Juana | Page 4

in soldier phrase, to be fighting his
own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of belonging to the
6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air of a man who was
ready to demolish everything; but his brother officers did not esteem
him. The 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 from orderly officer to
aide-de-camp on the staff of some easy-going marshal. By that time, he

reflected, he should come into his property of a hundred thousand scudi
a year, some journal would speak of him as "the brave Montefiore," he
would marry a girl of rank, and no one would dare to dispute his
courage or verify his wounds.
Captain Montefiore had one friend in the person of the quartermaster,
--a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was
Diard. A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist,
consoles for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two
philosophers, who consoled each other for their present lives by the
study of vice, as artists soothe the immediate disappointment of their
hopes by the expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its
results, not its action; they simply considered those who died for glory
fools. Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural
proclivities would have seated them at the green table of a congress.
Nature had poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard
into that of a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous,
feverish, half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good
or evil, and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these
singular temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a
base one. The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the
pressure, more or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by
violent and transitory passions.
Diard was considered a good accountant, but no soldier would have
trusted him with his purse or his will, possibly because of the antipathy
felt by all real soldiers against the bureaucrats. The quartermaster was
not without courage and a certain juvenile generosity, sentiments which
many men give up as they grow older, by dint of