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Title: The dead tryst

Author: James Grant

Release date: August 19, 2022 [eBook #68789]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: George Routledge and Sons

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEAD TRYST ***







  THE DEAD TRYST


  BY

  JAMES GRANT

  AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR'


  LONDON
  GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
  BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
  NEW YORK: 9, LAFAYETTE PLACE

  1883




  JAMES GRANT'S NOVELS,

  _Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards._

  The Romance of War
  The Aide-de-Camp
  The Scottish Cavalier
  Bothwell
  Jane Seton: or, the Queen's Advocate
  Philip Rollo
  The Black Watch
  Mary of Lorraine
  Oliver Ellis: or, the Fusileers
  Lucy Arden: or, Hollywood Hall
  Frank Hilton: or, the Queen's Own
  The Yellow Frigate
  Harry Ogilvie: or, the Black Dragoons
  Arthur Blane
  Laura Everingham: or, the Highlanders of Glenora
  The Captain of the Guard
  Letty Hyde's Lovers
  Cavaliers of Fortune
  Second to None
  The Constable of France
  The Phantom Regiment
  The King's Own Borderers
  The White Cockade
  First Love and Last Love
  Dick Rooney
  The Girl he Married
  Lady Wedderburn's Wish
  Jack Manly
  Only an Ensign
  Adventures of Rob Roy
  Under the Red Dragon
  The Queen's Cadet
  Shall I Win Her?
  Fairer than a Fairy
  One of the Six Hundred
  Morley Ashton
  Did She Love Him?
  The Ross-shire Buffs
  Six Years Ago
  Vere of Ours
  The Lord Hermitage
  The Royal Regiment
  Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders
  The Cameronians
  The Scots Brigade
  Violet Jermyn
  Jack Chaloner




  CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER

  I. TWO COUSINS
  II. CHARLIE PIERREPONT
  III. THE DREADED MEETING
  IV. CHARLIE IN LOVE
  V. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DOM KIRCHE
  VI. AN ALARM
  VII. AMONG THE BREAKERS
  VIII. CHARLIE'S VISITOR
  IX. FOR LIFE AND DEATH
  X. TO THE RHINE!
  XI. SEPARATED
  XII. THE BAPTISM OF FIRE
  XIII. THE DREAM IN THE BIVOUAC
  XIV. THE LETTER OF ERNESTINE
  XV. WHAT THE 'EXTRA BLATT' TOLD
  XVI. IN FRONT OF METZ
  XVII. FACING A BATTERY OF MITRAILLEUSES
  XVIII. IN THE ENEMY'S HANDS
  XIX. THE CHATEAU DE CAILLÉ
  XX. ERNESTINE
  XXI. AT AIX ONCE MORE
  XXII. AT BURTSCHEID
  CONCLUSION




THE DEAD TRYST.



CHAPTER I.

THE COUSINS.

On an evening in summer before the late siege of Paris, three
ladies--one a matron of mature years, the other two both young and
handsome girls, a brunette and a blonde--were seated in one of the
lofty windows of a stately room on the first _étage_ of the Grand
Hotel Royal, which immediately overlooks the Rhine at Cologne.

The senior of these--Adelaide, Countess of Frankenburg, a woman
grey-haired now, and with features somewhat of the heavy German
type--had just received a letter, and was intent upon it, while her
daughter Ernestine, and her orphan niece Herminia, watched her face
with interest, and forgot the little Tauchnitz editions over which
they had been idling.

'What does my brother Heinrich say?' asked Ernestine.

'That he has got extended leave of absence from Potsdam, and next
week will arrive at Frankenburg, to spend some time with us.  He
brings with him a young English friend, Carl Pierrepont, an officer
of his regiment.  I trust, Herminia, you will receive my dear boy
with all the affection he so justly merits.'

But Herminia made no reply, so the Countess repeated what she had
said, and fixed her eyes steadily and inquiringly upon her.  She only
sighed, opened, and then tossed aside her Tauchnitz edition of an
English novel.  The Countess's ideas of propriety would not permit
her to allow her girls to peruse any other light literature; but
having an idea that a married woman might read works of a
higher-flavoured nature, she sometimes read the works of MM. Dumas
and De Kock, to 'keep up her French,' as she phrased it

The cousins--known as 'the Belles of Frankenburg'--were alike in
stature and delicacy, but very dissimilar in style of beauty and in
complexion.  Herminia was dazzlingly fair, of a pure Saxon type, with
hair of that lovely brown tint which seems shot with gold in the
sunshine, and soft eyes of violet-blue, that seemed almost black at
night, and though brown her tresses, and wondrously fair her skin,
her eyelashes and eyebrows were dark, almost black; but her pretty
little nose bordered rather on the _retroussé_.

Ernestine was a dark beauty, with black hair and clear, but
thoughtful and dreamy hazel eyes, which she inherited with the blood
of some Hungarian ancestor; her whole style was more classic than
that of her cousin.  Her nose was slightly aquiline, with dark
straight eyebrows that nearly met over it, imparting a great degree
of character to her face, which was suggestive of decision of mind
and firmness of purpose--a little self-willed and opinionated,
perhaps; for Ernestine was not without her faults.  She was fond of
admiration; but what pretty girl is not?  She liked dress and gaiety,
and would dance all night if her partners pleased her.

The Countess carefully folded her son's letter, and fixing her keen
grey eyes on Herminia, said, somewhat sententiously:

'Though an old man now, the father of my Heinrich was as brave a
soldier as ever trod the soil of Germany, and his name is yet
venerated among the Uhlans of the Archduke; and I am proud to say,
Herminia, that his son is worthy of such a father.'

'Were my cousin the Archduke himself,' said Herminia, wearily, for
she was pretty well used to hear these encomiums, 'he would be
totally indifferent to me.'

'Herminia!'

'Totally, I repeat.  Pardon me, dear Aunt Adelaide; but he has no
particular claim on my regard.'

'He is your cousin, your own blood relation--near almost as a
brother!' said the Countess, impatiently.

'But still, mamma, as I have said a hundred times before, he can have
no claim upon her hand,' urged Ernestine, who had not yet spoken on
the subject.

'Do you, Grafine, wish to abet Herminia in her strange contumacy?'
asked the Countess, severely.

'I speak but my thoughts, dearest mamma.'

'Her father, the Staats Rath, gave her away to him as a child; but
you, as well as I do, know the arrangement made by our family; they
were betrothed when she was in her cradle, and he a schoolboy at
Bonn; and now he comes to claim her hand, in virtue of that
betrothal,' added the Countess, who, though a German, had
considerable nobility and dignity in her bearing and aspect.

'Such foolish arrangements may have been made long ago, Aunt
Adelaide, when robber-barons lived in those ruined castles which look
down from every rock upon the Rhine; but such would be absurd in
these days of ours, when its waters are ploughed up by steamers, and
the lurlies and elves have all been put to flight.'

'Herminia,' said the Countess, with increasing severity, 'do you
revere the memory of the Baron and Privy Councillor your father?'

'I do, indeed, Aunt Adelaide; my father's memory is very dear to me,
even as that of my dead mother, whom I never saw,' replied the girl,
with her eyes growing moist; 'but I decline to admit the right of
either to give me, while yet a helpless child, away to anyone in
marriage.  The idea is eccentric; it is more, it is odious and
preposterous!'

'You use somewhat strong language, Grafine.'

'Surely not stronger than the situation merits?' replied Herminia,
her soft voice trembling with agitation and annoyance.  'If my cousin
Heinrich is unmanly enough to insist upon the fulfilment of this most
absurd family compact, I shall ever deem him most unworthy of my
regard, or, indeed, that of any woman!' added Herminia, whose tears
now began to fall.

'Then it is your resolution to violate, to trample upon, to utterly
disregard the affectionate contract made by your parents and by his?'

'But I have never seen this--this most tiresome cousin, Aunt
Adelaide!'

'That has been a misfortune caused by your being educated in England,
while he was at the university, and then with the army.'

'Hence he is to me a stranger, and must be greeted and received as
such.'

'I think my brother Heinrich is acting foolishly in bringing the
English friend (of whom he writes so frequently) to Frankenburg,'
said Ernestine.

'Why?' asked the Countess.

'Because Herminia, in the very spirit of opposition, may fall in love
with _him_.'

'My father could not have taken a surer way to make me shun and
loathe my cousin, and even do something more dreadful still, than by
forming this arrangement.'

'Something more dreadful still!' repeated the Countess, raising her
voice, and surveying her niece through her gold eyeglass.  'In
Heaven's name, what _do_ you mean, Herminia?'

'By compelling me to marry a man I don't love; for what happiness
could follow a union with a total stranger?  Besides, I don't want to
marry.'

'Your own cousin a stranger?' persisted the Countess.  'But though we
have discussed this subject a thousand times before, there is one
feature in it to which I have never referred, and which,
consequently, will be _new_ to you.'

'I am glad to hear _that_,' replied the contumacious little beauty,
shrugging her pretty shoulders and almost yawning.

'I mean a clause in your father's will, by which, if you do not marry
our Heinrich, your fortune will be divided between him and your
cousin Ernestine,--leaving you, in fact, without a silver groschen.'

'I would not have a kreutzer of it--neither, I am sure, would
Heinrich!' exclaimed Ernestine, emphatically.

'Neither of you would be consulted in the matter.  But now, Herminia,
will you brave the prospect of poverty--a life of utter
dependence--go back to England as a governess, perhaps?'

'Yes,' said the girl proudly; 'I would brave anything.'

'You love some one else!' exclaimed her aunt.

'I have never said so,' replied Herminia, with a perceptible tremor
in her sweet voice; 'but no doubt it is this fortune of which you
speak that Heinrich wants.'

'Did he want it when you were in your cradle, and he was carrying his
satchel at Bonn?'

'I should think not; but he may want it now, after some years spent
in the army.'

'Shame! you forget yourself, Herminia--forget that you speak of your
own cousin--of _my_ son.  It is much more likely that some
adventurous friend, some acquaintance, whom you have picked up here
is thinking of your fortune, than my dear Heinrich.'

The old lady's eyes were actually filled with tears, and after a
pause she said:

'I regret, Herminia, that I ever sent you to England.'

'Why, dearest aunt?'

'Because those English girls, your school companions there, have
indoctrinated you with preposterous ideas of female
independence--right of choice, and so forth; and now that I think of
it, _who_ is that gentleman with whom you waltz so frequently?'

'Waltz, aunt?' said the girl, in a low voice.

'And who gave you, last night, that rose which you now wear in your
breast?'

'Last night, aunt?' faltered Herminia, now blushing deeply, while
Ernestine laughed mischievously.

'Don't repeat my words, please.  Yes, last night, when the band of
the Uhlans was playing in the garden of the Prinz Carl?'

'Herr Ludwig Mansfeld.'

'And how came you to know him?' asked the Countess, severely, adding,
'I hope he is not an officer from the barracks?'

(Such dreadful fellows 'those officers from the barracks' seem to be
all the world over, from Canterbury to Cabul!)

'I met him first at a ball in the Kaiserlicher Hof, where the Master
of the Ceremonies introduced him to me when you were playing cards in
the ante-room.  We dance frequently; and the introduction was
unnecessary, according to our German ideas.'

'In--deed!'

'Is there any harm in all that when he dances so delightfully?

'And oh, how handsome he is!' exclaimed Ernestine.

'I fear some harm has been done already; and I do not think that any
gentleman should dance with a young lady before he has obtained the
permission of her chaperone.'

There was now a pause, after which the Countess said:

'The Count urges our return before Heinrich arrives; so we shall take
the train to Aix-la-Chapelle to-morrow.'

'So very soon, aunt?' said Herminia, growing pale.

'My dear, I am sorry to spoil your pleasure here; but to-morrow
morning _we go_,' said the Countess, rising haughtily; 'come with me,
Ernestine.  I need your assistance with my correspondence.'

The mother and daughter swept out of the room, their dresses--the
rustling moiré of the Countess and the maize-coloured silk of
Ernestine--gliding noiselessly over the varnished floor, and Herminia
was left to her own sad reflections.

'Ich bin sehr böse!' (I am very angry) she heard the Countess
exclaim, as the door closed, and then she heard her cousin make some
laughing response.

'How can Ernestine be so heartless?' thought the girl; 'but, alas!
she knows not what love is!  To-morrow,' she exclaimed
aloud--'to-morrow, I shall lose him, and perhaps for ever, my dear,
dear Ludwig!'

Her handsome eyes were now welling over with hot, salt tears.  She
had her arms above her head, with her white slender fingers
interlaced amid the coils of her beautiful brown hair; her eyes were
cast mournfully upward; then she tore her fairy fingers asunder with
a sob in her throat and let her hands drop by her side as she sank
back in her chair.

'Would to Heaven that I had never known him--that we had never, never
come to Cologne,' she exclaimed.

She felt that she must see Ludwig once again; but this dreadful
cousin, how was he to be avoided?

These two ideas filled her whole soul as she sat, silent and
motionless, looking out on the view that lay before the hotel
windows: the broad waters of the famous Rhine, shining redly in the
light of the setting sun, covered with sailing vessels and steamers
shooting to and fro, its great pontoon bridge, through which the
current surged, the wilderness of roofs that formed the city--that
Rome of the north which Petrarch apostrophized to Colonna--stretching
far away, with the great masses of the unfinished cathedral, the dome
of St. Gereon, with its three galleries, and the stately tower of St.
Cunibert rising high in the air and casting mighty shadows eastward.
But Herminia surveyed them all as one who was in a dream, and kept
repeating to herself, as she drew the rose from her breast and
pressed it to her trembling lips with all a young girl's fervour:

'Yes--yes--I must see him once again, and then all will be over--over
for ever!'

She glanced at her watch, took her hat and gloves from a console
table close by, and hastily and noiselessly quitted the room.
Descending the great staircase of the hotel, she issued into the
beautiful garden attached to it, and proceeded at once to a certain
fountain, near which a gentleman was lingering.  He hurried towards
her, and took both her tremulous little hands within his own.  He
gazed tenderly into her eyes, and then scanned the windows of the
hotel.  Alas! too many overlooked them, so the longed-for kiss was
neither given nor taken; and neither knew that at this very time,
they were both seen by the Countess and the laughing Ernestine.

Though in plain clothes, attired as a civilian, the soldier-like air
of Ludwig Mansfeld would not conceal.  He was dark-complexioned,
especially for a German, with straight handsome features.  He was
closely shaven, all save a thick moustache, and he had tender brown
eyes--tender, at least, when they looked into those of Herminia, who
was now weeping freely.

'Tears?' said he, inquiringly.

'Yes, Ludwig, tears; I have much reason for them.'

'How, darling?

'We leave Cologne to-morrow.'

'Ah! why so soon?'

'It is the resolve of my aunt.'

'And for where, darling?'

'Aix-la-Chapelle.'

Her lover's features brightened as she said this.

'Well, my own one, I shall be there in a few days,' he whispered
cheerfully; 'and if we are prudent, and watch well our opportunities,
it will indeed be a very remarkable thing if we don't meet as often
as we may desire.'

'But my cousin--this most odious _fiancé_--Heinrich von Frankenburg,
joins us in a week from Potsdam, where, I understand, his regiment is
stationed.'

'I have seen Frankenburg, and know that he has the reputation of
being dangerously handsome; but I thought he was on leave of absence?'

'So he has been.  As for Aunt Adelaide, she is a tyrant, and I do
believe would keep me in pinafores, if she could!' said Herminia
bitterly.

'Herminia, dearest,' said the young man, while gazing at her
lovingly, earnestly, and very keenly, 'you have never seen this
wondrous cousin, to whom your family wish to assign you like a bale
of goods?'

'Oh, never even once, Ludwig; and to me he is an object of
abhorrence!' she exclaimed passionately.

'Excuse me, my love,' said Ludwig sadly; 'but I have a strange
foreboding--a presentiment which comes to me unbidden, and seems to
say that when you _do_ see him, your present abhorrence may pass
away, and--and a tender emotion take its place.  The propinquity and
charms given to a cousin are perilous for a secret lover like me.'

Herminia now wept bitterly.

'Ludwig, I could quarrel with you for such a cruel suspicion,' she
sobbed out, 'but that we are, I fear me, now speaking together for
the--the--the last time,' and, heedless of who might see the action,
in the abandonment of her great grief, her head sank on his shoulder,
and she nestled her sweet face in his neck.

'Your tears, my own darling,' said he, 'are a rebuke, and more than a
sufficient rebuke, for my suspicion; and bitter, indeed, would this
parting-time have been to me, but for the knowledge--the sure
conviction--that, even if a thousand cousins came, still we shall
meet at Aix.'

Herminia shook her head mournfully, and said, 'I pray to Heaven that
it may be so, and with the hope these words inspire, I must now,
dear, dear Ludwig, say--farewell!'

And so they parted, with hearts that doubtless were aching sorely,
for their future seemed dark and dubious.  Yet he seemed more hopeful
than her.  He kissed her very tenderly, and, though his naturally
brown cheek looked pale, she thought he smiled at their temporary
separation--if temporary it was to be--more than she could account
for.

But doubtless, lover-like, he had some bold plan in view.

'Yet it was a sad, sad smile my darling gave me,' thought the girl,
as, with her veil closely drawn, she slowly and wearily ascended the
great oak staircase to the _étage_ off which her bed-room opened;
'but no doubt he only thought of cheering me.'

Next morning the Countess's carriage took the trio to the
Eisenbahnhof for Aix-la-Chapelle; and as Herminia from the
swift-speeding train looked back to the sinking spires of Cologne, a
curtain seemed to have fallen between her past and present existence.

And oh! how weary was the night that followed, when tossing
restlessly, defiantly, and petulantly on her laced pillow, she lay in
broken slumber, with tears matting her long and lovely eyelashes.




CHAPTER II.

CHARLIE PIERREPONT.

A week after this, a drochski deposited a smart-looking young
officer, in the uniform of the 95th Thuringian regiment--blue with
red facings and silver epaulettes, spike-helmet and black belt--at
the entrance of the Pariser Hof of Cologne, a comfortable and
moderate hotel, suitable to that style of economy continental
military men are usually constrained to practise.

Though wearing the well-known uniform of the Prussian army, it was
impossible not to recognize in the new arrival, as he sprang lightly
up the steps of the hotel, that he was an Englishman, a genuine
Briton, for he was the Carl Pierrepont mentioned by young Frankenburg
in his letter to the Countess.  Carl--or Charlie, as he was known
when he was wont to hold his wicket in the playing-grounds of Rugby
against the best bowler in the three hundred, and to con his studies
in the white brick Tudor school-house, or in the long avenue called
Addison's Walk--was a great favourite with all his regiment, and
already had the honour of being specially noticed on parade by our
Princess Royal when her husband was reviewing the Prussian troops,
and of receiving from his hand the much-coveted Iron Cross when
almost in his boyhood.

One great cause, perhaps, of Charlie's popularity among the
Thuringians was, that as an Englishman he was destitute of that
aristocratic hauteur which causes the well-born German officer to
regard all under his command as an inferior order of beings, a style
of bearing and sentiment unknown alike in the armies of Britain and
France.

His face was fair, his features handsome, and he was verging on
thirty years of age.  His character, like his figure, was fully
developed and formed; the expression of his eyes betokened
intelligence and promise; while his lithe and manly form had all that
muscular strength and activity that women often prefer to intellect
in men, and which is frequently the result of the out-door sports in
the playgrounds of Rugby, Eton, and Harrow, a portion of our English
system of education.

Though the son of a fox-hunting Warwickshire squire, who knew every
cover in Stoneleigh, the Brailes, and the Edgehills, the head of an
old but certainly embarrassed family, so far as mortgages and so
forth went, he was barely deemed among the wohlgeborn, according to
the Prussian standard; and poor Charlie had nothing as yet but his
epaulettes and sword, his pay as a soldier of Fortune, with the
privileges usually accorded to Continental officers, such as going
everywhere at half-price in virtue of their being in
uniform--privileges which ours would decline 'with thanks.'

Charlie Pierrepont was everywhere a great favourite with the other
sex; and perhaps there was no species of flirtation in which he was
not a skilled hand, and he had carefully studied the whole 'scale of
familiarities, the gamut of love,' as he was wont to call it, from a
touch of the hand or the elevation of an eyebrow, upward, to the
extremity of tenderness; and thus much of his time had been passed
pleasantly for some ten years in every garrison town between the Elbe
and the Vistula; but he had always come off scot-free, for he was
possessed, as we have said, of but his epaulettes and sword, while
many of the girls he met were as finished flirts as himself; and
some, after a short acquaintance, would show their hands with a
laugh, and, as it were, throw up their cards.

'Kellner! let me have a room on the lowest _étage_ that is
unoccupied,' said he, as his portmanteaus were carried in by the
hausknecht.

'Yes, mein Herr,' replied the oberkellner, or head-waiter.

'Is the young Count Von Frankenburg here--an officer of the
Thuringians?'

'Yes; he is now at the _table d'hôte_.  The bell has just rung, so
mein Herr is exactly in time for dinner.'

'Very good.'

'This way, mein Herr,' said the waiter, bowing; 'but, though in the
Prussian uniform, I think the Herr is an Englishman.'

'How do you know that I am so?'

'Because I myself am one, and I recognized you by your voice.'

And, sooth to say, Charlie was very unlike a German in that respect,
and had the pleasantly modulated voice of a well-trained English
gentleman, and few voices are more agreeable to listen to.

He entered the stately speise-saal, or dining-hall of the hotel,
where the landlord, in the kindly German fashion, sat at the head of
the table, presiding over all his guests, more than a hundred in
number, and already the waiters were busy.  A single glance showed
Pierrepont where his comrade sat--a smart and handsome young officer
in undress uniform, who was caressing a dark moustache, and making
himself agreeable to a lady beside him.  He rose and beckoned to the
new arrival.

'Welcome to Cologne, Carl!'

'Thanks, Heinrich.  How are you?'

They shook hands simply, as Charlie had a genuine English repugnance
to salute a man in the German fashion on the cheek.  He then took the
chair which his friend, the Count, had reversed and placed against
the table, for service beside his own.

'Kellner! die speise-karte!'  The wine card was called for next, and
the serious business of the meal began, amid all that noise and
hubbub peculiar to a German _table d'hôte_, where Counts and Barons,
with ribbons and orders, may be seen handling their knives and forks
like English ploughmen, and pretty frauleins tugging away at chicken
bones with the whitest of teeth, and the most perfect air of
self-possession.  The first conversation was, of course, about the
expected war concerning the Spanish succession, the political
sketches in the _Kladderadatch_, the official accounts in the _Staats
Anzeiger_; how all Paris was brimming over with enthusiasm, rage, and
vengeance; that crowds were always in the streets shouting, 'Down
with Prussia!' 'To the Rhine! to the Rhine!' 'To Berlin!'  How the
'Marseillaise' was being sung, and the hotel of the Prussian
ambassador was only saved from total destruction by the intervention
of the gendarmerie; for the time had now come when the Prussians
spoke exultingly of Leipzig, even as the French did of Jena, and also
raised the cry of 'To the Rhine!' while the national songs of the
Fatherland were constantly sung in hoarse but martial chorus.

Dinner over, the lighted candles came, as a hint for the ladies to
retire, and rising like a covey of partridges they withdrew.  The
cloth was removed, and fresh bottles of wine, or lager-beer, with
tobacco and cigars, were provided on all hands, and the conversation
became more general, and, if possible, more noisy than before.

As the subject of the coming war was discussed, many eyes were turned
to the two friends in the uniform of the 95th Thuringians, for both
seemed gentlemen and soldiers, and no troops in the world look more
like our own in bearing, and in firm, manly physique, than the
Prussians.  Charlie Pierrepont had acquired many of the ways of the
latter, and would join, when on the march, 'Was is des Deutschen
Vaterland,' as lustily as if his father had been some Rhenish Baron,
and not a hearty Warwickshire squire.

'I am already sick of this subject of the war,' said Charlie, as he
lingered over a cigar; 'one hears so much of it everywhere.  By the
way, have you yet seen your fair cousin, Heinrich?'

