The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
page 34 of 252 (13%)
page 34 of 252 (13%)
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Arensdorf, and longer still before I could be told all that had befallen
me. It was Duroc, already able to go soldiering, who came to my bedside and gave me an account of it. He it was who told me how a piece of timber had struck me on the head and laid me almost dead upon the ground. From him, too, I learned how the Polish girl had run to Arensdorf, how she had roused our hussars, and how she had only just brought them back in time to save us from the spears of the Cossacks who had been summoned from their bivouac by that same black-bearded secretary whom we had seen galloping so swiftly over the snow. As to the brave lady who had twice saved our lives, I could not learn very much about her at that moment from Duroc, but when I chanced to meet him in Paris two years later, after the campaign of Wagram, I was not very much surprised to find that I needed no introduction to his bride, and that by the queer turns of fortune he had himself, had he chosen to use it, that very name and title of the Baron Straubenthal, which showed him to be the owner of the blackened ruins of the Castle of Gloom. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: The term Brigadier is used throughout in its English and not in its French sense.] 2. HOW THE BRIGADIER SLEW THE BROTHERS OF AJACCIO When the Emperor needed an agent he was always very ready to do me the honour of recalling the name of Etienne Gerard, though it occasionally |
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