on that account. The pay of a soldier is in no sense
an adequate compensation for the risks he runs, the perils to which he
voluntarily and willingly subjects himself, but it is a universal
experience that although his pay is in no degree commensurate, yet the
soldier whose pay is withheld instantly becomes insubordinate and
mutinous, however high or patriotic the motives back of his enlistment.

Again the officers had, most of them, been degraded in rank. Many of
them had been retired on pittances which were not paid. Those who were
lucky enough to be retained in active service were superseded by
superannuated, often incompetent old officers of the old royal army
before the revolution, or by young scions of nobility with no knowledge
or fitness to command veterans, to whom the gross-bodied, uninspiring,
gouty old King did not appeal. Again, the regimental names and
associations had been changed and the old territorial or royal and
princely designations had been reestablished; the Napoleonic victories
had been erased from the battle-flags; the Eagles had been taken away.

The plain people of France were more or less apathetic toward Emperor
or King. France had been drained of its best for so long that it
craved rest and peace and time to recuperate above everything else. It
had been sated with glory and was alike indifferent to victory or
defeat. But the army was a seething mass of discontent. It had
nothing to gain by the continuance of present conditions and everything
to lose. It was a body of soldiers-of-fortune held in control
temporarily by circumstances but ready to break the leash and respond
instantly to the call of the greatest soldier-of-fortune of all.

And while all this is true it must also be admitted that there were
many officers and men like Marteau who were profoundly humiliated and
distressed over conditions in France and who, passionately wrapped up
in and devoted to the Emperor, had spurned commissions and dignities
and preferments. If they were obscure men they remained in France
unnoticed; if they were great men they had expatriated themselves and
sought seclusion and safety in other countries, oftentimes at great
personal sacrifice of property, ease and comfort.

The King, who was by no means lacking in shrewdness and wit, and his
chief advisers in Paris, did not fail to realize something of this, but
keen-sighted men like the Marquis d'Aumenier, away from the person of
the monarch,