"And now I will conclude our meek little story. Perhaps regretfully I will close the door through which the public has been suffered to peep in upon the movements of our quiet life at home and in the village, and thus will end the spectacle. That life will continue, but it shall be sacred to ourselves, and the events that give it interest shall go unrecorded."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I have reasons for believing that Smiley did not construct this story. I remember having seen it in a French newspaper long before I met the lieutenant, and I am sure he borrowed it from that or some other publication.
Transcriber's note:
Variant spelling and hyphenation were retained.
Punctuation was normalized without comment.
Spelling corrections:
Page 183, "aleak" changed to read "a leak".
Page 198, "cetan" changed to read "certain".
Page 262, "advertisment" changed to read "advertisement".