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Updated: June 20, 2025
After disbanding his troops at Strasburg, and after making the best arrangements possible under the circumstances for the eventual payment of their wages, he had joined the army which the Duke of Deux Ponts had been raising in Germany to assist the cause of the Huguenots in France.
The first thought of all is to become another Newton, or Laplace, or Vauban. Such are the efforts that France demands of the young men who leave her celebrated school. Now let us see the fate of these men culled with so much care from each generation. At one-and-twenty we dream of life, and expect marvels of it. I entered the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees; I was a pupil-engineer.
Your friend the magistrate has given him some money out of his own pocket; the restaurant proprietress refuses to be paid for his food, while another one, near the station, sends word to say that he can have a plate of soup there whenever he likes; a young Arab boy these Arabs are really incomprehensible gives him as many cups of tea or coffee as he can drink; a Jewish lawyer has sent him some clothes; a gentleman in your hotel a quantity of linen; the Italian barber shaves him gratis; a certain shopkeeper sends him a bottle of liqueur of liqueur! every second day; the commissaire has given him, free of charge, a decent unoccupied bedroom in the prison, where he can go in and out as he pleases; best of all, the Ponts et Chaussees are now employing him at three francs a day a princely income, they tell me at some agricultural job: pure kindness, inasmuch as he has never handled a spade or pickaxe in his life.
Placing the government of the Palatinate in the hands of the Duke of Deux Ponts, he repaired, with his family, to Prague. A rejoicing multitude met him at several leagues from the capital, and escorted him to the city with an unwonted display of popular enthusiasm. He was crowned with splendor such as Bohemia had never witnessed before.
The dauphiness comprehended the signification of these words, and her fine eyes were filled with tears. However, she no longer insisted upon the erasure, when her husband, who most tenderly loved her, further declared it to be the king's desire that nothing should be done which could in any way displease the prince des Deux Ponts.
"THIS," he said, excavating from under a pile of miscellaneous rubbish a paper whereon was displayed the official stamp of the Ponts et Chaussees the Department of Public Works for whose servants this choice apartment is or rather ought to be exclusively reserved: the rule is not always obeyed. "Bring me THIS" tapping the document proudly "and you have the room."
I afterwards repeated to the minister of Deux Ponts what I had previously stated in the garden to M. de Cosse, and had the satisfaction of hearing madam d'Aiguillon approve of my sentiments. When I retired to my apartment I was followed by my niece. "How happy are you, dear aunt," said she, "to preserve such friends in your present troubles."
Laval, upon observations continued through seven years, found the quantity to be twenty-five metres per running metre, which is equal to two hundred and sixty-eight cubic feet to the running foot. Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1842, 2me semestre, p. 229.
It is superfluous to add that one of the great ends of strategy is to be able to assure real advantages to the army by preparing the theater of war most favorable for its operations, if they take place in its own country, by the location of fortified places, of intrenched camps, and of têtes de ponts, and by the opening of communications in the great decisive directions: these constitute not the least interesting part of the science.
"I have been honoured by the commands of the prince, my master, madam," replied he, "to bring you the assurances of his unalterable friendship; and to say further, that whenever you feel dissatisfied with your residence in France, you will find at Deux Ponts an asylum, which the most earnest endeavors of the prince, my gracious patron, will strive to render agreeable to you."
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