Austria; the intelligence, the moral force that resided
in that army, commanded as it was almost exclusively by young generals,
who in turn looked up to a commander-in-chief who seemed destined
to revolutionize the art of war, whose prudence and foresight were
unparalleled, whose correctness of judgment was a thing to wonder at.
And in contrast to that picture of Germany he pointed to France: the
Empire sinking into senile decrepitude, sanctioned by the plebiscite,
but rotten at its foundation, destroying liberty, and therein stifling
every idea of patriotism, ready to give up the ghost as soon as it
should cease to satisfy the unworthy appetites to which it had given
birth; then there was the army, brave, it was true, as was to be
expected from men of their race, and covered with Crimean and Italian
laurels, but vitiated by the system that permitted men to purchase
substitutes for a money consideration, abandoned to the antiquated
methods of African routine, too confident of victory to keep abreast
with the more perfect science of modern times; and, finally, the
generals, men for the most part not above mediocrity, consumed by petty
rivalries, some of them of an ignorance beyond all belief, and at their
head the Emperor, an ailing, vacillating man, deceiving himself and
everyone with whom he had dealings in that desperate venture on which
they were embarking, into which they were all rushing blindfold, with no
preparation worthy of the name, with the panic and confusion of a flock
of sheep on its way to the shambles.

Rochas stood listening, open-mouthed, and with staring eyes; his
terrible nose dilated visibly. Then suddenly his lantern jaws parted to
emit an obstreperous, Homeric peal of laughter.

"What are you giving us there, you? what do you mean by all that
silly lingo? Why, there is not the first word of sense in your whole
harangue--it is too idiotic to deserve an answer. Go and tell those
things to the recruits, but don't tell them to me; no! not to me, who
have seen twenty-seven years of service."

And he gave himself a thump on the breast with his doubled fist. He was
the son of a master mason who had come from Limousin to Paris, where the
son, not taking kindly to the paternal handicraft, had enlisted at the
age of eighteen. He had been a soldier of fortune and had carried the
knapsack, was corporal in Africa, sergeant in the Crimea, and after
Solferino had been made lieutenant, having devoted fifteen ye