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Rosbach had been fought—that terrible battle in which Frederick prevailed against the Austrians, who were assisted by the soldiers of France and the money of England. The Austrians and French had, at first, attempted an orderly retreat; but the piercing cold, the constant fall of snow, and the difficulties of subsistence, had very much interfered with this. Their object was to reach Prince Charles of Lorraine, in northwest Silesia, and many small bodies of troops succeeded in maintaining their organization until they joined Prince Charles. Others were not so fortunate; soldiers found themselves without officers, and officers found themselves without men. In this last case was Captain St. Arnaud, of the French regiment of Dufour, a young gentleman who had exchanged his commission in the King's Musketeers, the most royal of all the royal guards, for a line regiment where he could see service. It cannot be denied that this decision on Captain St. Arnaud's part surprised his world, for he was a curled darling among the ladies, and the most superlative dandy in Paris. And, wonderful to say, he still looked the superlative dandy on the afternoon of the coldest day he ever felt in his life, amid the snowy wastes of Silesia, when...