to exist.  But at first he reacted from sheer incredulity.  This could not be.  It could not last.  The heavens would fall presently.  He called upon thunder, earthquakes, natural cataclysms.  But nothing happened.  The leaden weight of an irremediable idleness descended upon General Feraud, who, having no resources within himself, sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude.  He haunted the streets of the little town gazing before him with lack-lustre eyes, disregarding the hats raised on his passage; and the people, nudging each other as he went by, said:  “That’s poor General Feraud.  His heart is broken.  Behold how he loved the emperor!”

The other living wreckage of Napoleonic tempest to be found in that quiet nook of France clustered round him infinitely respectful of that sorrow.  He himself imagined his soul to be crushed by grief.  He experienced quickly succeeding impulses to weep, to howl, to bite his fists till blood came, to lie for days on his bed with his head thrust under the pillow; but they arose from sheer ennui, from the anguish of an immense, indescribable, inconceivable boredom.  Only his mental inability to grasp the hopeless nature of his case as a whole saved him from suicide.  He never even thought of it once.  He thought of nothing; but his appetite abandoned him, and the difficulty of expressing the overwhelming horror of his feelings (the most furious swearing could do no justice to it) induced gradually a habit of silence:—­a sort of death to a Southern temperament.

Great therefore was the emotion amongst the anciens militaires frequenting a certain little cafe full of flies when one stuffy afternoon “that poor General Feraud” let out suddenly a volley of formidable curses.

He had been sitting quietly in his own privileged corner looking through the Paris gazettes with about as much interest as a condemned man on the eve of execution could be expected to show in the news of the day.  A cluster of martial, bronzed faces, including one lacking an eye and another lacking the tip of a nose frost-bitten in Russia, surrounded him anxiously.

“What’s the matter, general?”

General Feraud sat erect, holding the newspaper at arm’s length in order to make out the small print better.  He was reading very low to himself over again fragments of the intelligence which had caused what may be called his resurrection.

“We are informed... till now on sick leave... is to be called to the command of the 5th Cavalry Brigade in...”

He dropped the paper stonily, mumbled once more...  “Called to the command"... and suddenly gave his forehead a mighty slap.

“I had almost forgotten him,” he cried in a conscience-stricken tone.

A deep-chested veteran shouted across the cafe: 

“Some new villainy of the government, general?”

“The villainies of these scoundrels,” thundered General Feraud, “are innumerable.  One more, one less!...”  He lowered his tone.  “But I will set good order to one of them at least.”