My first impulse was to look from the window of this apartment. It was large for the window of a turret, but so closely grated that the iron bars, together with its height from the ground, precluded all chance of escape either by rope or ladder, if I had them. The fire-place was also enclosed by a complicated iron-grating, so that the chamber seemed peculiarly adapted for retention, escape by the chimney being even contemplated and provided against. The storm was dying away; the rain ceased to lash the walls and batter on the windows. I could see the steep brows and black defiles of the Vosges, over which the murky shadows of the clouds and the wavering gleams of the moon were flitting. Lofty and dusky these mountains were—dark and solemn too, seeming to approach as the moonlight gleamed along their rocky steeps, and anon receding into gloom as the crape-like clouds wrapped up the moon in their pall of murky vapour.
Morning soon began to dawn; and, as the sun came up, the storm, with all its clouds and shadows, its gusts of rain and wind, retired westward over the mountains, together with the gloom of night.
The steep Vosges looked green and bright, with all their thick waving woods and chestnut groves, many of these mountains being clothed from base to summit in foliage. In the valleys and defiles between them, nestled little thatched hamlets, bordered by rich meadows, by flower gardens, and by pastures of emerald green; in others I saw the lurid gleam of furnaces, where the copper-ore was smelted in mines that were old as the days of Hilderic, King of the Franks, who was lord of all Alsatia.
As the morning brightened and the day wore on, voices loud and clamorous came at times along the corridor from the hall, mingled with the tipsy shrieks and coarse laughter of women. These sounds gave me vague alarm. De Bitche and his ruffianly companions might be arranging and planning my death; and the contemplation of enduring a lonely and helpless murder at their hands filled my soul with a sickly horror which it is impossible to portray.
I knew the cruelties of which the Imperialists were capable. I knew that Colonel Sir James Ramsey, one of Scotland's best and bravest officers, was enclosed by them in a chamber of the castle of Dillingen, on the Danube, and there starved to death—he a prisoner of war, taken gallantly in battle under the Swedish banner. I knew that, like Caribs or Mohawks, these Austrians frequently murdered or mutilated their prisoners. At New Brandenburg they put a whole Scottish garrison to the sword, and tore the heart of Major Dunbar from his breast. At the dreadful sack of Magdeburg they rent the children from their mothers' wombs before they burned them both. In Saxony they roasted men before slow fires; in Silesia they boiled them like lobsters, to force them to discover hidden wealth; and in Lower Germany, committed such atrocities as were enough to bring a curse upon the house of Hapsburg.
My comrades were only six miles distant; twenty, perhaps thirty, thousand men were there, who, to save me, would each man have lent a hand to tear Phalsbourg from its foundations. This was a bitter, an agonising reflection! But that Marie Louise might never know the barbarous death I suffered for her sake was the bitterest thought of all! The hope of acquainting the Prince of Vaudemont of my danger was as vain as the chance of my being able to communicate with the besiegers of Zaberne; vain as the prospect of escape when I looked from the barred window of the lofty turret and saw the scarped hill and valley, overhung by the castle, a hundred feet below.
So, amid these reflections, the long night had passed away; morning came without sleep once visiting my eyes; and I felt neither hunger nor thirst, nor fear at times, but only a fierce impatience to have the last act of this diabolical drama played out. I knew that I was in the hands of desperate men, and had but one desire—that, if I was to be sent untimeously out of this world, the malevolent De Bitche should not remain in it behind me. But I was without a weapon, and saw nothing that could be made one. With this thought I threw a hurried glance around my room.
The walls were covered by tapestry, which hung on tenterhooks, and represented a banquet of the gods, whose scanty costume displayed a considerable oblivion of decency. They were hideously grotesque and mis-shapen; but were regaling themselves on every variety of fish, flesh, and fowl, and were quaffing water from huge Rhenish tankards. Round the cornice were the arms, crests, and mottoes of the princes of Phalsbourg and the counts palatine of Lutzelstein, with whose family the former had intermarried, and whose castle stands on the skirts of the Vosges, but six miles nearer the frontier of Lorraine.
In a distant defile of the hills a gleam caught my eye: it wavered at first, but came again and again steadily. It was the glitter of arms; and, with a keen glance and an anxious heart, I watched that glitter sparkling afar off like a beam of hope: that it came from the arms of soldiers on the line of march I had no doubt. Anon it disappeared, but gave a new current to my bitter imaginings.
The morning stole away and noon drew near: no food was brought to me; but I did not miss it then, my mind being so agitated by alarm and useless regrets. I was agreeably surprised that the unscrupulous soldiers into whose hands I had fallen did not pistol me as a spy, for De Bitche had given them every reason to believe me one; but that worthy personage had ulterior motives for sparing me so long.
About noon he entered my chamber abruptly, and carefully closed and double-locked the door on the inside, placing the key in the pocket of his buff coat. He then threw off his blue velvet cloak and large beaver hat, which was adorned by a long red feather, and surveyed me sternly. His aspect was in some respects handsome, but his form was colossal, and his bearing imperious. His eyes expressed an excitement which he endeavoured to veil under his usual cruel smile; but a black expression and sinister glare hovered in them. His lower jaw was deep and square—a feature generally indicative of brutal strength and strong passions. In his waist-belt were placed a pair of pistols and a poniard without a sheath. He made an ironical bow to me, to which I replied by drawing my figure up to its full height, and loftily giving him a frown of contempt.
'I have had tidings from Zaberne this morning,' said he; 'Mulheim still holds out bravely, though Count Gallas has failed to relieve him; and so this night the Chevalier Hepburn means to attack Phalsbourg.'
'This night! are you sure of that?'
'Sure as that I now address a—dying man.'
I smiled scornfully.
'Oh, smile on, monsieur! His troops are now in sight: horse, foot, and artillery coming to the attack.'
'Their arms had been the gleam I saw among the mountains. This night, you say—'
'Nay, this very day—perhaps within an hour, the castle may be taken.'
'And I?'
'Shall be by that time buried deep enough below the pavement of the court, perhaps.'
'What do you mean, villain? They will take the place by storm.'
'Do not flatter yourself; for on reflection, M. Blane, I think they will not. I have made every disposition for a vigorous defence. Let ten thousand come, they are welcome to Phalsbourg.'
'You have some purpose, Count, in visiting me this morning?'
'Of course; I was about to allude to it.'
'And this purpose?'
He smiled, and insolently surveyed me from head to foot.
'Count de Bitche, I demand to be liberated, or to be treated with the courtesy usually allotted to a prisoner of war. My parole—'
'Liberated! that you may go back to Paris, and coquette with the King's mistress, to sup in her boudoir, to toy with her full fair arms, her chestnut hair, and adjust the sachetà la violettein her bosom! Bah! Pardieu, my fine fellow, you shall have no such indulgence. So, so, among your papers I have the honour to find a letter from Mademoiselle de Lorraine.
'Insolent!'
'Well, I have something to propose, which, from the tenor of that letter, must, I presume, afford you pleasure.
'Indeed!' said I, reading the wicked sneer of his heart in his eyes; 'how kind of you, M. le Comte!'
'Very!'
'And this proposition—out with it.'
'Is merely that you should answer that letter.'
'You mock me, Count; never, while subject to your surveillance—never, while a prisoner in Phalsbourg.'
