Moore pressed his hand tightly.
“Anderson, don’t leave me!” he murmured.
Then, as his faithful French servant, François, appeared, in blank horror, with falling tears, he smiled.
“Mon ami, this is nothing,” he said.
The surgeons examined the wound, only to find that no hope of recovery existed. By this time the agony had become so overwhelming that Moore could hardly speak, and his face was deathly pale. Yet, after a while, he so far mastered the torture as to utter one sentence and then another at intervals.
“Anderson, you know that I have always wished to die in this way,” came first. And, as the officers of his staff appeared, one by one, he put the same question to each—“Are the French beaten?”
Next, with unconscious pathos, read now in the light of after-misrepresentations—
“I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will do me justice!”
Now there was the thought of his own relatives.