“Monsignore, the government of his Holiness is too prudent to go in search of adventures.  We are no longer in the days of Julius II., who donned the cuirass, and buckled on the sword of the flesh, and sprang himself into the breach.  But why should not the Head of the Church do as Pius V., who sent his sailors with the Spaniards and Venetians to the battle of Lepanto?  Why should you not detach a regiment or two to Algeria?  France would, perhaps, give them a place in her army; they might join us in advancing the holy cause of civilization.  Rest assured that when those troops returned, after five or six campaigns, to the more modest duty of preserving the public peace, everybody would obey them courteously.  Vulgar footmen would no longer dare to make use of such expressions as one I heard yesterday evening at the door of a theatre,—­’Stick to your soldiering, and leave servant’s work to me!’ They who despise them now, would be proud to show them respect; for nations have a tendency to admire themselves in the persons of their armies.”

     “For how long?”

“For ever.  Acquired glory is a capital which can never be exhausted.  And these regiments would never lose the spirit of honour and discipline which they would bring back from the seat of war.  You know not, Monsignore, what it is to have an idea become incarnate in a regiment.  There is a whole world of recollections, traditions, and virtues, circulating, seen and unseen, through this band of men.  It is the moral patrimony of the corps; the veterans don’t carry it away when they retire from the service, while the conscripts inherit it from the day of their joining the regiment.  The colonel, the officers, and the privates, change one after the other, and yet it is the same regiment that ever remains, because the same spirit continues to flutter amid the folds of the same colours.  Have four good regiments of picked men, well paid, properly respected, and that have been under fire, and they will last as long as Rome, and Mazzini himself will not prevail against their courage.”

     “So be it!  And may Heaven hear you!”

     “The business is half done, Monsignore, when you have heard
     me.  We are not far from the Vatican, where sits the real
     Minister of Arms.”

     “He will urge another objection.”

     “What will it be?”

     “That if he send our regiments to serve their apprenticeship
     in Africa, they will bring back French ideas.”

“That is an accident, impossible to prevent.  But console yourself with the reflection that it is perfectly immaterial whether the French ideas are brought into your country by your soldiers or by ours.  Besides, this is an article which so easily eludes the vigilance of the custom-house, that the railways are already bringing it in daily, and you will soon have a large stock on hand.  And after all, where’s