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REFLECTIONS.
During the wars of the Empire, while husbands and brothers were in Germany, anxious mothers gave birth to an ardent, pale, and neurotic generation.

Conceived between battles, reared amid the noises of war, thousands of children looked about them with dull eyes while testing their limp muscles.

From time to time their blood-stained fathers would appear, raise them to their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on the ground and remount their horses.
The life of Europe centred in one man; men tried to fill their lungs with the air which he had breathed.

Yearly France presented that man with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax to Caesar; without that troop behind him, he could not follow his fortune.