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Title: The Curfew Tolls
   [From Bent's 1937 collection
   Thirteen O'Clock: Stories of Several Worlds]
Author: Bent, Stephen Vincent (1898-1943)
Date of first publication: 1937
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York and Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937
Date first posted: 9 March 2011
Date last updated: 9 March 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #743

This ebook was produced by
Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






THE CURFEW TOLLS

by Stephen Vincent Bent


     "It is not enough to be the possessor of genius--the time and
     the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age
     of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world--a
     Newton, grown up in a thieves' den, might have devised little
     but a new and ingenious picklock. . . ."

                          _Diversions of Historical Thought by
                                           John Cleveland Cotton._

(The following extracts have been made from the letters of General Sir
Charles William Geoffrey Estcourt, C.B., to his sister Harriet, Countess
of Stokely, by permission of the Stokely family. Omissions are indicated
by triple dots, thus . . .)


                          St. Philippe-des-Bains, September 3d, 1788.

My Dear Sister: . . . I could wish that my excellent Paris physician had
selected some other spot for my convalescence. But he swears by the
waters of St. Philip and I swear by him, so I must resign myself to a
couple of yawning months ere my constitution mends. Nevertheless, you
will get long letters from me, though I fear they may be dull ones. I
cannot bring you the gossip of Baden or Aix--except for its baths, St.
Philip is but one of a dozen small white towns on this agreeable coast.
It has its good inn and its bad inn, its dusty, little square with its
dusty, fleabitten beggar, its posting-station and its promenade of
scrubby lindens and palms. From the heights one may see Corsica on a
clear day, and the Mediterranean is of an unexampled blue. To tell the
truth, it is all agreeable enough, and an old Indian campaigner, like
myself, should not complain. I am well treated at the Cheval Blanc--am I
not an English milord?--and my excellent Gaston looks after me
devotedly. But there is a blue-bottle drowsiness about small watering
places out of season, and our gallant enemies, the French, know how to
bore themselves more exquisitely in their provinces than any nation on
earth. Would you think that the daily arrival of the diligence from
Toulon would be an excitement? Yet it is to me, I assure you, and to all
St. Philip. I walk, I take the waters, I read Ossian, I play piquet with
Gaston, and yet I seem to myself but half-alive. . . .

. . . You will smile and say to me, "Dear brother, you have always
plumed yourself on being a student of human nature. Is there no society,
no character for you to study, even in St. Philippe-des-Bains?" My dear
sister, I bend myself earnestly to that end, yet so far with little
result. I have talked to my doctor--a good man but unpolished; I have
talked to the cur--a good man but dull. I have even attempted the
society of the baths, beginning with Monsieur le Marquis de la
Percedragon, who has ninety-six quarterings, soiled wristbands, and a
gloomy interest in my liver, and ending with Mrs. Macgregor Jenkins, a
worthy and red-faced lady whose conversation positively cannonades with
dukes and duchesses. But, frankly, I prefer my chair in the garden and
my Ossian to any of them, even at the risk of being considered a bear.
A witty scoundrel would be the veriest godsend to me, but do such exist
in St. Philip? I trow not. As it is, in my weakened condition, I am
positively agog when Gaston comes in every morning with his budget of
village scandal. A pretty pass to come to, you will say, for a man who
has served with Eyre Coote and but for the mutabilities of fortune, not
to speak of a most damnable cabal . . . (A long passage dealing with
General Estcourt's East Indian services and his personal and unfavorable
opinion of Warren Hastings is here omitted from the manuscript.) . . .
But, at fifty, a man is either a fool or a philosopher. Nevertheless,
unless Gaston provides me with a character to try my wits on, shortly, I
shall begin to believe that they too have deteriorated with Indian
suns. . . .


                                               September 21st, 1788.

