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On coming out of the colonel's quarters, Lieut. D'Hubert said nothing to the friend who was waiting outside to take him home. He said nothing to anybody. Lieut. D'Hubert made no confidences. But on the evening of that day the colonel, strolling under the elms growing near his quarters, in the company of his second in command, opened his lips.

"I've got to the bottom of this affair," he remarked.

The lieut.-colonel, a dry, brown chip of a man with short side-whiskers, pricked up his ears at that without letting a sign of curiosity escape him.

"It's no trifle," added the colonel, oracularly. The other waited for a long while before he murmured:

"Indeed, sir!"

"No trifle," repeated the colonel, looking straight before him. "I've, however, forbidden D'Hubert either to send to or receive a challenge from Feraud for the next twelve months."

He had imagined this prohibition to save the prestige a colonel should have. The result of it was to give an official seal to the mystery surrounding this deadly quarrel. Lieut. D'Hubert repelled by an impassive silence all attempts to worm the truth out of him. Lieut. Feraud, secretly uneasy at first, regained his assurance as time went on. He disguised his ignorance of the meaning of the imposed truce by slight sardonic laughs, as though he were amused by what he intended to keep to himself. "But what will you do?" his chums used to ask him. He contented himself by replying "Qui vivra verra" with a little truculent air. And everybody admired his discretion.

Before the end of the truce Lieut. D'Hubert got his troop. The promotion was well earned, but somehow no one seemed to expect the event. When Lieut. Feraud heard of it at a gathering of officers, he muttered

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Rh through his teeth, "Is that so?" At once he unhooked his sabre from a peg near the door, buckled it on carefully, and left the company without another word. He walked home with measured steps, struck a light with his flint and steel, and lit his tallow candle. Then snatching an unlucky glass tumbler off the mantelpiece he dashed it violently on the floor.

Now that D'Hubert was an officer of superior rank there could be no question of a duel. Neither of them could send or receive a challenge without rendering himself amenable to a court-martial. It was not to be thought of. Lieut. Feraud, who for many days now had experienced no real desire to meet Lieut. D'Hubert arms in hand, chafed again at the systematic injustice of fate. "Does he think he will escape me in that way?" he thought, indignantly. He saw in this promotion an intrigue, a conspiracy, a cowardly manœuvre. That colonel knew what he was doing. He had hastened to recommend his favourite for a step. It was outrageous that a man should be able to avoid the consequences of his acts in such a dark and tortuous manner.

Of a happy-go-lucky disposition, of a temperament more pugnacious than military, Lieut. Feraud had been content to give and receive blows for sheer love of armed strife, and without much thought of advancement; but now an urgent desire to get on sprang up in his breast. This fighter by vocation resolved in his mind to seize showy occasions and to court the favourable opinion of his chiefs like a mere worldling. He knew he was as brave as any one, and never doubted his personal charm. Nevertheless, neither the bravery nor the charm seemed to work very swiftly. Lieut. Feraud's engaging, careless truculence of a beau sabreur underwent a change. He began to make bitter allusions to "clever fellows who stick at nothing to get on." The

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204 army was full of them, he would say; you had only to look round. But all the time he had in view one person only, his adversary, D'Hubert. Once he confided to an appreciative friend: "You see, I don't know how to fawn on the right sort of people. It isn't in my character."

He did not get his step till a week after Austerlitz. The Light Cavalry of the Grand Army had its hands very full of interesting work for a little while. Directly the pressure of professional occupation had been eased Captain Feraud took measures to arrange a meeting without loss of time. "I know my bird," he observed, grimly. "If I don't look sharp he will take care to get himself promoted over the heads of a dozen better men than himself. He's got the knack for that sort of thing."

This duel was fought in Silesia. If not fought to a finish, it was, at any rate, fought to a standstill. The weapon was the cavalry sabre, and the skill, the science, the vigour, and the determination displayed by the adversaries compelled the admiration of the beholders. It became the subject of talk on both shores of the Danube, and as far as the garrisons of Gratz and Laybach. They crossed blades seven times. Both had many cuts which bled profusely. Both refused to have the combat stopped, time after time, with what appeared the most deadly animosity. This appearance was caused on the part of Captain D'Hubert by a rational desire to be done once for all with this worry; on the part of Captain Feraud by a tremendous exaltation of his pugnacious instincts and the incitement of wounded vanity. At last, dishevelled, their shirts in rags, covered with gore and hardly able to stand, they were led away forcibly by their marvelling and horrified seconds. Later on, besieged by comrades avid of details, these

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Rh gentlemen declared that they could not have allowed that sort of hacking to go on indefinitely. Asked whether the quarrel was settled this time, they gave it out as their conviction that it was a difference which could only be settled by one of the parties remaining lifeless on the ground. The sensation spread from army corps to army corps, and penetrated at last to the smallest detachments of the troops cantoned between the Rhine and the Save. In the cafés in Vienna it was generally estimated, from details to hand, that the adversaries would be able to meet again in three weeks' time on the outside. Something really transcendent in the way of duelling was expected.

These expectations were brought to naught by the necessities of the service which separated the two officers. No official notice had been taken of their quarrel. It was now the property of the army, and not to be meddled with lightly. But the story of the duel, or rather their duelling propensities, must have stood somewhat in the way of their advancement, because they were still captains when they came together again during the war with Prussia. Detached north after Jena, with the army commanded by Marshal Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo, they entered Lübeck together.

It was only after the occupation of that town that Captain Feraud found leisure to consider his future conduct in view of the fact that Captain D'Hubert had been given the position of third aide-de-camp to the marshal. He considered it a great part of a night, and in the morning summoned two sympathetic friends.

"I've been thinking it over calmly," he said, gazing at them with blood-shot, tired eyes. "I see that I must get rid of that intriguing personage. Here he's managed to sneak on to the personal staff of the marshal. It's a

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206 direct provocation to me. I can't tolerate a situation in which I am exposed any day to receive an order through him. And God knows what order, too! That sort of thing has happened once before—and that's once too often. He understands this perfectly, never fear. I can't tell you any more. Now you know what it is you have to do."

This encounter took place outside the town of Lübeck, on very open ground, selected with special care in deference to the general sentiment of the cavalry division belonging to the army corps, that this time the two officers should meet on horseback. After all, this duel was a cavalry affair, and to persist in fighting on foot would look like a slight on one's own arm of the service. The seconds, startled by the unusual nature of the suggestion, hastened to refer to their principals. Captain Feraud jumped at it with alacrity. For some obscure reason, depending, no doubt, on his psychology, he imagined himself invincible on horseback. All alone within the four walls of his room he rubbed his hands and muttered triumphantly, "Aha! my pretty staff officer, I've got you now."

Captain D'Hubert on his side, after staring hard for a considerable time at his friends, shrugged his shoulders slightly. This affair had hopelessly and unreasonably complicated his existence for him. One absurdity more or less in the development did not matter—all absurdity was distasteful to him; but, urbane as ever, he produced a faintly ironical smile, and said in his calm voice, "It certainly will do away to some extent with the monotony of the thing."

When left alone, he sat down at a table and took his head into his hands. He had not spared himself of late and the marshal had been working all his aides-decamp particularly hard. The last three weeks of

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Rh campaigning in horrible weather had affected his health. When over-tired he suffered from a stitch in his wounded side, and that uncomfortable sensation always depressed him. "It's that brute's doing, too," he thought bitterly.

The day before he had received a letter from home, announcing that his only sister was going to be married. He reflected that from the time she was nineteen and he twenty-six, when he went away to garrison life in Strasbourg, he had had but two short glimpses of her. They had been great friends and confidants; and now she was going to be given away to a man whom he did not know—a very worthy fellow no doubt, but not half good enough for her. He would never see his old Léonie again. She had a capable little head, and plenty of tact; she would know how to manage the fellow, to be sure. He was easy in his mind about her happiness but he felt ousted from the first place in her thoughts which had been his ever since the girl could speak. A melancholy regret of the days of his childhood settled upon Captain D'Hubert, third aide-de-camp to the Prince of Ponte Corvo.

He threw aside the letter of congratulation he had begun to write as in duty bound, but without enthusiasm. He took a fresh piece of paper, and traced on it the words: "This is my last will and testament." Looking at these words he gave himself up to unpleasant reflection; a presentiment that he would never see the scenes of his childhood weighed down the equable spirits of Captain D'Hubert. He jumped up, pushing his chair back, yawned elaborately in sign that he didn't care anything for presentiments, and throwing himself on the bed went to sleep. During the night he shivered from time to time without waking up. In the morning he rode out of town between his two seconds, talking of

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208 indifferent things, and looking right and left with apparent detachment into the heavy morning mists shrouding the flat green fields bordered by hedges. He leaped a ditch, and saw the forms of many mounted men moving in the fog. "We are to fight before a gallery, it seems," he muttered to himself, bitterly.

