the tax-gatherer squeeze out the little the other oppressors had left;
anger, discontent, wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between
one order of people and another; an incredible indifference to the
miseries their despotism caused on the part of the aristocracy; a sullen
and vindictive hatred for the perpetration of those miseries on the part
of the people; all places sold--even all honours priced--at the court,
which was become a public market, a province of peasants, of living men
bartered for a few livres, and literally passed from one hand to
another, to be squeezed and drained anew by each new possessor: in a
word, Sir, an abandoned court; an unredeemed /noblesse/,--unredeemed,
Sir, by a single benefit which, in other countries, even the most
feudal, the vassal obtains from the master; a peasantry famished; a
nation loaded with debt which it sought to pay by tears,--these are what
I saw,--these are the consequences of that heartless and miserable
vanity from which arose wars neither useful nor honourable,--these are
the real components of that /triumph/, as you term it, which you wonder
that I regret."

Now, although it was impossible to live at the court of Louis XIV. in
his latter days, and not feel, from the general discontent that
prevailed even there, what a dark truth the old soldier's speech
contained, yet I was somewhat surprised by an enthusiasm so little
military in a person whose bearing and air were so conspicuously
martial.

"You draw a melancholy picture," said I; "and the wretched state of
culture which the lands that we now pass through exhibit is a witness
how little exaggeration there is in your colouring. However, these are
but the ordinary evils of war; and, if your country endures them, do not
forget that she has also inflicted them. Remember what France did to