"Your godfather often re-read that passage,
--and see! here's a little of his snuff in it."
"And he not here!" said Ursula, taking the volume to read the passage.
"The siege of Privat was remarkable for the loss of a great number
of officers. Two brigadier-generals died there--namely, the
Marquis d'Uxelles, of a wound received at the outposts, and the
Marquis de Portes, from a musket-shot through the head. The day
the latter was killed he was to have been made a marshal of
France. About the moment when the marquis expired the Duc de
Montmorency, who was sleeping in his tent, was awakened by a voice
like that of the marquis bidding him farewell. The affection he
felt for a friend so near made him attribute the illusion of this
dream to the force of his own imagination; and owing to the
fatigues of the night, which he had spent, according to his
custom, in the trenches, he fell asleep once more without any
sense of dread. But the same voice disturbed him again, and the
phantom obliged him to wake up and listen to the same words it had
said as it first passed.
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