His seconds were rather concerned at the state of the atmosphere, but presently a pale, sickly sun struggled out of the low vapours, and Captain D'Hubert made out, in the distance, three horsemen riding a little apart from the others. It was Captain Feraud and his seconds. He drew his sabre, and assured himself that it was properly fastened to his wrist. And now the seconds, who had been standing in close group with the heads of their horses together, separated at an easy canter, leaving a large, clear field between him and his adversary. Captain D'Hubert looked at the pale sun, at the dismal fields, and the imbecility of the impending fight filled him with desolation. From a distant part of the field a stentorian voice shouted commands at proper intervals: An pas—Au trot—Charrrgez!. . . Presentiments of death don't come to a man for nothing, he thought at the very moment he put spurs to his horse.

And therefore he was more than surprised when, at the very first set-to, Captain Feraud laid himself open to a cut over the forehead, which blinding him with blood, ended the combat almost before it had fairly begun. It was impossible to go on. Captain D'Hubert, leaving his enemy swearing horribly and reeling in the saddle between his two appalled friends, leaped the ditch again into the road and trotted home with his two seconds, who seemed rather awestruck at the speedy issue of that encounter. In the evening Captain D'Hubert finished the congratulatory letter on his sister's marriage.

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Rh He finished it late. It was a long letter. Captain D'Hubert gave reins to his fancy. He told his sister that he would feel rather lonely after this great change in her life; but then the day would come for him, too, to get married. In fact, he was thinking already of the time when there would be no one left to fight with in Europe and the epoch of wars would be over. "I expect then," he wrote, "to be within measurable distance of a marshal's baton, and you will be an experienced married woman. You shall look out a wife for me. I will be, probably, bald by then, and a little blasé. I shall require a young girl, pretty of course, and with a large fortune, which should help me to close my glorious career in the splendour befitting my exalted rank." He ended with the information that he had just given a lesson to a worrying, quarrelsome fellow who imagined he had a grievance against him. "But if you, in the depths of your province," he continued, "ever hear it said that your brother is of a quarrelsome disposition, don't you believe it on any account. There is no saying what gossip from the army may reach your innocent ears. Whatever you hear you may rest assured that your ever-loving brother is not a duellist." Then Captain D'Hubert crumpled up the blank sheet of paper headed with the words "This is my last will and testament," and threw it in the fire with a great laugh at himself. He didn't care a snap for what that lunatic could do. He had suddenly acquired the conviction that his adversary was utterly powerless to affect his life in any sort of way; except, perhaps, in the way of putting a special excitement into the delightful, gay intervals between the campaigns.

From this on there were, however, to be no peaceful intervals in the career of Captain D'Hubert. He saw the fields of Eylau and Friedland, marched and

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210 in the snow, in the mud, in the dust of Polish plains, picking up distinction and advancement on all the roads of North-eastern Europe. Meantime, Captain Feraud, despatched southwards with his regiment, made unsatisfactory war in Spain. It was only when the preparations for the Russian campaign began that he was ordered north again. He left the country of mantillas and oranges without regret.

The first signs of a not unbecoming baldness added to the lofty aspect of Colonel D'Hubert's forehead. This feature was no longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth; the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beak-like curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by a deep fold on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable and staring bird—something like a cross between a parrot and an owl. He was still extremely outspoken in his dislike of "intriguing fellows." He seized every opportunity to state that he did not pick up his rank in the ante-rooms of marshals. The unlucky persons, civil or military, who, with an intention of being pleasant, begged Colonel Feraud to tell them how he came by that very apparent scar on the forehead, were astonished to find themselves snubbed in various ways, some of which were simply rude and others mysteriously sardonic. Young officers were warned kindly by their more experienced comrades not to stare openly at the colonel's scar. But indeed an officer need have been very young in his profession not

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Rh to have heard the legendary tale of that duel originating in a mysterious, unforgivable offence.   III

The retreat from Moscow submerged all private feelings in a sea of disaster and misery. Colonels without regiments, D'Hubert and Feraud carried the musket in the ranks of the so-called sacred battalion—a battalion recruited from officers of all arms who had no longer any troops to lead.

In that battalion promoted colonels did duty as sergeants; the generals captained the companies; a marshal of France, Prince of the Empire, commanded the whole. All had provided themselves with muskets picked up on the road, and with cartridges taken from the dead. In the general destruction of the bonds of discipline and duty holding together the companies, the battalions, the regiments, the brigades, and divisions of an armed host, this body of men put its pride in preserving some semblance of order and formation. The only stragglers were those who fell out to give up to the frost their exhausted souls. They plodded on, and their passage did not disturb the mortal silence of the plains, shining with the livid light of snows under a sky the colour of ashes. Whirlwinds ran along the fields, broke against the dark column, enveloped it in a turmoil of flying icicles, and subsided, disclosing it creeping on its tragic way without the swing and rhythm of the military pace. It struggled onwards, the men exchanging neither words nor looks; whole ranks marched touching elbow, day after day and never raising their eyes from the ground, as if lost in despairing reflections. In the dumb, black forests of pines the cracking of overloaded branches was the only sound they heard. Often

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text: A Set of Six/The Duel

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text: A Set of Six/The Duel/Chapter 1

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text: A Set of Six/The Duel/Chapter 2

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text: A Set of Six/The Duel/Chapter 3

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text: A Set of Six/The Duel/Chapter 4

title: A Set of Six/The Duel/Chapter 4


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Rh arouse in the minds of the beholders a more lively understanding of the history and development of our city, and, while delighting the eye, will convey an important lesson in the very best and most effective way—that is, unconsciously. A population like ours is greatly in need of some powerful stimulation of this kind to weld together all its heterogeneous elements. But let it not be supposed that this is the only end to be attained; such brilliant spectacles are a good in themselves and none will appreciate this more thoroughly than those whose life is merely a sad and monotonous struggle for their daily bread. On this occasion the poorest and the richest will share equally in the enjoyment of the various splendid and artistic spectacles.

Of the special exhibitions which have been organized by the Art and Historical Exhibits Committee, the most important is the magnificent collection of masterpieces by Dutch painters which will be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at Fifth Avenue and Eighty-second Street. Never before have so many splendid examples of Dutch art been gathered together in the United States; indeed, the exhibition as a whole has never been rivaled even in Europe. Here may be seen no less than thirty-five Rembrandts, a larger number than exist in any permanent collection, except that of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Then there are nineteen portraits by Franz Hals, who is only inferior to Rembrandt among the Dutch portraitists, and five specimens of the work of Vermeer van Delft, whose pictures are extremely rare, there being only thirty authentic examples extant. Besides the works of these artists there are fine and characteristic pictures by Jacob and Salomon Ruysdael, Cuyp, Hobbema, Metsu, Van Ostade and many others who were contemporaries of Henry Hudson. These works come from the finest private collections in the United States and many years will pass before an equally favorable opportunity will be afforded for the study of Dutch pictorial art.

The special exhibition also embraces a large and valuable collection of furniture, silver, pewter, porcelain and glass, produced in this country between 1625 and 1815, the year of Fulton's death; and there is also a fine collection of paintings by American artists born before 1800, including pictures by Woolaston, Copley, West, Allston, Peale, Stuart, Trumbull, Fulton, Doughty, etc.

We have all read of the Indians who were settled on Manhattan Island before the arrival of Henry Hudson, but few realize how many relics of these aborigines have been found here, especially at the upper end of the island. A large and valuable collection of these relics may be seen in the American Museum of Natural History, at Central Park West and Seventy-seventh Street, and a classic monograph, written by Dr. Clark Wissler, can be obtained at the same place, and will enable the visitor to understand the significance of the various relics. The


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manners and customs of the Indians of Long Island are represented by an important exhibit in the Brooklyn Institute. Independent of any museum, and of ethnological interest, will be the 125 Indians, men, women and children, from New York reservations, who will participate in the landing of the Half Moon, and in several of the parades.

The early history of New York and the beginnings of steam navigation will be illustrated by an exhibition of views, paintings, manuscripts, books, etc., shown in the Lenox branch of the New York Public Library, detailed information in regard to the exhibits being offered in a special catalogue. The New York Historical Society, in its new building, on Central Park West, corner of Seventy-seventh Street, just below the American Museum of Natural History, exhibits many interesting pictures and relics relating to Robert Fulton. At the National Arts Club, No. 15 Gramercy Park, the special collection is entitled "Three Hundred Years of New York," and the visitor will see a large number of pictures and other objects illustrating the development of the city and its rapid and marvelous growth. A collection of oil paintings and old manuscripts concerning the early history of New York is exhibited by the Genealogical and Biographical


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Society, No. 226 West Fifty-seventh Street, and rare manuscripts and books on the same subject may be seen at the College of the City of New York, St. Nicholas Avenue and 138th Street.

