desired me to guess who and what he might be. The subject
of my examination was a compact, solidly-built man, with a plodding
rustic air, and who walked a little lame. After looking at him a minute,
I guessed he was some substantial grazier, who had come to Paris on
business connected with the supplies of the town. My friend laughed, and
told me it was Marshal Soult. To my inexperienced eye, he had not a bit
of the exterior of a soldier, and was as unlike the engravings we see of
the French heroes as possible. But here, art is art; and like the man
who was accused of betraying another into a profitless speculation by
drawing streams on his map, when the land was without any, and who
defended himself by declaring no one ever saw a _map_ without streams,
the French artists appear to think every one should be represented in
his ideal character, let him be as _bourgeois_ as he may in truth. I
have seen Marshal Soult in company, and his face has much character. The
head is good, and the eye searching, the whole physiognomy possessing
those latent fires that one would be apt to think would require the
noise and excitement of a battle to awaken. La Fayette looks more like
an old soldier than any of them. Gerard, however, is both a handsome man
and of a military mien.

Now and then we see a _vieux moustache_ in the guards; but, on the
whole, I have been much surprised at finding how completely the army of
this country is composed of young soldiers. The campaigns of Russia, of
1813, 1814, and of 1815, left few besides conscripts beneath the eagles
of Napoleon. My old servant Charles tells me that the guardhouse is
obliged to listen to tales of the campaign of Spain, and of the
Trocadero!

The army of France is understood to be very generally disaffected. The
restoration has introduced into it, in the capacity of general officers,
many who followed the fortunes of the Bourbons into exile, and some, I
believe, who actually fought against this country in the ranks of her
enemies. This may be, in some measure, necessary, but it is singularly
unfortunate.

I have been told, on good authority, that, since the restoration of
1815, several occasions have occurred, when the court thought itself
menaced with a revolution. On all these occasions the army, as a matter
of course, has been looked to with hope or with distrust. Investigation
is said to have always discovered so bad a spirit, that little reliance
is placed on its support.