His face was good, his hair dark, forehead without a wrinkle, high and massive, eyes bright and sparkling, nose neither fine nor dumpy--a fair enough proboscis as noses go. There was an expression about the upper lip and mouth that I did not like--a constant nervous sort of lifting of the lip as it were; and as the mustache appeared to have been recently shaven off, there was a white blueness on the upper lip, that contrasted unpleasantly with the dark tinge which he had gallantly wrought for on the glowing sands of Egypt, and the bronzing of his general features from fierce suns and parching winds. His bare neck and hands were delicately fair, the former firm and muscular, the latter slender and tapering, like a woman’s. He was reading a gazette, or some printed paper, when we entered; and although there was a tolerable clatter of muskets, sabres, and spurs, he never once lifted his eye in the direction where we stood. Opposite this personage, on a low chair, with his legs crossed, and eyes fixed on the ashes that were dropping from the stove, with his brown cloak hanging from his shoulders, sat a short stout personage, a man about thirty years of age, with fair flaxen hair, a florid complexion, a very fair skin, and massive German features. The expression of his face, so far as such a countenance could be said to have any characteristic expression, was that of fixed sorrow. But before I could make any other observation, the aide-de-camp approached with a good spice of fear and trembling, as I could see. “Colonel----to wait on your Highness.” “Ah!”--said the officer to whom he spoke,--“ah, colonel, what do you here? Has the Emperor advanced again?” “No,” said the officer, “he has not advanced; but the rear-guard were cut off by the Prussians, and the light, with the grenadiers, are now in Cuxhaven.” “Well,” replied the general, “but how come you here?” “Why, Marshal, we were detached to seize a depot of provisions in a neighbouring village, and had made preparations to carry them off, when we were attacked through a gap in the dike, by some armed boats from an English squadron, and hearing a distant firing at the very moment, which I concluded to be the Prussian advance, I conceived all chance of rejoining the main army at an end, and therefore I shoved off in the grain-boats, and here I am.” “Glad to see you, however,” said the general, “but sorry for the cause why you have returned.--Who have we got here--what boy is that?” “Why,” responded the colonel, “that lad is one of the British officers of the force that attacked us.” “Ha,” said the general again, “how did you capture him?” “The boat (one of four) in which he was, was blown to pieces by a six-pound shot. He was the only one of the enemy who swam ashore. The rest, I am inclined to think, were picked up by the other boats.” “So,” grumbled the general, “British ships in the Elbe!”