“This recruiting-sergeant, whom you can hear from here promising these vagabonds a halfpenny a day, with bread and meat, fills me, my son, with profound reflections on war and armies. I have worked at all trades save that of a soldier, which has always filled me with disgust and terror, by the characteristics of servitude, false glory, and cruelty, attached to it, which are in direct opposition to my peaceful temper, to my wild love of freedom, and to my turn of mind, which, judging sanely of glory, estimates at its rightful worth that attainable by a musketeer. I am not speaking at all of my incorrigible leaning to meditation which would have been exceedingly thwarted by sword and gun exercise. Not desirous of being Cæsar you will easily understand that neither do I wish to be a La Tulipe or Brin-d’Amour. And I own to you, my son, that military service seems to me to be the most terrible pest of civilised nations. “This is the opinion of a philosopher. There is nothing to show that it will ever be shared by a large number of people. And in actual fact, kings and republics will always find as many soldiers as they want for their parades and their wars. I have read Machiavelli’s treatises at Monsieur Blaizot’s, at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, where they are all very nicely bound in parchment. They deserve it my son, and, for my part, I hold an infinitely high opinion of the Florentine secretary, who was the first to remove from political action the legendary foundation of justice, on which they set up nothing but highly respectable villainies. This Florentine, seeing his country at the mercy of its hireling defenders, conceived the idea of a national and patriotic army. He says somewhere in his books that it is right that all citizens should unite for the safety of their country and all be soldiers. I have likewise heard this theory sustained at Monsieur Blaizot’s by Monsieur Roman, who is very zealous, as you know, for state rights. He has no care save for the general, and the universal, and will never be content until the day when every private interest is sacrificed to the public interest. Thus Machiavelli and Monsieur Roman wish us all to be soldiers, since we are all citizens. I do not say, as do they, that it is just, nor do I say that it is unjust, because justice and injustice are matter for debate, and it is a subject which only sophists can decide.” “What! my good master,” I cried in sorrow and surprise, “you hold that justice depends on the reasoning of a sophist, and that our actions are just or unjust according to the arguments of a clever man! Such a maxim shocks me more than I can say.”