well enough for a field marshal. I really think I could give you a commission without much stickling of my conscience. No, no! I should like you nearer me. I have a good mind to make you my master of the horse; that is to say, when I am entitled to have one."
As Vivian acknowledged the young Baroness' compliment by becoming emotion, and vowed that an office near her person would be the consummation of all his wishes, his eye caught the lady's: she blushed deeply, looked down upon her horse's neck, and then turned away her head.
Von Sohnspeer's pavilion excellently became the successful leader of the army of Reisenburg. Trophies taken from all sides decked its interior. The black eagle of Austria formed part of its roof, and the brazen eagle of Gaul supported part of the side. The grey-headed General looked rather grim when he saw a flag belonging to a troop which perhaps he had himself once commanded. He vented his indignation to the toothless Bishop, who crossed his breast with his fingers, covered with diamonds, and preached temperance and moderation in inarticulate sounds.
During the collation the conversation was principally military. Madame Carolina, who was entirely ignorant of the subject of discourse, enchanted all the officers present by appearing to be the most interested person in the tent. Nothing could exceed the elegance of her eulogium of "petit guerre." The old grey General talked much about the "good old times," by which he meant the thirty years of plunder, bloodshed, and destruction, which were occasioned by the French Revolution. He gloated on the recollections of horror, which he feared would never occur again. The Archduke Charles and Prince Schwartzenburg were the gods of his idolatry, and Nadasti's hussars and Wurmser's dragoons the inferior divinities of his bloody heaven. One evolution of the morning, a discovery made by von Sohnspeer himself, in the deploying of cavalry, created a great sensation; and it was settled that it would have been of great use to Desaix and Clairfait in the Netherlands affair of some eight-and-twenty years ago, and was not equalled even by Seidlitz' cavalry in the affair with the Russians at Zorndorff. In short, every "affair" of any character during the late war was fought over again in the tent of Field Marshal von Sohnspeer. At length from the Archduke Charles and Prince Schwartzenburg, the old grey-headed General got to Polybius and Monsieur Folard; and the Grand Duke now thinking that the "affair" was taking too serious a turn,