oment
another version, in which Maurice Tiernay never occurred, and the incident
of the Fels Insel 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 labor 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 int