Joseph Conrad

“ Lying in his bed with the windows of his room open wide to the sunshine of Provence, he perceived at last the undisguised aspect of the blessing conveyed by that jagged fragment of a Prussian shell which, killing his horse and ripping open his thigh, saved him from an active conflict with his conscience. After fourteen years spent sword in hand in the saddle and strong in the sense of his duty done to the end, General D'Hubert found resignation an easy virtue. His sister was delighted with his reasonableness. "I leave myself altogether in your hands, my dear Léonie," he had said. ”

“ But I am minister of the king as yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this obscure Feraud off the list? You wonder how his name got there. Is it possible that you know men so little? My dear general, at the very first sitting of the commission names poured on us like rain off the tiles of the Tuileries. Names! We had our choice of thousands. How do you know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don't matter to France, does not keep out some other name?..."
The voice out of the armchair stopped. General D'Hubert sat still, shadowy, and silent. ”

“ The retreat from Moscow submerged all private feelings in a sea of disaster and misery. Colonels without regiments, D'Hubert and Feraud carried the musket in the ranks of the sacred battalion--a battalion recruited from officers of all arms who had no longer any troops to lead. ”

“ Like many other men he was rendered wicked by misfortune.
"I cannot consider General D'Hubert's person of any account either for the glory or safety of France," he snapped viciously. "You don't pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do--who have been with him half a dozen times on the ground--do you?"
His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced. Colonel Feraud walked up and down the room.
"This is not a time to mince matters," he said. "I can't believe that that man ever loved the emperor. He picked up his general's stars under the boots of Marshal Berthier. Very well. ”

“ Thus prepared, General D'Hubert went about his affairs in Paris feeling inwardly very happy with the peculiar uplifting happiness of a man very much in love. The charming girl looked out by his sister had come upon the scene and had conquered him in the thorough manner in which a young girl, by merely existing in his sight, can make a man of forty her own. ”

“ Two carefully aimed shots rang out in the frosty air, two Cossacks reeled in their saddles. The rest, not thinking the game good enough, closed round their wounded comrades and galloped away out of range. The two officers managed to rejoin their battalion, halted for the night. During that afternoon they had leaned upon each other more than once, and towards the last Colonel D'Hubert, whose long legs gave him an advantage in walking through soft snow, peremptorily took the musket from Colonel Feraud and carried it on his shoulder, using his own as a staff. ”

“ But the great majority of these bodies lay buried under the falls of snow, others had been already despoiled; and besides, to loot a pair of breeches from a frozen corpse is not so easy as it may appear to a mere theorist. It requires time. You must remain behind while your companions march on. And Colonel D'Hubert had his scruples as to falling out. They arose from a point of honour, and also a little from dread. Once he stepped aside he could not be sure of ever rejoining his battalion. And the enterprise demanded a physical effort from which his starved body shrank. ”

“ It's enough to make one break one's sword over one's knee and fling the pieces..."
"What government do you imagine yourself to be serving?" interrupted the minister sharply. After a short pause the crestfallen voice of General D'Hubert answered:
"The government of France."
"That's paying your conscience off with mere words, general. The truth is that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who have been without country for twenty years. Of men also who have just got over a very bad and humiliating fright.... ”

“ No doubt many of his brother officers of field rank had the same personal experience. But these were not the times to talk of it. In one of his letters home Colonel D'Hubert wrote: "All your plans, my dear Leonie, of marrying me to the charming girl you have discovered in your neighbourhood, seem farther off than ever. Peace is not yet. Europe wants another lesson. It will be a hard task for us, but it will be done well, because the emperor is invincible."
Thus wrote Colonel D'Hubert from Pomerania to his married sister Léonie, settled in the south of France. ”

“ No one cared how the next man felt or looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. ”

“ There remains with one, after the misfortune of having to breathe the air of the same room with that man, a sense of diminished dignity, the uneasy feeling of being not so clean after all as one hoped one was.... ”

“ The unfavourable opinion entertained of him in the more irreconcilable Bonapartist circles, though it rested on nothing more solid than the unsupported pronouncement of General Feraud, was directly responsible for General D'Hubert's retention on the active list. As to General Feraud, his rank was confirmed, too. It was more than he dared to expect, but Marshal Soult, then Minister of War to the restored king, was partial to officers who had served in Spain. Only not even the marshal's protection could secure for him active employment. ”

“ How General Feraud escaped the clutches of the Special Commission and the last offices of a firing squad, he never knew himself. It was partly due to the subordinate position he was assigned during the Hundred Days. He was not given active command but was kept busy at the cavalry depot in Paris, mounting and despatching hastily drilled troopers into the field. Considering this task as unworthy of his abilities, he discharged it with no offensively noticeable zeal. But for the greater part he was saved from the excesses of royalist reaction by the interference of General D'Hubert. ”

“ Luckily one never does begin again really. You must not think of breaking your sword, general."
General D'Hubert, his eyes fixed on the ground, made with his hand a hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him and began to scan deliberately the paper he had been holding up all the time.
"There are only twenty general officers to be brought before the Special Commission. Twenty. A round number. And let's see, Feraud. Ah, he's there! Gabriel Florian. Parfaitement. That's your man. ”

“ Living all his spare moments, as is frequently the case with expectant lovers a day in advance of reality, as it were, and in a state of bestarred hallucination, it required nothing less than the name of his perpetual antagonist pronounced in a loud voice to call the youngest of Napoleon's generals away from the mental contemplation of his betrothed. ”

“ But Colonel D'Hubert's letter contained also some philosophical generalities upon the uncertainty of all personal hopes if bound up entirely with the prestigious fortune of one incomparably great, it is true, yet still remaining but a man in his greatness. This sentiment would have appeared rank heresy to Colonel Feraud. ”