. Here,
however, was Gustavus Adolphus, in a small inn, in a small village of
Warwickshire, on an autumn evening in the year 1705; and at the very
moment when this history begins, he and Mr. Brock, his corporal and
friend, were seated at a round table before the kitchen-fire while a
small groom of the establishment was leading up and down on the
village green, before the inn door, two black, glossy, long-tailed,
barrel-bellied, thick-flanked, arch-necked, Roman-nosed Flanders horses,
which were the property of the two gentlemen now taking their ease at
the "Bugle Inn." The two gentlemen were seated at their ease at the inn
table, drinking mountain-wine; and if the reader fancies from the sketch
which we have given of their lives, or from his own blindness and belief
in the perfectibility of human nature, that the sun of that autumn
evening shone upon any two men in county or city, at desk or harvest, at
Court or at Newgate, drunk or sober, who were greater rascals than
Count Gustavus Galgenstein and Corporal Peter Brock, he is egregiously
mistaken, and his knowledge of human nature is not worth a fig. If they
had not been two prominent scoundrels, what earthly business should we
have in detailing their histories? What would the public care for
them? Who would meddle with dull virtue, humdrum sentiment, or stupid
innocence, when vice, agreeable vice, is the only thing which the
readers of romances care to hear?

The little horse-boy, who was leading the two black Flanders horses up
and down the green, might have put them in the stable for any good that
the horses got by the gentle exercise which they were now taking in the
cool evening air, as their owners had not ridden very far or very hard,
and there was not a hair turned of their sleek shining coats; but the
lad had been especially ordered so to walk the horses about until he
received further commands from the gentlemen reposing in the "Bugle"
kitchen; and the idlers of the village seemed so pleased with the
beasts, and their smart saddles and shining bridles, that it would have
been a pity to deprive them of the pleasure of contemplating such an
innocent spectacle. Over the Count's horse was thrown a fine red cloth,
richly embroidered in yellow worsted, a very large count's coronet and a
cipher at the four corners of the covering; and under this might be
seen a pair of gorgeous silver stirrups, and above it, a couple of
silver-mounted pistols reposing in bearskin ho