The sergeant answered: "All this sounds fair enough for my purpose: yet well I see that the doors by which we might win to many dignities be shut against us by the nobility. For as soon as he is crept out of his shell, forthwith your nobleman is clapped into such a position as we cannot venture to set our thoughts upon, howbeit we have done more than many a noble who is now appointed a colonel. And just as among the peasants many noble talents perish for want of means to keep a lad at his studies, so many a brave soldier grows old under the weight of a musquet, that more properly deserved a regiment and could have tendered great services to his general." _Chap. xviii._: HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS TOOK HIS FIRST STEP INTO THE WORLD AND THAT WITH EVIL LUCK I cared no longer to listen to this old ass, but grudged him not his complaints, for often he himself had beaten poor soldiers like dogs. I turned again to the trees whereof the whole land was full and saw how they swayed and smote against each other: and the fellows tumbled off them in batches. Now a crack; now a fall. One moment quick, the next dead. In a moment one lost an arm, another a leg, the third his head. And as I looked methought all trees I saw were but one tree, at whose top sat the war-god Mars, and which covered with its branches all Europe. It seemed to me this tree could have overshadowed the whole world: but because it was blown about by envy and hate, by suspicion and unfairness, by pride and haughtiness and avarice, and other such fair virtues, as by bitter north winds, therefore it seemed thin and transparent: for which reason one had writ on its trunk these rhymes: "The holmoak by the wind beset and brought to ruin, Breaks its own branches down and proves its own undoing. By civil war within and brothers' deadly feud All's topsy-turvy turned and misery hath ensued."