I had seen that the true secret of this great tactician, for such unquestionably he was, consisted in his rejecting the superfluities and retaining the substance; in reducing tactics to the ready application of force, and in simplifying the old and tardy manoeuvres of the French and Austrian battalions, to the few expeditious and essential formations required before an enemy in the field. I was offered the adjutancy, and I accepted it rejoicingly. In those days, by a curious anomaly, which can scarcely be believed in ours, every regiment was practically free to choose its own system of manoeuvre. The natural consequence was, that no two regiments did any thing alike. To brigade the army was impossible, and every field-day was a scene of ludicrous confusion. But this freedom had the advantage, in the present instance, of allowing me to introduce that Prussian discipline which has since been made the basis of the British. It was then perfectly new, and it had all the effect of brilliant novelty. Our parade was constantly crowded with officers of the highest grades, anxious to transmit our practice to their regiments. The king, always attached to German recollections, and who would have made as good a soldier as any of his forefathers, was frequently a spectator. The princes and nobility were constant in their attendance; and the regiment, thus stimulated, rapidly displayed all the completeness and precision of movement which to this day makes a review of the Guards the finest military spectacle of Europe. The adjutant was not forgotten in the general applause and excitement. I was promised promotion in the most gratifying language of royalty itself, and all the glittering prospects of the most glittering of all pursuits opened before me. I still had my moments of depression. Clotilde often rose before me like a departed spirit in the solitude of my chamber, and even in the midst of public festivities, or in those balls and banquets which the nobility gave in such profusion at this period of the year. When a shape, however faintly resembling her incomparable elegance of form, passed before my eye, or a voice, in the slightest degree reminding me of her noble tones, reached my ear, I felt an irresistible pang, that, for the time, embittered all the scene around me.