A fair share of these windfalls had been the lot of De Pontis, and his excellent discipline and perfect knowledge of military tactics had extorted, on several occasions, from the French monarchs, presents of rare value. Still every year saw him grow poorer. And how happened it? Returning once from a campaign in Germany, laden with gold, and a dozen fine horses, the spoil of the Austrian archduke’s stud, he was swindled out of the whole between Strasburg and Paris, by a youngster travelling the same route in grand style, calling himself Baron De Champoleon—but who was really only son of a poor minister of Nismes. Already an adept in roguery, he was on the road to Paris, intent on villanous practices, when he fell in with the unfortunate De Pontis. Our _militaire_ bore the loss philosophically, only exclaiming, “If he had but left me my favorite hack, _Millefleurs_, I should have been content!” Twice he had been taken prisoner, losing horses and personal property, and obliged to instruct relatives at home to sell more paternal acres to pay ransom—the alternative being to submit to a dreary _parole_ confinement in a remote town in Germany, and await the dubious and uncertain chance of an exchange of prisoners. On the last occasion that this calamity occurred, the distress was greatly aggravated by the dishonesty of the party through whom the funds raised for his ransom were conveyed—making necessary a second sale of land. But without adding to the catalogue of untoward events, let it suffice to say, that circumstances which to most people, and on most occasions, proved instances of good fortune, were to the old soldier harbingers of ill-luck and misfortune. “My poor De Pontis never prospers!” exclaimed the good-natured Louis one day, on hearing that the veteran had lost a diamond-ring, a late royal gift. His wife dead, there remained only for the solace of old age, his fair daughter, Marguerite. Deeply as she felt her father’s distresses, fondly as she endeavored to hide her grief, and contribute by every art to his comfort, it proved that the damsel herself oftener stood in need of consolation than the veteran sufferer. He possessed such a fund of resignation, flow of strong animal spirits, and a heart void of high ambitious views, aiming only at duty and loyalty, that the shafts of misfortune lost much of their power. Not so with Marguerite; though her father bore up manfully against adversity, yet she had witnessed one parent droop, pine and fall beneath the successive strokes of ill fortune, and despondency and gloom gathered around her young heart.