nd every
Pashalic paid its blackmail for peace' sake."

"Thou are a lucky dog, Dalton, to find thy promotion and an inheritance
thus secured to thee."

"When thou has a regiment, lad, don't forget us poor devils here, that
have no uncles in the 'Maria Teresa' category."

"I 'll lay my life on't, that he is a colonel before I become
Rittmeister," said a young lieutenant of dragoons, "and I have had five
years' hard service in Galicia and Servia."

"And why not?" broke in Count Walstein, who sat silently up to
this smoking his meerschaum in a corner. "Has the empire lost its
aristocratic character? Are not birth and blood to have their claims, as
of old?"

This speech met a ready acceptance, for the company consisted of those
who either were, or affected to be, of noble extraction.

"How our fathers deceive themselves in trying to deceive us!" said a
young Hungarian cadet. "I, too, was sent off to join my regiment on
foot. Just fancy to walk from Arad to Presburg! I, that never went
twenty miles in my life save on the saddle. They fitted me with my
knapsack, just such a thing as Dalton's. I suppose about as many florins
jingled in my purse as in his. They gave me their blessing and a map of
the road, with each day's journey marked out upon it. And how far did
I go afoot, think'st thou? Two miles and a half. There I took an 'Eil
Bauer,' with four good horses and a wicker caleche, and we drove our
sixty, sometimes seventy miles a day. Each night we put up at some good
country house or other Honyadi's Ctzyscheny's Palfi's; all lay on the
road, and I found out about fifty cousins I never knew of before, and
made a capital acquaintance, too, the Prince Paul of Ettlingen, who,
owning a regiment of Light Dragoons, took me into his corps, and, when
I joined them at Leutmeritz, I was already an officer. What stuff it
is they preach about economy and thrift! Are we the sons of peasants
or petty shopkeepers? It comes well, too, from them in their princely
chateaux to tell us that we must live like common soldiers. So that,
while yesterday, as it were, I sat at a table covered with silver, and
drank my Tokay from a Venetian glass, tomorrow I must put up with sour
Melniker, or, mayhap, Bavarian beer, with black bread, and a sausage
to help it down! Our worthy progenitors knew better in their own young
days, or we should not have so many debts and mortgages on our estates
eh, Walstein?"

"I suppose the world is pretty much ali