MAJOR ANSPACH.
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FROM THE FRENCH OF MARC FOURNIER.
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CHAPTER I.
Major Anspach was an old gentleman who was as thin as he was long, nay, even thinner than he was long.
Forty years before the epoch when occurred, oh reader, the events we shall take the liberty to recount to you, the worthy major was the finest looking musqueteer in the regiment of Monsieur d’Artois. He possessed some fortune, belonged to one of the best families in Lorraine, could fence to admiration, and had a heart at the service of the fair sex. The ladies of the court and city, to whom a son of Mars is always irresistible, of course were not insensible to the attractions of a musqueteer of five feet eleven, and the major, on his part, was so gallant in his attentions to them, that his captain gave him the title of the Turenne of boudoirs.
But forty years leave some traces of their flight; Major Anspach in 1827 was the mere shadow of his former self, and retained of his vanished splendors only a scanty income of 800 livres, a pair of black plush pantaloons, a long snuff-colored overcoat, and a garret for which he paid forty crowns a year.