Chapter LXII: A Midnight March

The evil fortune which had attended my comrade in his love affair affected my own spirit, and for several days after rejoining the Garde du Corps, I felt sad, lonely, and thoughtful. I was separated from Marie Louise, and though I could scarcely despair, what had I to give me hope? Yet a faint, a wild, and fantastic hope that did come at times, faded and grew fainter as day succeeded day.

She seemed ever before me, vividly and distinctly as I had seen her last; for in this girl's manner, in the clear full expression of her eye and the melody of her voice, there were an indescribable fascination; while her conversational powers were so full of unstudied grace, that, I verily believe, no man could speak with her, without feeling himself insensibly charmed and lured, he knew not why, to love her. But of this enough; lest the reader may suspect me of being less a soldier than a puling sentimentalist.

The recollection of Pappenheim was always sufficient to kindle my fury. At times, I had a gloomy desire to fall in battle; but not before I sent the thick-lipped Austrian lord to his last account, duly attended, if possible, by his friend De Bitche, as aide-de-camp; and these amiable desires seemed unexpectedly to be in a fair way of being gratified; for one evening the Marquis de Gordon, who had been overnight with the Duc de Lavalette, rode hurriedly to our quarters, and as he passed me at the door of my billet, where I was lounging and enjoying a pipe of tobacco.

'Now, Blane,' said he, 'your time for vengeance is at hand!'

'How, Marquis?'

'Count Pappenheim, with a thousand Walloon horsemen, all peasants, raised in the province of Luxembourg, is in the village of Lutzelstein; and I am ordered to take a sufficient body of cavalry, and, if possible, cut him off. Attended by a troop of German and Spanish courtezans, clad in the spoil of plundered provinces, they have been making merry there for a week past.'

'And the Count de Bitche?'

'Is with him. This fellow who, as Shakespeare says of Talbot,

'------ is so much feared abroad,
That with his name the mothers still their babes,'

has now a fair chance of ending his life under the same trees which saw his abduction of the Countess of Lutzelstein.'

'And when do we march?'

'To-night.'

'Excellent!'

'Our cuirassiers lead the way; the dragoons of Brissac, under the Marquis de Toneins, who has just joined from Paris, are to follow.'

'Bravo!' I exclaimed, as a fiery joy swelled up in my heart.

'At daybreak, we will be upon them; and then let the Austrian and Lorrainer look well to sword and harness, for the Garde du Corps Ecossais never ride forth on a bootless errand!'

After supping with Home, Dundrennan, and a few others, on an omelette, with pickled herrings and saur-kraut, dressed with hog's-lard, a horrible repast, prepared by my German landlady, and washed down by a few bottles of Rhenish wine, we marched on our expedition, leaving Zaberne about midnight.

De Brissac's dragoons--still so called because they had been raised by the marechal of that name in 1600--with our troop of guardsmen, made up about nine hundred swords. The former were led by the Marquis de Toneins, formerly camp-master of the regiment de Normandie, who had succeeded the Duc de Bellegarde, slain before Phalsbourg; and the Marquis of Gordon commanded the whole. We left the town at an easy pace, in light marching order, _i.e._, unencumbered by forage, oats, or valises, but otherwise fully accoutred with all our arms.

The night was unusually serene; the month was August; and, as I looked back at Zaberne, I felt somewhat influenced by the beauty of the scenery and the silence of the hour. Around the city, the Sarre wound between woods of chestnut, and over it, on a lofty rock, stood a castle of the Bishops of Strasbourg, in the deep arched windows of which, red lights that twinkled, showed where Cardinal de Lavalette still held revel with some of his officers; for that old fortress was his head-quarters.

While leaving the city by its only avenue, a steep and narrow path, hewn through the solid rock in the olden time, the French cavalry trumpets--sharp, shrill, and warlike--rang in the clear atmosphere, as they played a stirring march; while the aspect of the successive sections of steel-trapped horsemen, as they defiled by threes from the ancient arch of the town-gate, and dipped into the deep path of echoing rock, with helmets, swords, and corslets glinting to the moon--their bridles and scabbards clanking--was sufficiently stirring and picturesque to raise even my sombre spirit from the thoughts on which it had brooded for some days past.

