"I am entirely serious!" answered my father. "The problem of an army and its pay I propose to solve by enlisting volunteers; and the difficulty of feeding my troops (I had forgotten it and thank you for reminding me) will be minimized by enlisting as few as possible. Myself and Prosper make two; Priske, here, three; I would fain have you accompany us, Gervase, but the estate cannot spare you. Let me see--" He drummed for a moment on the table with his fingers. "We ought to have four more at least, to make a show: and seven is a lucky number." "You seriously design," my uncle demanded, "to invade the island of Corsica with an army of seven persons?" "Most seriously I do. For consider. To begin with, this Theodore-- a vain hollow man--brought but sixteen, including many non-combatants, and yet succeeded in winning a crown. You will allow that to win a crown is a harder feat than to succeed to one. On what reckoning then, or by what Rule-of-Three sum, should Prosper, who goes to claim what already belongs to him, need more than seven? "Further," my father continued, "it may well be argued that the fewer he takes the better; since we sail not against the Corsicans but against their foes, and therefore should count on finding in every Corsican a soldier for our standard. "Thirdly, the Corsicans are a touchy race, whom it would be impolitic to offend with a show of foreign strength. "Fourthly, we must look a little beyond the immediate enterprise, and not (if we can help it) saddle Prosper's kingdom with a standing army. For, as Bacon advises, that state stands in danger whose warriors remain in a body and are used to donatives; whereof we see examples in the turk's Janissaries and the Pretorian Bands of Rome. "And fifthly, we have neither the time nor the money to collect a stronger force. The occasion presses: and _fronte capillata est, post haec Occasio calva_. Time turns a bald head to us if we miss our moment to catch him by the forelock." "The Abantes," put in Mr. Grylls, "practised the direct contrary: of whom Homer tells us that they shaved the forepart of their heads, the reason being that their enemies might not grip them by the hair in close fighting. I regret, my dear Sir John, you never warned me that you designed Prosper for a military career. We might have bestowed more attention on the warlike customs and operations of the ancients." My father sipped his wine and regarded the Vicar benevolently. For closest friends he had two of the most irrelevant thinkers on earth and he delighted to distinguish between their irrelevancies. "But I would not," he continued, "have you doubt that the prime cause of our expedition is to deliver my lady from the Genoese; or believe that Prosper will press his claims unless she acknowledge them." "I am wondering," said my uncle, "where you will find your other four men."