“They were jolly dogs with whom jesting was not safe! If enemies were not come-at-able they were capable of spitting a dozen of their superior officers. Such is the heroic temperament. But Dumanet is not a hero nowadays, since peace no longer produces such beings. Sergeant Bridoux has nothing to fear in his peaceful quarters, yet it pleases him to be still able to say that a man cannot raise a hand against him without being immediately shot with musical honours. However, in the present state of our manners and in time of peace, such a circumstance is out of proportion, although nobody can see it. It is true that when a sentence of death has been passed by court-martial it is never carried out, save in Algeria, and that, as far as possible, we avoid giving these martial and musical entertainments in France. It is recognised that here they would produce a bad effect: and in that fact you have a tacit condemnation of the military code.” “Take care,” said M. de Terremondre, “lest you impair discipline in any way.” “If,” answered M. Bergeret, “you had only seen a batch of raw recruits filing into the barrack yard, you would no longer think it necessary to be for ever hurling threats of death at these sheep-like creatures in order to maintain discipline among them. They are thinking of nothing but of how to get through their three years, as they put it, and Sergeant Bridoux would be touched even to tears by their pitiful docility, were it not that he thirsts to terrify them in order that he may enjoy his own sense of power. It is not that Sergeant Bridoux was born with a more callous heart than anyone else. But he is doubly perverted, both as slave and tyrant, and if Marcus Aurelius had been a non-commissioned officer I would not go so far as to promise that he would never have tyrannised over his men. However that may be, this tyranny suffices to produce that submission tempered by deceit that is the soldier’s most useful virtue in time of peace. “It is high time that our military codes of law, with their paraphernalia of death, should be seen no more, save in the chamber of horrors, by the side of the keys of the Bastille and the thumb-screws of the Inquisition.” “Army affairs,” said M. de Terremondre, “require most cautious handling. The army means safety and it means hope. It is also the training school of duty. Where else, save there, can be found self-sacrifice and devotion?” “It is true,” said M. Bergeret, “that men consider it the primary social duty to learn to kill their fellows according to rule, and that, in civilised nations, the glory of massacre is the greatest glory known. And, after all, though man may be irredeemably evil and mischievous, the bad work he does is but small in comparison with the whole universe. For this planet is but a clod of earth in space and the sun but a gaseous bubble that will soon dissolve.” “I see,” said M. Frémont, “that you are no positivist. For you treat the great fetich but scornfully.”