My Dear Sister: . . . Believe me, there is little soundness in the views
of your friend, Lord Martindale. The French monarchy is not to be
compared with our own, but King Louis is an excellent and well-beloved
prince, and the proposed summoning of the States-General cannot but have
the most salutary effect. . . . (Three pages upon French politics and
the possibility of cultivating sugar-cane in Southern France are here
omitted.) . . . As for news of myself, I continue my yawning course, and
feel a decided improvement from the waters. . . . So I shall continue
them though the process is slow. . . .

You ask me, I fear a trifle mockingly, how my studies in human nature
proceed?

Not so ill, my dear sister--I have, at least, scraped acquaintance with
one odd fish, and that, in St. Philip, is a triumph. For some time, from
my chair in the promenade, I have observed a pursy little fellow, of my
age or thereabouts, stalking up and down between the lindens. His
company seems avoided by such notables of the place as Mrs. Macgregor
Jenkins and at first I put him down as a retired actor, for there is
something a little theatrical in his dress and walk. He wears a
wide-brimmed hat of straw, loose nankeen trousers and a quasi-military
coat, and takes his waters with as much ceremony as Monsieur le Marquis,
though not quite with the same _ton_. I should put him down as a
Meridional, for he has the quick, dark eye, the sallow skin, the
corpulence and the rodomontish airs that mark your true son of the Midi,
once he has passed his lean and hungry youth.

And yet, there is some sort of unsuccessful oddity about him, which sets
him off from your successful bourgeois. I cannot put my finger on it
yet, but it interests me.

At any rate, I was sitting in my accustomed chair, reading Ossian, this
morning, as he made his solitary rounds of the promenade. Doubtless I
was more than usually absorbed in my author, for I must have pronounced
some lines aloud as he passed. He gave me a quick glance at the time,
but nothing more. But on his next round, as he was about to pass me, he
hesitated for a moment, stopped, and then, removing his straw hat,
saluted me very civilly.

"Monsieur will pardon me," he said, with a dumpy hauteur, "but surely
monsieur is English? And surely the lines that monsieur just repeated
are from the great poet, Ossian?"

I admitted both charges, with a smile, and he bowed again.

"Monsieur will excuse the interruption," he said, "but I myself have
long admired the poetry of Ossian"--and with that he continued my
quotation to the end of the passage, in very fair English, too, though
with a strong accent. I complimented him, of course, effusively--after
all, it is not every day that one runs across a fellow-admirer of Ossian
on the promenade of a small French watering place--and after that, he
sat down in the chair beside me and we fell into talk. He seems,
astonishingly for a Frenchman, to have an excellent acquaintance with
our English poets--perhaps he has been a tutor in some English family. I
did not press him with questions on this first encounter, though I noted
that he spoke French with a slight accent also, which seems odd.

There is something a little rascally about him, to tell you the truth,
though his conversation with me was both forceful and elevated. An ill
man, too, and a disappointed one, or I miss my mark, yet his eyes, when
he talks, are strangely animating. I fancy I would not care to meet him
in a _guet-apens_, and yet, he may be the most harmless of broken
pedagogues. We took a glass of waters together, to the great disgust of
Mrs. Macgregor Jenkins, who ostentatiously drew her skirts aside. She
let me know, afterward, in so many words, that my acquaintance was a
noted bandit, though, when pressed, she could give no better reason than
that he lives a little removed from the town, that "nobody knows where
he comes from" and that his wife is "no better than she should be,"
whatever that portentous phrase entails. Well, one would hardly call him
a gentleman, even by Mrs. Macgregor's somewhat easy standards, but he
has given me better conversation than I have had in a month--and if he
is a bandit, we might discuss thuggee together. But I hope for nothing
so stimulating, though I must question Gaston about him. . . .


                                                       October 11th.

. . . But Gaston could tell me little, except that my acquaintance comes
from Sardinia or some such island originally, has served in the French
army and is popularly supposed to possess the evil eye. About Madame he
hinted that he could tell me a great deal, but I did not labor the
point. After all, if my friend has been c-ck-ld-d--do not blush, my dear
sister!--that, too, is the portion of a philosopher, and I find his wide
range of conversation much more palatable than Mrs. Macgregor Jenkins'
rewarmed London gossip. Nor has he tried to borrow money from me yet,
something which, I am frank to say, I expected and was prepared to
refuse. . . .


