e
more alarming.'

'In time of peace,' I asked, 'what proportion of the conscripts return
after their six years of service?'

'About three-quarters,' answered Beaumont.

'Then,' I said, 'as you take 100,000 conscripts every year even in peace,
you lose 25,000 of your best young men every year?'

'Certainly,' said Beaumont.

'And are the 75,000 who return improved or deteriorated?' I asked.

'Improved,' said Ampere; 'they are _degourdis_, they are educated, they
submit to authority, they know how to shift for themselves.'

'Deteriorated,' said Beaumont. 'A garrison life destroys the habits of
steady industry, it impairs skill. The returned conscript is more vicious
and less honest than the peasant who has not left his village.'

'And what was the loss,' I asked, 'in the late war?'

'At least twice as great,' said Beaumont, 'as it is in peace. Half of
those who were taken perished. The country would not have borne the
prolongation of the Crimean War.'

'These wars,' I said, 'were short and successful. A war with England can
scarcely be short, and yet you think that he plans one?'

'I think,' said Beaumont, 'that he plans one, but only in the event of
his encountering any serious difficulty at home. You must not infer from
the magnitude of his naval expenditure that he expects one.

'You look at the expense of those preparations, and suppose that so great
a sacrifice would not be made in order to meet an improbable emergency.
But expense is no sacrifice to him. He likes it. He has the morbid
taste for it which some tyrants have had for blood, which his uncle had
for war. Then he is incapable of counting. When he lived at Arenenburg he
used to give every old soldier who visited him an order on Viellard his
treasurer for money. In general the chest was empty. Viellard used to
remonstrate but without effect. The day perhaps after his orders had been
dishonoured he gave new ones.'

'Is it true,' I asked, 'that the civil list is a couple of years' income
in debt?'

I know nothing about it,' said Beaumont; 'in fact, nobody knows anything
about anything, but it is highly probable. Everybody who asks for
anything gets it, everybody is allowed to waste, everybody is allowed to
rob, every folly of the Empress is complied with. Fould raised
objections, and was dismissed.

'She is said to have a room full of revolutionary relics: there is the
bust of Marie Antoinette, the nose broken at one of the sacks of the
Tuil