e my way
homeward to the barracks, more indifferent to life than ever I had been
afraid of death.

As I am not likely to recur at any length to the somewhat famous person to
whom I owed my life, I may as well state that her name has since occupied
no inconsiderable share of attention in France, and her history, under the
title of "Memoires d'une Contemporaine," excited a degree of interest and
anxiety in quarters which one might have fancied far above the reach of
her revelations. At the time I speak of, I little knew the character of
the age in which such influences were all powerful, nor how destinies very
different from mine hung upon the favoritism of "La belle Nathalie." Had I
known these things, and still more, had I known the sad fate to which she
brought my poor friend, Colonel Mahon, I might have scrupled to accept my
life at such hands, or involved myself in a debt of gratitude to one for
whom I was subsequently to feel nothing but hatred and aversion. It was
indeed a terrible period, and in nothing more so than the fact, that acts
of benevolence and charity were blended up with features of falsehood,
treachery, and baseness, which made one despair of humanity, and think the
very worst of their species.

Chapter XV. Scraps Of History.

Nothing displays more powerfully the force of egotism than the simple
truth that, when any man sets himself down to write the events of his
life, the really momentous occurrences in which he may have borne a part
occupy a conspicuously small place, when each petty incident of a merely
personal nature, is dilated and extended beyond all bounds. In one sense,
the reader benefits by this, since there are few impertinences less
forgivable than the obtrusion of some insignificant name into the
narrative of facts that are meet for history. I have made these remarks in
a spirit of apology to my reader; not alone for the accuracy of my late
detail, but also, if I should seem in future to dwell but passingly on the
truly important facts of a great campaign, in which my own part was so
humble.

I was a soldier in that glorious army which Moreau led into the heart of
Germany, and whose victorious career would only have ceased when they
entered the capital of the Empire, had it not been for the unhappy
mistakes of Jourdan, who commanded the auxiliary forces in the north. For
nigh three months we advanced steadily and successfully, superior in every
engagement; we only waited for