'Peste! we shall see that,' replied De Bitche, with a coarse laugh, as he twisted up his moustache, and continued to speak in this style, amusing himself with my situation, as a cat plays with the mouse it means to devour; 'you love Mademoiselle de Lorraine?' said he, with mock softness.
'You are the last man in the world to whom I would make any such admission. Neither do I wish to hear her name from your polluted lips.'
'Mighty well, mon brave!' said he, with flashing eyes; 'we shall see how long this gallant bearing lasts. You would do anything to serve mademoiselle; you would even lay down your life to insure the happiness of hers, I presume?'
'I would—Heaven knows I would, with joy!'
'Oh! 'tis a mere trifle that, when we love a woman; so I shall give you, my dear fellow, an opportunity of performing that pretty trifle.'
'What do you mean, M. le Comte?' said I, making a step towards him; but he placed the table between himself and me, and kept a hand on his pistols.
'You shall see. But ha! what is that?'
'A shot—another and another!' I exclaimed with joy, as we heard three dropping and distant shots. Then followed the closer rattle of musketry, and the sound of a drum beaten rapidly.
'And now hark! My fellows answer from the tête-du-point; your comrades have come within range; they are, I repeat, most welcome to Phalsbourg. Anon I will be with them. And now for you: mademoiselle knows your handwriting?'
'She does—having frequently seen it at Paris.'
'And your signature too, probably?'
'Yes.'
'Then take pen and ink, and write after me.'
'Excuse me, M. le Comte,' said I, trembling with exultation, as I saw a brigade of French artillery, consisting of ten pieces of cannon, on field carriages, with tumbrils and waggons, each drawn by four horses, pass at full gallop along the green brow of the opposite hill, while the head of a column of infantry appeared beyond it, with pikes glittering and standards waving. Then the ordnance were wheeled into position, as the cannoniers and fire-casters sprang from their seats, unlimbered and proceeded to load. 'Excuse me,' I continued, 'but there are some features in yonder landscape so very interesting that I must look for a moment.'
'Yonder preparations are of no moment to you,' said De Bitche, stamping his foot and growing pale with anger, as he drew a pistol from his belt and cocked it, 'take up that pen and write as I dictate, or'—and he swore an oath too frightful for me to repeat—'I will lay you, where I have laid many a better man,—dead at my feet.'
I glanced at the Count and measured his strength with my own, which it far surpassed, for his proportions and muscles were gigantic; I measured too the distance that lay between us; by one bound I could have cleared it, but a bullet would reach me with the rapidity of light. A contest with a man more powerful than myself by one half, and one who was so well armed, while I, faint with toil, was quite defenceless, would have been recklessly to throw away all chance of safety and escape; and now, while the roar of falconets on the bartizan overhead shook the keep from cope to groundstone while the French cannon opened from the brow of the opposite hill, I dipped the pen in the ink, and gave the Count a furious, glance to which he replied by an insolent laugh, and pointing with the muzzle of his loaded pistol to a sheet of fine white Dutch paper, said—
'Begin, monsieur, for I am leaving M. Schreckhorn alone to contend with those friends of yours, the feather-bed soldiers of Louis XIII. Begin thus—
'My dear Mademoiselle de Lorraine—'
Curious to learn what he had in view, and moreover to gain time, I slowly wrote the preamble, and he continued to dictate, amid the concussion of the adverse artillery, which shook the old feudal castle to its basement.
'Now that I am beyond the reach of your many attractions, a sentiment of remorse compels me to inform you that the love I profess to bear you—have you got all that down, my young moustache?'
'Yes, M. le Comte—proceed.'
'The love I have professed to bear you is alike absurd and futile. Mademoiselle, you have lavished all the young affection of your pure and noble heart upon a vile, a false, and worthless object; for I tell you, with shame and contrition, that I am already the husband of a pretty citoyenne of Zaberne—'
'But this is an infamous falsehood, Comte!'
'Proceed, I command you,' replied De Bitche, levelling his pistol across the table, and throwing a furious glance at the French cannon, the shot from which were coming over the valley with a sound between a boom and a scream.
'That I desire you will cease to think more of me, and pardon the presumption of one who is every way unworthy of you; who begs to return your letter, and to subscribe himself, Mademoiselle, your most devoted servant——Done at Zaberne—'
'But this is Phalsbourg?'
Again the black muzzle of the pistol threatened me.
'The 15th day of June—God and our Lady take you into holy keeping. And now, M. Blane—your signature in its usual fashion.'
'Rascal!' thought I; 'so this is the plan of your little campaign?'
'Your signature—your signature,' he continued, pressing his finger upon the trigger of the loaded pistol.
A cold perspiration burst over me. I was like one who is in a partial stupor, with a pressing sense of death and danger from which escape was impossible. I knew that if I delayed to sign he would shoot me in his rage; and that if I signed the letter, either by a real or feigned signature, it would prove my own death-warrant, for then I should also be shot, instantly perhaps, while the document thus extorted from me, would be duly forwarded to Marie Louise, and being dated from Zaberne, would remove all suspicion of force or fraud, and cast obscurity over the place and manner of my murder, and in her mind disgrace my memory for ever.
These were dreadful reflections to crowd into one short moment of time; but to gain one moment more was, to me, of priceless value. In one hand I held the extorted letter; in the other the still wetted pen.
'Sign—sign or die!'
I signed my name carefully, and slowly blotted it with blotting-paper, seeking a moment when the withdrawn pistol would enable me to spring at the throat of De Bitche; but alas! that moment never came.
My life hung by a hair, as it were; but this thorough-paced bravo was too wary for me.
Before I could either rush upon him, or tear the document to pieces, he snatched it from me, and thrust me furiously back by the muzzle of the loaded pistol, which, by heaven's mercy, rather than his, did not explode. He then placed the letter carefully in his breast, and dragged me by the throat—for his power and strength were far greater than mine—to the window.
'Look your last upon your friends, for in ten minutes I will hang your dead body from the tower-head, and the ravens of the Vosges may be picking your bones, when Mademoiselle Louise is reading your letter. Presumptuous fool,—who dared lift his eyes in love to the bride of Pappenheim—to a daughter of the house of Lorraine! But on receiving this letter, with its enclosure, she will cast you from her heart and memory, and accept with joy the lover chosen by her father and the Emperor. Look—what do you see?'
'Coward!' I exclaimed, 'coward and villain! Ah! if Hepburn knew I was here?'
'And would it avail you?' he asked, while his eyes filled with a dusky light, and I felt his hot, and snake-like breath on my face; 'but 'tis not Hepburn who commands yonder.'
'Who then?'
'Roger de St. Lacy, the Duc de Bellegarde. See! yonder is his regiment, the dragoons of Brissac, with an infantry battalion of Picardy. Look ye, Scot, and look well,' (here his voice trembled, and grew hoarse, with an emotion so wild and fierce that I believed him to be mad or drunk with wine and pride,) 'for I tell thee by the God who hears us, thou seest the last of war, and all its terrors—of the sun, and all his glory!'
He suddenly raised the pistol to my head—
There was a screaming sound—a tremendous crash, as if the solid keep had rent beneath our feet to its deep foundations, and I was thrown, breathless, and stunned for a time, on the floor. In a minute, or less, sense returned, and the knowledge of immediate danger restored my energy. I staggered up, and looked around me.
