aithful not to the
King only, but to the Law and the Nation. Do our commanders love the
Revolution? ask all soldiers. Unhappily no, they hate it, and love the
Counter-Revolution. Young epauletted men, with quality-blood in
them, poisoned with quality-pride, do sniff openly, with indignation
struggling to become contempt, at our Rights of Man, as at some
newfangled cobweb, which shall be brushed down again. Old officers, more
cautious, keep silent, with closed uncurled lips; but one guesses what
is passing within. Nay who knows, how, under the plausiblest word of
command, might lie Counter-Revolution itself, sale to Exiled Princes
and the Austrian Kaiser: treacherous Aristocrats hoodwinking the
small insight of us common men?--In such manner works that general
raw-material of grievance; disastrous; instead of trust and reverence,
breeding hate, endless suspicion, the impossibility of commanding
and obeying. And now when this second more tangible grievance has
articulated itself universally in the mind of the common man: Peculation
of his Pay! Peculation of the despicablest sort does exist, and has
long existed; but, unless the new-declared Rights of Man, and all rights
whatsoever, be a cobweb, it shall no longer exist.

The French Military System seems dying a sorrowful suicidal death. Nay
more, citizen, as is natural, ranks himself against citizen in this
cause. The soldier finds audience, of numbers and sympathy unlimited,
among the Patriot lower-classes. Nor are the higher wanting to the
officer. The officer still dresses and perfumes himself for such sad
unemigrated soiree as there may still be; and speaks his woes,--which
woes, are they not Majesty's and Nature's? Speaks, at the same time,
his gay defiance, his firm-set resolution. Citizens, still more
Citizenesses, see the right and the wrong; not the Military System alone
will die by suicide, but much along with it. As was said, there is yet
possible a deepest overturn than any yet witnessed: that deepest upturn
of the black-burning sulphurous stratum whereon all rests and grows!

But how these things may act on the rude soldier-mind, with its military
pedantries, its inexperience of all that lies off the parade-ground;
inexperience as of a child, yet fierceness of a man and vehemence of
a Frenchman! It is long that secret communings in mess-room and
guard-room, sour looks, thousandfold petty vexations between commander
and commanded, measure every where the wear