As to Mr.Nicholas B.,sub-lieutenant of 1808,lieutenant of 1813in the French army,and for a short time Officier d'Ordonnance of Marshal Marmont;afterward captain in the 2d Regiment of Mounted Rifles in the Polish army--such as it existed up to 1830in the reduced kingdom established by the Congress of Vienna--I must say that from all that more distant past,known to me traditionally and a little de visu,and called out by the words of the man just gone away,he remains the most incomplete figure.It is obvious that I must have seen him in '64,for it is certain that he would not have missed the opportunity of seeing my mother for what he must have known would be the last time.From my early boyhood to this day,if I try to call up his image,a sort of mist rises before my eyes,mist in which I perceive vaguely only a neatly brushed head of white hair (which is exceptional in the case of the B.family,where it is the rule for men to go bald in a becoming manner before thirty)and a thin,curved,dignified nose,a feature in strict accordance with the physical tradition of the B.family.But it is not by these fragmentary remains of perishable mortality that he lives in my memory.I knew,at a very early age,that my granduncle Nicholas B.was a Knight of the Legion of Honour and that he had also the Polish Cross for valour Virtuti Militari.The knowledge of these glorious facts inspired in me an admiring veneration;yet it is not that sentiment,strong as it was,which resumes for me the force and the significance of his personality.It is over borne by another and complex impression of awe,compassion,and horror.Mr.
Nicholas B.remains for me the unfortunate and miserable (but heroic)being who once upon a time had eaten a dog.
It is a good forty years since I heard the tale,and the effect has not worn off yet.I believe this is the very first,say,realistic,story I heard in my life;but all the same I don't know why I should have been so frightfully impressed.Of course I know what our village dogs look like--but still.No!At this very day,recalling the horror and compassion of my childhood,I ask myself whether I am right in disclosing to a cold and fastidious world that awful episode in the family history.I ask myself--is it right?--especially as the B.family had always been honourably known in a wide countryside for the delicacy of their tastes in the matter of eating and drinking.
But upon the whole,and considering that this gastronomical degradation overtaking a gallant young officer lies really at the door of the Great Napoleon,I think that to cover it up by silence would be an exaggeration of literary restraint.Let the truth stand here.The responsibility rests with the Man of St.
Helena in view of his deplorable levity in the conduct of the Russian campaign.It was during the memorable retreat from Moscow that Mr.Nicholas B.,in company of two brother officers--as to whose morality and natural refinement I know nothing--bagged a dog on the outskirts of a village and subsequently devoured him.As far as I can remember the weapon used was a cavalry sabre,and the issue of the sporting episode was rather more of a matter of life and death than if it had been an encounter with a tiger.A picket of Cossacks was sleeping in that village lost in the depths of the great Lithuanian forest.
The three sportsmen had observed them from a hiding-place making themselves very much at home among the huts just before the early winter darkness set in at four o'clock.They had observed them with disgust and,perhaps,with despair.Late in the night the rash counsels of hunger overcame the dictates of prudence.
Crawling through the snow they crept up to the fence of dry branches which generally encloses a village in that part of Lithuania.What they expected to get and in what manner,and whether this expectation was worth the risk,goodness only knows.
However,these Cossack parties,in most cases wandering without an officer,were known to guard themselves badly and often not at all.In addition,the village lying at a great distance from the line of French retreat,they could not suspect the presence of stragglers from the Grand Army.The three officers had strayed away in a blizzard from the main column and had been lost for days in the woods,which explains sufficiently the terrible straits to which they were reduced.Their plan was to try and attract the attention of the peasants in that one of the huts which was nearest to the enclosure;but as they were preparing to venture into the very jaws of the lion,so to speak,a dog (it is mighty strange that there was but one),a creature quite as formidable under the circumstances as a lion,began to bark on the other side of the fence.
At this stage of the narrative,which I heard many times (by request)from the lips of Captain Nicholas B.'s sister-in-law,my grandmother,I used to tremble with excitement.
The dog barked.And if he had done no more than bark,three officers of the Great Napoleon's army would have perished honourably on the points of Cossacks'lances,or perchance escaping the chase would have died decently of starvation.But before they had time to think of running away that fatal and revolting dog,being carried away by the excess of the zeal,dashed out through a gap in the fence.He dashed out and died.
His head,I understand,was severed at one blow from his body.I understand also that later on,within the gloomy solitudes of the snow-laden woods,when,in a sheltering hollow,a fire had been lit by the party,the condition of the quarry was discovered to be distinctly unsatisfactory.It was not thin--on the contrary,it seemed unhealthily obese;its skin showed bare patches of an unpleasant character.However,they had not killed that dog for the sake of the pelt.He was large.He was eaten.
The rest is silence.
A silence in which a small boy shudders and says firmly:
"I could not have eaten that dog."
And his grandmother remarks with a smile:
"Perhaps you don't know what it is to be hungry."
