ntity. From the day when I was turned out of that
town by the events of the war, I have wandered about like a vagabond,
begging my bread, treated as a madman when I have told my story, without
ever having found or earned a sou to enable me to recover the deeds
which would prove my statements, and restore me to society. My
sufferings have often kept me for six months at a time in some little
town, where every care was taken of the invalid Frenchman, but where he
was laughed at to his face as soon as he said he was Colonel Chabert.
For a long time that laughter, those doubts, used to put me into rages
which did me harm, and which even led to my being locked up at Stuttgart
as a madman. And indeed, as you may judge from my story, there was ample
reason for shutting a man up.

"At the end of two years' detention, which I was compelled to submit to,
after hearing my keepers say a thousand times, 'Here is a poor man who
thinks he is Colonel Chabert' to people who would reply, 'Poor fellow!'
I became convinced of the impossibility of my own adventure. I grew
melancholy, resigned, and quiet, and gave up calling myself Colonel
Chabert, in order to get out of my prison, and see France once more. Oh,
monsieur! To see Paris again was a delirium which I----"

Without finishing his sentence, Colonel Chabert fell into a deep study,
which Derville respected.

"One fine day," his visitor resumed, "one spring day, they gave me the
key of the fields, as we say, and ten thalers, admitting that I talked
quite sensibly on all subjects, and no longer called myself Colonel
Chabert. On my honor, at that time, and even to this day, sometimes I
hate my name. I wish I were not myself. The sense of my rights kills me.
If my illness had but deprived me of all memory of my past life, I could
be happy. I should have entered the service again under any name,
no matter what, and should, perhaps, have been made Field-Marshal in
Austria or Russia. Who knows?"

"Monsieur," said the attorney, "you have upset all my ideas. I feel as
if I heard you in a dream. Pause for a moment, I beg of you."

"You are the only person," said the Colonel, with a melancholy look,
"who ever listened to me so patiently. No lawyer has been willing to
lend me ten napoleons to enable me to procure from Germany the necessary
documents to begin my lawsuit--"

"What lawsuit?" said the attorney, who had forgotten his client's
painful position in listening to the narrative of his