Honore de Balzac: The Country Doctor

5. CHAPTER V: ELEGIES (continued)

" 'Well, Genestas,' he said, as he came towards me, 'so we are not yet dead, either of us?'

"It cut me to the heart to hear him say that. If you had heard him, you would have shuddered from head to foot, as I did. He pointed to the villainous English vessel that was keeping the entrance to the Harbor. 'When I see THAT,' he said, 'and think of my Guard, I wish that I had perished in that torrent of blood.'

"Yes," said Genestas, looking at the doctor and at La Fosseuse, "those were his very words.

" 'The generals who counseled you not to charge with the Guard, and who hurried you into your traveling carriage, were not true friends of yours,' I said.

" 'Come with me,' he cried eagerly, 'the game is not ended yet.'

" 'I would gladly go with your Majesty, but I am not free; I have a motherless child on my hands just now.'

"And so it happened that Adrien over there prevented me from going to St. Helena.

" 'Stay,' he said, 'I have never given you anything. You are not one of those who fill one hand and then hold out the other. Here is the snuff-box that I have used though this last campaign. And stay on in France; after all, brave men are wanted there! Remain in the service, and keep me in remembrance. Of all my army in Egypt, you are the last that I have seen still on his legs in France.' And he gave me a little snuff-box.

" 'Have "Honneur et patrie" engraved on it,' he said; 'the history of our last two campaigns is summed up in those three words.'