other horrible
ingenuities of an unseen enemy for killing and mutilating. Their
imaginations were unaccustomed to these terrors, it is true, but the
higher faculties of the human mind asserted themselves, and in the
vague collective battle of the trenches these young French officers;
despite the refinement and the security in which they had always been
acustomed to exist, instantly reverted to the chivalrous attitude
which their remote ancestors had adopted in a warfare that was
romantic and personal in its individualism.

No doubt a not inconsiderable part of the serenity, which is so
remarkably evident in the letters and journals of these young men, was
due to the fact that they had arrived, for the first time, at a
comprehension of the unity of life. There is no tedious alternative of
choice in the active military career. All is regulated, all is
arranged in accordance with a hierarchical discipline, and war becomes
what dogmatic religion is to a weak soul that has been tossed about by
the waves of doubt. It must be also borne in mind that the incessant
dread of invasion, especially in the neighbourhood of the eastern
frontier, had kept the spirits of those who knew that responsibility
would fall upon them, in a state of unceasing agitation. It is a
paralyzing thing to exist under a perpetual menace which nothing can
precipitate and yet nothing can avert. Captain Belmont, in his
admirable letters, speaks much of the "romanticism" which attracted
many of his companions, and of the natural satisfaction which the
declaration of war gave to their restless faculties. The two
sentiments were probably one and the same, and to a poetical
temperament that might well seem "romantic" which filled a less vivid
mind with restlessness and languor.

It is noticeable, too, that when once the sickening suspense was
removed, and the path of pain and glory lay clear before these
youthful spirits, they grew very rapidly in intellectual stature. They
had found their equilibrium, and no more time and force were wasted in
useless oscillations. Each of them had, at last, the occasion, and
therefore the power, to fill out the lines of his proper
individuality. As M. Henri Bordeaux excellently says, "L'esprit
inquiet ne se contente de rien, le coeur inapaise se croit incompris."
But now these men knew their vocation, and a precocious experience of
life developed in them a temper of meditation. It is extraordinary
what an intelligent philos