ke, in every age," said the
Count, laughing. "It now and then takes a virtuous fit, and affects
to be better than it used to be; but I shrewdly suspect that the only
difference is in the hypocritical pretension. When I entered the service
and it is not so many years ago that I cannot recollect it the cant was,
to resemble that rough school of the days of old Frederick and Maria
Teresa. Trenck's 'Pandours,' with their scarlet breeches stuffed into
their wide boot-tops, were the mode; and to wear your moustache to your
shoulders to cry 'Bey'm Henker!' and 'Alle Blitzen!' every moment, were
the veritable types of the soldier. Now we have changed all that.
We have the Anglomania of English grooms and equipages, top-boots,
curricles, hurdle-races, champagne suppers. Dalton will be the ton in
his regiment, and any extravagance he likes to launch into certain to
have its followers."

The youth blushed deeply; partly in conscious pride at the flattery,
partly in the heartfelt shame at its inappropriateness to himself; and
even the sincerity with which his comrades drank his health, could not
drown the self-reproaches he was suffering under.

"Thou art an only son, too, Dalton!" said another. "What favors fortune
will shower upon one happy fellow! Here I am, one of seven; and although
my father is a count of the empire, four of us have to take service in
the infantry."

"What of that?" said a dark-complexioned fellow, whose high cheek-bones
and sharp under-jaw bespoke a Pole. "I am a second lieutenant in the
regiment that my grandfather raised and equipped at his own cost; and
if I were to lose a thousand florins at lansquenet to-morrow, I 'd be
broke, like the meanest 'bursch' in the corps."

"It's better to be a rich Englander," cried one.

"And with a field-marshal for a grand-uncle!" chimed in another.

"And a 'Maria Teresa' to ask for thy grade as officer," said a third.

"It's a jolly service to all of us," said a young Bohemian, who,
although but a cadet, was a prince, with a princely fortune. "I ask for
nothing but a war to make it the best life going."

"A war with whom?" cried several together.

"What care I with whom or where? With Prussia, if you will, to fight out
our old scores about Frauconia; with Russia, if you like better, for the
Danubian provinces, and her Servian supremacy; with France she 's
always ready, with a cause or without one; with Italy to round off our
frontier, and push our limits to the