MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

grape-shot. Just before we reached the Circle, the doctor stopped and, pointing out to meone of the big corner houses so pompously grouped around the Arc de Triomphe,[266-2]told me this story.You see those four closed windows above the balcony? During the first day of August,that terrible August of last year, so full of storms and disaster, I was called there to attenda very severe case of apoplexy. The patient was Colonel Jouve, once a cuirassier of theFirst Empire,[266-3] and now an old gentleman mad about glory and patriotism. At theoutbreak of war he had gone to live in the Champs-Élysées, in an apartment with abalcony. Can you guess why? That he might be present at the triumphant return of ourtroops. Poor old boy! The news of Wissemburg reached him just as he was leaving thetable. When he read the name of Napoleon at the foot of that bulletin of defeat, he had astroke and fell.I found the old cuirassier stretched out on the carpet with his face bleeding andmotionless as if struck by a heavy blow. If he had been standing, he would have seemed atall man. Stretched out as he was, he seemed immense. He had a fine face, magnificentteeth, a thick head of curly white hair, and though eighty years old did not look more thansixty. Near him his granddaughter knelt weeping. There was a strong family resemblancebetween them. Seeing them side by side, you thought of two beautiful Greek medalsstruck from the same matrix, but one old and worn and the other bright and clear-cut withall the brilliancy and smoothness of a first impression.