the
Head of the State. You complain that young gentlemen of good
family do not throng to the College of Cadets in the hope of
gaining an epaulette. But you forget how little the
epaulette is honoured among you. The officer has no rank in
the state. It is a settled point that a deacon shall have
precedence of a sub-deacon; but the law and custom of Rome
do not allow a Colonel to take precedence even of a man
having the simple tonsure. Pray, what position do you assign
to your Generals? What is their rank in the hierarchy?"

"Instead of having our Generals in the army, we have them at
the head of the religious orders. Imagine the sensations of
the General of the Jesuits at hearing a soldier announced by
the honourable ecclesiastical title of _General_!"

"Well! there's something in that."

"In order to have commanders for our troops, without at the
same time creating personages of too much importance, we
have imported three foreign Colonels, who are permitted to
perform the functions of General. They even appear in the
disguise of Generals, but they will never have the audacity
to assume the title."

"Capital! Well, now with us there is not a scamp of eighteen
who would engage in the army if he were told that he might
become a Colonel, but never a General; or even a General,
but never a Marshal of France. Who, or what, could induce a
man to rush into a career in which there is at a certain
point an impassable barrier? You regret that all your
officers are not _savants_. I admit that they have learnt
something. They enter the College without competition or
preliminary examination, sometimes without orthography or
arithmetic. The first inspection made by our Generals
discovers future lieutenants who cannot do a sum in
division, a French class without either a master or pupils,
and an historical class in which, after seven months of
teaching, the professor is still theologically expounding
the creation of the world. It must indeed be a powerful
spirit of emulation which can induce these young men to make
themselves capable of keeping up a conversation with French
officers. You are astonished that they allow the discipline
of their men to become somewhat relaxed. Why, discipline is
about the last thing they have been taught. I