I had been about two months at Komorn, when I was invited to join a shooting party on the north bank of the river, at a place called Ercacs, or, as the Hungarians pronounce it, Ercacsh, celebrated for the black cock, or the auerhahn, one of the finest birds of the east of Europe. All my companions had been promising me great things, when the season for the sport should begin, and I was equally anxious to display my skill as a marksman. The scenery, too, was represented as surpassingly fine, and I looked forward to the expedition, which was to occupy a week, with much interest. One circumstance alone damped the ardor of my enjoyment: for some time back exercise on horseback had become painful to me, and some of those evil consequences which my doctor had speculated on, such as exfoliation of the bone, seemed now threatening me. Up to this the inconvenience had gone no further than an occasional sharp pang after a hard day’s ride, or a dull uneasy feeling which prevented my sleeping soundly at night. I hoped, however, by time, that these would subside, and the natural strength of my constitution carry me safely over every mischance. I was ashamed to speak of these symptoms to my companions, lest they should imagine that I was only screening myself from the fatigues of which they so freely partook; and so I continued, day after day, the same habit of severe exercise; while feverish nights, and a failing appetite, made me hourly weaker. My spirits never flagged, and, perhaps, in this way, damaged me seriously; supplying a false energy long after real strength had begun to give way. The world, indeed, “went so well” with me in all other respects, that I felt it would have been the blackest ingratitude against Fortune to have given way to any thing like discontent or repining. It was true, I was far from being a solitary instance of a colonel at my age; there were several such in the army, and one or two even younger; but they were unexceptionably men of family influence, descendants of the ancient nobility of France, for whose chivalric names and titles the Emperor had conceived the greatest respect; and never, in all the pomp of Louis XIV’s court, were a Gramont, a Guise, a Rochefoucauld, or a Tavanne more certain of his favorable notice. Now, I was utterly devoid of all such pretensions; my claims to gentle blood, such as they were, derived from another land, and I might even regard myself as the maker of my own fortune.