I kissed his hand fervently, and the staff rode forward, leaving me the happiest heart that beat in all the crowded host. CHAPTER VII. A PASSING ACQUAINTANCE If the guide who is to lead us on a long and devious track stops at every byway, following out each path that seems to invite a ramble or suggest a halt, we naturally might feel distrustful of his safe conduct, and uneasy at the prospect of the road before us. In the same way may the reader be disposed to fear that he who descends to slight and trivial circumstances will scarcely have time for events which ought to occupy a wider space in his reminiscences; and for this reason I am bound to apologise for the seeming transgression of my last chapter. Most true it is, that were I to relate the entire of my life with a similar diffuseness, my memoir would extend to a length far beyond what I intend it to occupy. Such, however, is very remote from my thoughts. I have dwelt with, perhaps, something of prolixity upon the soldier-life and characteristics of a past day, because I shall yet have to speak of changes, without which the contrast would be inappreciable; but I have also laid stress upon an incident trivial in itself, because it formed an event in my own fortunes. It was thus, in fact, that I became a soldier. Now, the man who carries a musket in the ranks may very reasonably be deemed but a small ingredient of the mass that forms an army; and in our day his thoughts, hopes, fears, and ambitions are probably as unknown and uncared for as the precise spot of earth that yielded the ore from which his own weapon was smelted. This is not only reasonable, but it is right in the time of which I am now speaking it was far otherwise. The Republic, in extinguishing a class, had elevated the individual; and now each, in whatever station he occupied, felt himself qualified to entertain opinions and express sentiments which, because they were his own, he presumed them to be national The idlers of the streets discussed the deepest questions of politics; the soldiers talked of war with all the presumption of consummate generalship. The great operations of a campaign, and the various qualities of different commanders, were the daily subjects of dispute in the camp. Upon one topic only were all agreed; and there, indeed, our unanimity repaid all previous discordance. We deemed France the only civilised nation of the globe, and reckoned that people thrice happy who, by any contingency of fortune, engaged our sympathy, or procured the distinction of our presence in arms. We were the heaven-born disseminators of freedom throughout Europe, the sworn enemies of kingly domination, and the missionaries of a political creed, which was not alone to ennoble mankind, but to render its condition eminently happy and prosperous.