'Yes.'

'And found her charming?'

'Beyond my fondest hopes; but she knew not that I had seen her, nor,
in truth, did I care much to intrude upon her.'

'Intrude!--upon your intended?'

'That is the word,' said the Count, with a strange smile.

'Why, Herr Graf?'

'Don't "Herr Graf" me.  Call me Heinrich.'

'Well?'

'A deuced fellow, named Ludwig Mansfeld (I found it so in the
_Fremden Buch_, at the Grand Hotel), has cut me out--quite.'

'Have him out in another fashion, and I am the man to measure the
ground for you.'

'Thanks, Carl, but I would rather fire at my own figure in a mirror,'
said Frankenburg, laughing.

'You are sure your friends expect me at the Schloss?'

'Yes, at Frankenburg; they are familiar with your name there.  I have
written so often of you to Ernestine, my sister.'

'She was educated in England, I believe?'

'With Herminia at the west end of London; so you and she will get on
famously together.  As you are a musician, you will like her
immensely, Carl.'

'I have no doubt of that.'

Little indeed could poor Charlie Pierrepont foresee all Ernestine was
yet to be to him.

'I am a bad fellow, I fear,' said the Count reflectively; 'I have
trifled with too many women in my time, and fear that I am not worthy
of this sweet cousin of mine, even if she would have me.'

'Nay, nay, Heinrich----'

'Somebody writes, that "if we were all judged by our deservings,
there is scarcely a man on earth would find a woman _bad_ enough for
him."'

'That is taking a low estimate of mankind in general.'

'And of the 95th Thuringians in particular,' added the young Count,
laughing; 'to-morrow we shall start for Frankenburg in an open
britzka--it is only twenty-five miles from this; and now, one bottle
more of St. Julian, and then we shall go and see the girls at the
gardens of the Prinz Carl.'

'Half German and half French--some of them are, no doubt, very
pretty.'

'Nay, I hope they are wholly German now.  It was in those gardens I
first met my beautiful cousin, with that devil of a fellow, who,
somehow, got introduced to her.  Let us go then; the band of the 76th
Hanoverians plays there every evening.  This time to-morrow will find
us at dear old Frankenburg, where, as I shall have the girl all to
myself, I hope to turn the flank of this Herr Mansfeld.  I am in love
with my cousin--actually in love with her at last.'

'My simple comrade, of what are you talking?  Is this any age of the
world in which to wear your heart upon your sleeve?  Is this fellow
Mansfeld good-looking?'

'Rather,' said the Count, twirling the points of his moustaches, and
eyeing himself complacently in the depths of a great mirror opposite;
'but I wish I had your general success, Carl.'

'In what--I took honours in nothing at dear old Rugby.'

'Indeed--not even in flirtation?'

'In that I might have had the golden medal, had golden medals been
given for such excellence.'

They assumed their spike helmets and swords, which the Prussian
officers wear through a perforation in the left skirt, as their belt
is worn under the coat, and thus bantering each other, cigar in mouth
and arm-in-arm, they proceeded laughingly towards the crowded gardens
of the Prinz Carl Hotel.

Next day saw them off for Frankenburg in an open britzka.  The day
was a lovely one in summer, and the scenery around them grand.
Charlie, of course, apostrophized the Rhine, and quoted Byron.  They
passed Düren and the valley of the Ruhr, with the picturesque hamlet
of Riedeggen perched on its lofty rock; Merodé, the cradle of the
Merodeur; industrious Stolberg, with its château crowning a hill, and
the beautiful wood named the Reichswald.

Young Frankenburg was in excellent spirits, and bantered the driver,
calling him schwager (brother-in-law), a singular title for
post-boys, and so forth, the origin of which is unknown.  He was
rather too liberal to him in the matter of trinkgeld (drink money);
thus the britzka was driven at a thundering rate down that basin of
beautiful hills which surround Aix, while Heinrich waved his
forage-cap, and sung verses from the war-song of Arndt:

  'My own Fatherland, my brave Germany on!
    We'll sing them a terrible strain.
  For what ages ago, their vile policy won--
    Of Strasburg, of Metz, and Lorraine.
  They shall hand it all back to the uttermost mite,
  Since for life or for death they compel us to fight.
  To shout, "To the Rhine, to the Rhine, and advance!
  All Germany onward, and march into France!"'




CHAPTER III.

THE DREADED MEETING.

A week had passed away at Frankenburg, and the subject of the young
Count's return--that event so dreaded by poor Herminia, from motives
of delicacy, perhaps--had not been resumed, till the evening which
saw him and his comrade driving through the beautiful scenery just
referred to.

Dinner had been delayed, as the Count had telegraphed from the
Pariser Hof that he was coming, and both the young ladies had made
most careful toilettes, and perhaps sorely tried the temper of their
attendants--Herminia, to please her watchful and somewhat suspicious
aunt; Ernestine to please herself, and perhaps with a secret desire
to please her brother's boasted friend, who, being an Englishman,
would, she feared, be rather critical and fastidious.

And still further to achieve the laudable end of subduing him, she
was now at her piano, practising sundry vapid fashionable songs which
she had learned in England, just as our English girls strum German
and Italian, learned, perhaps, at second hand from some poor needy
governess.  Most warmly had Heinrich written to her again and again
about his English comrade, who had once actually fought a duel for
him at Altona, when he was too ill to fight for himself, so Ernestine
was all anxiety to know, receive, and thank him; for she doted on
Heinrich, her only brother, as a loving, tender, and devoted sister
alone can dote.

During all the past week, Herminia had but one thought, especially
when riding, driving, or walking abroad.  Her lover had confidently
promised to see her again, and to follow her to Frankenburg; but she
had seen nothing of him, and no letter or note, however brief, had
reached her.

Why was this?  She could find no answer in her heart, and doubt and
anxiety cost her many tears in secret.

There had been great bustle and anticipation all day long in the
somewhat secluded mansion in consequence of the expected arrival of
the young Herr Graf and his friend.  The family were to be 'not at
home' to any visitors.  Already Grunthal, Rheinburg, and sundry other
Grafs had called in their ramshackle old-fashioned coaches and
droschkies, covered with coats-of-arms exhibiting the usual German
infinity of quarterings; and certain officials of Aix-la-Chapelle,
with their wives, who, like other wives all over Germany, insisted
upon taking the titles of their husbands' occupation, had been day
after day leaving their cards, having heard that 'the Belles of
Frankenburg had returned;' but now all were to be denied, and this
afternoon was to be devoted to the only son of the house.

The Countess, who, though a modern lady of fashion, requiring her
novels, cushions, Spitz lap-dog in a basket, and the _Kladderadatch_
to get through the day, was nevertheless, on the other hand, as
thrifty a German housewife as any of the old school, had bustled
about overseeing the culinary preparations, while her husband, Count
Ulrich, who was passionately addicted to the pleasures of the chase,
spent only half that day in the woods, and was now, with a huge pipe
(having a china bowl and tassel) in his mouth, watching, like a
sentinel, from a terrace before the drawing-room windows, the road
that wound away towards Aix-la-Chapelle.

The once smart officer of Uhlans, who had ridden on old Blucher's
staff at Waterloo, on that eventful day when the 'Iron Duke' wept
with joy to hear the boom of the Prussian cannon--the smart Lancer,
of whom the Countess had boasted at the Grand Hotel, was somewhat
obese now.  He was, in fact, a very stout, bald-headed, and rather
coarsely featured old Teuton, with a red ribbon (of course) at his
button-hole, and a thick plain hoop on his marital finger, as all
married men wear one in Germany.

He had been kept uninformed, so far as Herminia knew, of her aversion
to his son, and her very decided preference for a certain obscure
Herr Mansfeld, whose image was rising painfully before her, as she,
too, from time to time, looked down on the distant view, to where the
spires of the Dom Kirche of Aix rose darkly up amid the ruddy haze of
evening.

The Countess could detect in the face and deportment of her niece
that which the preoccupied or uninformed Count did not.  It was but
too evident that Herminia had passed a disturbed night, a restless
and feverish day.  Indeed, Ernestine admitted that she had heard her
sighing and moaning in her sleep, and Herminia had quitted her couch
that morning resolving to appeal to the chivalry, the manhood, the
charity, and honour of her cousin to release her from the yoke, the
thraldom his family had placed upon her, even with the loss of her
fortune.

Ignorant of this resolution, the Countess took her niece's passive
hand--and a lovely little hand it was--in hers, and said kindly but
firmly--

'Meine liebe, I trust that when our dear Heinrich arrives, you will
not exhibit any unpleasant coldness towards him.'

'Can you expect me to exhibit warmth?  Is he not an utter stranger
save by name?  Would warmth in me be modest or becoming, aunt?
Besides----' she paused, for tears choked her utterance.

'Do not be alarmed, mamma,' said Ernestine, as she looked laughingly
back from her seat at the piano; 'I know our Heinrich to be so
handsome and winning, that he will soon obliterate all recollection
of our friend at the Grand Hotel.'

'Ernestine,' said Herminia reproachfully, while she glanced nervously
at the portly figure of her uncle, who was still watching the Aix
road from the lofty terrace, where the box-trees were cut into
strange and fantastic shapes, like lions and egg-cups, and where some
stately peacocks strutted to and fro.

Frankenburg is situated on the summit of a tall rock that towers
above the line of the Antwerp railway.  The actual castle is a ruined
and ivy-mantled tower of unknown, but fabulous, antiquity, as it is
actually averred to have been a hunting seat of Charlemagne.  A more
modern edifice has been engrafted on it, and this formed at the time
the residence of the Count's family.  It had all the usual comforts
of a fashionable German household; but there was still attached to it
a banqueting-hall of the seventeenth century--the pride of Count
Ulrich's heart--with its black oak roof, its rows of deer skulls and
antlers, with all the implements for fishing, shooting, and hunting,
hung upon the walls, pell-mell with fragments of armour and weapons
of every kind, from the great glaives of the middle ages to muskets
and sabres gleaned up by the Count at Ligny and Waterloo.

And there, at Christmas time, a tall fir-tree from the Reichswald;
covered with toys and cakes, grotesque masks, _papier-maché_ dolls,
candles and shining lights, gladdened the hearts of the little
tenantry, who were cuddled and kissed up and down by the hearty old
Baron acting Father Christmas, with a mighty white beard, a cowl, and
long wand; while Ernestine and Herminia glided about like good
fairies, dispensing viands and wine to the sturdy Teutons and their
blooming fraus, when the trees of the Reichswald were leafless and
bare, and the branches glittered like silver and crystal in the
frostwork, and the first snowdrops of the season were peeping up in
sheltered spots, and the brown stacks of the last harvest were
mantled with snow.

And on these annual festive occasions there was seen the Countess
Adelaide, as lively and jovial at fifty, if not so pretty, as she was
at fifteen.  There, too, were the grim ancestry, the men and women of
other days and years, looking down from their garlanded frames, in
ruffs and stomachers, in breastplates or fardingales, just as Hans
Holbein, Rubens, and others had depicted them, and looking as demure
as if they had never flirted, squeezed hands under the tablecloth,
known the use of the mistletoe, or been like other folks 'world
without end.'

'Hoch! hoch!  Gott in Himmel! here they come--here is our dear boy at
last!' exclaimed the Count, clapping his fat pudgy hands, as the open
britzka, drawn by a pair of sparkling bays, came suddenly in sight,
with two officers in blue uniforms occupying the back seat.  One of
these--Heinrich, no doubt--was waving his forage-cap, and the vehicle
was driven straight to the grand approach.  The enthusiasm of the old
veteran of Waterloo swelling up in his breast when he saw the uniform
of the 95th, for

  'He thought of the days that had long since gone by,
    When his spirit was bold and his courage was high.'


Herminia grew deadly pale, and took advantage of the Countess
hurrying out upon the terrace to retire to her own room, whither,
however, her watchful aunt almost immediately followed her.

'Dearest Aunt Adelaide, oh! spare me this great mortification!'
intreated the trembling girl.

'Spare you?' repeated her aunt, now seriously angry, in expectation
of a public scene before Charlie Pierrepont, a stranger.

'Yes, I implore you to spare me the horror of this meeting.  Oh,
Ludwig!' she moaned in her heart, 'my own Ludwig!'

'I do not know whether you are most weak or defiant,' replied her
aunt.  'I give you a quarter of an hour to recover your composure and
to make your appearance properly in the drawing-room, with such a
bearing as will not be an insult to my son, to the memory of your
father, and our whole family.'

And with these words the Countess swept haughtily away.

Herminia bathed her face and hands with eau-de-cologne and water,
gave a finishing touch to her hair, kissed the envelope which
contained the now dry and faded leaves of Ludwig's rose, placed it in
her soft white bosom as a charm to strengthen her for the purpose she
had in hand, and descended noiselessly to the drawing-room, when the
sound of several voices, laughing loudly, jarred sorely on her ears
and excited nerves.

She entered with her heavy eyelids drooping, and advanced with her
gaze bent on the oak planks of the polished floor; then she shuddered
as some one approached and took her unresisting hand.

'Herminia, dearest, look up! look upon _me_!' said a familiar voice.

'Ludwig! my own Ludwig!' she exclaimed in astonishment--almost
terror, to see him there, and in the uniform of the Thuringians, as
he said--

'And now, cousin, let me introduce you to my dear friend, Herr Carl
Pierrepont of ours.'

'Ludwig?' said the thoroughly bewildered girl.

'No Ludwig at all,' he replied, laughing, and embracing her; 'but
your own cousin, my belle--Heinrich of Frankenburg.'

'Aunt Adelaide!--Ernestine!--what _does_ all this mean?'

'It means, my dear child,' said the Countess, laughing heartily at
her niece's perplexity; 'it means that it was all a plot of
Ernestine's and Heinrich's, too.  They had early learned your
repugnance to the plan of betrothal, when you were too young to
consent or refuse, and we all saw the folly of a constraint that
seemed so heart-sickening to you.  Thus we arranged that you should
meet him as a stranger under an assumed name.  You have met, and know
and love each other, so the tie of that love alone binds you now.'

'Oh, Ernestine, my sweet cousin, forgive and forget my reproaches!'
exclaimed the blushing and trembling, but happy girl, as she laid her
head on the bosom of the beautiful brunette, who laughed and kissed
her, fondling her as if she were a child.

'Well, Carl,' said Heinrich, 'what do _you_ think of all this?'

'That I wish you every joy; but I must own, that when proposing to
"have out" this Herr Mansfeld, your reply about shooting at
_yourself_ in a mirror puzzled me,' said Pierrepont, laughing
heartily at the whole situation, and enchanted with the happy scene
amid which he was introduced to two such beautiful girls as the
famous Belles of Frankenburg.

But now the bell clanged for dinner.  The Countess took his arm, the
Count leading with his niece, Heinrich and his sister following, all
laughter and smiles.

The only silent one there was the radiant Herminia, who had been, as
her affianced said, 'so pleasantly tricked.'




CHAPTER IV.

CHARLIE IN LOVE.

That night, at the very time the three gentlemen were in the
smoking-room busy with their china-bowled pipes, and with silver
tankards of beer before them--Heinrich full of happy dreams about his
fair-haired cousin and the trick they had played her; the old Count
full of memories of Waterloo and the coming war, French insolence,
the Vaterland, and all the rest of it; Charlie thinking how divinely
Ernestine sang and played, how sweet her downcast lashes looked, how
bright her upward glances, how lovely were the white hands that
wandered over the ivory keys, and made the said keys look very dark
and yellow by comparison, and while to him and Heinrich it seemed
that life at Frankenburg would be almost insupportable without the
two 'belles' thereof.  While all this was being thought of in the
smoking-room, we say, the two young ladies were comparing their notes
in their mutual dressing-room before retiring for the night to their
beds--those most uncomfortable couches which, in 'the Vaterland,' are
mere wooden boxes with pillows half-way down, and so arranged that
one can neither sit nor lie at full length therein.

That Charlie was handsome, agreeable, pleasant, and so forth, was
voted and carried _nem. con._, and Ernestine was full of fun and
pleasure at the success of her scheme--for with her it
originated--for luring Herminia into love with her brother by having
him introduced to her as a stranger.

'But oh, Herminia!' she exclaimed, 'to think of you getting the start
of me!'

'In what way?' asked Herminia, putting the whitest of feet into the
daintiest of slippers.

'In getting engaged _first_; it is most unkind!' continued Ernestine,
laughing, as she let down the masses of her dark silky hair.

'You forget, dear cousin, that I was engaged when in my cradle or
berceaunette.'

Then the two girls, now nearly half-undressed, laughed as only young
and happy girls can laugh, and with two snowy arms upheld, and
dimpled elbows shown, Ernestine went on brushing out that thick, dark
silky hair of hers.

'I declare, Herminia, I _do_ think I am pretty,' said she, suddenly
pausing and surveying herself in her laced night-robe in the long
cheval glass.

'You are too beautiful not to be quite aware of it,' replied Herminia.

'I wonder if Carl Pierrepont admired me?'

'Why?'

'Because--I should like him to do so.'

'Who could fail to admire you?' responded the happy Herminia.

'How sweetly he sang that song with me.'

'Heinrich tells me he is poor,' was the suggestive remark of Herminia.

'Alas!' after a pause, the former said, smiling.

'Herr Pierrepont scarcely took his gaze off you all the night; when
you sang alone he seemed entranced, and when with you, in those
duets, his voice became tender and tremulous.'

'Herminia, do you really think so, or do you jest?'

'I do not jest; hence my suggestion about his being poor, for that
man is loving you at first sight.'

'Your own sudden happiness, and the revulsion of feeling consequent
to the great _dénouement_ of to-day, lead you to think so,' replied
Ernestine, her smile brightening nevertheless, for she liked the idea.

'Nay, nay, his visit is to last some time; and time will prove that I
am right,' persisted Herminia, twisting up her coils of golden brown
hair.

Ernestine sat for a time toying with a velvet slipper half on and
half off her pretty foot, and then suddenly she said--

'Oh, Herminia, how can such a man care for me?'

'Why not, cousin dear? who would not, or could not, fail to care for
you?'

'But he seems so proud and cold, and so very English.'

'You quite mistake, and only wish to hear me contradict you.  He is
much less so than your special admirer, Baron Grünthal, the Director
of the Upper Consistorial Court.'

'A hideous old frump!' said Ernestine, tossing her head.

'Old!  He is only forty.'

'But that is more than twice my age.  My husband must be young and
handsome.'

'Like Carl Pierrepont?'

'Yes, like Carl Pierrepont.'

'He certainly seems to have impressed you,' said Herminia.

'You forget how often and how much Heinrich has written of him in his
letters to me.  He seems quite like an old friend.  How strange it
would be,' continued the girl, while a dreamy expression stole into
her beautiful dark eyes, as she sat with her slender fingers
interlaced over her knees, 'how very strange it would, if in him I
should have met--met----'

'What, cousin?

'My fate.'

'Let him take heed, that, in meeting you, he has not met with his
own,' said Herminia merrily.

'I have been longing to go to a wedding, and yours more than all,
dear Herminia; for being aware of your betrothal, it was one to which
I always looked forward.  I shall be one of the bridesmaids, of
course; and the two daughters of the Justiz-rath, and the two girls
from Rheinberg, though their toilettes are odious, and Hermangilda's
hair is always muffled up like a mop.'

'A golden mop, though; but, dearest cousin, how your tongue does run
on!  Does it never occur to you that no marriage can take place with
this French war--oh, meine Gott!--before us?'

And her eyes of violet blue suddenly filled with tears as she spoke,
as vague images of death and battle rose before her.

'Forgive me, Herminia.  Yet I was not jesting.'

'Forgive you, dear?  Yes.  I may as well do so,' replied the other
girl, kissing her cousin on both cheeks; 'for to you and aunt I owe
the love that Heinrich bears me--the love that I bear him.'

'And which Herr Mansfeld so nearly carried off!'

'And now, as we have our prayer's to say, good-night.'


Herminia was right; the girl, indeed, a close observer, was seldom
wrong in her deductions, for 'Herr Carl Pierrepont' was hopelessly
smitten at last by Ernestine, who, like the lively blonde, her
cousin, was rich in those charms, and mere than all, those pretty
mannerisms, or tricks of women, that win and secure a man's love for
ever.

Charlie was neither proud nor reserved--only a little shy at first;
he had been engaged in many _affaires du coeur_, but a genuine attack
of the tender passion was new to him.  He soon found himself
regularly installed and adopted, an _ami du maison_, with this
delightful family at Frankenburg.  As an Englishman, his natural love
of hunting, shooting, and fishing won him the friendship of the old
Count, with whom he drank as many flasks of Rhine wine and jugs of
beer as he wished; but he had one blot in the eyes of the latter--he
could never take cordially to _saur kraut_.

He was a prime favourite with the Countess from his general
_bonhommie_ of manner; and with Ernestine--ah! well, with
Ernestine--he speedily became more of a favourite than the girl would
have dared to acknowledge even to herself.

Society at Frankenburg was narrow and monotonous; most of the
visitors who came, especially Baron Grünthal and the Justiz-rath,
spoke only of politics, of Bismarck's plans, and the coming war,
which did not interest the ladies, save in so far as the 95th
Thuringians were concerned.

The days were devoted to rides and rambles amid the beautiful scenery
around the old Schloss; the evenings to music, to singing, and
frequently to dancing when the daughters of the Justiz-rath, or those
of Baron Rhineberg, were present; and then our two 95th men were
always in full uniform, _à la Prussien_; and the ladies were all
unanimous that Charlie looked _so_ handsome.

Those epaulettes! those epaulettes!  To many a young English officer
the pride and glory of wearing them was only secondary to the kiss of
the first girl he loved; and where are they _now_?

So Charlie was proud of his epaulettes.

Heinrich had fairly won his lovely cousin--under 'false colours,'
certainly; but, nevertheless, he _had_ won her; perhaps, from the
girl's peculiar temperament and pride, he might never have done so
otherwise; but having so won her, he was compelled to be thankful,
for with this odious French war on the _tapis_--a war which, but for
his love, he would have hailed with genuine German ardour, and the
95th under 'orders of readiness' for the Rhine--marriage, as Herminia
herself had said, was not to be thought of: so they had but to trust
to time and wait.

The Countess being always busy about the management of her household,
the Count having frequently to visit Aix about a lawsuit in one of
the courts there, and Heinrich being usually much with his _fiancée_,
threw Charlie and the young Grafine so much together that their
hearts were hopelessly entangled; yet no word of love escaped the
latter: he knew too well his lack of civil rank, and how many, or
rather how _few_, kreutzers he had per diem as a Prussian lieutenant
of infantry.  He could but abandon himself to the witchery of her
society, to dream of the joy of loving and being loved by her, and
drift away on the tide, too well aware that the charm of such a life
and the tender influences of such society could not last for ever.

With all their exalted and somewhat absurd ideas of their own family,
their rank and antiquity, the household of the Count and Countess Von
Frankenburg was a homely and kindly one; and, after his garrison
life, there was, to Charlie, a wonderful charm in accompanying the
cousins, Ernestine especially, to see the plough and carriage horses
taken to water at a certain pond below the old Schloss, to feed the
peacocks on the terrace, to throw corn to the hens, and watch them
picking and pecking between the stones in the yard at the home farm.

And Ernestine was to him the Eve of this Eden!

But for the soft and gentle influences under which Charlie and his
friend were at Frankenburg, they would certainly, like Prussian
officers in general (though gaming is strictly forbidden in the
army), have spent many an hour at the New Redoute, or Gaming House,
in the Comphausbad-Strasse, where games of hazard, rouge-et-noir,
roulette, and so forth, are played from morning till midnight.

In lieu of this dissipation, they had quiet walks in the woods or
visits to old ruins in the neighbourhood; and Ernestine, who was
German enough to have a strong love of the mystic, the ethereal, and
the romantic, and a desire to dabble with the unseen world, told
Charlie many a strange weird story; and though with all an
Englishman's mistrust of such things, it was impossible not to be
charmed by her earnestness, the modulation of her voice, the bright
expression of the dilated hazel eye, and the occasional but perfectly
innocent pressure of her pretty hand upon his arm, when she sought to
impress him by some remarkable episode.

