“Monotony is not the only thing a soldier complains of. I remember suffering many fits of indignation and of fury, principally in the beginning. A most remarkable thing about the army is that you are punished, not only for your own faults, which is quite right, but also for those of each of your comrades; and so you are responsible for the behaviour of the whole army—six hundred thousand men. Suppose you are at Brest. You will not, of course, be hanged if a soldier at Marseilles misbehaves, but if a soldier on leave a hundred leagues off comes back tipsy and obstreperous, the leave you hoped to have will perhaps not be given, and the time you might have employed in a pleasanter manner will be spent in cleaning the floor with the bottom of a bottle, without wax. These vicarious punishments occur much oftener in your own regiment, above all, in your own company; so that the nearer the sinner is to you the more threatening is he; and if you have the ill-luck to have for comrade a stupid or awkward fellow, you will be insulted and punished until that poor devil converts himself. I well remember such an idiot I suffered constantly for. The sergeant would tread on his feet when he was cold, and, consequently, more sensitive, and I have seen tears in his eyes more than once. Nobody, however, pitied him; everyone laughed at him; and such was his misery, his loneliness, his deep distress, that I have seen him weeping in bed like a child. He entered the army a good, poor creature, and will probably leave it a hardened blackguard. From military life, the school of patriotism, honour, and abnegation, he will only learn evil.... Sometimes it was so evident that our sufferings diverted our chiefs, and had no other object, that I fell into indescribable anger; though I am not bloodthirsty, I would gladly have killed some of my superior officers—this is no exaggeration; and I well remember one day weeping from impotent rage.”