dreadful; it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day
to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her
ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to
which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.
The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his
punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was
precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's
oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's.
I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have
done all that in them lay that they might have no country,--that all the
honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country"
might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I
know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left
of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they
are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the
agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will
see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,
like him.

For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,
submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to
the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold.
Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.
Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a
careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of
Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,--from the map of
the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to
do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as
Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was