Catherine: A Story | Page 5

engaged in the British service, he
had a tolerably fair claim to the majestic title of Briton. His name was
Peter Brock, otherwise Corporal Brock, of Lord Cutts's regiment of
dragoons; he was of age about fifty-seven (even that point has never
been ascertained); in height about five feet six inches; in weight, nearly
thirteen stone; with a chest that the celebrated Leitch himself might
envy; an arm that was like an opera-dancer's leg; a stomach so elastic
that it would accommodate itself to any given or stolen quantity of food;
a great aptitude for strong liquors; a considerable skill in singing
chansons de table of not the most delicate kind; he was a lover of jokes,
of which he made many, and passably bad; when pleased, simply
coarse, boisterous, and jovial; when angry, a perfect demon: bullying,
cursing, storming, fighting, as is sometimes the wont with gentlemen of
his cloth and education.

Mr. Brock was strictly, what the Marquis of Rodil styled himself in a
proclamation to his soldiers after running away, a hijo de la guerra--a
child of war. Not seven cities, but one or two regiments, might contend
for the honour of giving him birth; for his mother, whose name he took,
had acted as camp-follower to a Royalist regiment; had then obeyed the
Parliamentarians; died in Scotland when Monk was commanding in
that country; and the first appearance of Mr. Brock in a public capacity
displayed him as a fifer in the General's own regiment of Coldstreamers,
when they marched from Scotland to London, and from a republic at
once into a monarchy. Since that period, Brock had been always with
the army, he had had, too, some promotion, for he spake of having a
command at the battle of the Boyne; though probably (as he never
mentioned the fact) upon the losing side. The very year before this
narrative commences, he had been one of Mordaunt's forlorn hope at
Schellenberg, for which service he was promised a pair of colours; he
lost them, however, and was almost shot (but fate did not ordain that
his career should close in that way) for drunkenness and
insubordination immediately after the battle; but having in some
measure reinstated himself by a display of much gallantry at Blenheim,
it was found advisable to send him to England for the purposes of
recruiting, and remove him altogether from the regiment where his
gallantry only rendered the example of his riot more dangerous.
Mr. Brock's commander was a slim young gentleman of twenty-six,
about whom there was likewise a history, if one would take the trouble
to inquire. He was a Bavarian by birth (his mother being an English
lady), and enjoyed along with a dozen other brothers the title of count:
eleven of these, of course, were penniless; one or two were priests, one
a monk, six or seven in various military services, and the elder at home
at Schloss Galgenstein breeding horses, hunting wild boars, swindling
tenants, living in a great house with small means; obliged to be sordid
at home all the year, to be splendid for a month at the capital, as is the
way with many other noblemen. Our young count, Count Gustavus
Adolphus Maximilian von Galgenstein, had been in the service of the
French as page to a nobleman; then of His Majesty's gardes du corps;
then a lieutenant and captain in the Bavarian service; and when, after
the battle of Blenheim, two regiments of Germans came over to the

winning side, Gustavus Adolphus Maximilian found himself among
them; and at the epoch when this story commences, had enjoyed
English pay for a year or more. It is unnecessary to say how he
exchanged into his present regiment; how it appeared that, before her
marriage, handsome John Churchill had known the young gentleman's
mother, when they were both penniless hangers-on at Charles the
Second's court;--it is, we say, quite useless to repeat all the scandal of
which we are perfectly masters, and to trace step by step the events of
his history. Here, however, was Gustavus Adolphus, in a small inn, in a
small village of Warwickshire, on an autumn evening in the year 1705;
and at the very moment when this history begins, he and Mr. Brock, his
corporal and friend, were seated at a round table before the kitchen-fire
while a small groom of the establishment was leading up and down on
the village green, before the inn door, two black, glossy, long-tailed,
barrel-bellied, thick-flanked, arch-necked, Roman-nosed Flanders
horses, which were the property of the two gentlemen now taking their
ease at the "Bugle Inn." The two gentlemen were seated at their ease at
the inn table, drinking mountain-wine; and if the reader fancies from
the sketch which we have given of their lives, or