In the old ivied tower at Frankenburg she showed him the window of
the room in which the third wife of Charlemagne, Fastrada, daughter
of Count Raoul, died, while the Emperor was absent at Frankfort; and
told how he caused her body, which was so fair and beautiful, to the
end that it might never decay, to be enclosed in a coffin of the
purest crystal, which he kept in that chamber, and he never quitted
it by day or by night, neglecting his empire and government, and
forgetting all the concerns of war or peace, till Turpin the Wise
resolved to cure him.

Watching his opportunity, while the Emperor slept, he opened the
coffin, and took the golden wedding-ring from the finger of Fastrada,
and cast it into the lake below the castle, and thus broke Charles'
spell of sorrow.  From that day the great lake into which the magic
ring was cast, and which quite surrounded the Schloss, began to
shrink, and nothing of it remained but the tiny horse-pond already
mentioned.

And while she was telling this legend, a little grey owl sat in the
window of the ruin, winking and blinking in the sunshine, as if he
was weary of having heard the story so often.

The ruin, too, was haunted by the spectre of a former Count of
Frankenburg, who, resolving to get rid of his Countess, to the end
that he might marry again, invited her to share a dish of love-apples
with him.  These he divided with a silver-knife poisoned on one side;
but by some mistake, he ate all the poisoned halves himself, and so
fell dead at the table; and there in the upper story of the tower,
his cries of pain and despair were sometimes heard on the wind in the
stormy nights of winter.

So, amid this sweet intercourse--like one gathering beautiful flowers
on the brink of a giddy precipice--did Charlie Pierrepont drift into
a deep and hopeless passion.

He never spoke of it, but surely his eyes must have told, and his
manner too, that he loved her.  Oh yes, how he loved her, this
earnest and warm-hearted young Englishman, yet was silent.  He dared
not seek to lead her into a promise to wait till the sun of Fortune
shone on him, to waste her young and happy life till slow promotion
came: and even were he a colonel, the Count might--nay, would--look
for wealth or rank, or both; and while he--Charlie--was thus waiting,
could he ask a girl so lovely to trust to the doctrine of chances,
for a lucky spoke in the wheel of the blind goddess, and to grow
_fade_ and withered with the sickness of hope deferred?

Yet the sweet face, the dark shining hair, the tender, bright eyes,
the pretty winning ways--oh, those pretty winning ways, that twine so
round the heart of a man!--haunted him in the waking hours of the
night, and in his tormenting, yet delicious, dreams by day.




CHAPTER V.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DOM KIRCHE.

Strong though the sentiment of friendship that existed between him
and Heinrich, Charlie shrunk from making a confidant of him, as he
knew but too well that his aristocratic prejudices and native
ambition would preclude him from having any sympathy with such a
secret love, or giving it the least encouragement.

So the days of joy stole away at Frankenburg, till Charlie began to
reckon sadly the few that yet remained, when time would inexorably
separate him from Ernestine, and, too probably, for ever.

Did she suspect that he loved her?

A hundred times had Charlie asked this question of himself in doubt:
he was not an egotist; but every glance of her soft hazel eyes--that
seemed, he knew not why, something between a caress and a compliment,
together with a dash of entreaty--might have told him that he was
far, far indeed from being indifferent to her.

In the spirit of the old song, he often thought,

  'He either fears his fate too much,
    Or his desert is small,
  Who dare not put it to the touch
    To win or lose it all.'


If 'things did not turn,' in time--and for him how could they turn?
it was torment to think of losing her by his own silence and
diffidence; of seeing her, perhaps, won by another, far his inferior
in bearing and spirit, while he hungered for her smile, doted on her
shadow, and alternately blessed and _banned_ the hour that brought
him to the Castle of Frankenburg.

He thanked Heaven that there was this impending war with France
before them.  On the banks of the Rhine, or before the walls of
Paris, if he ever reached it, a French bullet might end it all for
him, and he would never have the horror and sorrow of knowing that
she was the bride of another; and so on, and on, day by day, when by
her side, talking with her and enjoying all the sweet charms of her
society, did this honest fellow torment himself, for we may, in the
matters of love and jealousy, torment ourselves far more than others
can.

Of this, a terror of every possible _parti_ who approached her was
one element, especially if rich or titled.

There was Baron Grünthal, who came about Ernestine more than Charlie
relished.  He was a man of great influence, and Oberconsistorial
Director of the Court at Aix, not over forty, and rather
good-looking.  Even the daughter of a Count might be pleased to
become Baroness Grünthal.

Then one or two young Counts, friends of Heinrich, were among the
frequent visitors, and Charlie gnawed his moustache viciously, as he
pictured to himself, perhaps meeting her years hence, as the wife of
one of these, when he was getting grey, weary of waiting for the
promotion that never came; or if it did, he would value so little
then: for with her, the glory of life would depart.

Getting grey?  But she would be a matron then in years; and does not
Jean Jacques Rousseau tell us that a pair of grey-haired lovers were
never known to sigh for each other?  But Charlie thrust that thought
aside; he preferred to live in the pleasant present than to picture
the gloomy future.  No romantic incident, no runaway horse, no death
averted from accident, or other melodramatic episode to draw largely
on the young lady's gratitude, as in novels, led to Charlie's avowal
of his love.

It all came about suddenly, in the most unromantic way, a quick
outpouring of passion, a rush, as it were, of the heart to the lips,
through the influence of which he told her that he loved her, her
only, and craved her love in return; and it all came to pass in this
fashion.

One day--Charlie Pierrepont never forgot it--they had contrived to
get away alone, to visit the great Dom Kirche at Aix, the shady
aisles and vast depths of which, with all its sequestered chapels,
were as well calculated to lure them into sweet and earnest converse
as the leafy alleys of a forest.

They had visited the tomb of Charlemagne, where, as Ernestine, while
leaning on Charlie's arm, and looking up in his face, from under one
of the prettiest of hats, told him with bated breath, that when it
was opened in the tenth century, the Emperor was not found in the
usual fashion of the dead, reclining in his coffin, but seated on a
throne as if alive, clothed in imperial robes, a sceptre in his hand,
and the gospels on his knee.  On his fleshless brow was a crown, and
by his side his famous sword, Joyeuse.

'And now,' added his charming guide, 'I shall show you the throne on
which he was seated; it stands in the Hoch Munster.'

Now the said Hoch Munster is a gallery running round the octagon,
facing the choir, and to reach it a narrow stair had to be traversed.
Charlie, who, strange to say, had drawn off his gloves, held out a
hand to guide Ernestine, who, by another coincidence, had drawn off
one of hers, and when Charlie's fingers closed on her soft and
velvet-like little hand, the desire to press it naturally occurred to
him, but a thrill, as if of electricity, went to his heart, when he
felt--with the gentlest assurance in the world--the pressure returned!

The stair to the Hoch Munster was surely steeper than usual, they
ascended it so slowly.  Amid its obscurity, Charlie pressed to his
lips twice the accorded hand, which was not withdrawn, and ere they
gained the upper step that led to the gallery, the great secret of
Charlie's heart had escaped him, and flushed and palpitating;
Ernestine heard him with downcast eyes.

The vehemence with which the avowal was made, though his voice was
low and earnest, and the tender expression with which he regarded
her, when they did emerge into daylight, bewildered her a little,
which, perhaps, was the reason that she permitted Charlie to take
prisoner her other hand; but after a time she regained her composure,
and, looking up at him with a most bewitching expression in her
tender brown eyes and pouting lip, said, as if she had doubted her
ears, in a whispered voice,

'You--you love me?'

'Yes--oh yes!  Dearest Ernestine, you must have known from the
first--from the very first hour I saw you, that I loved you.'

'I always thought,' she continued, in the same low and certainly
agitated voice, 'that you preferred my society to that of Herminia or
the Rhineberg girls.'

'Preferred your society--oh, Ernestine!'

'I did think that you were very fond of me--yes, very fond of me; but
that you actually loved me, I could not conceive.'

So the lovely little gipsy pretended, and cast her eyelids down,
while her soft bosom heaved so much with emotion that her diamond
brooch sparkled like prisms.  After a pause, the tender eyes were
again uplifted to Charlie, and as if she rather liked the sound of
the avowal, she said timidly,

'And so you love me--love me, Carl?'

How Charlie's heart now leaped to hear his Christian name uttered by
her lips for the first time!

'Ernestine, my own darling!' (et cetera, and so forth).

They remained--as the sacristan who was patiently waiting for his
fees said--quite long enough to have made an acute archaeological
investigation of the whole place; but somehow their minds were
otherwise occupied.

Singularly enough, they had forgotten all about the throne of
Charlemagne, and actually descended--slower than they had
ascended--the stairs of the Hoch Munster without having seen it.

They were both very silent on the drive homeward, but their young
hearts were brimming over with joy, and deep blushes suffused the
face of Ernestine, and her lips were trembling; and as if her
mother's eye might read how they had been occupied in the Dom Kirche,
she hurried upstairs to her own room, to seek in solitude the power
of reflecting over all that had passed, and her new position, for
within an hour she had passed a certain rubicon in life.

Charlie, too, desired to be alone, and ascended into the recess of
the ruined Schloss, where, among the owls and the ivy, he slowly
lighted a cigar, and while his heart was full of love and happiness,
and of gratitude to Ernestine for returning his passion, he began to
consider what was to be done next.

He first abandoned himself to a dream of joy.  In imagination
Ernestine was with him still; her hands so soft and small yet
lingered in his; her lips were still before him, and the perfume of
her dark hair came back to him, as he rehearsed, over and over again,
all that episode in the Dom Kirche.

The secret that had trembled so long on his tongue--the secret that
cold prudence and dread of German pride withheld so long, had escaped
him at last.  His love had been avowed; that love was accepted and
reciprocated.

But now, alas! there came home to Charlie's heart those thoughts that
had occurred to him before--thoughts that had not, as yet, entered
the mind of Ernestine.  The future--how and what was it to be?  How
cold and miserable was reflection--miserable, but for a time only.
Was not the fact of mutual love and perfect trust existing between
them enough to make all seem glorious, and the path of life most
flowery?

She loved him--that bright and beautiful girl!  Beyond that love she
might never be his; but with that love for him, she would never be
the wife of another.  Yet, as he before asked himself, was it just or
generous that her young life should be wasted, and for him?

If he suggested an elopement, in what light would such an episode
place him with his friend Heinrich, with her whole family, with his
regiment, and society, even, which was very, very doubtful, if she
would accede to such a measure.

So long as he had not spoken of love to Ernestine, but lingered on
the pleasant borderland that adjoins the realms of Cupid, Charlie
felt that he was guilty of no breach of faith with her family, and no
violation of the hearty hospitality extended to him.  But _now_ his
position seemed entirely altered.  Their love was a fact; he had won
her heart without the consent of her parents, and that consent, in
his subaltern rank in social and military life, he knew but too well
would never be accorded to him.

'Well, well,' thought he, with something of grim joy, 'the war is
before me, and who can foresee what honours I may win in defending
Germany, or on the soil of France!'

When the party in the Schloss met at dinner that evening, there was a
conscious expression in the faces of Charlie and Ernestine that they
alone could read, and to which their hearts had alone the key; and to
both there was something novel, joyous, and inexpressibly sweet in
this secret understanding between them.  Each felt a delicious
interest and right of proprietary in the other.

Among the visitors was Baron Grünthal, the Oberdirector of the
Consistory Court at Aix, a stout and florid, but rather handsome man,
in the prime of life, with an ill-trimmed moustache hiding his whole
mouth, and the inevitable red ribbon at his button-hole, who
mentioned incidentally that he had seen the Grafine and Herr
Pierrepont leaving the Dom Kirche by the great door, on either side
of which are a she-wolf and a fir apple in bronze.  Ernestine stooped
over her bouquet to hide her conscious blush.

'You know, mamma,' said she, in a tone of explanation, though none
was required, 'we drove into town, Herr Pierrepont and I, that I
might show him the tomb and throne of Charlemagne.'

'Ah! yes,' said the Baron, making his champagne effervesce with a
piece of biscuit; 'did you think the marble slabs of a good colour,
Herr Pierrepont?'

'Beautiful!' said Charlie.  'The finest black I ever saw,' he
desperately added, at a venture.

'Black?' said two or three voices.  'Why, they are of the purest
_white_!'

'Exactly; that was what I meant to say.  My German is not perfect,
Herr Baron,' said Charlie.

And Ernestine, who had grown pale, now laughed and glanced furtively
at her lover.

Dinner over, the Count and Baron retired to smoke and talk politics;
but the latter, whose suspicions had been roused by the confused
manner of Charlie, and the evident absorption of him and his fair
companion when quitting the Dom Kirche, began to talk of something
that might seriously affect their happiness.

Charlie and Ernestine betook themselves to the piano, where eye could
look into eye, and finger touch finger occasionally in the duet, or
soft whispers be exchanged amid a sonata of Beethoven; the Countess
retired to doze in the boudoir, with her Spitz pug on her knee; while
Herminia and her betrothed found sufficient attraction in each other;
so the evening of this eventful day passed off peacefully and
happily, as many others had done.

During the protracted progress of the sonata, the two antiquarians
from the Dom Kirche agreed that their engagement--for such they fully
considered it now--should, as yet, not be divulged to anyone, not
even to Herminia, from whom Ernestine had never before had a secret
to withhold.

Outwardly, our hero and heroine seemed merely intimate friends who
were soon to part; inwardly, they had their own happy thoughts, while
the family had not the slightest suspicion of how matters stood,
though that night all was on the very verge of discovery!

In the recess of a window, whither they had gone to study the stars,
Charlie suddenly pressed Ernestine to his breast.

'Oh, dearest, don't do that again!' she exclaimed.  'Aunt Adelaide
may see us; and she has the eyes of a lynx!'

After this night, matters progressed fast with the lovers.  In the
same house, they had a hundred means of meeting each other, were it
but for five minutes at a time.  Rings and locks of hair, of course,
with coloured photos--the best that could be got in
Aix-la-Chapelle--had been exchanged; promises were made and vows
exchanged again and again, with other delicious tokens equally
intangible.

In the flush of his love, Charlie forgot for a time the cruel doubts
that had at first oppressed him.  Ernestine should be his wife at all
risks, even if he carried her off to England; and, in the ardour of
his imagination, he began to marvel whether his father's old place in
Warwickshire would ever be free from those debts which drove him to
become a wanderer, a soldier of fortune, and to feed himself by his
sword in the ranks of the Prussian army.




CHAPTER VI.

AN ALARM.

Amid the pure satisfaction arising from the knowledge that Ernestine
loved him, and the natural anxiety to discover how she was ever to be
his wife, there was fated to come to Charlie Pierrepont the fear of
greater opposition to his--as yet--secret hopes and wishes, in the
person of a formidable rival, who, in a few weeks after the visit to
the Dom Kirche, came suddenly into the field.

One evening, when the Count, his son, and Charlie were seated cosily
in a place which the former called his study (but which more
resembled a harness and gun room, and littered with pipes of all
kinds, as the literature there consisted of a few volumes on hunting,
shooting, farriery), with their pipes and flasks of Rhine wine, which
they drank from silver tankards, the Count startled our hero by a
revelation which he made to him as a friend of the family.

A wealthy and great man--an intimate friend of the house of
Frankenburg, who, though not noble, was nevertheless Hochwohlgeboren,
had made proposals for the hand of Ernestine.

The cloud of smoke in which the trio had enveloped themselves perhaps
prevented the father and son from seeing the sudden contraction of
Charlie's brow on getting this unpleasant information.

'Does it meet with your approval, Count?' he asked, with a violent
effort to appear calm.

'In every respect.'

'And yours, Heinrich?'

'No, Carl.'

'Why?'

'Because the man is more than double her age,' replied the young
Count.

'That is----' Charlie was about to say 'unfortunate;' but the fib
remained unuttered.  Then after a pause he asked, 'And what says the
Grafine?'

'She dismissed him with kind words, certainly,' replied the Count,
'and well-bred wishes for his happiness.  He then came to me, begging
me to use my authority over her as a parent, which I shall certainly
do.'

'Herr Graf!' exclaimed Charlie, who felt a keener interest in all
this than his hearers imagined; for even Heinrich, in the absorption
of his passion for his cousin, had not the faintest suspicion that
his friend did more than admire his sister; 'Herr Graf, would you
actually attempt to control your daughter's affections?'

'Der Teufel! attempt it?  I shall do it!' replied the Count angrily,
as he laid his hand emphatically on the arm of his chair.

So this was the first intimation Charlie had of the coming storm.  A
rival in the field, and his leave of absence on the verge of expiry!
The situation--with all his trust in Ernestine--was, to say the least
of it, alarming.  Would she actually be torn from him after all?
Fearing to speak, he remained perfectly silent; but, as his curiosity
was irrepressible, he asked after a time--

'May I ask, Herr Graf, who this suitor is?'

'The Baron Grünthal, Oberdirector of the Consistory Court in
Aix-la-Chapelle.'

Then Charlie remembered that the Baron had been at the Schloss that
morning, and been long in the Graf's 'study' in consultation, and
that he failed to see Ernestine as usual, save at dinner, after which
she had hastily left the table.  It occurred now to Charlie, too,
that she had seemed both disturbed and taciturn during the progress
of the meal.

Such an offer was deemed flattering, even for a daughter of the house
of Frankenburg.  Ernestine had dismissed the Baron; but, backed by
her father's authority, he returned to the charge, and came the
following day to dinner; and until the bell rang for that meal,
Charlie, to his perplexity and annoyance, could see nothing of
Ernestine, who remained sequestered in her room.  Had her mother any
suspicions? thought he; but as yet the Countess had none.

On this day, in honour of the suitor, whose aspirations met with her
full approval, her white hair was done over a _toupée_ that was
higher than usual, her train was longer than ever, and she wore the
best of the family diamonds.

This was the most miserable meal ever made by Charlie Pierrepont.
The Count was rubicund, smiling, and conscious.  He had smoked many
pipes and imbibed much beer over the idea of having such a
son-in-law.  The Baron had made a careful study of his costume, and
was most gracious to the ladies, but more especially to the Countess,
who addressed nearly all her conversation to him--the winner of one
of 'the Belles of Frankenburg.'  Herminia looked waggish, Heinrich
somewhat provoked, as he deemed the suitor too old, and that his
sister's wishes should be consulted; while Ernestine--whose toilette
(a golden-coloured silk, trimmed with black lace), a most becoming
one for a brunette, had been made under the critical eye of her
mother--looked pale, 'worried,' and worn, and, like Heinrich,
provoked too, for, as we have said elsewhere, she was a self-willed
little beauty, and somewhat opinionated.

In spite of the desire of all to appear at their perfect ease, the
meal passed off awkwardly; the conversation flagged, and was unequal;
and if the eyes of Ernestine met those of Charlie, he would read in
them an imploring and sad expression, and when they looked down, they
seemed to sparkle with anger.

At last the meal passed over--and it proved the last that Charlie
Pierrepont was to consume in Frankenburg; the ladies rose from the
table to retire.

As Charlie opened the dining-room door for them, Ernestine contrived
to be the last who passed out, and swiftly and unseen, she slipped
into Charlie's hand a tiny scrap of folded paper.  This he hastened
to open and read covertly, on resuming his place at table.  It
contained but one pencilled line--

'Be in mamma's boudoir to-night at eleven, when all are in bed.'

He would have pressed it to his lips, but for the presence of those
who were with him.  Eleven o'clock?  The hour was then eight, as a
great ormolu clock on the side buffet informed him, and so he had
three long hours to wait for this most coveted interview!  And for
two of those hours he would have to endure the society--or rather the
presence--of this most obnoxious rival who had so suddenly started up
in his path, and with whom he felt a violent desire to quarrel, but
that such an episode would have been alike unseemly, unwise, and
calculated to excite suspicion.

They could meet in conversation on the neutral ground of the French
war; but in everything he stated, Charlie could not suppress a keen
desire to contradict the Baron.  The latter asserted that King
William would lead the Prussian army in person.  To this Charlie gave
a contradiction as flat as if he had it from the royal lips.  Metz
would be, undoubtedly, the chief base of the French operations.  This
idea he utterly scouted!  England would take part in the war, through
the influence of the Crown Princess.  England would do nothing of the
kind, said Charlie--what was the Rhine to her?

The Baron began to elevate his eyebrows, and became silent.  The
Count looked uneasy; one glass more, he suggested, and then they
would join the ladies.  They did so; but on entering the drawing-room
found the Countess asleep as usual, with the Spitz pug in her lap;
Herminia idling over the piano, while longing for Heinrich; and that
Ernestine was--which was never her wont--absent.

She had pleaded a headache, and retired to her own room.  The Baron
looked glum and disconcerted.  He had been framing many fine speeches
to make to his intended; but now they were no longer required.  He
should see her no more for that night.

Charlie fingered the little note in his waistcoat-pocket, and felt
defiant and jubilant.

The truth was that the Countess and her daughter had almost had high
words on the subject of the Baron.

'Mamma,' the latter had said, 'the idea of such a thing is
intolerable and absurd!'

'Why absurd, Grafine?' asked her mother, with asperity.

'A man of forty or more, getting bald already,' said Ernestine
mockingly; 'a stout man in a blue coat and brass buttons, with a red
ribbon, of course, at his lapelle; a man who, for twenty years, has
never made up his august mind to marry, comes now to make a
matrimonial victim of me.  Thanks--no.  I am the Grafine Ernestine of
Frankenburg, and such I shall remain.'

'Do you prefer anyone else?' asked the Countess, her eyes glittering
with sudden suspicion.

'No--none,' she falteringly said, with her cheeks aflame.

'Is there not _one_?'

'What do you mean, mamma?'

'I mean this,' said the Countess, with grim asperity, hiding her
suspicions, if she had any, 'my dear child, the regiment of Heinrich
is under orders for foreign service! his leave is conditional, and
may be cancelled by telegraph at any moment; so that if we wish his
presence at the marriage, the ceremony must be performed without much
delay.'

'It shall never take place with me,' replied Ernestine resolutely.

'To your room, Grafine,' said the Countess with hauteur; so her
daughter gladly withdrew, leaving her to make excuses for her absence
as she pleased, so the usual female ailment of a headache came at
once into play.




CHAPTER VII.

AMONG THE BREAKERS.

The Baron had been driven home to Aix in his britzka, promising to
return for some final arrangements on the morrow, when he hoped to
find the health of the Grafine restored; prayers were over; the
household were all a-bed, or supposed to be so, and Charlie sat in
his own room, looking sadly out upon the distant lights of Aix, which
seemed to twinkle like the stars above them.

He had ample food for reflection.  Fear of the Baron's influence on
Ernestine he had none; but he had real fear of the influence her
family, and long-trained habits of implicit obedience, might have on
her, and genuine love and truth are commodities too scarce and
valuable in this world to be wasted.

How much, thought Charlie, were Herminia and her cousin to be envied;
they had been, and were, so successful in their love, and all through
the fortunate little scheme of the Countess and Ernestine.

How he longed to show the latter to his sisters; for Charlie had
three, in that dear old home in Warwickshire, all softly featured and
gently mannered girls, such as England excels in, more than all the
world besides.  Would they love her?  But could they fail to do so?
Well, his father might, perhaps, oh, no! he could not look coldly on
her, because she was a foreigner.  Pure innocence and beauty belong
to no country in particular; and Ernestine looked more thoroughly
English than many an English lady Charlie had seen in Regent Street
and the Row.

What was to be the end of all this?

In spite of all his prudence and the suggestions of reason, Charlie
had fallen madly in love, without considering what a costly whim a
high-born wife would prove to a Prussian subaltern; or how the prize
was to be obtained, the whim gratified.

Eleven was struck by the great old clock in the hall of the Schloss,
and Charlie, who had been awaiting it, watch in hand, took his wax
taper, and softly and swiftly descended the great staircase to the
boudoir of the Countess, a small octagonal apartment that opened off
the drawing-room.

