clever glance, gentle smile, manly and mellow voice--everything about
him pleased and attracted one.

'All right, listen then,' he began.

It happened in 1813, before Dantzig. I was then in the E---- regiment of
cuirassiers, and had just, I recollect, been promoted to be a cornet. It
is an exhilarating occupation--fighting; and marching too is good enough
in its way, but it is fearfully slow in a besieging army. There one sits
the whole blessed day within some sort of entrenchment, under a tent, on
mud or straw, playing cards from morning till night. Perhaps, from
simple boredom, one goes out to watch the bombs and redhot bullets
flying.

At first the French kept us amused with sorties, but they quickly
subsided. We soon got sick of foraging expeditions too; we were
overcome, in fact, by such deadly dulness that we were ready to howl for
sheer _ennui_. I was not more than nineteen then; I was a healthy
young fellow, fresh as a daisy, thought of nothing but getting all the
fun I could out of the French... and in other ways too... you
understand what I mean... and this is what happened. Having nothing to
do, I fell to gambling. All of a sudden, after dreadful losses, my luck
turned, and towards morning (we used to play at night) I had won an
immense amount. Exhausted and sleepy, I came out into the fresh air, and
sat down on a mound. It was a splendid, calm morning; the long lines of
our fortifications were lost in the mist; I gazed till I was weary, and
then began to doze where I was sitting.

A discreet cough waked me: I opened my eyes, and saw standing before me
a Jew, a man of forty, wearing a long-skirted grey wrapper, slippers,