"Then you evidently think Soult and some others owe their present favour, less to the eminence of their services than to the plasticity of their principles?"
"Who ever thought Soult a great general?" said he, abruptly answering my question by this transition. "A great military organizer, certainly--the best head for the administration of an army, or the Emperor's staff--but nothing more. His capacity as a tactician was always third rate."
I could not help acknowledging that such was the opinion of our own great captain, who has avowed that he regarded Massena as the most accomplished and scientific general to whom he was ever opposed.
"And Massena's daughter," cried the veteran indignantly, "lives now in the humblest poverty--the wife of a very poor man, who cultivates a little garden near Brussels, where _femmes de chambre_ are sent to buy bouquets for their mistresses! The daughter of a _Maréchal de France_, a title once that Kings loved to add to their royalty, as men love to ennoble station by evidences of high personal desert!"
"How little fidelity, however, did these men shew to him who had made them thus great! how numerous were the desertions!--how rapid too!"
"Yes, there was an epidemic of treason at that time in France, just as you have seen at different epochs, here, other epidemics prevail: in the Revolution the passion was for the guillotine; then came the lust of military glory--that suited us best, and lasted longest; we indulged in it for twenty years: then succeeded that terrible revulsion, and men hastened to prove how false-hearted they could be. Then came the Restoration--and the passion was to be Catholic; and now we have another order of things, whose worst feature is, that there is no prevailing creed. Men live for the day and the hour. The King's health--the state of Spain--a bad harvest--an awkward dispute between the commander of our squadron in the Pacific with some of your admirals,--anything may overturn the balance, and our whole political and social condition may have to be built up once more."
"The great remedy against this uncertainty is out of your power," said I: "you abolished the claims of Sovereignty on the permanent affection of the people, and now you begin to feel the want of 'Loyalty.'"