'Marshal Randon,' I said, 'told me that the whole loss in the Italian campaign was under 7,000 men.'
'That is a good instance,' said Beaumont. 'It certainly was 50,000, perhaps 70,000. But I am guilty of a _délit_ in saying so, and you will be guilty of a _délit_ if you repeat what I have said. I remember the case of a man in a barber's shop in Tours, to whom the barber said that the harvest was bad. He repeated the information, and was punished by fine and imprisonment for having spread _des nouvelles alarmantes_. Truth is no excuse; in fact it is an aggravation, for the truer the news the more alarming.'
'In time of peace,' I asked, 'what proportion of the conscripts return after their six years of service?'
'About three-quarters,' answered Beaumont.
'Then,' I said, 'as you take 100,000 conscripts every year even in peace, you lose 25,000 of your best young men every year?'
'And are the 75,000 who return improved or deteriorated?' I asked.
'Improved,' said Ampère; 'they are _dégourdis_, they are educated, they submit to authority, they know how to shift for themselves.'
'Deteriorated,' said Beaumont. 'A garrison life destroys the habits of steady industry, it impairs skill. The returned conscript is more vicious and less honest than the peasant who has not left his village.'
'And what was the loss,' I asked, 'in the late war?'
'At least twice as great,' said Beaumont, 'as it is in peace. Half of those who were taken perished. The country would not have borne the prolongation of the Crimean War.'
'These wars,' I said, 'were short and successful. A war with England can scarcely be short, and yet you think that he plans one?'
'I think,' said Beaumont, 'that he plans one, but only in the event of his encountering any serious difficulty at home. You must not infer from the magnitude of his naval expenditure that he expects one.
'You look at the expense of those preparations, and suppose that so great a sacrifice would not be made in order to meet an improbable emergency. But expense is no sacrifice to him. He likes it. He has the morbid taste for it which some tyrants have had for blood, which his uncle had for war. Then he is incapable of counting. When he lived at Arenenburg he used to give every old soldier who visited him an order on Viellard his treasurer for money. In general the chest was empty. Viellard used to remonstrate but without effect. The day perhaps after his orders had been dishonoured he gave new ones.'