soldiers who think that because one's trade is to make war one
should never have a thought above fighting and plunder. There
was old Bouvet, for example--the one who was killed by the
Prussians on the day that I won the Emperor's medal; if you took
him away from the camp and the canteen, and spoke to him of books
or of art, he would sit and stare at you. But the highest
soldier is a man like myself who can understand the things of the
mind and the soul. It is true that I was very young when I
joined the army, and that the quarter- master was my only
teacher, but if you go about the world with your eyes open you
cannot help learning a great deal.

Thus I was able to admire the pictures in Venice, and to know the
names of the great men, Michael Titiens, and Angelus, and the
others, who had painted them. No one can say that Napoleon did
not admire them also, for the very first thing which he did when
he captured the town was to send the best of them to Paris. We
all took what we could get, and I had two pictures for my share.

One of them, called "Nymphs Surprised," I kept for myself, and
the other, "Saint Barbara," I sent as a present for my mother.

It must be confessed, however, that some of our men behaved very
badly in this matter of the statues and the pictures. The people
at Venice were very much attached to them, and as to the four
bronze horses which stood over the gate of their great church,
they loved them as dearly as if they had been their children. I
have always been a judge of a horse, and I had a good look at
these ones, but I could not see that there was much to be said
for them. They were too coarse-limbed for light cavalry charges