                                                      November 20th.

. . . Triumph! My character is found--and a character of the first
water, I assure you! I have dined with him in his house, and a very bad
dinner it was. Madame is not a good housekeeper, whatever else she may
be. And what she has been, one can see at a glance--she has all the
little faded coquetries of the garrison coquette. Good-tempered, of
course, as such women often are, and must have been pretty in her best
days, though with shocking bad teeth. I suspect her of a touch of the
tarbrush, though there I may be wrong. No doubt she caught my friend
young--I have seen the same thing happen in India often enough--the
experienced woman and the youngster fresh from England. Well, 'tis an
old story--an old one with him, too--and no doubt Madame has her charms,
though she is obviously one reason why he has not risen.

After dinner, Madame departed, not very willingly, and he took me into
his study for a chat. He had even procured a bottle of port, saying he
knew the Englishman's taste for it, and while it was hardly the right
Cockburn, I felt touched by the attention. The man is desperately
lonely--one reads that in his big eyes. He is also desperately proud,
with the quick, touchy sensitiveness of the failure, and I quite exerted
myself to draw him out.

And indeed, the effort repaid me. His own story is simple enough. He is
neither bandit nor pedagogue, but, like myself, a broken soldier--a
major of the French Royal Artillery, retired on half pay for some years.
I think it creditable of him to have reached so respectable a rank, for
he is of foreign birth--Sardinian, I think I told you--and the French
service is by no means as partial to foreigners as they were in the days
of the first Irish Brigade. Moreover, one simply does not rise in that
service, unless one is a gentleman of quarterings, and that he could
hardly claim. But the passion of his life has been India, and that is
what interests me. And, 'pon my honor, he was rather astonishing about
it.

As soon as, by a lucky chance, I hit upon the subject, his eyes lit up
and his sickness dropped away. Pretty soon he began to take maps from a
cabinet in the wall and ply me with questions about my own small
experiences. And very soon indeed, I am abashed to state, I found myself
stumbling in my answers. It was all book knowledge on his part, of
course, but where the devil he could have got some of it, I do not know.
Indeed, he would even correct me, now and then, as cool as you please.
"Eight twelve pounders, I think, on the north wall of the old
fortifications of Madras----" and the deuce of it is, he would be right.
Finally, I could contain myself no longer.

"But, major, this is incredible," I said. "I have served twenty years
with John Company and thought that I had some knowledge. But one would
say you had fought over every inch of Bengal!"

He gave me a quick look, almost of anger, and began to roll up his maps.

"So I have, in my mind," he said, shortly, "but, as my superiors have
often informed me, my hobby is a tedious one."

"It is not tedious to me," I said boldly. "Indeed, I have often marveled
at your government's neglect of their opportunities in India. True, the
issue is settled now----"

"It is by no means settled," he said, interrupting me rudely. I stared
at him.

"It was settled, I believe, by Baron Clive, at a spot named Plassey," I
said frigidly. "And afterward, by my own old general, Eyre Coote, at
another spot named Wandewash."

"Oh, yes--yes--yes," he said impatiently, "I grant you Clive--Clive was
a genius and met the fate of geniuses. He steals an empire for you, and
your virtuous English Parliament holds up its hands in horror because he
steals a few lakhs of rupees for himself as well. So he blows out his
brains in disgrace--you inexplicable English!--and you lose your genius.
A great pity. I would not have treated Clive so. But then, if I had been
Milord Clive, I would not have blown out my brains."

"And what would you have done, had you been Clive?" I said, for the
man's calm, staring conceit amused me.

His eyes were dangerous for a moment and I saw why the worthy Mrs.
Macgregor Jenkins had called him a bandit.

