discovered one night in the stables of the chateau by a groom who, seeing a light, raised an alarm of thieves.  His crutch was lying half buried in the straw of the litter, and he himself was hopping on one leg in a loose box around a snorting horse he was trying to saddle.  Such were the effects of imperial magic upon an unenthusiastic temperament and a pondered mind.  Beset, in the light of stable lanterns, by the tears, entreaties, indignation, remonstrances and reproaches of his family, he got out of the difficult situation by fainting away there and then in the arms of his nearest relatives, and was carried off to bed.  Before he got out of it again the second reign of Napoleon, the Hundred Days of feverish agitation and supreme effort passed away like a terrifying dream.  The tragic year 1815, begun in the trouble and unrest of consciences, was ending in vengeful proscriptions.

How General Feraud escaped the clutches of the Special Commission and the last offices of a firing squad, he never knew himself.  It was partly due to the subordinate position he was assigned during the Hundred Days.  He was not given active command but was kept busy at the cavalry depot in Paris, mounting and despatching hastily drilled troopers into the field.  Considering this task as unworthy of his abilities, he discharged it with no offensively noticeable zeal.  But for the greater part he was saved from the excesses of royalist reaction by the interference of General D’Hubert.

This last, still on convalescent leave but able now to travel, had been despatched by his sister to Paris to present himself to his legitimate sovereign.  As no one in the capital could possibly know anything of the episode in the stable, he was received there with distinction.  Military to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for.  All the rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the man who had never loved the emperor—­a sort of monster essentially worse than a mere betrayer.

General D’Hubert shrugged his shoulders without anger at this ferocious prejudice.  Rejected by his old friends and mistrusting profoundly the advances of royalist society, the young and handsome general (he was barely forty) adopted a manner of punctilious and cold courtesy which at the merest shadow of an intended slight passed easily into harsh haughtiness.  Thus prepared, General D’Hubert went about his affairs in Paris feeling inwardly very happy with the peculiar uplifting happiness of a man very much in love.  The charming girl looked out by his sister had come upon the scene and had conquered him in the thorough manner in which a young girl, by merely existing in his sight, can make a man of forty her own.  They were going to be married as soon as General D’Hubert had obtained his official nomination to a promised command.