To the latter, variety of occupation, change of scene in a foreign land, the activity of a military life, the incessant stir and alarms of war, would, in spite of love, separation, and fear of rivalry and of her family, draw in fresh moods of thought and afford thereby a certain healthy relief; but she was left amid the scenes of her departed joy, with the additional affliction before her of domestic persecution and the odious addresses of a would-be lover!
How eagerly she hoped that he would be detained for months at Berlin!
'Oh, Herminia!' she would sometimes say to her cousin; 'I was so happy—so happy, that it is a sin to make me so miserable!'
'Be calm, darling, be calm; Heinrich will bring him to you once again,' replied the girl, embracing her.
'It will be miraculous if theybothescape the dangers of this mighty war.'
'Do not speak thus, I implore you,' said Herminia, passionately, and somewhat scared by her cousin's tone of voice and expression of eye.
'My sufferings are indeed great, Herminia. Do you remember,' she asked, with a sad smile, 'all you endured at Cologne, when you only knew Heinrich as Herr Mansfeld?'
'Never, never shall I forget them, and the agony that I suffered on one particular evening, when I heard you laughing, and deemed you heartless, dear cousin. How I then loathed the name of Heinrich—it seems wonderful now!'
'So now do I loathe that of the Baron. Oh, Herminia, few like me have to endure misery without the prospect of relief!'
In the evening after Rhineberg had withdrawn, the Countess, whose mind was still running on her daughter's evident emotion at the name of Burtscheid, gave vent to the anger and suspicion that excited her.
'Did you evergoto Burtscheid with Herr Pierrepont?' she asked abruptly.
'Never, mamma,' replied Ernestine, blushing again, but at her own quibble rather than the question of her mother, who, after eyeing her narrowly, almost sternly for a minute, said—
'You still pine for that insolent young man. I can see it in your face, Ernestine!'
'Oh, mamma!' said the girl, with a wonderful tenderness of tone, 'is it a crime to love?'
'Not if it is a proper love.'
'Then why, mamma darling, are you so severe onme?' asked Ernestine, nestling in her mother's neck in the most endearing manner.
'I wish to protect and guide you, and to teach you that you must not love one who is beneath you.'
'But, dear Carl——' (The adjective escaped her unconsciously.)
'Grafine!' exclaimed the astonished Countess.
'Well, mamma, Carl Pierrepont is not beneath me.'
'This is new to me—how?'
'Because, even if he were so, love makes all equal.'
By kisses and caresses she strove to win over her mother; but the latter almost thrust her back, saying:
'This is folly—worse than folly; crush, forget, dismiss such thoughts. They are unworthy of you, Ernestine—unworthy ofmydaughter!'
'And of mine, too,' added the Count, who had come unnoticed upon the scene. 'Der Teufel! much as I liked that English lad, I hope some French bullet may rid us of him for ever.'
'Oh, father,' implored Ernestine, 'spare me such terrible remarks. Think of his old father and his three sisters in England. Think that our Heinrich shares his dangers.'
'True—true; God forgive me the thought; but go to your room, child, and let us have no more scenes like this,' replied the old Count, who had long outlived the memory of what a young love was, and Ernestine gladly obeyed.
The expression of her face changed at times; its softness seemed to pass away, and then contempt and anger mingled with sorrow on her white lips. She was a spirited yet a gentle girl; she felt that she had been insulted, and treated like a child; that her natural freedom had been trampled on, her wishes ignored, and in the long waking hours of the silent night, when no sound was heard but the hooting of the owls in the ruined tower close by, she brooded, almost revengefully, upon the pride and tyranny of her parents, and the gross insolence—for such she justly deemed it—of the Baron Grünthal, seeking her hand without her affection—her hand in defiance of herself and her avowed love for another!
Then it was, in times such as these, that wild and impotent schemes of flight and freedom occurred—schemes from which she shrank when daylight came.
Ernestine looked ere long careworn and became ill; her physician recommended the baths at different places, and the mineral waters elsewhere; but they were resorted to in vain. One little enclosure from Carl, received secretly in the letters of Herminia, was worth all the baths and wells in Germany to Ernestine.
One evening Baron Rhineberg came galloping to the Schloss, and from his vast rotundity was ushered into the drawing-room when on the verge of an apoplectic fit. His features were purple, his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, and from mingled excitement and enthusiasm, the burly old Teuton could only splutter and utter some incoherent sounds, while the Spitz pug barked furiously.
'Ach Gott!' exclaimed the Count; 'what is the matter?'
'Have you not heard the news, Herr Count?' he gasped.
'News!' repeated Frankenburg, changing colour, and mechanically, or by use and wont, playing with the pipe that dangled at his button, for even he did not smoke in the drawing-room, though a thorough German.
'But of course you could not, for I have just come from the city,' said Rhineberg.
'Der Teufel!' said Frankenburg, angrily, 'and what may the news be?'
'The advanced column of the German army has come to blows with the French at last.'
'At last!' said the Count, with something of pride mingling in his irritation; 'I don't think the Kaiser has lost much time.'
'Our troops were attacked, at least so the telegram says, by the French, led by the Emperor Napoleon in person.'
'Where—where?' asked all his listeners, while the three ladies grew very pale indeed.
'At Saarbrück.'
'The devil!' exclaimed the Count; 'that is actually on our Prussian ground.'
'Saarbrück?' re-echoed the Countess and Herminia, in faint voices, for they both knew that Heinrich was with the advanced column there.
Ernestine knew that her Carl was there too; but no sound left her white and quivering lips.
'And what were the results of the conflict—the casualties, and so forth?' asked the old Count, his mind flashing back to the days of Ligny, Wavre, and Waterloo.
'Unknown as yet. The first man killed is said to be anEnglishman.'
'Gott in Himmel!' cried the Count, 'my girl has fainted!'
So at Frankenburg, as at many other places, where the hearts of the people were with the flower of Germany, they could but wait and pray—pray and be patient till true tidings came.
It was no false alarm that, as related in a preceding chapter, made the advanced sentinels of the 95th, all hardy fellows from the Thuringerwald, open fire in quick succession.
The Emperor Napoleon, who had recently arrived at Metz, looking old and ill, with his head sunk on his breast, and who, on the 28th of July, had issued that famous bulletin, 'Soldiers, the eyes of the world are upon you! The fate of civilization depends upon our success. Soldiers, let each one do his duty, and the God of armies will be with us!'—the Emperor, we say, finding that the time had come when something must be done to stimulate the spirit of those troops whom he had massed in and about Metz, as well as to appease the fiery impatience of the French people, being aware that Saarbrück was of importance to the Prussians, who there had command of three lines of railway for the conveyance of troops and stores, resolved to carry the place by storm.
Hence, about nine o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of August, the gleam of bayonets was seen on some heights that overlook the town, and the dark columns of the French, in their long blue coats, and red or madder-coloured breeches, became visible, and by that time the whole Prussian force in and about Saarbrück was under arms, and their cannon went thundering to the front.
