' So say little to
him about the Spahi, mon Caporal. He loves you well, does your Rac."
"Well, indeed! Good God! what nobility!"
Picpon glanced at him; then, with the tact of his nation, glided away
and busied himself teaching Flick-Flack to shoulder and present arms,
the weapon being a long stick.
"After all, Diderot was in the right when he told Rousseau which side of
the question to take," mused Cecil, as he crossed the barrack-yard a
few minutes later to visit the incarcerated pratique. "On my life,
civilization develops comfort, but I do believe it kills nobility.
Individuality dies in it, and egotism grows strong and specious. Why is
it that in a polished life a man, while becoming incapable of sinking to
crime, almost always becomes also incapable of rising to greatness? Why
is it that misery, tumult, privation, bloodshed, famine, beget, in
such a life as this, such countless things of heroism, of endurance, of
self-sacrifice--things worthy of demigods--in men who quarrel with the
wolves for a wild-boar's carcass, for a sheep's offal?"
A question which perplexes, very wearily, thinkers who have more time,
more subtlety, and more logic to bring to its unravelment than Bertie
had either leisure or inclination to do.
"Is this true, Rake--that you intentionally commit these freaks of
misconduct to escape promotion?" he asked of the man when he stood alone
with him in his place of confinement.
Rake flushed a little.
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