hing besides
ourselves, are the very best of all safeguards against our own hearts. I
have a right to say this.

From a life of quiet and orderly regularity, I now launched out into
utter recklessness and abandonment. I formed acquaintances with the
least reputable of my comrades, frequented their haunts, and imitated
their habits. I caught vice as men catch a malady. It was a period
little short of insanity, since every wish was perverted, and every
taste the opposite of my real nature. I, who was once the type of
punctuality and exactness, came late and irregularly to my duties. My
habits of sobriety were changed for waste, and even my appearance,
my very temper, altered; I became dissolute-looking and abandoned,
passionate in my humors, and quick to take offence.

The downward course is ever a rapid one, and vices are eminently
suggestive of each other. It took a few weeks to make me a spendthrift
and a debauchee; a few more, and I became a duellist and a brawler. I
ceased to hold intercourse with all who had once held me in esteem, and
formed friends among the dissolute and the depraved. Amidst men of this
stamp the sentence of a Provost-Marshal, or the durance of the Salle de
Police, are reckoned distinctions; and he who has oftenest insulted his
superiors and outraged discipline is deemed the most worthy of respect.
I had won no laurels of this kind, and resolved not to be behind my
comrades in such claims. My only thought was how to obtain some peculiar
notoriety by my resistance to authority.

I had now the rank of sergeant,--a grade which permitted me to frequent
the cafe resorted to by the officers; but as this was a privilege no
sous-officer availed himself of, I of course did not presume to take.
It now, however, occurred to me that this was precisely the kind of
infraction the consequences of which might entail the gravest events,
and yet be, all the while, within the limits of regimental discipline.
With this idea in my head I swaggered, one evening, into the "Lion
Gaune," at that time the favorite military cafe of Strasburg. The look
of astonishment at my entrance was very soon converted into a most
unmistakable expression of angry indignation; and when, calling for the
waiter, I seated myself at a table, my intrusion was discussed in terms
quite loud enough for me to hear.

It was well known that the Emperor distinguished the class I belonged
to, by the most signal marks of favor: the sergeant and th