It was, of course, without a fireplace; but, in lieu thereof, in one
corner stood the prettiest of little German stoves, a black iron
cylinder, or column, surmounted by a large coronet of ornamental
brass, and set on a block of white marble.  Numerous statuettes under
glass shades, and pretty bijou articles, littered all the marble and
marqueterie tables, with Dresden china vases of flowers, gathered
fresh that morning by Ernestine and Herminia in the garden at the
foot of the castle rock.  The furniture and hangings were all pale
blue silk, trimmed with white lace or silver; water-colours decorated
the wall, and, in a place of honour, hung a Berlin engraving
representing the meeting of Wellington and Blucher at La Belle
Alliance.

A moderator lamp, upheld by a bronze Atlas, was suddenly flashed up,
and Ernestine stood before Charlie Pierrepont.  She had let all her
hair down, probably previous to coiling it up for the night, and now
its silky masses floated over her shoulders far below her waist, and
out of their darkness, her pale, minute, and delicately cut face came
with strong distinctness in the subdued light of the lamp.  How
lovely she looked just then; her form, though _mignonne_, round and
full.  She threw her arms round Charlie, and putting her head on his
shoulder, in a way she had like a petted love-bird, placed her sweet
face amid the masses of her hair on his neck, and her lover gazed at
her for some seconds ere he seated her by his side, with a kind of
adoration, for she was in all the pride of her beauty and purity;
and, as a writer says, with truth, 'There is nothing in the universe
so exquisite, so fascinating, so irresistibly alluring, as a young
girl!  A girl in the first dawn of earliest womanhood, fresh and
fragrant as a flower, and, alas! as fragile, for that bloom of youth
is as evanescent as it is lovely, and its loss is never, to my mind,
compensated by any maturer charm.  Let who will inhale the perfume of
the opening rose, but the sweet shy mystery of the folded bud for me!'

And some such thoughts ran through the mind of Charlie as he gazed
upon her.

In the perfect confidence of this love, they did not at first speak
of this sudden suitor (who had come like a thunder-cloud into their
sunny summer sky), for rival he could scarcely be deemed by Charlie;
but they referred to the last time they had been happy together in
each other's society.  Oh, _so_ happy! and but two days ago!

They had ridden to Stolberg, after losing Heinrich and Herminia
together in the wood (rather a common occurrence, by the way, when
these four went out on excursions), and had taken shelter from a
storm of rain in a village church, where a marriage ceremony had been
performed before them, and they now recurred to this little episode.

'How sweetly pretty the bride looked!' said Charlie, playing with her
rippling hair.

'And how happy the bridegroom!' she added, pulling Charlie's
moustache, in her momentary joy, forgetful of the tears she had been
shedding.

'How I envied them, Ernestine!  Will our day ever come?'

'We can but hope.'

'And if it never comes?'

'I shall die--I shall die faithful to you, Carl.  Faithful in life
and in death!' said Ernestine, with passionate energy.

'You say this so often that you alarm me,' said Charlie, with great
tenderness of tone.

'How can my promises of faith alarm you?'

'Nay.  It is these references to death.'

Her eyes were tender, dreamy, and sad, yet full of love, as they
looked into his.  After a pause, he said,

'I, Ernestine, am more in danger of death and peril than you,
dearest.'

'Oh, say not so!  And yet, of course, it must be, Carl, my darling
Carl!' she exclaimed, throwing herself upon his breast, in a passion
of tears and affection.

'Heaven and earth!  So _these_ are the terms on which you two are!'
exclaimed a shrill, stern voice behind them, and a low wail of terror
escaped from Ernestine, on perceiving the Countess, her mother,
standing there in her _robe-de-chambre_, a wax taper in her hand, and
her usually pale cheeks and cold grey eyes inflamed with indignation.
On this night she had, unfortunately, forgotten her unlucky Spitz cur
(who was quietly looking on the scene from his basket of
mother-of-pearl) and had descended from her room in search of him.

'So! so!' she exclaimed again, 'these are the terms on which you are;
and such are the hopes in which you dare to indulge!'

How long she had been there, or how much she had heard or seen, they
knew not.  They had but one common thought--that they had been
discovered, and all was over!  This _dénouement_, occurring
immediately after the proposal of the Baron, was too much for the
patience or equanimity of the irate Countess.  Even Charlie's
friendship for her son Heinrich, and the duel he had fought in
defence of his honour, were forgotten now.

There was a pause, during which they all surveyed each other with
undisguised signs of discomposure.  At last Charlie spoke, while
Ernestine withdrew a little way from him.

'Gnädige Frau' (gracious madame), he began, 'blame not your daughter,
but me, for all this; and pardon me for having so far forgotten my
position in this house as to love her without your permission; but
could I resist doing so--even without the hope of obtaining it?  What
can I say to mitigate your probable severity to her--your resentment
to me?  What am I to do?'

'Much!'

'Oh, say it!'

'Leave my roof at once!'

'Mamma, it is close on midnight,' urged Ernestine piteously.

'Silence, minx!'

Charlie's face had flushed to the temples at a tone and command so
unusual and so humiliating.

'Oh, mamma,' urged Ernestine, attempting, but in vain, to catch her
mother's hand, 'spare me and pardon him!'

'Him?  Who!'

'Carl.'

'You call him Carl already--and this to my face!  This intruder, who,
though in the king's uniform, is little better in the scale of
society than a poor Handwerks-Burschen!'

Charlie now grew deadly pale at this insulting comparison, but
restrained his rising anger for the sake of Ernestine, who said,
piteously:

'Dearest mamma, I implore you not to adopt this tone to Heinrich's
firm and tried friend.  It is inhospitable!  It is rude!  It is
cruel!' she added, amid a torrent of tears.

'You are no judge, _now_, of what is rude or not rude--proper or
improper--to a violator of our hospitality.  Oh, Herr Pierrepont, how
little could I have foreseen all this!'

Unless the old lady had been as blind as a mole, she might, or ought,
very well to have foreseen it.

'You know my views of all this matter, and I am certain they will be
fully shared by the Count,' said the old lady, with intense hauteur.
'You also know the measures we expect you to take with as little
delay as possible.'

She made a brief and haughty half-contemptuous bow, and taking her
daughter by the hand, and, without permitting her to give even one
farewell glance, led her away.

Charlie stood for a moment as if rooted to the spot.  He then very
quietly extinguished the moderator lamp, in a mechanical kind of way,
and, taking his taper, ascended the great gaunt staircase to his
room, where, with his heart torn by the contending emotions of love
and sorrow, rage and mortification--for the insult to which he, an
English gentleman, had been subjected by that intolerant and
insufferable old German woman--he sat for a time without thinking of
undressing.

Were she not the mother of Ernestine, he would have scattered a few
pretty hard adjectives with reference to her.  He then suddenly began
to pack his portmanteau.  He had but one desire and craving--to get
as far away from Frankenburg as possible, though it was the cage that
held his love-bird!  And as if his wish had been anticipated, just as
twelve o'clock was struck by the sonorous timepiece in the echoing
hall, a knock came to his door.

'It is Heinrich,' thought he; 'come in!'

The visitor was not Heinrich, but the old family butler, who entered,
bowing low, and looking very sleepy, cross, and very much surprised.

'The Herr Graf's compliments to the Herr Lieutenant.  At what time
would he require the carriage to take him to Aix?'  (He called it
Aachen.)

'Now!'

'Now--at this hour, mein Herr?'

'Now, I repeat--instantly--thanks; you may go.'

The old butler, who had served as man and boy in the Frankenburg
family from shortly after the days of Waterloo and Ligny, who had
attended Marshal Blucher when on a visit, and had made the fortunes
and honour of the denizens of the Schloss his own, as hereditary
retainers of the Caleb Balderstone type occasionally do, even in this
age of iron, opened his grey eyes very wide, alike at the fierce
energy and the order of Charlie Pierrepont, but vanished at once to
rouse the grooms and comply.

So he was actually turned out of the house, however politely, at
last; thrust out from _her home_ as if his presence there degraded
it.  He thought of the old arms of the Pierreponts carved about his
father's gate--the lion rampant _sable_, between two wings, the
mullets _semée_, and the motto '_Pie repone te_,' though he had never
valued such things much; and his anger boiled up--nor did it cool
down till he found himself on the eve of departure.

Why did Heinrich not appear? for good or for evil?  Had he also been
informed, and, like his father, mounted a high horse?  It seemed so.
The carriage was duly announced, at last.

As Charlie descended to it, the silver-haired butler appeared again
with a salver, on which were a decanter and glass, saying:

'The Herr Graf requests that mein Herr will take a little glass of
cognac, before leaving the Schloss; the night is cold.'

To have declined to accept this last act of old German hospitality
would have been churlish, and the cause of comment among the
domestics; so Charlie, with the name of her he loved on his lips,
drained a _petit verre_, and sprang into the carriage.

'Aachen,' said the butler to the driver, as he closed the door, and
bowing, said--

'Gute nacht--leben sie wohl, mein Herr.'

And Charlie, as he thought, turned his back on Frankenburg for ever.

Ernestine was as much, if not more, than any _only_ daughter could be
to Count Ulrich.  He was selfish enough to have looked with stern,
black, and utter discouragement on any swain who had no high rank;
then how much more with anger on a penniless soldier of Fortune--a
sub. of the Thuringians, like Charlie Pierrepont.

'All is at an end between the Frankenburgs and me,' thought the
latter, as the carriage bowled on in the dark; 'but the war once
over, if I escape it, I shall carry her off at all hazards--by
Heaven, I shall.'

As a soldier accustomed to change of quarters, billets, camps, and
barracks, Charlie could make himself at home anywhere; but nowhere
(save his father's house) had he found himself so much at home as in
that old German castle: a shrine he deemed it--a shrine of which
Ernestine was the idol; and now he was exiled from it.




CHAPTER VIII.

CHARLIE'S VISITOR.

The carriage deposited Charlie Pierrepont at an hotel in
Aix-la-Chapelle, where he meant to remain for a little to make some
attempt to see Ernestine once more--to arrange, if possible, about
their future correspondence, and then to rejoin the Thuringians.

The dawn stole in over the city, and the Rhine began to glitter in
light--the dawn of that day on which the Baron Grünthal was to return
to Frankenburg, and 'the final arrangements' were to be made.  What
would they be?

Five o'clock tolled from the great bell of the Dom Kirche.  But five
hours since she had been in his arms, with her head resting on his
breast; how long it seemed ago; what storm of alarm, bitterness, and
mortification had agitated his heart since then!  The bell of the Dom
Kirche brought instantly back to memory that day in the stair of the
Hoch Munster, when the returned pressure of her little hand, though
ever so lightly, nearly put him beside himself with joy, and lured
him to divulge the great secret of his heart.

So all their stolen glances and sweet daily intercourse were at an
end now; all the quaint weird stories that she had been wont to tell
him in their rides and rambles, of sprites and elves, of lurlies and
knights, who had loved and been drawn thus into peril, all their
mutual songs and music, would never come again!

Too probably their paths on earth might lie for ever apart.  A chasm
separated the past from the present; still more did it seem to yawn
between the present and the future; so Charlie could but wring his
hands, and wish, at times, that Heinrich had never brought him to
Frankenburg.

Ah, those lovely eyes that were ever varying in expression, now
dreamy and tender, and anon bright with mischief, or soft with
inexpressible love; the pouting rosebud lips, that were so firm and
delicately cut; the skin, smooth as satin; the hands, of velvet: the
pinky tint on the rounded cheek; the winning ways and the quaint
sayings of Ernestine--were they all, indeed, to be as things of the
past to him?  It was intolerable!

They would be all as air-drawn pictures--nothing more.  To
Pierrepont, it seemed as if all the brightness had gone out of his
life; or, as if half that life had left him.  Would time ever cure
this, or must it be war or death?  God alone knew!  In his sorrow for
the loss he had sustained, and for the terrible emotions which he
knew she would be feeling--torn from him on one hand, and menaced by
a hateful marriage on the other--he could almost have wept, and
perhaps would have done so, but for a glow of wrath and indignation,
at the manner in which the imperious Countess had treated him.

He had been bluntly turned out of the house!  That was what the
termination of his visit plainly amounted to.  Charlie felt that his
epaulettes had been insulted, and his native English pride revolted
at the idea.  He felt his blood boiling at times, but against whom?
It could not be against the father or the mother of her he loved so
tenderly.  Oh no! for surely they would relent in time, on seeing how
deep and tender was his passion for their daughter.

'_How_ would it all end?' he asked of himself a hundred times.

The day without was bright and sunny, but to Charlie Pierrepont it
seemed as if the hours stole dully, darkly, and drearily on.  The
guests in the Speise-saal were numerous and noisy.  Their voices
irritated him; and often he started to his feet with the intention of
vaguely proceeding to the vicinity of Frankenburg, and as frequently
relinquished the idea; for he dreaded lest he should meet the Baron,
and be tempted into the commission of some wild outrage.

With much of the same gloom that Herminia had in her mind, when, from
the windows of the Grand Hotel, on the evening our story opens, she
looked dreamily down on Cologne, on city, church, and river, did
Charlie, from a balcony of his hotel, opposite the new theatre, look
down upon the strasse that leads to Borcette, and the crowded
boulevard that now occupies the place of a levelled ditch and
rampart, and is prettily laid out with pine trees, and many tiny
sheets of water.

Dinner was set before him under the awning which shaded the balcony,
and there was a bottle of hock.  Yes; he had ordered the kellner,
mechanically, to serve it up; but the dinner remained untasted,
though the hock was drained in draughts, as if to drown the
ever-recurring thoughts--would he never again see that sweet girl
whose witcheries were entwined around his heart? should he never more
look into her eyes, whose tender glances were magnetic; never feel on
his lips those clinging kisses, while he pressed her hand to his
breast?

Near him, under an awning in front of the hotel, seated on hard
wooden stools, at a bare deal table, were some poor
Handwerks-Burschen, or travelling workmen, in blue blouses and wooden
sabots, smoking, drinking beer, and making merry with their wives or
sweethearts, and singing--

  'Draw the social chair yet closer;
    Vow by this full draught of mirth,
  That all evil is forgiven,
    Hell is banished from our earth.'

It was Schiller's beautiful 'Song of Joy' they were singing to the
clanking accompaniment of their cans and wooden shoes.  How happy
those humble fellows seemed; and how much he envied them!

But Charlie was roused from his reverie by the Oberkellner
announcing--

'Der Graf von Frankenburg.'

'Which?' asked Charlie, starting; 'Count Ulrich?'

'No, mein Herr--Count Heinrich.'

'Very good--show him up.'

Charlie would rather that the old father of Ernestine had come than
her brother, whose errand would no doubt be a hostile one.  That
Heinrich, his friend and comrade, came on such an errand seemed
horrible and unnatural.  The wild justice of the pistol, as some one
has named it, was ceasing to be appreciated even in Germany.  The
time had gone past when the pistols of skilled homicides were notched
as registers of the lives they had taken, or had cards attached to
them, with the names of the slain, the date and the place of meeting,
and the distance of fighting, all neatly written thereon.

Let Heinrich taunt him how he would, a duel must not take place.  'In
the battle-field,' thought Charlie, 'I shall cheerfully meet death,
front to front and face to face; but I shall not carry there the mark
of Cain, by perhaps shooting the brother of her I love--my brother in
the spirit.'

Charlie forgot that in the Heilinghaist-feld at Altona he had fought
a duel for that brother, and winged an officer of the King's
Grenadiers; and he was just remembering that if hostilities were
contemplated, a messenger would have been sent by Heinrich, when the
latter entered the room, and coming quickly forward to Charlie,
grasped both his hands with his usual frankness.

'Well, Sir Knight of the Rueful Countenance--' he was beginning, when
Charlie said--

'How can you jest, Heinrich, at a time like this?'

'I do not jest; but have come, in defiance of all family views and
prejudices, to cheer you, and have some conversation over this
wretched affair.  Poor Ernestine!  I wish you and she had taken me
into your confidence.  By our past and present friendship, I surely
merited that from you, at least.'

'A bottle of wine, Heinrich?

'Thanks--I have just galloped in from the Schloss, and had some
difficulty in finding your quarters.'

'There are cigars, and here is an easy-chair.  I am thankful you did
not come on a hostile visit.  To decline would have been disgraceful,
to accept might have been fratricide; but I should have fired in the
air.'

'What stuff you are talking!' said Heinrich, as he manipulated and
lit a cigar, while the waiter was pouring out the wine.

'Now let us talk,' said he, when the latter had withdrawn.

'And how are the ladies this evening?' asked Charlie, trying, with a
swelling heart, to talk common sense.

'As you may suppose, the Grafine, my mother, is in a furious pet; and
I knew nothing about your sudden departure till I found your place
vacant at the breakfast table.'

'And--and your sister, Heinrich?'

'Has been all day fretting in her room.'

'And the Grafine Herminia?'

'With her.  I saw Herminia for a little time to-day, and she desired
me to assure you of her fullest sympathy.'

'God bless her!' exclaimed he, whilst his eyes became moist.

'The poor little thing endured too much, when she believed me to be
Herr Mansfeld, and knew me not in my proper person, to be without due
sympathy for all afflicted lovers.'

'You do not speak of the Herr Graf.'

'Oh, he is inexorable!'

'And our infernal Baron--no doubt he was at Frankenburg to-day,
hoping to play the lover,' said Charlie viciously.

'He was not.'

'How so?'

'His Excellency has a violent fit of the gout!'

'Long may it continue!' said Charlie fervently.

'Amen!' added Heinrich, lying back in his chair and laughing
heartily; 'the idea of an adoring swain having an ailment so
unromantic!  And now for the object of my visit.  I have simply come
to apologize for all that has occurred at the Schloss; but I might
have foreseen it, had my own affairs not occupied too much of my
attention.  Ernestine is too enchanting a girl to have failed to
attract.  What is done cannot be undone.  I do love you, Carl, and
deplore all that has taken place.'

The two friends shook hands warmly.  With Charlie, his comrade,
brother officer, and most particular 'chum,' was now the link between
him and Ernestine--between him and Frankenburg--the Eden from which
he had been banished, and without his Eve.  How he loved the generous
fellow!  How gladly he would lay down his life for him; but in doing
so, he would leave Ernestine, and, perhaps, to another.  Another?
Oh! that was not to be thought of!  Heinrich began again--

'Herminia says that Ernestine has never closed an eye since last
night, which I am sorry to say, because if troubles can be slept upon
they are curable.  However, don't be alarmed about Ernestine,' he
added, laughing, 'she's very low and sad, no doubt; but there is no
chance of her drowning herself in Fastrada's pool below the
Schloss--that odious pond where I used to puddle for many a day with
a crooked pin and a string, catching many a cold, but never a fish.'

'Why, Heinrich?'

'For a very sufficient reason.  There was none in it.'

'Do you think your mother will ever forgive me?

'Heaven alone knows.  Time will show.  She has the most absurd ideas
concerning alliances and family rank.  As for my father, he storms
and gets into rages that I call apoplectic ones; but he'll sit in his
study among the saddles, dogs' collars, and so forth, and smoke
himself into quietude ere long.  He is a wonderful hale and hearty
old fellow for his great age; but he married late in life, and has
only had a silver wedding, when his comrade, old Field-Marshal
Wrangel, has had a golden one.  And, then, you are a soldier,
Carl--and to be a soldier is always a trump card with him.  You have
heard how he saved Blucher's life at Ligny?'

'Only vaguely.'

'It is a matter of history: Prussian history, at least; and was one
of those impulses, or inspirations, which, if not acted on instantly,
may never come again.  It was at Ligny where the Prussians and French
were engaged on the 16th of June, on that dreadful day of tempest;
rain, and wind, when the British were retreating from Quatre Bras to
their position at Waterloo.  Victory was evidently declaring for the
Emperor, when Blucher strove to arrest his success by consecutive
charges of cavalry.  In person he led on a regiment of Hussars, who
were repulsed; his horse fell beneath him wounded, and the great
Marshal could not be extricated, and the enemy were pressing on!  The
last of his flying Hussars had left the brave old man, who lay
helpless on the ground; but his aide-de-camp, the Count, my father,
resolving to share his fate, flung himself by Blucher's side, and
covered him with his horse-cloak that he might not be recognised.
Over them swept a brigade of Brass Cuirassiers, so named from the
metal of their helmets and corslets.  The routed Hussars rallied
suddenly, wheeled about, and attacked their pursuers, and again
passed their fallen leader, and the old Graf--a young Graf, then--in
their pursuit of the French, whom they routed.  My father instantly
seized the opportunity.  He dragged Blucher from under the fallen
charger, mounted him on a dragoon horse, and thus saved his life!'

While Heinrich, with something of exultation, was detailing this
episode of the Count's early life, the thoughts of Carl were very far
away from the events of Ligny and Waterloo.

'Next week will see us on the march for France,' said he, 'and I may
cross the purposes of your family and the path of Ernestine no more!
You, Heinrich, who are so successful and so happy in your love, might
surely pity us.'

'I do, Carl.  A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.'

'Arrange for me,' continued Charlie, with great earnestness, 'that
Ernestine and I may have one more interview.  Our last farewell--our
separation, was so cruelly abrupt.'

'A meeting!  When and where?'

'When and where you choose.  See her once again, I must at all
hazards; and you alone can arrange this for me.  Dear friend, don't
deny us this last melancholy pleasure!'

'Where, then, think you?'

'Settle that with my darling; and may God bless you, Heinrich!' said
Charlie, in a choking voice, as he patted his friend on the epaulette.

'I shall write you to-night, to-morrow at the latest; for we must not
lose time while the Baron's gout lasts.'

And Heinrich ordered his horse and departed, leaving Charlie
Pierrepont in a more contented mood of mind than he had been in since
he left the boudoir of the Countess.

So he should _see_ her once again!




CHAPTER IX.

FOR LIFE AND DEATH.

Eagerly did Charlie Pierrepont await the arrival of the Brieftrager,
or letter-carrier, who brought him a brief note from Heinrich, saying
that he meant to take his sister for a drive that evening, and that
Charlie would find her in the little church at Burtscheid at the hour
of seven.  The note was signed, as usual, '_Ihr treuer Freund_,
HEINRICH.'  After all that had occurred, how delightful and
encouraging it was to find her brother signing himself 'Your devoted
friend,' as of old!

'The little church of Burtscheid?' said Charlie, after perusing the
note for the third or fourth time; 'it is a strange place to choose.'

But Ernestine was a strange girl, and, with regard to this farewell
meeting, had that in view which Charlie could not foresee.  Ten hours
had to elapse before the appointed one came; and to Charlie, who
passed the day almost watch in hand, the time seemed interminable.
Evening came, however, at last; and the shadows of the church spires
were falling eastward when Charlie set out for the trysting-place,
which is a mile and a half from the gates of Aix, and connected
therewith by a handsome avenue of trees.  The village is now chiefly
celebrated for its mineral waters; but 'the abbey of Burtscheid,'
says Forster, a writer at the close of the last century, 'is
beautifully situated, and finished with all ecclesiastical splendour.
Close by, a small wood runs towards a large reservoir, and as you
advance you come to a narrow valley enclosed by woody hills, where
several warm springs are soon discovered by the vapour that rises
from them, and the large reservoir is quite filled with hot water.
As you walk along a series of beautifully shaded reservoirs you see
the romantic ruins of the old castle of Frankenburg.'

Thus the trysting-place selected by Ernestine was quite near her
home.  The church was an appendage of the abbey mentioned by Forster.
It was a lonely place, surrounded by a burial-ground, where, as usual
in German cemeteries, the inventions of the mason and carpenter
rarely go beyond an urn, a cross, or a broken pillar in fashioning a
tombstone, and where, for reasons to be afterwards mentioned, few
came to promenade, as the public usually do in public burying-grounds.

At the gate stood a handsome britzka, with a pair of horses, the
reins of which were held by Heinrich, who was without groom or other
attendant.

'Ernestine?' said Charlie, grasping the hand of his friend.

