fellows,
leading such an existence; but no one thought of working, and any one
of them would have given his life for two farthings. Worn out with
shouting, drinking, and internal grief, they ended by falling asleep
over the table, while the old fellows emptied their cups, singing:

"'Tis glory calls us on!"

I saw these things, and I blessed heaven for having given me, in my
wretchedness, kind hearts to keep up my courage, and prevent my falling
into such hands.

This state of affairs lasted until the twenty-fifth of January. For
some days a great number of Italian conscripts--Piedmontese and
Genoese--had been arriving in the city; some stout and fat as Savoyards
fed upon chestnuts--their cocked hats on their curly heads; their
linsey-woolsey pantaloons dyed a dark green, and their short vests also
of wool, but brick-red, fastened around their waists by a leather belt.
They wore enormous shoes, and ate their cheese seated along the old
market-place. Others were dried up, lean, brown, shivering in their
long cassocks, seeing nothing but snow upon the roofs and gazing with
their large, black, mournful eyes upon the women who passed. They were
exercised every day in marching, and were going to fill up the skeleton
of the Sixth regiment of the line at Mayence, and were then resting for
a while in the infantry barracks.

The captain of the recruits, who was named Vidal, lodged over our room.
He was a square-built, solid, very strong-looking man, and was, too,
very kind and civil. He came to us to have his watch repaired, and
when he learned that I was a conscript and was afraid I should never
return, he encouraged me, saying that it was all habit; that at the end
of five or six months one fights and marches as he eats his dinner; and
that many so accustom themselves to shooting at people that they
consider themselves unhappy when they are deprived of that amusement.

But his mode of reasoning was not to my taste; the more so as I saw
five or six large grains of powder on one of his cheeks, which had
entered deeply, and as he explained to me that they came from a shot
which a Russian fired almost under his nose, such a life disgusted me
more and more, and as several days had already passed without news, I
began to think they had forgotten me, as they did Jacob, of Chevre Hof,
of whose extraordinary luck every one yet talks. Aunt Gredel herself
said to me every time I went there, "Well, well! they will let us al