gentilhomme, would enter the army, if as a
sous-lieutenant, still as gentilhomme. But when told that, as he had
been at no military college, he could only enter the ranks as a private
soldier--herd with private soldiers--for at least two years before,
passing through the grade of corporal, his birth, education, habits
of life could, with great favour, raise him to the station of a
sous-lieutenant, you may conceive that the martial ardour of a
Rochebriant was somewhat cooled."

"If he knew what the dormitory of French privates is, and how difficult
a man well educated well brought up, finds it, first, to endure the
coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy, and then, having endured
and been compelled to share them, ever enforce obedience and discipline
as a superior among those with whom just before he was an equal, his
ardour would not have been merely cooled--it would have been changed
into despair for the armies of France, if hereafter they are met by
those whose officers have been trained to be officers from the outset
and have imbibed from their cradle an education not taught to the
boy-pedants from school--the two-fold education how with courtesy to
command, how with dignity to obey. To return to Rochebriant, such salons
as I frequent are somewhat formal--as befits my grave years and my
modest income; I may add, now that you know my vocation, befits me also
as a man who seeks rather to be instructed than amused. In those salons
I did, last year sometimes, however, meet Rochebriant--as I sometimes
still meet you; but of late he has deserted such sober reunions, and I
hear with pain that he is drifting among those rocks against which my
own youth was shipwrecked. Is the report true?"

"I fear," said Enguerrand, reluctantly, "that at least the report is not
unfounded. And my conscience accuses me of having been to blame in the
first instance. You see, when Alain made terms with Louvier by which he
obtained a very fair income, if prudently managed, I naturally wished
that a man of so many claims to social distinction, and who represents
the oldest branch of my family, should take his right place in our world
of Paris. I gladly therefore presented him to the houses and the
men most a la mode--advised him as to the sort of establishment,
in apartments, horses, &c., which it appeared to me that he might
reasonably afford--I mean such as, with his means, I should have
prescribed to myself--"

"Ah! I understand. But y