Over the brass-spiked helmets, the brass-pointed pickel-haubes, with the spread eagle, rose forests of bayonets, a steelly sea flashing in the sunshine, the Uhlans riding with pennons furled and lances down on the flanks of the massed close columns. Anon the drums beat sharply, then the hoarse German words of command rang out on the clear air, the colours rustled on the morning breeze, and rays of light seemed to pass over all the force as the columns deployed into line, elbow touching elbow, loosely, and the order was given to load—to load those terrible needle-guns which carried death and destruction into the Austrian ranks in the war of 1866. They are simply breech-loading rifles, in which the charge is exploded by the projection of a piece of steel, called 'the needle,' on the detonating powder. The Prussians, whenever they encountered the French, allowed them to exhaust the fire of their chassepots at long range; then they poured in their own with deadly accuracy; and next came the bayonet charge—and those who have seen the Prussians charge will never forget the impression conveyed by their levelled ridge of steel, the shining helmets, the hoarse hurrahs, the flushed, yet resolute faces, the whole physique of the rushing infantry, and the roar of the trumpets as the Uhlans went thundering on their flanks, whirling their tremendous spears, as if impatient to close with the foe.
All this did Charlie Pierrepont see on this eventful day at Saarbrück.
Ere the Prussians formed line, the booming of their artillery was heard in front; a great deal of wood surrounded the town, and from this, as from an ambuscade, their cannon were fired, and high in the air rose the white smoke above the green foliage* With shouts of 'A bas la Prusse!' the 2nd French corps, under General Bataille, came rushing on, only to be checked and decimated by the biting cannonade; the grassy slope that led to the heights was soon dotted by killed and wounded, and the stretchers and ambulance waggons made their appearance along the whole line of route.
'What is the meaning of those cheers on the right?' asked Captain Schönforst, a tall soldier-like fellow of the 95th, of Charlie, who was busy scanning the enemy through his field-glass; 'are those dragoons coming in from Forbach?'
'By Heaven, I think it is the Emperor in person, surrounded by a brilliant staff, with a little boy riding by his side!' was the excited response of Pierrepont.
And the Emperor it was, accompanied by the Prince Imperial, then in his fourteenth year.
'Tell the officer commanding that gun near us who these new arrivals are,' said Schönforst, a veteran of the Austro-Prussian war,' and desire him to send a few doses of grape in their direction.'
Charlie promptly delivered the order; the direction of the gun was altered, and thus it was that the young prince received what was popularly known as his 'baptism of fire.'
'He was admirably cool,' wrote the Emperor to the Empress; 'we were in front of the line, and the bullets fell at our feet. Louis has kept one which fell close to him. Some of the soldiers shed tears on seeing him so calm.'
Filled with enthusiasm by all this, General Froissard despatched two battalions of the 67th regiment, under Colonel Theobaudin, to attack the hamlet of St. Arnaul, which was occupied by our friends the Thuringians, and was further defended by batteries of guns on the right flank of the Saar. The 15th French regiment made a rush at those batteries, and captured them with great bravery. Theobaudin's battalion, supported now by the 40th and 66th regiments, and some mitrailleuses—those horrible weapons, now for the first time tried in active warfare—made a furious attack on the village of St. Arnaul.
Shoulder to shoulder stood the resolute Thuringians—the lineal descendants of the ancient Hyrcinian foresters—volleying over wall and bank and hedge with their deadly needle-guns; but the French came rushing up the slope with gloriousélan, though hundreds went rolling down, dead or dying, and choking in blood.
With those dreadful showers of balls, the mitrailleuses, 'those master-pieces for death and carnage,' were heard amid the roar of the musketry by the strange noise of their discharge, which was dry, shrieking, and terrible!
Their balls in continuous streams tore thtough the Prussian ranks, mowing them down as scythes mow a field of corn. Everywhere the smoke was dense. Heinrich had an epaulette torn off by one bullet, and the spike of his helmet by another, while Charlie was twice on the point of being taken prisoner, when his company was skirmishing in front, at the time when the 8th and 23rd French regiments were also in skirmishing order through some thickly wooded ravines. Two powerful soldiers attacked him—in fact, he had run against them in the smoke—and he must inevitably have been killed or taken had he not rid himself of one with his revolver, while Captain Schönforst passed his long straight sword through the body of the other.
But the Prussian drums were now beating a retreat. It was impossible for the small force in Saarbrück—a mere weak advanced guard—to withstand the many battalions sent against it by the Emperor, especially as the attacking force was supported by an entire battery of mitrailleuses.
The affair was a skirmish rather than a battle, and ended by the town being set on fire, and the thick columns of smoke from the burning houses rose from amid the trees, rolled along the railway embankments, and added to the obscurity and confusion. Amid this rang the roar of the red flashing musketry, and the horrible shrieking of the mitrailleuse. The latter we may describe for the information of the reader is a four-pound gun, divided into twenty-five compartments by as many rifle barrels, all loaded at the breech by cartridges, and all discharged at once, the loading only requiring five actions, by which seven thousand eight hundred balls can be discharged in one hour into a circle of twelve feet in diameter.
It was by the fire of one of these that Charlie saw an event which was one of the most touching scenes in the war. His skirmishers had been driven by the French 23rd close to the railway bank, and near them lay a Zouave, terribly wounded in the lungs apparently. The poor man's agony was frightful. He was past speech, and could only clasp his hands in prayer, cross himself, and point imploringly to his mouth.
A kindly sergeant of the 95th uncorked his water-bottle, and raising the Frenchman's head, was about to slake his thirst, when the shrieking sound was heard amid the smoke close by. Out of that smoke came the leaden storm of the mitrailleuse, and the Prussian and the Zouave were literally blown to fragments.
Over the railway bank the Thuringians were now driven, and everywhere the whole Prussian line was giving way! The moment the Emperor became aware of this, with generous humanity he ordered the mitrailleuses to cease firing, and thus arrested the useless carnage.
As yet Charlie Pierrepont had escaped without a scratch, though frequently the very sod beneath his feet was torn and sowed by balls. Though the French obtained possession of Saarbrück—the last troops out of which were the Thuringians—the Prussians still continued to lurk in the village of St. Johann, on the further side of the Saar, and in the thick woods beyond it, from whence the white smoke spirted out in incessant puffs as their well-concealed skirmishers kept up a galling fire on the enemy.
This gradually ceased, and the shadows of evening began to deepen over Saarbrück, and on the faces of the dead and dying who lay by the sedgy banks of the once peaceful river. The fishers had fled, abandoning their tubs and baskets; no figures were seen moving on either side now save those of men in various uniforms; and terrified by the unnatural din that then had seemed to rend the sky, the little birds were seen to grovel amid the reeds and grass, as if too scared to seek their nests in those thickets around which the tide of carnage rolled.
The advanced sentinels were posted for the night, and under the shelter of a shattered cottage wall. Charlie Pierrepont, Heinrich, and Captain Schönforst congratulated each other that they all escaped untouched, and sat down amid thedebrisof what had once been a cabbage-garden, to enjoy an humble repast, some German sausage, a few slices of bread, and the contents of their water-bottles, dashed with cognac.
The telegram which, on that same evening, the Baron Rhineberg so duly reported at Frankenburg, thereby piercing, as with a poniard, the heart of Ernestine, was correct in some of its details, as thefirstman killed in the Franco-Prussian war was an Englishman—but not Charlie.
