nt of no
one. Liked for his ready, broad military qualities, it was a matter of
comment, nevertheless, that no one knew anything about him except that
he had served in the French army and was highly esteemed by General
Scott as a daring and proficient engineer.

One evening shortly before the skirmish of Antigua, a small Mexican
town had been ransacked, where were found cattle, bales of tobacco,
pulque and wine. At the rare feast which followed a veteran drank to
his wife; a young man toasted his sweetheart, and a third, with moist
eyes, sang the praises of his mother. In the heart of the enemy's
land, amid the uncertainties of war, remembrance carried them back to
their native soil, rugged New England, the hills of Vermont, the
prairies of Illinois, the blue grass of Kentucky.

"Saint-Prosper!" they cried, calling on him, when the festivities were
at their height.

"To you, gentlemen," he replied, rising, glass in hand. "I drink to
your loved ones!"

"To your own!" cried a young man, flushed with the wine.

Saint-Prosper gazed around that rough company, brave hearts softened
to tenderness, and, lifting his canteen, said, after a moment's
hesitation:

"To a princess on a tattered throne!"

They looked at him in surprise. Who was this adventurer who toasted
princesses? The Mexican war had brought many soldiers of fortune and
titled gentlemen from Europe to the new world, men who took up the
cause more to be fighting than that they cared what the struggle was
about. Was the "tattered throne" Louis Philippe's chair of state, torn
by the mob in the Tuileries? And what foreign princess was the lady of
the throne? But they took up the refrain promptly, good-naturedly, and
a chorus rolled out:

"To the princess!"

Little they knew she was but a poor stroller; an "impudent,
unwomanish, graceless monster," according to Master Prynne.

After leaving the commanding general's tent, Saint-Prosper retired to
rest in that wilderness which had once been a monarch's pleasure
grounds. Now overhead the mighty cypresses whispered their tales of
ancient glory and faded renown; the wind waved those trailing beards,
hoary with age; a gathering of venerable giants, murmuring the days
when the Aztec monarch had once held courtly revels under the grateful
shadows of their branches. The moaning breeze seemed the wild chant of
the Indian priest in honor of the war-god of Anahuac. It told of
battles to come and conflicts which would l