Prince Blücher shook his hand warmly and said a great many things in German (none of which Strange understood). Then the old gentleman pointed to his stomach wherein lay the illusory elephant and made a wry face as if to say, “What can one do?”

Strange stepped outside and immediately he almost walked into Captain Hadley-Bright. “I was told you were dead!” he cried.

“I was sure you would be,” replied Hadley-Bright.

There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away upon all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive at that moment seemed, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly.

“Who else survived? Do you know?” asked Hadley-Bright.

Strange shook his head. “No.”

They parted.

At Wellington’s Headquarters in Waterloo that night the table was laid for forty or fifty people. But when the dinner-hour came, only three men were there: the Duke, General Alava (his Spanish attaché) and Strange. Whenever the door opened the Duke turned his head to see if it was one of his friends, alive and well; but no one came.

Many places at that table had been laid for gentlemen who were either dead or dying: Colonel Canning, Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon, Major-General Picton, Colonel De Lancey. The list would grow longer as the night progressed.

The Duke, General Alava and Mr Strange sat down in silence.

41
Starecross

Late September–December 1815

Fortune, it seemed, could not be persuaded to smile upon Mr Segundus. He had come to live in York with the aim of enjoying the society and conversation of the city’s many magicians. But no sooner had he got there than all the other magicians were deprived of their profession by Mr Norrell, and he was left alone. His little stock of money had dwindled considerably and in the autumn of 1815 he was forced to seek employment.

“And it is not to be supposed,” he remarked to Mr Honeyfoot with a sigh, “that I shall be able to earn very much. What am I qualified to do?”

Mr Honeyfoot could not allow this. “Write to Mr Strange!” he advised. “He may be in need of a secretary.”

Nothing would have pleased Mr Segundus better than to work for Jonathan Strange, but his natural modesty would not allow him to propose it. It would be a shocking thing to put himself forward in such a way. Mr Strange might be embarrassed to know how to answer him. It might even look as if he, John Segundus, considered himself Mr Strange’s equal!

Mr and Mrs Honeyfoot assured him that if Mr Strange did not like the idea he would very soon say so – and so there could be no possible harm in asking him. But upon this point Mr Segundus proved unpersuadable.

Their next proposal, however, pleased him better. “Why not see if there are any little boys in the town who wish to learn magic?” asked Mrs Honeyfoot. Her grandsons – stout little fellows of five and seven – were just now of an age to begin their education and so the subject rather occupied her mind.