Prior to the affair at Saarbrück, twenty Baden troopers, led by a Mr. Winslow, made a dash into France at Lauterburg, and galloping on as far as Niederbronn, in open daylight, cut all the telegraph wires along the line of railway there. They halted next morning to breakfast at a French farmhouse, when they were surprised, and, in the combat that ensued, Winslow was cut down and slain.
The terror and anxiety of Ernestine were, however, short-lived, as Heinrich's letter, written next morning, contained an enclosure for her that gave her a blessed relief.
In talking over the stirring events of the past day, Captain Schönforst sat drawing out his fair fly-away whiskers to their full length, and then stuffing them into his mouth, as if to stifle his indignation at the Emperor Napoleon, for, like many other German officers at this time, he was loud in condemning him for bringing the Prince Imperial, a mere boy, under fire.
'You forget, Herr Captain,' said Charlie, 'that princes have a great political game to play in this world, and that the heir of a throne should always be a soldier.'
'But a boy—a mere boy—to be brought into action!' persisted the Captain.
'Well. The sooner his nerves are strung, the better, I think; and we must remember that boys are employed in navies as well as in armies, and it is no more inhuman to have a prince under fire than a midshipman or drummer boy.'
So the worthy captain was convinced, though much against his will.
We have no intention of afflicting the reader with a history of the terrible Franco-Prussian war; but we cannot omit the details of some of those events in which Charlie Pierrepont and his comrades, the Thuringians, bore a share.
Serious disasters followed the slight success won by the French at Saarbrück, when the Crown Prince of Prussia, two days after, made a furious attack on their right flank, which rested on a high hill called the Geisberg, just within the frontier of France and a little south-east of Saarbrück. All round the Geisberg the country is hilly and woody, with cultivated fields, detached cottages nestling among vines and flowers, and here and there pretty little hamlets.
Just as grey dawn stole in on the morning of the 4th of August, and when the French troops on the Geisberg were cooking their breakfasts and drinking their coffee quietly between their piles of arms, and looking from time to time into the beautiful pastoral valley, suddenly a storm of shells burst over them. The air seemed alive with fire and falling bombs, while, at the same moment, the whole town of Weissenburg, close by, burst into flames.
Unseen by, and unknown to the French, the Crown Prince of Prussia had established a terrible battery of guns on the heights of Schweigen, a village on the other side of the river, and these guns were supported by a vast force, variously estimated from 50,000 to 100,000 men.
On and about the Geisberg were only 10,000 French troops.
The country on the Bavarian side of the Lauter is so thickly wooded, that the approach of the Crown Prince's army was quite concealed; not a bayonet flashed out from amid the foliage; not a standard was seen to waver; hence the men on the Geisberg suddenly found themselves confronted by a vast host that crossed the river at various points, the first to plunge in being the Thuringians, with stentorian shouts of
'Vorwarts! Vorwarts! Hoch Germania!'
A young fähnrich (or ensign), a mere boy, carrying the King's colour, was shot through the head, and was being swept down the stream with the pole in his grasp, when Schönforst wrenched it away; and the standard, all bloody and dripping, was shouldered by another subaltern.
Pierrepont could see nothing of what was being done at any other point than where his regiment crossed; but in a few minutes he found himself out of the water, and into clouds of smoke, through gaps in which, when made by the morning breeze, he could see the dusky columns of the enemy—the red-breeched Zouaves in their variegated Oriental costume, their necks bare, and their bearded faces dark and brown, and a corps of Voltigeurs in blue faced with white.
Up the Geisberg went the Prussian troops, cheering, and with a rush—up so fast that the mounted officers were cantering their horses—and with a rush the hill was carried, after a short, sharp hand-to-hand conflict, though here the dark, savage Turcos fought with desperation and incredible bravery, charging many times with the bayonet, though their ranks were torn to pieces by grape-shot.
General Douay, commanding the French, was here killed by a shell. His fate was a very melancholy one, and a noble instance of self-sacrifice.
On seeing the battle hopelessly lost, he stood sadly apart on a little mound, watching the last desperate struggles of his fast-falling infantry. He then issued some final orders to the officers of his staff, and began to descend the slope of the mound alone. At its base he dismounted, and slaying his horse, as Roland did at the battle of Roncesvalles (but with a pistol), he drew his sword, and began to ascend the opposite slope of the Geisberg.
'Where are you going, Monsieur le General?' cried some of his soldiers, in astonishment.
'To meet the enemy,' he replied, through his clenched teeth.
They continued to dissuade him, but in vain. Sword in hand he continued to advance, calmly and alone, till a passing shell struck him dead.
General Montmarie, and many other brave officers, fell at the head of their men; and, on this day, was inaugurated that series of rapid disasters to France that never ended till the Prussian drums woke the echoes of the Arc de Triomphe at Paris.
The troops were considerably broken as they fought their way up the hill, and some of the King's Grenadiers got mingled among the 95th. Carl missed Heinrich from his place on the left of the company. 'Heavens!' thought he, 'has he fallen?'
Looking round, even at the risk of being struck by a bullet from behind, he saw him about fifty yards in the rear, in the grasp of a savage-looking and powerfully built Turco, whose left hand was on Heinrich's throat, while, with his unfixed bayonet, the socket of which he grasped dagger-fashion in his right, he was making vain efforts to stab and thrust—we say vain efforts, for, though Heinrich had lost his sword in the fray, he had firm possession of the Turco's right wrist.
While the two were wrenching and swaying to and fro, the black eyes of the swarthy Turco flashing fire, and his teeth glistening white as he hissed and muttered curses through them, a second Turco, not far off, took aim at Heinrich with his chassepot, and fired, but missed. He threw open the breech of the weapon to insert another cartridge; but ere he could close it, Pierrepont, quick as thought, snatched a needle-gun from the nearest soldier, took steady aim at him, and fired. The ball pierced the left side of the Turco, who bounded three feet from the ground, made a kind of half-turn in the air, and then fell flat on his face motionless.
When the smoke cleared away, Charlie saw his friend with a breathless and half-strangled expression hurrying towards him, having been freed from the Turco by the bayonet of a Westphalian. He had saved her brother; and from that gory field, his heart—his thoughts—flashed home to Ernestine.
It was now two o'clock p.m.; by this time the French were in full and rapid retreat, followed by the Prussian flying artillery, as they fell back upon the line of Bitsch. The Geisberg was won, but the slaughter on both sides was terrible. The French fought nobly. Fourteen men of the 24th regiment were all that were leftaliveof that corps at the close of the day; and even those refused to surrender, but kept fighting on at the point of the bayonet until the Prussians, not liking to kill them, rushed upon them in a body and threw them down by wrestling.
On the corpse-encumbered Geisberg the glorious old valour of France was conspicuous as ever; but her troops were badly officered and badly led.
Night came down on the field; the quiet stars were reflected in the placid bosom of the river, and heavy were the moans, and loud sometimes the screams of anguish from the wounded. The sisters of charity began to flit about like good angels, and the bells were rung in Weissenberg to muster the firemen for the burial of the dead.
To follow the 96th in detail through all the subsequent operations would be foreign to our story; suffice it that after the attack by the Crown Prince on the 6th of August, and the outflanking of Marshal MacMahon, after the desperate battle at Worth, Charlie Pierrepont and young Frankenburg found themselves still without a wound, hurrying in pursuit of the fugitive French, who were in full retreat towards Strasburg.
