The devouring¹ in a dismal² forest of a luckless Lithuanian dog by my granduncle Nicholas B. in company of two other military and famished³ scarecrows, symbolized⁴, to my childish imagination, the whole horror of the retreat from Moscow, and the immorality⁵ of a conqueror’s ambition. An extreme distaste for that objectionable episode has tinged⁶ the views I hold as to the character and achievements of Napoleon the Great. I need not say that these are unfavourable. It was morally reprehensible⁸ for that great captain to induce a simple-minded Polish gentleman to eat dog by raising in his breast a false hope of national independence. It has been the fate of that credulous⁹ nation to starve for upward of a hundred years on a diet of false hopes and — well — dog. It is, when one thinks of it, a singularly poisonous regimen. Some pride in the national constitution which has survived a long course of such dishes is really excusable.

But enough of generalizing. Returning to particulars, Mr. Nicholas B. confided¹⁰ to his sister-in-law (my grandmother) in his misanthropically¹² laconic¹³ manner that this supper in the woods had been nearly “the death of him.” This is not surprising. What surprises me is that the story was ever heard of; for granduncle Nicholas differed in this from the generality of military men of Napoleon’s time (and perhaps of all time) that he did not like to talk of his campaigns, which began at Friedland and ended some where in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc. His

分享到：