Probably no two beings could present a much stronger contrast than the two who now journeyed along side by side. The one, rich, highly placed, and distinguished with every gift of fortune at his command, and yet pleasure-sick, weary, and discontented; the other, poor, and almost friendless, full of hope, and ardent with all the buoyancy of youth. The Count was as jaded and tired of life as the cadet was eager to enjoy it. Notwithstanding perhaps we should rather say in virtue of these strong contrarieties, they made admirable travelling companions, and the road slipped away unconsciously to each.
At Innspruck they halted for a day or two, and Frank accompanied his new friend to the cafes and theatres, mingling in the throng of those whose life is a round of easy dissipation. It is true that, to conform by dress and demeanor with these, Frank was obliged to spend the golden coins of Nelly's purse; louis after louis went in some one extravagance or another, sacrifices that cost him many a pang, but which, from pride, he bore up against with seeming indifference. Walstein presented him everywhere as the nephew of the old field-marshal Von Auersberg; and as nothing was more common than to see a young cadet dispensing the most lavish sums, with equipages, liveries, and servants, none seemed surprised that the youth should indulge in these habits and tastes of extravagance. His very enjoyment seemed like an earnest of being long habituated to these modes of life, for whether he played or drank, or in whatever excesses he mingled, there was ever the same joyous spirit; and Frank Dalton had all the outward signs of a youth rich in every accident of fortune. At first, thoughts of his humble home and of those by whose sacrifices he was enabled to indulge in such costly pleasures would cross his mind, and, what between shame and sorrow, he felt degraded and debased before himself; but, by degrees, the levity of action induced, as it ever will do, the levity of thinking; and he suffered himself to believe that “he was no worse than others.” A more fatal philosophy than this, youth never adopted, and he who seeks a low standard rarely stops till he falls beneath even that. Frank's pride of family made him vain, and his vanity made him credulous; he therefore implicitly believed all that his new companions told him, the familiar “thee and thou” of camaraderie giving an air of friendship to all the flatteries.
“Were I a nephew of a field-marshal like thee, I'd not serve in an infantry corps. I 'd be in the Lichtenstein Hussars or the Lancers of the Kaiser,” said one.
“So he will,” cried another. “Dalton only joined the Franz Carl to get his promotion quickly. Once at Vienna, he will be an officer, and ready to exchange his regiment.”
“Old Auersberg can make thee what he will, lad,” said a third. “He might have been Minister of War himself, if he had liked it. The Emperor Franz loved him as a brother.”
“And he is rich, too, no one knows how rich,” broke in a fourth. “He commanded for many years on the Turkish frontier, in those good days when our Grenzers used to make forays upon the villages, and every Pashalic paid its blackmail for peace' sake.”
“Thou are a lucky dog, Dalton, to find thy promotion and an inheritance thus secured to thee.”
“When thou has a regiment, lad, don't forget us poor devils here, that have no uncles in the 'Maria Teresa' category.”
“I 'll lay my life on't, that he is a colonel before I become Rittmeister,” said a young lieutenant of dragoons, “and I have had five years' hard service in Galicia and Servia.”
“And why not?” broke in Count Walstein, who sat silently up to this smoking his meerschaum in a corner. “Has the empire lost its aristocratic character? Are not birth and blood to have their claims, as of old?”