"Oh," he said coolly, "I would have sent a file of grenadiers to your
English Parliament and told it to hold its tongue. As Cromwell did. Now
there was a man. But your Clive--faugh!--he had the ball at his feet and
he refused to kick it. I withdraw the word genius. He was a nincompoop.
At the least, he might have made himself a rajah."

This was a little too much, as you may imagine. "General Clive had his
faults," I said icily, "but he was a true Briton and a patriot."

"He was a fool," said my puffy little major, flatly, his lower lip stuck
out. "As big a fool as Dupleix, and that is saying much. Oh, some
military skill, some talent for organization, yes. But a genius would
have brushed him into the sea! It was possible to hold Arcot, it was
possible to win Plassey--look!" and, with that, he ripped another map
from his cabinet and began to expound to me eagerly exactly what he
would have done in command of the French forces in India, in 1757, when
he must have been but a lad in his twenties. He thumped the paper, he
strewed corks along the table for his troops--corks taken from a supply
in a tin box, so it must be an old game with him. And, as I listened, my
irritation faded, for the man's monomania was obvious. Nor was it, to
tell the truth, an ill-designed plan of campaign, for corks on a map. Of
course these things are different, in the field.

I could say, with honesty, that his plan had features of novelty, and he
gulped the words down hungrily--he has a great appetite for flattery.

"Yes, yes," he said. "That is how it should be done--the thickest skull
can see it. And, ill as I am, with a fleet and ten thousand picked
men----" He dreamed, obviously, the sweat of his exertions on his waxy
face--it was absurd and yet touching to see him dream.

"You would find a certain amount of opposition," I said, in an amused
voice.

"Oh, yes, yes," he said quickly, "I do not underrate the English.
Excellent horse, solid foot. But no true knowledge of cannon, and I am a
gunner----"

I hated to bring him down to earth and yet I felt that I must.

"Of course, major," I said, "you have had great experience in the
field."

He looked at me for a moment, his arrogance quite unshaken.

"I have had very little," he said, quietly, "but one knows how the thing
should be done or one does not know. And that is enough."

He stared at me for an instant with his big eyes. A little mad, of
course. And yet I found myself saying, "But surely, major--what
happened?"

"Why," he said, still quietly, "what happens to folk who have naught but
their brains to sell? I staked my all on India when I was young--I
thought that my star shone over it. I ate dirty puddings--_corpo di
Baccho!_--to get there--I was no De Rohan or Soubise to win the king's
favor! And I reached there indeed, in my youth, just in time to be
included in the surrender of Pondicherry." He laughed, rather terribly,
and sipped at his glass.

"You English were very courteous captors," he said. "But I was not
released till the Seven Years War had ended--that was in '63. Who asks
for the special exchange of an unknown artillery lieutenant? And then
ten years odd of garrison duty at Mauritius. It was there that I met
Madame--she is a Creole. A pleasant spot, Mauritius. We used to fire the
cannon at the sea birds when we had enough ammunition for target
practice," and he chuckled drearily. "By then I was thirty-seven. They
had to make me a captain--they even brought me back to France. To
garrison duty. I have been on garrison duty, at Toulon, at Brest,
at----" He ticked off the names on his fingers but I did not like his
voice.

"But surely," I said, "the American war, though a small affair--there
were opportunities----"

"And who did they send?" he said quickly. "Lafayette--Rochambeau--De
Grasse--the sprigs of the nobility. Oh, at Lafayette's age, I would have
volunteered like Lafayette. But one should be successful in youth--after
that, the spring is broken. And when one is over forty, one has
responsibilities. I have a large family, you see, though not of my own
begetting," and he chuckled as if at a secret joke. "Oh, I wrote the
Continental Congress," he said reflectively, "but they preferred a dolt
like Von Steuben. A good dolt, an honest dolt, but there you have it. I
also wrote your British War Office," he said in an even voice. "I must
show you that plan of campaign--sometime--they could have crushed
General Washington with it in three weeks."

I stared at him, a little appalled.

"For an officer who has taken his king's shilling to send to an enemy
nation a plan for crushing his own country's ally," I said,
stiffly--"well, in England, we would call that treason."