Their brigade halted for the night, and bivouacked among some vineyards near a little village.
Now that he had been so often under fire, Charlie Pierrepont looked back with surprise to the days when, in Frankenburg, he had hoped that a French bullet might kill him! But that was before he had told his love and had been accepted; before that happy day in the Dom Kirche.
Life seemed very different now; it was both precious and valuable!
The staff officers occupied all the cottages in the village, so Charlie, like other regimental officers, had to sleep among his men; and thus, weary and worn, Charlie muffled himself in his ample blue cloak, and with his sword and revolver beside him, went to roost under the shelter of a haystack. Undisturbed by the falling dew, by the occasional beat of a drum or sound of a trumpet, as the field-officers of the night paraded and inspected the out-pickets, the hoarse challenges of the German sentinels, and the clatter of ambulance waggons carrying wounded to the rear, he slept soundly, yet not so soundly as not to have after some strange rambling flights about old Rugby, and a delicious dream of Ernestine, which from its vividity made a great impression on him then, and was to make a still greater, when a future episode came to pass.
In the visions of the night she came to him as distinctly as she had ever appeared to him in reality, and bent over him tenderly and pityingly, as he lay there in that miserable bivouac, with a bundle of hay under his head, and he heard her murmuring softly—oh, so softly, in his ear—
'My darling, my own darling!'
Then, as a gush of her nature, which was ever passionate, deep, and earnest, came over her, she knelt by his side ere he could rise, and drew his head lovingly and caressingly on her soft breast, with her hands clasped under his chin—
'Oh, my Carl, how weary and how worn you look!' she continued, kissing his cheek, on which her tears were falling, while the light of love, triumph, and joy shone in her beautiful eyes.
'I think of you by day and night, my love, my wife, my own wife that is to be,' murmured Carl in his sleep; 'you are indeed my guardian angel.'
He pressed her to his breast, and starting, awoke, to find it all but adream; that the clock of the French village was striking the hour ofthree, and that around him were the weary Thuringians, sleeping in their blue greatcoats and spiked helmets, between their piles of loaded muskets, but to his half-awakened senses her voice seemed to linger in his ear, and he still felt her soft warm kiss on his lips.
He closed his eyes and strove to sleep, in the hope of that dear vision coming back again; but he strove in vain: he was thoroughly awakened now; so dreams or slumber come no more to Charlie Pierrepont.
The dawn of the 7th August came in, and the Prussian troops began their march on Forbach.
The events of the war succeeded each other with frightful speed. Marshal MacMahon's spirited address to the army and his promise, 'with God's help, soon to take a brilliant revenge,' failed to inspire with courage the troops of France, whose military prowess seemed gone. The excitement in the army and at Paris grew terrible. Saarbrück was retaken by the Prussians; the French were again defeated at Forbach; vast bodies of prisoners taken in battle or by capitulation began to pour through the towns of Germany, where they were kindly received; the once great Empire of France seemed tottering to its fall, and on the 13th of August the Prussian scouts were at Pont-à-Mousson, on the Moselle.
Then, more fully to cut off MacMahon's communications with Metz, the 95th Thuringians, now greatly reduced in strength by fighting, and other troops, took post in the pleasant valley where the river divides the town in two parts. The town was soon filled by Prussian troops, but the hardy Thuringians pitched their tents near a village on the bank of the river, on a pretty wooded slope; and there on the first evening of the halt, Charlie received some intelligence from Frankenburg, which caused him much perplexity and thought.
Most of the furniture from the village had been brought into camp; before the tent of Captain Schönforst stood a table and chairs, and there he, with Charlie, Heinrich, and two other officers, sat smoking and drinking, and making merry, while their servants prepared a repast for them.
The aspect of the camp was very picturesque; it was now the beginning of evening, the August sun was sinking behind a wooded mountain range, the 'blue Moselle' looked bluer than ever between its green and fertile banks, and the rooks were cawing noisily overhead in the stately old beeches, amid which the tents of the 95th were pitched.
A single day's halt had enabled the officers to remove all the mud of the march; parade suits of uniform with fresh lace had been donned in lieu of old 'fighting jackets;' boots were polished and spurs burnished, and Schönforst wore a sword of which he was justly vain, as he had received it from the hands of King William after a battle in the campaign of 1866, when he was but a feldwebel, but won his silver shoulder-straps by bravery.
On all sides the men were cleaning their muskets, cutting wood, lighting fires, carrying water from the stream, singing merrily, and many of them in chorus.
'Well, Schönforst,' said one of his guests, Herr Donnersberg, a thoughtless young fähnrich, 'I feel that I have an appetite—what is your speise-karte for to-day?'
'The bill of fare shows rather an omnium gatherum,' replied the Captain, thrusting nearly half a pound of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe; 'but the chief feature in it is a goose, now broiling on ramrods. One of our foragers gave it to me this morning for a couple of kreutzers and a bottle of cognac.'
'Excellent!' replied the other, 'though it is a bird, which an English gourmand said "was too much for one, but not quite enough for two."
'Here is my contribution to the repast,' said Heinrich, producing from his tent a square case bottle of prime Geneva 'per Johann de Kuy, Rotterdam,' which he had picked up somewhere on the march.
'So, as we have nothing better than Geneva and beer,' said the Captain, 'it will be useless to discuss the question as to the aroma of Veuve Clicquot, as compared with that of sparkling hock or Sillery.'
'Hock!' cried the other; 'wait till our drums are ringing among the vineyards of Champagne!'
The goose was pronounced excellent, and soon disappeared with all Schönforst's own viands; the bowled pipes were again resorted to, and when Charlie produced a bottle of cognac from his tent, the serious business of the evening began, with the usual amount of rough military joking; and Schönforst was making them all laugh noisily and heartily, with an account of how Herr Major Rumpenfalz, just before the Westphalians marched, had married the frolicsome widow of a Hofrath, and on waking in the morning found his bride's golden hair on the toilette table, and her pearly teeth in the tumbler out of which the Herr Major was about to take his matutinal draught of cold water. While they were still laughing at this, or rather at the manner in which Schönforst related it, an officer who was passing suddenly paused, and—
'A glass with you, gentlemen!'
'With pleasure,' replied Schönforst, handing him a bumper of brandy and water.
'The Kaiser!' said the stranger, on which all started to their feet and drank the toast, standing with their caps off. Though wearing the usual spike-helmet, a plain blue surtout, with silver shoulder-straps, and a little eight-pointed cross at his neck, in the closely shaven face, the resolute mouth and square jaws, the stern grey eyes and aquiline nose of their visitor, they all recognised the Count Von Moltke—the spirit of the war, 'that embodied fate who prepared in mystery and gloom the blows that were to fall on mighty armaments, and in a few weeks to reduce great military powers to ruin and humiliation.'
'I have news for you, gentlemen,' said he. 'The Emperor has resigned the command of the French army to Marshal Bazaine, so he will have to make the great stand at Metz, where he has one hundred and forty thousand men, with two hundred and eighty pieces of cannon.'
