Who is he?
A Frenchman, if one may trust to a name; an Austrian, if one may trust from whence he came, recommended by the premier himself.

He entered the cuirassiers as a Captain.

You yourself, Sire, made him what he is--the real military adviser of the kingdom.

But what of his past?
No one knows, unless it be von Wallenstein, his intimate.

I, for one, while I may be wrong, trust only those whose past I know, and even then only at intervals." "Colonel Beauvais ?" murmured the king.