"Wingarti's dragoons are all puppies, and think more of their mustaches than their muskets." "And this Count of Carlstein has two women in his train--ha! ha!" said Tilly, with a sardonic laugh, as he unbuckled his waist-belt and laid his long rapier on the table; "two women, Kœningheim--the man is mad!" "He introduced them as his daughters," replied the other, colouring a little with vexation. "A mere trick--daughters, cousins, and sisters have been introduced to me thus before! You cunning fellows begin to think me stupid." "On my honour, Count Tilly, I swear to you they are his daughters." "What faith you have in their mother! Daughters! well, well, so much the worse--a wise man truly to lead a column of infantry--one who has daughters! I do not love to have women following our army, Kœningheim. I have known many a brave fellow lost to Austria and God's service by the fascinations of that subtle sex, whose sole object is to create passions and rivalry among gallant men, without feeling in their own hearts one spark of this so-called love, of which idlers rave and poets sing." "Your excellency is speaking like the Jesuit you were, and not like the brave soldier you are," replied Count Albert, with a cold smile. "I am speaking like a man of common sense, Kœningheim," retorted Tilly, grasping the knobs of his arm-chair, and turning his snakelike eyes upon the broad honest face of the colonel of Reitres. "Beware you of their snares, count; and recollect that the first object of an Imperialist cavalier is the cause of God and of the Emperor--the Cross and the Eagle; that all private sympathies must yield to the public good. By the wiles of a woman, Adam lost his innocence, Samson his strength, and Mark Antony the fruit of all his victories. Ah! beware of them, Kœningheim, beware of them!" added Tilly, drawing his lean legs out of his enormous boots. "No man," saith Saint Jerome, "can serve God with a whole heart, if he hath any transactions with a woman." "Corpo di Baccho! but one may very well lead a regiment of horse, serve the emperor, and love a pretty woman occasionally," said the aide-de-camp, twirling his mustaches; "the fact is, count, that what suited Saint Jerome well enough, will not suit me, or Merodé, or Wingarti, or any of us but yourself, who are quite a model of a man! Women are called the pious sex, and I have no doubt Saint Jerome had a high opinion of them in his time." "So had Cornelius Agrippa," sneered Tilly; "he wrote a notable treatise on female excellence, and yet withal divorced his third wife. Ha! ha! What make up the sum of this love thou pratest about! Rich gauds, billets-doux, sighs, and treachery! I have seen many a gallant man, who had hewn a passage through a forest of pikes, become a woman's plaything--then flung aside and forgotten, as a toy is forgotten by a child."