The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

174 THB IIPlWTTUATOBB.
ant Rossi was employed by his colonel writing. in his tent.
Xalozy sat at some distance, reading letters and dictating
certain memoranda upon which the young man (who had
received a lair education from his uncle the priest) was employed
in transcribiI;g. The night was warm, the curtains
of the tent undrawn; suddenly a rush of balmy ak aeemed
to pass over the brow of the scribe, and a dim shadow fen
across the tent door.
" Eulalie !" muttered the young soldier; and for a moment
an impulse to spring away, into the wide, wide realma
of air, away forever, seemed to possess him; the next,
the still, dreamy ecstasy of France; and then'he saw Kalozy
- who sat directly behind him - placed like a picture
on his very table. He saw him knit his brow, contract his
lip, and then, with a face all seamed with discontent, draw
from his vest a letter, reading thus: -
.. You have either milltaken me or betrayed my trust, friend Hermann.
I told you I would have that beggar killed; and you send
home, or lI1l1I'er home to come, accounta of hill wondrous bravery
and prowess, until all those who read news of this war, and bulletins
of your most cursed imubordinate rebellious country, begin
to think the Italian organ grinding Ernest RolBi is going to tum
out another Bonaparte, and convert a handful of beggarly Hungarian
hordes, into a second imperial army •
.. I know, my worthy cousin, it matters little to you on which
!ride you fight. The bread that ill the best buttered tastes the be&t
to you, whether it be baked in Austria, Germany, or Hungary.
Must I tell you again, then, that whilst I am paying you handsomely
to do my work, that work ill to get Ernest RoIBi decently
killed, and not made a captain and a hero of'. Look at it, therefore;
unleu you can ftnd a better paymaster amongst the Austrians,
and as I am in more earnest than ever, the day that sends me
home news of the death and burial ot this interesting vagrant.. shan
Iign the deed which makes you master ot the long-coveted estate
and manor of Wallingford. So now choose, and that without