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

“If one of your boy’s names had been Napoleon—­or Joseph—­or even Joachim, I could congratulate you on the event with a better heart.  As you have thought proper to give him the names of 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 despair after perusing that answer.

“You see?  He won’t be reconciled,” said her husband.  “He must never, by any chance, be allowed to guess where the money comes from.  It wouldn’t do.  He couldn’t bear it.”

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

“My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out; but as I didn’t, we can’t let him starve.  He has lost his pension and he is utterly incapable of doing anything in the world for himself.  We must take care of him, secretly, to the end of his days.  Don’t I owe him the most ecstatic moment of my life? . . .  Ha! ha! ha!  Over the fields, two miles, running all the way!  I couldn’t believe my ears! . . .  But for his stupid ferocity, it would have taken me years to find you out.  It’s extraordinary how in one way or another this man has managed to fasten himself on my deeper feelings.”

A PATHETIC TALE

IL CONDE

“Vedi Napoli e poi mori.”

The first time we got into conversation was in the National Museum in Naples, in the rooms on the ground floor containing the famous collection of bronzes from Herculaneum and Pompeii:  that marvellous legacy of antique art whose delicate perfection has been preserved for us by the catastrophic fury of a volcano.

He addressed me first, over the celebrated Resting Hermes which we had been looking at side by side.  He said the right things about that wholly admirable piece.  Nothing profound.  His taste was natural rather than cultivated.  He had obviously seen many fine things in his life and appreciated them:  but he had no jargon of a dilettante or the connoisseur.  A hateful tribe.  He spoke like a fairly intelligent man of the world, a perfectly unaffected gentleman.