oldiers in rank and file, but if they lived they would
another year be again what they had been.

Beside one of such volunteers was perhaps an old officer from the time
of the rule of the nobles and the stick. He had done his duty in
unlucky wars, had perhaps been a prisoner, plundered of all he had and
dragged through the streets of Berlin, the people following him with
jeering and curses, and shaking their fists at him; then after the
peace a court-martial had been held upon him, he was liberated but
discharged with a miserable pittance. Since that he had starved, and
secretly gnashed his teeth when the foreign conqueror looked down on
him as insolently as he had once done on the civilian. If he had no
wife or child to maintain, he had lived for years with his companions
in sorrow in a poor dwelling, with disorderly housekeeping, and some of
the failings of his old officer class still clung to him; this time of
deprivation had not made him softer or milder, the ruling feeling of
his soul was hate, deep furious hatred against the foreign conqueror.
He had long nourished an uncertain hope, perhaps a vain plan of
revenge, now the time was come for retaliation. Even he had been
altered by this time of servitude. He had discovered how unsatisfactory
his knowledge was, and he had in moments of earnestness done something
towards educating himself; he had learnt and read, he also had been
inspired by the noble pathos of Schiller. Still he looked with mistrust
and disfavour on the new-fashioned warrior who perhaps stood before him
in the ranks. His old grudge against scribblers was still very active,
and want of discipline, together with high pretensions, wounded him.
The same antagonism showed itself in the higher as well as lower grades
in the ranks. It is a remarkable circumstance in this war that he was
so well restrained; the volunteers soon learnt military obedience, and
to value the knowledge of service of those above them; and the officer
lost somewhat of the rough and arbitrary way with which he used to
treat his men. At last he listened complacently when a wounded rifleman
contended with the surgeon whether the _flexor_ of the middle finger
should be cut through, or when one of his men by the bivouac fire
discussed with animation--in remembrance of his legal lectures--whether
the ambiguous relation in which a Cossack had placed himself with
respect to a certain goose was to be considered _culpa lata_ or
_dolus_. On t