While I slept my lady and the Waldgrave came and began to walk up and down the terrace, and gradually little bits of their talk slid into my dreams, until I found myself listening to them between sleeping and waking. The Waldgrave was doing most of the speaking, in the boyish, confident tone which became him so well. Presently I heard him say--
'The whole art of war is changed, fair cousin. I had it from one who knows, Bernard of Weimar. The heavy battalions, the great masses, the slow movements, the system invented by the great Captain of Cordova are gone. Breitenfeld was their death-blow.'
'Yet my uncle was a great commander,' my lady said, with a little touch of impatience in her tone.
'Of the old school.'
I heard her laugh. 'You speak as if you had been a soldier for a score of years, Rupert,' she said.
'Age is not experience,' he answered hardily. 'That is the mistake. How old was Alexander when he conquered Egypt? Twenty-three, cousin, and I am twenty-three. How old was the Emperor Augustus when he became Consul of Rome? Nineteen. How old was Henry of England when he conquered France? Twenty-seven. And Charles the Fifth, at Pavia? Twenty-five.'
'Sceptres are easy leading-staves,' my lady answered deftly. 'All these were kings, or the like.'
'Then take Don John at Lepanto. He, too, was twenty-five.'
'A king's son,' my lady replied quickly.
'Then I will give you one to whom you can make no objection,' he answered in a tone of triumph: 'Gaston de Foix, the Thunderbolt of Italy. He who conquered at Como, at Milan, at Ravenna. How old was he when he died, leaving a name never to be forgotten in arms? Twenty-three, fair cousin. And I am twenty-three.'