from orderly officer to aide-de-camp on the staff of some
easy-going marshal. By that time, he reflected, he should come into his
property of a hundred thousand scudi a year, some journal would speak of
him as "the brave Montefiore," he would marry a girl of rank, and no one
would dare to dispute his courage or verify his wounds.

Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
--a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was Diard.
A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist, consoles
for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two philosophers, who
consoled each other for their present lives by the study of vice,
as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their hopes by the
expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its results, not
its action; they simply considered those who died for glory fools.
Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural proclivities
would have seated them at the green table of a congress. Nature had
poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard into that of
a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous, feverish,
half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good or evil,
and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these singular
temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a base one.
The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the pressure, more
or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by violent and
transitory passions.

Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have
trusted him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the
antipathy felt by all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The
quartermaster was not without courage and a certain juvenile generosity,
sentiments which many men give up as they grow older, by dint of
reasoning or calculating. Variable as the beauty of a fair woman, Diard
was a great boaster and a great talker, talking of everything. He said
he was artistic, and he made prizes (like two celebrated generals) of
works of art, solely, he declared, to preserve them for posterity.
His military comrades would have been puzzled indeed to form a correct
judgment of him. Many of them, accustomed to draw upon his funds when
occasion obliged them, thought him rich; but in truth, he was a gambler,
and gamblers may be said to have nothing of their own. Montefiore was
also a gambler, and all the officer