He then put two fingers to the peak of his helmet, and walked slowly away, leaving them to discuss the probable turn events might take now; but jollity was soon resumed.
Charlie was rather silent and thoughtful; for sooth to say, the vivid nature of his dream still haunted him; and Heinrich, who knew well where his thoughts were, gave him a clap on the epaulette, and began to sing a verse of an old love song:
THE CARRIER PIGEON.
'They that behold me little dreamHow wide my spirit soars from them,And, borne on fancy's pinions, rovesTo seek the glorious form it loves.
'Know that a faithful herald fliesTo bear her image to my eyes,My constant thought for ever tellingHow fair she is, all else excelling!'
'Pass the bottle, Carl,' he added; 'let us be merry; weep when you must, but laugh when you can. Vive la bagatelle! as these Frenchmen have it.'
At that moment a Uhlan came spurring into camp with letters for the brigade from the field post; those for the 95th were soon distributed: there was one for Heinrich from Herminia, with another for Charlie enclosed, and both became at once deep in their contents by the last light of the sun. Ernestine's letter was very long, and so crossed and recrossed that the perusal of it occupied a long time. Ere he had read a few lines, Heinrich said:
'I do not know whether I should show you this, Carl.'
'What?'
'A passage in Herminia's letter.'
'About whom?' asked Charlie anxiously.
'Ernestine—my sister.'
'Read it, pray; anything is better than suspense.'
'Herminia writes, "Poor Ernestine seems to fret fearfully. There is a flush on her cheeks such as often precedes but more often follows pallor; and all her actions, figure, and manner are indicative of listlessness and ill-health."'
'My poor darling!' said Charlie, in a low agitated voice.
'"Surely her mamma will have some pity upon her," continued Herminia; "the Baron Grünthal has returned to Aix, and though his gout still continues——"'
'Praised be Plutus!' commented Charlie; 'I wish the nasty old beast was at the bottom of the Red Sea.'
'"And though it does not improve his temper, he has become very anxious and importunate."'
'Curse him! I hope the gout may get into his Excellency's stomach.'
'"The Count and Countess begin to hint now that as the war will too probably be a protracted one, it was unwise to wait for Heinrich's presence at this odious marriage. How Aunt Adelaide pores over theGazettes—those dreadfulGazettes!" And now, Herr Carl, all that follows are littlebon-bonsfor my own perusal.'
Innocent Herminia little knew that her aunt watched the warGazetteswith the double hope that Heinrich's name was not in them, and that Charlie'swas—or might be.
Poor Charlie! Her ladyship was to be gratified one day, however.
'What news from Ernestine?' asked Heinrich, when Charlie had finished the perusal ofhisletter; 'I feel as anxious about these girls at Frankenburg, as if I was Rip Van Winkle after his long snooze in the Sleepy Hollow.'
But Charlie made no reply; he sat with the letter in his hand, and lost in thought.
'What is the matter, my friend?' asked Heinrich. 'There is something more in your letter than there is in mine?'
'There is, indeed!' replied Charlie, in a strange voice, as he drained his glass.
'Good news?'
'No, Heinrich.'
'Bad news, then?'
'No, thank Heaven!' replied Charlie fervently.
'What, then, agitates you?'
'That which I cannot tell you. That which you cannot understand.'
'Carl!' exclaimed Heinrich.
'Pardon me—another time, and I may tell you. Oh, Heinrich, your sister, Ernestine, is indeed the world's one woman to me!' he exclaimed, with deep emotion; and, heedless of Schönforst and the rest, he rose from the table, walked into his tent, and threw himself on the pallet which was his couch, to re-peruse the letter of his betrothed.
The following was the passage at the end of her letter which caused him so much thought and bewilderment:
'Oh, Carl! Carl! what is separation but a living death—a blank in life—a place vacant?' ('How prone the girl is to speak of death!' thought Charlie.) 'But I am ever and always with you in spirit, my love. Do you ever dream of me, Carl? I ask this because last night I had such a delicious dream ofyou.'
'Lastnight,' thought Charlie, glancing again at the date of her letter—'7th' August; 'last night must have been the 6th, when we bivouacked in the stackyard, and I had such a vivid dream of her.'
'I imagined, love, Carl,' continued the letter, 'that I came upon you suddenly, when you were lying on the cold earth in your cloak, as I fear you too often are compelled to do. A great horror seized me! I thought you were dead, you looked so white and wasted; but a sudden joy came into my poor heart when I found you were but asleep. I drew your dear head upon my bosom, as a mother might do her baby's, and caressed you, calling you "My darling!" "My very own darling!" so distinctly that Herminia heard me speaking in my sleep.
'And then you kissed me, Carl, with such tender and passionate kisses as you gave me on that dear day in the Hoch Munster, and called me your little wife and your guardian angel. I was then startled by the great hall clock striking three in the morning, and awoke to weep on finding that it was all a dream, but a dear, dear dream to me.'
These were the actions and words of Charlie's dream, and he remembered that when he awoke the hour ofthreewas tolled in the village spire!
'What can it mean?' he exclaimed, tossing his thick curly hair back from his forehead, impatiently—a way he had; 'the mystery of dreams is unfathomable; they are, indeed, "strange—passing strange!" The same dream, yet we are miles upon miles apart! The same words spoken and heard!—the same night!—the same hour and moment of time!'
Was there some magnetic influence at work? Some spiritual affinity, born of this great love, between these two? It almost seemed so.
Charlie Pierrepont, a matter-of-fact young officer, knew as little of the famous Dr. Emmerson's theories of polarity and odic force, as he did of the Philosophy of the Infinite, or any other abstruse speculation of the present day.
Though bewildered and perplexed, as we have said, it gave him a thrill of strange delight to think how strong, and yet how tender, must be the tie of love between him and Ernestine to produce a spiritual intercourse like this; and lest they might be laughed at by the heedless Heinrich, it was not until some days subsequent to the arrival of her letter that he revealed its contents to her brother, to whom, fortunately for the corroboration of the story, he had told of his vivid dream on the morning it occurred, before the regiment marched from the village.
A few days after the Thuringians and others advanced from the Moselle, the quiet family in the old Schloss of Frankenburg assembled as usual at breakfast. The old butler had cut and aired the morning papers—theStaats Anzeiger, theCologne Gazette, theExtra Blatt, and so forth, and laid them beside the Count. The two young ladies were there in most becoming morning toilets, and there, too, was the Herr Baron Grünthal. The hour was an unusual one for his Excellency to be at Frankenburg, but he had been dining there the evening before; a storm had come on, and, to the infinite annoyance of Ernestine, he had accepted the Count's invitation to remain all night.
With the single exception of absurd family pride and the consequent tyranny over Ernestine, the general tenor of the Count's household presented a fair example of German domestic life.
'The serious character of a people,' says the translator of Schiller's poem 'The Glocke,' 'who begin the common business of everyday life with prayer, who attach importance as well to the manner of performing an action as to the action itself, the custom of travelling, either in their own or in foreign countries, in the interval between the completion of their education and their settlement in life, the domestic manners, where great attention is paid to the minutiæ of domestic economy,' are all, he maintains, peculiar to the German people.
As southerns, the family of Frankenburg were more gay and lively in manner than Germans usually are, for being nearer the Rhine they had been for generations insensibly under French influences; yet they were all German, to the heart's core.
