The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I said to myself: we couldn’t have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain—think of it! I thought my hair would turn white. Consider what I did—I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his regiment, and away we went to the field. And there—oh dear, it was awful. Blunders?—why, he never did anything _but_ blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow’s secret—everybody had him focussed wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time—consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius; they did, honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry—and rage and rave too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he’ll get so high, that when discovery does finally come, it will be like the sun falling out of the sky. He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of **** down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we’ll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure. The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now must be destruction. At this crucial moment, what does this immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over a neighboring hill where there wasn’t a suggestion of an enemy! “There you go!” I said to myself; “this _is_ the end at last.”