A cannon-shot—whether discharged at random, or because our figures had been seen struggling at the large window of the turret, I know not; but this cannon-shot—an eighteen-pound ball—had entered the aperture, dashing it to pieces, and tearing, as if it had been a gossamer web, the strongly interlaced bars of the iron grating, half-buried itself in the stone-wall beyond us. A large splinter of the grating, and a fragment of stone, had struck De Bitche on the breast and right arm, hurling him furiously on the floor, and causing the pistol, with which he was threatening my life to explode, and send its bullet through the ceiling. He was lying on his back and breathing slowly, with his eyes half-closed, and so far turned back within their sockets, that the white of them alone was visible.
Amid the din of the cannonade, and the many sounds which filled this fortified tower, the crash of this random shot, and the report of the pistol were unnoticed or unheard.
De Bitche was moaning heavily, and when I placed a foot upon his breast, a half-stifled sob escaped him. I surveyed him steadily, and I fear me furiously, as with something like a laugh of exultation, I possessed myself of his girdle, with its poniard, and remaining pistol; and I now deem it singular, that in the revulsion of my emotions, and in my fury and despair, having so many affronts to avenge; I did not then and there beat out his brains with my heel, or strangle him by placing my foot on his neck to destroy him as I would have done a wild beast. I placed the loaded pistol to his head, and said,
'Recover your senses as quickly as possible, M. le Comte; 'I have little time for trifling.'
'Viper!' he groaned, 'it isyourturn now.'
'And believe me, I shall not neglect it,' I replied, spurning him with my foot; 'ha—ha! M. le Comte, I hope your mother has been forgiven—'
'For what, fellow?'
'For bringing into the world, a villain so unparalleled as you! Now, hear me. You have in your possession a letter which you compelled me to write a few minutes ago—to write with this pistol at my ear. You will please to deliver up that letter?'
He hesitated.
'The letter!' I hissed through my teeth; 'or, by heaven! I will cut off your head with this dagger, and toss it through that shattered window.'
By the left hand he drew it from his breast, and in doing this, I perceived by a futile effort he made to move the right arm, that it wasbroken. I carefully tore the letter into the smallest pieces, and scattered them about.
'Good! now M. le Comte, I have another favour to ask. The letter of Mademoiselle de Lorraine?'
This he also delayed to give; but the pressure of my foot on his breast, proved an argument so persuasive, that he was forced to yield, and I carefully consigned it to my breast.
'Now, M. le Comte, I have still another little favour to ask; the pass-word for the day—the parole—speak, or die! ha, ha! a minute ago, it was you who said, "sign or die;" the parole?' I added, fiercely, 'or I will crush you, like the worm you are—ay, strangle you as the Lady of Lutzelstein was strangled.'
A frightful pallor came over his damp visage at this threat, and under his heavy black moustache he faltered out—
''Tis the name of the Emperor.'
'Mathias?'
'Yes.'
'And the countersign?'
Again he delayed.
'Quick—quick.'
'Vienna.'
'Good—now I have done with you, until your arm is cured, and we can meet again in our helmets, and under better auspices; and then—dog, coward, and murderer—be wary of the worthless life a mistaken humanity causes me to spare to-day!'
Regardless of his broken arm, and of the sickening agony it caused him, I bound his hands behind him by his waist-belt. I then tore his scarf in two; tied his heels by one half, and with the other gagged him, in such a position, that he could neither summon aid nor give an alarm. I then possessed myself of his violet-coloured velvet mantle, and broad Spanish hat, and tearing out the scarlet plume by which it might be recognised, armed with his poniard and pistol, I left the chamber.
On withdrawing, I gave him a farewell glance; and never did I read in human eyes, the snaky, fiend-like expression of hatred, rage, baffled spite, and bodily agony, that glared in those of the bruised and fettered De Bitche, when I left him with a fierce and mocking laugh. I double-locked the chamber-door, and as I crossed the deserted hall, flung the key into a fire of wood that blazed on the hearth, under the arched fireplace.
'Now,' thought I, 'my tormentor is secure enough!'
This sombrely tapestried and stately apartment seemed at first quite unoccupied; and for a moment the idea of throwing burning faggots on the floor, and setting the hated tower on fire, occurred to me; but the desire of effecting my own escape lay nearer my heart than the destruction of Phalsbourg. Moreover, I observed one who had escaped my first survey, a woman, asleep, or in a swoon on a bench; a tipsy courtesan of the last night's orgies, and an emotion of pity restrained me. Arming myself with a sword, I rushed to the court-yard, which was crowded by the garrison, and was then the scene of all the infernal hurlyburly incident to a furious assault and vigorous defence.
'Mathias and Vienna,' I repeated; 'these are the magic words which are to set me free; but amid this vile uproar who is to receive them—to whom can they be given?'
Finding their shot too light for battering purposes, already the French cannoniers were beginning to slacken their fire against the donjon of Phalsbourg, the old grey walls of which had long been worn by time, and battered in war. I gave an upward glance at the square projecting turret, where my proud and boastful enemy was lying, bruised, bound, gagged and everyway baffled, humbled, and secured. Then hurrying forward, I joined the crowd of armed men who were lining the walls of the tête-du-pont. Here eight iron 24-pounders were pouring a close and destructive cross-fire against the companies of the regiment de Picardy, then moving up to assault the rampart, and bearing ladders to cross the ditch, though the musketry from the tower told fearfully upon their ranks.
To prevent recognition, I partially blackened my face by gunpowder; possessed myself of a dead man's musket and collar of bandaliers, and stepped upon the platform, within which the killed and wounded men lay thick. I had scarcely taken my place upon the parapet, when a small shell, or bombelle, exploded in the air, just above my head. Some of the fragments fell on me, but without doing harm. Then I fired a few blank rounds, to gain time, or to enable me to observe what was going on; and there I ran considerable risk; for the hat, so recently borrowed from my friend M. le Comte, was torn off my head by a musket-shot.
Situated on rocks, that are steep and inaccessible on every side save the west, the tower of Phalsbourg is approached by a narrow causeway, which is cut by a deep ditch; and along this causeway, under a fire from the flankers which defended the drawbridge, the regiment de Picardy;—that noble old band, of immortal memory—advanced valiantly and resolutely to the escalade, with loud shouts of, 'Vive Louis le Roi! Picardy to the assault! Picardy to the assault!'
They rushed to the edge of the trench, undeterred by the withering rain of lead that swept the causeway, piling it with dead and wounded men, many of whom rolled over it, down the defile on one hand, or into a foaming mountain-stream on the other,—on, on they came, led by their officers, splendidly-attired chevaliers in steel cuirasses, and velvet pourpoints, perfumed, laced, and ruffled; and at their head came one, whom before I had observed, with remarkable sangfroid, to be alternately caressing his horse's neck, and playing with his own hair, which was long and ringleted, like the tresses of a girl. On foot he now led the stormers, with a little standard of the fleur-de-lis in his hand; on his breast was the cross of the Holy Ghost, and in the band of his hat there was stuck a lady's fan. By the latter, I knew him in a moment to be Roger de St. Lacy, Colonel of the regiment de Brissac, a brilliant and determined soldier, for whom one of the fairest coquettes at the court of France had procured the title of Duc de Bellegarde.
He had already reached the edge of that fatal fosse, and, brandishing his sword, shouted 'Picardy to the assault! forward with the ladders! forward my braves! Vive Louis le Roi!'
