“Yes; I am, or rather I was, the Duc de Liancourt,” said the lieutenant, with an almost imperceptible struggle: “my present rank is Sous-Lieutenant of the Third Lancers. Now listen to me calmly for a few moments, and I hope to shew you, that in a country where a dreadful social earthquake has uprooted every foundation of rank, and strewed the ground with the ruins of every thing like prescription, it is nobler and better to shew that nobility could enter the lists, unaided by its prestige, and win the palm, among those who vainly boasted themselves better and braver. This we have done, not by assuming the monk’s cowl and the friar’s cord, but by carrying the knapsack and the musket; not by shirking the struggle, but by confronting it. Where is the taunt now against the nobility of France? whose names figure oftenest in the lists of killed and wounded? whose lot is it most frequently to mount first to the assault or the breach? No, no, take to the alb and the surplice if your vocation prompt it, but do not assume to say that no other road is open to a Frenchman because his heart is warmed by noble blood.” If Alfred was at first shocked by hearing assertions so opposed to all the precepts of his venerated tutor, he was soon ashamed of offering opposition to one so far more capable than himself of forming a just judgment on the question, while he felt, inwardly, the inequality of the cause for which he would do battle against--that glorious and triumphant one of which the young officer assumed the championship. Besides, De Liancourt’s history was his own; he had been bred up with convictions precisely like his, and might, had he followed out the path intended for him, been a priest at the very hour that he led a charge at Lodi. “I was saved by an accident,” said he. “In the march of Berthault’s division through Chalons, a little drummer-boy fell off a waggon when asleep, and was wounded by a wheel passing over him: they brought him to our château, where we nursed and tended him till he grew well. The Curé, wishing to snatch him as a brand saved from the burning, adopted him, and made him an acolyte; and so he remained till one Sunday morning, when the ‘Chasseurs gris’ marched through the town during mass. Pierre stole out to see the soldiers; he heard a march he had often listened to before; he saw the little drummers stepping out gaily in front; worse, too, _they_ saw him, and one called out to his comrades, ‘Regarde donc le Prêtre; ce petit drôle là--c’est un Prêtre.’ “‘Du tout,’ cried he; tearing off his white robe, and throwing it behind him, ‘Je suis tambour comme toi,’ and snatching the drum, he beat his ‘Ran tap-plan’ so vigorously and so well, that the drum-major patted him on the head and cheek, and away marched Pierre at the head of the troop, leaving Chalons, and Curé, and all behind him, without a thought or a pang.