A Journey Round my Room by Xavier De Maistre

I had a friend. Death took him from me. He was snatched away at the beginning of his career, at the moment when his friendship had become a pressing need to my heart. We supported one another in the hard toil of war. We had but one pipe between us. We drank out of the same cup. We slept beneath the same tent. And, amid our sad trials, the spot where we lived together became to us a new fatherland. I had seen him exposed to all the perils of a disastrous war. Death seemed to spare us to each other. His deadly missives were exhausted around my friend a thousand times over without reaching him; but this was but to make his loss more painful to me. The tumult of war, and the enthusiasm which possesses the soul at the sight of danger might have prevented his sighs from piercing my heart, while his death would have been useful to his country, and damaging to the enemy. Had he died thus, I should have mourned him less. But to lose him amid the joys of our winter-quarters; to see him die at the moment when he seemed full of health, and when our intimacy was rendered closer by rest and tranquillity -- ah, this was a blow from which I can never recover!

But his memory lives in my heart, and there alone. He is forgotten by those who surrounded him, and who have replaced him. And this makes his loss the more sad to me.