Dr. Lombalot’s mind was greatly disturbed while Colonel Bicquerot lived at Tours. He would have liked him to live there always for one reason, and that was because he played chess so admirably, and often had a game with the worthy doctor. But for the sake of his phrenological theories the doctor would have liked to see the colonel start for Cochin China. For after having said that so distinguished an officer was wanting in the bump of combativeness, how could he talk of the truths of phrenology again! However, he did talk of them, though in his heart the obstinate old man could not have believed in them. At the time when Bicquerot and his friend Marc Sublaine passed that happy holiday at Bois-Clair, there was a little baby sister of Marc’s being carried about by her nurse. Miss Marie Sublaine was then cutting her first teeth. As that young person, at that time of her life, was of a somewhat misanthropical turn of mind, and passed all her time in the nursery, it is not to be wondered at, that “the Coward” omitted to mention her when he recounted his confessions. However, one knows that, in general, young gentlemen of nine or ten profess the most extreme contempt for the society of babies; above all, babies that have a habit, like Miss Marie Sublaine, of crying for nothing, and of scratching and biting the noses and fingers of their friends. Nevertheless Miss Marie Sublaine became in time the wife of Colonel Bicquerot. And a very happy couple they were. THE END. BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected. ○ Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Page 116, “Ulysses came up to us at a hand gallop.” was changed to “Ulysses came up to us at a hard gallop.” ○ Page 138, “as he lived near here I did” was changed to “as he lived near where I did”. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in bold by “equal” signs (=bold=). End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Coward or Hero?, by Eugène Leclerc