This captain of a renown to come pretended that a superb Venetian lady of the Branciani family was bound to make response in public to his private signals, and publicly to reply to his salutations.  He refused to be as a particle in space floating airily before her invincible aspect.  Meeting her one evening, ere sweet Italy had exiled herself from the Piazza, he bowed, and stepping to the front of her, bowed pointedly.  She crossed her arms and gazed over him.  He called up a thing to her recollection in resonant speech.  Shameful lie, or shameful truth, it was uttered in the hearing of many of his brother officers, of three Italian ladies, and of an Italian gentleman, Count Broncini, attending them.  The lady listened calmly.  Count Broncini smote him on the face.  That evening the lady’s brother arrived from Venice, and claimed his right to defend her.  Captain Weisspriess ran him through the body, and attached a sinister label to his corpse.  This he did not so much from brutality; the man felt that henceforth while he held his life he was at war with every Italian gentleman of mettle.  Count Broncini was his next victim.  There, for a time, the slaughtering business of the captain stopped.  His brother officers of the better kind would not have excused him at another season, but the avenger of their irritation and fine vindicator of the merits of Austrian steel, had a welcome truly warm, when at the termination of his second duel he strode into mess, or what serves for an Austrian regimental mess.

It ensued naturally that there was everywhere in Verona a sharp division between the Italians of all classes and their conquerors.  The great green-rinded melons were never wheeled into the neighbourhood of the whitecoats.  Damsels were no longer coquettish under the military glance, but hurried by in couples; and there was much scowling mixed with derisive servility, throughout the city, hard to be endured without that hostile state of the spirit which is the military mind’s refuge in such cases.  Itinerant musicians, and none but this fry, continued to be attentive to the dispensers of soldi.

The Austrian army prides itself upon being a brotherhood.  Discipline is very strict, but all commissioned officers, when off duty, are as free in their intercourse as big boys.  The General accepts a cigar from the lieutenant, and in return lifts his glass to him.  The General takes an interest in his lieutenant’s love-affairs:  nor is the latter shy when he feels it his duty modestly to compliment his superior officer upon a recent conquest.  There is really good fellowship both among the officers and in the ranks, and it is systematically encouraged.