Curiously enough, duelling is officially countenanced in these regulations, which are still in force: "If a soldier has been gravely insulted by one of his comrades, and the insult has taken place in public, he must not hesitate to claim reparation for it by a duel. He should address his demand to his Captain, who should transmit it to the Colonel; but it must not be forgotten that duels must be the exception, and that a good soldier ought to avoid quarrels." The passage relating to cleanliness is rather interesting: "Troopers are sent to the swimming-baths in the summer, and are allowed to have tepid baths in winter, in order to scrape off the deposit formed on the surface of the body by perspiration and dirt (_sic_)." I must add that, as in many other cases, theory and practice differ vastly, for in my time there existed but one dilapidated bath in the whole of our barracks, where 1600 men were quartered. No appliance for admitting hot water into the bath existed, so that, when it had to be used for a sick man, hot water had to be carried from the nearest kitchen 300 yards away! I need dwell no longer on this little book, evidently written with the best intentions, but entirely ignored by every French soldier. At the end of an hour or so the Sergeant closed his novel, and told us to learn by heart two pages of the regulations dealing with drill on foot. In order to show how narrow-minded Sergeant Legros was, I must mention that he expected us to learn _verbatim_ every single sentence of those regulations. So far as I am concerned (and I am not the only one who suffers from this defect in memory), I am totally unable to learn anything _verbatim_, so that, when an hour later, the Sergeant called upon me to recite what I had learnt, instead of reciting the following: "At the command of 'Cavalerie en Avant--Marche,' the trooper _places_ the whole weight of his body on his right foot, _after which he_...." &c. &c. I recited, "At the command of 'Cavalerie en Avant--Marche,' the trooper _puts_ the whole weight of his body on his right foot _and then_...." &c. &c. The Sergeant stopped me: "You blockhead," he exclaimed, "what the deuce is that you are reciting?" "What you gave us to learn, Sergeant." "What I gave you to learn! Go and look at your regulations, and you'll see if it's right, and as you can't learn the thing in an hour, you will be confined to barracks next Sunday, and that will give you plenty of time to ponder over it."