could see no one, I was dug out by a woman, who was brave or curious
enough to come close to my head, which must have looked as though it
had sprouted from the ground like a mushroom. This woman went to fetch
her husband, and between them they got me to their poor hovel.

"It would seem that I must have again fallen into a catalepsy--allow
me to use the word to describe a state of which I have no idea, but
which, from the account given by my hosts, I suppose to have been the
effect of that malady. I remained for six months between life and
death; not speaking, or, if I spoke, talking in delirium. At last, my
hosts got me admitted to the hospital at Heilsberg.

"You will understand, Monsieur, that I came out of the womb of the
grave as naked as I came from my mother's; so that six months
afterwards, when I remembered, one fine morning, that I had been
Colonel Chabert, and when, on recovering my wits, I tried to exact
from my nurse rather more respect than she paid to any poor devil, all
my companions in the ward began to laugh. Luckily for me, the surgeon,
out of professional pride, had answered for my cure, and was naturally
interested in his patient. When I told him coherently about my former
life, this good man, named Sparchmann, signed a deposition, drawn up
in the legal form of his country, giving an account of the miraculous
way in which I had escaped from the trench dug for the dead, the day
and hour when I had been found by my benefactress and her husband, the
nature and exact spot of my injuries, adding to these documents a
description of my person.

"Well, monsieur, I have neither these important pieces of evidence,
nor the declaration I made before a notary at Heilsberg, with a view
to establishing my identity. From the day when I was turned out of