Puzzles of the Black Widowers - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,33

Marlborough, and so on. Their reputations depend on the manner of their victories and the quality of their adversaries. At least two generals I can think of almost always lost but remained great considering what they did with what they had. There's George Washington, of course, and General Giap of North Vietnam."

Gonzalo said, "I suppose that in your history books and novels, you deal with the catastrophes that people survive. What are the trifles that can kill you?"

Everyone turned to look at Gonzalo, who grew restive under the communal stare. "What's wrong with the question? Mr. Dunhill said that catastrophes could be survived, but trifles kill you."

"Did I?" said Dunhill, frowning.

"Yes, you did. You said it to Tom Trumbull." He turned to Trumbull, who was nursing his brandy. "Tom, didn't he say that?"

Trumbull nodded. "You said that, Mr. Dunhill."

"Well, then," said Gonzalo. "What trifles did you have in mind?"

"Actually," put in Avalon, "every defeat suffered by a competent general might be blamed on some trifle. In fact, in War and Peace Tolstoy argued, in what I found to be tedious detail, the thesis that no general controls a battle, but that trivialities decide it all."

Gonzalo said, "Come on, Jeff, you're trying to get your guest off the hook, and that's unethical. I don't think Mr. Dunhill was thinking about big battles. I think he had something personal in mind. That's the way it sounded to me and that's what I want to know about."

Dunhill shook his head. "It was just a remark. We all make remarks."

Gonzalo said, "Remarks aren't made out of nothing. You must have had something in your mind."

Dunhill shook his head again.

Trumbull sighed and said, "It seemed to me, too, Mr. Dunhill, that when you made that remark something was tearing at you. Jeff said he explained the game to you. You've agreed to answer all questions and we agree, in return, to hold everything you say absolutely confidential. If you're willing to state flatly that the statement had no personal meaning to you then and that you spoke idly, we will have to accept that, but please don't say that unless it is the truth."

Avalon said, in a tone of deep discomfort, "I did tell you that this would all be confidential, Chet."

Dunhill said, with a touch of anger in his voice, "There's nothing involved here but a deep personal disappointment that I can hardly bear to think of, let alone discuss. The trouble is that it is a matter of no moment to anyone but me, and others will only laugh at the whole thing. It involves a ridiculous trifle that places all the blame squarely on me. That's the unbearable part. If I could blame it on the government, on Fate, on the Universe, it wouldn't be so - " He stopped, broodingly.

"May we hear about it?" said Gonzalo stubbornly.

"I warn you," said Dunhill. "It's a long story of no interest whatever except to me."

"That's beside the point," said Gonzalo.

"Very well, but you asked for it. - During World War II, I was a young chap who missed actual army service (for a few years, anyway) because I was working for the Navy as a chemist. This was in Philadelphia. I was rather an unsocial creature in those days and my chief amusement lay in making my way out to the main branch of the Free Library and reading whatever I came across. And one of the things I came across was The Historians' History of the World in twenty-four volumes. It was published in 1902, with a second edition in 1907, with two supplementary volumes carrying things through World War I, and an index volume - twenty-seven altogether. Did any of you ever hear of it?"

There was silence. Dunhill went on, "I'm not surprised. To most people, it would be a deadly work. It was long out of print even at the time I came across it forty years ago, and now - "

He shrugged, and went on. "The volumes are a cut-and-paste job. Sections from the Greek and Roman historians and from the modern historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were included in the proper order in a series of histories dealing with the various nations separately. Volumes three and four were on Greece; volumes five and six were on Rome; and so on. There is a great deal of overlapping, of course, but that just meant that the same events are described from the viewpoints of different historians,