y military day. Ask Captain
Dampmartin; an authentic, ingenious literary officer of horse; who loves
the Reign of Liberty, after a sort; yet has had his heart grieved to the
quick many times, in the hot South-Western region and elsewhere; and
has seen riot, civil battle by daylight and by torchlight, and anarchy
hatefuller than death. How insubordinate Troopers, with drink in their
heads, meet Captain Dampmartin and another on the ramparts, where there
is no escape or side-path; and make military salute punctually, for we
look calm on them; yet make it in a snappish, almost insulting manner:
how one morning they 'leave all their chamois shirts' and superfluous
buffs, which they are tired of, laid in piles at the Captain's doors;
whereat 'we laugh,' as the ass does, eating thistles: nay how they 'knot
two forage-cords together,' with universal noisy cursing, with evident
intent to hang the Quarter-master:--all this the worthy Captain,
looking on it through the ruddy-and-sable of fond regretful memory, has
flowingly written down. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 122-146.) Men growl
in vague discontent; officers fling up their commissions, and emigrate
in disgust.

Or let us ask another literary Officer; not yet Captain; Sublieutenant
only, in the Artillery Regiment La Fere: a young man of twenty-one; not
unentitled to speak; the name of him is Napoleon Buonaparte. To such
height of Sublieutenancy has he now got promoted, from Brienne School,
five years ago; 'being found qualified in mathematics by La Place.'
He is lying at Auxonne, in the West, in these months; not sumptuously
lodged--'in the house of a Barber, to whose wife he did not pay the
customary degree of respect;' or even over at the Pavilion, in a
chamber with bare walls; the only furniture an indifferent 'bed without
curtains, two chairs, and in the recess of a window a table covered with
books and papers: his Brother Louis sleeps on a coarse mattrass in an
adjoining room.' However, he is doing something great: writing his first
Book or Pamphlet,--eloquent vehement Letter to M. Matteo Buttafuoco,
our Corsican Deputy, who is not a Patriot but an Aristocrat, unworthy
of Deputyship. Joly of Dole is Publisher. The literary Sublieutenant
corrects the proofs; 'sets out on foot from Auxonne, every morning at
four o'clock, for Dole: after looking over the proofs, he partakes of
an extremely frugal breakfast with Joly, and immediately prepares for
returning to his Garrison; w