'She is in the church.  We have not been here three minutes.  Do not
detain her long, Carl, as I would not have suspicion excited.
Meantime, I shall smoke a cigar.'

Charlie hastened into the edifice, for the Herr Pastor of which, in
happier times, Ernestine and Herminia had worked many altar-cloths,
pen-wipers, slippers, and smoking-caps.  It was a plain, whitewashed
edifice, ancient Gothic in some parts, patched with modern brickwork
elsewhere; and a subdued light stole through the windows on the
portraits of certain defunct Herr Pastors hung upon the pillars, the
oaken pews, and the rows of black iron spittoons in some, with
kneeling hassocks in others.  Before the rail of the altar, Ernestine
was kneeling, in prayer apparently.

There was no one else in the church, and on hearing Charlie approach,
she threw herself into his arms, and for some time could but sob
passionately and utter his name in a choking voice, while he patted
her cheek and kissed away her tears.  Then she became more composed,
and taking Charlie's face between her soft and ungloved hands, gazed
into his eyes with a tender smile.

'You will yet love me, Carl, in spite of all that mamma has said?'
she whispered.

'Love you!' he exclaimed, 'what on earth could make me cease to love
you?'

'How enchanting it is to be with you again, my own Carl!  You will
write to me from--from France, when Heinrich writes to me or
Herminia, and I can reply in the same manner.'

'Thank you, darling, for the delightful promise.'

'No power on earth must separate us, Carl.  I have resolved that such
cannot, shall not be.'

'The Baron----'

'Ah, don't speak of him at this precious time,' said she,
contemptuously; 'that odious Grünthal--such a mouth he has!  When he
laughs you can almost see it behind him.'

'Behind him, darling--how?'

'The corners of his mouth might meet behind his head.'

This was somewhat of an exaggeration, but as it was like some of
Ernestine's speeches in merrier times, she made Charlie laugh.

'Yet, to such a man _they_ would assign you!' said he.

'If they dare!' she replied, with a little gesture, peculiarly her
own, as it was partly imperious and partly child-like.

Her tears began to flow again, and she said:

'It is in vain that the Graf storms, and that mamma tells me every
vow that has passed between us must be forgotten, that when you left
Frankenburg you lost all claim on me, and I was, and am, perfectly
free.  I am not free, Carl; I have promised to become your wedded
wife, and no other shall have my heart or hand while I live!'

She spoke with strong passion, and as she lay in the arms of her
lover, her whole delicate form was trembling violently.

'But for this war, I would implore you to take me away with you, and
make me your wife in spite of them all--your dear little wife, Carl.
Wherever you went, there Ernestine would be with you, and we should
live but for each other, and love each other as we have always done.'

'And this war once over, if God spares me, I shall come, at every
risk, at every hazard, and take you away--on this I had already
resolved, darling.'

'When that time comes, dearest Carl, I will live on your smiles by
day, and rest my head on your bosom at night.'

There was a smile on the eyes and on the lips of the girl as she
spoke, though her heart was torn by the misery of the coming
separation.  Suddenly she said:

'Kneel with me before this altar, ere some one interrupts us.  Let us
make a promise to be true to each other in life and in death----'

'Death, darling?'

'In sorrow and joy, peril and safety; sickness and health, in death
and in life!  Repeat after me, what I say.'

Clasped hand in hand, and kneeling face to face, they each promised
to be faithful, loving and true to the other, under all
circumstances, exactly as if they had been wedded, till death parted
them.  The words she dictated were strangely nervous and
solemn--solemn even to being fantastic--chilling, yet somehow
charming, and they were never forgotten by Charlie, who repeated them
after her as one in a dream.

In the usually tender eyes and soft face of Ernestine there was, for
a time, a sad yet stern expression of resolution and self-mastery,
which Charlie failed to analyze, though the memory of it long haunted
him.

'We have forged our spiritual chain, beloved Carl,' said she, 'and
cannot break it now.'

'Nor shall it ever be broken!' he replied, caressing her tenderly.

'_For life and death_ our bond be recorded in Heaven!' said the
strange romantic girl; 'kiss me, Carl, kiss me--I feel much happier
now.'

'Surely Heaven will spare me for your sake, my love.'

'If not, we shall meet there, Carl--for I should not be long behind
you, there, where there are no harsh parents, "where there is neither
marriage, nor giving in marriage,"--then we shall be re-united, Carl,
and live our dreams of love over again.'

The girl's manner was exquisitely tender, yet sad, and so earnest
that there came a time when Charlie remembered it, occasionally with
terror.  The voice of her brother was now heard.

'Heinrich is very impatient,' said Charlie.

'One moment, Carl.  If I were to come to you when dead, would you
fear me?'

'When dead?' said Charlie, looking down on the sweet upturned face
that lay on his shoulder; 'what _do_ you mean, Ernestine?'

'I scarcely know; but I should not fear _you_, love.  I have some
strange emotions in my heart this evening.  I do not think even the
grave would keep me from you; but would it keep you from me?'

'I fear it would, darling,' said he, with a half smile, though rather
bewildered by all this; 'battle trenches are often pretty deep and
full.'

'Oh, horror, Carl; don't talk of such an end as that!'

He regarded her anxiously, fearing that sudden sorrow was affecting
her mind.  Again the voice of Heinrich was heard.  She drew down the
veil of her hat to conceal the redness of her eyes, and Charlie led
her out to the britzka.  All was over now, and they were separated
till Fate or Chance should enable them to meet again.

Those who saw Ernestine looking back from the britzka, and Charlie
lift his hat more than once, as he walked slowly down the avenue that
led to Aix, could little have imagined the strangely solemn betrothal
that had just taken place between these two, in the little church of
Burtscheid.




CHAPTER X.

TO THE RHINE!

'To Paris!  To Paris!  Hoch Germania!'

Such were the cries that rang along the line of march, when on the
1st of August the various columns of the German army began to meet
those which left Paris shouting 'To Berlin!'

After detailing much that savours of what may seem romance, we have
now to borrow a paragraph or two from the history of Europe.

Perfect in organization, the forces which the Prussian Government
were able to bring to the frontier a few days after the declaration
of war against France were divided into three great armies, making a
grand total of four hundred and twelve thousand infantry, and
forty-seven thousand eight hundred cavalry, with one thousand four
hundred and forty pieces of cannon.

The first of these three armies was commanded by Major General
Steinmetz, the second by Prince Frederick Charles, and the third by
the Crown Prince--the whole being under the orders of the King of
Prussia, assisted by General Count Von Moltke, a distinguished Dane,
as chief of his staff.

Strong reserves were posted at Hainau, Frankfort, at the old
electoral city of Mayence, and amidst the vast defences of Coblentz
between the Rhine and the Moselle.  Another army defended the north,
under Von Falkenstein; so taken altogether, including the Landwehr,
Prussia, with her million and a quarter of well-drilled soldiery,
seemed impregnable.

Charlie Pierrepont's regiment was formed in brigade with the 7th, or
King's Grenadiers, and the 37th, or Westphalians.  The war
establishment of a Prussian regiment is never less than 3,006 men,
with 69 officers.  His brigade was among the first troops actively
employed, with orders to occupy the line of the Saar, resting its
right on Saarbrück, with advanced posts at that place and in the
schloss of the Princes of Nassau, at Saarlouis, which had been
fortified by Vauban, at Bliescastle, where the Prussians and French
fought a great battle in 1793, and at Merzig.

The second army, with the royal headquarters, crossed the Rhine at
Mayence, and took a position on the left of General Steinmetz,
occupied Zweibrucken (which the French had named Deux Ponts), and
Pirmasens, with its main body echeloned along the line of railway
from the ruined castle of the Counts of Sickingen at Landstuhl to the
strong fortress of Landau.

The third army came on by the way of Mannheim and Germesheim, and
formed to the left of the second, at the latter place, Speirs,
Neustadt, and Landau.  All these formidable columns could communicate
with each other by railway, and were well secured in the rear in case
of having to retreat.  But no thought of retreating was in the
Prussian ranks.

From the suddenness and efficiency of these arrangements, it was
clear 'that Count Bismarck and his master had been long and actively
preparing for war, and had not been entirely absorbed in peaceful and
innocent designs, as we were constantly assured by certain writers in
this country, who desired to present France to the world as a crafty
and ravening wolf, and Prussia a meek and inoffensive lamb.'

Something of this kind was said by Heinrich to Charlie, as their
brigade approached Saarbrück.  But the latter would scarcely admit
it, as his love for Ernestine, and his high military enthusiasm, made
him, for the time, 'German all over--German at fever-heat,' as he
said.

And splendid was the aspect of the strong brigade, with the King's
Grenadiers in front, the Westphalians in the centre, and the 95th
Thuringians in the rear, as it defiled across the bridge that led to
the suburb of St. Johann, each battalion with its carts of reserve
ammunition, drawn by six horses.  After each battalion, also, came
thirteen baggage and one canteen waggon, all the brass drums beating
smartly to make the men step quick.  The colours of the King's
Grenadiers, black and white; of the other corps, black, white, and
red--the standard of the North German Confederation--were floating in
the wind, above the long lines of spiked helmets, and of bright
bayonets and brighter musket barrels sloped in the sunshine, for the
Prussian arms are not browned as ours are now, but pure, white steel.
Hence the glitter over all the column was great, though the uniforms
were sombre and blue.

Anon the brass bands struck up between the echoing streets of
Saarbrück; but amid all the enthusiasm of the time, the crash of the
martial music, the measured tramping of thousands of marching feet,
Charlie's mind could not help reverting to those happy moments in the
stair of the Hoch Munster, and the sadder ones in the quiet little
church of Burtscheid, and, in memory, he still saw the rosy,
trembling lips of the girl he loved, and the full bosom that rose and
fell with sobs and sighs.

When would he be marching home, and what might happen then?  Would it
come to pass that he might never return, but find a grave in the soil
of France?  They were now within thirty miles of Metz.  He cast a
backward glance to where the rearguard was descending a slope, and,
as if to reply to his surmises, there came marching with it a corps
of grave-diggers, for a force of this kind was attached to every
column, while 'by an arrangement characterised by a grim horror, yet
unquestionably useful,' every Prussian officer and soldier was
ordered to wear round his neck a label, to establish his identity in
case of his being killed.

These reflections were but momentary, so Charlie's spirit rose again,
and his heart beat responsive to the sharp and regulated crash of the
drums; for there is much elasticity of mind in healthy twenty-eight
or thirty years, and Charlie's were no more.

The enthusiasm all over Germany was unquestionably great at this
time, and as a specimen of it, Heinrich told Charlie, exultingly, how
his father's old comrade and brother officer, Field Marshal the Count
Von Wrangel, then in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on seeing his
old regiment, the 3rd Cuirassiers, marching through Berlin, had
petitioned the king for leave to join them as a private, as he was
now too aged to lead; but the king declined the offer of the brave
old man, and requested him to remain in Berlin, and make himself
useful in a more peaceable way.

On the early morning of the 2nd of August, Charlie Pierrepont was
subaltern of the out-picket posted on the road that leads direct from
the open town of Saarbrück towards Metz, where then the Emperor
Napoleon III. commanded in person.  He had returned from visiting his
line of advanced sentinels, all of whom stood motionless, with musket
ordered and bayonet fixed, with their faces turned in the direction
of Metz, each longing, no doubt, for the relief and a pipe.  Stiff,
and chilled with the rain and dew of the summer night, Charlie shook
himself, as a dog might do, and proceeded to light a cigar and look
around him, as the dawn brightened, little foreseeing that this would
be one of the most important days in the new current of events.

He could see the Saar winding in and out at the foot of a chain of
hills, covered to their summits by beautiful oaks and beeches.  Here
and there the red precipices started up from the bed of the stream;
for the rocks and the soil were red, and even the river was red, too,
for rain had fallen overnight.

The scene looked lovely and peaceful.  Red stones, spotted with
orange-coloured lichens, lay plentifully in the bed of the Saar,
where a solitary kingfisher wound about among the water-weeds.  Here
and there at the narrower parts of the stream, an occasional peasant
was fishing with a tub and sink-net, and beyond lay the plain, where
Saarlouis' ramparts rose above the swampy fields, where herds of
cattle plashed disconsolately about.

'Guten morgen, Carl!' cried a familiar voice, and on looking up, he
saw Heinrich hurrying towards him.  'I have news for you.'

'Are the enemy in motion?

'As your post is an advanced one, you should be the first to know of
that.  My news is from the rear.'

'From the rear!'

'How dull you are, Carl--from Frankenburg!  Here, take a pull at my
bottle; your own is, no doubt, empty by this time.'

'Thanks!'

Charlie took a few mouthfuls from the metal flask of brandy-and-water
that Heinrich wore slung over his shoulder in a belt, and said--

'Now for your news, friend; it is not pleasant, I fear, when you
fortify me thus.'

'Anything must be pleasant that comes to us from the girls we love.
The field-post has just come.  I have a letter from Herminia, Carl,
with a little enclosure for you.'

It was a note--merely a note, on scented and tinted paper, for
Ernestine was not above these feminine prettinesses, written in her
graceful style and lady-like hand--to say that he was never absent
from her thoughts, and how she and Herminia had wept and prayed in
secret on the night the army crossed the Rhine.

'I fear, Carl, that I am looking ill and pale,' she continued, 'but
sunny-haired Herminia seems to thrive on her grief; but you know she
is ever all dimples--dimples on her white elbows and chin, cheeks,
and hands--soft jolly dimples.  Mamma, tired of knitting--she always
knits as if her livelihood depended upon it--has dozed off to sleep,
with her Spitz pug under her lace shawl in the boudoir.  (The
boudoir!  Do you ever think of it, and that horrible night when she
surprised us while searching for that miserable little cur?)  Papa,
as dinner is over, is smoking in his study, among his fishing and
shooting gear, pistols, guns, whips, collars, and whistles, no doubt
drinking to the health of the Kaiser and studying the _Staats
Anzeiger_.  All is unchanged since you left Frankenburg, from whence
my heart goes with this to you, my dearest Betrothed of Burtscheid.'

Charlie was perusing this for the third time, Heinrich was lolling
beside him on the grass, humming '_Du du_,' and idly playing with his
silver sword-knot, while watching the bright morning sunshine
stealing along the wooded hills and winding river, when suddenly
there was the report of a needle-gun in front.  Another, another, and
a third followed, as the whole line of advanced sentinels opened
fire, and the out-picket rushed to their arms and fell in their ranks.

'Sapperment!' exclaimed young Frankenburg, springing to his feet; 'it
has come at last!  This is war!  The French are in motion in front;
there will soon be work for the grave-digger corps!'

So opened the day on which the young Napoleon was to receive his
'baptism of fire.'




CHAPTER XI.

SEPARATED.

For a time the preparations for her marriage had gone on
openly--though Ernestine, in her tenderness of heart and reluctance
to wound one she loved so well, made no reference to this in her
short letter--so openly that there were times when she contemplated
flight; but whither could she fly? and then she shrunk from the
dreadful _esclandre_ of such a proceeding; so settlements were made
and deeds signed, and from time to time she found beautiful ornaments
and jewels, the gifts of the Baron, on her toilette tables; but she
never wore them, and the morocco cases remained unopened; till at
last a serious illness, or sickness of the heart, in fact,
supervened, and the espousals were delayed, and the Count cursed the
hour that his thoughtless son had brought his troublesome English
comrade to Frankenburg.

She was no longer _espiègle_, as of old; the piano remained unopened
now, and no entreaties on the part of her father could lure her into
playing 'Die Wacht am Rhein,' the war-song of Arndt, or any of those
stirring and patriotic airs with which all Germany was resounding
now.  The very sound of the instrument fretted her.

Times there had been when she had tried over some of those songs she
had loved to sing to Charlie Pierrepont--the same that she had been
rehearsing on the evening of his arrival (how much had happened since
then!)--but she fairly broke down and made the attempt no more.

A summons from Prince Bismarck, for the Baron Grünthal to attend at
Berlin, in consequence of some affairs connected with the
Oberconsistory Court at Aix, gave poor Ernestine a temporary respite
from the annoyance of his presence and clumsy attentions; and as she
was at times easier in mind, and more content to wait the issue of
events, after that remarkable and somewhat solemn interchange of
promises at Burtscheid Church, her parents began to hope that all was
at an end between her and the Herr Lieutenant of Infantry, and that
she would be content to receive the Baron as her husband in time,
perhaps when Heinrich returned, if God spared him ever to return.

This was satisfactory to her on one hand, while on the other she had
the pleasure of sharing her secret sorrows and hopes of future joy
with Herminia, with whom she had now a double link and bond of
sympathy.

They led but a dull life now in the old Schloss.

Baron Rhineberg, 'a beer-bloated Teuton' of the first class, came
occasionally to talk politics with the Count, over a pipe and flask
of Rhine wine; the two daughters of the Justiz-rath, and a few other
visitors, dropped in, but Ernestine found it weary work to talk
commonplaces with these people, not one of whom had any vital or
particular interest, beyond a national one, in the army now in the
field; and to chat of music and books, of Berlin wools and soup for
the poor, when, perhaps, _at that very moment of time_, the bullets
might be whistling about him she loved; or when he might be stretched
wounded, dying or dead, upon the bloody sod--to talk, we say, of
aught that was frivolous, with such fears in her heart, was
impossible.

Strong, yet tender, was thus the bond of sympathy between the
cousins; for those whom they loved--the one openly, the other
secretly--and to whom they were affianced, were facing side by side
the foes of Germany, and risking the same perils and toils.

Once only did she rouse herself thoroughly and feel startled when the
portly Baron Rhineberg, taking his vast pipe out from his bushy
moustaches, asked her abruptly if she 'ever visited the church of
Burtscheid.'

'Sometimes,' said she, colouring deeply for a moment, and then
becoming pale as before; 'but why do you ask, Herr Baron?'

'Because Herr Pastor Puffenvortz is preaching a series of stirring
sermons there just now.'

Poor Ernestine, who had begun to fear that her interview there with
Charlie had been overheard or overseen by some eavesdropper unknown,
felt greatly relieved by the Baron's simple reply; but her sudden
change of colour was not unnoticed by the Countess, who drew certain
conclusions therefrom, though she could scarcely give them any form.

The sudden and blunt reference to the church at Burtscheid, the scene
of her last and farewell interview with Charlie, gave her so sudden a
shock--her sensibility had become so delicate now--that she had to
retire to her room.

Burtscheid!  All the scene then came again before her--when words
were spoken that were known to Heaven and themselves alone!  He was
gone--torn from her, the first and only man she had ever loved, so
the girl pined in her heart.  So now she sat, as she had been wont to
sit for hours, listlessly, as if without consciousness of thought;
yet her mind was keenly active and full of images of the absent one.

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 they _both_ escape 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 ever _go_ to 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 on _me_?' 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 of _my_
daughter!'

'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 an _Englishman_.'

'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.




CHAPTER XII.

THE BAPTISM OF FIRE.

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 glorious _élan_, 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 the _debris_ of 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 the
_first_ man 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.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE DREAM IN THE BIVOUAC.

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 left _alive_ of
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
a _dream_; that the clock of the French village was striking the hour
of _three_, 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.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE LETTER OF ERNESTINE.

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 dream
  How wide my spirit soars from them,
  And, borne on fancy's pinions, roves
  To seek the glorious form it loves.

  'Know that a faithful herald flies
  To bear her image to my eyes,
  My constant thought for ever telling
  How 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 the
_Gazettes_--those dreadful _Gazettes_!"  And now, Herr Carl, all that
follows are little _bon-bons_ for my own perusal.'

Innocent Herminia little knew that her aunt watched the war
_Gazettes_ with the double hope that Heinrich's name was not in them,
and that Charlie's _was_--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 of _his_ letter; '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 of _you_.'

'_Last_ night,' 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 of _three_ was 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.




CHAPTER XV.

WHAT THE 'EXTRA BLATT' TOLD.

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--the _Staats Anzeiger_, the _Cologne Gazette_, the _Extra
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 for _her_; 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 the _joss_, 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 high _toupée_--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 the _Extra 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, and _hanged
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.




CHAPTER XVI.

IN FRONT OF METZ.

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.  _My_ sister 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 new _alignement_.

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 a _souvenir_ for 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 losing
_nineteen_ thousand 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 stone _tourelles_, 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 terrified _bonne_, 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 the _bonne_ poured 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.

'And yet you fight for those horrible barbarians, the Prussians?'
exclaimed the young lady.

'I am a soldier of fortune, my dear child,' said Charlie, laughing,
for the girl was only in her fifteenth year, apparently, and he could
not but remember that Ernestine was one of those 'horrible
barbarians.'

'I could have guessed as much,' said the girl.

'How, Mademoiselle?

'By a certain boldness in your bearing, and by something in your eyes
that tells of----' she paused shyly and coloured at her own
impetuosity.

'An expression that tells of what?' asked Charlie.

'I don't know, unless it is of--sorrow.'

'You are an acute observer, Mademoiselle,' said Charlie, bowing.  'I
have indeed undergone much sorrow but lately.'

The girl had a pretty, innocent, and most lovable little face.  She
was, probably, half German in blood; her eyes were bright blue; her
cheeks delicate and peach-like; her lips a ruddy red, though cheek
and lips were ashy white with terror when Charlie first saw her,
being pulled about roughly by the Bavarians, who had boisterously
dragged her from one another, under the eyes of her helpless and
agonized father.

She nestled up to Charlie's side, and shaking the masses of her rich
brown hair--hair that in its tint reminded him of Herminia--she put a
pretty hand on each of his epaulettes, and looking into his face with
pure childish confidence, said--

'I shall like you.  I am sure I shall.  I am so happy you are not one
of those barbarians, though you do wear a spike-helmet!'

'Why?  How should you like me?'

'Can you ask me _why_, Monsieur, after saving our lives?  In
gratitude, I can love you and pray for you.'

Charlie laughed, and said--

'_Ma belle_, I am, indeed, thankful that we were in time to turn
these marauders out of doors.'

And then he thought of his three sisters at home, and what his
emotions would be if such a scene, as he had just interrupted, had
taken place in his father's quiet house in Warwickshire.

'What is your name, Monsieur?' she asked, 'as I must never forget it.'

'Carl--Charles Pierrepont.'

She repeated it two or three times, and laughing, said:

'It sounds very droll!'

Charlie could not help laughing at the girl's _naïve_ manner, and
thought that the old Warwickshire squire, who was fond of deducing
his descent from Robert, who received the manor of Hurstpierpoint, in
Sussex, from the Conqueror, would have found nothing 'droll' in it.

'And what is yours, Mademoiselle?'

'Célandine--Célandine de Caillé.'

'Well, I cannot say it is _droll_.  I think it very pretty.'

'Your little rebuke is a just one, Monsieur,' said the smiling old
gentleman, who, had Charlie been a genuine Prussian, would little
have relished all this conversation between him and his daughter.

'We shall be very good friends, I doubt not, for to-night, at least,
Monsieur.'

'Only for to-night?'

'To-morrow shall relieve you of our hateful presence, as we shall
probably move against Metz.'

'Don't say "hateful," Monsieur, when we owe you so much, and esteem
you so much,' urged Célandine.

'Ernestine will never have a rival, even here,' thought Charlie, as
he begged them to excuse him, as he had to go his rounds, and, with
his sergeant, post fresh sentinels.

That duty done, he undid his belt, but without undressing, threw
himself on a sofa, and, utterly exhausted and worn out by the whole
events of the day, oblivious of the presence of Mademoiselle de
Caillé and her father in the dining-room, he slept as soundly as
Hood's old woman,

  'Who might have worn a percussion cap,
  And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap.'




CHAPTER XVII.

FACING A BATTERY OF MITRAILLEUSES.

The night passed over quietly, and without alarm; but with dawn of
day came an officer of Uhlans, attended by a trumpeter, flying at
full speed along the line of advanced posts, calling in all the
out-pickets, while the King was probably already telegraphing to
Berlin as usual:--

'Another new victory!  Thank God for His mercy!'

