he fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for
two reasons, "captain of crows." In the first place, he could smell
powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly,
the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position
in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious
Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy
forbade him to bear his title in the French service) was one of the
handsomest men in the army. This beauty may have been among the secret
causes of his prudence on fighting days. A wound which might have
injured his nose, cleft his forehead, or scarred his cheek, would have
destroyed one of the most beautiful Italian faces which a woman ever
dreamed of in all its delicate proportions. This face, not unlike the
type which Girodet has given to the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at
Cairo," was instinct with that melancholy by which all women are more or
less duped.

The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his income
was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of certain
Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined
himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon a public
a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly. A fine
future was therefore before him, and he did not care to risk it for the
paltry distinction of a bit of red ribbon. He was not a brave man, but
he was certainly a philosopher; and he had precedents, if we may use so
parliamentary an expression. Did not Philip the Second register a vow
after the battle of Saint Quentin that never again would he put himself
under fire? And did not the Duke of Alba encourage him in thinking that
the worst trade in the world was the involuntary exchange of a crown
for a bullet? Hence, Montefiore was Philippiste in his capacity of rich
marquis and handsome man; and in other respects also he was quite as
profound a politician as Philip the Second himself. He consoled himself
for his nickname, and for the disesteem of the regiment by thinking
that his comrades were blackguards, whose opinion would never be of any
consequence to him if by chance they survived the present war, which
seemed to be one of extermination. He relied on his face to win him
promotion; he saw himself made colonel by feminine influence and a
carefully managed transition from captain of equipment to orderly
officer, and