the sight of the horsemen converging from many sides in the pursuit of his person alarmed the officer in command of the sappers and caused the premature firing of the charges.  He had not gone more than 200 yards on the other side when he heard the sound of the fatal explosions.  Mr. Nicholas B. concluded his bald narrative with the word “Imbecile” uttered with the utmost deliberation.  It testified to his indignation at the loss of so many thousands of lives.  But his phlegmatic physiognomy lighted up when he spoke of his only wound, with something resembling satisfaction.  You will see that there was some reason for it when you learn that he was wounded in the heel.  “Like his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon himself,” he reminded his hearers with assumed indifference.  There can be no doubt that the indifference was assumed, if one thinks what very distinguished sort of wound it was.  In all the history of warfare there are, I believe, only three warriors publicly known to have been wounded in the heel—­Achilles and Napoleon—­demi-gods indeed—­to whom the familial piety of an unworthy descendant adds the name of the simple mortal, Nicholas B.

The Hundred Days found Mr. Nicholas B. staying with a distant relative of ours, owner of a small estate in Galicia.  How he got there across the breadth of an armed Europe and after what adventures I am afraid will never be known now.  All his papers were destroyed shortly before his death; but if there was amongst them, as he affirmed, a concise record of his life, then I am pretty sure it did not take up more than a half-sheet of foolscap or so.  This relative of ours happened to be an Austrian officer, who had left the service after the battle of Austerlitz.  Unlike Mr. Nicholas B., who concealed his decorations, he liked to display his honourable discharge in which he was mentioned as unschreckbar (fearless) before the enemy.  No conjunction could seem more unpromising, yet it stands in the family tradition that these two got on very well together in their rural solitude.

When asked whether he had not been sorely tempted during the Hundred Days to make his way again to France and join the service of his beloved Emperor, Mr. Nicholas B. used to mutter:  “No money.  No horse.  Too far to walk.”