The devouring in a dismal forest of a luckless Lithuanian dog by my
grand-uncle Nicholas B. in company of two other military and famished
scarecrows, symbolised, to my childish imagination, the whole horror of
the retreat from Moscow and the immorality of a conqueror's ambition. An
extreme distaste for that objectionable episode has tinged the views I
hold as to the character and achievements of Napoleon the Great. I need
not say that these are unfavourable. It was morally reprehensible for
that great captain to induce a simple-minded Polish gentleman to eat dog
by raising in his breast a false hope of national independence. It
has been the fate of that credulous nation to starve for upwards of a
hundred years on a diet of false hopes and--well--dog. It is, when one
thinks of it, a singularly poisonous regimen. Some pride in the national
constitution which has survived a long course of such dishes is really
excusable. But enough of generalising. Returning to particulars, Mr.
Nicholas B. confided to his sister-in-law (my grandmother) in his
misanthropically laconic manner that this supper in the woods had been
nearly "the death of him." This is not surprising. What surprises me is
that the story was ever heard of; for grand-uncle Nicholas differed in
this from the generality of military men of Napoleon's time (and perhaps
of all time), that he did not like to talk of his campaigns, which began
at Friedland and ended somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc.
His admiration of the great Emperor was unreserved in everything but
expression. Like the religion of earnest men, it was too profound a
sentiment to be displayed before a world of little faith. Apart from
that he seemed as completely devoid of military anecdotes as though he
had hardly ever seen a soldier in his life. Proud of his decorations
earned before he was twenty-five, he refused to wear the ribbons at the
buttonhole in the manner practised to this day in Europe and even was
unwilling to display the insignia on festive occasions, as though he