He looked all round the faces.  “There’s a pomaded curled staff officer, the darling of some of the marshals who sold their father for a handful of English gold.  He will find out presently that I am alive yet,” he declared in a dogmatic tone....  “However, this is a private affair.  An old affair of honour.  Bah!  Our honour does not matter.  Here we are driven off with a split ear like a lot of cast troop horses—­good only for a knacker’s yard.  Who cares for our honour now?  But it would be like striking a blow for the emperor.... Messieurs, I require the assistance of two of you.”

Every man moved forward.  General Feraud, deeply touched by this demonstration, called with visible emotion upon the one-eyed veteran cuirassier and the officer of the Chasseurs a cheval, who had left the tip of his nose in Russia.  He excused his choice to the others.

“A cavalry affair this—­you know.”

He was answered with a varied chorus of “Parfaitement mon General...  C’est juste...  Parbleu c’est connu...” Everybody was satisfied.  The three left the cafe together, followed by cries of “Bonne chance.”

Outside they linked arms, the general in the middle.  The three rusty cocked hats worn en bataille, with a sinister forward slant, barred the narrow street nearly right across.  The overheated little town of gray stones and red tiles was drowsing away its provincial afternoon under a blue sky.  Far off the loud blows of some coopers hooping a cask, reverberated regularly between the houses.  The general dragged his left foot a little in the shade of the walls.

“That damned winter of 1813 got into my bones for good.  Never mind.  We must take pistols, that’s all.  A little lumbago.  We must have pistols.  He’s sure game for my bag.  My eyes are as keen as ever.  Always were.  You should have seen me picking off the dodging Cossacks with a beastly old infantry musket.  I have a natural gift for firearms.”

In this strain General Feraud ran on, holding up his head with owlish eyes and rapacious beak.  A mere fighter all his life, a cavalry man, a sabreur, he conceived war with the utmost simplicity as in the main a massed lot of personal contests, a sort of gregarious duelling.  And here he had on hand a war of his own.  He revived.  The shadow of peace had passed away from him like the shadow of death.  It was a marvellous resurrection of the named Feraud, Gabriel Florian, engage volontaire of 1793, general of 1814, buried without ceremony by means of a service order signed by the War Minister of the Second Restoration.

IV

No man succeeds in everything he undertakes.  In that sense we are all failures.  The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life.  In this matter vanity is what leads us astray.  It is our vanity which hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged.  Whereas pride is our safeguard by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our endeavour, as much as by the virtue of its sustaining power.