an to draw from people, by the aid of
that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an
attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that
everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the
peasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as the marshal of
France.

"I have often noticed how ready these casks, overflowing with wit, are
to open their sluices while being transported by diligence or 'bus, or
by any vehicle drawn by horses, for nobody talks in a railway car.

"At the rate of our exit from Paris, the journey would take full seven
hours: so I got an old corporal to talk, for my diversion. He could
neither read nor write: he was entirely illiterate. Yet the journey
seemed short. The corporal had been through all the campaigns, he
told me of things perfectly unheard of, that historians never trouble
themselves about.

"Ah! Hector, how superior is practice to theory! Among other things, and
in reply to a question relative to the infantry, whose courage is much
more tried by marching than by fighting, he said this, which I give you
free from circumlocution:

"'Sir, when Parisians were brought to our 45th, which Napoleon called
The Terrible (I am speaking of the early days of the Empire, when the
infantry had legs of steel, and when they needed them), I had a way of
telling beforehand which of them would remain in the 45th. They marched
without hurrying, they did their little six leagues a day, neither
more nor less, and they pitched camp in condition to begin again on the
morrow. The plucky fellows who did ten leagues and wanted to run to the
victory, stopped half way at the hospital.'

"The worthy corporal was talking of marriage while he thought he was
talking of war, and you have stopped half way, Hector, at the hospital.

"Remember the sympathetic condolence of Madame de Sevigne counting out
three hundred thousand francs to Monsieur de Grignan, to induce him to
marry one of the prettiest girls in France! 'Why,' said she to herself,
'he will have to marry her every day, as long as she lives! Decidedly, I
don't think three hundred francs too much.' Is it not enough to make the
bravest tremble?

"My dear fellow, conjugal happiness is founded, like that of nations,
upon ignorance. It is a felicity full of negative conditions.

"If I am happy with my little Caroline, it is due to the strictest
observance of that salutary principle so strongly insisted u