Note 5 — CHAP. XX.

Above thirty years after, when the writer of these pages lived with her family at the Flats, the hero of this little tale used very frequently to visit her father, a veteran officer, and being a great talker, war and politics were his incessant topics. There was no campaign or expedition proposed, but what he censured and decided on: proposing methods of his own, by which they might have been much better conducted; in short, Parolles, with his drum, was a mere type of our neighbour. Her father long wondered how kindly he took to him, and how a person of so much wealth and eloquence should dwell so obscurely, and shun all the duties of public life; till at length we discovered that he still loved to talk arrogantly of war and public affairs, and pitched upon him for a listener, as the only person he could suppose ignorant of his disgrace. Such is human nature! and so incurable is human vanity!