Then came she near again, And hover’d o’er the plain Where I sat listening to my darling’s long love-story. “Art ready now?” she cried: “O, no! no!” I replied, “My heart is now in all its fullest prime and glory!” A third time came she near: “Now!” said she, “now prepare! For I must have thy heart to mould at my good pleasure!” “Here, take it!” I replied, And pluck’d it from my side (For I in sooth was half a-weary of my treasure). “But what is this?” says she, And flung it back to me; “A stone! O traitor! thou shalt rue this jesting turn!” She wing’d her flight away, And I to shriek and pray For that dear angel, who would never more return. FRENCH AND ENGLISH STAFF OFFICERS. Louis de Bonfils is a captain in the corps of état-major, or the staff corps of France. I have known him for several years, and always found him an honourable upright soldier; in every sense of the word, a gentleman. According to our insular ideas of decorum, the captain is, perhaps, rather too much given to swaggering about with his hands in the far-down pockets of his red trousers, and is slightly addicted to swearing when ladies are not by. An English cavalry captain might think Louis awfully slow, because he does not know or care anything about racing, is proud of, and wears, his uniform at all times and on all occasions, and has but one suit of plain clothes to his name. Moreover, since he commenced his career in the army, the captain has thought of, and worked for, nothing but his profession, and has, consequently, succeeded in making himself what the state pays him to be--a useful active wheel in the great mass of French military machinery. Not but that my friend has his failings and shortcomings like other men; but he knows full well that unless he keeps pace with--and, to do so, he must strive to outrun--his comrades on the staff in the race for professional pre-eminence, he will be cast aside as a useless encumbrance on the army list of France. Besides his rank of captain in the staff corps, Louis de Bonfils is attached to the depôt général de la guerre at Paris; where he is assisting, together with several others of his own rank and regiment, in completing a magnificent series of military maps of France, on a larger scale than any that have yet been published. The captain lately returned from the Crimea, where he was attached as aide-de-camp to the staff of a general of division; but, being sent to Paris in charge of some valuable topographical papers relating to Russia--which he had compiled when in camp by order of his superiors--the minister of war attached him, for the present, to the aforesaid depôt de la guerre.