'Deteriorated,' said Beaumont. 'A garrison life destroys the habits of steady industry, it impairs skill. The returned conscript is more vicious and less honest than the peasant who has not left his village.'
'And what was the loss,' I asked, 'in the late war?'
'At least twice as great,' said Beaumont, 'as it is in peace. Half of those who were taken perished. The country would not have borne the prolongation of the Crimean War.'
'These wars,' I said, 'were short and successful. A war with England can scarcely be short, and yet you think that he plans one?'
'I think,' said Beaumont, 'that he plans one, but only in the event of his encountering any serious difficulty at home. You must not infer from the magnitude of his naval expenditure that he expects one.
'You look at the expense of those preparations, and suppose that so great a sacrifice would not be made in order to meet an improbable emergency. But expense is no sacrifice to him. He likes it. He has the morbid taste for it which some tyrants have had for blood, which his uncle had for war. Then he is incapable of counting. When he lived at Arenenburg he used to give every old soldier who visited him an order on Viellard his treasurer for money. In general the chest was empty. Viellard used to remonstrate but without effect. The day perhaps after his orders had been dishonoured he gave new ones.'
'Is it true,' I asked, 'that the civil list is a couple of years' income in debt?'
I know nothing about it,' said Beaumont; 'in fact, nobody knows anything about anything, but it is highly probable. Everybody who asks for anything gets it, everybody is allowed to waste, everybody is allowed to rob, every folly of the Empress is complied with. Fould raised objections, and was dismissed.
'She is said to have a room full of revolutionary relics: there is the bust of Marie Antoinette, the nose broken at one of the sacks of the Tuileries. There is a picture of Simon beating Louis XVII. Her poor child has been frightened by it, and she is always dwelling on the dangers of her position.'
'So,' I said, 'did Queen Adelaide—William IV.'s Queen. From the passing of the Reform Bill she fully expected to die on the scaffold.'