Referring to the official pietism of the Prussian monarch at this
crisis, a very impartial historian of the war says thus:--'How little
his armies were controlled by regard for humanity--the most essential
element of any religion--will appear in lurid colours.  Abu Bekr, the
successor of Mohammed, enjoined his soldiers not to kill old people,
women, or children; to cut down no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of
corn; to spare all fruit-trees; and slay no cattle but such as they
could take for their own use.  But the Prussians made a desert of
France, burned villages and small towns, and treated old people and
women with horrible barbarity.  But they were prodigal of religious
words, and words with many have too often a greater weight than
facts.'

But with all this, it should be borne in mind, from past experience
of French invading armies, how would those of the Emperor have
behaved had they reached Berlin?

One of a thousand of such episodes, as were daily occurring along the
frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine, would no doubt have desolated for
ever the household of M. de Caillé but for the timely arrival of
Pierrepont and his twenty Thuringians.

Aware of this, when the Uhlan trumpet sounded, Célandine de Caillé,
like most young girls, a light sleeper, heard it before the war-worn
Charlie, and pale and startled, came forth in the prettiest of
morning robes to bid him farewell, and to stuff his havresack, and
the havresacks of his men (though they were Prussians), with all that
the Bavarians had not consumed last night.

Charlie thought how fresh and radiant the young girl looked in her
white morning dress, with blue breastknots, and a ribbon of the same
colour in her hair, a soft light shining in her blue eyes, and a
little colour in her peach-like cheek, that reminded him of
Ernestine; but, ah! who was like Ernestine?

A soldier fresh from one battle and going forth to fight another is
an object of interest to all; but a handsome, frank, and free-hearted
young fellow, like Charlie Pierrepont, was doubly so to an
impassionable girl like Mademoiselle de Caillé; thus her blue eyes
filled with tears as he kissed her tremulous little hand, which, like
her taper arm, came so delicately forth from the wide-laced sleeves
of her dress.

'Why are there tears in your eyes, Mademoiselle?' asked Charlie, with
a kind smile.

'Because, Monsieur, I pity you.'

'Pity me!'

'Indeed I do, Monsieur.  Most earnestly.'

'And why?'

'Because you are too young, and too good and kind, to be killed.
Oh!' continued the girl, looking up in his face, 'I implore you to go
home--home to your own England--home to your mother, if you have one,
and leave these odious Prussians to fight their own battles.'

'It is too late, my pretty friend.'

'How so?'

'The die is cast that makes me--Prussian.'

'Will another horrible battle be fought to-day?' asked Monsieur de
Caillé, who now made his appearance.

'I am sure of it, Monsieur,' replied Charlie.

'_Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!_' exclaimed Célandine, clasping her hands, and
looking upwards; 'and you will be in it?'

'Undoubtedly, Mademoiselle.'

She drew very close to Charlie, and said, in a low voice,

'Pardon me, _mon ami_--but--but when were you last at mass or
confession?'

'We don't attend to either much in the 95th,' was Charlie's evasive
reply; 'besides, our Herr Pastor is a Lutheran.'

The sweet French girl eyed him wistfully.

'You are too good and humane thus to die like a heathen!' said she,
'and many more will die to-day.  Promise me, Monsieur, that you will
wear this.'

And from her white neck she took a little holy cross and medal,
suspended by a blue ribbon, which she passed over Charlie's head.

'For your sake, then,' said Charlie gallantly.

'For your own, rather.  Whether you believe in such things or not, it
will do you no harm to wear it.'

'_Très bon_, my child!' said the old gentleman; 'but Monsieur has a
cross already,' he added, patting the iron one at the breast of
Charlie's blue tunic.

'And now I must go,' said he, putting on his helmet; 'there sounds
the trumpet again.'

As he bade them adieu and left them, the French girl, with a quick
pretty action, flicked some holy water in his face from a Dresden
china font that hung inside the door of the dining-room, and the
glittering drops fell on his moustache and silver gorget, which the
Prussians still wear, or at least wore then; and father and daughter
stood sadly in the porch, looking after their protector as he marched
off at the head of his men, for Charlie, though a thorough English
gentleman, was, as some say, 'the soldier all over, but the soldier
adventurer--the soldier of fortune, rather than the soldier of
routine.'

Charlie, we fear, and are ashamed to admit it, did not pray often.
'It wasn't much in his line; besides, what was the Herr Pastor paid
for?' but as he marched back to headquarters on the Bellecroix road,
at the head of his picket, he prayed in his heart that no harm--no
perils, such as those of last night--might ever again menace that
frank, engaging, and innocent young girl at the Chateau de Caillé.

But he had not seen the last of that old mansion.

By this time, a considerable portion of the German army had
penetrated so far to the west and north-west of Metz, as to be almost
already between Marshal Bazaine and Paris!  The line of the invading
forces was thus so greatly extended that the French generalissimo
dared not make any offensive movement against them, but was compelled
to retreat along the highways that led from Gravelotte to Verdun.

Charlie had barely rejoined his regiment, and exchanged a few words
with Heinrich, Schönforst, and other friends, when the order came for
the line to advance, as the French were in position at Vionville,
covering the whole southern road to Verdun, with a front extending to
the village of Gorz, eight miles south-west of Metz; and in their
martial ardour to meet the enemy, many of the Thuringians, as the
march forward began, struck up the fine war-song of Arndt.

In the ranks of this regiment, as in others of the Prussian army,
were many well-born and gently nurtured young men, bred to
professions or businesses, and who could speak several languages, and
take their place in good society, but were dragged away from their
avocation, hearth, and home, by the Prussian military system.  There
were others, again, grey, brown, and hardy men, who could digest
sutler's beef and eat such ammunition bread as the Kaiser's
commissariat supplied, sleep in their spike-helmets as soundly as in
a velvet night-cap, feel, by a bivouac fire, as comfortable as if in
the Grand Hotel at Cologne, and march to be maimed or massacred, to
wound and to slay, with genuine Teutonic taciturnity and phlegm.


The battle of the day began on some wooded hills above the pretty
red-tiled village of Gorz, near a pleasant stream that meanders
between fields and beautiful coppices from Mars-la-Tour to the
Moselle.

By sheer force of numbers, the Prussians, while giving and receiving
a storm of musketry, pushed into the woods, driving the French
skirmishers before them.  Those who were spectators saw the little
scarlet kepis of the latter dispersing in succession amid the white
smoke and green foliage; then the dark-coated Prussians, with their
spike-helmets and goat-skin packs, disappeared also in pursuit.  What
happened in this part of the battle no one knows, or ever will know,
as it was entirely in the dense woods and deep valleys, and thus no
general view could be obtained; yet it is to this part of the field
we have to refer, for there fought the 95th regiment.

From one wooded slope to another the French fell back, fighting
desperately.  In the valleys, the din of war rang with a hundred
reverberations.  Shrieks, cries, and hoarse cheering shook the very
woodlands, and the smoke curled up from the latter as if they were on
fire.  White puffs and red flashes seemed to burst from every bush
and tree.  Now and then the bayonets flashed, or a tricolour appeared
amid the foliage; but on, almost without check, went the Prussians,
over ground strewn with the terrible _debris_ of men, gun-carriages,
limbers, and horses, in many instances blown literally to pieces, for
the whole ground was ploughed by shot and shell, and sown with rifle
bullets.

Charlie's regiment, with the 40th, 67th, and 69th, was ordered to
surround and storm a cottage mid-way on the Gorze road.  The reason
of four battalions being sent to storm a mere cottage was that it was
held by a half-battery of French mitrailleuses, which did frightful
execution in their ranks as they advanced.

Forward they went at a rush, the living tumbling over the
fast-falling dead, these dreadful cannon belching death and
destruction from amid the foliage in front, with that horrible
shrieking sound peculiar to their discharge, and Charlie felt the
_streams_ of shot as they passed him.

A wild cry of agony, amid many others, made him look to his right.
There lay Schönforst and half his company writhing or dead in one
bloody heap; and the next moment it was Charlie's turn.

He felt as if a hot sword-blade had entered his breast--there was a
heavy blow, a sharp tearing of the body, an emotion of rage or
anger--a loud cry escaped him, and he fell on his face, enduring
terrible agony.  He staggered up, just as the attacking force swept
over him to assault the battery, but fell over on his side, and lay
with the blood pouring from his chest.

Wounded at last--perhaps mortally! was his first reflection; for he
could feel that the bullet was in his body still.  Life, death--the
past, the future--'the possible heaven, the impending hell'--all
flashed upon him, with thoughts of his own misery in lying there
dying, helpless, and so far from Ernestine!

A faintness came over him, from which he was roused by feeling some
one opening his tunic.

'Where are you wounded?' asked a familiar voice, and Charlie found
the doctor of the regiment--with all of whom, we have said, he was a
great favourite--bending over him kindly, with the hospital attendant
of his company.

'In the breast,' he gasped.

The doctor had but little time to lose, and the bullets were
_pinging_ past him and his patient in every direction.

'The bullet is lodged near the spine,' said the doctor, 'and it must
be cut out, but not here.'

'Is--is the wound dangerous?' he faltered.

'Not very; but great care will be requisite.'

Whether on the part of himself or his medical attendant Charlie did
not inquire; the tone in Which the doctor said 'very' lessened his
hopes.

'God's will be done,' said he; and there flashed on his memory all
that little Célandine de Caillé had said to him that morning about
religion; while the doctor put a pad on the wound, bandaged it, and
hastened to look at Schönforst, but he was long since past all aid,
and stone-dead.

Save the moans, cries, and interjections--pious, fierce, or
despairing--of those around him, Charlie heard little more but the
occasional boom of the heavy guns as the tide and din of the battle
rolled away towards Gravelotte; and great faintness, like a kind of
sleep, stole over him.  From time to time the acute agony of his
wound roused him, and amid his terrible thoughts, ever present were
the images of Ernestine and his family.

The emotion of faintness increased as the day wore on and evening
came.  He saw many around him die, and thinking that his own time
would soon come too, he thought once more of the French girl's words,
and strove to fashion a prayer or two, but they were little else than
pious invocations.

Dying, as he certainly deemed himself to be, his thoughts flashed
incessantly to her he loved; her whose soft hand might too probably
never be in his again; anon to his boyhood's home in Warwickshire;
the voices of his father and of his dead mother came drowsily to his
ear; the soft English faces of his sisters floated before him.  Oh,
how hard it was to lie there bleeding, and too probably dying, when
they were all making merry, perhaps, in that drawing-room which he
remembered so well, and many of the pettiest details of which, even
to a crack in the ceiling, came strangely back to memory now, with
scraps of songs and forgotten airs.

Would the Krankentrager never come to take him away?  Had the doctor
and hospital attendant both forgotten him, or had been killed?  The
latter, too probably.

So the long, long day of anxiety, thirst, and agony passed away, and
sunset came on.  Charlie watched it fading on the distant woods and
green slopes of those lovely Lorraine valleys, till the mellowing
haze of twilight blurred all the landscape into gloom, and the
silvery moon and the evening star came forth in their beauty to light
up the carnage of the past day.

Neither the doctor nor the hospital attendant of his company had
forgotten poor Charlie; but strange to say, when they came to look
for him with a party about midnight, no trace could be found of him
save a pool of blood on the grass where he had lain.

So the Countess, perhaps, had her wicked wish fulfilled at last, and
fate had removed 'the intruder,' as she named him, for ever from the
path of Baron Grünthal!




CHAPTER XVIII.

IN THE ENEMY'S HANDS.

We must now devote a short chapter to the fate of young Frankenburg.

Ignorant that his friend Pierrepont had fallen--and a knowledge
thereof would have served the latter but little--Heinrich, in his
present capacity of adjutant, had to keep at his post and go on with
the regiment, which, like the others, carried all before it.

The French, aware of the vital importance of keeping possession of a
hill on their right, as soon as their troops began to fall back
before those battalions sent forward by General Steinmetz, threw up
some earthen works, in rear of which their 62nd regiment of the line
lay down, while several batteries of artillery fired over their
heads, raining grape and shell upon the fast-advancing Prussians.

For three hours the fighting was desperate there--the slaughter on
both sides woeful!  Again the French fell back, and the Prussians
brought up battery after battery of Krupp guns to the summit of the
abandoned height, the gunners using their whips and spurs, the
officers brandishing their swords and shouting, 'Vorwarts! vorwarts!'
with their horses at a gallop.

In the ardour of the pursuit, or in terror of the dreadful sounds
which shook the air, the horse ridden by Heinrich, having got the bit
of the bridle firmly wedged between his teeth for a time, darted with
his rider to the front at racing speed, and fairly carried him
through the line of the retreating French!

Shot after shot was fired after him, but he escaped them all, and ere
long found himself in a village, the main street of which was crowded
by Francs-Tireurs, who seemed to have expended all their ammunition,
as they pursued him simply with fixed bayonets, yells, and ferocious
maledictions; for, as the Prussians gave no quarter to this species
of volunteer force, they were not disposed to give any in return, so
Heinrich began to give himself up for lost.

An alley opened on his right, and by it he hoped to gain the open
country.  He spurred his horse and shouted; he urged it with leg and
hand and voice, and forced it to the right down the alley, followed
by a shout of fierce derisive laughter, the source of which he soon
discovered to be the fact that the alley had no outlet, and that he
was fairly entrapped in a narrow _cul-de-sac_!

To take a pistol from the holsters, to leap from his horse, make a
dash into the nearest house, was to Heinrich but the work of an
instant; but he had barely closed and secured the door, ere the human
tide of the Francs-Tireurs, intent on revenge and bloodshed, came
surging wildly down the alley against it.

The house had been abandoned by its owners.  He sought for the
back-door, but there was none.  He could only drop from an upper
window into a garden; but his uniform would cause him at once to be
recognised, and instant death was sure to follow.  Not a moment was
to be lost!  He looked wildly round him.  On a peg there hung a
loose, coarse peasant blouse of blue cloth.  He tore off his uniform,
threw it and his helmet aside with his weapons, donned the blouse,
and was just in the act of dropping from the window, when his
exulting pursuers, who had soon forced the door, burst into the room,
with cries of:

'Tué, tué!--justice, revenge!--revenge for the Francs-Tireurs!'

The garden-wall was uncommonly high, the gate securely locked; outlet
there was none; and in another minute Frankenburg found himself in
the hands of a score of these French volunteers, so many of whose
comrades had been--no doubt, barbarously--put to death by the
Prussians, simply for being found with arms in their hands, so that
to look for mercy was vain.  Their grasp was upon him; and in their
desire to destroy him, they actually impeded each other, and for a
second or two it seemed doubtful whether he was to perish by the
charged bayonet or the whirled butt-end of the chassepot, as he was
hustled and dragged hither and thither from hand to hand.

'Checkmated--cornered!' thought he, as the faces of Herminia and all
at home came before him; 'to die thus--and at the hands of these
rascally French peasantry.'  Suddenly one exclaimed:

'Un espion--un mouchard!  A Prussian disguised in a blouse--he was
about to become a spy!'

'L'espion, l'espion!--a rope, a rope!' cried the rest, catching at
the new idea with extreme fervour.  'No, no--bayonet him!' cried one.

'They hanged my brother at Borny,' said another;' so, by Baalzebub,
let us hang him--hang him, Etienne!'

Heinrich's blood ran cold at this horrible suggestion.

'I did but seek to escape, messieurs, in exchanging my uniform for
this dress,' said he.

'Oh, of course--of course!' they cried, with fierce mockery and
cruelty flashing in their eyes.

'I did it but to save my life,' he urged.  'Diable--of course!'

'I am but one man among hundreds,' he continued.

'And so shall die--tué! tué!' cried they altogether.

'You are a band of cowards!' exclaimed Heinrich, defiantly; 'I do not
fear to die.  Hurrah for Germany!'

'Hah, ha!  hah, ha!--à bas le Prussien!' they chorused.

One now appeared with a rope, which he had procured somewhere, and a
cold perspiration burst over the brows of Heinrich.

'I am the Graf Von Frankenburg,' he urged, almost, but not quite,
piteously.  'I am an officer of the Thuringians--let me die the death
of a soldier, not that of a felon.'

'You are the Graf Von Frankenburg?' said one; 'be it so.  The higher
the rank the greater the disgrace in dying the death of a spy; so,
coquin, hang you shall.'

Resistance was vain; the iron grasp of many was on each of his arms,
and he was as helpless in their hands as an infant.  His father, his
mother, his love--the bright-haired Herminia!--what horror would the
story of his fate cost them!  It was too dreadful to think of; it was
madness!

'Oh,' thought he, 'that I had but died on yonder field, and not
thus--not _thus_--in the hands of wretches such as these!'

He disdained to ask for mercy, and resolved to die with dignity even
the horrid death to which they had doomed him.  But little time was
given him for reflection, and none for prayer; yet a cry certainly
escaped him, and a nervous shudder, when he found a corporal actually
adjusting the hastily constructed halter about his neck.  An
involuntary effort he made for resistance or escape, and then stood
still and passive.

'Throw the end of the rope over that apple-tree,' was the command of
the corporal; and after one or two efforts it was thrown over a
suitable branch, 'Stand aside, comrades,' was the next command; 'whip
him up now, and make fast the rope to the branch below.'

While a mocking shout burst from the band, and many brutal and
irreligious speeches were made, some crying piteously, 'Bon voyage,
Monsieur le Comte--bon voyage, mon Prussien,' the noose closed and
tightened round the neck of Heinrich.  His eyeballs seemed to start
from their sockets, dark purple overspread his face, and he was swung
up to the branch, where he dangled in convulsive agony, swinging and
swaying to and fro, with a hoarse, rattling, gulping sound in his
throat, and with his feet about eight feet from the ground.

The other end of the fatal rope was made fast to a lower branch, and
then the Francs-Tireurs rushed away, with mocking shouts, to join
their comrades, and left the unhappy Heinrich--the 'Prussian spy,' as
they falsely affected to call him--to his miserable fate.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE CHATEAU DE CAILLE.

And now to account for the mysterious disappearance of Charlie
Pierrepont, which the Herr Doctor could only account for by supposing
that in the restlessness of his agony, or desire to procure water, he
had crawled away into some obscure corner to die.  But such was not
the case.

It was still dusky night, or lighted only by the moon, when Charlie,
lying where we left him, began to surmise whether the morning sun
would evermore gladden his eyes, that were staring upward at the
stars, as they twinkled through the branches of those trees amid
which the battle had been partly fought, and the stems of which, in
places, were barked and whitened by the passing whirlwinds of shot
from the mitrailleuses.

'If I die,' thought he, 'the label at my neck will tell the burial
party who I am--or was.'

And as the slow hours of the night stole on, he thought of the
ghastly face of the French captain who killed the young ensign
Donnersberg, and the peculiar hatred and inhumanity expressed by his
dying wish.  The sound of wheels coming slowly along now roused him.
A party of the Krankentrager, picking up the wounded, were passing
near.  He tried to call aloud, but his voice had failed him.

'How high the moon is to-night,' said one.

'How bright, you mean; for I don't suppose she is higher up than
usual,' replied another.

'But it would be a lovely night for having another turn with the
French schelms, in their long blue coats and red kepis.'

'There has been slaughter enough, for one day, Rudiger; ugh!--how
thick the corpses lie here, where the horrible mitrailleuses have
been playing.'

The waggon was stopped, and the soldiers looked about them.

Suddenly one said--

'There is young Herr Pierrepont, the Englander of the 95th.  How in
his heart he loved the crack of the zundnadelgewehr, or the click of
steel on steel!  So he is gone, too!'

'He is worth a dozen dead men yet!' exclaimed one of the
Krankentrager, leaping off the seat of the ambulance waggon, on
seeing Charlie's eyes and hand move.

Some brandy-and-water was given him as a reviver, and he was lifted
into the waggon, which was already full, and was hence driven from
the field; and here we may mention that the Krankentrager is one of
the best-organized corps in the Prussian army, and its special duty
is to carry the sick and wounded.

In this Franco-Prussian war, it is to be recorded that to their
immortal honour, the Sisters of Mercy were always on every field of
battle _before the firing ceased_, and they went on foot, each little
company preceded by a Catholic priest or Lutheran pastor.

Luckily, as it proved in the end for Charlie, he had fallen into the
hands of Landwehr men alone, for ere long, conceiving him to be dead,
they took him out of the waggon and left him at the door of a
mansion, which proved to be the Chateau de Caillé.

Prior to this, as the waggon was driven slowly and tortuously, to
avoid mutilating the killed and wounded, who lay thickly everywhere,
in literal heaps in some places, in ranks in others, the moon went
down, clouds overspread the sky, and, to add to the miseries of the
helpless, rain began to fall.  In the action of the previous day, the
canopy of the waggon in which Charlie Pierrepont lay had been
destroyed by a passing shot.  No other had been substituted, so there
he Jay, with seven others, packed closely side by side, some dying,
some actually dead, with the rain of heaven pouring into their open
months and eyes.

Some there were who stirred restlessly from side to side, constantly
requesting their position to be shifted, as the agonies of death came
on; and when they died they were lifted from the waggon and laid by
the side of the way.

To the grim corps of grave-diggers was assigned the duty of noting
the neck-labels, and doing what was necessary then!

As Charlie lay very still and motionless with eyes closed, sunk
indeed into a species of stupor, the unskilled men of the Landwehr
concluded that he was dead, and lifting him from the waggon, laid him
near the gate of the chateau, and drove off, just as grey dawn began
to brighten on the wooded hills that look down, the Moselle, and the
great spire of the distant cathedral of Metz.

So there he was left to be killed, perhaps outright, by the first
vindictive peasant of Lorraine who might be going a-field to his
work; but there was too much gunpowder in the air about Metz just
then to permit other work to be done than 'the harvest of death.'

Now, before those terrible fellows in spike-helmets came into that
peaceful part of pleasant Lorraine, where the old chateau lies
embosomed among vineyards and apple-bowers--the Lorraine that whilom
belonged to the mother of Mary Queen of Scots--it had been the wont
and custom of Célandine de Caillé, at the hour of seven every
morning, to go to early mass in a little chapel near the highway that
leads to Metz.  She dared not venture so far now; but by mere force
of habit, she was saying the prayers for mass among the dew-drops in
the flower-garden, when something caused her to peep out of the front
gate, and then she saw----  What?  Oh, it could not be!

Was this pale, ghastly, sodden, and blood-stained creature the
handsome young soldier who, but yesterday morning about the same
hour, after being startled by the Uhlan trumpet, had marched away so
proudly at the head of his Thuringians, with his silver epaulettes
glittering in the sun, and had yet in his havresack--soaked with his
own gore--the food so kindly placed there by Célandine?

It seemed incredible, yet so it was!

A shriek escaped the startled girl, and she rushed indoors for her
father, her _bonne_, and everybody else; assistance was soon
procured, the sufferer carried indoors, placed in bed, his uniform
hidden, for the Francs-Tireurs were hovering about, and medical aid
was procured from the nearest village, in the person of a young
doctor, Adolphe Guerrand, on whom, as an admirer of Célandine, they
could rely for silence and secrecy.

The thunder of war was an awful event to the inmates of that little
secluded chateau, to none more than to Monsieur de Caillé, whose days
were usually spent in dozing about his flower-garden, plucking off a
faded leaf here and there, or training vines and sprays, and whose
evenings were passed over a bottle of vin ordinaire with the Curé, or
listening to Célandine's performances on a--well, it was _not_ a
grand trichord piano, because it had been her grandmother's.

Some days and nights elapsed--strange, drearily days and nights to
Charlie Pierrepont, who only knew at times where, by a strange
coincidence, he was.  They were passed by him in a chaos or confusion
of thought, in dreams of Ernestine, of the day in the Hoch Munster,
and the evening in the church at Burtscheid, of battle-fields, with
lines of red kepis, fierce bearded faces, and hedges of bristling
bayonets looming through the smoke, of the roaring shriek of those
dreadful mitrailleuses--the veritable invention of Satan; yea, even
the scowl and curse of the French captain were not forgotten; but
after a time Charlie's thoughts became coherent; he knew fully where
he was; that a conical rifle bullet had been cut out of his back,
near the spine, by the skilful hands of Adolphe Guerrand; that he had
a narrow escape from death; that he was recovering, and had, as
nurses, Célandine de Caillé and her kind old _bonne_.

