The Stratagem and Other Stories

ure that the governor might (and did) indeed restrict, but could not take away. I refer to hope—the hope of escape. Yes, sir, that spark (alone of all its ancient fires) burnt in this breast—and in that of my fellow- convicts. And in this I did not look so much to myself as to another. I am not endowed with any great intellect,” he modestly pursued, “my grandmother was pure Eng- lish, a Higginbotham, one of the Warwickshire Hig- ginbothams” (what has that to do with his stupid- ity? thought Bevan) “and the majority of my compan- ions were men not only devoid of intelligence, but of education. The one pinnacled exception was the great Dodu—ha! you start?” Bevan had not done anything of the sort; he had continued to exhibit the most stolid in- difference to the story. “Yes, you are not mistaken; it was indeed the world- famous philosopher, the discoverer of Dodium, rarest of known elements, supposed only to exist in the universe to the extent of the thirty-thousand and fifth part of a milligramme, and that in the star called y Pegasi; it was Dodu who has shattered the logical process of obver- sion, and reduced the quadrangle of oppositions to the condition of the British square at Abu-Klea. So much you know; but this perhaps you did not know, that, al- though a civilian, he was the greatest strategist of France. It was he who in his cabinet made the disposi- tions of the armies of the Ardennes; and the 1890 scheme of the fortifications of Luneville was due to his genius alone. For this reason the Government were loth to condemn him, though public opinion revolted bitterly against his crime. You remember that, having proved that women after the age of fifty were a useless burden to the State, he had demonstrated his belief by decapi- tating and devouring his widowed mother. It was con- sequently the intention of the Government to connive at his escape on the voyage, and to continue to employ him under an assumed name in a flat in an entirely dif- ferent quarter of Paris. However, the Government fell