Louis de Launay, once known as "Louisiana" and later, as a general of cavalry, but now a broken man suffering from soul and mind sickness, was too far gone to give a thought to his condition. Thwarted ambition and gnawing disappointment had merely been the last straw which had broken him. His real trouble was that strange neurosis of mind and body which has attacked so many that served in the war. Jangled nerves, fibers drawn for years to too high a tension, had sagged and grown flabby under the sudden relaxation for which they were not prepared. His case was worse than others as his career was unique. Where others had met the war's shocks for four years, he had striven titanically for nearly a score, his efforts, beginning with the terrible five-year service in the _Légion des Etrangers_, culminating in ever-mounting strain to his last achievement and then--sudden, stark failure! He was, as he had said, burned out, although he was barely thirty-nine years old. He was a man still young in body but with mind and nerves like overstrained rubber from which all resilience has gone. His uniform was gone. Careless of dress or ornamentation, he had sunk into roughly fitting civilian garb of which he took no care. Of all his decorations he clung only to the little red rosette of the Legion of Honor. Half drunk, he lolled at a table in a second-class café. He was in possession of his faculties; indeed, he seldom lost them, but he was dully indifferent to most of what went on around him. Before him was stacked a respectable pile of the saucers that marked his indebtedness for liquor. When the cheerful murmur of his neighbors suddenly died away, he looked around, half resentfully, to note the entrance of a woman. "What is it?" he asked, irritably, of a French soldier near him. The Frenchman was smiling and answered without taking his eyes from the woman, who was now moving down the room toward them. "Morgan _la fée_," he answered, briefly. "Morgan--what the deuce are you talking about?" "It is Morgan _la fée_," reiterated the soldier, simply, as though no other explanation were necessary. De Launay stared at him and then shifted his uncertain gaze to the figure approaching him. He was able to focus her more clearly as she stopped to reply to the proprietor of the place, who had hastened to meet her with every mark of respect. Men at the tables she passed smiled at her and murmured respectful greetings, to which she replied with little nods of the head. Evidently she was a figure of some note in the life of the place, although it also seemed that as much surprise at her coming was felt as gratification.