'Ah!  Célandine--Mademoiselle Célandine,' said he, taking the girl's
tiny hand within his own, and just touching it with his lips,
'neither your holy water, nor the consecrated medal, acted as a
charm.  In what a condition have I come back to you!'

'But for my medal and the holy water, perhaps a cannon-ball might
have taken off your head,' retorted little Mademoiselle de Caillé.

'True,' replied Charlie, as he kissed her hand again.

Three weeks had elapsed since the battle in which Charlie had fallen
wounded; two days after, as Célandine told him, Gravelotte had been
fought, and then the French had been defeated after a dreadful
struggle, and driven back to Metz.  Strasbourg was besieged,
Phalsburg bombarded, the Prussians were daily everywhere victorious.

'And, alas! monsieur,' said the little maid, clasping her pretty
hands, and lifting upward eyes that were suffused with tears, 'France
is lost!  The glory of my France is gone!  And surely now the cries
of Melusine will be heard!'

'Melusine?' asked Charlie, with surprise.  'Who is she?'

'Don't you know, monsieur?  Have you never heard of the "_Cris de
Melusine_?"'

'Never.'

'It is an old legend believed in by most of our peasantry.  Brantôme
says she is a spirit that haunts the old castle of Lusignan, where,
by loud shrieks, she announces any disasters that are to befall
France.'

'She must have been shrieking pretty loud and long of late,' said
Charlie, smiling at the earnestness of the girl, who, in her love of
the legendary, reminded him, he thought, of Ernestine, and he liked
her the better for it.

So Charlie continued to be attended daily by the young Doctor
Guerrand, and nursed by Célandine in secret, as it would have been
perilous for Charlie had the exasperated peasantry learned that a
Prussian officer was concealed in the chateau.  The heart of the
young French doctor Guerrand was full of bitterness for the disgrace
that was falling on his country, and, were it not that by his
practice he supported an aged mother, he would have cast aside the
lancet and betaken to the chassepot.

'_Sacre!_' said he, on one occasion, to Charlie; 'in this war the
French seem to make more use of their feet than their hands; but we
won't talk of politics.'

'Why, Doctor?'

'Because I always lose my temper.  I am a Republican now.  I have
become so in the bitterness of my heart.  But, thank Heaven, we shall
soon be rid of our Emperor, as you will, ere long, of your Kaiser;
for what are kings, emperors, and princes, but a crowned confederacy
against the freedom of the world?  _Sacre!_'

And the young Republican ground his teeth in his fierce energy.

Charlie had Ernestine's photo, done and coloured at Aix-la-Chapelle.
It was one which, so far as these sun pictures go, represented her to
the life, and he had seen her in that particular posé, and with that
expression on her soft face, many, many times.  He kept it beneath
his pillow.  Never did he tire of gazing on it; thus, more than once,
his active little nurse caught him with the blue velvet case in his
hand.

'Ah!  It is monsieur's mother?' said she, trying to get a peep at it.

'It is not,' said Charlie, with a fond smile.

'A sister, then?  I have seen that it is a lady!'

'No, Célandine.'

'Something as dear as both would be?'

'I cannot say.'

'How so, monsieur?'

'I scarcely ever saw my mother.  And when I left home to soldier in
Prussia, my sisters were mere children; but dear she is, indeed.'

'Ah,--a _fiancée_?' said Célandine, laughing and clapping her hands.

'Yes, mademoiselle.'

'Ah, show me the likeness, monsieur,' she entreated; so Charlie gave
her the case.  'How sweet, how lovely she looks!  Do let me kiss her!
Monsieur Pierrepont, I congratulate you.  And when are you to be
married?'

'Alas!' muttered Charlie, as his countenance fell.

'Surely she loves you?' asked Célandine, with her blue eyes dilated.

'Loves me?--dearly! so each of us has one secret of the heart to
treasure.'

'What have I?' asked the girl, demurely.

'You have Adolphe.'

'Ah!--yes; M. Adolphe loves me, I believe, and--and perhaps I may
learn to love him in time.  I am not sure.  I may marry some one
else, and learn to love that some one.  Mon père will arrange all
that for me, and it will be so kind of him.'

Charlie looked puzzled; but ere long, in the case of Célandine
herself, he was to see how matrimonial matters are arranged in the
land of the silver lilies.

Her question, 'When are you to be married?' opened up no new train of
thought to Charlie; that important _when_ had been a source of
frequent and painful surmise; but a new idea was ever before him now.

What had Ernestine heard of his fate?--that he was killed, wounded,
or missing?  He had no means of communicating with her now, and thus
sparing her that which he would gladly have done--a single sigh, a
single throb of pain.

There was no one at the chateau could tell him where the 95th were,
whether in front of Metz, besieging Strasbourg, or fighting at
Phalsburg.  But, oh, how to relieve the grief of his betrothed!  He
would not, for worlds, have cost that warm, wilful, and impassioned
heart one pang!

Yet there he lay on his back, with a closing wound, helpless.

Like an iron weight it bore on his heart, the remoteness and dubiety
of their meeting again; and when all thought of his personal danger
passed away, this reflection weighed more heavily on him than ever,
while his very career as a soldier made the future more uncertain and
gloomy.

He had but one fixed, yet vague, idea--that, at the risk of his life,
he would see Ernestine before he returned to the regiment in which he
was, as yet, unfit to serve, and assure her of his all-unaltered
love.  Times there were when he thought he would ask Célandine to
write to her, but in turn was afraid to do so--to Herminia, or to
Ernestine, over whose postal correspondence, doubtless, the Countess
kept a strict vigil--or, if she did write, there was no other post
than the field one between France and Prussia now, and that was with
the German army.

So Charlie could but lie on his bed and writhe, though in the kindly
hands of the sweetest of little nurses.

Would the Countess Adelaide, he sometimes asked himself, feel any
compunction for her proud severity, any pity for her daughter's
honest lover, on hearing of his probable fate?  Alas! it seemed more
likely that she would exult at it as a barrier, a bramble, removed
from her path.  The Count was an old soldier; perhaps he might relent
and prove generous; and so, on and on, Charlie hoped, surmised, and
pondered, till his very brain ached.

Célandine knew that Charlie was English by birth, yet Prussian by
sympathy, which she deplored--they were such barbarians, those men in
the spiked helmets.  Thus when she played or sang to him, which she
did with great taste and sweetness, with good taste she only chose
neutral airs and songs, such as those from the Trovatore, etc., and
in these Adolphe Guerrand frequently joined her.

As she was in her mere girlhood, it appeared that she was too young
to marry, nor had ever thought of it; and more than all, as Adolphe
was poor, having only his practice as a hard-working village
practitioner, Monsieur de Caillé was by no means disposed to look
upon him, even in the future, as an eligible suitor for his daughter,
till a letter reached young Guerrand from Paris by which one morning
he found himself rich by one of the most extraordinary chances in the
world.

It happened that just a week before the Prussians crossed the Rhine,
Adolphe Guerrand had been at Blankenberg with a patient, to whom he
had prescribed sea-bathing, and, when walking on the beach there, had
found a carefully sealed bottle among some sea-weed.  Holding it
between him and the light, he saw that it contained a written
document, and conceiving naturally that it was a message from the
sea--the last farewell from some sinking ship, he drew the cork, and
perused the damp paper, which was properly signed and dated, from on
board a French vessel, which had sprung a leak, and was going down in
the middle of the Atlantic.  And thus it ran on, in French:


'About to perish by drowning, I commend my soul to God, the Blessed
Virgin, and all the saints.  I hereby constitute my sole heir the
finder of this will, which I enclose in a glass bottle.  The labour
of years, my fortune amounts to two hundred and twenty thousand
francs, and I am without a relation in the world.  I wish the house I
have resided in at Paris to be converted into a chapel of St.
Dominique, my patron saint.  The fortune is deposited in the hands of
the notary, M. Vantin, in the Rue St. Honoré.  _Ora pro me_.

'DOMINIQUE SOURDEVAL.'


The letter was from Vantin, the notary, to the young doctor, who thus
found himself suddenly rich, so all obstacles were removed to a union
with Célandine, when she was a few years older, though the family of
Adolphe was of humble origin and that of De Caillé ancient, and shone
at the court of Louis XIII.  It was of a Madame de Caillé that we are
told, how when that monarch was once playing at shuttlecock with her
at Versailles, it fell into her bosom, on which she desired his
majesty to take it; but such was his royal delicacy that, to avoid
the snare laid by the charming Lorrainer, he discreetly extricated
the toy with the aid of the tongs.

Thus, on the first day of Charlie's convalescence, the formal
betrothal of the daughter of the house took place; and to him it
seemed a very cold-blooded affair to the wild, passionate, and solemn
episode between himself and Ernestine in that lonely church at
Burtscheid.

Adolphe was in his twenty-fifth year, naturally sanguine and
enthusiastic; his clear-cut features and thoughtful eyes were now
full of light and brightness; there was a greater springiness in his
step, born of the knowledge that he was now rich and the inheritor of
a fortune--the fortune of M. de Sourdeval, so mysteriously cast at
his feet by the waves of the sea.

A well-bred French girl, of course, expects one day to be wedded, but
chiefly looks forward to the event as an opportunity of displaying
her presents and trousseau, and is supposed to have no preference in
the matter.  To Célandine it seemed only natural that she should
accept her father's choice, just as he had done the choice of _his_
parents in espousing her mother.

Yet in her heart of hearts, the girl--though very young--had grown
fond of Charlie Pierrepont, her helpless charge, who was always so
gentle and grateful, so sad, too, and who looked, withal, so manly
and soldier-like.  And with this sentiment in her heart, the girl was
to contract what we must call a French marriage.  So full of
cross-purposes, hidden currents of thought, and secret springs of
action, is this work-a-day world of ours!

She knew that it is understood and accepted in her native country
that unions cannot, as in England, be contracted on the impulse of
love or romantic notions, but upon principles of cold and practical
utility, as mere transactions between parents; but they are sometimes
equally so on this side of the Straits of Dover.

So, on the day referred to, M. de Caillé said to his daughter, with
his eyebrows elevated as if he had quite made a discovery, while
kissing her on the forehead, 'I have found you a husband, my love.'

'Merci, mon père--who is he?' asked Célandine, as if she had not the
slightest guess on the subject.

'The time will come anon--but here he is,' and he led in Adolphe, who
approached Célandine, whose eyes were fixed on Charlie, pale, wan,
and propping himself on a cane of M. de Caillé's.

At such a crisis, Adolphe Guerrand had vague ideas--from what he had
read in novels and seen at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, when
he was a student in Paris, at the Ecole de Medicin--that he should
drop on his knees, or at least on one knee; but the floor was very
slippery, and Célandine not being much in love with him, and very
much inclined to laugh, he didn't attempt a melodramatic posé at this
betrothal, which Charlie saw as in a dream; for his thoughts were at
Burtscheid, and the heart-stirring parting words of Ernestine were
lingering in his ear.




CHAPTER XX.

ERNESTINE.

As the reader may suppose, some time elapsed ere the quiet little
household at Frankfort realized--they could not for long recover
from--the catastrophe recorded by the German papers; but when it was
actually stated that a prisoner taken in a skirmish, a captain, was
roasted alive, nothing seemed too horrible to happen now.  That
Heinrich might be wounded unto death, or slain outright in battle,
seemed but a too probable contingency; but that he should be taken
prisoner, and suffer an end of such enforced ignominy, was beyond the
category of all their speculations.

The whole family were utterly prostrated by an event so inexplicable,
and Ernestine felt the shock in her own peculiar way.  She loved her
only brother dearly, and all the more dearly that he was the friend
and defender of her lover Carl--her betrothed husband, for as such
she always viewed him.  Now that her beloved Heinrich was gone, the
links between her and Carl--the means of communication--were broken,
and she could hear of him no more.

And, meanwhile, where was Carl?  Alive or dead?

The _Gazette_, so grudging in words, so meagre in detail, had simply
said that he was severely wounded.  Where, and in what fashion, was
he wounded?  By steel or lead?  Was he mutilated, disfigured for
life?  Perhaps he had since perished in his agony, or when undergoing
some terrible operation!

So, for days and nights, the girl tormented herself till she became
seriously ill with agonizing conjectures, over which she was
compelled to brood in silence and tears.

At last, to the astonishment, to the wild joy of all, there came a
letter from Heinrich himself--a letter dated ten days subsequent to
the catastrophe recorded in the _Extra Blatt_!

It was dated from a village somewhere near Metz, and briefly
recapitulated what has been detailed in Chapter Eighteen, and added
that a humane peasant woman, who, from a hiding-place, had witnessed
the terrible scene in the garden, the moment the Francs-Tireurs
retired, had rushed forth and cut him down.  She had quickly and
adroitly released his neck from the odious cord, chafed it with her
hands, given him water, and thoroughly revived him, though animation
had never been quite suspended.

Moreover, she had concealed him in her house for two days, and
enabled him to join the regiment before Metz; but the shock to his
system was such that the military surgeons advised his return home
for a time, and that, doubtless, he would spend his Christmas with
them all at Frankenburg.

They had all mourned so deeply over his supposed terrible fate, that
the account this letter contained--the assurance of his perfect
safety and speedy return in his own handwriting--seemed like a
resurrection from the tomb!  All the family embraced each other and
shed tears of joy, and a new and sudden happiness was diffused over
the whole household, even to the grooms in the stable, for all loved
the handsome young Graf.

An enormous amount of beer was consumed on the occasion, and in 'the
study,' the Count and Baron Grünthal over their pipes, and certainly
more than one bottle of Rhenish wine, grasped each other's hands ever
and anon, and shouted, in the melodious language of the Vaterland,

'Hoch, Heinrich!  Ich habe die Ehre, auf Ihre Gesundheit zu trinken!'
(I have the honour of drinking your good health.)

In his letter there was no mention of Carl Pierrepont, and no
enclosure for _her_, thought Ernestine; but then, as Heinrich wrote
to the Countess, he could not make a communication concerning him; so
the girl, though her joy for her brother's safety was somewhat
clouded by that circumstance and the wish that Heinrich had written
to Herminia; could but wait and hope--hope and pray.

'A little time, and my dear brother will tell me all,' she said to
herself; 'but, oh! this suspense--this mystery concerning the fate of
my Carl, is intolerable!'

And now, in the excess of their happiness, the intended marriage of
her and the Baron was revived in greater force than ever.  Heinrich
was returning, and his presence would make the happiness of all
complete.  Daily, Ernestine, while scanning the papers with keen and
haggard eyes for intelligence of the lost one, heard the marriage
arrangement schemed out; the projected breakfast; the cake which was
to come from the most celebrated confectioner in Aix; the
_trousseau_, which was to come from the most fashionable Putzmacherin
(or _modiste_) in Berlin; the feast in the hall, and who were to be
invited; whether the honeymoon was to be spent at Wiesbaden, at
Carlsbad, or Bruckenau, and the girl listened to them as if she had
been turned to stone.  But there is a writer who says, 'Age
legislates and youth trespasses; but the tide of love no more recedes
at a _bidding_, than King Canute's waves.'

Only once, however, did the sympathizing Herminia think her pale
cousin was about to yield, when one night she laid her head on her
bosom, and said with a gasping shudder,

'Oh, how terrible it is to give one's hand to the living when one's
heart has been given to the dead!'

'But your dear Carl may not be dead.  Heinrich is returning.'

Other times there were when she would not believe that he was dead,
yet how many brave hearts were growing cold in death then all over
Northern France!  How many men yet were to perish among the blushing
vineyards of Champagne, and under the beleaguered walls of Paris!

The cruel _Blatt_ had only said he had been wounded.  But how had he
disappeared?

'He will return--oh, yet he will return!  Kind God, you would not
take him from me!'

And in the fervour of such a moment she would lift her streaming eyes
upward with a trustful and angelic expression.

Like Charlie, when in many a comfortless bivouac under the sky and
dew of heaven, under canvas when the summer rain pattered on the tent
roof within an inch of his nose, of when in his bed tossing
restlessly at the Chateau de Caillé, how many wild, strange, and
impracticable plans and schemes did the busy mind of Ernestine frame,
to reconstruct and hopelessly destroy again!  Time, possibility, and
the usages of life--and especially of her position in life, she
overleaped with wonderful facility, so impulsive was she, but to fall
back panting, as it were, and without one ray of hope, till she
became, as we have said, like a stone, yet love lived on.

Times there were when she imagined, or strove to imagine, that she
had eloped with Charlie; that he had cast epaulettes, sword, and
military reputation to the winds, and all for her sake; and that she
was rambling with him among those lovely woods and sylvan scenes he
had so often described to her, the scenes of his native home in
Warwick.  They did not require a huge schloss; they could be so happy
in a little cottage, and she was certain that she could milk a cow,
if she tried.

Charlie she must and would see again at all hazards!  Were they not
each other's unto death--vowed in life and death?  Even now _where_
he was, she knew not, wist not; but in imagination she felt his arm
pressing her hand to his side; she saw his brave and tender gaze of
love into her eyes till they seemed to droop beneath the magnetism of
it; she felt his kisses on their snowy lids, on her hair and on her
brow, and all his soft uttered whispers come to memory again.  And as
she thought over all these things, the girl clasped her hot white
hands in agony by day, and tossed feverishly and restlessly on her
pillow by night.

At last Heinrich returned, to the increased joy of all and the
thoughts of Ernestine went back to that evening when, from the
terrace, she had watched Carl, driving in the britzka towards the
Schloss--her Carl, then a stranger to her save by name, but who was
now so dear!  Heinrich looked well and strong, sun-browned and
bold-eyed, and as the Count said, after kissing him on both cheeks,
and giving him a kindly thwack on the back, 'not a whit the worse for
his hanging!'

And now utterly regardless of what her parents might think or say,
oblivious alike of their anger and their absurd pride, Ernestine, in
her, usual passionate way, threw herself into her brother's arms, and
cried in a piercing voice:

'Oh, Heinrich, what news of _him_, of Carl? tell me, my brother--my
brother, lest I die.'

'I have no news, dear sister; the regiment has heard nothing of him
since the battle of the 14th of August, before Metz,' replied
Heinrich, speaking with great reluctance, being alike loath to wound
his tender sister, or in that moment of their happiness to offend his
parents.  But now her father spoke, and calmly too.

'The _Blatt_ stated that the Herr Lieutenant was wounded?'

'Yes, when we were storming a mitrailleuse battery.'

'Did you see him fall?'

'No, Herr Graf.  The smoke was thick, and I was on the left of the
line, he on the right, in Schönforst's company.  Poor Schönforst--he
fell there, literally torn to shreds!'

'What certainty is there that Here Pierrepont was wounded at all?'
asked the Count, very desirous to learn that it was all over with
poor Charlie, while Ernestine hung on her brother's words in agony.

'His company saw him struck.  He was leading them bravely on after
Schönforst's death.  Our doctor patched up his wound in some fashion;
but on returning at night, could find no trace of him.'

'Where was the wound?' asked Ernestine, with quivering lips.

'In the breast--we shall hear all about it ere long,' continued
Heinrich, putting an arm kindly round his sister.  'He is doubtless
in some of the many hospitals that are near the fields where we have
been fighting.'

'Bah! the Herr Englander has probably tired of fighting, gone home to
his own country, and will trouble Prussia no more!' said the Countess.

Heinrich thought it much more probable that he had crawled away
somewhere and died unseen, or, to judge from his own experience, been
murdered by the peasantry; but he kept these ideas to himself.  On
the first opportunity when they were alone, Ernestine had a thousand
questions to ask Heinrich; but to the fate--the disappearance of
Pierrepont, he could not give the faintest clue, though to feed her
hopes, when he had none, he drew largely on his imagination; for he
knew that unless Charlie were dead, or most severely wounded indeed,
and quite helpless, which we have shown him to be, he would have put
himself in communication with the nearest Prussian military
authorities.

So, from the day of Heinrich's return, the health and spirits of
Ernestine sank painfully and visibly.

Summer had passed away, and the tints of autumn, brown and yellow,
russet and orange, stole over the woodlands around the old Schloss
and the beautiful dingles of the Reichswald.  In vain were daily
drives in the open carriage resorted to, and in vain were doctors
consulted; the cheek of Ernestine grew paler and thinner; her
roundness of form was passing away, and the once lovely hand becoming
all but transparent.  Had sure tidings come that Charlie had been
killed outright, and, was actually dead, she might have got over the
shock; but the suspense of not knowing where he was, how
circumstanced, how mutilated, whether in his grave or still lingering
in the land of the living, proved too much for a girl so sensitively
organized as Ernestine.

One fact was certain, as Heinrich's letters from the Thuringians
assured her, that nothing had been heard of him by the regiment as
yet.  Owing to her state of health, the Countess's favourite topic
and plan of the marriage was abandoned for the time, and in that
matter she obtained some temporary relief.

The poor girl really was, to all appearance, in a rapid consumption;
but in all her family, hale, hearty, and strong on both sides, such
an ailment had never been known.  The whole tenor of her ways was
changed.  Even her pets--and she had many--were forgotten now.

The winter would come, and with it Christmas, and to that festival
Ernestine looked forward with a kind of horror now.  Would it be
jovial as usual in the old ancestral hall of Frankenburg?  Doubtless
the glittering Christmas tree--a pine from the Reichswald--would be
there as of old, as it had been for generations; and there would be
the venison pasty, and the brown shining boar's head to be solemnly
cut and jovially eaten; speeches would be made, and toasts drunk with
many a merry 'hoch!' while her heart would be with the German army
before beleaguered Paris, or in the grave, where she feared her Carl
lay; so she hoped as Christmas came that her place in Frankenburg
would be vacant.

The girl's mind was a prey to suspense and fear, sorrow and
love--love, the strongest of all human passions.

We have said that her nervous organization was delicate; hence these
mental affections, together with incessant anxiety, threw her into a
species of rapid consumption, which the presence and restoration of
'her Carl,' as she always called him, alone could cure or arrest.
She had a dry cough, a quick small pulse, a burning heat in her
hands, a loss of strength, and sinking of the eyes, and her state
became such at last that the Countess begged the Baron to absent
himself from the Schloss for a time, as his visits there were a
source of perpetual annoyance to Ernestine, though, for some time
past, she secluded herself in her own room.

Now her mother began to wring her hands, and pray that Heaven would
find for her this Herr Pierrepont, if his presence, even if tolerated
for a time, would restore her sinking child.

Again and again did Heinrich write and telegraph to the head-quarters
of the Thuringians concerning Charlie; but nothing had been heard of
him there, and all were certain that he must have been killed in the
action on the 14th of the preceding August.

Poor Ernestine!  Her case was soon pronounced hopeless.  Her beauty
remained; but it was of a strange and weird kind.  On each cheek was
a hectic spot; her eyes, sunken in their sockets, had an unnatural
brightness; she spoke little, and laughed never.

A little time more, and she was confined to her bed, where she lay
for hours with her hot hand clasped in that of Herminia's, who bathed
her temples with Rimmel and eau de Cologne, and fanned and petted
her, while she tossed on her pillow, and muttered 'Carl!  Carl!'

It was always Carl.

Often when she spoke, her dark eyes flashed up, like the momentary
flicker of a lamp about to go out for ever--on earth, at least.

'Oh, Herminia, darling!' she said on one occasion; 'life has no
charms, and death has no terrors for me now.'

'Carl will return.'

'Never!  Or it may be that he will come _too late_.  Yet, even then,'
she added, with a strange bright smile, that terrified her weeping
cousin, 'even then I may see him, for it is among the possibilities
of this world that the dead may return again!'

'Strange weird words!  What does she--what _can_ she mean?' thought
Herminia.

Some days after this she became almost speechless; yet she was quite
conscious, and looked so lovely with the dishevelled masses of her
dark hair floating over her laced pillow and delicate neck, as she
smiled tenderly on her mother, Herminia, and all who hovered about
her.  Yet ever she whispered to herself, 'Carl!  Carl!'