As is the case with all great inventions, steam navigation was not the work of one man alone, although Robert Fulton was the first to apply it consequently and permanently. Epoch-making inventions have usually been the work of a group of men pursuing the same end, often independently of each other, but the credit and glory of success is reserved for that one of them who possesses the energy and persistence requisite for ultimate triumph. Before Fulton built the Clermont, John Fitch had constructed a boat operated and propelled by steam, and John Stevens had already sailed a steamboat, his Phœnix being undoubtedly the first steamboat to sail on the ocean; but Fulton applied the ideas of Fitch and improved upon them to such an extent that he is rightly regarded as the parent of steam navigation. Aided by the advice of Chancellor Livingston, he secured a sort of monopoly in steamship building and his name will always be remembered among those of the great benefactors of humanity.

The portrait of Fulton by Benjamin West is justly regarded as one


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330 of the best works of our American painter, who became president of the Royal Academy in London. Fulton himself was an artist of considerable ability, and pursued his art studies in London under West's direction. Among his works is a most interesting portrait of himself, which can be seen in the Brooklyn Institute. Although this does not equal West's portrait in artistic merit, like other attempts of artists to portray their own features it gives us something not to be found in other portraits, namely, the idea, or perhaps we should rather say the ideal, the artist has formed of himself. One of the most interesting of the printed documents referring to the Revolution is an old "Broadside" printed in New York, March 25, 1783. We are here given a vivid idea of the time required for the transmission of news in that day, for this sheet tells us that the first news of the signing of the preliminaries to the treaty of peace at Paris


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Rh on January 20, 1783, reached Philadelphia, by way of Cadiz, Spain, on the twenty-seventh of March.

The flora of Manhattan Island and its vicinity, in the time of Henry Hudson, is shown in the New York Botanical Garden, where these specimens are indicated by the letter "H," and in the parks of Brooklyn and Queens boroughs, a special sign in this case indicating the trees and shrubs which grew here in 1609. It is difficult for those who see this city of stone, brick and concrete to imagine its appearance in Henry Hudson's time, when stretches of meadow land alternated with groves or small forests of trees, over the greater part of the territory, while the upper part of Manhattan Island was traversed with rocky ridges rising in some cases to a considerable height above tide-water. Except in the outlying portions of the city, all these irregularities have been effaced, but the large parks, especially Morningside Park and a portion of Central Park above 100th Street, still show much of the primitive conditions.

Such a transformation makes the old pictures of Manhattan Island seem unreal, nevertheless it should be a consolation for the present landowners to know that the land was duly and legally acquired by the first Dutch settlers, and although Peter Minuit may have made a good bargain, the title is clear and without stain.

Those who wish to form some idea of the fauna of this region at the time of Hudson's arrival should visit the New York Zoological Garden, where the specimens in question are marked by the flag of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. In the New York Aquarium appropriate signs have also been placed on the tanks containing fish indigenous to the Hudson River and the waters surrounding New York.

For many special exhibitions catalogues have been prepared at considerable expense. The price at which they are sold scarcely covers the cost of printing them from the plates. A first edition of 5,000 to 10,000 copies has been printed, but when this supply is exhausted new editions of, say, 2,000 copies will be issued from time to time as occasion requires.

One of the leading features of the celebration will be a grand banquet of 2,000 persons in the magnificent new dining-hall of the Hotel Astor. This will be the greatest fine banquet ever given in this country, and the use of the hall has been held back to have this the initial banquet. It is true that in point of size it can not be compared with the dinner given to 22,000 maires of the French communes, at the opening of the Paris Exposition in 1889. Some idea of the gigantic proportions of this function may be given by the fact that the plates used in serving the dinner, if placed on top of each other, would have made a pile two miles in height. However, this was merely a dinner, while the function in the Hotel Astor is a grand banquet faultless in every detail.

In Brooklyn the social side of the celebration will find expression in


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a ball to be given at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Invitations have been extended to the officers of the American and International fleets, the diplomatic representatives of foreign nations, and many other distinguished guests, and the ball will undoubtedly be a brilliant and imposing affair.

Lovers of good music will have ample opportunity to gratify their


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334 Avenue and Seventh Street, Fifth Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street and West End Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street.

The Henry Hudson Monument on Spuyten Duyvil Hill will be dedicated on Monday, September 27, and is so placed as to form a prominent landmark. From a base ornamented with bas-reliefs springs a fluted Doric column, surmounted by a pedestal supporting the statue of Hudson. This monument, by Karl Bitter and Schrady, is a chaste and beautiful work of art. It is 110 feet high, and, being set upon an

(New York State) and to be dedicated during Hudson-Fulton Celebration— September 25 to October 9, 1909—as part of the official program. Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission.

elevation 200 feet above tide-water, it can be seen from a distance of several miles up and down the Hudson River, and even from the waters of Long Island Sound; the sum required for its erection was supplied by private subscription. The monument rests on the site of the Indian village of Nipinichsen, whence, on October 2, 1609, an attack was made upon the Half Moon.

The last scene of Hudson's life makes a gloomy picture. Set adrift in a small boat by the mutinous crew of his ship Adriatic, he passed away out of the sight of men and was never heard of again. In the dreary hours of aimless drifting over the tossing waves, and face to face with death, Hudson had not even the consolation of knowing that his


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 To be erected on Spuyten Duyvil by popular subscription at a cost of $100,000. and to be dedicated as a part of the official program of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. This monument is by Karl Bitter and Schrady, is 110 feet high and will stand on an elevation of two hundred feet above the water, being visible for many miles above the Hudson River and from Long Island Sound.

A special two-cent stamp to commemorate the Hudson-Fulton Celebration has been issued by the Post Office Department. The background of the design shows the Palisades, with the Half Moon sailing up the Hudson River, and the Clermont steaming in the opposite direction; in the foreground is an Indian in a canoe, and another canoe manned by four Indians can just be discerned in the distance. The commission has to thank Congressman Bennett and his colleagues, Congressmen Parsons and Olcott, for their successful efforts in securing the consent of the Postmaster General to the issue of these stamps, of which fifty million will be printed.


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British Association has in recent years taken seriously its imperial duties. Twenty-five years ago it first met outside the British Islands. The step was not taken without long consideration and considerable opposition, but the meeting in Montreal in 1884 proved remarkably successful, no fewer than 910 members crossing the sea. In 1897 the association met in Toronto, and after an intervening meeting in South Africa in 1905, it has now for the third time visited Canada. The registration of members at Winnipeg was about 1,400, of whom about 500 crossed the Atlantic and about 150 came from the United States. The attendance at meetings of the British Association is always greatly increased by local and visiting associate members who join for the year from interest in the general and social events or from public spirit. The meetings of the British and American associations are of about the same size, but there is a noticeable difference in the composition of the membership. In the case of the British Association there are a large number of amateurs dominated by a few leaders, whereas at the annual meeting of our association and the affiliated societies the average working man of science is the main factor. This appears to represent a typical difference between an aristocracy and a democracy, for though Great Britain may be in its government more democratic than the United States it retains its social aristocracy.


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424 The sixth station is situated in California, 112 miles north of San Francisco, one mile south of the city of Ukiah, the county seat of Mendocino County. The observatory is located toward the western edge of one of the numerous small valleys in the Coast Range of mountains. The valley, which is traversed by the Russian River, is about ten miles long and from, two to three miles wide, and surrounded by mountains of an average height of about 1,300 feet above the floor of the valley. The altitude of the observatory is 700 feet above sea-level. The meteorological conditions at this station are very favorable, standing next to those of Carloforte in this respect. Snow seldom falls and, although

the summer temperatures are sometimes extreme, the nights are always cool, which adds much to the comfort of the observer if not to the accuracy of the observations. Up to May, 1903, the observations at this station were made by Dr. Frank Schlesinger, now director of the Allegheny Observatory; from that time until September, 1907, the observations were made by the writer of this article. The work is now in charge of Dr. James D. Maddrill.

From a seismological point of view, all the American stations are favorably located. Although the Pacific Coast of the Americas is well recognized as a region of seismic activity, yet the mountainous nature of the country surrounding Ukiah seems to afford a measure of protection from these disturbances. No earthquake since the observatory was established, not even the great shock of April 18, 1906, has been of sufficient intensity to interfere in any way with the progress of observations.


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Rh The four stations first established, Mizusawa, Carloforte, Gaithersburg and Ukiah, are provided with zenith telescopes of exactly the same pattern, and constructed especially for this work of observing latitudes by the Talcott method.

