the man just gone away, he remains the most
incomplete figure. It is obvious that I must have seen him in '64, for
it is certain that he would not have missed the opportunity of seeing my
mother for what he must have known would be the last time. From my early
boyhood to this day, if I try to call up his image, a sort of mist rises
before my eyes, mist in which I perceive vaguely only a neatly brushed
head of white hair (which is exceptional in the case of the B. family,
where it is the rule for men to go bald in a becoming manner before
thirty) and a thin, curved, dignified nose, a feature in strict
accordance with the physical tradition of the B. family. But it is not
by these fragmentary remains of perishable mortality that he lives in my
memory. I knew, at a very early age, that my granduncle Nicholas B. was
a Knight of the Legion of Honour and that he had also the Polish Cross
for _valour Virtuti Militari_. The knowledge of these glorious facts
inspired in me an admiring veneration; yet it is not that sentiment,
strong as it was, which resumes for me the force and the significance of
his personality. It is over borne by another and complex impression
of awe, compassion, and horror. Mr. Nicholas B. remains for me the
unfortunate and miserable (but heroic) being who once upon a time had
eaten a dog.

It is a good forty years since I heard the tale, and the effect has not
worn off yet. I believe this is the very first, say, realistic, story I
heard in my life; but all the same I don't know why I should have been
so frightfully impressed. Of course I know what our village dogs look
like--but still. . . . No! At this very day, recalling the horror
and compassion of my childhood, I ask myself whether I am right in
disclosing to a cold and fastidious world that awful episode in the
family history. I ask myself--is it right?--especially as the B. family
had always been honourably known in a wide countryside for the delicacy
of their tastes in the matter of eating and drinking. But upon the
whole, and considering that this gastronomical degradation overtaking a
gallant young officer lies really at the door of the Great Napoleon,
I think that to cover it up by silence would be an exaggeration of
literary restraint. Let the truth stand here. The responsibility rests
with the Man of St. Helena in view of his deplorable levity in the
conduct of the Russian campaign. It was during the memorable retreat
from Moscow that Mr. Nicho