On his last visit the doctor looked very grave as he departed.

'Can nothing be done to save her?' implored the Countess, in a
tremulous voice.

'Nothing in my power, Grafine.  Her disease is of the mind--the mind
alone.  Your daughter--I deplore to say it--is dying!'

'Of what, Herr Doctor?  Of what?

'To me, it seems--of a broken heart!'

'Impossible!' replied the Countess; 'people do not die of broken
hearts, and grief does not kill.'




CHAPTER XXI.

AT AIX ONCE MORE.

So, like Heinrich, Charlie had fallen into the 'enemy's hands;' but
fortunately for him, they were the soft and gentle ones of little
Célandine de Caillé.

The passage of the ball had seriously injured him internally; thus he
was long in recovering, and the winter of the year was almost at hand
ere he could venture to travel; but it now seemed imperative to
Charlie that he should trespass on his host and hostess no longer.

'You would spoil any man with kindness, Mademoiselle de Caillé,' said
he, one day; 'or any dog, too.'

'Often the most loving animal of the two,' replied the French girl,
laughing.

During that protracted convalescence how often, in the waking hours
of the night, had he thought of Ernestine, and strove to sleep in the
hope to dream of her; of their moonlight walks in the garden of the
old Schloss, when she had held his arm, with her little hands
interlaced so confidingly on his sleeve, and he used to pet and
caress them as she leant with all her weight upon his wrist; or of
the mad gallops they were wont to have through the glades and dingles
of the lovely Reichswald, when the green woods seemed to sleep under
the dusky purple of the summer sky; but one night he had a dream that
startled, and, like that one in the bivouac, made a deep impression
upon him by its vividness and the sense of pain it left.

In imagination she bent over him sadly and caressingly; her dark eyes
were tender and beautiful as of old; but the rose-leaf tint had left
her cheeks, as if for ever.  Her smile was full of sweetness.  Then a
change came suddenly over her; the soft light died out of her eyes;
her cheeks became hollow, her lips pallid; her whole expression and
aspect painful and ghastly; the grasp of her hands became cold and
chilling, and her voice grew faint and husky, as she said,

'At Burtscheid, dearest Carl; meet me at Burtscheid, where last we
met.'

Then she seemed to melt away from before him, and Charlie started and
awoke, to find it was happily but a mere dream, born too probably of
his nervous and enfeebled condition, yet one so vivid, we have
said--so terrifically vivid and painful, that he was trembling in
every limb, a cold perspiration covered his whole frame; and by some
strange association of ideas, the dying curse, if curse it was, of
the French captain came rushing on his memory.

And now the time came when he was to leave the Chateau de Caillé.

'And you go, you go to her,' said Célandine, making a great effort to
appear calm, on the day of his departure.

'To her whose miniature I showed you, dear friend yes.'

'Oh, may you both be happy--very, very happy!'

'I thank you, dear Célandine; you will ever have her gratitude, as
well as mine; but there are many things to oppose, many interests to
thwart our happiness.'

'Alas!' said the French girl, sadly; 'but remember that nothing is
_impossible_.'

And so when Charlie Pierrepont left his kind friends and that
charming part of Lorraine, he little knew that he left behind a warm
girlish heart that yearned for him, and him only, and thought nothing
of Monsieur Adolphe, with all his thousands of francs, her father's
choice; and keenly she envied her--the unknown lady--whose miniature
was in Charlie's heart.

From the surgeon of a Prussian regiment at Saarbrück, Charlie
Pierrepont got a medical certificate, to the effect that he was
incapable of rejoining the Thuringians, or of serving for some time.
Leave was given him by the general in command, and he took the train
from Saarbrück to Aix, to be near Frankenburg and her, of whom he had
heard nothing for all those months, that seemed like so many ages
now; for Charlie was so much of a lover, that to breathe the same
atmosphere with her was a source of joy.

Yet it was a cold and frosty atmosphere now, for Christmas was close
at hand, the time when Christmas trees are lighted, when arcades and
toyshops, fruiterers and pastry-cooks drive a roaring trade, when
circles long separated are reunited, and happy parents sit at the
head of happy tables surrounded by shining faces.

The Reichswald was leafless and bare now, and a mantle of snow
covered all those heights that surround Aix, which seems to lie in 'a
fertile bowl surrounded by bold hills;' and ice lay in masses about
the boats of the pontoon bridge of the Rhine.  It was on the evening
of the third Thursday before the great festival of the Christian year
that Charlie found himself in the brilliant speise-saal of the Grand
Monarque.

He was now within a very short distance of Frankenburg; but how was
he to communicate with Ernestine?  See her he must before
Christmas-eve, or she could not meet him then; and the hunger, the
craving of his heart, was too great to be endured long.  He feared to
write to Herminia, lest his handwriting might be recognised by the
Countess, and to write to Ernestine would too probably be useless, as
her correspondence was too probably under her mother's supervision.

What if she should now be the Baroness Grünthal?  For months no one
had known anything of his existence.  All might have believed him to
be dead, and she, perhaps yielding to the influences around her; but
no, no--he thrust that thought aside, and recalled the solemnity of
their vows interchanged at Burtscheid.

Had she not then, and on that eventful night in the boudoir, promised
to be faithful to him in life and death? and Charlie smiled at his
momentary doubt.

How many people there are in this world who treasure up and con over
and over again an impossible day-dream that may never come to pass!
Charlie thought of this as, from the hotel windows, he gazed moodily
into the snow-covered street, with all its bustle and lamps, and
shrank from the passing fear that his aspirations after Ernestine
might only be an impossible and unrealizable longing; but see her
again he must, even if he went to the Schloss--but no, that would
never do after the treatment he had experienced there, and the
epithets applied to him by the Countess.

Suddenly he observed near him, while lingering over his wine in the
speise-saal, which had emptied of guests, the Baron Rhineberg and, of
all men in the world, Baron Grünthal, busy with their meerschaums and
tankards of beer.  Both seemed very quiet and taciturn; they had been
speaking very little, which perhaps was the reason that, in his
abstraction, they had hitherto been unnoticed by Charlie, who now
held up the _Staats Anzeiger_ between them and him, as he had no wish
to be recognised by either.  However, they were a link between him
and Frankenburg, so he could not help listening intently to whatever
they said.

They were talking at slow intervals of some recent sorrow they had
sustained; but so great was the slaughter of the French war, that
everyone in Germany then was wearing crape or mourning for the loss
of some friend.

'Ach Gott--yes,' said Rhineberg; 'it is certainly a great calamity
even to the city of Aachen.'

'When I saw the black flag flying on the old Schloss,' responded
Grunthal, 'and the hatchment with its sixteen quarters over the gate,
I--I knew that the dreaded event had taken place at last.'

'That we had lost a dear friend?'

'Yes.  The poor old Graf!' said Grünthal, with a sigh.

Charlie felt startled--almost inclined to speak and discover himself,
but restrained the inclination, and listened intently, thinking,
'Well, the poor old veteran of Ligny and Waterloo could not be
expected to live for ever.'

'He has never suffered more, I think,' said Rhineberg, after taking a
long pull at his pipe, and watching the smoke thoughtfully as it
ascended in concentric rings towards the lofty ceiling of the
speise-saal, 'never, since that morning when the devilish _Extra
Blatt_ had in it the mutilated telegram concerning the capture of
Heinrich by the Francs-Tireurs.'

'And the severe wounding--was it not mortally?--of the Englander,
Herr Pierrepont,' added Grunthal, with something in his throat that
sounded, as Charlie thought, exceedingly like a chuckle of
satisfaction.

But Heinrich, his dear friend and comrade, had been taken by the
Francs-Tireurs!  Knowing, from experience, how the Francs-Tireurs and
the Prussians were in the habit of handling each other, this was an
event to cause him anxiety, but, as it happened, only for a few
minutes.

Would the death of the Count in any way release Ernestine from
parental thraldom?  Though he felt genuine sympathy for her natural
grief, he could not very much regret the event; 'and yet,' thought
Charlie, 'the poor old fellow was always kind to me.'

'It is most fortunate,' said Rhineberg, after a little pause, 'that
the young Graf Heinrich is at home during such a terrible crisis.'

'Most fortunate for his mother, and all.'

So Heinrich was at Frankenburg, and not with the old 95th before the
walls of Paris!  This was indeed most welcome news for Charlie!  More
than once he had been on the verge of speaking, as his curiosity had
been keenly excited, but repressed the inclination; he did not wish
that his presence in Aix should be known to the Countess, and to
address Grünthal, his acknowledged rival, or competitor, rather, was
altogether an intolerable idea, so quitting the speise-saal softly,
he hastened to his own room.

Then he wrote rapidly a long and explanatory letter to Ernestine,
full of all the deepest, most tender, and passionate thoughts of his
heart, telling her of his presence at Aix, and beseeching her to meet
him.  He recalled the dream in which she had asked him to meet him at
Burtscheid.

'At Burtscheid, be it,' he wrote, 'at the same hour, dear, dear
Ernestine, when last we met there; and I shall give you a strange
souvenir of the war--the bullet that pierced my breast, and has been
the means, perhaps, of keeping me so long from you.  At Burtscheid,
then, my darling.'

This letter he despatched under cover to Heinrich, and felt more
happy and composed than he had been since last he saw her.

He knew that his letter would be delivered by the post at Frankenburg
in the morning.

Probably Heinrich would visit his hotel during the day, and he knew
that at all risks--unless something most extraordinary
intervened--Ernestine, who had such strength of will, would contrive
to meet him in the old church.

All the following day Charlie lingered about the Grand Monarque, but
Heinrich never came; doubtless the business or calamity to which the
Barons referred had detained him.

Then a fear came over Charlie that the same event might prevent
Ernestine meeting him, as she might be deprived of her brother's
escort.

But if she failed to come, a messenger of some kind might meet him at
Burtscheid.




CHAPTER XXII.

AT BURTSCHEID.

'In five hours--in four--in two,' and so on he reckoned, 'I shall see
her again--my darling! my darling!'

At last the wished-for time came when he was to set forth on that
walk which--he fondly, ardently, and tenderly hoped--was to end in
_her_ presence; but, as he walked down the leafless avenue from the
city, he felt his heart become tremulous, almost sick with anxiety
and fear, lest she should be unable to meet him, even after all the
months of separation undergone; yet his was a heart that never
quailed, even when he faced that battery in the wood--a battery that
was not of cannon, but mitrailleuses!

Anon as he proceeded, something of Ernestine's high and strange
enthusiasm gathered in his breast.

Even if he were fated never to wed her, he felt that she was the one
great passion of his life, a worship almost spiritualized, and that
beyond the trammels of this material world, he would follow her,
faithful and unchanged, into that to come.

Then he almost smiled to think how German the tone of his mind was
becoming.

The evening sky was cloudless, and wore a kind of pale violet tint,
amid which the stars sparkled out brilliantly.

The trees of the avenue between the city and Burtscheid were covered
with rimy frost, which made their branches seem to coruscate and
glitter in myriad prisms.  Frost was on the pathway; it shone on the
stems and twigs, on the stalks and blades of the wayside plants; snow
covered all the district, yet the air was far from being cold.

At last the old church of Burtscheid rose before him again.  In
another minute or two, he would have clasped her to his breast, where
he had clasped her last--at the altar-rail--when those sad and sweet
and solemn vows were interchanged.

In that moment the campaign in Alsace and Lorraine, danger, duty,
wound, and suffering, were all forgotten; nothing was in his mind but
the intense happiness of the event to come.

He was conscious enough of the tombs and cypresses, the pillars and
obelisks, standing grimly up from the snow-clad graves; of the dusky
outlines of various distant buildings; of red lights streaming from
windows out upon the gloom; and he could see the pale silver crescent
of the new moon peeping sharply up above the black outline of the
Schloss of Frankenburg.

He heard the faint whisper of the ivy leaves on the old wall; but all
as one might do in a dream.'

He threw away the end of his cigar, and thought,

'I should not have been smoking when coming to meet _her_.'

No britzka or other carriage stood before the gate.  Heinrich was not
there as escort; neither was the old butler or any other servant
there in attendance.

So, as the evening was clear and fine, she must have come alone to
meet him, that they might have the joy of walking back to the Schloss
together!

He entered the church.  It was gaily decorated for the coming
Christmas-eve.

No one was in the church, and Charlie's heart began at once to sink,
when there was a sound behind him, and coming down two steps, from a
door that he had not observed before, was his own Ernestine.

'Carl!  Carl!  It is thee!  Thee, at last!' she exclaimed, in a
piercing voice, and, with innocent self-abandonment and a tenderness
that was irrepressible, but peculiarly her own, she flung herself
into his arms, as on that night in the boudoir.

She was dressed as if for a ball or some great festival; but Carl
remembered that this was Christmas-time, always a season of gaiety at
Frankenburg as elsewhere.

Her dress was white silk, covered with waves of the finest white
lace.  A great veil of the latter material enveloped her head and
shoulders.

She wanted but a white wreath to make her look like a lovely bride,
and Charlie's heart throbbed with pride and joy to think that she was
his own.

He thought she looked pale and tired.  It might be--nay, doubtless,
it must be--that the months of past anxiety had told upon her system
as on his own.

Yet her eyes had all the tender purity of an angel's in them, though
when she became excited there came over them a strange glitter, a
restless flashing, a sparkling animation, that contrasted strongly
with the languor of her form and actions; but happily there was no
fever flush on her cheek, which was pale--paler than of old, as
Charlie thought.

Long and silent was their embrace ere they spoke in broken accents of
all they had mutually undergone; and, while speaking, her head
nestling as it used to do on Charlie's neck, she shuddered sometimes,
for she seemed to be sorely chilled by the damp cold atmosphere of
the old church.

'Are all well at the Schloss?' asked Charlie suddenly, after a pause,
as the last evening's conversation recurred to him.

'All!  Thank Heaven!' replied Ernestine.

'And your father, the Herr Graf?'

'Well, too.'

Charlie was puzzled.  He must have been in a dream, or have
misunderstood the remarks of the two barons.

'Is Heinrich with the regiment?' he asked.

'No,' she replied, 'dear Heinrich is at the Schloss, and this morning
put your letter into my hand; and then, after, to tease or please me,
in my bosom.  See, it is there now!' she added, in the most engaging
manner.

'You found no difficulty in coming to meet me, dearest?'

'None.'

'How fortunate--how happy we are!'

'My poor Carl!'

'Why poor?  I feel to-night the happiest man in Germany.'

'I was resolved to meet you, at all risks, my darling.  A faith
plighted--a promise made is holy, Carl--holy to God and man.  I
promised to be here, Carl, in a dream that I had of you; and by a
strange chance I have been permitted to come--to be here, to see you,
feel your strong but tender arm round me once more.  Oh, Carl, kiss
me once again, as you did on that day in the Hoch Munster when first
you said you loved me.'

'Ernestine, what do you mean?' asked Charlie, eyeing her with some
anxiety, and impressed with a strange fear by the solemnity of her
manner.

'I belong no longer to myself.'

'To whom, then?  Heavens!' he added, starting, 'you have not become
the wife of that man!'

'Who?'

'Baron Grünthal.'

'Oh, no; how could you think of such a thing for a moment, Carl?' she
said, with a bitter smile, while looking down and playing with a ring
he had given her in other days.

'Then to whom do you belong?' he asked, fondly.

'My love--to you!'

She put up her little face tenderly to his, and then looked away,
with the weary, wistful expression of those who have long lived in
some world of their own, and can never seem to see out beyond the
present.

'We were betrothed together for life and death, Carl.'

'Were--_are_, you mean, Ernestine.'

'Yes, beloved Carl; but time presses--alas!  I fear that I must leave
you now.'

'But to meet again----'

'Very soon.'

'I have brought these for you from Lorraine.  This is the bullet that
struck me down, and this cross is a trophy of the war.'

'How pretty--nay, it is beautiful and interesting, too,' she
exclaimed, with something of her old gleeful way, as he clasped round
her slender throat a gold necklet he had procured in Aix, and now the
white enamelled cross hung thereat.

She shuddered when she looked at the chassepot ball and took it in
her hand.

'And this actually pierced you, my Carl?'

'Nearly through and through, love.  For five days it was in
unpleasant proximity to my lungs.'

'It is indeed a relic,' said she, while placing it in the bosom of
her dress.

'So--so,' said she, sadly, disengaging herself from his arms, 'our
love has been sanctified by danger and death.'

'Great Heavens!' thought Carl, 'sorrow has turned her brain!'

'It has _not_,' she said; 'do not think so.'

'What is not?  I did not speak,' said Carl.

'No, but you thought; and I know what you thought, and there is no
living grace or glory like a love so sanctified as ours, Carl.'

He regarded her with a bewilderment not unmixed with alarm.

There was a strange wild and weird beauty in her pale face--a
radiance in her eyes, a brightness all over her such as Charlie had
never before witnessed.

Whence did it come?  From the altar-lights?

They were too dim.

What did it mean?  Was it her natural beauty only, magnified by the
force of his imagination, and enhanced by his great love for her?

Somehow Charlie was perplexed and startled by her, amid all the
transport and joy of the time.

Suddenly there was a sound of wheels and horses' hoofs without, then
of several feet ringing on the hard and frozen churchyard path.

Ernestine started, and exclaimed in a voice husky, as it seemed, with
alarm--

'They are coming--my father and that dreadful Baron!  I must leave
you, beloved Carl--but only for a time; we shall meet again where
even they can separate us no more!'

She turned, and flying like a phantom, hurried through the little
door by which she had entered the church; and Charlie Pierrepont,
feeling certain that their interview had been discovered--that they
had come in pursuit of her in ire and indignation, and that there
would be a scene which he was most anxious to avoid--looked hastily
round the little church for a place of concealment.

There was none; so he resolved to make the best of it, and turned to
the doorway just as the portly old Count of Frankenburg, the Baron
Grünthal, limping as usual with gout, and Heinrich entered the church
together.




CONCLUSION.

They were all in evening costume--that sombre attire in which the
modern gentleman may attend a funeral by day, and a ball by night,
without change; and they all looked pale, harassed, and grave.

'Oh, Herr Graf von Frankenburg, if you have a human heart----'
Charlie was beginning, anxious to propitiate the father of her he
loved so dearly, when the Count, waving his hand, interrupted him,
and said:

'Herr Lieutenant, I can well afford to forgive the past now, and your
rash love for my daughter.'

'Herr Graf, I thank you--I thank you!' exclaimed Charlie, with warmth
and gratitude; for he expected high words, anger, and fierce
reproaches.

'Carl, my dear friend,' said Heinrich, taking his hand kindly in both
of his, while his eyes filled with genuine emotion, 'you here!--you
here after all!'

'You got my letter and gave it to her--to Ernestine?'

'To her--yes; but alas!  Carl, it came too late.'

'Too late!--too late!  How?'

'Do you not know?  have you not heard?  Poor Carl! poor Carl!' said
Heinrich, in a voice full of sympathy.

'What do you mean?' asked Charlie, in great perplexity.

'He means, Mein Herr,' said the Count, in a broken voice, 'that our
beloved Ernestine died at noon yesterday.'

Charlie passed a hand across his brow, and looked wildly in their
faces, as if doubting their sanity or his own.

'Died!' he repeated mechanically.

'It is incomprehensible your being here,' said the Count, in a still
more broken voice, and few could have seen that old man weeping
unmoved, 'as her last words were, "Meet me at Burtscheid--at
Burtscheid, dearest Carl."'

'And I _have_ met her, seen her, spoken with her not two minutes
since.'

'My poor friend,' said Heinrich, 'grief, or your wound, has turned
your brain.'

'What madness is this?' asked Charlie, with a kind of bitter laugh in
his voice, as he felt in no humour for jesting.  'Herr Graf, Herr
Baron, Heinrich, my friend, Ernestine has been here with me, in this
lonely church, for fully two hours!'

'And _spoken_ with you?' said the Count, in an excited tone.  'Oh, if
it should be that she still lives!'

'Lives!--great Heaven!  Herr Graf--she was here with me, and I gave
her a French cross with the bullet that wounded me.'

'He raves!' said the Baron Grunthal, with anger in his tone.

'She is there--in that room off the church.'

'In that room sure enough.  It is the Dead Chamber,' said the Count,
approaching the door.

'She fled there for concealment on hearing your approach.'

'Man,' said the old Count, pausing, 'are you not mad to tell me that
she is there now, and yet was here but a minute ago?'

'As I have Heaven to answer to--she was!'

'Follow me, then.'

On entering the room, Charlie Pierrepont reeled, and would have
fallen had not Heinrich supported him.

We scarcely know how to write of the episode that follows, and can
but tell the tale as it was told by those who were cognisant of it.

In a purple velvet coffin, mounted with silver, and supported on
trestles, the lid being open, lay Ernestine, dressed as we have
described her--dead, stone-dead, cold and pale as marble, her lips a
pale blue streak, her long eyelashes closed for ever.

Dead, beyond a doubt, was the girl he had clasped in his arms as a
living being, but a few minutes before living and full of volition
and life, love and energy; the lips he had kissed closed thus for
ever; the hands he had caressed, snow-white now, disposed upon her
bosom, the upper one holding the cross he had given her!

'Dead!  What miracle of heaven; what magic of hell is here!' he
exclaimed, as he staggered to the side of the coffin, pale as the
girl who lay in it, the bead-like drops oozing from his temples as he
grasped the locks above them.  'Speak! oh, speak, Heinrich!'

How terribly now came back to memory some of the strange things
Ernestine had said to him, and more than all, those dying words of
the French captain in the Chateau de Colombey, which sounded like
something between a prophecy and a curse!

'Compose yourself, Carl,' said Heinrich, full of pity.

'My letter to her--written after she was dead,' said Charles, in a
voice like a whisper--'she--she----'

'I placed it in her coffin ere she was brought here from the
Schloss,' said Heinrich, who was now weeping freely; 'it is there
now--and heavens, father! she _has_ round her neck the cross of which
Carl spoke.'

There are many things but imperfectly known in 'our philosophy,' and
certainly this seemed one of them.

'She died talking of you--not raving--the poor angel,' said the old
Count, as he bent fondly over the coffined girl, 'but smiling
sweetly, and saying earnestly, again and, again, that she would meet
you at Burtscheid.'

* * * * *

The gloomy half-lighted chamber in which this scene took place, and
where the dead girl lay, looking so sweetly placid in her coffin, was
one of those, where, in conformity with the police regulations of
Germany in general, the bodies of persons deceased are placed within
twelve hours after death--there to await interment.

In many places, more particularly at Frankfort, to guard against the
chances of burial in cases of suspended animation, the fingers of the
dead are placed in the loops of a bell-rope, attached to an alarm
clock, which is fixed in the apartment of the attendant appointed to
be on the watch.

The least pulsation in the body would give the alarm, when medical
aid would instantly be called in.

Ernestine had a watcher in an adjoining room! but that worthy was
found in the enjoyment of a profound slumber, and so had neither
heard nor seen anything.

This strange story found its way into the _Aix Gazette_ and the
_Extra Blatt_.

Some averred that Charlie Pierrepont, on discovering her body in the
chamber of Death, had gone mad and had imagined the whole interview
in the church; others, that it was really a case of suspended
animation, and that she had recovered for a time, and actually kept
her tryst; but the former idea was the predominant one.

Certain it is that for many weeks after the event Charlie seemed to
hover between life and death, sanity and insanity, at the Grand
Monarque; and when he rejoined the Thuringianas before the walls of
Paris, he had become so haggard, grey-haired, and old-looking, that
his former comrades scarcely recognised him, so much had he undergone
by a fever of the mind, rather than of the body.


When these dreadful events were soothed by time, though not forgotten
at Frankenburg, and when the summer flowers were blooming over
Charlie's grave--a grave which he found under the guns of Mont
Valerien--the young Graf Heinrich was married to his cousin Herminia
by the Herr Pastor Von Puffenvörtz, in the church of Burtscheid,
when, as if no sorrow had preceded the ceremony, all indeed went
merrily as a 'marriage bell.'



THE END.



BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD AND LONDON.









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