"Bah! in my absence I found that she had taken to study poetry with M. Grobbin, a grenadier of the Consular Guard, the same who was the cause of the First Consul issuing his remarkable order of the day, concerning that Parisian weakness for destroying oneself, in the passion named love. Did you never hear of it?"
"No."
"Ma foi! You English know nothing that is acted out of your foggy little island."
"And this order——"
"Stated that as the Grenadier Grobbin had destroyed himself in despair, for his dismissal by Madame de Thiebault, the First Consul directed that it should be inserted in the order of the day for the Consular Guard, 'that a soldier ought to know how to subdue sorrow and the agitation of the passions; that there is as much courage in enduring with firmness the pains of the heart as remaining steady under the grape-shot of a battery; and to abandon oneself to grief without resistance, to kill oneself in order to escape from it, is to fly from the field of battle before one is conquered!' The order was signed by Bonaparte, as First Consul, and countersigned by Jean Baptiste Bessières."
"Have you ever seen the Emperor?" asked Quentin.
"Once, mon ami—only once."
"In the field?"
"No; but nearer than I ever wish to see him again, under the same circumstances at least. Shall I tell you how it was?"
"If you please."