would take full seven
hours: so I got an old corporal to talk, for my diversion. He could
neither read nor write: he was entirely illiterate. Yet the journey
seemed short. The corporal had been through all the campaigns, he told
me of things perfectly unheard of, that historians never trouble
themselves about.

"Ah! Hector, how superior is practice to theory! Among other things,
and in reply to a question relative to the infantry, whose courage is
much more tried by marching than by fighting, he said this, which I
give you free from circumlocution:

"'Sir, when Parisians were brought to our 45th, which Napoleon called
The Terrible (I am speaking of the early days of the Empire, when the
infantry had legs of steel, and when they needed them), I had a way of
telling beforehand which of them would remain in the 45th. They
marched without hurrying, they did their little six leagues a day,
neither more nor less, and they pitched camp in condition to begin
again on the morrow. The plucky fellows who did ten leagues and wanted
to run to the victory, stopped half way at the hospital.'

"The worthy corporal was talking of marriage while he thought he was
talking of war, and you have stopped half way, Hector, at the
hospital.

"Remember the sympathetic condolence of Madame de Sevigne counting out
three hundred thousand francs to Monsieur de Grignan, to induce him to
marry one of the prettiest girls in France! 'Why,' said she to
herself, 'he will have to marry her every day, as long as she lives!
Decidedly, I don't think three hundred francs too much.' Is it not
enough to make the bravest tremble?

"My dear fellow, conjugal happiness is founded, like that of nations,
upon ignorance. It is a felicity full of negative conditions.

"If I am happy with my little Caroline, it is due to the strictest
observance of that salutary principle so strongly insisted upon in the
_Physiology of Marriage_. I have resolved to lead my wife through
paths beaten in the snow, until the happy day when infidelity will be
difficult.

"In the situation in which you have placed yourself, and which
resembles that of Duprez, who, on his first appearance at Paris, went
to singing with all the voice his lungs would yield, instead of
imitating Nourrit, who gave the audience just enough to enchant them,
the following, I think, is your proper course to--"

The letter broke off here: Caroline returned it to its place, at the
same time wondering how sh