I had no writing-materials, but I had just composed a long letter to the “Times” on “the outrageous treatment and false imprisonment of a British subject in Austria,” when my door was opened by a thin, lank-jawed, fierce-eyed man in uniform, who announced himself as the Rittmeister von Mahony, of the Keyser Hussars. “A countryman--an Irishman,” said I, eagerly, clasping his hand with warmth. “That is to say, two generations back,” replied he; “my grandfather Terence was a lieutenant in Trenck's Horse, but since that none of us have ever been out of Austria.” If these tidings fell coldly on my heart, just beginning to glow with the ardor of home and country, I soon saw that it takes more than two generations to wash out the Irishman from a man's nature. The honest Rittmeister, with scarcely a word of English in his vocabulary, was as hearty a countryman as if he had never journeyed out of the land of Bog. He had beard “all about it,” he said, by way of arresting the eloquent indignation that filled me; and he added, “And the more fool myself to notice the matter;” asking me, quaintly, if I had never heard of our native maxim that says, “One man ought never to fall upon forty.” “Well,” said he, with a sigh, “what's done can't be undone; and let us see what's to come next? I see you are a gentleman, and the worse luck yours.” “What do you mean by that?” asked I. “Just this: you'll have to fight; and if you were a 'Gemeiner'--a plebeian--you'd get off.” I turned away to the window to wipe a tear out of my eye; it had come there without my knowing it, and, as I did so, I devoted myself to the death of a hero. “Yes,” said I, “_she_ is in this incident--she has her part in this scene of my life's drama, and I will not disgrace her presence. I will die like a man of honor rather than that her name should be disparaged.” He went on to tell me of my opponent, who was brother to a reigning sovereign, and himself a royal highness,--Prince Max of Swabia. “He was not,” he added, “by any means a bad fellow, though not reputed to be perfectly sane on certain topics.” However, as his eccentricities were very harmless ones, merely offshoots of an exaggerated personal vanity, it was supposed that some active service, and a little more intercourse with the world, would cure him. “Not,” added he, “that one can say he has shown many signs of amendment up to this, for he never makes an excursion of half-a-dozen days from home without coming back filled with the resistless passion of some young queen or archduchess for him. As he forgets these as fast as he imagines them, there is usually nothing to lament on the subject. Now you are in possession of all that you need know about _him_. Tell me something of yourself; and first, have you served?” “Never.” “Was your father a soldier, or your grandfather?” “Neither.” “Have you any connections on the mother's side in the army?” “I am not aware of one.”