"And what is treason?" he said lightly. "If we call it unsuccessful
ambition we shall be nearer the truth." He looked at me, keenly. "You
are shocked, General Estcourt," he said. "I am sorry for that. But have
you never known the curse"--and his voice vibrated--"the curse of not
being employed when you should be employed? The curse of being a hammer
with no nail to drive? The curse--the curse of sitting in a dusty
garrison town with dreams that would split the brain of a Caesar, and no
room on earth for those dreams?"

"Yes," I said, unwillingly, for there was something in him that demanded
the truth, "I have known that."

"Then you know hells undreamed of by the Christian," he said, with a
sigh, "and if I committed treason--well, I have been punished for it. I
might have been a brigadier, otherwise--I had Choiseul's ear for a few
weeks, after great labor. As it is, I am here on half pay, and there
will not be another war in my time. Moreover, M. de Sgur has
proclaimed that all officers now must show sixteen quarterings. Well, I
wish them joy of those officers, in the next conflict. Meanwhile, I have
my corks, my maps and my family ailment." He smiled and tapped his side.
"It killed my father at thirty-nine--it has not treated me quite so ill,
but it will come for me soon enough."

And indeed, when I looked at him, I could well believe it, for the light
had gone from his eyes and his cheeks were flabby. We chatted a little
on indifferent subjects after that, then I left him, wondering whether
to pursue the acquaintance. He is indubitably a character, but some of
his speeches leave a taste in my mouth. Yet he can be greatly
attractive--even now, with his mountainous failure like a cloak upon
him. And yet why should I call it mountainous? His conceit is
mountainous enough, but what else could he have expected of his career?
Yet I wish I could forget his eyes. . . . To tell the truth, he puzzles
me and I mean to get to the bottom of him. . . .


                                                February 12th, 1789.

. . . I have another sidelight on the character of my friend, the major.
As I told you, I was half of a mind to break off the acquaintance
entirely, but he came up to me so civilly, the following day, that I
could find no excuse. And since then, he has made me no embarrassingly
treasonable confidences, though whenever we discuss the art of war, his
arrogance is unbelievable. He even informed me, the other day, that
while Frederick of Prussia was a fair general, his tactics might have
been improved upon. I merely laughed and turned the question. Now and
then I play a war game with him, with his corks and maps, and when I
let him win, he is as pleased as a child. . . . His illness increases
visibly, despite the waters, and he shows an eagerness for my company
which I cannot but find touching. . . . After all, he is a man of
intelligence, and the company he has had to keep must have galled him at
times. . . .

Now and then I amuse myself by speculating what might have happened to
him, had he chosen some other profession than that of arms. He has, as I
have told you, certain gifts of the actor, yet his stature and figure
must have debarred him from tragic parts, while he certainly does not
possess the humors of the comedian. Perhaps his best choice would have
been the Romish church, for there, the veriest fisherman may hope, at
least, to succeed to the keys of St. Peter. . . . And yet, Heaven knows,
he would have made a very bad priest! . . .

But, to my tale. I had missed him from our accustomed walks for some
days and went to his house--St. Helen's it is called; we live in a
pother of saints' names hereabouts--one evening to inquire. I did not
hear the quarreling voices till the tousle-haired servant had admitted
me and then it was too late to retreat. Then my friend bounced down the
corridor, his sallow face bored and angry.

"Ah, General Estcourt!" he said, with a complete change of expression as
soon as he saw me. "What fortune! I was hoping you would pay us a
call--I wish to introduce you to my family!"

He had told me previously of his pair of stepchildren by Madame's first
marriage, and I must confess I felt curious to see them. But it was not
of them he spoke, as I soon gathered.

"Yes," he said. "My brothers and sisters, or most of them, are here for
a family council. You come in the nick of time!" He pinched my arm and
his face glowed with the malicious navet of a child. "They do not
believe that I really know an English general--it will be a great blow
to them!" he whispered as we passed down the corridor. "Ah, if you had
only worn your uniform and your Garters! But one cannot have everything
in life!"

