The news of it was carried back
to England, and country gentlemen who knew little of the details
of the war grew crimson with passion when they heard of it, and
yeomen of the shires raised freckled fists to Heaven and swore.
And yet who should be the doer of this dreadful deed but our
friend the Brigadier, Etienne Gerard, of the Hussars of Conflans,
gay-riding, plume-tossing, debonair, the darling of the ladies
and of the six brigades of light cavalry.
But the strange part of it is that this gallant gentleman did
this hateful thing, and made himself the most unpopular man in
the Peninsula, without ever knowing that he had done a crime for
which there is hardly a name amid all the resources of our
language. He died of old age, and never once in that
imperturbable self- confidence which adorned or disfigured his
character knew that so many thousand Englishmen would gladly have
hanged him with their own hands. On the contrary, he numbered
this adventure among those other exploits which he has given to
the world, and many a time he chuckled and hugged himself as he
narrated it to the eager circle who gathered round him in that
humble cafe where, between his dinner and his dominoes, he would
tell, amid tears and laughter, of that inconceivable Napoleonic
past when France, like an angel of wrath, rose up, splendid and
terrible, before a cowering continent.
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