eges of masculine beauty.

This captain of a renown to come pretended that a superb Venetian lady
of the Branciani family was bound to make response in public to his
private signals, and publicly to reply to his salutations. He refused to
be as a particle in space floating airily before her invincible aspect.
Meeting her one evening, ere sweet Italy had exiled herself from the
Piazza, he bowed, and stepping to the front of her, bowed pointedly.
She crossed her arms and gazed over him. He called up a thing to her
recollection in resonant speech. Shameful lie, or shameful truth, it was
uttered in the hearing of many of his brother officers, of three Italian
ladies, and of an Italian gentleman, Count Broncini, attending them. The
lady listened calmly. Count Broncini smote him on the face. That evening
the lady's brother arrived from Venice, and claimed his right to defend
her. Captain Weisspriess ran him through the body, and attached a
sinister label to his corpse. This he did not so much from brutality;
the man felt that henceforth while he held his life he was at war with
every Italian gentleman of mettle. Count Broncini was his next victim.
There, for a time, the slaughtering business of the captain stopped.
His brother officers of the better kind would not have excused him at
another season, but the avenger of their irritation and fine vindicator
of the merits of Austrian steel, had a welcome truly warm, when at the
termination of his second duel he strode into mess, or what serves for
an Austrian regimental mess.

It ensued naturally that there was everywhere in Verona a sharp division
between the Italians of all classes and their conquerors. The great
green-rinded melons were never wheeled into the neighbourhood of the
whitecoats. Damsels were no longer coquettish under the military glance,
but hurried by in couples; and there was much scowling mixed with
derisive servility, throughout the city, hard to be endured without that
hostile state of the spirit which is the military mind's refuge in
such cases. Itinerant musicians, and none but this fry, continued to be
attentive to the dispensers of soldi.

The Austrian army prides itself upon being a brotherhood. Discipline is
very strict, but all commissioned officers, when off duty, are as free
in their intercourse as big boys. The General accepts a cigar from the
lieutenant, and in return lifts his glass to him. The General takes an
interest in his lieutenant's love