ds you to offer the other cheek to the smiter.'

'So that a proper balance may be restored to both sides of the face,'
General Pierson appended.

'And mark me,' he resumed. 'There may be doubts about the policy of
anything, though I shouldn't counsel you to cherish them: but there's
no mortal doubt about the punishment for this thing.' The General spoke
sternly; and then relaxing the severity of his tone, he said, 'The
desire of the Government is to make an army of Christians.'

'And a precious way of doing it!' interjected two or three of the
younger officers. They perfectly understood how hateful the Viennese
domination was to their chiefs, and that they would meet sympathy
and tolerance for any extreme of irony, provided that they showed a
disposition to be subordinate. For the bureaucratic order, whatever it
was, had to be obeyed. The army might, and of course did, know best:
nevertheless it was bound to be nothing better than a machine in the
hands of the dull closeted men in Vienna, who judged of difficulties
and plans of action from a calculation of numbers, or from foreign
journals--from heaven knows what!

General Schoneck and General Pierson walked away laughing, and
the younger officers were left to themselves. Half-a-dozen of them
interlaced arms, striding up toward the Porta Nuova, near which, at the
corner of the Via Trinita, they had the pleasant excitement of beholding
a riderless horse suddenly in mid gallop sink on its knees and roll
over. A crowd came pouring after it, and from the midst the voice of
a comrade hailed them. 'It's Pierson,' cried Lieutenant Jenna. The
officers drew their swords, and hailed the guard from the gates.
Lieutenant Pierson dropped in among their shoulders, dead from want of
breath. They held him up, and finding him sound, thumped his back. The
blade of his sword was red. He coughed with their thumpings, and sang
out to them to cease; the idle mob which had been at his heels drew back
before the guard could come up with them. Lieutenant Pierson gave no
explanation except that he had been attacked near Juliet's tomb on his
way to General Schoneck's quarters. Fellows had stabbed his horse, and
brought him to the ground, and torn the coat off his back. He complained
in bitter mutterings of the loss of a letter therein, during the first
candid moments of his anger: and, as he was known to be engaged to the
Countess Lena von Lenkenstein, it was conjectured by his comrades that