terest him much, although in them the 23d had
won a good share of glory.
"As a school, it's very well," said he. "The soldier ought to train
himself in other ways than in the Tivoli gardens, behind nurses'
petticoats. But why the devil are not five hundred thousand men flung
upon the back of England? England is the soul of the coalition, I can
tell you that."
How many explanations were necessary to make him understand the Crimean
war, where the English had fought by our sides!
"I can understand," said he, "why we took a crack at the Russians--they
made me eat my best horse. But the English are a thousand times worse.
If this young man" (the Emperor Napoleon III.) "doesn't know it, I'll
tell him. There is no quarter possible after what they did at St.
Helena! If I had been commander-in-chief in the Crimea, I would have
begun by properly squelching the Russians, after which I would have
turned upon the English, and hurled them into the sea. It's their
element, anyhow."
They gave him some details of the Italian campaign, and he was charmed
to learn that the 23d had taken a redoubt under the eyes of the Marshal
the Duke of Solferino.
"That's the habit of the regiment," said he, shedding tears in his
napkin. "That brigand of a 23d will never act in any other way. The
goddess of Victory has touched it with her wing."
One of the things, for example, which greatly astonished him, was that a
war of such importance was finished up in so short a time. He had yet to
learn that within a few years the world had learned the secret of
transporting a hundred thousand men, in four days, from one end of
Europe to the other.
"Good!" said he; "I admit the practicability of it. But what astonishes
me is, that the Emperor did not invent this affair in 1810; for he had a
genius for transportation, a genius for administration, a genius for
office details, a genius for everything. But (to resume your story) the
Austrians are fortified at last, and you cannot possibly get to Vienna
in less than three months."
"We did not go so far, in fact."
"You did not push on to Vienna?"
"No."
"Well, then, where did you sign the treaty of peace?"
"At Villafranca."
"At Villafranca? That's the capital of Austria, then?"
"No; it's a village of Italy."
"Monsieur, I don't admit that treaties of peace are signed anywhere but
in capitals. That was our principle, our A B C, the first paragraph of
our theory. It seems as if the world
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