ange for the glory of serving the Church.
Resolved to approach this honor as nearly as possible, I contrived to
obtain an appointment in the ambulance corps, and accompanied the
troops to the field. I have no distinct recollection of that day,--the
third after Valeria's funeral,--and which, as my first experience of a
battle, assumed to me the magnificent proportions of an Austerlitz or
Waterloo. I only know that, intoxicated by the novel excitement of the
scene, perhaps by the mere smell of the gun-powder, I forgot the
duties to which I was assigned, snatched a musket from a Zouave who
had just expired at my feet, and rushed into the heart of the
conflict. I received a slight wound in the forehead, staggered, fell,
and fainted away. I suppose I must, at the same time, have received
the shock from a larger ball than that which grazed my temple, and
experienced some concussion of the brain, for I did not fully recover
consciousness until I had been transported to the military hospital.

Here I stayed a week, and came, for the first time, into near contact
with my fellow-defenders of the faith. The contact, instead of
warming, chilled me inexplicably. Instead of belief, I discovered
scepticism; instead of enthusiasm, persiflage and eternal quizzing,
intolerable in professed martyrs to a sacred cause.

"Que voulez-vous?" they said, shrugging their shoulders at my
indignant remonstrances. "The ass who carries all his panniers on the
same side stumbles on his own nose. To each man his business; those
who believe, don't fight; and we who fight cannot be expected to
believe."

I was surprised to find that my own loyalty became affected by this
indifference, much more than by any influence to which I had hitherto
been submitted. Others had sneered because they did not know; but
these men precisely because they knew too well. The cause which
depended so exclusively upon their bravado was belittled in their own
eyes, and presently in mine also. I felt somewhat ashamed of the drops
of blood I had lavished so heroically at Montana, and when the
gazettes began to flourish the fame of the victory, repeat the dying
speeches of fallen braves, and enrol rascally Zouaves on saintly
calendars, I could have blushed in the dark--everywhere a little
martyrdom, a little battle, and innumerable little apotheoses. I began
to doubt the greatness of the cause made up of such infinitesimals. It
is easy to serve ideas in which we have ceased to