My answer was briefly a hope that the new general would be as much overmatched by the duke’s fortunes in the field, as he had been by party in the capital.  “Still, he seemed to me a clever, and even a remarkable man, however inexperienced as a soldier.”

“If he is the officer of that name who served in the last French war, he is an old acquaintance of mine,” observed the duke.  “I remember him perfectly.  He was a mere boy, who, in a rash skirmish with some of our hussars, was wounded severely and taken prisoner.  But as I learned that he was the son of a French literateur of some eminence whom I had met in Paris, and as I had conceived a favourable opinion of the young soldier’s gallantry, I gave him his parole and sent him back to his family, who, I think, were Provencals.  He was unquestionably spirited and intelligent, and with experience might make either minister or general; but as he has begun by failure in the one capacity, it will be our business to show him that he may find success equally difficult in another.  At all events, we have nothing but this minister-general between us and Notre-Dame.  He has taken up a position on the Argonne ridge in our front.  To force it will be but an affair of three hours.  Adieu, gentlemen.”  He put spurs to his horse, and galloped to one of the columns which approached with trumpets sounding, bearing the captured banner of the church tower of Longwy.

The world was now before us, and we enjoyed it to the full.  Varnhorst and I were inseparable, and feasted on the scene, the gaiety, the oddity of the various characters, which campaigning developes more than any mode of existence.  The simple meal, the noon-rest under a tree, the songs of our troopers, the dance in the villages, as soon as the peasantry had discovered that we did not eat women and children—­even the consciousness of a life wholly without care, formed a delicious state of being.  “If this is the life of the Arab,” I often was ready to exclaim, “what folly would it be in him to leave the wilderness!  If the Esquimaux can sleep through one half of the year and revel through the other, is he not the true philosopher in the midst of his frost and snow?” Guiscard, who sometimes joined our party, was now and then moved to smile at our unripe conceptions of the nature of things.  But we laughed at his gravity, and he returned to pore over the mysteries of that diplomacy which evidently thickened on him hour by hour.  I recollect, however, one of his expressions—­“My friend, you think that all the battle is to be fought in front:  I can assure you that a much more severe battle is to be fought in the rear.  Argonne will be much more easily mastered than the King’s closet and the Aulic Council.”  We had good reason to remember the oracle.