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ous but haughty politeness was not a whit shaken by the calamitous position of his country, and who wished to treat the great events of the campaign as among the transient reverses which war deals out, on this side, to-day, on that, to-morrow. I told that my confidence in the impregnable character of Kuffstein only raised a smile, for it had already been surrendered to the Tyrolese; and I summed up my political conjectures by suggesting that there was enough of calm confidence in the minister's manner to induce me to suspect that they were calculating on the support of the northern powers, and had not given up the cause for lost. I knew for certain that a Russian courier had arrived and departed since my own coming; and although the greatest secrecy had attended the event, I ascertained the fact, that he had come from St. Petersburg, and was returning to Moscow, where the Emperor Alexander then was. Perhaps I was a little piqued, I am afraid I was, at the indifference manifested at my own presence, and the little, or indeed no importance, attached to my prolonged stay. For when I informed Count Stadion that I should await some tidings from Vienna, before returning thither, he very politely expressed his pleasure at the prospect of my company, and proposed that we should have some partridge shooting, for which the country along the Danube is famous. The younger brother of this minister, Count Ernest Stadion, and a young Hungarian magnate, Palakzi, were my constant companions. They were both about my own age, but had only joined the army that same spring, and were most devoted admirers of one who had already won his epaulettes as a colonel in the French service. They showed me every object of interest and curiosity in the neighborhood, arranged parties for riding and shooting, and, in fact, treated me in all respects like a much valued guest--well repaid, as it seemed, by those stories of war and battlefields which my own life and memory supplied. My improved health was already noticed by all, when Metternich sent me a most polite message, stating, that if my services at Vienna could be dispensed with for a while longer, that it was hoped I would continue to reside where I had derived such benefit, and breathe the cheering breezes of Hungary for the remainder of the autumn. It was full eight-and-twenty years later that I accidentally learned to what curious circumstance I owed this invitation. It chanced that the young
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