No outline of the Austrian army of to-day would be quite correct without a portrait, or, at the very least, a few thumb-nail sketches of the man whom the above initial designates, and whom no officer and few civilians in Austria will have difficulty in identifying.

Nowadays, at a certain afternoon hour he is almost daily to be seen reading the papers in a well-known Viennese café, a hale octogenarian, no longer in the uniform which he wore for over forty years—looking as bourgeois as any Vienna burgher, unless indeed you draw near enough to look into his rugged face and catch his thoughtful and acute eye.

The stories told about him are legion. In here recording a few of them, I once more call attention to the fact that I am occasionally reduced to relying upon hearsay, and cannot vouch for the accuracy of details, but only for inherent probability.

G—— has always been what is called “a character,” but he is far more than a mere oddity—he is both a head and a heart, having not only always enjoyed the affection of his subordinates of all degrees, but being likewise recognised as the greatest strategist in his own generation of Austrian commanders. Had war come in his time, few doubt that the command of the Austrian army would have been placed in his hands; and there are some who think that the postponement of the inevitable conflict till beyond G——'s day is anything but good luck for Austria.