(Just capable of one heroic aim),
And threw it in the thickest of the world.”
Aurora Leigh.
NOTE
Any reader familiar with the figure of the gallant and unfortunate Louis de Frotté will realise why neither he nor the Normandy which he led so well play any part in these pages—not indeed that he has served as prototype for any character in them, but because to have introduced him also would have been to overblacken the reputation of Bonaparte. Yet that which is here laid to the First Consul’s charge is no libel, for the deeds done at Alençon and Verneuil in mid-February, 1800, are written in history.
CHAPTER I
“WHAT IS MIRABEL?”
“I wish I had been taught how to make a bed!” complained Roland de Céligny, as he wrestled with his blanket in the half-darkness of the attic.
“You may think yourself lucky to have a bed to make!” retorted a comrade who sat cross-legged on a neighbouring pile of sacking. “Mine cannot be ‘made,’ though a careless movement will reduce it to its component elements.”