"Who is that?" said I to Heinzel.
The German rose from his seat, walked round the fire, and drew the cloak collar a little aside, disclosing a set of features of mild and agreeable expression. The man was not asleep, or else the touching of his cloak awakened him, for I saw the firelight glance upon his eyes; but he said nothing, and Heinzel returned to his place.
"It is Franz Schmidt."
I knew this young man well, although he belonged to a different squadron, as an exceedingly clean well-behaved soldier, and one of the most daring fellows that ever threw leg over saddle. In fact, from the colonel downwards, no man was better known than Schmidt. He was a splendid horseman, and had attracted notice upon almost the first day he joined, by a feat of equitation. There was a horse which had nearly broken the heart of the riding-master, and the bones of every man who had mounted him. The brute would go pretty quietly in the riding-school, but as soon as he got into the ranks, he took offence at something or other—whether the numerous society, the waving of pennons, or the sounds of the trumpet, it was impossible to decide—and started off at the top of his speed, kicking and capering, and playing every imaginable prank. The rough-riders had all tried him, but could make nothing of him. Still, as he was a showy young horse, the colonel was loath to have him cast; when one day, as we went out to drill, and Beelzebub, as the men had baptised the refractory beast, had just given one of the best horsemen in the regiment a severe fall, Schmidt volunteered to mount him. His offer was accepted. He was in the saddle in a second; but before his right foot was in the stirrup, or his lance in the bucket, the demon was off with him, over a stiff wall and a broad ditch, and across a dangerous country, at a slapping pace. Schmidt rode beautifully. Nothing could stir him from his saddle; he endured the buck-leaps and other wilful eccentricities of his headstrong steed with perfect indifference, and amused himself, as he flew over the country, by going through the lance-exercise, in the most perfect manner I ever beheld. At last he got the horse in hand, and circled him in a large heavy field, till the sweat ran off his hide in streams; then he trotted quietly back to the column. From that hour he rode the beast, which became one of the best and most docile chargers in the corps. Beelzebub had found his master, and knew it.
The attention Schmidt drew upon himself by this incident, was sustained by subsequent peculiarities in his conduct. The captain of his troop wished to have him made a corporal; but he refused the grade, although he might be well assured it would lead to higher ones. He preferred serving as a private soldier, and did his duty admirably, but was more popular with his officers than with his comrades, on account of his reserved manner, and of the little disposition he showed to share the sports or revels of the latter. Before the enemy he was fearless almost to a fault, exposing his life for the mere pleasure, as it seemed, of doing so, whenever the opportunity offered. He did not cotton much, as the phrase goes, with any one, but in his more sociable moments, and when their squadrons happened to be together, he was more frequently seen with Heinzel than with any body else. In manner he was very mild and quiet, exceedingly silent, and would sometimes pass whole days without opening his lips, save to answer to his name at roll-call.
To return, however, to Master Heinzel. I was resolved to learn something of his history, and, by way of drawing him out, began to speak to him of his native country, generally the best topic to open a German's heart, and make him communicative. Heinzel gave into the snare, and gradually I brought him to talk of himself. I asked him if he had been a soldier in his own country—thinking it possible he might be a deserter, from some German service; but his reply was contradictory of this notion.
"All my service has been in Spain, sir," he said; "and it is not two years since I first put on a soldier's coat, although in one sense, I may say, I was born in the army. For I first saw light on the disastrous day of Wagram, and my father, an Austrian grenadier, was killed at the bridge of Znaym. My mother, a sutler, was wounded in the breast by a spent ball whilst supporting his head, and trying to recall the life that had fled for ever; and although she thought little of the hurt at the time, it occasioned her death a few months afterwards."
"A melancholy start in the world," I remarked. "The regiment should have adopted and made a soldier of the child born within sound of cannon, and deprived of both father and mother by the chances of war."
"Better for me if the regiment had, I dare say," replied Heinzel; "but somebody else adopted me, and by the time I was old enough to do something for myself, fighting was no longer in fashion. I might think myself lucky that I was not left to die by the road-side, for in those days soldiers' orphans were too plenty for one in a hundred to find a foster-father."
"And who acted as yours?"