As the years passed away, Duponceau himself
became a celebrated man, and loved to tell the story of these checkered
days. Another German, too, De Kalb, was sometimes seen there, taller,
statelier, graver than Steuben, with the cold, observant eye of the
diplomatist, rather than the quick glance of the soldier, though a
soldier too, and a brave and skillful one; caring very little about the
cause he had forsaken his noble chateau and lovely wife to fight for,
but a great deal about the promotion and decorations which his good
service hero was to win him in France; for he had made himself a
Frenchman, and served the King of France, and bought him French lands,
and married a French wife. Already before this war began, he had come
hither in the service of France to study the progress of the growing
discontent; and now he was here again an American major-general, led
partly by the ambition of rank, partly by the thirst of distinction, but
much, too, by a certain restlessness of nature, and longing for
excitement and action, not to be wondered at in one who had fought his
way up from a butlership to a barony. He and Steuben had served on
opposite sides during the Seven Years War, though born both of them on
the same bank of the Rhine; and though when Steuben first came, De Kalb
was in Albany, yet in May they must have met more than once.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233