The veteran advances slowly, his hand leaning on the shoulder of the young soldier.  His eyes, closed for ever, no longer perceive the sun shining through the flowering chestnut-trees.  In the place of his right arm hangs an empty sleeve, and he walks with a wooden leg, the sound of which on the pavement makes those who pass turn to look.

At the sight of this ancient wreck from our patriotic wars, the greater number shake their heads in pity, and I seem to hear a sigh or an imprecation.

“See the worth of glory!” says a portly merchant, turning away his eyes in horror.

“What a deplorable use of human life!” rejoins a young man who carries a volume of philosophy under his arm.

“The trooper would better not have left his plow,” adds a countryman, with a cunning air.

“Poor old man!” murmurs a woman, almost crying.

The veteran has heard, and he knits his brow; for it seems to him that his guide has grown thoughtful.  The latter, attracted by what he hears around him, hardly answers the old man’s questions, and his eyes, vaguely lost in space, seem to be seeking there for the solution of some problem.

I seem to see a twitching in the gray moustaches of the veteran; he stops abruptly, and, holding back his guide with his remaining arm: 

“They all pity me,” says he, “because they do not understand it; but if I were to answer them—­”

“What would you say to them, father?” asks the young man, with curiosity.

“I should say first to the woman who weeps when she looks at me, to keep her tears for other misfortunes; for each of my wounds calls to mind some struggle for my colors.  There is room for doubting how some men have done their duty; with me it is visible.  I carry the account of my services, written with the enemy’s steel and lead, on myself; to pity me for having done my duty is to suppose I would better have been false to it.”

“And what would you say to the countryman, father?”

“I should tell him that, to drive the plow in peace, we must first secure the country itself; and that, as long as there are foreigners ready to eat our harvest, there must be arms to defend it.”

“But the young student, too, shook his head when he lamented such a use of life.”

“Because he does not know what self-sacrifice and suffering can teach.  The books that he studies we have put in practice, though we never read them:  the principles he applauds we have defended with powder and bayonet.”

“And at the price of your limbs and your blood.  The merchant said, when he saw your maimed body, ‘See the worth of glory!"’