I do not intend to make a history of battles in the Prussian any more than in the English service.  I did my duty in them as well as another, and by the time that my moustache had grown to a decent length, which it did when I was twenty years of age, there was not a braver, cleverer, handsomer, and I must own, wickeder soldier in the Prussian army.  I had formed myself to the condition of the proper fighting beast; on a day of action I was savage and happy; out of the field I took all the pleasure I could get, and was by no means delicate as to its quality or the manner of procuring it.  The truth is, however, that there was among our men a much higher tone of society than among the clumsy louts in the English army, and our service was generally so strict that we had little time for doing mischief.  I am very dark and swarthy in complexion, and was called by our fellows the ‘Black Englander,’ the ‘Schwartzer Englander,’ or the English Devil.  If any service was to be done, I was sure to be put upon it.  I got frequent gratifications of money, but no promotion; and it was on the day after I had killed the Austrian colonel (a great officer of Uhlans, whom I engaged—­singly and on foot) that General Bulow, my colonel, gave me two Frederics-d’or in front of the regiment, and said, ’I reward thee now; but I fear I shall have to hang thee one day or other.’  I spent the money, and that I had taken from the colonel’s body, every groschen, that night with some jovial companions; but as long as war lasted was never without a dollar in my purse.

CHAPTER VII

BARRY LEADS A GARRISON LIFE, AND FINDS MANY FRIENDS THERE

After the war our regiment was garrisoned in the capital, the least dull, perhaps, of all the towns of Prussia:  but that does not say much for its gaiety.  Our service, which was always severe, still left many hours of the day disengaged, in which we might take our pleasure had we the means of paying for the same.  Many of our mess got leave to work in trades; but I had been brought up to none:  and besides, my honour forbade me; for as a gentleman, I could not soil my fingers by a manual occupation.  But our pay was barely enough to keep us from starving; and as I have always been fond of pleasure, and as the position in which we now were, in the midst of the capital, prevented us from resorting to those means of levying contributions which are always pretty feasible in wartime, I was obliged to adopt the only means left me of providing for my expenses:  and in a word became the ORDONNANZ, or confidential military gentleman, of my captain.  I spurned the office four years previously, when it was made to me in the English service; but the position is very different in a foreign country; besides, to tell the truth, after five years in the ranks, a man’s pride will submit to many rebuffs which would be intolerable to him in an independent condition.