There a shot struck him! I saw the crimson blood spout over his white uniform, as he bent forward and fell headlong into the ditch. This shot was fired by one beside me: I turned, and beheld M. Schreckhorn, the officer of Swiss, in the act of reloading his arquebuse, with a grin of triumph; and I had some difficulty in controlling my first impulse to brain him with the butt of my musket.
Here also fell the Sieur de la Rivière, captain of French musketeers, who having, it was affirmed, neglected to put on his scapular, was shot through the very place where the Madonna's picture would have hung. He was brother of the celebrated Abbé de la Rivière, who, at this very time, having lost the royal favour by visiting Clara d'Amboise, was sent to the Bastille to study practical philosophy and new periwigs together.
Under a storm of lead and iron, the leading company had already thrown themselves into the fosse, and were planting their ladders against the sloping stone glacis of the redoubt, when Schreckhorn flung among them apate de grenades, or earthen pot, filled with gunpowder and grenades, having iron spikes upon them; while at the same moment the petardiers of De Bitche, like brave and reckless fellows as they were, lifted bombs in their hands, lighted their fuses, and, with all their force, hurled them over the parapet into the crowded fosse below, where they exploded with thepate, destroying, tearing to pieces the unfortunate stormers, and paralysing the rest, who were already sufficiently disheartened by the loss they had sustained, and by the fall of their brilliant leader.
The assault was abandoned, and a precipitate retreat succeeded—a retreat galled by a fire of cannon, muskets, and arquebuses, from the ramparts of the tower and its outworks; while the stubborn Swiss, the fierce Imperialists, and infuriated Lorrainers, who composed the garrison, about eight hundred in all, raised a wild and tumultuous hurrah; for never before had the regiment de Picardy been known to retreat. Schreckhorn flung down his musket and drew his rapier, exclaiming, 'Lorraine and the Emperor! the Emperor and Lorraine! A sortie! volunteers for a sortie! Fall in, my comrades! fall in!'
A tumultuary mass of musketeers, pikemen, and Swiss halberdiers, about four hundred strong, formed in something like military order, and led by Schreckhorn in person, now rushed towards the barrier gate of the tête-du-pont; and with this mass I mingled, taking care to keep well in the rear ranks, and to avoid being conspicuous, resolving on the earliest opportunity to conceal myself, or feign death. But I soon abandoned the last idea; for, when we crossed the drawbridge, I beheld, to my horror, the brutal Swiss and Austrians murder all the French wounded by braining them with the bolls of their halberds or the butts of their muskets; and in this villany M. Schreckhorn set the example, by twice passing his sword through the body of the Sieur de la Rivière.
The fall of the Duc de Bellegarde prevented proper measures being taken to secure a retreat. Already the French artillery were far down the valley, retiring at a trot towards Zaberne, and (fortunately for those who composed the sortie) escorted by the dragoons. The regiment de Picardy was following them in confusion, their rear maintaining a desultory fire with our front, as we proceeded over broken and rocky ground, on the skirts of a chesnut-wood, near a steep cliff, at the foot of which the mountain river ran with a hoarse and brawling sound. Here I took an early opportunity of loitering in the rear; and seeing a large pile of dried branches and withered leaves collected together by some woodman prior to removal, I first affected to drop a shoe, and, when adjusting it, contrived to be left completely in the rear. Then, instead of rejoining, I concealed myself in the heap of forest spoil, drawing in my musket after me, and concealed every portion of my person as carefully as if I had been tucked in, like a babe in the wood, by the kind birds of the popular ballad.
At that moment the regiment De Picardy made a stand, and I heard their drums beat a charge; then followed some heavy firing, and their musket-shot crashed among the trees overhead, and, with a dull, heavy sound, tore up the ground near me. I lay still and breathless. With a fierce shout, the sally from Phalsbourg fell back before their sudden volley. I heard two men speaking near me in a hoarse and guttural language. Heavens! One stumbled over the heap of leaves—I was discovered—no; not yet!
They proved to be two of Schreckhorn's Swiss musketeers, who had just come out of the castle to enjoy a little shooting at the French; and kneeling behind the pile which concealed me, they proceeded deliberately to exchange a few rounds of ball-cartridge with certain musketeers of Picardy, who were nestling in rear of a rock, at forty yards' distance. The Swiss fired with coolness shot after shot close to my ear, casting about and reloading their long heavy muskets; while the bullets of their adversaries crashed among the stones or branches, whitened the stumps of the trees, tore up the turf, and knocked about the dry leaves which concealed me.
Imagine my situation and my feelings while this continued; to find myself reduced to the position of a fascine, a sand-bag, a parapet for those devils of Swiss to fire over! In lying still I risked the bullets of my friends; in starting up to seek safety by flight, I risked death at the hands alike of friends and foes; and while I lay thus, with a palpitating heart and a reeling brain, at least twelve shots whistled harmlessly about me, and five or six knocked the withered leaves into the air.
At last the distant firing grew fainter; the regiment de Picardy was retiring! My heart began to beat more equally, and with less pain. My friends the Swiss shouldered their muskets and were proceeding to advance, when one of them, in stepping over the pile of leaves, placed a foot on me with such force and suddenness, that a faint cry of pain escaped me. They started back with a shout of alarm, which brought to the spot several of their comrades; and I was immediately pulled from my lurking-place, to find myself confronted by M. Schreckhorn, and other officers of the garrison, who were mustering the skirmishers.
Inquiries were first made as to whether I was wounded; then as to who I was, my rank and name—for my attire, to say the least of it, was rather peculiar, and my face was still begrimed with powder. A glance showed me the situation in which I was placed.
The brow of the cliff, on which I stood, overhung the stream that brawled through the wooded defile, past the square black tower of Phalsbourg; further off, down the valley, lay the little fortified tower of that name, and beyond it were the Vosges, green, dun, or brown, but all huge and many shadowed, piled peak on peak, fading and mellowing away in the distance. On the other hand, the wooded defile opened out into a broad and sunlit valley, clothed with waving vineyards. This valley led towards Zaberne; and there I could see the discomfited infantry of king Louis, halted at the distance of a mile; but whether preparatory to renewing the attack, or to retiring, I know not. Nearer were the dragoons of Brissac, who had now fallen back to cover the rear of their foot; and nearer still were ten cavaliers in brilliant trappings, whose helmets and corslets, as they caracoled to and fro in the green meadows as if loth to retreat, flashed back the rays of the morning sun. On beholding them, a new impulse awoke within me, for I believed them to be ten gentleman of the Garde du Corps Ecossais, and eventually, my surmise proved correct.
Around me, and scattered over the brow of the grim cliff which overlooked all this panorama, were the prostrate forms of some twenty or thirty soldiers, killed or wounded in the skirmish; and close by me, were the men of the sally, falling into their ranks preparatory to marching back to the tower, under the orders of M. Schreckhorn's second in command.
A rapid and hopeless glance told me all this; and then I turned to meet, and if possible to baffle, the suspicious questions of the warlike Switzer, who wore a quaint old jagged suit of harness of the last century, and carried a pair of long pistols in his leathern girdle, while he wielded one of those enormous halberds, to which the countrymen of Tell have been so partial in all ages.
'Who are you, monsieur?' asked Schreckhorn, in his execrable French.
'Faith, I can scarcely tell,' said I.
