ly unknown amongst them--none felt ashamed at the disgrace
of punishment; and as all knew that, at the approach of the enemy,
prison-doors would open, and handcuffs fall off, they affected to think
the 'Salle de Police' was a pleasant alternative to the fatigue and
worry of duty. These habits not only stripped soldiering of all its
chivalry, but robbed freedom itself of all its nobility. These men saw
nothing but licentiousness in their newly won liberty. Their 'Equality'
was the permission to bring everything down to a base and unworthy
standard; their 'Fraternity,' the appropriation of what belonged to one
richer than themselves.

It would give me little pleasure to recount, and the reader, in all
likelihood, as little to hear, the details of my life among such
associates. They are the passages of my history most painful to recall,
and least worthy of being remembered; nor can I even yet write without
shame the confession, how rapidly their habits became my own. Eugene's
teachings had prepared me, in a manner, for their lessons. His
scepticism, extending to everything and every one, had made me
distrustful of all friendship, and suspicious of whatever appeared a
kindness. Vulgar association, and daily intimacy with coarsely minded
men, soon finished what he had begun; and in less time than it took me
to break my troop-horse to regimental drill, I had been myself 'broke
in' to every vice and abandoned habit of my companions. It was not in my
nature to do things by halves; and thus I became, and in a brief space,
too, the most inveterate Tapageur of the whole regiment. There was not
a wild prank or plot in which I was not foremost, not a breach of
discipline unaccompanied by my name or presence, and more than half the
time of our march to meet the enemy, I passed in double irons under the
guard of the provost-marshal.

It was at this pleasant stage of my education that our brigade arrived
at Strasbourg, as part of the _corps d'armee_, under the command of
General Moreau.

He had just succeeded to the command on the dismissal of Pichegru, and
found the army not only dispirited by the defeats of the past campaign,
but in a state of rudest indiscipline and disorganisation. If left to
himself, he would have trusted much to time and circumstances for the
reform of abuses that had been the growth of many months long. But
Regnier, the second in command, was made of 'different stuff'; he was
a harsh and stern disciplinarian,