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220
Recollections of
[Ch. XIX.

enemy, and they remained till nature had paid her last debt and released the expiring soldiers from their agony." Such is the true, and now almost universally acknowledged version of this atrocious story. "Not that I think it would have been a crime," Napoleon observed, "had opium been administered; on the contrary, I think it would have been a virtue. To leave a few miserables, who could not recover, in order that they might be massacred according to the custom of the Turks, with the most dreadful tortures, would I think have been cruelty; nor would any man under similar circumstances, who had the free use of his senses, have hesitated to prefer dying easily a few hours sooner, rather than expire under the tortures of those barbarians. I ask you, O'Meara, to place yourself in the situation of one of these men, and were it demanded of you which fate you would select, either to be left to suffer the tortures of those

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