"Chevalier," returned the captain, "I return the confidence. I am called Captain Brand, of the Coldstream Guards--have just sold out, and to all I am merely St. Udo Brand--at your service." They shook hands and lit cigars. The captain felt irresistibly drawn to the little chevalier; he liked him amazingly from the first. He was handsome; he had a square brow, brown eyes, ruddy cheeks, firm mouth, enormous nut-brown mustache, and a full, glossy beard. He was attractive; there was intelligence in the bold forehead, penetration in the beaming eye, a purpose in the closely-fitting lips, and withal a playful, airy, insolent, cheery frankness which illumined nearly the whole face. He stood revealed, brisk, and ready for business, the nimble Chevalier de Calembours. "You are en route for America? So am I--we will be comrades," quoth the chevalier. "With all my heart! Yes, I go to join the army. I shall either find fame or death in the American war." "Bah! I go to court the jade Fortune. She has jilted me of late. I would feed my wrinkled purse with American dollars, _ma foi!_ that purse is famishing just now." "You are not pure French?" demanded the captain. "_Mon Dieu!_ no," rasped monsieur, with a shrug. "I am cosmopolite, yes." "Where is your birthplace?" "The Hungary, _mon ami_. Have been in Vienna, in Geneva, in Turin, and for the rest--everywheres." "You omit England?" "Ah, I did not live in England. I saw it, no more." "Yet you speak English well." "I am flattered. I have the habitude of the languages; they count me an expert. Insisted on giving me the post of Professor of the modern languages in the University of Berlin." "But it was not as a knight of the ferule that you won this mark of distinction?" laughed the captain, touching a fluttering badge which depended from the chevalier's button-hole. "_Ma foi! non!_ I am Magyar, and that is to say patriot and warrior in one. I combat under the gaze of our glorious Kossuth; but there are times when even valor himself must fly, and the sword of the brave must change, in the stranger's land, to the plowshare, the pen--anything to keep the wolf from the door. But the ferule, the pen, the pestle, I abhor. I hear the blast of the trumpet, I return to my first loves. I cross to Algiers. I fight my way up till I win my _grade_, and this bagatelle. Nothing more there to pick. I looked around; the rays of glory are beginning to gild the long slumbering west. I leave the ancient world, and sinking my illustrious personality, I forget that I am Count of the Order of Santo Spirito, Turin; that I wear the ribbon of Legion of Honor, and am to throw myself among these Republican hordes, and to fight knee by knee with the mob. Enough!" he concluded; "to you I shall be but Ludovic, _mon ami_. Come--do you play?" "I play, chevalier. I am at your service," answered the captain. The chevalier preceded his new friend to his state-room, and ushered him in with "effusion."