“Stay,” said the Prince. “Did you chance to hear the name of the prodigy whose single blackthorn foiled the attempt made by four thousand of the best troops in the Imperial service?”
“He is called, your Highness, the Sieur O’Byrne.”
“O’Byrne! O’Byrne! an Irishman!” exclaimed the Prince.
The Governor bowed.
“But you told me there were no Irishmen in Brissach.”
“There was only one.”
“Only one!” The Prince arrested his thumb as he was lifting up a pinch of snuff. He made a gesture of dismissal and the Governor retired.
“Only one,” the Prince repeated when he was alone. “If there had been a hundred it is more than probable the Governor of Freiburg would never have found his way back from Brissach.”
The Prince made up for his interrupted pinch, and dabbed at both nostrils as he moved to the window. The cannonade, which had been going on for some hours, had ceased, but a puff of smoke from the trenches, followed by a report, showed that the firing was kept up in a desultory fashion. The Prince’s eyes rested for a second on the portrait of the Emperor on his snuff-box. “The loss of Brissach,” he said half aloud, “was a severe blow to the Emperor. I had recovered it for him if it were not for that infernal Irishman with his blackthorn. Pardieu, but it is worse than Cremona!” And the Prince, of whom it has been written that his “passion was for glory and his appetite for snuff,” flicking up the lid of the precious box, scooped up between finger and thumb what was left, and as he sniffed the fragrant but strong powder, “I must get more snuff,” he said.