sconduct in quarters. This is
a mistake that must be corrected. All Frenchmen are brave;
none can arrogate to themselves any prerogative of valour.
If any wish to establish such a belief, a campaign can
always attest it. If any profess to think so without such
proof, and, acting in conformity with this impression,
disobey their orders or infringe regimental discipline, I
will have them shot.

'Regnier, Adjutant-General.'

This was, at least, a very straightforward and intelligible
announcement, and as such my comrades generally acknowledged it. I,
however, regarded it as a piece of monstrous and intolerable tyranny,
and sought to make converts to my opinion by declaiming about the rights
of Frenchmen, the liberty of free discussion, the glorious privilege of
equality, and so on; but these arguments sounded faint in presence
of the drumhead; and while some slunk away from the circle around me,
others significantly hinted that they would accept no part of the danger
my doctrines might originate.

However I might have respected my comrades had they been always the
well-disciplined body I now saw them, I confess that this sudden
conversion through fear was in nowise to my taste, and rashly confounded
their dread of punishment with a base and ignoble fear of death. 'And
these are the men,' thought I, 'who talk of their charging home through
the dense squares of Austria--who have hunted the leopard into the sea,
and have carried the flag of France over the high Alps?'

A bold rebel, whatever may be the cause against which he revolts, will
always be sure of a certain ascendency. Men are prone to attribute power
to pretension, and he who stands foremost in the breach will at least
win the suffrages of those whose cause he assumes to defend. In this
way it happened that exactly, as my comrades fell in my esteem, I was
elevated in theirs; and while I took a very depreciating estimate of
their courage, they conceived a very exalted opinion of mine.

It was altogether inexplicable to see these men, many of them the
bronzed veterans of a dozen campaigns--the wounded and distinguished
soldiers in many a hard-fought field, yielding up their opinions and
sacrificing their convictions to a raw and untried stripling who had
never yet seen an enemy.

With a certain fluency of speech I possessed also a readiness at picking
up information, and arraying the scattered fragments of news into a