ation, and daily intimacy with coarsely-minded
men, soon finished what he had begun; and in less time than it took me
to break my troop-horse to regimental drill, I had been myself "broke
in" to every vice and abandoned habit of my companions.

It was not in my nature to do things by halves; and thus I became, and
in a brief space too, the most inveterate Tapageur of the whole
regiment. There was not a wild prank or plot in which I was not
foremost, not a breach of the discipline unaccompanied by my name or
presence, and more than half the time of our march to meet the enemy, I
passed in double irons under the guard of the Provost-marshal.

It was at this pleasant stage of my education that our brigade arrived
in Strasbourg, as part of the corps d'armee under the command of General
Moreau.

He had just succeeded to the command on the dismissal of Pichegru, and
found the army not only dispirited by the defeats of the past campaign,
but in a state of rudest indiscipline and disorganization. If left to
himself, he would have trusted much to time and circumstances for the
reform of abuses that had been the growth of many months long. But
Regnier, the second in command, was made of "different stuff;" he was a
harsh and stern disciplinarian, who rarely forgave a first, never a
second offense, and who deeming the Salle de Police as an incumbrance to
an army on service, which, besides, required a guard of picked men,
that might be better employed elsewhere, usually gave the preference to
the shorter sentence of "four spaces and a fusillade." Nor was he
particular in the classification of those crimes he thus expiated: from
the most trivial excess to the wildest scheme of insubordination, all
came under the one category. More than once, as we drew near to
Strasbourg, I heard the project of a mutiny discussed, day after day.
Some one or other would denounce the "scelerat Regnier," and proclaim
his readiness to be the executioner; but the closer we drew to
head-quarters, the more hushed and subdued became these mutterings, till
at last they ceased altogether; and a dark and forboding dread succeeded
to all our late boastings and denunciations.

This at first surprised and then utterly disgusted me with my
companions. Brave as they were before the enemy, had they no courage for
their own countrymen? Was all their valor the offspring of security, or
could they only be rebellious when the penalty had no terrors for them?
Alas! I