"No? Yet such recognition is usually the ambition of every military
life."
A very weary smile passed over his face.
"I have no ambition, madame. Or, if I have, it is not a pair of
epaulettes that will content it."
She understood him; she comprehended the bitter mockery that the tawdry,
meretricious rewards of regimental decoration seemed to the man who had
waited to die at Zaraila as patiently and as grandly as the Old Guard at
Waterloo.
"I understand! The rewards are pitifully disproportionate to the
services in the army. Yet how magnificently you and your men, as I have
been told, held your ground all through that fearful day!"
"We did our duty--nothing more."
"Well! is not that the rarest thing among men?"
"Not among soldiers, madame."
"Then you think that every trooper in a regiment is actuated by the
finest and most impersonal sentiment that can actuate human beings!"
"I will not say that. Poor wretches! They are degraded enough, too
often. But I believe that more or less in every good soldier, even when
he is utterly unconscious of it, is an impersonal love for the honor of
his Flag, an uncalculating instinct to do his best for the reputation of
his corps. We are called human machines; we are so, since we move by no
will of our own; but the lowest among us will at times be propelled by
one single impulse--a desire to die greatly. It is all that is left to
most of us to do."
She looked at him with that old look which he had seen once or twice
before in her, of pity, respect, sympathy, and wonder, all in one.
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