These instruments, illustrated in Fig. 4, were made by Wanschaff, of Berlin, and have objectives of 4 inches aperture and focal lengths of fifty-one inches. The instruments at Tschardjui and Cincinnati are of similar design by the same maker, but smaller. From the figure it may be seen that the telescope is fixed perpendicular to the end of a horizontal axis. By placing this axis in an east and west direction the telescope will move only in the plane of the meridian as the horizontal axis is rotated in its supports. The whole instrument may be revolved about the vertical axis, m and by properly adjusted stops on the base-piece the amount of rotation may be limited to 180°, thus giving two east and west positions for the horizontal axis, one, telescope east, the other, telescope west. It is readily seen that if the telescope is set to point say 10° north of the zenith when east of the vertical axis, then, without disturbing the setting of the telescope, if the whole instrument be revolved about the vertical axis, the telescope will, when it comes into the position west of the axis, be pointed 10° south of the zenith. It is thus possible to measure the difference of zenith distance of two stars,


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212 from daybreak to dusk no one spoke in the whole column. It was like a macabre march of struggling corpses towards a distant grave. Only an alarm of Cossacks could restore to their eyes a semblance of martial resolution. The battalion faced about and deployed, or formed square under the endless fluttering of snowflakes. A cloud of horsemen with fur caps on their heads, levelled long lances, and yelled "Hurrah! Hurrah!" around their menacing immobility whence, with muffled detonations, hundreds of dark red flames darted through the air thick with falling snow. In a very few moments the horsemen would disappear, as if carried off yelling in the gale, and the sacred battalion standing still, alone in the blizzard, heard only the howling of the wind, whose blasts searched their very hearts. Then, with a cry or two of "Vive l'Empereur!" it would resume its march, leaving behind a few lifeless bodies lying huddled up, tiny black specks on the white immensity of the snows.

Though often marching in the ranks, or skirmishing in the woods side by side, the two officers ignored each other; this not so much from inimical intention as from a very real indifference. All their store of moral energy was expended in resisting the terrific enmity of nature and the crushing sense of irretrievable disaster. To the last they counted among the most active, the least demoralized of the battalion; their vigorous vitality invested them both with the appearance of an heroic pair in the eyes of their comrades. And they never exchanged more than a casual word or two, except one day, when skirmishing in front of the battalion against a worrying attack of cavalry, they found themselves cut off in the woods by a small party of Cossacks. A score of fur-capped, hairy horsemen rode to and fro, brandishing their lances in ominous silence; but the two officers

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Rh had no mind to lay down their arms, and Colonel Feraud suddenly spoke up in a hoarse, growling voice, bringing his firelock to the shoulder. "You take the nearest brute, Colonel D'Hubert; I'll settle the next one. I am a better shot than you are."

Colonel D'Hubert nodded over his levelled musket. Their shoulders were pressed against the trunk of a large tree; on their front enormous snowdrifts protected them from a direct charge. Two carefully aimed shots rang out in the frosty air, two Cossacks reeled in their saddles. The rest, not thinking the game good enough, closed round their wounded comrades and galloped away out of range. The two officers managed to rejoin their battalion halted for the night. During that afternoon they had leaned upon each other more than once, and towards the end, Colonel D'Hubert, whose long legs gave him an advantage in walking through soft snow, peremptorily took the musket of Colonel Feraud from him and carried it on his shoulder, using his own as a staff.

On the outskirts of a village half buried in the snow an old wooden barn burned with a clear and an immense flame. The sacred battalion of skeletons, muffled in rags, crowded greedily the windward side, stretching hundreds of numbed, bony hands to the blaze. Nobody had noted their approach. Before entering the circle of light playing on the sunken, glassy-eyed, starved faces, Colonel D'Hubert spoke in his turn:

"Here's your musket, Colonel Feraud. I can walk better than you."

Colonel Feraud nodded, and pushed on towards the warmth of the fierce flames. Colonel D'Hubert was more deliberate, but not the less bent on getting a place in the front rank. Those they shouldered aside tried to greet with a faint cheer the reappearance of the two

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214 indomitable companions in activity and endurance. Those manly qualities had never perhaps received a higher tribute than this feeble acclamation.

This is the faithful record of speeches exchanged during the retreat from Moscow by Colonels Feraud and D'Hubert. Colonel Feraud's taciturnity was the outcome of concentrated rage. Short, hairy, black faced, with layers of grime and the thick sprouting of a wiry beard, a frost-bitten hand wrapped up in filthy rags carried in a sling, he accused fate of unparalleled perfidy towards the sublime Man of Destiny. Colonel D'Hubert, his long moustaches pendent in icicles on each side of his cracked blue lips, his eyelids inflamed with the glare of snows, the principal part of his costume consisting of a sheepskin coat looted with difficulty from the frozen corpse of a camp follower found in an abandoned cart, took a more thoughtful view of events. His regularly handsome features, now reduced to mere bony lines and fleshless hollows, looked out of a woman's black velvet hood, over which was rammed forcibly a cocked hat picked up under the wheels of an empty army fourgon, which must have contained at one time some general officer's luggage. The sheepskin coat being short for a man of his inches ended very high up, and the skin of his legs, blue with the cold, showed through the tatters of his nether garments. This under the circumstances provoked neither jeers nor pity. No one cared how the next man felt or looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself, hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. But to loot a pair of breeches from a frozen corpse is not so easy

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Rh as it may appear to a mere theorist. It requires time and labour. You must remain behind while your companions march on. Colonel D'Hubert had his scruples as to falling out. Once he had stepped aside he could not be sure of ever rejoining his battalion; and the ghastly intimacy of a wrestling match with the frozen dead opposing the unyielding rigidity of iron to your violence was repugnant to the delicacy of his feelings. Luckily, one day, grubbing in a mound of snow between the huts of a village in the hope of finding there a frozen potato or some vegetable garbage he could put between his long and shaky teeth, Colonel D'Hubert uncovered a couple of mats of the sort Russian peasants use to line the sides of their carts with. These, beaten free of frozen snow, bent about his elegant person and fastened solidly round his waist, made a bell-shaped nether garment, a sort of stiff petticoat, which rendered Colonel D'Hubert a perfectly decent, but a much more noticeable figure than before.

Thus accoutred, he continued to retreat, never doubting of his personal escape, but full of other misgivings. The early buoyancy of his belief in the future was destroyed. If the road of glory led through such unforeseen passages, he asked himself—for he was reflective—whether the guide was altogether trustworthy. It was a patriotic sadness, not unmingled with some personal concern, and quite unlike the unreasoning indignation against men and things nursed by Colonel Feraud. Recruiting his strength in a little German town for three weeks, Colonel D'Hubert was surprised to discover within himself a love of repose. His returning vigour was strangely pacific in its aspirations. He meditated silently upon this bizarre change of mood. No doubt many of his brother officers of field rank went through the same moral experience. But these were not the

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216 times to talk of it. In one of his letters home Colonel D'Hubert wrote, "All your plans, my dear Léonie, for marrying me to the charming girl you have discovered in your neighbourhood, seem farther off than ever. Peace is not yet. Europe wants another lesson. It will be a hard task for us, but it shall be done, because the Emperor is invincible."

Thus wrote Colonel D'Hubert from Pomerania to his married sister Léonie, settled in the south of France. And so far the sentiments expressed would not have been disowned by Colonel Feraud, who wrote no letters to anybody, whose father had been in life an illiterate blacksmith, who had no sister or brother, and whom no one desired ardently to pair off for a life of peace with a charming young girl. But Colonel D'Hubert's letter contained also some philosophical generalities upon the uncertainty of all personal hopes, when bound up entirely with the prestigious fortune of one incomparably great it is true, yet still remaining but a man in his greatness. This view would have appeared rank heresy to Colonel Feraud. Some melancholy forebodings of a military kind, expressed cautiously, would have been pronounced as nothing short of high treason by Colonel Feraud. But Léonie, the sister of Colonel D'Hubert, read them with profound satisfaction, and, folding the letter thoughtfully, remarked to herself that "Armand was likely to prove eventually a sensible fellow." Since her marriage into a Southern family she had become a convinced believer in the return of the legitimate king. Hopeful and anxious she offered prayers night and morning, and burnt candles in churches for the safety and prosperity of her brother.

She had every reason to suppose that her prayers were heard. Colonel D'Hubert passed through Lutzen, Bautzen, and Leipsic losing no limb, and acquiring

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Rh additional reputation. Adapting his conduct to the needs of that desperate time, he had never voiced his misgivings. He concealed them under a cheerful courtesy of such pleasant character that people were inclined to ask themselves with wonder whether Colonel D'Hubert was aware of any disasters. Not only his manners, but even his glances remained untroubled. The steady amenity of his blue eyes disconcerted all grumblers, and made despair itself pause.

This bearing was remarked favourably by the Emperor himself; for Colonel D'Hubert, attached now to the Major-General's staff, came on several occasions under the imperial eye. But it exasperated the higher strung nature of Colonel Feraud. Passing through Magdeburg on service, this last allowed himself, while seated gloomily at dinner with the Commandant de Place, to say of his life-long adversary: "This man does not love the Emperor," and his words were received by the other guests in profound silence. Colonel Feraud, troubled in his conscience at the atrocity of the aspersion, felt the need to back it up by a good argument. "I ought to know him," he cried, adding some oaths. "One studies one's adversary. I have met him on the ground half a dozen times, as all the army knows. What more do you want? If that isn't opportunity enough for any fool to size up his man, may the devil take me if I can tell what is." And he looked around the table, obstinate and sombre.

Later on in Paris, while extremely busy reorganizing his regiment, Colonel Feraud learned that Colonel D'Hubert had been made a general. He glared at his informant incredulously, then folded his arms and turned away muttering, "Nothing surprises me on the part of that man."