Well, my dear sister, what a group, when we entered the salon! It is a
small room, tawdrily furnished in the worst French taste, with a jumble
of Madame's femininities and souvenirs from the Island of Mauritius, and
they were all sitting about in the French after-dinner fashion, drinking
tisane and quarreling. And, indeed, had the room been as long as the
nave of St. Peter's, it would yet have seemed too small for such a crew!
An old mother, straight as a ramrod and as forbidding, with the burning
eyes and the bitter dignity one sees on the faces of certain Italian
peasants--you could see that they were all a little afraid of her except
my friend, and he, I must say, treated her with a filial courtesy that
was greatly to his credit. Two sisters, one fattish, swarthy and
spiteful, the other with the wreck of great beauty and the evident marks
of a certain profession on her shabby-fine _toilette_ and her pinkened
cheeks. An innkeeper brother-in-law called Buras or Durat, with a
jowlish, heavily handsome face and the manners of a cavalry sergeant--he
is married to the spiteful sister. And two brothers, one sheep-like,
one fox-like, yet both bearing a certain resemblance to my friend.

The sheep-like brother is at least respectable, I gathered--a provincial
lawyer in a small way of business whose great pride is that he has
actually appeared before the Court of Appeals at Marseilles. The other,
the fox-like one, makes his living more dubiously--he seems the sort of
fellow who orates windily in taprooms about the Rights of Man, and other
nonsense of M. Rousseau's. I would certainly not trust him with my
watch, though he is trying to get himself elected to the States-General.
And, as regards family concord, it was obvious at first glance that not
one of them trusted the others. And yet, that is not all of the tribe.
There are, if you will believe me, two other brothers living, and this
family council was called to deal with the affairs of the
next-to-youngest, who seems, even in this mlange, to be a black sheep.

I can assure you, my head swam, and when my friend introduced me,
proudly, as a Knight of the Garters, I did not even bother to contradict
him. For they admitted me to their intimate circle at once--there was no
doubt about that. Only the old lady remained aloof, saying little and
sipping her camomile tea as if it were the blood of her enemies. But,
one by one, the others related to me, with an unasked-for frankness, the
most intimate and scandalous details of their brothers' and sisters'
lives. They seemed united only on two points, jealousy of my friend, the
major, because he is his mother's favorite, and dislike of Madame
Josephine because she gives herself airs. Except for the haggard
beauty--I must say, that, while her remarks anent her sister-in-law
were not such as I would care to repeat, she seemed genuinely fond of
her brother, the major, and expounded his virtues to me through an
overpowering cloud of scent.

It was like being in a nest of Italian smugglers, or a den of
quarrelsome foxes, for they all talked, or rather barked at once, even
the brother-in-law, and only Madame Mre could bring silence among them.
And yet, my friend enjoyed it. It was obvious he showed them off before
me as he might have displayed the tricks of a set of performing animals.
And yet with a certain fondness, too--that is the inexplicable part of
it. I do not know which sentiment was upmost in my mind--respect for
this family feeling or pity for his being burdened with such a clan.

For though not the eldest, he is the strongest among them, and they know
it. They rebel, but he rules their family conclaves like a petty despot.
I could have laughed at the farce of it, and yet, it was nearer tears.
For here, at least, my friend was a personage.

I got away as soon as I could, despite some pressing looks from the
haggard beauty. My friend accompanied me to the door.

"Well, well," he said, chuckling and rubbing his hands, "I am infinitely
obliged to you, general. They will not forget this in a hurry. Before
you entered, Joseph"--Joseph is the sheep-like one--"was boasting about
his acquaintance with a _sous-intendant_, but an English general, bah!
Joseph will have green eyes for a fortnight!" And he rubbed his hands
again in a perfect paroxysm of delight.

It was too childlike to make me angry. "I am glad, of course, to have
been of any service," I said.