'There sleep the brave whom no earthly trumpet will ever rouse again,' said Sir Quentin Home to me, as we passed the long and gloomy mound which marked where we buried the dead.

'By this time to-morrow many of us may be still and cold, as they are to-night,' thought I.

As we penetrated into the mountains, the music ceased, and we rode in silence; even conversing in the ranks being forbidden.

The moon shed her clear cold light in a brilliant flood along the rocky vale. At the bottom of the latter ran a torrent towards the Rhine. It was bordered by groves of pale-green willow, the branches and tremulous leaves of which swept up the foam that gleamed on the chafed rocks and rushing water. In some places, olive-trees and flowering osiers mingled with them. Apart from the dull, monotonous tramp of nine hundred horse upon the road or sward, the silence was broken only by the occasional bark of a shepherd's dog, as its wakeful ear caught the distant sound; or the ominous bay of a wolf, prowling on the wooded peaks of the Vosges, and by some strange instinct scenting blood and slaughter on the midnight breeze already.

A ride of some miles brought us to a cascade, the white foam of which sparkled like a torrent of pearls as it plunged over the brow of a rock into a chasm. A single fairy-like rib of stone, forming an arch high above us, with its span clearly defined against the moon-lighted sky, gave access over this cascade to the small, but strong feudal castle of the Counts of Lutzelstein. This torrent flowed from a little lonely lake which bathed its walls, and was fed by the snowy rills of the Vosges.

Under Lieutenant Francis Ruthven, in this castle there was a garrison composed of eighty Scottish musketeers of Ramsay's regiment; but all was dark and sombre in tower and turret as we defiled through the valley below, and rode on, on our errand of death, unchallenged and unseen.

It was now that dark, cold hour which always precedes the dawn.

The Marquis ordered strict silence in the ranks, for we were about to debouch and form squadrons in the flat and open valley occupied by the bivouac of Pappenheim's cavalry.

'I have but one thought to-night,' said I to Dundrennan, whom I had made the confidant of my love affair, and in whose honour I had perfect reliance.

'To-night! You should rather say this morning. See, the moon grows pale already--and this thought?'

'Is to have Pappenheim killed or taken; for in either case Marie Louise will be freed from his obtrusive attentions.'

'If both fail?'

'Then I shall get myself killed.'

'Zounds! nay,' replied the Viscount; 'were I in your predicament, I should as soon think of hanging myself (like a certain Grecian blockhead when rebuked by Pythagoras) as of throwing away my life in battle. Life is a precious commodity, and we never know what a day may bring forth.'

'True,' said I.

'And the hand of Mademoiselle de Lorraine, deprived as her father is of land, fortune, rank, and authority, is no longer an object of gain to Pappenheim, or to any but such a Quixote as you.'

'But he is not the man to relinquish, without a struggle, a bride so beautiful and so nobly born.'

'We shall see.'

The order to form squadron, manoeuvre, executed from the rear at a rapid trot, cut short further conversation. De Brissac's dragoons formed four squadrons of double troops; we formed _one_, and were in their front about two hundred paces. The country around us seemed open; the moon had sunk behind the hills. A grove of trees in the valley before us, with a red light or two from a watchfire, marked the locality of the enemy, whose bivouac, disposition, and arrangements were explained to the Marquis, our leader, by a burgher of Zaberne, who acted as our guide; and who, as he had purposely misled us, received his fee, and vanished ere the fray began; for by this traitor the Counts Pappenheim and De Bitche had been duly informed of our intended attack, and had thus formed a counter-plan for cutting the whole of us off; though we had fully believed that nine hundred regular French cavalry were fully equal to the task of dissipating a thousand Walloon militia.