Jean was terribly lonely in these dreary and unaccustomed solitudes.
The white mountains awed him, and the mad roar of the river seemed but
poor compensation for the dignified measured thunder of the waves on
the broad sands of the Brittany coast.

But Jean was a good-natured giant, and he strove to do whatever was
required of him. He was not quick at repartee, and the men mocked his
Breton dialect. He became the butt for all their small and often mean
jokes, and from the first he was very miserable, for, added to his
yearning for the sea, whose steady roar he heard in his dreams at
night, he felt the utter lack of all human sympathy.

At first he endeavoured, by unfailing good nature and prompt obedience,
to win the regard of his fellows, and he became in a measure the slave
of the regiment; but the more he tried to please the more his burden
increased, and the greater were the insults he was compelled to bear
from both officers and men. It was so easy to bully this giant, whom
they nicknamed Samson, that even the smallest men in the regiment felt
at liberty to swear at him or cuff him if necessary.

But at last Samson's good nature seemed to be wearing out. His stock
was becoming exhausted, and his comrades forgot that the Bretons for
hundreds of years have been successful fighters, and that the blood of
contention flows in their veins.

Although the Alpine Corps, as a general thing, contain the largest and
strongest men in the French Army, yet the average French soldier may be
termed undersized when compared with the military of either England or
Germany. There were several physically small men in the regiment, and