n can realize what it is to see
your regiment and to hear the same roll of the drum as when it is in
front of the enemy, and to say to yourself, "There are your comrades,
who return beaten, humiliated, and crushed, bowing their heads under
another cockade." No! I never felt anything like it. Later many of
the men of the Sixth came and settled down at Pfalzbourg, they were my
old officers, old sergeants, and were always welcome, there was
Lafleche, Carabin, Lavergne, Monyot, Padoue, Chazi, and many others.
Those who commanded me during the war sawed wood for me, put on tiles,
were my carpenters and masons. After giving me orders they obeyed me,
for I was independent, and had business, while they were simply
laborers. But that was nothing, and I always treated my old chiefs
with respect, I always thought, "at Weissenfels, at Lutzen, and at
Leipzig, these men who now are forced to labor so hard to support
themselves and their families, represented at the front the honor and
the courage of France." These changes came after Waterloo! and our old
Ensign Faizart, swept the bridge at the gate of France for fifteen
years! That is not right, the country ought to be more grateful.

It was the Third battalion that returned, in so wretched a state that
it made the hearts of good men bleed. Zebede told me that they left
Versailles on the 31st of March, after the capitulation of Paris, and
marched to Chartres, to Chateaudun, to Blois, Orleans and so on like
real Bohemians, for six weeks without pay or equipments, until at last
at Rouen, they received orders to cross France and return to
Pfalzbourg, and everywhere the processions and funeral services for the
King, Louis XVI., had excited the people against them. They were
obliged to bear it all, and even were compelled to bivouac in the
fields while the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians, and other beggars,
lived quietly in our towns.

Zebede wept with rage as he recounted their sufferings afterward.

"Is France no longer France?" he asked. "Have we not fought for her
honor?"

But it gives me pleasure now in my old age, to remember how we received
the Sixth at Pfalzbourg. You know that the First battalion had already
arrived from Spain, and that the remnant of this regiment and of the
24th infantry of the line formed the 6th regiment of Berry, so that all
the village was rejoicing that instead of the few old veterans, we were
to have two thousand men in garrison. There