Ernestine was looking crushed and pale. The self-conscious air that a really beautiful girl usually possesses had nearly left her now; while Herminia, happy in her love, and having but one anxiety—the safety of Heinrich—looked bright and radiant as ever.
In a letter from Heinrich to her, Ernestine had been told the story of the strangely coincident dreams; and to a romantic and enthusiastic girl like her—one deeply imbued, too, with German mysticism—the idea that she had thus communed and met, and might again commune with and meet her lover in the spirit, was a source of the purest joy. Every night she laid her head on the pillow in the hope that her soul might fly to him; but as yet no more such visions had come.
And this brave-hearted and handsome young Englishman—Carl, her own Carl—he was risking wounds and death, enduring toil and suffering for the Kaiser, for Germany, and forher; for well she knew that Charlie Pierrepont identified her image with the Fatherland. Then how cruel it was of the Countess to view him so, and to treat him as she did; and again and again she asked in her heart—
'Is it a crime to love?'
But rank was thejoss, the idol that was worshipped in Frankenburg.
However, she had Charlie's ring on her finger, and a curly lock of his hair in a gold locket, reposing in the cleft of her white bosom, all unknown to the Herr Baron, and to all, save Herminia, who could now see the blue ribbon at which it hung encircling her slender neck; and in her bosom, too, she had his last letter, a mere scrap, but full of love and truth and great tenderness; and yet he wrote of pay and poverty. Ob, how hard it was when youth alone should be money, beauty, wealth, and everything.
'Ernestine, meine liebe,' the Countess would say from time to time, 'attend to the Herr Baron—assist him with your own pretty hands. Dear girl! she is always so bright when you are here, Grünthal. She must be doubly happy to see you this morning, after only leaving you last night.'
But poor Ernestine looked anything but happy or bright either, and the Baron, though a lover, was middle-aged; hence his raptures did not spoil his appetite, and he made genuine German breakfast, demolishing steaks, potatoes, rolls, eggs, and coffee, in the most unromantic way in the world.
His hair was turning iron-grey, and on his pericranium was a bald spot the size of a Prussian dollar. He limped a little in his gait—there was no concealing that devilish gout—yet he looked surprisingly young. He was attired in an elegant morning-coat with pale-coloured trousers, a scarlet flower as well as a red ribbon at his button-hole. His hair was brushed up into a stiff bristly pyramid in front; but his face looked flabby now, and his coarse moustache, like that of a walrus, overhung his mouth.
Though suspicious, as we have said elsewhere, concerning that visit to the Dom Kirche, and the mistake about the colour of the marble of Charlemagne's throne, he had not the slightest idea that he had a rival so formidable as Charlie Pierrepont, or that he, Herr Baron Grünthal, Oberdirector of the Consistory Court, could have any rival at all!
Yet there was one thing he could not help remarking—that of all the many handsome presents he had sent Ernestine, from Berlin and elsewhere, not one was ever to be seen on her slender wrists, her fairy-like hand, or round her delicate throat.
This surely boded ill for him as a lover! He found himself, however, highly acceptable to her family, and the marriage once over, all that was necessary would be sure to come after. Whenever he was present or expected, the Countess always seemed, somehow, unusually large and rustling, and on this morning was especially so, in white lace over back moiré, with her hightoupée—it was quite an evening costume she had donned.
The meal was taken somewhat silently, for at times:
'When great events were on the gale,And each hour brought a varying tale;'
and when newspaper correspondents were often fallacious and fallible, the gazettes were unfolded with fear and trembling, and the arrival of a telegram was quite sufficient to terrify the quiet household at Frankenburg.
The Count and Baron, with spectacles on nose, had skimmed over the papers, which contained nothing to alarm them in the way of friends' names among the lists of killed and wounded in the action of the 14th of August; but the Baron read aloud, with peculiar unction, some of those barbarous reports and stories with which the French and German papers then teemed of cruelties perpetrated on both sides. No one knew then whether they were false or true; but they served to fan and inflame the hatred of the adverse parties to fever heat.
The Baron read that many of the dead Arabs and Turcos at Freshweiler were found with fragments of human flesh—torn from the German wounded—between their jaws; that a Saxon officer, who had been struck by a bullet, and taken shelter in the house of a peasant, where he fainted from loss of blood, had his eyes torn out by a woman armed with a fork. These and many other details of atrocities, which actually found their way into the London papers, he read for the edification of the ladies, while Ernestine and Herminia exchanged glances of horror and commiseration, as much as to say how awful it was to think that those they loved so dearly had to run the risk of perils such as these!
Even the Countess forgot her Spitz pug, and a piece of mysterious crochet, that seemed endless as the web of Penelope, while listening to the news, and far away from her peaceful home her thoughts followed her son, to where in the fields, the lanes, the valleys, and pretty hamlets of Alsace and Lorraine, and in places then rendered deserts, there lay in hundreds—yea, in thousands—the hopes of families, the heads of homes, the source of many a broken heart!
Suddenly the Baron raised his voice, and a strange gleam passed over his face.
'Der Teufel!' he exclaimed; 'here is the name of a friend of yours—in theExtra Blatt?
'Of mine—who?' asked the Count.
'We regret to learn by a recent telegram from the seat of war that a party of the 95th Thuringian Regiment met with a severe misfortune, and lost two officers. Herr Lieutenant Pierrepont fell, it is believed, mortally wounded——'
The Baron paused and changed colour; the Countess grew pale, but with a smile of grim satisfaction on her lips; the Count said:
'Poor fellow—poor fellow!'
A low cry escaped Ernestine, who fell forward with her face on the table, and her arms stretched upon it at full length; but this emotion failed to avert the attention of the Baron, whose eyes, now dilated, were fixed on the newspaper. He was very pale, and shook his head slowly, as he said to the Count:
'Ach Gott—the worst is yet to come. Compose yourself, my dear friend.'
'Read—read—it is the name of my son—my Heinrich, that you see,' said the Countess, in a breathless voice.
'It is, madam. "Herr Lieutenant Pierrepont fell, it is believed, mortally wounded——"'
'You read that already; what matters it to me?'
'"And the Herr Graf Von Frankenburg was taken prisoner, andhanged by the Francs Tireurs!" Oh, my friends,' added the Baron, 'I beseech you to suspend your grief for a time; it may all be some terrible mistake, to be cleared up in the end.'
'We seem fated to have startling tidings here!' groaned the poor old Count, as his wife flung herself in a passion of tears upon his breast.
And now to relate that catastrophe which caused such grief and horror to the hearts of all in that hitherto peaceful German home.
We have said that on the 13th of August the Prussian advanced guard was at Pont-à-Mousson. The following day saw them defiling, with drums beating, colours flying, and bayonets flashing in the sun, across the great bridge which there spans the Moselle, and gives its name to the town. This was on a Sunday morning, after the Herr Pastor of the 95th had preached on the text of 'Peace on earth and goodwill to all men'—French excepted, apparently—as the Colonel, while the regiment was yet in a hollow square, issued special orders as to the cleaning of the needle-guns and mode of carrying the ammunition in the pouches.