'A peculiar state of mind—perhaps a prick of a sword might enlighten you? Speak!'
'I am one of your garrison of Phalsbourg,' I replied, with confidence, assured that to falter now, would destroy me.
'Does any one know this man?' asked Schreckhorn, looking around him; but not one of all the soldiers who crowded near, responded to his question.
'The Count de Bitche knows me well, and will answer for my honour and courage,' said I.
'We have only your word for that; but does it look like either honour or courage to skulk under this pile of leaves during an action? You say you are one of our soldiers?'
'But I amnotone of your soldiers.'
'What then?'
'A simple volunteer.'
'I do not recognise you.'
'How should you, M. Schreckhorn, when you came to Phalsbourg but yesterday or the day before?'
'Peste! that is true; but then you cannot have any objection to return with us.'
'I have a most decided objection, M. le Capitaine.'
'Parbleu!'
'I do not choose to serve longer under the Count de Bitche.'
'This is rank mutiny; but perhaps you would prefer to serve under the enemy?'
'I have not said so. A volunteer chooses his own leader; it is the rule of war.'
'From whence came you last?'
'Champagne.'
'Aha—France!' said Schreckhorn, with kindling eyes, and I found that I had made a false move. 'You issued out with us; speak quick, fellow, for our troops are marching in, and yonder ten troopers are nearer than I like. You joined our sortie?'
'My presence here implies that I did so,' said I, haughtily, and gathering confidence on perceiving that some five or six petardiers, who remained by the side of Schreckhorn, all the soldiers of the sortie, were now marching into Phalsbourg.
'Then you must know the password for the day?'
'I know both parole and countersign.'
'What are they?' he asked, in a gentler tone.
'"Mathias" and "Vienna."'
'False, by St. Nicholas! Here is a spy!' exclaimed Schreckhorn, seizing me.
'These words were given to me by the Count in person.'
'Thou liest! The Count has not been seen among us to-day.'
'And the passwords——'
'Are "Gallas" and "Prague."'
'Then the villain has deceived me,' said I, as the petardiers laid hold of me; and just at that moment a soldier came running breathlessly towards us, crying, as the devil would have it—
'Hola, M. Schreckhorn! hola?
'What is the matter, fellow?'
'The spy we took last night has escaped from the turret, leaving in his place M. le Commandant, robbed and half murdered.'
'Mordieu! then this is our man. I must have been blind or mad not to recognise him even in this tatterdemalion dress, and with that visage of his, so artfully blackened!'
'Shoot him!' cried a petardier, drawing a pistolette from his girdle. 'Tête Dieu! an ounce of lead, my boy, will pay your passage to the other world, and here it is.'
'Cut him down!' suggested another, drawing his sword.
'Nay, take him back, and let M. le Comte deal with him, in person,' said the messenger.
'No, no,' added a fourth; 'diable! don't trouble us with prisoners, M. Schreckhorn; they do nothing but eat up the rations.'
They proceeded, however, to drag me towards the tower of Phalsbourg, and then I shuddered when contemplating all I might suffer there, and at the idea of confronting De Bitche when flushed by pain and vengeance. But aware that to resist seven well-armed men would be an act of folly, I could only glance hopelessly at the horsemen, who were now galloping along the valley, obviously with a view to cut off Schreckhorn and his six stragglers.
'Here come those ten cavaliers of the enemy's horse,' said a petardier; 'and this fellow grows heavier at every step.'
'Unless we shoot him and run, we shall be cut off, M. le Capitaine,' urged a second.
'And they are Gardes Ecossais, by all that is infernal!'
'These fellows will follow us up to the very gate of Phalsbourg,' said Schreckhorn.
'Bah! I have a petard at the foot of yonder tree, M. le Capitaine,' said the first speaker; 'let us tie our moucharde to it, fire the match, and leave him to his friends, who may pick up his pieces at leisure.'
'A brilliant idea, comrade!' growled Schreckhorn, whose eyes flashed with rage and excitement at the unexpected danger in which his parley with me had placed him, though his native love of bloodshed, cruelty, and novelty were tickled by the barbarous proposition of the petardier, whose words were acted upon in a moment. 'Sang Dieu! quick, quick; your straps and the petard; we have not a moment to lose; these fellows will be on us!'
I had scarcely time for breath or thought before my hands and feet were secured by straps, while the petard was bound to my breast; and now, lest the reader may not know what this warlike invention is, I shall describe it briefly.
A petard is made of gun-metal, screwed upon a board two feet square, and holds usually about fifteen pounds of powder; a vent is screwed into the hole, by which the iron case is filled. When fired, its explosion will blow to shreds the strongest gates and palisades. The French Huguenots were the first who invented them, and by their means captured the city of Cahors in 1579.
A pistol was snapped, and the slow-match lighted, and then, with a brutal laugh, M. Schreckhorn and his soldiers rushed own the hill towards Phalsbourg, looking back ever and anon watch the expected explosion.
Though hardened by war, and familiarised to its dangers, this petard—this frightful engine of death—pressing like a charged bomb upon my breast, filled me with a horror too great for description, for realisation, or for utterance, and existence became a stupor! I was unable to move—to cry out—to breathe! I felt nothing—saw nothing! I knew nothing! all my thoughts and feelings, if I possessed them, were absorbed in one overwhelming sense of panic! I was surrounded by a black and wavering chaos, amid which I saw a brilliant and luminous spark, close to my face, consuming, shrinking, and expanding; this was the touchpaper, communicating with the petard to which I was tied.
Suddenly the sense of danger and immediate death became to great for my whole nervous system. Bound as I was, powerless, paralysed, like one amid a crushing nightmare, a cry at last escaped me! Then, though fettered neck, hand, and heel, I rose to my feet, and in a wild endeavour to free myself from the dreadful engine of destruction to which I was bound, rolled over the cliff, and fell headlong through the air—down—down—I knew not how far!
There was a cold splash—a shock—as I cleft the waters of a river; then there was darkness, and a rushing, bubbling sound, as they closed over me; then came blinding light, as I rose again to the surface; darkness again, and a whirling of all the senses, as I sank the second time; and with that sinking a deep, deep sleep seemed to come upon me, and I remembered no more.
A dull and pricking pain over all my stiffened limbs, as the blood slowly and laboriously forced its way through vein and artery; a dim light in my aching eyes, as if the dawn were just stealing upon the night; a confused sense of sounds and voices growing more distinct and palpable, were the first sensations of returning animation I experienced.
I respired with difficulty, and with that respiration life and energy came back to me. I found myself stretched at length upon a grassy bank, on which the warm sunshine played. My arms were free; the straps that bound them once lay beside me cut and severed, with the unexploded petard—unexploded because it had been drenched in the water of the mountain stream, from which I had been rescued with difficulty by my friends; but chiefly by the bravery and exertions of the valiant border baronet, Sir Quentin Home of Redden, and and the Chevalier Livingstone d'Angoulême, who plunged their chargers in below that part of the stream in which I was struggling, and succeeded in getting me landed, as the former said, 'Like a huge salmon grilse from the Tweed.'
