“And, meanwhile both his legs are still on his body,” said the prince, laughing. “I assure you, it is only an innocent joke, and you need not be angry about it.”
“Excuse me—wait a minute—he says that the leg we see is a wooden one, made by Tchernosvitoff.”
“They do say one can dance with those!”
“Quite so, quite so; and he swears that his wife never found out that one of his legs was wooden all the while they were married. When I showed him the ridiculousness of all this, he said, ‘Well, if you were one of Napoleon’s pages in 1812, you might let me bury my leg in the Moscow cemetery.’ ”
“Why, did you say—” began the prince, and paused in confusion.
The general gazed at his host disdainfully.
“Oh, go on,” he said, “finish your sentence, by all means. Say how odd it appears to you that a man fallen to such a depth of humiliation as I, can ever have been the actual eyewitness of great events. Go on, I don’t mind! Has he found time to tell you scandal about me?”
“No, I’ve heard nothing of this from Lebedeff, if you mean Lebedeff.”
“H’m; I thought differently. You see, we were talking over this period of history. I was criticizing a current report of something which then happened, and having been myself an eyewitness of the occurrence—you are smiling, prince—you are looking at my face as if—”
“Oh no! not at all—I—”
“I am rather young-looking, I know; but I am actually older than I appear to be. I was ten or eleven in the year 1812. I don’t know my age