most fatal of your deeds of arms. Who is there of us but knows, that
from the depth of his obscurity the looks of the fallen man are
involuntarily directed towards the splendor of his past existence--even
when its light illuminates the shoal on which the bark of his fortune
struck, and when it displays the fragments of the greatest of
shipwrecks?

* * * * *

For myself, I will own, that an irresistible feeling carries me back
incessantly to that disastrous epoch of our public and private
calamities. My memory feels a sort of melancholy pleasure in
contemplating and renewing the painful traces which so many horrors have
left in it. Is the soul, also, proud of her deep and numerous wounds?
Does she delight in displaying them? Are they a property of which she
has reason to be proud? Is it rather, that after the desire of knowing
them, her first wish is to impart her sensations? To feel, and to excite
feeling, are not these the most powerful springs of our soul?

* * * * *

But in short, whatever may be the cause of the sentiment which actuates
me, I have yielded to the desire of retracing the various sensations
which I experienced during that fatal war. I have employed my leisure
hours in separating, arranging, and combining with method my scattered
and confused recollections. Comrades! I also invoke yours! Suffer not
such great remembrances, which have been so dearly purchased, to be
lost; for us they are the only property which the past leaves to the
future. Single, against so many enemies, ye fell with greater glory than
they rose. Learn, then, that there was no shame in being vanquished!