General Steinmetz having orders to make a demonstration against the French troops lying between him and the great fortress of Metz, at two o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday ordered his seventh corps, including the Thuringians and Westphalians, under General Von Zastrow, to proceed to the attack.
As if inspired by one of those presentiments of coming evil that come unbidden to many, and at times to the bravest of soldiers, on this day Charlie Pierrepont was unusually taciturn, thoughtful, and sunk in reverie. 'Rouse yourself, Carl, rouse!' Heinrich said to him, cheerfully; 'you have had a little romance that is not yet ended. The enemy is before us, and war brings promotion and glory.'
'To some.'
'And to others, Carl?'
'Death, perhaps.'
'Why so gloomy in an hour like this?' asked his friend.
'Life, Heinrich, is, alas! so full of the unforeseen!'
'Of course; but life has pleasant things in store for you yet. You have been having some gloomy dream of our Ernestine again.'
'I have not,' replied Charlie, with a sad smile.
'All will yet be well and happy for you both.Mysister does not require to look for wealth or position. These she had already, and the Baron of Grünthal is lower in rank than a Grafine of the family of Frankenburg,' he added so proudly, that there was much in his tone and bearing which reminded Charlie of the Countess, his mother.
'This brigade will deploy into line, and throw forward skirmishers from the flank of each regiment,' were now the orders of General Von Zastrow; 'the other brigades will deploy in succession.'
And, on the spur, his aides-de-camp went skurrying hither and thither to the commanders of battalions to have the requisite formation completed with as little delay as possible.
'Take courage, Carl,' said Heinrich; 'my dear sister shall yet be your wife—or the wife of no one else.'
'You forget that, save my pay, I am all but penniless. A terrible crime in the eyes of the Grafine Adelaide.'
'Penniless girls are often married for their beauty,' said young Frankenburg, laughing; 'why should not a penniless man be married for his talents or bravery?'
And, as the subdivisions were somewhat apart, those two brothers in heart shook hands, saluted each other with their swords, and took their places in the newalignement.
The day was a bright and beautiful one. Over all Lorraine the green woods and vineyards seemed to be sleeping in the glowing summer sunshine, and the scared peasant near Courcelles Chaussy paused in his work with the sweat on his brow, and spoke with bated breath, as the marching troops went past to death and slaughter, and his honest sunburnt face grew pale, perhaps at the thought of what might be.
Around Ars and Grigy, Borny and Colombey, and many other hamlets and picturesque chateaux, the cattle, rich in colour and sleek in hide, were chewing the cud among the knee-deep pastures; the fresh blue streams ran on their course as if rejoicing to escape the scenes of blood that were about to ensue; the blue kingfishers flitted about, and the sparrows twittered in the green hedge-rows, the branches of which were matted and intertwined with gorgeous wild flowers. The corn was waving in the ripening fields, the swallows skimmed in the air, and from their cottage doors the buxom peasant girls, their cheeks dusky with southern blood and their black eyes sparkling with tears and terror, stood by their mother's side and watched in sorrow and terror the forward march of the Prussian troops to conquest and carnage, and the village bells, from more than one Gothic spire, rang out the hour that was to be the death-knell of thousands closing in the shock of steel.
The moment the formation of the infantry in line was complete, the cavalry scouts went galloping to the front, and in a few minutes a green ridge in front of the Prussian infantry was studded by Uhlans, with their figures and tall lances clearly defined against the pure blue of the sky. Anon, these weapons were slung, and pistols were resorted to, and a sharp cracking of these announced that the enemy was in sight.
In a cloud of dust, a body of dragoons in close column of troops now poured along the broad highway, with swords and helmets flashing in the sun. There were the escort of the artillery, which came rumbling along, with rammers and sponges ready for use, the limber-boxes unlocked, the gunners ready to leap down, and wheel their muzzles to the enemy.
When deploying from close column into line, the companies marched over everything, treading to mud and mire the golden grain—the hope of the husbandman and farmer; while the horses of the cavalry ate it standing in their ranks.
Resolutely marched on the Prussian infantry, each man with his blue greatcoat rolled over his right shoulder, the deadly zundnadelgewehr with bayonet fixed, sloped on his left shoulder, the chain of his helmet down, lest it should fall off in the mêlée. The Uhlans fell back round the flanks, and then the French were seen lurking in rifle-pits, which on one hand afforded them protection, and, on the other, enabled them over the little earthen banks to take sure aim at the invaders.
These rifle-pits and other defences extended over a considerable space of ground, from Colombey, with its fields of scarlet poppies, to Ars-sur-Moselle (so famous for its red wines), including Laguenxey, Grigy, and Borny, all pretty little hamlets. The firing first began at the village of Ste. Barbe, within seven miles from the walls of Metz, in front of which were the principal corps of the French army under Marshal Bazaine, according to the Prussian account.
The fire from the chassepots was deadly, and in their eagerness to come to close quarters, the Prussian officers were seen brandishing their straight-cutting swords and heard crying—
'Vorwarts! vorwarts! Hoch Germania!'
On the other hand the French were not slow in crying—
'En avant! en avant! à bas la Prusse, et vive la France.' For they were ceasing to shout the Emperor's name now.
The whole of the villages had to be stormed by the Prussians in succession. The French resisted nobly; hence the slaughter was terrible. In one rifle-pit alone there lay seven hundred and eighty-one corpses; the chateau of Colombey was taken and recaptured three times at the point of the bayonet.
The livelong day the battle lasted over all the ground before Metz, seven and a half miles in length. The air was loaded with the smoke of cannon and musketry, enveloping alike the dead and wounded, who lay everywhere, in fields and gardens, under hedgerows and hayricks, in vineyards and rifle-pits.
The Prussians were every moment receiving fresh reinforcements, and the troops of Bazaine, unable to check their advance, fell slowly back upon Metz, but fighting every foot of the way.
The 95th were at the third capture of the Chateau of Colombey, out of which the French Voltigeurs were driven in a fair hand-to-hand conflict, leaving behind them a vast number of wounded and slain. Among the former, supporting himself against a fragment of the shot-shattered wall, was a French captain bleeding profusely from a wound in the breast.
The fähnrich of Charlie's company, young Donnersberg, approached and offered him his handkerchief to staunch the bleeding, when the Frenchman, inspired by some sudden gust of national hate and rancour, uttered 'a good garrison oath,' and with all the strength that yet remained in his arm, ran his sword through the body of the German, and killed him on the spot.
Both fell nearly at the same time, as two or three bayonets clashed in the body of the Frenchman, who lay over a pile of dead, bleeding from several wounds. A few minutes after, Charlie chanced to pass where he still lay in the courtyard of the chateau, to all appearance dead. On his breast was the handsome white enamelled Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, conspicuous among his Crimean medals.
'A present for my Ernestine!' thought he; 'and it is no use now to this treacherous fellow.'
'Not yet, not yet,' muttered the Frenchman, while his white lips quivered and his blood-shot glazing eyes turned slowly on Charlie; 'accursed Prussian, I am not yet done with it.'
Charlie drew back. He would have taken it from the dead man without compunction, but shrank from touching the living.
'A little time—a little time,' moaned the Frenchman, 'and I shall indeed be done with it, and all—earthly things.'
