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 MADAME DE STAEL AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 265 volumes. Let me glean a few passages from the bulle- tins dictated by his own mouth, and sent from the battle- field to be published in the Moniteur at Paris. From the field of Ulm, he sent this : " For two days the rain has fallen by pailfuls, and every one is soaked. The soldiers have had no rations, and the mud is up to their knees ; but the sight of the Emperor restores their gayety, and they make the field resound with the cry of Vive VUmpereur." Note how ingeniously he reconciles Paris to the idea of a French army floundering in the mud of a distant land : " They report also, that when the officers expressed their surprise that the soldiers should forget their priva- tions in the pleasure of seeing him, he replied, ' They are right; for it is to spare their blood that I make them experience such great fatigues.' . .So the soldiers often say, ' The Emperor has found a new method of making war ; he uses our legs, and not our bayonets.' Five-sixths of the army have not fired a shot, and sorry enough they are for it." As we read these bulletins we cease to wonder that France should have been willing, year after year, to send to these distant fields of conquest, the elite of her youth. Never was a nation so artfully flattered. Never was war exhibited in so romantic and captivating a manner. Fancy a peasant, worn with toil and privation, reading such a passage as this, or hearing it read at his village church on Sunday : " No contrast is more striking than the spirit of the French army and that of the Austrian. In the French army, heroism is carried to the highest point; in the Austrian, the discouragement is extreme. The Austrian soldier is paid only with pieces of paper; he can send nothing home, and he is very ill-treated. The French soldier thinks of nothing but glory. One could cite a