'The first portion of this volume, _Servitude et Grandeurs
Militaires_, contains an account of the way in which he
received his false tendency. Cherished on the "wounded
knees" of his aged father, he listened to tales of the great
Frederic, whom the veteran had known personally. After an
excellent sketch of the king, he says: "I expatiate here,
almost in spite of myself, because this was the first great
man whose portrait was thus drawn for me at home,--a portrait
after nature,--and because my admiration of him was the first
symptom of my useless love of arms,--the first cause of one of
the most complete delusions of my life." This admiration
for the great king remained so lively in his mind, that even
Bonaparte in his gestures seemed to him, in later days, a
plagiarist.
'At the military school, "the drum stifled the voices of our
masters, and the mysterious voices of books seemed to us cold
and pedantic. Tropes and logarithms seemed to us only steps to
mount to the star of the Legion of Honor,--the fairest star of
heaven to us children."
'"No meditation could keep long in chains heads made
constantly giddy by the noise of cannon and bells for the _Te
Deum_.
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