'Pardon me,' said Charlie, and was about to pass on, when the Frenchman spoke again.
'Water,' said he, in a low piteous voice, like a sigh; 'one drop of water on my lips, for the love of God!'
Charlie glanced for a moment at the body of young Donnersberg that lay close by, with the Voltigeur's sword nearly up to the hilt in his breast; and then, inspired by pity, placed his water-bottle to the lips of his slayer, whose face was ghastly now and covered with the dew of death.
'Merci! Merci!I am dying!' said he. 'Take my cross, or less worthy hands will soon do so,' he added, trying with a feeble and fatuous hand to detach the ornament from his breast; 'but what will you do with it?'
'Hang it round the neck of her I love,' replied Charlie, who spoke French fluently, and hoping its destination might please a Frenchman's love of gallantry.
'Take it, then. Take it,' replied the latter, as he rent the cross from his breast by a last effort; 'take it, accursed Prussian!' he hissed, through his clenched teeth, 'and when you hang it round the neck of her you love, may she be like—like me!'
'What mean you?'
'A corpse!'
With this dreadful and inhuman wish, the vindictive Gaul sank back; a deadlier pallor overspread his features—there was a terrible sound in his throat, and all was over. For a moment Charlie stood bewildered, with the cross in his hand, and half-tempted to cast it from him. But he changed his mind, and carefully placed it in his breast-pocket as asouvenirfor Ernestine of the battles before Metz, and hurried to join the shattered remnant of his regiment, now hurrying with others, double-quick, to take part in the attack of the orchards of the farm of Bellecroix, where two batteries of mitrailleuses made dreadful havoc among the assailants, sweeping whole ranks away.
By the time the batteries were taken, the French, after losingnineteenthousand men (and the Prussians fully an equal number), were in rapid retreat for Metz. Charlie Pierrepont's work was over for the day, and like his friend Heinrich, he still found himself untouched.
The sun was setting, and the shadows were darkening in the orchards of Bellecroix, when the 95th were ordered to pile arms and take a little rest; and a singular scene—singular by way of contrast, and yet terrible—did these orchards present. The trees were still in full foliage and bearing, and thickly among the green leaves the apples, golden and red, the yellow pears, the downy peaches, and the purple plums were all mingling on the branches above; below lay the dead and the dying, some of whom in their agony had burrowed their faces into the very earth; others had torn it up in handfuls. A few, who had been wounded early in the day, lay dead now, with their hairy knapsacks under their heads, and many with sweet smiles on their waxen faces, as if their last thoughts had been of home, and those who loved them there.
Some had died with their fingers clasped in prayer, others with their hands clenched, as if in rage or pain, and with their faces terribly contorted. Everywhere lay knapsacks, shakos, kepis, helmets, arms, and water-bottles. Pierrepont gladly quitted these dreadful orchards of Bellecroix, and retired to a grassy bank by the side of the highway to Metz, where a few of his brother officers, apart from the rest, were sharing the contents of their havresacks and comparing notes on the dire events of the day.
There he found young Frankenburg mounted on the horse of the adjutant, who had fallen in the attack on Bellecroix, and whose duty he had been ordered to take in the interim, an office that was nearly costing him very dear soon after.
As the troops were to halt on the field pending those operations which led to the battle of Gravelotte, a chain of out-pickets was detailed for the night, and Charlie Pierrepont, as many of his seniors had been killed off or wounded in that day's strife, had command of one of these, consisting of two non-commissioned officers and thirty men, with whom he was ordered to take possession of a little chateau nearer Metz than Bellecroix, to use it as his picket-house, and post his sentinels as to him seemed best.
He accordingly marched for this place, the Chateau de Caillé, belonging to a French gentleman of that name. It was a quaint-looking little place, with latticed windows of iron, two or three little stonetourelles, with conical roofs and vanes, and it was quite buried among masses of ivy, jasmine, and clematis, and embosomed, among rich fruit-trees.
Having posted ten sentinels, equidistant and in communication with those of the adjacent pickets, with orders to stand on their posts and keep their faces steadily turned in the direction of Metz, the dark mass of the citadel which, together with the spires of the churches, could be traced against the now moonlit sky, he approached the chateau with the main body of his picket, never doubting that they would find it deserted, and that the family of M. de Caillé had fled.
Passing down the little avenue which led to the front door, brilliant lights were visible in the lower rooms; loud and noisy voices were heard. Charlie ordered his men to look to their cartridges. As for the bayonets, they were never unfixed now; but a loud, hoarse German chorus that rang out upon the night showed that the place was already in possession of friends, and on entering the dining-room of the chateau, a curious scene presented itself.
It was a handsome apartment, with an elaborately polished floor, and modern furniture in the fashion of the time of Louis XIV. Wax candles in great profusion were burning on the elaborately inlaid table, on which were spread in great confusion dishes, plates, glasses, and bottles with viands and fruit of every kind. M. de Caillé, as he proved to be, a fine-looking old French gentleman, with hair and moustache white as the thistle-down, was there tied hand and foot with a rope, the end of which was secured to the knob of a shutter, compelling him to look helplessly on at the desolation of his dwelling, into which a dozen or so of stragglers from some Bavarian regiment, as they appeared to be, as their helmets were crested with black bearskin and not spikes, had broken, and were now making merry, eating, drinking, singing, and roughly pulling about Mademoiselle de Caillé, her terrifiedbonne, and other female servants; and it was only too evident that but for the timely arrival of Charlie and his picket, something very disastrous must have ensued, as these fellows were fast maddening themselves by drinking all kinds of wines and spirits in succession.
On Charlie's entrance, sword in hand, such is the influence of the epaulette, that they all started to their feet; their noise died away instantly, and every man raised his right hand to the peak of his helmet. Believing they were utterly lost now on the appearance of this fresh arrival, the young lady uttered a cry of despair, and shrank to the side of her father, who was unable to put forth even a hand to shield her, and who eyed Charlie Pierrepont with a half-piteous, half-defiant expression.
He was considerably reassured, however, when he heard the latter announce the duty which brought him there, and ordered the Bavarians, on pain of being treated as mutineers or deserters, at once to return to their quarters. They hurried to obey with more alacrity than goodwill, one alone venturing to explain that they had been fighting all day without food or drink, and were in an enemy's country. By a wave of his sword, Charlie cut him short, and ere he had shot it into the sheath, the chateau was empty of all but his own men, who crowded into the kitchen, and there certainly made free with all that the cook's pantry contained.
Charlie now apologized to M. de Caillé for the conduct of the Bavarians, and hastened to cut the cord that bound him. He was so weak and faint from all he had undergone, that he could only stagger into an arm-chair, when his daughter caressed him and chafed his hands, and while thebonnepoured out some wine for him and Charlie, to whom she curtseyed, and tendered her thanks again and again.
After a time all became more composed, and the conversation naturally ran on the events of the day, and the dreadful din of cannon and musketry which had been ringing for miles around the little chateau; and somehow, while chatting over their wine, and Charlie received again and again the heartfelt thanks of the old Frenchman, the latter, by some word or exclamation that escaped him, discovered the nationality of the former.
'Thank God, monsieur is an Englishman!' he exclaimed.
'Yes,' said Charlie, with one of his pleasant smiles.