"Oh, you have been a great service," he said. "They will not plague my
poor Josie for at least half an hour. Ah, this is a bad business of
Louis'--a bad business!"--Louis is the black sheep--"but we will patch
it up somehow. Hortense is worth three of him--he must go back to
Hortense!"

"You have a numerous family, major," I said, for want of something
better to say.

"Oh, yes," he said, cheerfully. "Pretty numerous--I am sorry you could
not meet the others. Though Louis is a fool--I pampered him in his
youth. Well! He was a baby--and Jerome a mule. Still, we haven't done so
badly for ourselves; not badly. Joseph makes a go of his law
practice--there are fools enough in the world to be impressed by
Joseph--and if Lucien gets to the States-General, you may trust Lucien
to feather his nest! And there are the grandchildren, and a little
money--not much," he said, quickly. "They mustn't expect that from me.
But it's a step up from where we started--if papa had lived, he wouldn't
have been so ill-pleased. Poor Elisa's gone, but the rest of us have
stuck together, and, while we may seem a little rough, to strangers, our
hearts are in the right place. When I was a boy," and he chuckled again,
"I had other ambitions for them. I thought, with luck on my side, I
could make them all kings and queens. Funny, isn't it, to think of a
numskull like Joseph as a king! Well, that was the boy of it. But, even
so, they'd all be eating chestnuts back on the island without me, and
that's something."

He said it rather defiantly, and I did not know which to marvel at
most--his preposterous pride in the group or his cool contempt of them.
So I said nothing but shook his hand instead. I could not help doing the
latter. For surely, if anyone started in life with a millstone about his
neck . . . and yet they are none of them ordinary people. . . .


                                                   March 13th, 1789.

. . . My friend's complaint has taken a turn for the worse and it is I
who pay him visits now. It is the act of a Christian to do so and, to
tell the truth, I have become oddly attached to him, though I can give
no just reason for the attachment. He makes a bad patient, by the way,
and is often abominably rude to both myself and Madame, who nurses him
devotedly though unskillfully. I told him yesterday that I could have no
more of it and he looked at me with his strangely luminous eyes. "So,"
he said, "even the English desert the dying." . . . Well, I stayed;
after that, what else might a gentleman do? . . . Yet I cannot feel that
he bears me any real affection--he exerts himself to charm, on occasion,
but one feels he is playing a game . . . yes, even upon his deathbed, he
plays a game . . . a complex character. . . .


                                                   April 28th, 1789.

. . . My friend the major's malady approaches its term--the last few
days find him fearfully enfeebled. He knows that the end draws nigh;
indeed he speaks of it often, with remarkable calmness. I had thought it
might turn his mind toward religion, but while he has accepted the
ministrations of his Church, I fear it is without the sincere repentance
of a Christian. When the priest had left him, yesterday, he summoned
me, remarking, "Well, all that is over with," rather more in the tone of
a man who has just reserved a place in a coach than one who will shortly
stand before his Maker.

"It does no harm," he said, reflectively. "And, after all, it might be
true. Why not?" and he chuckled in a way that repelled me. Then he asked
me to read to him--not the Bible, as I had expected, but some verses of
the poet Gray. He listened attentively, and when I came to the passage,
"Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed," and its successor,
"Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest," he asked me to repeat them.
When I had done so, he said, "Yes, yes. That is true, very true. I did
not think so in boyhood--I thought genius must force its own way. But
your poet is right about it."

I found this painful, for I had hoped that his illness had brought him
to a juster, if less arrogant, estimate of his own abilities.

"Come, major," I said, soothingly, "we cannot all be great men, you
know. And you have no need to repine. After all, as you say, you have
risen in the world----"

"Risen?" he said, and his eyes flashed. "Risen? Oh, God, that I should
die alone with my one companion an Englishman with a soul of suet! Fool,
if I had had Alexander's chance, I would have bettered Alexander! And it
will come, too, that is the worst of it. Already Europe is shaking with
a new birth. If I had been born under the Sun-King, I would be a Marshal
of France; if I had been born twenty years ago, I would mold a new
Europe with my fists in the next half-dozen years. Why did they put my
soul in my body at this infernal time? Do you not understand, imbecile?
Is there no one who understands?"

