Does any man of power know whither the tendencies of his time are
leading him, or the people whom he leads whither they are being led? Had
any one of these four heroes of the Grays in their heavy gilt frames
divined what kind of a to-morrow his day was preparing? All knew the
pass of La Tir well, and if all had not won decisive battles they would
have been hung in the outer office or even in the corridors, where a
line of half-forgotten or forgotten generals crooked down the stairways
into the oblivion of the basement. That unfortunate one whom the first
Galland had driven through the pass was quite obscured in darkness. He
would soon be crowded out to an antique shop for sale as an example of
the portrait art of his period.

The privileged quartet on that Valhalla of victories, the walls of the
chief of staff's room, personified the military inheritance of a great
nation; their names shone in luminous letters out of the thickening
shadows of the past, where those of lesser men grew dimmer as their
generations receded into history. He in the steel corselet, with high
cheek-bones, ferret, cold eyes, and high, thin nose, its nostrils drawn
back in an aristocratic sniff--camps were evil-smelling in those
days--his casquette resting on his arm, was the progenitor of him with
the Louis XIV. curls; he of the early nineteenth century, with a face
like Marshal Ney's, was the progenitor of him with the mustache and
imperial of the sixties.

It was whispered that the aristocratic sniff had taken to fierce,
no-quarter campaigns in the bitterness of a broken heart. Did the
Grays, then, really owe two of their fairest provinces to the lady who
had jilted him? Had they to thank the clever wife of him of the Louis
XIV. curls, whose intrigues won for her husband command of the army, for
another province? It was whispered, too, that the military glory of him