As for his manners, they are, at the best of times, uncouth, not to say detestable, and when at meals, disgusting. He is an enormous eater, caring not so much about the quality of what he devours, so long as quantity is provided; and though he drinks an amount of beer that would make any other European helplessly intoxicated, he is seldom drunk. Nothing irritates him like hunger and thirst; in which circumstance he furnishes the most unpleasing contrast to a French soldier,--always patient, and commonly cheerful under such privations. When suffering in this way, physically (which seldom occurred under the admirable organisation of the German commissariat), he would pillage and plunder all before him to get food or beer. For such depredations, when caught, he was mercilessly punished. And the German soldier submits impassively to this treatment at the hands of his officer, as if he were a dog, without seeming to resent it. I have seen officers and their subalterns on the quays of Orleans strike their men repeatedly, and on parade drill make their recruits dress in line, with the flat of their broad-swords,--a disgraceful procedure, to which neither an English nor a French lad would submit. All these features of the German system, as brutal as it has proved effective, I observed, long after I had seen them at Orleans, in the vivacious and sparkling pages of _Barry Lyndon_. So little does the world change in a hundred and thirty years! For some days no one but the military had appeared in the streets. All the shop windows in the town were closed, all business suspended; and the place, in these circumstances, had anything but a lively aspect. The Commandant, however, issued an order to all shopkeepers, obliging them, under pain of severe punishment, to take down their shutters, and open their establishments. In accordance with this regulation, on a certain day, before the appointed hour, down came all the shutters; but the display of goods in the windows amused me very much. In one, exhibiting a frontage of perhaps twenty feet or more, where silks, satins, and the most costly stuffs were usually spread out, now appeared in a tasteful arrangement several pieces of glazed calico, which were, it seemed, the only goods one could purchase in that establishment. Another equally large shop in the Rue Royale, a hardware house, exhibited as its stock in trade some dozen or so of rusty kettles, saucepans, and gridirons. In like manner did nearly all the other shopkeepers.