Beginning the campaign of France in that state of mind, General D’Hubert was wounded on the second day of the battle under Laon.  While being carried off the field he heard that Colonel Feraud, promoted that moment to general, had been sent to replace him in the command of his brigade.  He cursed his luck impulsively, not being able, at the first glance, to discern all the advantages of a nasty wound.  And yet it was by this heroic method that Providence was shaping his future.  Travelling slowly south to his sister’s country house, under the care of a trusty old servant, General D’Hubert was spared the humiliating contacts and the perplexities of conduct which assailed the men of the Napoleonic empire at the moment of its downfall.  Lying in his bed with the windows of his room open wide to the sunshine of Provence, he perceived at last the undisguised aspect of the blessing conveyed by that jagged fragment of a Prussian shell which, killing his horse and ripping open his thigh, saved him from an active conflict with his conscience.  After fourteen years spent sword in hand in the saddle and strong in the sense of his duty done to the end, General D’Hubert found resignation an easy virtue.  His sister was delighted with his reasonableness.  “I leave myself altogether in your hands, my dear Leonie,” he had said.

He was still laid up when, the credit of his brother-in-law’s family being exerted on his behalf, he received from the Royal Government not only the confirmation of his rank but the assurance of being retained on the active list.  To this was added an unlimited convalescent leave.  The unfavourable opinion entertained of him in the more irreconcilable Bonapartist circles, though it rested on nothing more solid than the unsupported pronouncement of General Feraud, was directly responsible for General D’Hubert’s retention on the active list.  As to General Feraud, his rank was confirmed, too.  It was more than he dared to expect, but Marshal Soult, then Minister of War to the restored king, was partial to officers who had served in Spain.  Only not even the marshal’s protection could secure for him active employment.  He remained irreconcilable, idle and sinister, seeking in obscure restaurants the company of other half-pay officers, who cherished dingy but glorious old tricolour cockades in their breast pockets, and buttoned with the forbidden eagle buttons their shabby uniform, declaring themselves too poor to afford the expense of the prescribed change.

The triumphant return of the emperor, a historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General D’Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse.  Neither could he walk very well.  These disabilities, which his sister thought most lucky, helped her immensely to keep her brother out of all possible mischief.  His frame of mind at that time, she noted with dismay, became very far from reasonable.  That general officer, still menaced by the loss of a limb, was