PETKOFF.
They wouldn’t let us make a fair stand-up fight of it. However, I suppose soldiering has to be a trade like any other trade.
SERGIUS.
Precisely. But I have no ambition to succeed as a tradesman; so I have taken the advice of that bagman of a captain that settled the exchange of prisoners with us at Peerot, and given it up.
PETKOFF.
What, that Swiss fellow? Sergius: I’ve often thought of that exchange since. He over-reached us about those horses.
SERGIUS.
Of course he over-reached us. His father was a hotel and livery stable keeper; and he owed his first step to his knowledge of horse-dealing. (With mock enthusiasm.) Ah, he was a soldier—every inch a soldier! If only I had bought the horses for my regiment instead of foolishly leading it into danger, I should have been a field-marshal now!
CATHERINE.
A Swiss? What was he doing in the Servian army?
PETKOFF.
A volunteer of course—keen on picking up his profession. (Chuckling.) We shouldn’t have been able to begin fighting if these foreigners hadn’t shewn us how to do it: we knew nothing about it; and neither did the Servians. Egad, there’d have been no war without them.
RAINA.
Are there many Swiss officers in the Servian Army?
PETKOFF.
No—all Austrians, just as our officers were all Russians. This was the only Swiss I came across. I’ll never trust a Swiss again. He cheated us—humbugged us into giving him fifty able bodied men for two hundred confounded worn out chargers. They weren’t even eatable!
SERGIUS.
We were two children in the hands of that consummate soldier, Major: simply two innocent little children.
RAINA.
What was he like?