And aloud he added, speaking over his shoulder,

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218 "You would oblige me greatly by telling General D'Hubert at the first opportunity that his advancement saves him for a time from a pretty hot encounter. I was only waiting for him to turn up here."

The other officer remonstrated.

"Could you think of it, Colonel Feraud, at this time, when every life should be consecrated to the glory and safety of France?"

But the strain of unhappiness caused by military reverses had spoiled Colonel Feraud's character. Like many other men, he was rendered wicked by misfortune.

"I cannot consider General D'Hubert's existence of any account either for the glory or safety of France," he snapped viciously. "You don't pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do—I who have met him half a dozen times on the ground—do you?"

His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced. Colonel Feraud walked up and down the room.

"This is not the time to mince matters," he said. "I can't believe that that man ever loved the Emperor. He picked up his general's stars under the boots of Marshal Berthier. Very well. I'll get mine in another fashion, and then we shall settle this business which has been dragging on too long."

General D'Hubert, informed indirectly of Colonel Feraud's attitude, made a gesture as if to put aside an importunate person. His thoughts were solicited by graver cares. He had had no time to go and see his family. His sister, whose royalist hopes were rising higher every day, though proud of her brother, regretted his recent advancement in a measure, because it put on him a prominent mark of the usurper's favour, which later on could have an adverse influence upon his career. He wrote to her that no one but an inveterate enemy could say he had got his promotion by favour.

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Rh As to his career, he assured her that he looked no farther forward into the future than the next battlefield.

Beginning the campaign of France in this dogged spirit, General D'Hubert was wounded on the second day of the battle under Laon. While being carried off the field he heard that Colonel Feraud, promoted this moment to general, had been sent to replace him at the head of his brigade. He cursed his luck impulsively, not being able at the first glance to discern all the advantages of a nasty wound. And yet it was by this heroic method that Providence was shaping his future. Travelling slowly south to his sister's country home under the care of a trusty old servant, General D'Hubert was spared the humiliating contacts and the perplexities of conduct which assailed the men of Napoleonic empire at the moment of its downfall. Lying in his bed, with the windows of his room open wide to the sunshine of Provence, he perceived the undisguised aspect of the blessing conveyed by that jagged fragment of a Prussian shell, which, killing his horse and ripping open his thigh, saved him from an active conflict with his conscience. After the last fourteen years spent sword in hand in the saddle, and with the sense of his duty done to the very end, General D'Hubert found resignation an easy virtue. His sister was delighted with his reasonableness. "I leave myself altogether in your hands, my dear Léonie," he had said to her.

He was still laid up when, the credit of his brother-in-law's family being exerted on his behalf, he received from the royal government not only the confirmation of his rank, but the assurance of being retained on the active list. To this was added an unlimited convalescent leave. The unfavourable opinion entertained of him in Bonapartist circles, though it rested on nothing more solid than the unsupported pronouncement of

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220 General Feraud, was directly responsible for General D'Hubert's retention on the active list. As to General Feraud, his rank was confirmed, too. It was more than he dared to expect; but Marshal Soult, then Minister of War to the restored king, was partial to officers who had served in Spain. Only not even the marshal's protection could secure for him active employment. He remained irreconcilable, idle, and sinister. He sought in obscure restaurants the company of other half-pay officers who cherished dingy but glorious old tricolour cockades in their breast-pockets, and buttoned with the forbidden eagle buttons their shabby uniforms, declaring themselves too poor to afford the expense of the prescribed change.

The triumphant return from Elba, an historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General D'Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse. Neither could he walk very well. These disabilities, which Madame Léonie accounted most lucky, helped to keep her brother out of all possible mischief. His frame of mind at that time, she noted with dismay, became very far from reasonable. This general officer, still menaced by the loss of a limb, was discovered one night in the stables of the château by a groom, who, seeing a light, raised an alarm of thieves. His crutch was lying half-buried in the straw of the litter, and the general was hopping on one leg in a loose box around a snorting horse he was trying to saddle. Such were the effects of imperial magic upon a calm temperament and a pondered mind. Beset in the light of stable lanterns, by the tears, entreaties, indignation, remonstrances and reproaches of his family, he got out of the difficult situation by fainting away there and then in the arms of his nearest relatives, and was carried off to bed. Before he got

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Rh out of it again, the second reign of Napoleon, the Hundred Days of feverish agitation and supreme effort, passed away like a terrifying dream. The tragic year 1815, begun in the trouble and unrest of consciences, was ending in vengeful proscriptions.

How General Feraud escaped the clutches of the Special Commission and the last offices of a firing squad he never knew himself. It was partly due to the subordinate position he was assigned during the Hundred Days. The Emperor had never given him active command, but had kept him busy at the cavalry depot in Paris, mounting and despatching hastily drilled troopers into the field. Considering this task as unworthy of his abilities, he had discharged it with no offensively noticeable zeal; but for the greater part he was saved from the excesses of Royalist reaction by the interference of General D'Hubert.

This last, still on convalescent leave, but able now to travel, had been despatched by his sister to Paris to present himself to his legitimate sovereign. As no one in the capital could possibly know anything of the episode in the stable he was received there with distinction. Military to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence, which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for. All the rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the man who had never loved the Emperor—a sort of monster essentially worse than a mere betrayer.

General D'Hubert shrugged his shoulders without anger at this ferocious prejudice. Rejected by his old friends, and mistrusting profoundly the advances of Royalist society, the young and handsome general (he was barely forty) adopted a manner of cold, punctilious

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222 courtesy, which at the merest shadow of an intended slight passed easily into harsh haughtiness. Thus prepared, General D'Hubert went about his affairs in Paris feeling inwardly very happy with the peculiar uplifting happiness of a man very much in love. The charming girl looked out by his sister had come upon the scene, and had conquered him in the thorough manner in which a young girl by merely existing in his sight can make a man of forty her own. They were going to be married as soon as General D'Hubert had obtained his official nomination to a promised command.

One afternoon, sitting on the terrasse of the Café Tortoni, General D'Hubert learned from the conversation of two strangers occupying a table near his own, that General Feraud, included in the batch of superior officers arrested after the second return of the king, was in danger of passing before the Special Commission. Living all his spare moments, as is frequently the case with expectant lovers, a day in advance of reality, and in a state of bestarred hallucination, it required nothing less than the name of his perpetual antagonist pronounced in a loud voice to call the youngest of Napoleon's generals away from the mental contemplation of his betrothed. He looked round. The strangers wore civilian clothes. Lean and weather-beaten, lolling back in their chairs, they scowled at people with moody and defiant abstraction from under their hats pulled low over their eyes. It was not difficult to recognize them for two of the compulsorily retired officers of the Old Guard. As from bravado or carelessness they chose to speak in loud tones, General D'Hubert, who saw no reason why he should change his seat, heard every word. They did not seem to be the personal friends of General Feraud.

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Rh His name came up amongst others. Hearing it repeated, General D'Hubert's tender anticipations of a domestic future adorned with a woman's grace were traversed by the harsh regret of his warlike past, of that one long, intoxicating clash of arms, unique in the magnitude of its glory and disaster the marvellous work and the special possession of his own generation. He felt an irrational tenderness towards his old adversary and appreciated emotionally the murderous absurdity their encounter had introduced into his life. It was like an additional pinch of spice in a hot dish. He remembered the flavour with sudden melancholy. He would never taste it again. It was all over. "I fancy it was being left lying in the garden that had exasperated him so against me from the first," he thought, indulgently.

The two strangers at the next table had fallen silent after the third mention of General Feraud's name. Presently the elder of the two, speaking again in a bitter tone, affirmed that General Feraud's account was settled. And why? Simply because he was not like some bigwigs who loved only themselves. The Royalists knew they could never make anything of him. He loved The Other too well.

The Other was the Man of St. Helena. The two officers nodded and touched glasses before they drank to an impossible return. Then the same who had spoken before, remarked with a sardonic laugh, "His adversary showed more cleverness."

"What adversary?" asked the younger, as if puzzled.

"Don't you know? They were two hussars. At each promotion they fought a duel. Haven't you heard of the duel going on ever since 1801?"

The other had heard of the duel, of course. Now he understood the allusion. General Baron D'Hubert

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224 would be able now to enjoy his fat king's favour in peace.

"Much good may it do to him," mumbled the elder. "They were both brave men. I never saw this D'Hubert—a sort of intriguing dandy, I am told. But I can well believe what I've heard Feraud say of him that he never loved the Emperor."

They rose and went away.

General D'Hubert experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from his view in the flood of moral distress. Everything he had ever been or hoped to be would taste of bitter ignominy unless he could manage to save General Fepaud from the fate which threatened so many braves. Under the impulse of this almost morbid need to attend to the safety of his adversary, General D'Hubert worked so well with hands and feet (as the French saying is), that in less than twenty-four hours he found means of obtaining an extraordinary private audience from the Minister of Police.

