pitals or to
contribute to the molding of a new cannon. The actor, wearing a short
uniform and booted to the thighs, would recite with enormous success
poems of the times in which enthusiasm and fine sentiments took the
place of art and common sense. What can one say to a triumphant actor
who takes himself for a second Tyrtee, and who after a second recall is
convinced that he is going to save the country, and that Bismarck and
old William had better look after their laurels.

As to Maurice Roger, at the beginning of the campaign he sent his
mother, wife, and child into the country, and, wearing the double
golden stripe of a lieutenant upon his militia jacket, he was now at the
outposts near his father's old friend, Colonel Lantz.

Owing to a scarcity of officers, they had fished up the old Colonel
from the depths of his engineer's office, and had torn him away from his
squares and compasses. Poor old fellow! His souvenirs of activity went
as far back as the Crimea and Sebastopol. Since that time he had not
even seen a pickaxe glisten in the sun, and, behold, they asked this
worthy man to return to the trench, and to powder his despatches
with earth ploughed up by bombs, like Junot at Toulon in the fearless
battery.

Well, he did not say "No," and after kissing his three portionless
daughters on the forehead, he took his old uniform, half-eaten up by
moths, from a drawer, shook the grains of pepper and camphor from it,
and, with his slow, red-tapist step, went to make his excavators work
as far as possible from the walls and close by the Prussians. I can
tell you, the men of the auxiliary engineers and the gentlemen with the
American-caps had not joked for some time over his African cape or his
superannuated cap, which seemed to date from Pere Bugeaud. One day,
when a German bomb burst among them, and they all fell to the ground
excepting Colonel Lantz, who had not flinched. He tranquilly settled his
glasses upon his nose and wiped off his splashed beard as coolly as he
had, not long since, cleaned his India-ink brushes. Bless me! it gave
you a lesson, gentlemen snobs, to sustain the honor of the special army,
and taught you to respect the black velvet plastron and double red
bands on the trousers. In spite of his appearance of absence of mind
and deafness, the Colonel had just before heard murmured around him the
words "old Lantz," and "old dolphin." Very well, gentlemen officers, you
know now that the old army was