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'Are you a Protestant? 'No, your Majesty, Catholic. 'See, IHR HERREN, said the King to those about him; 'Warkotsch is a Protestant; his Curatus Schmidt is a Catholic; and this man is a Catholic: there are villains and honest people in every creed! Nobody can help his luck. Take a bit of dinner with us, anyway! Rittmeister refused; but the Baroness too pressed him; he at length sat down.
But, just when things were looking hopeless, over the top of the parapet leaped the two runners, unarmed but irresistible. With blazing eyes they flung themselves on that old Rittmeister, and while one of them downed him with a blow under the chin we heard the voice of the other uplifted in a new slogan: 'Give over, will you, old turnip-head!
Next, I think, in order of delight, came "Quentin Durward," especially the hero of the scar, whose name Thackeray could not remember, Quentin's uncle. Then "The Black Dwarf," and Dugald, our dear Rittmeister. I could not read "Rob Roy" then, nor later; nay, not till I was forty. Now Di Vernon is the lady for me; the queen of fiction, the peerless, the brave, the tender, and true.
And I could not help picturing to my mind the head of the man it had belonged to, some Rittmeister, with an eyeglass, fat pink cheeks and neck bulging over the collar of his tunic. What a pity he had been able to decamp! That is the kind of countenance we should so much have liked to see closer and face to face. But I could not wait.
I fancied that among them might be found that Rittmeister with the bulging neck and pink cheeks, who, after the orgy of that night at the Château de Condé, had left behind him the cap that I had found hanging from the chandelier in the dining-room. How I longed to see the brigade debouch, and to receive instructions from the Colonel! I had not long to wait.
There was nothing for it but to leave instantly and to seek safety in America. His rank was that of rittmeister in the hussars, and he had nothing to do but enlist in the cavalry. He was penniless and starving when he reached Truscott's quarters, and her face, bending over him as he rallied from his swoon, had haunted him day and night with its beauty, its sympathy and tenderness.
As he said this a clatter of wheels and chains caused me to turn my head, and I saw behind us, in the stubble-fields of the plateau, two batteries of 75's taking up positions. Ah! ah! we were going to send them our greetings then, a salute to the pompous General over there, and to his aide-de-camp, the stiff and obsequious Rittmeister, whom I imagined to be at his side.
In Prussia promotion to Oberleutnant averages 10 years, to captain or Rittmeister 15 years, to major 25 years, to colonel 33 years, and to general 37 years. It would not be altogether inhuman if these gentlemen occasionally drank a toast to war and pestilence!
There are no more field-marshals like Nugent than major-generals like O'Connell. I might be made a Rittmeister, and if I lived long enough, and was not superannuated, a major; but there my ambition must cease. 'And you are content with that prospect? 'Of course I am not. I go back to it with something little short of despair. 'Why go back, then?
And I well remember thinking, at the moment that I made this stroke and so saved my life by it, for the fellow was pressing me very closely how happy it would have made the old Rittmeister could he have seen me deliver it.
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