Captain Jean had received a bullet in his breast, not far from the frontier, and had been taken up by some peasants in the environs of Pontarlier, and saved by some Swiss custom house officers who had conveyed him to Lausanne, where he had received the most careful attention. We might give a touching account of that sad period of our disasters; and indeed we must write it if it is to be on record at all, for the Swiss are not the people to make a parade of the zealous kindness they displayed on this occasion in saving our harassed, famished, and frozen soldiers. Peasants and townspeople set out amid the snows of the Jura, to guide and to give shelter to our disbanded and wandering regiments. Some sacrificed their lives in this service of humanity, and emulated each other in offering an asylum and giving assistance to our exhausted soldiers. The behaviour of these excellent people has excited universal admiration.
Captain Jean was living at Lausanne when Monsieur N.... an officer on half pay happened to be there. His medical attendants thought that the climate would contribute to the cure of the wounded man, who had obtained a congé in the hope of regaining health under the clement skies of this part of the lake of Geneva. His sister had come to join him and was doing all for his cure that the tenderest affection could suggest. His strength was however not returning and alarming symptoms continued.
Captain Jean was from La Roche-Pont; he was on intimate terms with Monsieur N.... and the conversation often turned on the recent war and the resources which through ignorance or inability had not been employed; and they frequently spoke of this beautiful province of Burgundy, placed on the flank of the invasion, and which was so well adapted to mask and protect an offensive movement, if they had had an army of reserve with its right supported by Besançon and its left by Dijon, and abundantly supplied from the basins of the Rhône and the Saône.
The Captain used to employ his leisure in studying the defence of his dear little town whose history he knew so well and which he deemed a strategic position of some importance.
Monsieur N.... spent nearly a month in the company of this amiable and well-informed man, whose feelings were deeply affected by our disasters; but whose active mind sought in these misfortunes themselves a means of instruction, and an opportunity for developing the resources and advantages peculiar to France. This was an inexhaustible subject of conversation for the two friends, and they would continue talking till the sister interposed her authority as nurse to enjoin silence and rest.
In December 1871, Monsieur N.... received the following letter at Paris, accompanied by a bundle of papers.
"Lausanne, December 10th, 1871.
"Sir,
"My dearly loved brother died in my arms the day before yesterday, his death being the result of his wound and also perhaps of grief for our late disasters,—deeply affected as he was by the indelible recollection of the sufferings he had witnessed.
"He retained his consciousness to the last, and I am fulfilling one of his most urgent requests in sending you these papers. It is the only souvenir he can bequeath to you—as he said to me the day before his death—of the hours you so kindly devoted to a poor invalid.
"My brother often spoke to me of you; you were able to appreciate his excellencies and noble character, and will receive his bequest, I doubt not, as a mark of the profound esteem he had for you.