I
need not say that these are unfavourable. It was morally reprehensible
for that great captain to induce a simple-minded Polish gentleman to eat
dog by raising in his breast a false hope of national independence. It
has been the fate of that credulous nation to starve for upward of a
hundred years on a diet of false hopes and--well--dog. It is, when one
thinks of it, a singularly poisonous regimen. Some pride in the national
constitution which has survived a long course of such dishes is really
excusable.
But enough of generalizing. Returning to particulars, Mr. Nicholas B.
confided to his sister-in-law (my grandmother) in his misanthropically
laconic manner that this supper in the woods had been nearly "the death
of him." This is not surprising. What surprises me is that the story
was ever heard of; for granduncle Nicholas differed in this from the
generality of military men of Napoleon's time (and perhaps of all time)
that he did not like to talk of his campaigns, which began at Friedland
and ended some where in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc. His admiration
of the great Emperor was unreserved in everything but expression. Like
the religion of earnest men, it was too profound a sentiment to be
displayed before a world of little faith.
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