departs for the grand
manoeuvres. When they are over, the _classe_ for that year is dismissed,
except those unfortunates who are detained as many days longer as they
have served days in prison. The cheerfulness with which the soldiers
undergo the fatigues and discomforts of these annual exercises is
rightfully considered as an excellent sign of the efficiency of the
service. In the present year of grace, these manoeuvres were rendered
unusually trying by the persistent abnormal midsummer heat, and by the
blinding dust that blotted out whole parades. And yet, says a
correspondent of the _Temps_, "if the _armoire a glace_ (the knapsack)
be heavy, the road dusty, and the march across cultivated fields
laborious, it is none the less true than in the ranks of each detachment
there are to be found certain _loustics_ whose inexhaustible repertory
is sufficient to unwrinkle the most morose brows.

"The ancient French gaiety is dead, you say; follow, then, for a couple
of hours a column of infantry on the march, and you will not be long in
being undeceived. You will recognize very quickly that, in the army,
this gaiety is still in very good condition, even though it be at times
a little too gross. And, if you know your authors a little, you will see
things that would astonish them.

"You will hear chanted the _Boiteuse_, which was hummed, some two
hundred and odd years ago, by the troops of Louis XIV, and the couplets
of which swarm with allusions to the infirmity of Mlle. de la Valliere;
_Aupres de ma blonde_ ... song addressed to Mme. de Montespan, and a
multitude of others bearing witness to the passage of noble sovereigns,
or of illustrious chiefs now long since disappeared."

You will also, if you are a foreigner, see many other interesting traits
of national character, and, not improbably, some such curiously
unmilitary proceeding as that represented on our page, engraved from the
record of an unsympathetic photograph. This particular incident took
place at the manoeuvres at Chateaudun in 1894; the President of the
Republic, M. Casimir-Perier, is distributing the cross of the Legion of
Honor to a number of specially deserving officers and sous-officiers.

That very modern instrument of warfare, the bicycle, appeared in the
manoeuvres of this present year of grace with more importance than ever.
One correspondent, writing from Dompierre-sur-Besbre, on the 11th of
September, says: "The _compagnie cycliste_, covering the a