have for comrade a stupid or awkward fellow, you will be insulted and punished until that poor devil converts himself. I well remember such an idiot I suffered constantly for. The sergeant would tread on his feet when he was cold, and, consequently, more sensitive, and I have seen tears in his eyes more than once. Nobody, however, pitied him; everyone laughed at him; and such was his misery, his loneliness, his deep distress, that I have seen him weeping in bed like a child. He entered the army a good, poor creature, and will probably leave it a hardened blackguard. From military life, the school of patriotism, honour, and abnegation, he will only learn evil. . . . Sometimes it was so evident that our sufferings diverted our chiefs, and had no other object, that I fell into indescribable anger; though I am not bloodthirsty, I would gladly have killed some of my superior officers—this is no exaggeration; and I well remember one day weeping from impotent rage."
Elsewhere he remarks that the only feeling a soldier comes to cherish is resignation. "He knows very well that none of his superiors will ever say a kind word to him, and that his destiny is to pay for every annoyance they undergo. If he behaves himself he will be compelled to toil all day without evening recreation, and his only reward will be to be called an idiot by his comrades, to be punished for them, and not be
