BY
BERNARD CAPES
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
First Published in 1906
THE UNLUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD
Acknowledgments are made to the editors of “The Pall Mall Magazine,”“The Illustrated London News,” “The World,” “Black and White,” “TheLondon Magazine,” “The English Illustrated Magazine,” and “TheBystander,” to the hospitality of whose pages a number of the storieshere reprinted were first invited.
In February of the year 1809, when the French were sat down beforeSaragossa—then enduring its second and more terrific siege within aperiod of six months—it came to the knowledge of the Duc d’Abrantes,at that time the General commanding, that his army, though undoubtedlythe salt of the earth, was yet so little sufficient to itself in thematter of seasoning, that it was reduced to the necessity offlavouring its soup with the saltpetre out of its own cartridges. Inthis emergency, d’Abrantes sent for a certain Ducos, captain on thestaff of General Berthier, but at present attached to a siege trainbefore the doomed town, and asked him if he knew whence, if anywherein the vicinity, it might be possible to make good the deficiency.
Now this Eugène Ducos was a very progressive evolution of the times,hatched by the rising sun, emerged stinging and splendid from theexotic quagmires of the past. A facile linguist, by temperament andearly training an artist, he had flown naturally to the field ofbattle as to that field most fertile of daring new effects, whosesurprises called for record rather than analysis. It was for him tocollect the impressions which, later, duller wits should classify.And, in the meantime, here he was at twenty a captain of renown, andalways a creature of the most unflagging resourcefulness.
“You were with Lefebvre-Desnouettes in Aragon last year?” dema