g
ever the thinner and hollower, towards the verge of entire vacuity.
(Bouille, Memoires (London, 1797), i. c. 8.) A quick, choleric, sharply
discerning, stubbornly endeavouring man; with suppressed-explosive
resolution, with valour, nay headlong audacity: a man who was more in
his place, lionlike defending those Windward Isles, or, as with military
tiger-spring, clutching Nevis and Montserrat from the English,--than
here in this suppressed condition, muzzled and fettered by diplomatic
packthreads; looking out for a civil war, which may never arrive. Few
years ago Bouille was to have led a French East-Indian Expedition, and
reconquered or conquered Pondicherri and the Kingdoms of the Sun: but
the whole world is suddenly changed, and he with it; Destiny willed it
not in that way but in this.

Chapter 2.2.II.

Arrears and Aristocrats.

Indeed, as to the general outlook of things, Bouille himself augurs not
well of it. The French Army, ever since those old Bastille days, and
earlier, has been universally in the questionablest state, and growing
daily worse. Discipline, which is at all times a kind of miracle, and
works by faith, broke down then; one sees not with that near prospect of
recovering itself. The Gardes Francaises played a deadly game; but how
they won it, and wear the prizes of it, all men know. In that general
overturn, we saw the Hired Fighters refuse to fight. The very Swiss of
Chateau-Vieux, which indeed is a kind of French Swiss, from Geneva and
the Pays de Vaud, are understood to have declined. Deserters glided
over; Royal-Allemand itself looked disconsolate, though stanch of
purpose. In a word, we there saw Military Rule, in the shape of poor
Besenval with that convulsive unmanageable Camp of his, pass two martyr
days on the Champ-de-Mars; and then, veiling itself, so to speak, 'under
the cloud of night,' depart 'down the left bank of the Seine,' to seek
refuge elsewhere; this ground having clearly become too hot for it.

But what new ground to seek, what remedy to try? Quarters that were
'uninfected:' this doubtless, with judicious strictness of drilling,
were the plan. Alas, in all quarters and places, from Paris onward to
the remotest hamlet, is infection, is seditious contagion: inhaled,
propagated by contact and converse, till the dullest soldier catch
it! There is speech of men in uniform with men not in uniform; men in
uniform read journals, and even write in them. (See Newspapers of
July