January

Mainz, January 1813

My dear cousin, at last I write to you! Try to picture the physical condition of my brothers-in-arms and myself. We are appalling, revoltingly dirty, and we go down on our knees at the sight of a potato. When I endure such things by myself, I fall under the sway of their romantic quality, and can take an interest in them. But the presence of my brothers-in-arms makes my knees turn to water. On the whole, it was a destestable life, worse than what I suffered in Spaiin.

Farewell; write to me; a letter from France holds me in rapture for two days.

--That's Henri Beyle, aka Stendhal, to Félix Faure (not the Félix Faure who was later President of France). Beyle had just ridden back with the French Imperial Army from Moscow, after the cataclysmic defeat that effectively ended Napoleon's dreams of empire. Spain was, indeed, another nasty piece of business for the Napoleonic forces, but Beyle was never in Spain. Source: Stendhal, To the Happy Few: Selected Letters 153 (Norman Cameron ed., 1986).