the uniform of the despotic Frederick; as deeply skilled in
the ceremonial of a court as in the manoeuvring of an army; with a
glittering star on his left breast, that bore witness to the faithful
service he had rendered in his native Germany; and revolving in his
accurate mind designs which were to transform this mass of physical
strength, which Americans had dignified with the name of army, into a
real army which Frederick himself might have accepted. He had but little
English at his command as yet, but at his side there was a mercurial
young Frenchman, Peter Duponceau, who knew how to interpret both his
graver thoughts and the lighter gallantries with which the genial old
soldier loved to season his intercourse with the wives and daughters of
his new fellow-citizens. As the years passed away, Duponceau himself
became a celebrated man, and loved to tell the story of these checkered
days. Another German, too, De Kalb, was sometimes seen there, taller,
statelier, graver than Steuben, with the cold, observant eye of the
diplomatist, rather than the quick glance of the soldier, though a
soldier too, and a brave and skillful one; caring very little about the
cause he had forsaken his noble chateau and lovely wife to fight for,
but a great deal about the promotion and decorations which his good
service hero was to win him in France; for he had made himself a
Frenchman, and served the King of France, and bought him French lands,
and married a French wife. Already before this war began, he had come
hither in the service of France to study the progress of the growing
discontent; and now he was here again an American major-general, led
partly by the ambition of rank, partly by the thirst of distinction, but
much, too, by a certain restlessness of nature, and longing for
excitement and action, not to be wondered at in one who had fought his
way up from a butlership to a barony. He and Steuben had served on
opposite sides during the Seven Years War, though born both of them on
the same bank of the Rhine; and though when Steuben first came, De Kalb
was in Albany, yet in May they must have met more than once. How did
they feel towards each other, the soldier of Frederick, and the soldier
of Louis? If we had known more about this, we should have known better,
perhaps, why Lafayette, a fast friend of De Kalb, speaks of the
"methodic mediocrity" of Steuben, and Steuben of the "vanity and
presumption" of the young major-general.

In t