f levying contributions which are always pretty feasible in
wartime, I was obliged to adopt the only means left me of providing
for my expenses: and in a word became the ORDONNANZ, or confidential
military gentleman, of my captain. I spurned the office four years
previously, when it was made to me in the English service; but the
position is very different in a foreign country; besides, to tell the
truth, after five years in the ranks, a man's pride will submit to many
rebuffs which would be intolerable to him in an independent condition.

The captain was a young man and had distinguished himself during the
war, or he would never have been advanced to rank so early. He was,
moreover, the nephew and heir of the Minister of Police, Monsieur de
Potzdorff, a relationship which no doubt aided in the young gentleman's
promotion. Captain de Potzdorff was a severe officer enough on parade or
in barracks, but he was a person easily led by flattery. I won his heart
in the first place by my manner of tying my hair in queue (indeed,
it was more neatly dressed than that of any man in the regiment),
and subsequently gained his confidence by a thousand little arts and
compliments, which as a gentleman myself I knew how to employ. He was a
man of pleasure, which he pursued more openly than most men in the stern
Court of the King; he was generous and careless with his purse, and he
had a great affection for Rhine wine: in all which qualities I sincerely
sympathised with him; and from which I, of course, had my profit. He was
disliked in the regiment, because he was supposed to have too intimate
relations with his uncle the Police Minister; to whom, it was hinted, he
carried the news of the corps.

Before long I had ingratiated myself considerably with my officer,
and knew most of his affairs. Thus I was relieved from many drills and
parades, which would otherwise have fallen to my lot, and came in for a
number of perquisites; which enabled me to support a genteel figure and
to appear with some ECLAT in a certain, though it must be confessed very
humble, society in Berlin. Among the ladies I was always an especial
favourite, and so polished was my behaviour amongst them, that they
could not understand how I should have obtained my frightful nickname of
the Black Devil in the regiment. 'He is not so black as he is painted,'
I laughingly would say; and most of the ladies agreed that the private
was quite as well-bred as the captain: as inde