The Point Of Honor: A Military Tale

by Joseph Conrad

know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don't matterto France, does not keep out some other name?..."

  The voice out of the armchair stopped. General D'Hubert sat still,shadowy, and silent. Only his sabre clinked slightly. The voice in thearmchair began again. "And we must try to satisfy the exigencies of theallied sovereigns. The Prince de Talleyrand told me only yesterday thatNesselrode had informed him officially that his Majesty, the EmperorAlexander, was very disappointed at the small number of examples thegovernment of the king intends to make--especially amongst military men.I tell you this confidentially."

  "Upon my word," broke out General D'Hubert, speaking through his teeth,"if your Excellency deigns to favour me with any more confidentialinformation I don't know what I will do. It's enough to make one breakone's sword over one's knee and fling the pieces..."

  "What government do you imagine yourself to be serving?" interrupted theminister sharply. After a short pause the crestfallen voice of GeneralD'Hubert answered:

  "The government of France."

  "That's paying your conscience off with mere words, general. The truthis that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who havebeen without country for twenty years. Of men also who have just gotover a very bad and humiliating fright.... Have no illusions on thatscore."

  The Duke of Otranto ceased. He had relieved himself, and had attainedhis object of stripping some self-respect off that man who hadinconveniently discovered him posturing in a gold-embroidered courtcostume before a mirror. But they were a hot-headed lot in the army,and it occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposedgeneral officer, received by him on the recommendation of one of theprinces, were to go and do something rashly scandalous directly aftera private interview with the minister. In a changed voice he put aquestion to the point:

  "Your relation--this Feraud?"

  "No. No relation at all."

  "Intimate friend?"

  "Intimate... yes. There is between us an intimate connection of a naturewhich makes it a point of honour with me to try..."

  The minister rang a bell without waiting for the end of the phrase.When the servant had gone, after bringing in a pair of heavy silvercandelabra for the writing desk, the Duke of Otranto stood up, hisbreast glistening all over with gold in the strong light, and taking apiece of paper out of a drawer held it in his hand ostentatiously whilehe said with persuasive gentleness:

  "You must not talk of breaking your sword across your knee, general.Perhaps you would never get another. The emperor shall not return thistime.... _Diable d'homme!_ There was just a moment here in Paris, soonafter Waterloo, when he frightened me. It looked as though he were goingto begin again. Luckily one never does begin again really. You must notthink of breaking your sword, general."

  General D'Hubert, his eyes fixed on the ground, made with his hand ahopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned hiseyes away from him and began to scan deliberately the paper he had beenholding up all the time.

  "There are only twenty general officers to be brought before the SpecialCommission. Twenty. A round number. And let's see, Feraud. Ah, he'sthere! Gabriel Florian. _Parfaitement_. That's your man. Well, therewill be only nineteen examples made now."

  General D'Hubert stood up feeling as though he had gone through aninfectious illness.

  "I must beg your Excellency to keep my interference a profound secret. Iattach the greatest importance to his never knowing..."

  "Who is going to inform him I should like to know," said Fouche, raisinghis eyes curiously to General D'Hubert's white face. "Take one of thesepens and run it through the name yourself. This is the only list inexistence. If you are careful to take up enough ink no one will be ableto tell even what was the name thus struck out. But, _par example_, I amnot responsible for what Clarke will do with him. If he persist inbeing rabid he will be ordered by the Minster of War to reside in someprovincial town under the supervision of the police."

  A few days later General D'Hubert was saying to his sister after thefirst greetings had been got over:

  "Ah, my dear Leonie! It seemed to me I couldn't get away from Parisquick enough."

  "Effect of love," she suggested with a malicious smile.

  "And horror," added General D'Hubert with profound seriousness. "I havenearly died there of... of nausea."

  His face was contracted with disgust. And as his sister looked at himattentively he continued:

  "I have had to see Fouche. I have had an audience. I have been in hiscabinet. There remains with one, after the misfortune of having tobreathe the air of the same room with that man, a sense of diminisheddignity, the uneasy feeling of being not so clean after all as one hopedone was.... But you can't understand."

  She nodded quickly several times. She understood very well on thecontrary. She knew her brother thoroughly and liked him as he was.Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the JacobinFouche, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, everyvirtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his wholegeneration and died obscurely as Duke of Otranto.

  "My dear Armand," she said compassionately, "what could you want fromthat man?"

  "Nothing less than a life," answered General D'Hubert. "And I've gotit. It had to be done. But I feel yet as if I could never forgive thenecessity to the man I had to save."

  General Feraud, totally unable as is the case with most men tocomprehend what was happening to him, received the Minister of War'sorder to proceed at once to a small town of Central France with feelingswhose natural expression consisted in a fierce rolling of the eye andsavage grinding of the teeth. But he went. The bewilderment and awe atthe passing away of the state of war--the only condition of society hehad ever known--the prospect of a world at peace frightened him. He wentaway to his little town firmly persuaded that this could not last. Therehe was informed of his retirement from the army, and that his pension(calculated on the scale of a colonel's half-pay) was made dependent onthe circumspection of his conduct and on the good reports of the police.No longer in the army! He felt suddenly a stranger to the earth like adisembodied spirit. It was impossible to exist. But at first he reactedfrom sheer incredulity. This could not be. It could not last. Theheavens would fall presently. He called upon thunder, earthquakes,natural cataclysms. But nothing happened. The leaden weight of anirremediable idleness descended upon General Feraud, who, having noresources within himself, sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude.He haunted the streets of the little town gazing before him withlack-lustre eyes, disregarding the hats raised on his passage; and thepeople, nudging each other as he went by, said: "That's poor GeneralFeraud. His heart is broken. Behold how he loved the emperor!"

  The other living wreckage of Napoleonic tempest to be found in thatquiet nook of France clustered round him infinitely respectful ofthat sorrow. He himself imagined his soul to be crushed by grief. Heexperienced quickly succeeding impulses to weep, to howl, to bite hisfists till blood came, to lie for days on his bed with his head thrustunder the pillow; but they arose from sheer _ennui_, from the anguishof an immense, indescribable, inconceivable boredom. Only his mentalinability to grasp the hopeless nature of his case as a whole saved himfrom suicide. He never even thought of it once. He thought of nothing;but his appetite abandoned him, and the difficulty of expressing theoverwhelming horror of his feelings (the most furious swearing could dono justice to it) induced gradually a habit of silence:--a sort of deathto a Southern temperament.

  Great therefore was the emotion amongst the _anciens militaires_frequenting a certain little cafe full of flies when one stuffyafternoon "that poor General Feraud" let out suddenly a volley offormidable curses.

  He had been sitting quietly in his own privileged corner looking throughthe Paris gazettes with about as much interest as a condemned man onthe eve of execution could be expected to show in the news of the day.A cluster of martial, bronzed faces, including one lacking an eye andanother lacking the tip of a nose frost-bit
ten in Russia, surrounded himanxiously.

  "What's the matter, general?"

  General Feraud sat erect, holding the newspaper at arm's length in orderto make out the small print better. He was reading very low to himselfover again fragments of the intelligence which had caused what may becalled his resurrection.

  "We are informed... till now on sick leave... is to be called to thecommand of the 5th Cavalry Brigade in..."

  He dropped the paper stonily, mumbled once more... "Called to thecommand"... and suddenly gave his forehead a mighty slap.

  "I had almost forgotten him," he cried in a conscience-stricken tone.

  A deep-chested veteran shouted across the