General Baron D'Hubert was shown in suddenly without preliminaries. In the dusk of the Minister's cabinet, behind the forms of writing-desk, chairs, and tables, between two bunches of wax candles blazing in sconces, he beheld a figure in a gorgeous coat posturing before a tall mirror. The old conventionnel Fouché, Senator of the Empire, traitor to every man, to every principle and motive of human conduct, Duke of Otranto, and the wily artizan of the second Restoration, was trying the fit of a court suit in which his young and accomplished fianceé had declared her intention to have his portrait painted on porcelain. It was a caprice, a

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Rh charming fancy which the first Minister of Police of the second Restoration was anxious to gratify. For that man, often compared in wiliness of conduct to a fox, but whose ethical side could be worthily symbolized by nothing less emphatic than a skunk, was as much possessed by his love as General D'Hubert himself.

Startled to be discovered thus by the blunder of a servant, he met this little vexation with the characteristic impudence which had served his turn so well in the endless intrigues of his self-seeking career. Without altering his attitude a hair's-breadth, one leg in a silk stocking advanced, his head twisted over his left shoulder, he called cut calmly, "This way, General. Pray approach. Well? I am all attention."

While General D'Hubert, ill at ease as if one of his own little weaknesses had been exposed, presented his request as shortly as possible, the Duke of Otranto went on feeling the fit of his collar, settling the lapels before the glass, and buckling his back in an effort to behold the set of the gold embroidered coat-skirts behind. His still face, his attentive eyes, could not have expressed a more complete interest in those matters if he had been alone.

"Exclude from the operations of the Special Court a certain Feraud, Gabriel Florian, General of brigade of the promotion of 1814?" he repeated, in a slightly wondering tone, and then turned away from the glass. "Why exclude him precisely?"

"I am surprised that your Excellency, so competent in the evaluation of men of his time, should have thought worth while to have that name put down on the list."

"A rabid Bonapartist!"

"So is every grenadier and every trooper of the army, as your Excellency well knows. And the individuality

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226 of General Feraud can have no more weight than that of any casual grenadier. He is a man of no mental grasp, of no capacity whatever. It is inconceivable that he should ever have any influence."

"He has a well-hung tongue, though," interjected Fouché.

"Noisy, I admit, but not dangerous."

"I will not dispute with you. I know next to nothing of him. Hardly his name, in fact."

"And yet your Excellency has the presidency of the Commission charged by the king to point out those who were to be tried," said General D'Hubert, with an emphasis which did not miss the minister's ear.

"Yes, General," he said, walking away into the dark part of the vast room, and throwing himself into a deep armchair that swallowed him up, all but the soft gleam of gold embroideries and the pallid patch of the face—"yes, General. Take this chair there."

General D'Hubert sat down.

"Yes, General," continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue and betrayals, whose duplicity, as if at times intolerable to his self-knowledge, found relief in bursts of cynical openness. "I did hurry on the formation of the proscribing Commission, and I took its presidency. And do you know why? Simply from fear that if I did not take it quickly into my hands my own name would head the list of the proscribed. Such are the times in which we live. But I am minister of the king yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this obscure Feraud off the list? You wonder how his name got there! Is it possible that you should know men so little? My dear General, at the very first sitting of the Commission names poured on us like rain off the roof of the Tuileries. Names! We had our choice of thousands. How do you know that the name

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Rh of this Feraud, whose life or death don't matter to France, does not keep out some other name?"

The voice out of the armchair stopped. Opposite General D'Hubert sat still, shadowy and silent. Only his sabre clinked slightly. The voice in the armchair began again. "And we must try to satisfy the exigencies of the Allied Sovereigns, too. The Prince de Talleyrand told me only yesterday that Nesselrode had informed him officially of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander's dissatisfaction at the small number of examples the Government of the king intends to make—especially amongst military men. I tell you this confidentially."

"Upon my word!" broke out General D'Hubert, speaking through his teeth, "if your Excellency deigns to favour me with any more confidential information I don't know what I will do. It's enough to break one's sword over one's knee, and fling the pieces. . . ."

"What government you imagined yourself to be serving?" interrupted the minister, sharply.

After a short pause the crestfallen voice of General D'Hubert answered, "The Government of France."

"That's paying your conscience off with mere words, General. The truth is that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who have been without country for twenty years. Of men also who have just got over a very bad and humiliating fright. . . . Have no illusions on that score."

The Duke of Otranto ceased. He had relieved himself, and had attained his object of stripping some self-respect off that man who had inconveniently discovered him posturing in a gold-embroidered court costume before a mirror. But they were a hot-headed lot in the army; it occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposed general officer, received in audience on the recommendation of one of the Princes, were to

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228 do something rashly scandalous directly after a private interview with the minister. In a changed tone he put a question to the point: "Your relation—this Feraud?"

"No. No relation at all."

"Intimate friend?"

"Intimate . . . yes. There is between us an intimate connection of a nature which makes it a point of honour with me to try . . ."

The minister rang a bell without waiting for the end of the phrase. When the servant had gone out, after bringing in a pair of heavy silver candelabra for the writing-desk, the Duke of Otranto rose, his breast glistening all over with gold in the strong light, and taking a piece of paper out of a drawer, held it in his hand ostentatiously while he said with persuasive gentleness: "You must not speak of breaking your sword across your knee, General. Perhaps you would never get another. The Emperor will not return this time. . . . Diable d'homme! There was just a moment, here in Paris, soon after Waterloo, when he frightened me. It looked as though he were ready to begin all over again. Luckily one never does begin all over again, really. You must not think of breaking your sword, General."

General D'Hubert, looking on the ground, moved slightly his hand in a hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him, and scanned deliberately the paper he had been holding up all the time.

"There are only twenty general officers selected to be made an example of. Twenty. A round number. And let's see, Feraud. . . . Ah, he's there. Gabriel Florian. Parfaitement. That's your man. Well, there will be only nineteen examples made now."

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Rh General D'Hubert stood up feeling as though he had gone through an infectious illness. "I must beg your Excellency to keep my interference a profound secret. I attach the greatest importance to his never learning . . ."

"Who is going to inform him, I should like to know?" said Fouché, raising his eyes curiously to General D'Hubert's tense, set face. "Take one of these pens, and run it through the name yourself. This is the only list in existence. If you are careful to take up enough ink no one will be able to tell what was the name struck out. But, par exemple, I am not responsible for what Clarke will do with him afterwards. If he persists in being rabid he will be ordered by the Minister of War to reside in some provincial town under the supervision of the police."

A few days later General D'Hubert was saying to his sister, after the first greetings had been got over: "Ah, my dear Léonie! it seemed to me I couldn't get away from Paris quick enough."

"Effect of love," she suggested, with a malicious smile.

"And horror," added General D'Hubert, with profound seriousness. "I have nearly died there of . . . of nausea."

His face was contracted with disgust. And as his sister looked at him attentively he continued, "I have had to see Fouché. I have had an audience. I have been in his cabinet. There remains with one, who had the misfortune to breathe the air of the same room with that man, a sense of diminished dignity, an uneasy feeling of being not so clean, after all, as one hoped one was. . . . But you can't understand."

She nodded quickly several times. She understood very well, on the contrary. She knew her brother

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552. The same thing is true of the letters, the unmarked ones being legible much farther than the others. Fig. 2 shows exactly the same effect with reversed colors. That part of the gray butterfly next the black ocellus fades, as one recedes, until it becomes pure white like the background, leaving the rest of the butterfly to continue visible at a much greater distance. In both these cases the effect of conspicuous pattern proves to be the exact reverse of the old hypothesis on which the Bates and Wallace theories so largely rest. Figs. 3 and 4 will, I think, still more surprise the many writers who, from Darwin and Wallace down to the present time, are accustomed to say of one or another brilliantly pied species, that its patterns are so conspicuous that one can see it a hundred yards off. It is here shown that it can not be the brilliancy or conspicuousness of the animal's patterns that enables them thus to see him from afar, since these very characters here produce the opposite effect. The reader will discover, in looking from a greater and greater distance, that it is the normally colored, strongly pied butterfly and skunk, respectively, that fade first, and that all of the remaining six figures can be seen further. (These can be tested not only by distance, but by decreased illumination, and, especially for the latter means, a still more satisfactory test of the skunk can be made by using life-size figures and turning down the lights in a hall, or studying them out of doors as night comes on.) He will discover that the supposed white blazon actually serves to efface the black animal on a nearer view (especially if seen through the leaves). He can not fail, either, to perceive that an all-white skunk, being exempt from the risk of giving an impression of two different things, a black one, and a white one, would in the long run, be, also, the more recognizable when seen against any ground, except snow. It is not yet generally perceived that in the scenery about us every spot means to a casual observer one thing, and it follows that two different color-patches, as of the skunk, amidst the million color-patches in sight, tend, especially when more or less eclipsed by vegetation, to mean, not one pied animal, but two different elements of the scene. It must be remembered that the skunk's scene is a night scene, commonly abounding, in wild places, in black shadow masses relieved here and there by light spots made by bleached twigs, fragments of fallen birches, shining wet spots, etc., and, what is by far the most essential fact, with all visibility whatsoever at the minimum. In fact the whole "warning-color" theory in the case of these nocturnal species smacks of the laboratory. For instance, although skunks abound all


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Rh The universal tendency of common habits and environment to be accompanied by common form and appearance has long been a familiar fact, and no one would have conceived of a vast gap in this tendency but that naturalists thought themselves forced to accept the evidence that such a gap existed, and set themselves to work to fill it as best they could. Now, however, the obstacle to their discovering the wholly concealing character of the whole array of costumes that had puzzled them vanishes, and no power can withhold this array from taking its place in the ranks of universal procryptic coloration.

