rmy!
He felt suddenly strange to the earth, like a disembodied spirit. It
was impossible to exist. But at first he reacted from sheer incredulity.
This could not be. He waited for thunder, earthquakes, natural
cataclysms; but nothing happened. The leaden weight of an irremediable
idleness descended upon General Feraud, who having no resources within
himself sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude. He haunted the
streets of the little town, gazing before him with lacklustre eyes,
disregarding the hats raised on his passage; and people, nudging each
other as he went by, whispered, "That's poor General Feraud. His heart
is broken. Behold how he loved the Emperor."

The other living wreckage of Napoleonic tempest clustered round General
Feraud with infinite respect. He, himself, imagined his soul to be
crushed by grief. He suffered from quickly succeeding impulses to weep,
to howl, to bite his fists till blood came, to spend days on his bed
with his head thrust under the pillow; but these arose from sheer ennui,
from the anguish of an immense, indescribable, inconceivable boredom.
His mental inability to grasp the hopeless nature of his case as a whole
saved him from suicide. He never even thought of it once. He thought
of nothing. But his appetite abandoned him, and the difficulty he
experienced to express the overwhelming nature of his feelings (the most
furious swearing could do no justice to it) induced gradually a habit of
silence--a sort of death to a southern temperament.

Great, therefore, was the sensation amongst the anciens militaires
frequenting a certain little cafe; full of flies when one stuffy
afternoon "that poor General Feraud" let out suddenly a volley of
formidable curses.

He had been sitting quietly in his own privileged corner looking through
the Paris gazettes with just as much interest as a condemned man on the
eve of execution could be expected to show in the news of the day. "I'll
find out presently that I am alive yet," he declared, in a dogmatic
tone. "However, this is a private affair. An old affair of honour. Bah!
Our honour does not matter. Here we are driven off with a split ear like
a lot of cast troop horses--good only for a knacker's yard. But it
would be like striking a blow for the Emperor. . . . Messieurs, I shall
require the assistance of two of you."

Every man moved forward. General Feraud, deeply touched by this
demonstration, called with visible emotion upon the one-eyed v