"Your majesty, will you allow me to present my sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, and great-great-grandsons? They are all in my regiment."
"The Eleventh Cuirassiers of Herberstein, your majesty," added the
Duke of Lorraine.
"Ah," cried the emperor, in a voice intended to be heard by all the men, "that is an old and renowned regiment. Were you in it, Christopher, when it was commanded by the great Dampierre in 16l9?"
"Yes, your majesty, I was the first man enrolled. I was there when the regiment rescued the Emperor Ferdinand from a body of insurgents, who had surrounded his imperial palace, and were trying to compel him to abdicate. Just as they were forcing the gates, the trumpets of Dampierre sounded an alarm, and the emperor was saved. The cuirassiers galloped into the midst of the insurgents, and dispersed them like so many cats."
"And to reward their loyalty and opportune aid," cried the emperor, "Ferdinand conferred upon the Eleventh Cuirassiers the privilege of riding through Vienna, trumpet sounding and colors flying, and of pitching their tents on the Burgplatz." [Footnote: This is historical, and in 1819, on the two hundredth anniversary of the rescue, the privilege was extended to the present time.—See Austrian Plutarch.]
"Hurrah! Hurrah! The emperor knows our history," shouted Christopher
Ill.
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" echoed the regiment, and once more through the plains of Kitsee rang the jubilant cry, "Long live Leopold! Long live our emperor!"
"And now," said the emperor, when the shouts had died away, "now let me see your children, my brave veteran.—Baron Dupin," added Leopold, addressing himself to the colonel of the regiment, "will you permit them to step out of their ranks?"
Baron Dupin bowed, and, riding to the front with drawn sword, he called out: "All the descendants of Christopher Ill—forward!"
There was a general movement among the cuirassiers, and fifty-four men rode up, and clustered around their common ancestor. There were bronzed faces with white beards—others with gray; there were men in the prime of life, and others in the flower; there were youths approaching manhood, and lads that had scarcely emerged from childhood; but from peeping bud to fruit that was about to fall, they one and all resembled their parent stem; every mother's son of them had Christopher Ill's aquiline nose, and large, sparkling eyes.