I found myself surrounded by the familiar faces of nine cuirassiers of the Scottish Guard, led by old Patrick Gordon; and their surprise to find that the rescued man, the escaped prisoner, whom they had just fished from the river, was one of themselves—Arthur Blane—was great indeed. Revived by a good dose of brandy from Patrick's flask, and by some dry garments which they gave me from their valises (for these cavaliers were all cap-a-pie, and in marching order), I looked up to the crag over which I had rolled in my terror and agony of soul; and on seeing that it was at least fifty feet high, and that I was safe and sound, wind and limb, and save a tremulous sensation, not a whit the worse of the whole affair, I thanked heaven for my release from Phalsbourg, and for my escape from all the perils that followed it.
Mounted on Livingstone's horse, being as yet unable to walk, unless slowly and laboriously, we proceeded down the valley, and on looking back, from time to time, I saw the dark tower of Phalsbourg apparently rise higher among the mountains, as we descended.
'We will return anon, Arthur,' said our grim Marechal de Logis, 'and bring to a severe reckoning this Count de Bitche and his garrison of outlaws: I suppose they are all ragamuffins sprung from the barricades, as we say in Paris.'
'And how about your siege of Zaberne?' I asked, surprised to find myself conversing calmly, and among friends too, after all that had passed.
A cloud came over all their faces at the question.
'It fell this morning,' said Gordon.
'And Hepburn—'
'Alas! he fell with it. A shot killed him yesterday; but his death filled the troops with fury, so we carried the place by assault this morning. The King of France has lost a faithful soldier, and old Scotland a gallant son. Rest him, heaven!' said Gordon, looking upward, with tears in his eyes; 'for there, in his bloody harness at Zaberne, lies cold and still a heart that never knew fear!'
'But the fear of God?' added Livingstone.
'Right, chevalier; Hepburn was pious as he was brave. He was the first soldier in Christendom, and we may never see his like again.'
Hepburn's fall shocked and grieved me, the more that he had died before I could announce to him that Louis XIII. had raised him to that rank so coveted by every chevalier in his army—marechal of France; and conversing of his worth and bravery, rather than of my more recent adventures, which lay, perhaps, nearer my heart, we rode sadly and thoughtfully towards Zaberne.
I found the town breached and battered by cannon-shot; the houses riddled, the streets in ruin; encumbered by fallen masonry and unburied bodies. The soldiers were sullen and full of fury, especially the Scottish regiments, for the fall of their beloved commander, who was solemnly interred in the cathedral of Toul, where a magnificent monument was erected to his memory.*
* Demolished by the revolutionists in 1793, his tomb was restored by order of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1851, as a letter from the curé of the cathedral informed the author.—See Note at end.
We buried the other dead in one huge grave—friend and foe—and threw in their weapons with them. Still enough they lay in that ghastly trench, as we heaped the earth over them; though their uniforms were on and their weapons at hand, the strife of their gallant hearts was over; but if ever men went to heaven, they will be the brave fellows who died with Hepburn at Zaberne.
The brave general of the Scots being thus slain by those citizens of Zaberne, who, as Cardinal de la Valette said, 'had been keeping him at bay for the last six months by playing at soldiers,' the colonelcy of his celebrated Scottish regiment devolved upon his cousin, the Laird of Waughton, and the command of the army upon the Duke of Saxe-Weimar.
Under the Marquis of Gordon, the cuirassiers of the Garde du Corps Ecossais continued to serve in Alsace, with the combined army of French, Scots, Swedes, and Germans in the pay of Louis XIII, during the year 1637, and in that time, though we fought no general action, we were severely engaged in many skirmishes and minor affairs. This army, which occupied Alsace, was ably led by the Duke, who had suffered many family injuries from the house of Austria, and fearfully he avenged them in those wars, which devastated the land with such severity, that the brave old Duke of Lorraine and his fiery son, deprived of all but their swords and honour, were ere long reduced to mere private gentlemen, fighting for bread in the Imperial ranks, while the people of their duchy and of Alsace, were reduced to such misery, that, in this year 1637, after the capture of Brissac, the governor was compelled (as the French 'Mercury' records) to place guards upon the burial-places, to prevent the inhabitants, who were mad with hunger, tearing the dead from their graves and devouring them.
Two days after the fall of Zaberne, De Bitche blew up the tower of Phalsbourg, and crossed the Rhine, retiring into the duchy of Baden.
During my absence, the chevaliers of the Scottish Guard had suffered severely; their number was considerably below a hundred now, and I missed many a stalwart form and familiar face from their ranks. Among those who were absent was Adam Scott, the hardy young Laird of Tushielaw, who usually rode on my left hand.
One night, several of us sat smoking and drinking in the garden of a little country-house of which we had taken possession, and there we were making merry talking of all the beautiful and amiable sinners of Paris, such as Ninon de l'Enclos, Marion de l'Orme, the Duchess de Bouillon, Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, and others; of that right royal glutton, Anne of Austria, who, in her anxiety still to please her lovers, had discovered the drugs by which Diana of Poictiers preserved her beauty in extreme old age; a secret written by a sorcerer on the skin of a dead-born child, and long borne about the person of Catherine de Medici. I heard, too, that Clara d'Amboise, my voluptuous, intellectual, and political beauty, still reigned in the heart of Louis, with other gossip of equal interest to Parisian absentees.
During a pause in the conversation, I inquired about my comrade Tushielaw.
'Adam became sick of these fruitless and bootless wars, and went home to old Scotland,' said Patrick Gordon, gloomily; for, on finding that a shower of brevets had come from Paris, and that his name was not among them, our old comrade had of late betaken himself to the soldier's consolation of grumbling; 'and ere long, Blane, I shall go home too, for I am now seventy years old at least.'
'Seventy! How, Marechal de Logis, I deemed you but fifty?' said Dundrennan.
'True; but I have served for twenty years in Denmark, Muscovy, and Brandenburg, and reckon these as forty; yet I am only a poor Marechal de Logis of horse, while such boys as those painted fops De Toneins and Turenne, are camp-masters and knights of all the king's orders. However, my Lord Dundrennan, we have an auld Scottish proverb, which saitha hauf egg is better than a toom doup, so I must e'en content me. When we campaigned ten years ago in Westphalia, a place where, as their own proverb says, you are sure to find bad quarters, worse rations, and long miles, I often heard the 'half egg' quoted by one who is now dead and gone—poor Hepburn—than whom no better soldier ever belted him with steel.'
This compliment to our dead leader was received by all with a silent bow of assent.
'But Tushielaw was a wise man, and hath gone home four months ago to his old tower on the Border side,' resumed Gordon; 'I would that I had some such neuk to hang my sword in when I grow too old to carry it.'
'Tushielaw,' said Dundrennan, 'was a brave and wild spirit. The last May-day we were in Paris, how merrily he, De Toneins, the Chevalier, and I danced with the grisettes round a Maypole cut from the Bois de Boulogne, and planted just outside the Porte St. Antoine. He was severely wounded in that affair we had at Mannheim—'
'Ah—you fought that while I was cooling my heels in the Bastille.'
'We were campaigning among the mountains of the Bergstrasse. It was in the month of December; the country was covered with snow, and our infantry were busy under Hepburn, de la Force, and de Maille Breze in the fortification of Heidelberg and Mannheim. We were now in the land of brutal barons, beer-bloated philosophers, beggarly mightinesses, devils, ghosts, and doppelgangers.
'Now this town of Mannheim, until we girt it by ramparts, was nothing more than a pretty village, guarded by the old castle of Rheinhausen; and our proceedings there, in stone and lime, were so highly resented by the Imperialists, that they never left us an hour in peace. Our boots were never off, and we slept in our frozen tents, with belts and harness on, till we were weary of our lives, and furious at the foe.
