To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new.
And these are the men that become sullen and desperate--that become poachers and incendiaries. How and why! It is not plenty and kind words that make them so? What, then? What makes the wolves herd together, and descend from the Alps and the Pyrenees? What makes them desperate and voracious, blind with fury, and reveling with vengeance? Hunger and hardship!
When the English peasant is gay, at ease, well-fed and clothed, what cares he how many pheasants are in a wood, or ricks in a farmer's yard? When he has a dozen backs to clothe, and a dozen mouths to feed, and nothing to put on the one, and little to put into the other--then that which seemed a mere playful puppy, suddenly starts up a snarling, red-eyed monster! How sullen he grows! With what equal indifference he shoots down pheasants or game-keepers. How the man who so recently held up his head and laughed aloud, now sneaks, a villainous fiend, with the dark lantern and the match, to his neighbor's rick! Monster! Can this be the English peasant? 'Tis the same!--'tis the very man! But what has made him so? What has thus demonized, thus infuriated, thus converted him into a walking pestilence? Villain as he is, is he alone to blame?--or is there another?
When I reached the quarters of the état major, I found the great court-yard of the "hotel" crowded with soldiers of every rank and arm of the service. Some were newly-joined recruits waiting for the orders to be forwarded to their respective regiments. Some were invalids just issued from the hospital, some were sick and wounded on their way homeward. There were sergeants with billet rolls, and returns, and court-martial sentences. Adjutants with regimental documents, hastening hither and thither. Mounted orderlies, too, continually came and went; all was bustle, movement, and confusion. Officers in staff uniforms called out the orders from the different windows, and dispatches were sent off here and there with hot haste. The building was the ancient palace of the dukes of Lorraine, and a splendid fountain of white marble in the centre of the "Cour," still showed the proud armorial bearings of that princely house. Around the sculptured base of this now were seated groups of soldiers; their war-worn looks and piled arms contrasting strangely enough with the great porcelain vases of flowering plants that still decorated the rich "plateau." Chakos, helmets, and great coats were hung upon the orange trees. The heavy boots of the cuirassier, the white leather apron of the "sapeur," were drying along the marble benches of the terrace. The richly traceried veining of gilt iron-work, which separated the court from the garden, was actually covered with belts, swords, bayonets, and horse gear, in every stage and process of cleaning. Within the garden itself, however, all was silent and still. Two sentries, who paced backward and forward beneath the "grille," showing that the spot was to be respected by those whose careless gestures and reckless air betrayed how little influence the mere "genius of the place" would exercise over them.