“My comrades—O my comrades!” He staggered forward, with stretched-out hands. A confused murmur buzzed in his ears; it swelled into a tumult—“and the shout of a king was among them.”
One hand sought the bearskin. Suddenly he fell face forward.
Under the wide sky, in the uniform of their dead Emperor, the three veterans lay together; a young boy crouched near them, bleeding from an unnoticed wound, and sobbing.
A night wind crept over the frozen fields; a little wind, like a sigh from France for her ruined homes, her smoking villages, her slain children, her lost cause and faded glories.
The sun of Austerlitz sank down behind the poplars.
The Royal Road to Learning
FREDDIE—What’s an honorary degree, dad?
Johnson—That’s a title a college confers on a man who would never be able to get it if he had to pass an examination.