did not instantly attend, he gave her
elbow a poke to attract attention: then she squeaked; and he grinned
at her double absurdity in minding a touch, and not minding the real
business of the table.

But his wrongs rankled in him. He vented antique phrases such as, "I
want a change;" "This village is the last place the Almighty made," etc.

Then he was attacked with a moral disease: affected the company of
soldiers. He spent his weekly salary carousing with the military, a
class of men so brilliant that they are not expected to pay for their
share of the drink; they contribute the anecdotes and the familiar
appeals to Heaven: and is not that enough?

Present at many recitals, the heroes of which lost nothing by being
their own historians, Dard imbibed a taste for military adventure. His
very talk, which used to be so homely, began now to be tinselled with
big swelling words of vanity imported from the army. I need hardly say
these bombastical phrases did not elevate his general dialect: they lay
fearfully distinct upon the surface, "like lumps of marl upon a barren
soil, encumbering the ground they could not fertilize."

Jacintha took leave to remind him of an incident connected with
warfare--wounds.

"Do you remember how you were down upon your luck when you did but cut
your foot? Why, that is nothing in the army. They never go out to fight
but some come back with arms off, and some with legs off and some with
heads; and the rest don't come back at all: and how would you like
that?"

This intrusion of statistics into warfare at first cooled Dard's
impatience for the field. But presently the fighting half of his heart
received an ally in one Sergeant La Croix (not a bad name for a military
aspirant). This sergeant was at the village waiting to march with the
new recruits to the Rhine. Sergeant La Croix was a man who, by force of
eloquence, could make soldiering appear the most delightful as well as
glorious of human pursuits. His tongue fired the inexperienced soul with
a love of arms, as do the drums and trumpets and tramp of soldiers,
and their bayonets glittering in the sun. He would have been worth his
weight in fustian here, where we recruit by that and jargon; he was
superfluous in France, where they recruited by force: but he was
ornamental: and he set Dard and one or two more on fire. Indeed, so
absorbing was his sense of military glory, that there was no room left
in him for that mere verbal honor civili