‘Well, sir,’ said Madame Merlancourt, addressing me with a stately coldness of manner, very different from her former tone, ‘let us hear what you ask, for we are already taking up a vast deal of time that our host would prefer devoting to his friends--what is it you wish?’ ‘My discharge from a service, madame, where zeal and enthusiasm are rewarded with infamy and disgrace; my freedom to be anything but a French soldier.’ ‘You are resolved, sir, that I am not to be proud of my protégé,’ said she haughtily; ‘what words are these to speak in presence of a general and his officers?’ ‘I am bold, madame, as you say, but I am wronged.’ ‘How so, sir--in what have you been injured?’ cried the general hastily, ‘except in the excessive condescension which has stimulated your presumption. But we are really two indulgent in this long parley. Madame, permit me to offer you some coffee under the trees. Contardo, tell the band to follow us. Gentlemen, we expect the pleasure of your society.’ And so’ saying, Berthier presented his arm to the lady, who swept proudly past without deigning to notice me. In a few minutes the tent was cleared of all, except the servants occupied in removing the remains of the dessert, and I fell back, unremarked and unobserved, to take my way homeward to the barracks, more indifferent to life than ever I had been afraid of death. As I am not likely to recur at any length to the somewhat famous person to whom I owed my life, I may as well state that her name has since occupied no inconsiderable share of attention in France, and her history, under the title of _Mémoires d’une Contemporaine_, excited a degree of interest and anxiety in quarters which one might have fancied far above the reach of her revelations. At the time I speak of, I little knew the character of the age in which such influences were all powerful, nor how destinies very different from mine hung upon the favouritism of ‘La belle Nathalie.’ Had I known these things, and, still more, had I known the sad fate to which she brought my poor friend, Colonel Mahon, I might have scrupled to accept my life at such hands, or involved myself in a debt of gratitude to one for whom I was subsequently to feel nothing but hatred and aversion. It was indeed a terrible period, and in nothing more so than the fact that acts of benevolence and charity were blended up with features of falsehood, treachery, and baseness, which made one despair of humanity, and think the very worst of their species. CHAPTER XV. SCRAPS OF HISTORY