XVI.

THE EPAULET.

“Really, yes!  I love my calling.  This active adventurous life is amusing, do you see? there is something as regards discipline itself which has its charm; it is wholesome and relieves the spirit to have one’s life ordered in advance with no possible dispute, and consequently with no irresolution or regret.  Thence comes lightness of heart and gaiety.  We know what we must do, we do it, and we are content.”

  EMILE AUGIER et JULES SANDEAU (Le Gendre de M. Poirier).

And Durand threw down his rake or his spade.

—­Well! here you are already, cried the old housekeeper; breakfast is not ready.

—­My paper? he said shortly.

Sometimes the paper had not yet arrived; then he sat down near the window and watched impatiently for the carrier.  There he is, coming out of the next street.  He goes down with all haste to open the door himself, and take the precious Moniteur.

For it is the Moniteur de l’Armee! and he unfolds it with the respect which we owe to holy things, and he reads it all religiously from the first article to the everlasting advertisement of Rob Boyreau Laffecteur.  He reads it all, not because he is studying tactics or has need of Rob, but because he has set himself the task of reading it all.  His servant brings him his morning coffee and brandy, and he believes himself still at father Etienne’s or mother Gaspard’s, at the garrison cafe; this makes him quite sprightly.

  “Come, mother Gaspard,
    It is not late,
    Another glass! 
  Come, mother Gaspard,
    It is not late,
  To midnight it wants a quarter!”

But it is not the long, tedious military articles which first attract his eye, nor the ministerial decrees, nor the studies on the sabretache, nor the biographies of celebrated skin breeches, nor the improvement of gaiter buttons, nor the changes of police caps; PROMOTIONS AND CHANGES, that is what he wants.

PROMOTIONS AND CHANGES! divine rubrics which have caused so many hearts to beat.

You all recollect it, my old brothers in arms, who have waited long, like me.  Years and years have passed.  At length the hour is come and the newspaper which is going to transform your life.  That folded paper gleams with all the fires of hope, it glitters like a sun, for it contains the magic word which out of nothing is going to make you everything, to draw you out of the obscure ranks to place you in the brilliant phalanx, which, from a passive despised instrument, is going to create you an active and respected head.

How you are dazzled as you open it; with what palpitations and haste you look for the blessed page, skipping the regiments, glancing over the ranks, flying over the names in order to arrive at your own.  Ah! you know well where it ought to be; it is among the last; but what does it matter, it is here above all that the last can arrive first.