Chapter 3 - Page 2

years in his
brother's house, the home of many children, a house full of life, of
animation, noisy with a constant coming and going of many guests, he
kept his habits of solitude and silence. Considered as obstinately
secretive in all his purposes, he was in reality the victim of a most
painful irresolution in all matters of civil life. Under his taciturn,
phlegmatic behaviour was hidden a faculty of short-lived passionate
anger. I suspect he had no talent for narrative; but it seemed to afford
him sombre satisfaction to declare that he was the last man to ride over
the bridge of the river Elster after the battle of Leipsic. Lest some
construction favourable to his valour should be put on the fact he
condescended to explain how it came to pass. It seems that shortly after
the retreat began he was sent back to the town where some divisions
of the French army (and among them the Polish corps of Prince Joseph
Poniatowski), jammed hopelessly in the streets, were being simply
exterminated by the troops of the Allied Powers. When asked what it was
like in there, Mr. Nicholas B. muttered only the word "Shambles." Having
delivered his message to the Prince he hastened away at once to render
an account of his mission to the superior who had sent him. By that time
the advance of the enemy had enveloped the town, and he was shot at from
houses and chased all the way to the river-bank by a disorderly mob of
Austrian Dragoons and Prussian Hussars. The bridge had been mined early
in the morning, and his opinion was that the sight of the horsemen
converging from many sides in the pursuit of his person alarmed the
officer in command of the sappers and caused the premature firing of the
charges. He had not gone more than two hundred yards on the other
side when he heard the sound of the fatal explosions. Mr. Nicholas B.
concluded his bald narrative with the word "Imbecile," uttered with the
utmost deliberation. It testified to his indignation at the loss of so
many thousands of lives. But his phlegmatic physiognomy lighted up when
he spoke of his only wound, with something resembling satisfaction. You
will see that there was some reason for it when you learn that he was
wounded in the heel. "Like his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon himself," he
reminded his hearers, with assumed indifference. There can be no
doubt that the indifference was assumed, if one thinks what a very
distinguished sort of wound it was. In all the history of warfare there
are, I believe, only three warriors publicly known to have been wounded
in the heel--Achilles and Napoleon--demigods indeed--to whom the
familial piety of an unworthy descendant adds the name of the simple
mortal, Nicholas B.

The Hundred Days found Mr.