The following pages demonstrate that all diversification of the colors of animals' costumes tends wholly and unmixedly to conceal them. This should set the believers in conspicuous species reflecting that while they are making their records of cases of momentary conspicuousness of individuals of one species or another, they are making no investigation whatever of the possibility that all the while a large number of individuals of this same species are, through some magic of their costume, escaping their sight and making no impression on their minds. It is precisely to such an investigation as this that I here invite the reader.

Any out-of-door naturalist knows that if he walk through a sunny field of fairly profuse vegetation, after first studying it, say, from an upper window, he will flush an immensely greater amount of so-called conspicuous aerial life than he had detected from the window, and he will believe that much of this life was all the time within the field of his vision.

These plates have been prepared with the especial purpose of exposing the weakness of the optical hypotheses upon which the theories of "warning-colors," "recognition," "mimicry," etc., so largely rest. They show that these hypotheses would never have lived a day had their originators begun by testing them. Darwin's erroneous supposition that a conspicuous mark on an object makes the object itself conspicuous has been built on and rebuilt on by the leaders of zoological research, even down to the present day. Entomologists, especially, make much of the supposed power of sharp and strong patterns to render conspicuous that particular part of the insect which they occupy. We now discover that the effect of these patterns is the very opposite. In the illustrations of this article we see the actual effect of such marks in several typical situations. Fig. 1 shows two butterflies and several letters, all of one color, and against one background. On each butterfly and on several of the letters bright spots or patterns have been painted. As the spectator recedes, those parts of the butterflies nearest the bright patterns fade, until, at a short distance, they are invisible, while the rest of the insect is clearly distinguishable up to a much greater


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 and 2 show that bright sharp pattern obliterates instead of rendering conspicuous the form on which it is painted: and that its details are left to be seen to be part of the similar details of the background. Test these fact by receding from the picture.


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230 thoroughly, and liked him as he was. Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the Jacobin Fouché, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, every virtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his whole generation, and died obscurely as Duke of Otranto.

"My dear Armand," she said, compassionately, "what could you want from that man?"

"Nothing less than a life," answered General D'Hubert. "And I've got it. It had to be done. But I feel yet as if I could never forgive the necessity to the man I had to save."

General Feraud, totally unable (as is the case with most of us) to comprehend what was happening to him, received the Minister of War's order to proceed at once to a small town of Central France with feelings whose natural expression consisted in a fierce rolling of the eye and savage grinding of the teeth. The passing away of the state of war, the only condition of society he had ever known, the horrible view of a world at peace, frightened him. He went away to his little town firmly convinced that this could not last. There he was informed of his retirement from the army, and that his pension (calculated on the scale of a colonel's rank) was made dependent on the correctness of his conduct, and on the good reports of the police. No longer in the army! He felt suddenly strange to the earth, like a disembodied spirit. It was impossible to exist. But at first he reacted from sheer incredulity. This could not be. He waited for thunder, earthquakes, natural cataclysms; but nothing happened. The leaden weight of an irremediable idleness descended upon General Feraud, who having no resources within himself sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude. He haunted the streets of the little town, gazing before him with

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Rh eyes, disregarding the hats raised on his passage; and people, nudging each other as he went by, whispered, "That's poor General Feraud. His heart is broken. Behold how he loved the Emperor."

The other living wreckage of Napoleonic tempest clustered round General Feraud with infinite respect. He, himself, imagined his soul to be crushed by grief. He suffered from quickly succeeding impulses to weep, to howl, to bite his fists till blood came, to spend days on his bed with his head thrust under the pillow; but these arose from sheer ennui, from the anguish of an immense, indescribable, inconceivable boredom. His mental inability to grasp the hopeless nature of his case as a whole saved him from suicide. He never even thought of it once. He thought of nothing. But his appetite abandoned him, and the difficulty he experienced to express the overwhelming nature of his feelings (the most furious swearing could do no justice to it) induced gradually a habit of silence—a sort of death to a southern temperament.

Great, therefore, was the sensation amongst the anciens militaires frequenting a certain little café full of flies when one stuffy afternoon "that poor General Feraud" let out suddenly a volley of formidable curses.

He had been sitting quietly in his own privileged corner looking through the Paris gazettes with just as much interest as a condemned man on the eve of execution could be expected to show in the news of the day. A cluster of martial, bronzed faces, amongst which there was one lacking an eye, and another the tip of a nose, frost-bitten in Russia, surrounded him anxiously.

"What's the matter, General?"

General Feraud sat erect, holding the folded newspaper at arm's length in order to make out the small print better. He read to himself, over again, fragments

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232 of the intelligence which had caused, what may be called his resurrection.

"We are informed that General d'Hubert, till now on sick leave in the south, is to be called to the command of the 5th Cavalry brigade in . . ."

He dropped the paper stonily. . . . "Called to the command". . . and suddenly gave his forehead a mighty slap. "I had almost forgotten him," he muttered, in a conscience-stricken tone.

A deep-chested veteran shouted across the café: "Some new villainy of the Government, General?"

"The villainies of these scoundrels," thundered General Feraud, "are innumerable. One more, one less!" . . . He lowered his tone. "But I will set good order to one of them at least."

He looked all round the faces. "There's a pomaded, curled staff officer, the darling of some of the marshals who sold their father for a handful of English gold. He will find out presently that I am alive yet," he declared, in a dogmatic tone. "However, this is a private affair. An old affair of honour. Bah! Our honour does not matter. Here we are driven off with a split ear like a lot of cast troop horses—good only for a knacker's yard. But it would be like striking a blow for the Emperor. . . . Messieurs, I shall require the assistance of two of you."

Every man moved forward. General Feraud, deeply touched by this demonstration, called with visible emotion upon the one-eyed veteran cuirassier and the officer of the Chasseurs à Cheval who had left the tip of his nose in Russia. He excused his choice to the others.

"A cavalry affair this—you know."

He was answered with a varied chorus of "Parfaitement, mon Général. . . . C'est juste. . . . Parbleu, c'est connu. . . ." Everybody was satisfied.

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Rh The three left the café together, followed by cries of "Bonne chance."

Outside they linked arms, the general in the middle. The three rusty cocked hats worn en bataille with a sinister forward slant barred the narrow street nearly right across. The overheated little town of grey stones and red tiles was drowsing away its provincial afternoon under a blue sky. The loud blows of a cooper hooping a cask reverberated regularly between the houses. The general dragged his left foot a little in the shade of the walls.

"This damned winter of 1813 has got into my bones for good. Never mind. We must take pistols, that's all. A little lumbago. We must have pistols. He's game for my bag. My eyes are as keen as ever. You should have seen me in Russia picking off the dodging Cossacks with a beastly old infantry musket. I have a natural gift for firearms."

In this strain General Feraud ran on, holding up his head, with owlish eyes and rapacious beak. A mere fighter all his life, a cavalry man, a sabreur, he conceived war with the utmost simplicity, as, in the main, a massed lot of personal contests, a sort of gregarious duelling. And here he had in hand a war of his own. He revived. The shadow of peace passed away from him like the shadow of death. It was the marvellous resurrection of the named Feraud, Gabriel Florian, engagé volontaire of 1793, General of 1814, buried without ceremony by means of a service order signed by the War Minister of the Second Restoration.   IV

No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not

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234 to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our endeavour as much as by the virtue of its sustaining power.

General D'Hubert was proud and reserved. He had not been damaged by his casual love affairs, successful or otherwise. In his war-scarred body his heart at forty remained unscratched. Entering with reserve into his sister's matrimonial plans, he had felt himself falling irremediably in love as one falls off a roof. He was too proud to be frightened. Indeed, the sensation was too delightful to be alarming.

The inexperience of a man of forty is a much more serious thing than the inexperience of a youth of twenty, for it is not helped out by the rashness of hot blood. The girl was mysterious, as young girls are by the mere effect of their guarded ingenuity; and to him the mysteriousness of that young girl appeared exceptional and fascinating. But there was nothing mysterious about the arrangements of the match which Madame Léonie had promoted. There was nothing peculiar, either. It was a very appropriate match, commending itself extremely to the young lady's mother (the father was dead) and tolerable to the young lady's uncle—an old émigré lately returned from Germany, and pervading, cane in hand, a lean ghost of the ancien régime, the garden walks of the young lady's ancestral home.

