far more ready to receive the light than minds and hearts overwearied
with the world's sophistries.

Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a
lad of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly
forty years old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and
day after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first,
and of himself afterwards. While he served his military
apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure in which to
reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had
his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A
soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of
nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans
of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with that of the
administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most
boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in
a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield passive
obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down the men
opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in the forest. Violent
physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they repair
the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep, that
they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are not
greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
character is as simple as heretofore.

When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank
seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,