him one summer evening, under the great trees of his terrace,
which is washed by the green and sluggish Marne:

"Yes, old fellow, you are sensitive. What the deuce would you have done on
a campaign where you were obliged to shoot, to strike down with a sabre
and to kill? And then, too, you have never fought except against the
Arabs, and that is quite another thing."

He smiled, a little sadly. His handsome mouth, with its blond mustache,
was almost like that of a youth. His blue eyes were dreamy for an instant,
then little by little he began to confide to me his thought, his
recollections and all that was mystic and poetic in his soldier's heart.

"You know we are soldiers in my family. We have a marshal of France and
two officers who died on the field of honor. I have perhaps obeyed a law
of heredity. I believe rather that my imagination has carried me away. I
saw war through my reveries of epic poetry. In my fancy I dwelt only upon
the intoxication of victory, the triumphant flourish of trumpets and women
throwing flowers to the victor. And then I loved the sonorous words of the
great captains, the dramatic representations of martial glory. My father
was in the third regiment of zouaves, the one which was hewn in pieces at
Reichshofen, in the Niedervald, and which in 1859 at Palestro, made that
famous charge against the Austrians and hurled them into the great canal.
It was superb; without them the Italian divisions would have been lost.
Victor Emmanuel marched with the zouaves. After this affair, while still
deeply moved, not by fear but with admiration for this regiment of demons
and heroes, he embraced their old colonel and declared that he would be
proud, were he not a king, to join the regiment. Then the zouaves
acclaimed him corporal of the Third. And for a long time on the
anniversary festival of St. Palestro, when the roll was called, they
shouted 'Corporal of the first squad, in the first company of the first
battalion, Victor Emmanuel,' and a rough old sergeant solemnly responded:
'Sent as long into Italy.'

"That is the way my father talked to us, and by these recitals, a soldier
was made of a dreamy child. But later, what a disillusion! Where is the
poetry of battle? I have never made any campaign except in Africa, but
that has been enough for me. And I believe the army surgeon is right, who
said to me one day: 'If instantaneous photographs could be taken after a
battle, and millions of copies made and