never to return, I have faithfully shared his fortunes,
rising with his star and sinking with it also.
And yet, as I look back at my old master, I find it
very difficult to say if he was a very good man or
a very bad one. I only know that he was a very
great one, and that the things in which he dealt were
also so great that it is impossible to judge him by
any ordinary standard. Let him rest silently,
then, in his great red tomb at the Invalides, for
the workman’s work is done, and the mighty hand
which moulded France and traced the lines of modern
Europe has crumbled into dust. The Fates have
used him, and the Fates have thrown him away, but still
it lives, the memory of the little man in the grey
coat, and still it moves the thoughts and actions
of men. Some have written to praise and some
to blame, but for my own part I have tried to do neither
one nor the other, but only to tell the impression
which he made upon me in those far-off days when the
Army of England lay at Boulogne, and I came back once
more to my Castle of Grosbois.
THE END
Copyrights
Uncle Bernac from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
