"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 lacklustre 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."
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