“We have here an original who is always getting into trouble. A good fellow, and an honest servant, but so incorrigibly kind-hearted that he is always breaking our rules. I shall have to be serious with him in spite of myself.” He poured out a cup of black coffee as he spoke, and set it with a bottle of maraschino and an open box of cigars at my elbow. I had scarcely selected and lit ray cigar, when there came a tap at the door; and at the lieutenant's call to enter a man in uniform came in, and, having closed the door behind him, stood rigidly at attention. Breschia addressed him in a tone of anger, which sounded real enough, and the man stood like a statue to receive his reproof. There was nothing in the least degree remarkable about the fellow, who was just a mere simple, common soldier. He was attired in a sort of fatigue costume, and looked and smelled as if he had just been sent away from stable duty. His short cropped hair was of a fiery auburn, and his rough features, with a prodigious mustache and the most ponderous over-beetling eyebrows I had ever seen, gave him a look rather of ferocity than of good-nature. But when in answer to the lieutenant's rating he began to excuse himself, it was evident even to an ear so untrained and ignorant as mine that he spoke in a language which was not his own. He spoke haltingly and stammeringly; and at last, despairing of making himself understood, he made a little motion of his hands without moving them from his sides, and so stood as if to receive sentence. Again Breschia spoke to him, and again the man responded. The lieutenant broke into a fit of laughter, and the man stood there immovable, with his little fingers at the seams of his canvas trousers, and his rugged visage frowning straight before him. “Go!” said the lieutenant, speaking, to my surprise, in his own halting English. “You are too much a silly fellow. Go; and do it not again.... Eh? Will you?” “Well, sir,” the man answered, speaking, to my astonishment, in good native-sounding English, “I'm sorry to displease, and I try to do my duty--” “Hold your tongue,” cried Breschia, and the man obeyed at once. “Behold a man,” cried the lieutenant, turning upon me and speaking in his customary French, “who has been in the English army, and who is as incapable of an idea of discipline as if he were a popular prima donna.” “Oh,” said I, turning round on the man and addressing him in English, “you have been in the army at home, I hear?” “Yes, sir,” he answered, saluting me as he had done the lieutenant on his entrance. “Two-and-twenty years, sir.” “You don't mind my talking to the fellow?” I asked the lieutenant, reverting to French again. “Pas du tout,” said the lieutenant. “Vous le trouverez bien bête, je vous promis.” “How long have you been in the Austrian service?” “Not in the service at all, sir. General's groom, sir.” “You're in fatigue dress?” “Yes, sir. Old custom, sir. Like the feel of it, sir.” “Been here long?”