enthusiasm grew under indulgence, so that, had a little more time been granted me, I verily believe I should have forgotten Moreau altogether, and coupled only Maurice Tiernay with the passage of the Rhine, and the capture of the fortress of Kehl. Fortunately Captain Discau awoke, and cut short my historic recollections, by asking me how much I had done, and telling me to read it aloud to him. I accordingly began to read my narrative slowly and deliberately, thereby giving myself time to think what I should best do when I came to that part which became purely personal. To omit it altogether would have been dangerous, as the slightest glance at the mass of writing would have shown the deception. There was, then, nothing left, but to invent at the moment another version, in which Maurice Tiernay never occurred, and the incident of the Fels Insel should figure as unobtrusively as possible. I was always a better improvisatore than amanuensis; so that without a moment’s loss of time I fashioned a new and very different narrative, and detailing the battle tolerably accurately, _minus_ the share my own heroism had taken in it. The captain made a few, a very few corrections of my style, in which the “flourish” and “bom,” figured, perhaps, too conspicuously; and then told me frankly, that once upon a time he had been fool enough to give himself great trouble in framing these kind of reports, but that having served for a short period in the “bureau” of the minister of war, he had learned better. “In fact,” said he, “a district report is never read! Some hundreds of them reach the office of the minister every day, and are safely deposited in the ‘archives’ of the department. They have all, besides, such a family resemblance, that with a few changes in the name of the commanding officer, any battle in the Netherlands would do equally well for one fought beyond the Alps! Since I became acquainted with this fact, Tiernay, I have bestowed less pains upon the matter, and usually deputed the task to some smart orderly of the staff.” So thought I, I have been writing history for nothing; and Maurice Tiernay, the real hero of the passage of the Rhine, will be unrecorded and unremembered, just for want of one honest and impartial scribe to transmit his name to posterity. The reflection was not a very encouraging one; nor did it serve to lighten the toil in which I passed many weary hours, copying out my own precious manuscript. Again and again during that night did I wonder at my own diffuseness—again and again did I curse the prolix accuracy of a description that cost such labor to reiterate. It was like a species of poetical justice on me for my own amplifications; and when the day broke, and I still sat at my table writing on, at the third copy of this precious document, I vowed a vow of brevity, should I ever survive to indite similar compositions. Chapter XIII. A Farewell Letter.