‘Shall I show you, General?’ cried a quick little subaltern.

’The order, my children, as received a fortnight since from our old Wien, commands you to offer the other cheek to the smiter.’

‘So that a proper balance may be restored to both sides of the face,’ General Pierson appended.

‘And mark me,’ he resumed.  ’There may be doubts about the policy of anything, though I shouldn’t counsel you to cherish them:  but there’s no mortal doubt about the punishment for this thing.’  The General spoke sternly; and then relaxing the severity of his tone, he said, ’The desire of the Government is to make an army of Christians.’

‘And a precious way of doing it!’ interjected two or three of the younger officers.  They perfectly understood how hateful the Viennese domination was to their chiefs, and that they would meet sympathy and tolerance for any extreme of irony, provided that they showed a disposition to be subordinate.  For the bureaucratic order, whatever it was, had to be obeyed.  The army might, and of course did, know best:  nevertheless it was bound to be nothing better than a machine in the hands of the dull closeted men in Vienna, who judged of difficulties and plans of action from a calculation of numbers, or from foreign journals—­from heaven knows what!

General Schoneck and General Pierson walked away laughing, and the younger officers were left to themselves.  Half-a-dozen of them interlaced arms, striding up toward the Porta Nuova, near which, at the corner of the Via Trinita, they had the pleasant excitement of beholding a riderless horse suddenly in mid gallop sink on its knees and roll over.  A crowd came pouring after it, and from the midst the voice of a comrade hailed them.  ‘It’s Pierson,’ cried Lieutenant Jenna.  The officers drew their swords, and hailed the guard from the gates.  Lieutenant Pierson dropped in among their shoulders, dead from want of breath.  They held him up, and finding him sound, thumped his back.  The blade of his sword was red.  He coughed with their thumpings, and sang out to them to cease; the idle mob which had been at his heels drew back before the guard could come up with them.  Lieutenant Pierson gave no explanation except that he had been attacked near Juliet’s tomb on his way to General Schoneck’s quarters.  Fellows had stabbed his horse, and brought him to the ground, and torn the coat off his back.  He complained in bitter mutterings of the loss of a letter therein, during the first candid moments of his anger:  and, as he was known to be engaged to the Countess Lena von Lenkenstein, it was conjectured by his comrades that this lady might have had something to do with the ravishment of the letter.  Great laughter surrounded him, and he looked from man to man.  Allowance is naturally made for the irascibility of a brother officer coming tattered out of the hands of enemies, or Lieutenant Jenna would have construed his eye’s