because in spite of his rank of general he always stood in the rank and file, next to the right file-leader of the Old Guard.  Then when he fell, in the battle of Neuburg, Napoleon gave orders that the heart of the “First Grenadier” be placed in an urn and carried along with the troop, and that his name, Latour d’Auvergne, be regularly called at every roll-call, and the soldier serving as file-leader be instructed to answer in his stead and tell where he was.  This was about what I had long ago learned by heart from my father’s stories; but his fondness for this hero was so great that, whenever it was at all possible, he returned to him and asked the same questions.  Or, to be more accurate, the same scene was enacted, for it was a scene.

“Do you know Latour d’Auvergne?” he usually began.

“Certainly.  He was the First Grenadier of France.”

“Good.  And do you also know how he was honored after he was dead?”

“Certainly.”

“Then tell me how it was.”

“Very well; but you must first stand up, papa, and be file-leader, or I can’t do it.”

Then he would actually rise from his seat on the sofa and in true military fashion take his position before me as file-leader of the Old Guard, while I myself, little stick-in-the-mud that I was, assumed the part of the roll-calling officer.  Then I began to call the names: 

“Latour d’Auvergne!”

“He is not here,” answered my father in a basso profundo voice.

“Where is he, pray?”

“He died on the field of honor.”

Once in awhile my mother attended these peculiar lessons—­the one about Latour, however, was never ventured in her presence—­and she did not fail to give us to understand, by her looks, that she considered this whole method, which my father with an inimitable expression of countenance called his “Socratic method,” exceedingly dubious.  But she, by nature wholly conventional, not only in this particular, but in others, was absolutely wrong, for, to repeat, I owe in fact to these lessons, and the similar conversations growing out of them, all the best things, at least all the most practical things, I know.  Of all that my father was able to teach me nothing has been forgotten and nothing has proved useless for my purposes.  Not only have these stories been of hundredfold benefit to me socially throughout my long life, they have also, in my writing, been ever at hand as a Golden Treasury, and if I were asked, to what teacher I felt most deeply indebted, I should have to reply:  to my father, my father, who knew nothing at all, so to speak, but, with his wealth of anecdotes picked up from newspapers and magazines, and covering every variety of theme, gave me infinitely more help than all my Gymnasium and Realschule teachers put together.  What information these men offered me, even if it was good, has been for the most part forgotten; but the stories of Ney and Rapp have remained fresh in my memory to the present hour.