I called Madame at this, as he was obviously delirious, and, after some
trouble, we got him quieted.


                                                      May 8th, 1789.

. . . My poor friend is gone, and peacefully enough at the last. His
death, oddly enough, coincided with the date of the opening of the
States-General at Versailles. The last moments of life are always
painful for the observer, but his end was as relatively serene as might
be hoped for, considering his character. I was watching at one side of
the bed and a thunderstorm was raging at the time. No doubt, to his
expiring consciousness, the cracks of the thunder sounded like
artillery, for, while we were waiting the death-struggle, he suddenly
raised himself in the bed and listened intently. His eyes glowed, a
beatific expression passed over his features. "The army! Head of the
army!" he whispered ecstatically, and, when we caught him, he was
lifeless . . . I must say that, while it may not be very Christian, I am
glad that death brought him what life could not, and that, in the very
article of it, he saw himself at the head of victorious troops. Ah,
Fame--delusive spectre . . . (A page of disquisition by General Estcourt
on the vanities of human ambition is here omitted.) . . . The face,
after death, was composed, with a certain majesty, even . . . one could
see that he might have been handsome as a youth. . . .

                                                     May 26th, 1789.

. . . I shall return to Paris by easy stages and reach Stokely sometime
in June. My health is quite restored and all that has kept me here this
long has been the difficulty I have met with in attempting to settle my
poor friend, the major's affairs. For one thing, he appears to have been
originally a native of Corsica, not of Sardinia as I had thought, and
while that explains much in his character, it has also given occupation
to the lawyers. I have met his rapacious family, individually and in
conclave, and, if there are further gray hairs on my head, you may put
it down to them. . . . However, I have finally assured the major's
relict of her legitimate rights in his estate, and that is something--my
one ray of comfort in the matter being the behavior of her son by the
former marriage, who seems an excellent and virtuous young man. . . .

. . . You will think me a very soft fellow, no doubt, for wasting so
much time upon a chance acquaintance who was neither, in our English
sense, a gentleman nor a man whose Christian virtues counterbalanced his
lack of true breeding. Yet there was a tragedy about him beyond his
station, and that verse of Gray's rings in my head. I wish I could
forget the expression on his face when he spoke of it. Suppose a genius
born in circumstances that made the development of that genius
impossible--well, all this is the merest moonshine. . . .

. . . To revert to more practical matters, I discover that the major has
left me his military memoirs, papers and commentaries, including his
maps. Heaven knows what I shall do with them! I cannot, in courtesy,
burn them _sur-le-champ_, and yet they fill two huge packing cases and
the cost of transporting them to Stokely will be considerable. Perhaps I
will take them to Paris and quietly dispose of them there to some
waste-paper merchant. . . . In return for this unsought legacy, Madame
has consulted me in regard to a stone and epitaph for her late husband,
and, knowing that otherwise the family would squabble over the affair
for weeks, I have drawn up a design which I hope meets with their
approval. It appears that he particularly desired that the epitaph
should be writ in English, saying that France had had enough of him,
living--a freak of dying vanity for which one must pardon him. However,
I have produced the following, which I hope will answer.

                              Here lies
                         NAPOLEONE BUONAPARTE
                     Major of the Royal Artillery
                              of France.
                        Born August 15th, 1737
                         at Ajaccio, Corsica.
                          Died May 5th, 1789
                      at St. Philippe-des-Bains

                    "Rest, perturbed spirit . . ."

. . . I had thought, for some hours, of excerpting the lines of
Gray's--the ones that still ring in my head. But, on reflection, though
they suit well enough, they yet seem too cruel to the dust.




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Minor variations in spelling and punctuation have been preserved.




[End of The Curfew Tolls, by Stephen Vincent Bent]
