never scolds them for it,
and always gives them back their playthings. "They are but children, let
them play!" says he.

In society, too, he is a most agreeable, amusing man, polite and
chivalrous towards ladies, and at public entertainments he distinguishes
himself by his neat little speeches, which are always good-natured, very
much to the point, and seasoned with attic salt of a piquant but not too
pungent quality. He is merciful to the absurdities of his
fellow-citizens; it is no business of his to impress them with any
affectation of soldierly gravity or stiffness; and if at first sight
his stern, clean-shaven face--the regulation countenance of soldiers of
those days--keeps a timid stranger somewhat at a distance, he has only
to open his mouth, and his beautifully pure Magyar accent and intonation
prove to demonstration that, soldier as he is, he has remained a true
son of his fatherland--and all hearts open to him at once.

But all this ceases at the gate of the barracks. Within the barrack
courtyard there is an end to all friendship, kinsmanship, _camaraderie_,
and patronage. He is no longer either a county magistrate or an honorary
citizen. He has done with all those qualities which make up a man's
social amiability. Here Vertessy is only a soldier, a rigorous,
inexorable commandant, who never overlooks a blunder, and never leaves a
fault unpunished.

As regards the good school children, you could give them no better
encouragement than to say to them: "The General is coming and will pat
you on the shoulder!" but there was nothing so terrible to the bad
school children as to be threatened with the General if they did not
learn their lessons. "You'll be sent to the General, and he will tap you
from the shoulder to the heel and make another man of you in
double-quick time," people used to say to them.

At any rate, so much is certain: the most stubborn, pig-headed louts,
whom no school would keep at any price, when sent, despite the tears and
protests of their fond mothers, to the General's establishment, used to
return from thence in a couple of years or so as if transformed. They
had become orderly, methodical, manly fellows, courteous, tractable, and
as spick and span as if they had just been taken out of a band-box. As
to what exactly happened to them during their manipulation in this same
military band-box not one of them was ever known to allude in a boastful
spirit; but the lay mind had a very strong su