The General and his gracious lady were grand people. They had two
coats of arms on their carriage, a coat of arms for each of them, and the
gracious lady had had this coat of arms embroidered on both sides of every
bit of linen she had, and even on her nightcap and her dressing-bag. One of
the coats of arms, the one that belonged to her, was a very dear one; it had
been bought for hard cash by her father, for he had not been born with it,
nor had she; she had come into the world too early, seven years before the
coat of arms, and most people remembered this circumstance, but the
family did not remember it. A man might well have a bee in his bonnet,
when he had such a coat of arms to carry as that, let alone having to carry
two; and the General’s wife had a bee in hers when she drove to the court
ball, as stiff and as proud as you please.
The General was old and gray, but he had a good seat on horseback, and
he knew it, and he rode out every day, with a groom behind him at a proper
distance. When he came to a party, he looked somehow as if he were riding
into the room upon his high horse; and he had orders, too, such a number
that no one would have believed it; but that was not his fault. As a young
man he had taken part in the great autumn reviews which were held in those
days. He had an anecdote that he told about those days, the only one he
knew. A subaltern under his orders had cut off one of the princes, and taken
him prisoner, and the Prince had been obliged to ride through the town with
a little band of captured soldiers, himself a prisoner behind the General.
This was an ever-memorable event, and was always told over and over
again every year by the General, who, moreover, always repeated the
remarkable words he had used when he returned his sword to the Prince;
those words were, “Only my subaltern could have taken your Highness
prisoner; I could never have done it!” And the Prince had replied, “You are
incomparable.” In a real war the General had never taken part. When war
came into the country, he had gone on a diplomatic career to foreign courts.
He spoke the French language so fluently that he had almost forgotten his
own; he could dance well, he could ride well, and orders grew on his coat in
an astounding way. The sentries presented arms to him, one of the most
