el' should figure as unobtrusively as
possible. I was always a better improvisatore than amanuensis; so that
without a moment's loss of time I fashioned a new and very different
narrative, and detailing the battle tolerably accurately, minus the
share my own heroism had taken in it. The captain made a few, a very
few corrections of my style, in which the 'flourish' and 'bom.' figured,
perhaps, too conspicuously; and then told me frankly, that once upon a
time he had been fool enough to give himself great trouble in framing
these kind of reports, but that having served for a short period in the
'bureau' of the minister of war, he had learned better--'In fact,' said
he, 'a district report is never read! Some hundreds of them reach
the office of the minister every day, and are safely deposited in the
"archives" of the department. They have all, besides, such a family
resemblance, that with a few changes in the name of the commanding
officer, any battle in the Netherlands would do equally well for one
fought beyond the Alps! Since I became acquainted with this fact,
Tiernay, I have bestowed less pains upon the matter, and usually deputed
the task to some smart orderly of the staff.'

So, thought I, I have been writing history for nothing; and Maurice
Tiernay, the real hero of the passage of the Rhine, will be unrecorded
and unremembered, just for want of one honest and impartial scribe
to transmit his name to posterity. The reflection was not a very
encouraging one; nor did it serve to lighten the toil in which I passed
many weary hours, copying out my own precious manuscript. Again and
again during that night did I wonder at my own diffuseness--again and
again did I curse the prolix accuracy of a description that cost such
labour to reiterate. It was like a species of poetical justice on me
for my own amplifications; and when the day broke, and I still sat at my
table writing on, at the third copy of this precious document, I vowed a
vow of brevity, should I ever survive to indite similar compositions.

CHAPTER XIII. A FAREWELL LETTER

It was in something less than a week after that I entered upon my new
career as orderly in the staff, when I began to believe myself the
most miserable of all human beings. On the saddle at sunrise, I never
dismounted, except to carry a measuring chain, 'to step distances,'
mark out intrenchments, and then write away, for hours, long
enormous reports, that were to be models of caligr