en in the house deserted it.'

'What were you doing at the Chateau d'Eau?' I asked.

'We were marching,' he said, 'with infantry and artillery on the
Boulevard du Temple, across which there was a succession of barricades,
which it was necessary to take one by one.

'As we advanced in the middle, our sappers and miners got into the houses
on each side, broke through the party walls, and killed the men at the
windows.'

'Those three days,' he continued, 'impress strongly on my mind the
dangers of our present state.'

'It is of no use to take up pavements and straighten streets, and pierce
Paris by long military roads, and loop-hole the barracks, if the
Executive cannot depend on the army. Ditches and bastions are of no use
if the garrison will not man them.'

'The new law of recruitment, however, may produce a great change. Instead
of 80,000 conscripts, 120,000 are to be taken each year. This is about
all that are fit for service. They are required to serve for only two
years. If the change ended there our army would be still more a militia
than it is now. It would be the Prussian Landwehr. But those entitled to
their discharge are to be enticed by higher pay, promotions, bounties,
and retiring pensions--in short, by all means of seduction, to re-enter
for long periods, for ten, or fifteen, or perhaps twenty years. It is
hoped that thus a permanent regular army may be formed, with an _esprit
de corps_ of its own, unsympathising with the people, and ready to keep
it down; and such will, I believe, be the result. But it will take nine
or ten years to produce such an army--and the dangers that I fear are
immediate.'

'What are the motives,' I asked, 'for the changes as to the conscription,
the increase of numbers, and the diminution of the time of service?'

'They are parts,' he answered, 'of the system. The French peasant, and
indeed the _ouvrier_, dislikes the service. The proportion of conscripts
who will re-enlist is small. Therefore the whole number must be large.
The country must be bribed to submit to this by the shortness of the
term. The conscript army will be sacrificed to what is to be the regular
army. It will be young and ill-trained.'

'But your new regular army,' I said, 'will be more formidable to the
enemy than your present force.'

'I am not sure of that,' he answered. 'The merit of the French army was
the impetuosity of its attack, the "furia Francese," as the Italians
called it. Young troops h