“H’m,” commented the old emigre.  “It depends what sort of men.  That Bonaparte’s soldiers were savages.  As a wife, my dear, it is proper for you to believe implicitly what your husband says.”

But to Leonie’s husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion.  “If that’s the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the honeymoon, too, you may depend on it no one will ever know the secret of this affair.”

Considerably later still, General D’Hubert judged the time come, and the opportunity propitious to write a conciliatory letter to General Feraud.  “I have never,” protested the General Baron D’Hubert, “wished for your death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel.  Allow me to give you back in all form your forfeited life.  We two, who have been partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly.”

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information.  It was alluding to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village on the banks of the Garonne: 

“If one of your boy’s names had been Napoleon, or Joseph, or even Joachim, I could congratulate you with a better heart.  As you have thought proper to name him Charles Henri Armand I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the emperor.  The thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to blow my brains out.  From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred.  But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer.”

Madame la Generale D’Hubert lifted up her hands in horror after perusing that letter.

“You see?  He won’t be reconciled,” said her husband.  “We must take care that he never, by any chance, learns where the money he lives on comes from.  It would be simply appalling.”

“You are a brave homme, Armand,” said Madame la Generale appreciatively.

“My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out—­strictly speaking.  But as I did not we can’t let him starve.  He has been deprived of his pension for ‘breach of military discipline’ when he broke bounds to fight his last duel with me.  He’s crippled with rheumatism.  We are bound to take care of him to the end of his days.  And, after all, I am indebted to him for the radiant discovery that you loved me a little—­you sly person.  Ha!  Ha!  Two miles, running all the way!...  It is extraordinary how all through this affair that man has managed to engage my deeper feelings.”

THE END