General D'Hubert was not the man to be satisfied merely with the woman and the fortune—when it came to the point. His pride (and pride aims always at true success) would be satisfied with nothing short of love. But as true pride excludes vanity, he could not imagine any reason why this mysterious creature with deep and

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Rh brilliant eyes of a violet colour should have any feeling for him warmer than indifference. The young lady (her name was Adèle) baffled every attempt at a clear understanding on that point. It is true that the attempts were clumsy and made timidly, because by then General D'Hubert had become acutely aware of the number of his years, of his wounds, of his many moral imperfections, of his secret unworthiness—and had incidentally learned by experience the meaning of the word funk. As far as he could make out she seemed to imply that, with an unbounded confidence in her mother's affection and sagacity, she felt no unsurmountable dislike for the person of General D'Hubert; and that this was quite sufficient for a well-brought-up young lady to begin married life upon. This view hurt and tormented the pride of General D'Hubert. And yet he asked himself, with a sort of sweet despair, what more could he expect? She had a quiet and luminous forehead. Her violet eyes laughed while the lines of her lips and chin remained composed in admirable gravity. All this was set off by such a glorious mass of fair hair, by a complexion so marvellous, by such a grace of expression, that General D'Hubert really never found the opportunity to examine with sufficient detachment the lofty exigencies of his pride. In fact, he became shy of that line of inquiry since it had led once or twice to a crisis of solitary passion in which it was borne upon him that he loved her enough to kill her rather than lose her. From such passages, not unknown to men of forty, he would come out broken, exhausted, remorseful, a little dismayed. He derived, however, considerable comfort from the quietist practice of sitting now and then half the night by an open window and meditating upon the wonder of her existence, like a believer lost in the mystic contemplation of his faith.

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236 It must not be supposed that all these variations of his inward state were made manifest to the world. General D'Hubert found no difficulty in appearing wreathed in smiles. Because, in fact, he was very happy. He followed the established rules of his condition, sending over flowers (from his sister's garden and hot-houses) early every morning, and a little later following himself to lunch with his intended, her mother, and her émigré uncle. The middle of the day was spent in strolling or sitting in the shade. A watchful deference, trembling on the verge of tenderness was the note of their intercourse on his side—with a playful turn of the phrase concealing the profound trouble of his whole being caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in the afternoon General D'Hubert walked home between the fields of vines, sometimes intensely miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes pensively sad; but always feeling a special intensity of existence, that elation common to artists, poets, and lovers—to men haunted by a great passion, a noble thought, or a new vision of plastic beauty.

The outward world at that time did not exist with any special distinctness for General D'Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a ridge from which he could see both houses, General D'Hubert became aware of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal decoration of the inflamed sky lent a gentle glow to the sober tints of the southern land. The grey rocks, the brown fields, the purple, undulating distances harmonized in luminous accord, exhaled already the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon of white dust. General D'Hubert made out the long, straight, military capotes buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked

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Rh hats, the lean, carven, brown countenances—old soldiers—vieilles moustaches! The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye; the other's hard, dry countenance presented some bizarre, disquieting peculiarity, which on nearer approach proved to be the absence of the tip of the nose. Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the slightly lame civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the house where the General Baron D'Hubert lived, and what was the best way to get speech with him quietly.

"If you think this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round at the vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning rock—"if you think this spot quiet enough, you can speak to him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly, with perfect confidence."

They stepped back at this, and raised again their hands to their hats with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose, speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough, and to be arranged discreetly. Their general quarters were established in that village over there, where the infernal clodhoppers—damn their false, Royalist hearts!—looked remarkably cross-eyed at three unassuming military men. For the present he should only ask for the name of General D'Hubert's friends.

"What friends?" said the astonished General D'Hubert, completely off the track. "I am staying with my brother-in-law over there."

"Well, he will do for one," said the chipped veteran.

"We're the friends of General Feraud," interjected the other, who had kept silent till then, only glowering

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238 with his one eye at the man who had never loved the Emperor. That was something to look at. For even the gold-laced Judases who had sold him to the English, the marshals and princes, had loved him at some time or other. But this man had never loved the Emperor. General Feraud had said so distinctly.

General D'Hubert felt an inward blow in his chest. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second it was as if the spinning of the earth had become perceptible with an awful, slight rustle in the eternal stillness of space. But this noise of blood in his ears passed off at once. Involuntarily he murmured, "Feraud! I had forgotten his existence."

"He's existing at present, very uncomfortably, it is true, in the infamous inn of that nest of savages up there," said the one-eyed cuirassier, drily. "We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses. He's awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know. The General has broken the ministerial order to obtain from you the satisfaction he's entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he's anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets on his scent."

The other elucidated the idea a little further. "Get back on the quiet—you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too. Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at the first chance. It's a risk. But honour before everything."

General D'Hubert had recovered his powers of speech. "So you come here like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with that—that . . ." A laughing sort of rage took possession of him. "Ha! ha! ha! ha!"

His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood before him lank and straight, as though they

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 Here the spectator will find, as he recedes or turns down the light, that all the monochrome figures, even the dimmest, can be seen further, or in a less illumination, than the two normally and brightly patterned ones. These latter fade first. They show how contrasted juxtaposed color-notes destroy each other, so that, contrary to the current theories. monochrome is far better both for revealing the wearer, and also for proclaiming his identity amidst the innumerable details of wild places.


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Rh over the premises of American country folk, it is very rare to see one of them, except by encountering him in the hen-house. This is the more significant in view of their well-known temerity and disinclination to get out of one's way. Their white pattern, if seen at all, and even when observed to move, is easily mistaken for some inanimate detail of the scene, some shifting shine on a wet leaf, or other of the above-mentioned light-colored details of the place. There seldom pass many minutes without some breeze to set in motion the many more or less white details of the shrubbery, so that the disembodied light patch of this little hunter's coat may move, even within the short visibility-range that we have discovered it to possess, yet by no means commonly attract our attention. It is certainly the universal experience of American country dwellers that although in their domestic duties they must frequently pass within a few feet of skunks, yet the whole family together scarcely see one a year. Under shrubbery, moonlight, which might be expected to reveal these animals, adds, on the contrary, to the scene hundreds of white patterns, and these often all in motion, so that what was before a comparatively negative form of concealment becomes a most brilliant and positive illusion. The skunk's pattern so absolutely reproduces the hundred surrounding ones, often all shifting in a thousand directions, that even when the animal is near enough to be seen, he is almost sure to escape detection. Dr. Merriam first called my attention to this, and also to a very clear statement of it by Verrill. Merriam says that spilogales amidst cactus shadows in moonlight are practically impossible to follow with the eye. It is easy to see that this must apply to the appearance of all the other top-patterned species under similar circumstances. This is one more instance of increased illumination producing increased procryptic effect, such as we also see in the operation of counter-shading.

These simple diagrams, then, prove that it is not the diversification into brilliantly contrasted pattern that makes its wearer conspicuous, or that is the most efficacious way to make him recognizable. It is the very juxtaposition of the skunk's black that makes his white fade out of sight at a short distance, and in a nearer view, amidst the many light spots likely to be in sight, one more has often no significance to a spectator; but if this light color took the full shape of a skunk, then, of course, it would make him recognizable. In the next plates we shall see what is the main cause of the frequent conspicuousness, during motion, of all aerial species, or of any that by virtue of being taller than others, are, to these lower-level observers, practically the same as aerial, because of looming against their sky.

But let us turn aside to notice the circumstances of the species already recognized by naturalists as procryptically colored. These are merely such species as live, or rest by day, in actual contact with their


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554 background, and, as now proves to be the case with practically the whole animal kingdom, wear its colors (or some of them).

Bark moths, terrestrial animals in general, terrestrial habited birds, etc., all such species, when thus in actual contact with their backgrounds, share its varying illumination from minute to minute. The patch of sunlight that falls on the squatting woodcock illumines also

 shows the revealing-effect of being seen against a contrasting background, and illustrates the fact that no aerial creature, can go about at all without constantly passing across both revealing and concealing backgrounds.

the surrounding ground, so that the bird continues to seem a part of it; and the same is of course true of the rest of this great class of animal. But a very different fate attends the life of aerial species destined constantly to appear against more or less distant backgrounds which do not share their particular momentary illumination, and which constantly show, now light, when the flying bird or butterfly is dark, and the next instant dark when he is light. This fate causes all aerial species, in a very vital sense, to be conspicuous. Fig. 5 illustrates this. On the white of the sky a white butterfly has been pasted, which, of course, does not show. In the same way, a black one has been placed upon the darkest part of the tree's shadow, and a ground-colored one on the ground. Both of these, like the white one, are, of course, practically invisible, and, could they be always seen against these same backgrounds, they might be classed as cryptic. But their habits preclude the possibility of this, their own changes of position, not to speak of those of the spectator, bringing them, as they fly about, across, often in a single second, the whole gamut of backgrounds, from brightest sky to deepest tree-shadow, and back. And against every one, except the single one which they match, they are clearly visible. The black one shows against the sky, the ground, etc., the white one against the various