'One evening, when the sun was setting behind the mountains, and when the ice lay deep and strong upon the waters of the frozen Rhine and Neckar, a party of Austrian horse, led by young Count Pappenheim, with furred roquelaures over their black iron trappings, came suddenly upon our quarters, and gave us analerte. On the right flank which, as you know, is always our post, the Marquis of Gordon ordered the trumpets to sound 'to horse;' and after some smart piqueering with our pistols, we fell on with our rapiers, at full gallop, and routed three hundred of Goetz's dragoons, driving them across the valley of the Rhine in full and disastrous flight.
'Brave Tushielaw, being better mounted than any of us, and being used of old to border-pricking by Ettrick wood and Solway sands, led the van of this pursuit, till a few of the Imperialists turned upon him. Nothing daunted, he encountered them all. In three minutes he had slain, or at least unhorsed, four; but a fifth proved a very evil-disposed fellow, who, with peculiar vindictiveness, ran him fairly through the body, and laid him at his horse's heels, bleeding on the snow which whitened all the mountain-side.
'We stripped the warm furs off the dead dragoons, and carefully rolling up Tushielaw, brought him back with us to the camp, when the physician of the Marquis declared him unfit for the king's service; and so, after lingering among us for a month or two, he went home to Tushielaw to breathe once more of the breeze that comes down the heathery glen from those green hills that look on lovely Yarrow—home, where many a Scottish exile, now far away, would gladly be—home to his old tower, so famed in song and story, that stands in the solitude where Rankleburn joins the Ettrick.'
'So we shall see him no more?' said I.
'Not in France, at least: but his story is not yet told,' continued the Viscount. 'Poor Adam had been outlawed, and driven from Scotland mainly by the exertions and influence of William Douglas, Earl of March, who had conceived a hatred for him, and whose eldest daughter Isabel he had ventured to love; for he had frequently met her in Peebles at the play, where the football, the golf, the shooting for the silver arrow, and all our old Scottish manly games, yearly attract the flower of the Borderside.
'They had exchanged rings and locks of hair, and broken a piece of money between them, in the old superstitious fashion at Allhallowmass; but the ring given to Isabel was ominously inscribed,—
'The eye finds;The heart chooseth;The hand binds;But death looseth.'
And these foreboding words were ever before her, on her lips and in her heart.
'Isabel Douglas had the black, sparkling eyes and dark eyebrows of her race; but her skin was fair, and her tresses were like golden-coloured silk.'
'Were, say you?'
'Listen. She was more than lovely, for I, who have seen her, know all this: and know that she possessed thethirtypoints of feminine beauty which Brantome declares we shall never meet with in one woman. But though she had the dark Douglas' eyes and their black brows, she was feeble, gentle, and timid in spirit: so her father, knowing the daring and pride of Tushielaw, shut her up in his strong castle of Neidpath. There she was beyond the reach of the moss-trooping Scotts, whose hero, Adam, became involved in some vile border brawl or plot against the government; and with the servile Lords of Council at Edinburgh, when a personage styling himself William Earl of March, Lord Douglas of Neidpath, Lyne, and Manorheid, opposed himself to simple Adam Scott, of Tushielaw, proscription and banishment were sure to follow; so our Border chieftain sailed to France, and took service in our Scottish Guard.
'In his absence I need scarcely relate to you how Isabel Douglas, still shut up in the gloomy tower of Neidpath, pined; how the brilliance of her beauty faded; how her eyes lost their lustre, and her lips their enchanting bloom; and how she repeated, ever and anon, the ominous legend inscribed on her betrothal ring. No amusement roused her from the apathy and consumption into which she seemed to be fast hurrying. My lord of March, when he beheld Isabel, on his return from a year's absence in London, was pleased to be mightily shocked and repentant. He removed her to his livelier mansion in the busy little burgh of Peebles, and endeavoured, but in vain, to lead her from her own thoughts and the secret sorrow that preyed upon her; till, finding that every means failed, he at last consented to bring home Tushielaw, and wrote to Acheson, the Secretary of State at Edinburgh, who, by one dash of his pen, restored the estates of Scott, but failed to cure the worm that preyed upon the heart of the poor girl whom that year of sorrow in Neidpath Peel had destroyed.
'"He will never return to me, father," said she, and showed the Earl the legend on her ring, while her tears fell fast, for she had long been confined to bed, and was so weak and feeble that the heart of the old Earl was wrung on beholding the mischief he had wrought. At last there came tidings that Tushielaw had sailed from France, that he had landed in Scotland, and the day on which he was to pass through Peebles on his way to the forest was known.
'On that day there was an unusual bustle and commotion visible in and about the old castellated mansion of the Earl of March, which is sufficiently remarkable in the town by its curious turret that overhangs the street.
'At an early hour of the morning, poor Lady Isabel caused herself to be dressed and conveyed into a stone balcony, that projected in front of the house; and there, on a couch, she sat for hours, with her wan face, her black and now ghastly eyes fixed upon the vista of the sunlit thoroughfare, that she might be the first to see her lover as he rode up. At that time the town was lonely and dull; few noises woke the echoes of its streets; but so much had disease, anxiety, and love sharpened and rendered unnaturally acute the senses of this feeble girl, that she was able to detect the steps of her lover's horse at an incredible distance, and long before any such sound reached the ears of the anxious Earl, or her two sisters who attended her.
'A sudden flush crossed her cheek, her dark eyes sparkled with somewhat of their former beauty, and clasping the hands of her youngest sister, she exclaimed—
'"He comes, Jeanie! I hear his horse; but, oh, it is far off yet!" Then, closing her eyes, she almost swooned. Yet the Earl and his pale daughters heard nothing, for at that moment Tushielaw was fully three miles distant, galloping along the highway that wound by hill and wood, and feeling his heart expand with anxiety and joy as he saw fair Teviotdale, with all its pastoral beauties, deepening in the summer sun.
'After landing at Eskmouth from a ship of the States-General, Tushielaw, still suffering from his wound received at Mannheim, became suddenly oppressed by one of those gloomy presentiments of approaching evil, which at times come unbidden to the Scottish mind, and so mysteriously affect it. He endeavoured to shake off this solemn oppression, but in vain. An uncontrollable conviction of the necessity of reaching home without delay made him ride fast and furiously; and thus, without presenting himself at the capital to thank the servile placeman who had recalled him, he crossed the Lammermuirs and rode straight towards Peebles, which he entered about sunset.
'A half-stifled exclamation of joy burst from Isabel Douglas when his tall figure, with cloak and plume, was seen to ride up the street at a rapid pace towards her father's house. Full of his own thoughts, and haunted by that presentiment of coming sorrow—all unaware that Isabel was in the town, or, if he saw her, all unprepared for the sad change in her appearance, the war-worn cavalier rode rapidly past, without seeming once to lift his eye to the stone balcony, where the poor trembling girl cast her hollow eyes and thin, wan hands towards him in an agony of joy that could never find utterance in words.
'Poor Isabel! Alas! though his soul was full of her image, Adam Scott beheld her not, and spurred out of sight without according a word, a glance, a smile of recognition! And this was the hour, the time, the meeting to which she had so long looked forward during the age of separation that had passed!
