the
officers the marshals, and the soldiers the officers."

"You are right," said Zebede, "but there, they are beating the
assembly."

And he shook hands and hurried off to the barracks.

The winter passed in this way, while the indignation increased every
day. The city was full of officers on half-pay, who dared not remain
in Paris,--lieutenants, captains, commandants, and colonels of infantry
and cavalry,--men who lived on a crust of bread and a glass of wine a
day, and who were the more miserable because they were forced to keep
up an appearance--think of such men with their hollow cheeks and their
hair closely cropped, with sparkling eyes and their big mustaches and
their old uniform cloaks, of which they had been forced to change the
buttons, see them promenading by threes and sixes and tens on the
square, with their sword-canes at their button-holes, and their
three-cornered hats so old and worn, though still well brushed; you
could not help thinking that they had not one quarter enough to eat.

And yet we were compelled to say to ourselves, these are the victors of
Jemmapes, of Fleurus, of Zurich, of Hohenlinden, of Marengo, of
Austerlitz, and of Friedland and Wagram. If we are proud of being
Frenchmen, neither the Comte d'Artois nor the Duke de Berry can boast
of being the cause; on the contrary, it is these men, and now they
leave them to perish, they even refuse them bread and put the emigres
in their place. It does not need any extraordinary amount of
common-sense, or heart, or of justice to discover that this is contrary
to nature.

I never could look at these unhappy men; it made me miserable. If you
have been a soldier for only six months, your respect for your old
chiefs, for those whom you have seen in the very front under fire,
always remains. I was ashamed of my country for permitting such
indignities.

One circumstance I shall never forget: it was the last of January,
1815, when two of these half-pay officers--one was a large, austere,
gray-haired man, known as Colonel Falconette, who appeared to have
served in the infantry, the other was short and thick and they called
him Commandant Margarot, and he still wore his hussar whiskers--came to
us and proposed to sell a splendid watch. It might have been ten
o'clock in the morning. I can see them now as they came gravely in,
the colonel with his high collar, and the other one with his head down
between his shoulders.

The watch was a gold