“I do not care!”

The answer was insulting, and I intended to compel him to give me reparation, but the next day O’Neilan told me that Captain Laurent had gone mad and had been locked up in a mad-house.  He subsequently recovered his reason, but his conduct was so infamous that he was cashiered.

O’Neilan, who was as brave as Bayard, was killed a few years afterwards at the battle of Prague.  A man of his complexion was certain to fall the victim of Mars or of Venus.  He might be alive now if he had been endowed only with the courage of the fox, but he had the courage of the lion.  It is a virtue in a soldier, but almost a fault in an officer.  Those who brave danger with a full knowledge of it are worthy of praise, but those who do not realize it escape only by a miracle, and without any merit attaching itself to them.  Yet we must respect those great warriors, for their unconquerable courage is the offspring of a strong soul, of a virtue which places them above ordinary mortals.

Whenever I think of Prince Charles de Ligne I cannot restrain my tears.  He was as brave as Achilles, but Achilles was invulnerable.  He would be alive now if he had remembered during the fight that he was mortal.  Who are they that, having known him, have not shed tears in his memory?  He was handsome, kind, polished, learned, a lover of the arts, cheerful, witty in his conversation, a pleasant companion, and a man of perfect equability.  Fatal, terrible revolution!  A cannon ball took him from his friends, from his family, from the happiness which surrounded him.

The Prince de Waldeck has also paid the penalty of his intrepidity with the loss of one arm.  It is said that he consoles himself for that loss with the consciousness that with the remaining one he can yet command an army.

O you who despise life, tell me whether that contempt of life renders you worthy of it?

The opera opened immediately after Easter, and I was present at every performance.  I was then entirely cured, and had resumed my usual life.  I was pleased to see that Baletti shewed off Marina to the best advantage.  I never visited her, but Baletti was in the habit of breakfasting with me almost every morning.

He had often mentioned an old actress who had left the stage for more than twenty years, and pretended to have been my father’s friend.  One day I took a fancy to call upon her, and he accompanied me to her house.

I saw an old, broken-down crone whose toilet astonished me as much as her person.  In spite of her wrinkles, her face was plastered with red and white, and her eyebrows were indebted to India ink for their black appearance.  She exposed one-half of her flabby, disgusting bosom, and there could be no doubt as to her false set of teeth.  She wore a wig which fitted very badly, and allowed the intrusion of a few gray hairs which had survived the havoc of time.  Her shaking hands made mine quiver when she pressed