'Isabel gazed after his retiring figure in silence and speechless sorrow; and then, crushed by the sudden shock of his apparent heedlessness, she exclaimed, that in France he had forgotten her, and murmuring the legend on her ring, she threw up her white hands wildly towards heaven—there was a gush of blood from her lips, and she expired in the arms of the Earl and her sisters before they could bear her in from the balcony.
'She was interred among her ancestors in the burial vault of the ducal house of Queensberry, and a plate on her coffin—a plate to which her sorrowing lover pressed his lips again and again—bore the simple legend—
'The eye finds;The heart chooseth;The hand binds;But death looseth!' *
and since then,' concluded Dundrennan, 'we have heard no more of our comrade, who, though at home in beautiful Ettrick forest, would, I doubt not, willingly be with us to-night; for the tower of Tushielaw, with the brawl of Rankleburn, and the sough of the old oaks that shade it, must be but a lonely place wherein to brood over the loss of a heart we have loved.'
* A copper plate, bearing this inscription, was recently found in a grave in Inveresk churchyard.
The evil fortune which had attended my comrade in his love affair affected my own spirit, and for several days after rejoining the Garde du Corps, I felt sad, lonely, and thoughtful. I was separated from Marie Louise, and though I could scarcely despair, what had I to give me hope? Yet a faint, a wild, and fantastic hope that did come at times, faded and grew fainter as day succeeded day.
She seemed ever before me, vividly and distinctly as I had seen her last; for in this girl's manner, in the clear full expression of her eye and the melody of her voice, there were an indescribable fascination; while her conversational powers were so full of unstudied grace, that, I verily believe, no man could speak with her, without feeling himself insensibly charmed and lured, he knew not why, to love her. But of this enough; lest the reader may suspect me of being less a soldier than a puling sentimentalist.
The recollection of Pappenheim was always sufficient to kindle my fury. At times, I had a gloomy desire to fall in battle; but not before I sent the thick-lipped Austrian lord to his last account, duly attended, if possible, by his friend De Bitche, as aide-de-camp; and these amiable desires seemed unexpectedly to be in a fair way of being gratified; for one evening the Marquis de Gordon, who had been overnight with the Duc de Lavalette, rode hurriedly to our quarters, and as he passed me at the door of my billet, where I was lounging and enjoying a pipe of tobacco.
'Now, Blane,' said he, 'your time for vengeance is at hand!'
'How, Marquis?'
'Count Pappenheim, with a thousand Walloon horsemen, all peasants, raised in the province of Luxembourg, is in the village of Lutzelstein; and I am ordered to take a sufficient body of cavalry, and, if possible, cut him off. Attended by a troop of German and Spanish courtezans, clad in the spoil of plundered provinces, they have been making merry there for a week past.'
'And the Count de Bitche?'
'Is with him. This fellow who, as Shakespeare says of Talbot,
'——— is so much feared abroad,That with his name the mothers still their babes,'
has now a fair chance of ending his life under the same trees which saw his abduction of the Countess of Lutzelstein.'
'And when do we march?'
'To-night.'
'Excellent!'
'Our cuirassiers lead the way; the dragoons of Brissac, under the Marquis de Toneins, who has just joined from Paris, are to follow.'
'Bravo!' I exclaimed, as a fiery joy swelled up in my heart.
'At daybreak, we will be upon them; and then let the Austrian and Lorrainer look well to sword and harness, for the Garde du Corps Ecossais never ride forth on a bootless errand!'
After supping with Home, Dundrennan, and a few others, on an omelette, with pickled herrings and saur-kraut, dressed with hog's-lard, a horrible repast, prepared by my German landlady, and washed down by a few bottles of Rhenish wine, we marched on our expedition, leaving Zaberne about midnight.
De Brissac's dragoons—still so called because they had been raised by the marechal of that name in 1600—with our troop of guardsmen, made up about nine hundred swords. The former were led by the Marquis de Toneins, formerly camp-master of the regiment de Normandie, who had succeeded the Duc de Bellegarde, slain before Phalsbourg; and the Marquis of Gordon commanded the whole. We left the town at an easy pace, in light marching order,i.e., unencumbered by forage, oats, or valises, but otherwise fully accoutred with all our arms.
The night was unusually serene; the month was August; and, as I looked back at Zaberne, I felt somewhat influenced by the beauty of the scenery and the silence of the hour. Around the city, the Sarre wound between woods of chestnut, and over it, on a lofty rock, stood a castle of the Bishops of Strasbourg, in the deep arched windows of which, red lights that twinkled, showed where Cardinal de Lavalette still held revel with some of his officers; for that old fortress was his head-quarters.
While leaving the city by its only avenue, a steep and narrow path, hewn through the solid rock in the olden time, the French cavalry trumpets—sharp, shrill, and warlike—rang in the clear atmosphere, as they played a stirring march; while the aspect of the successive sections of steel-trapped horsemen, as they defiled by threes from the ancient arch of the town-gate, and dipped into the deep path of echoing rock, with helmets, swords, and corslets glinting to the moon—their bridles and scabbards clanking—was sufficiently stirring and picturesque to raise even my sombre spirit from the thoughts on which it had brooded for some days past.
'There sleep the brave whom no earthly trumpet will ever rouse again,' said Sir Quentin Home to me, as we passed the long and gloomy mound which marked where we buried the dead.
'By this time to-morrow many of us may be still and cold, as they are to-night,' thought I.
As we penetrated into the mountains, the music ceased, and we rode in silence; even conversing in the ranks being forbidden.
The moon shed her clear cold light in a brilliant flood along the rocky vale. At the bottom of the latter ran a torrent towards the Rhine. It was bordered by groves of pale-green willow, the branches and tremulous leaves of which swept up the foam that gleamed on the chafed rocks and rushing water. In some places, olive-trees and flowering osiers mingled with them. Apart from the dull, monotonous tramp of nine hundred horse upon the road or sward, the silence was broken only by the occasional bark of a shepherd's dog, as its wakeful ear caught the distant sound; or the ominous bay of a wolf, prowling on the wooded peaks of the Vosges, and by some strange instinct scenting blood and slaughter on the midnight breeze already.
A ride of some miles brought us to a cascade, the white foam of which sparkled like a torrent of pearls as it plunged over the brow of a rock into a chasm. A single fairy-like rib of stone, forming an arch high above us, with its span clearly defined against the moon-lighted sky, gave access over this cascade to the small, but strong feudal castle of the Counts of Lutzelstein. This torrent flowed from a little lonely lake which bathed its walls, and was fed by the snowy rills of the Vosges.
Under Lieutenant Francis Ruthven, in this castle there was a garrison composed of eighty Scottish musketeers of Ramsay's regiment; but all was dark and sombre in tower and turret as we defiled through the valley below, and rode on, on our errand of death, unchallenged and unseen.
It was now that dark, cold hour which always precedes the dawn.
The Marquis ordered strict silence in the ranks, for we were about to debouch and form squadrons in the flat and open valley occupied by the bivouac of Pappenheim's cavalry.
'I have but one thought to-night,' said I to Dundrennan, whom I had made the confidant of my love affair, and in whose honour I had perfect reliance.
'To-night! You should rather say this morning. See, the moon grows pale already—and this thought?'
'Is to have Pappenheim killed or taken; for in either case Marie Louise will be freed from his obtrusive attentions.'