foaming mouth played inconceivable havoc with everything inanimate that may be found in a well-appointed dining-room. When he opened the door of his apartment the fit was over, and his bodily fatigue was so great that he had to catch at the backs of the chairs while crossing the room to reach a low and broad divan on which he let himself fall heavily. His moral prostration was still greater. That brutality of feeling which he had known only when charging the enemy, sabre in hand, amazed this man of forty, who did not recognize in it the instinctive fury of his menaced passion. But in his mental and bodily exhaustion this passion got cleared, distilled, refined into a sentiment of melancholy despair at having, perhaps, to die before he had taught this beautiful girl to love him. </p> <p> That night, General D&rsquo;Hubert stretched out on his back with his hands over his eyes, or lying on his breast with his face buried in a cushion, made the full pilgrimage of emotions. Nauseating disgust at the absurdity of the situation, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his existence, and mistrust of his best sentiments (for what the devil did he want to go to Fouche for?)&mdash;he knew them all in turn. &ldquo;I am an idiot, neither more nor less,&rdquo; he thought&mdash;&ldquo;A sensitive idiot. Because I overheard two men talking in a cafe. . . . I am an idiot afraid of lies&mdash;whereas in life it is only truth that matters.&rdquo; </p> <p> Several times he got up and, walking in his socks in order not to be heard by anybody downstairs, drank all the water he could find in the dark. And he tasted the torments of jealousy, too. She would marry somebody else. His very soul writhed. The tenacity of that Feraud, the awful persistence of that imbecile brute, came to him with the tremendous force of a relentless destiny. General D&rsquo;Hubert trembled as he put down the empty water ewer. &ldquo;He will have me,&rdquo; he thought. General D&rsquo;Hubert was tasting every emotion that life has to give. He had in his dry mouth the faint sickly flavour of fear, not the excusable fear before a young girl&rsquo;s candid and amused glance, but the fear of death and the honourable man&rsquo;s fear of cowardice. </p> <p> But if true courage consists in going out to meet an odious danger from which our body, soul, and heart recoil together, General D&rsquo;Hubert had the opportunity to practise it for the first time in his life. He had charged exultingly at batteries and at infantry squares, and ridden with messages through a hail of bullets without thinking anything about it. His business now was to sneak out unheard, at break of day, to an obscure and revolting death. General D&rsquo;Hubert never hesitated.