Moreover, the General used to have guilty soldiers tied up and well whipped without first stopping to inquire who their fathers might be. With him punishment was meted out with no regard for persons. It was the uniform, not the man who happened to be inside it, that he regarded. When his soldiers were drawn up in line he was quite blind to the fact that this man perhaps was the son of his old crony, or that man was the son of a county magistrate—sergeants, corporals, ensigns, and privates, these were the only distinctions he ever made. And if anybody tried to distinguish himself by appearing on parade in a dirty jacket, he had it well dusted for him there and then in a way the individual concerned was not likely to forget in a hurry.
Nor did the General ever allow anybody, no matter whom, to be exempted from service. The dear little gentlemen-cadets had to pace up and down when on guard, with seven-pound muskets across their shoulders, just like anybody else, though the hearts of their distinguished mammas almost broke at the sight, when they drove over in their fine coaches to see their darlings. Malingerers, again, had a fearful time of it with him. Such young gentlemen never wanted to go to the hospital more than once. Their distinguished mammas would scurry off to the General full of despair, and explain to him with tears in their eyes that this or that young exquisite lay mortally sick in the hospital, would he allow them to take their poor darlings home, or at least let them come to the hospital to nurse the invalids there, or send them nice tempting dishes from home, or tell the family doctor to call? No, nothing of the sort. The General used to receive them buttoned up to the chin, and nothing on earth could move him. The proper place for the fellow was the barrack-hospital, he would say, there he would receive proper treatment like any other of His Majesty's soldiers; the regimental surgeons had quite sufficient science to cure him. And it regularly happened that after a four or five days' course of a platter of coarse barley pottage, and half an ounce of plain black commissariat bread, the young gentleman was so completely cured of every bodily ailment that he had never the faintest wish ever afterwards to divert himself in the hospital, but preferred instead to attend to his daily duties.
Nor could his officers boast that he showed them any special indulgence. It was really terrible how he contrived to fill up their time all day long: instruction, regimental practice, writing, calculation, technical studies filled up every hour of the day. The smoking-rooms of the cafés and the civic promenades very rarely saw Vértessy's officers gathered together there. The officers had to know everything which the General asked them about, and were often obliged to work out for themselves, with the aid of their mother wit, the details of their extremely laconic instructions. Everyone knew, too, that he could not endure the slightest suspicion of cowardice; if an officer were insulted, he was obliged to fight in defence of his honour, or the regiment was made too hot to hold him. If, on the other hand, the townsmen got to know anything of the details of these duels, he would punish severely all the officers concerned in the affair, for he placed boastfulness on the same level as cowardice. Such severity had this good effect however, that the soldiers tried to live amicably with the townsmen as they knew very well that it would be impossible to keep dark a duel with any of the black-coated gentry, such an event was certain to be an object of common gossip in all four quarters of the town within twenty-four hours.
It was also a recognised fact throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom that the officers of Vértessy's regiment were all well instructed, orderly, serious men, and that this result was due entirely to the initiative of "the iron man," for this was the name most usually and very naturally applied to him.
And his face, figure, and expression, corresponded with the name. He was of a tall, straight, well-knit-together habit of body, with broad shoulders and a well-rounded chest. His head seemed almost too small for his extraordinary developed body, especially as the chestnut-brown hair was clipped quite short. His face was of a deep red, and shaved to the chin, but a pair of small well kept semicircular whiskers helped to give it character. His nose was straight, his mouth small; his eyes were grey and piercing. And everything on this face: nose, mouth, eyes, down to the smallest feature, seemed one and all to be under the most rigorous military discipline, not one of them was suffered to move without the General's command. When once his features are under orders to be coldly severe, the lips may not give expression to joy, the eyes may not be clouded with sorrow, the eyebrows may not contract with rage, or lead anyone to suspect, by so much as a twitch or a jerk, that anything in the world outside has the slightest influence upon the business he may happen to have on hand.
We may add that the General did not acquire this honourable title in times of peace. Formerly, beneath the walls of Dresden, when he was a lieutenant scarcely five-and-twenty years old, he had earned it by holding a position on the battle-field as stubbornly as if he had really been made of cast iron, whereby a totally defeated army corps was saved from the annihilating pursuit of the triumphant foe. Even the enemy's general had inquired on this occasion: "Who is that man of iron who will neither break nor bend?" That, then, was how he had won the epithet "iron."
Subsequently the nickname was applied in jest or flattery; you could take it as spite, fear, or homage, according to the manner in which it was pronounced, naturally always behind the General's back, for it went very hard indeed with the man who ventured to pick a quarrel with him, and still harder, if possible, with anybody who tried to flatter him.
In the ante-chamber of "the iron man" stood an orderly with a big sealed dispatch in his hand, a tall grenadier-sort of warrior, with two stiffly twisted moustachios, the pointed ends of which projected like a couple of fixed bayonets. A deep scar furrowed each of his red cheeks from end to end, a living testimony to the fact that this warrior was no mere sucking soldier. His chin was planted firmly on his stiff cravat and half hidden by the broad loop of his shako. His jacket was as white as chalk, and his buttons shone as if they were fresh from the shop. On his bosom gleamed gloriously the large copper medal of which the veterans of former days used to be so proud. The warrior was standing motionless behind the door, with the big sealed dispatch in his bosom; not a muscle of him moves, his heels are pressed close together at attention, his eyes now and then glance furtively from side to side, but his neck does not stir the least little bit.
The oblique motion of his eyes, however, is explicable by the fact that a trim little wench, a nursery-maid from some village hard by, with a round radiant face, with her hair trailing down her back in ribboned pigtails, is rummaging about the room as if she had no end of work to do there, casting furtive sheep's eyes from time to time at the upright soldier, and looking as if she would very much like to say to him: "Oh! how frightened I am of you!"