have been taught.  In the time of Gregory XVI. an officer refused to allow a Cardinal’s carriage to pass down a certain street.  Such were his orders.  The coachman drove on, and the officer was sent to the castle of St. Angelo, for having done his duty.  A single instance of this sort is quite enough to demoralize an army.  But the King of Naples shows the Pope his mistake.  He had a sentry mentioned in the order of the day, for giving a bishop’s coachman a cut with his sword.  You are scandalized because certain military administrators curtail the soldiers’ poor allowance of bread; but they have never been told that peculation will be punished by dismissal.”

     “Well, the scheme of reorganization is in hand; you will see
     a new order of things in 1859.”

“I am glad to hear it, Monsignore; and I will answer for it that a judicious, well-considered reform—­slowly progressive, of course, as everything is at Rome—­will produce excellent results in a few years.  It is not in a day that you can expect to change the face of things; but you know the gardener is not discouraged by the certainty that the tree he plants to-day will not produce fruit for the next five years.  The morals of your soldiers are, as you say, none of the best:  I hear it said everywhere that an honest peasant thinks it a dishonour to wear your uniform.  When you can hold out a future to your men, you need no longer recruit them from the dregs of the population.  The soldier will have some feeling of personal dignity when he ceases to find himself exposed to contempt.  These poor fellows are looked down upon by everybody, even by the servants of small families.  They breathe an atmosphere of scorn, which may be termed the malaria of honour.  Relieve them, Monsignore; they ask nothing better.”

“Do you think, then, the means are to be found of giving us an army as proud and as faithful as the French army?  That were a secret for which the Cardinal would pay a high price.”

“I offer it to you for nothing, Monsignore.  France has always been the most military country in Europe; but in the last century the French soldier was no better than yours.  The officers are pretty much the same, with this difference only,—­that formerly the King selected them from the nobility, whereas now they ennoble themselves by zeal and courage.  But a hundred years ago the soldiery, properly so called, consisted in France of what it now does with you—­the scum of the population.  Picked up in low taverns, between a heap of crown-pieces and a glass of brandy, the soldier made himself more dreaded by the peasantry than by the enemy.  He seemed to be overpowered beneath the weight of the scorn of the country at large, the meanness of his present condition, and the impossibility of future promotion; and he revenged himself by forays upon the cellar and the farmyard.  He had his place among the scourges which desolated monarchical France.  Hear what La Fontaine says,—­

     “La faim, les creanciers, les soldats, la corvee, Lui font
     d’un malheureux la peinture achevee.”