Not that he ever gave offence to man or woman, prince or peasant girl, willingly or knowingly. The gentle tailor lad of the remote Bohemian village was ever gentle, yet not undetermined, at the council boards and levées of kings. Never was there man more gallant. It is said of the late Duke of Wellington that, at past fourscore, he, in one day, attended early morning prayer, gave away two brides, transacted business at the Horse Guards, took his usual rides, made his ordinary visits, was present at a council and a “Drawing-room,” looked in at one or two exhibitions, entertained forty people at dinner, gave a ball after it, and escorted the last of the fair dancers to her carriage, gallantly saluting her as she stepped therein at sunrise! This was a well-spent day for a veteran; and it was just such a day as Dörfling loved to pass, full of mingled pastime and business. For it was his maxim, as it was the Duke’s, that a man must be _doing_ something, unless he wished to become the devil’s man. And so, at various courts, the gallant old Dörfling was an example of activity courteously performed, to all who cared to profit by it. As ambassador, he was highly welcome whithersoever his credentials took him; and it was said of him that his suavity was such, that an unwelcome missive delivered by him fell less harshly on the ears, than a compliment from the lips of messengers not so exquisitely trained in the school of _bienséance_. Not that Dörfling lacked language to apply properly to acts which displeased him. Had the Czar stolen his “carpet-bag,” as that stupendous felon did Sir G. H. Seymour’s, the German soldier would have called him an arrant knave, and not a “gracious sovereign,” as the British diplomatist did, in his excessive good-nature. Dörfling lived to enter his ninetieth year! When he passed from the shop-board to the barracks, people accounted of him as a man who, in abandoning a peaceful calling for a perilous vocation, had committed a sort of early suicide. There were plenty of old tailors, it was said, but very few aged soldiers,—at least, sound ones. It may be doubted however, humanly speaking, whether he would have lived half so long as a quiet, meditative tailor, as he did by exposing himself to be shot at, moderately computated, once an hour during nearly three-quarters of a century of his subsequent life.