CHAPTER VIII.
AN OLD FRIEND ARRIVES.
According to his invitation, I dined with the brave Duc de Broglie, in the hall of the old Schloss, the walls and roof of which still bore all the frescoes, heraldic devices and ornaments with which Count Josias had decorated it many years before. Bourgneuf declined to be present, and I cannot say that I regretted his absence; but we had M. Monjoy and some officers of the Regiments of Clermont and Bretagne, all pleasant, gay and affable men save the engineer, who was somewhat reserved, even sad in manner.
The Duke talked freely of the folly and loss of life occasioned by our unmeaning expeditions to the coast of France, and dilated particularly on the third (a service which the Greys escaped, by receiving the route for Germany), which ended in the unfortunate battle of St. Cas, where General Durie, Sir John Armitage, and one thousand of our finest troops, particularly of the 1st Foot Guards, were slaughtered on the beach, while four hundred were drowned in their disastrous flight.
Minden, however, he and those present tacitly ignored; the defeat there was too recent to be a pleasant French souvenir.
He spoke frequently and always with praise of my regiment, the Ecossais Gris, which he knew well, having often encountered them on service. He knew Colonel Preston too, and laughed at his quaint old buff coat. He had met the corps at Dettingen, and acknowledged that it was from his hand that one of the Greys wrenched away the famous White Standard—the Cornette Blanche—of the Gendarmes du Roi, and he perfectly remembered the retort, recorded in our first volume as having been made by Colonel Preston to Louis Philippe Duc d'Orleans, at the review of the Scots Greys in Hyde Park.
"A greater dishonour than the loss of that banner was never suffered by the Household Cavalry of France," continued the Duc de Broglie; "the Cornette Blanche is a royal standard, which was substituted for the ancient Pennon Royal, and was never unfurled save when the King in person led the army; those who served immediately under it were the princes, nobles, and maréchals of France, with old field-officers who received orders from his Majesty direct; so, messieurs, you may imagine what I felt on finding myself unhorsed, and seeing it borne through the slaughter in the hands of a Scottish Grey trooper!"
Amid all the topics which we discussed over the wine of the defunct Prince of Ysembourg, with the contents of whose cellars, hewn deep in the old castle rock, Monseigneur le Duc and his epauletted and aiguiletted staff made most free, I could glean nothing about Jacqueline, where she resided, how she had married her cousin, the stern Count, or why, or wherefore; nor did I venture to ask—a natural delicacy, with a difficulty of approaching the subject, together with something of pique, restrained me.
When I looked on the old Duc de Broglie, dispensing the honours of his table with an air so courtly in his powdered hair, with his star and ribbon of St. Louis, and when I thought of the passionate love I had borne his daughter, and how she had responded to it—how I had sorrowed for her supposed death, and so terribly avenged it—of all that had been and never could be again,—I asked of myself, were not all those days we had spent together at that quaint château in Brittany, amid its arbours trained by old Urbain, its rose-gardens and leafy labyrinth, a dream, or was I dreaming now?
That she should be the wife of this Count de Bourgneuf—a Frenchman all the more jealous because his mother was a Spanish lady of Alava—who knew more than I wished him to know about those love passages in Brittany, and thus hated me accordingly, seemed strange and difficult to realize; but of that hate I had good proof ere long.
Dinner was nearly over when the Chevalier de Boisguiller, of the Hussars de la Reine, was announced, and this gay fellow, all travel-stained and with his face looking very red, after a long ride against a keen, frosty wind, entered with his sabre under his left arm, and carrying his fur cap with plume and scarlet kalpeck, in his right hand.
"Welcome, kinsman Guillaume," said the host, rising and presenting his hand; "what news bring you from the head-quarters of M. de Contades?"
"This despatch, monseigneur," replied the hussar, delivering an oblong letter sealed with yellow wax, and making a profound salute.
"When did you leave?"
"This morning, monseigneur."
"Ma foi! you must have come at a good pace to reach Ysembourg by this time."
"I dined early at Helingenstadt, and when I have dined well and drunk good wine, somehow my horse always goes well. The wine communicates itself through the spur-rowels, I think. 'Tis sixty miles and more from Helingenstadt to this, so as the sight of these viands makes me hungry again, I shall join you gentlemen. Thus hunger, a long ride over a snow-covered country—snow—ouf! it is six feet deep at Hesse Cassel—with a young appetite, are capital sauce to a meal, and if your cook equals your maitre d'hôtel, my dear maréchal—Grands Dieux! what have we here?—a ragout—delightful!—gigot de mouton, with force-meat balls, like grape and canister shot. Monjoy, I shall trouble you for a slice. Parbleu! my friends, where did you pick up all these dainties? I thought those active devils, the Black Hussars of His Prussian Majesty, had swept everything but snow and icicles out of Hesse and Westphalia. Monjoy, mon cher, what does that silver jug contain?"
"Champagne-punch, chevalier."
"Made how?"
"One bottle of claret to three of champagne, with some sugar, a little hot water, a squeeze or so of a lemon, and after a few glasses——"
"One may see all the sentinels and outposts double their usual number, and the main body quite what M. le Maréchal wishes it to be, before beating up the quarters of Prince Ferdinand, mon brave; hand it over here!"
"Pardieu!" he exclaimed, setting down the silver jug after a long draught, "what do I see—Monsieur Gauntlet of the Grey Scots—a prisoner, eh? In the dusk I took you in your red coat for a mousquetaire rouge."
"Monsieur is a prisoner, who, for the service he has done my family, returns free to the allied lines to-morrow," said the Duke, who had been rapidly skimming the despatch, while Boisguiller had been keeping up a running fire of small talk. "I must leave you, messieurs; Monjoy will take my place at the head of the table, as this despatch requires immediate attention. Contades returns to France for a time; the entire command is vested in me, and the army is to be augmented to a hundred thousand men, while thirty thousand more are to be formed upon the Rhine, under the orders of the Comte St. Germain. My brother's regiment of Cuirassiers must ride towards Wetzler, as the King of Prussia's Death's-head Hussars are marching in that direction. We move from this early——"
Loud cries of "Bravo—Vive le Roi! Vive le Maréchal Duc!" rang round the table.
"And the castles of Marburg and Dillenburg may soon have some powder burnt before them. You see, M. Gauntlet, I have no secrets from you, though you were so reserved with me this morning. Adieu, messieurs—make yourselves at home; I am an old campaigner, but must keep my head clear for the work of the bureau."
And with a smiling bow the stately old Maréchal left us. Then around the table the conversation became more gay, free, and unrestrained; the wine-decanters were circulated with a rapidity that loosened every tongue, and as usual with Frenchmen, they all talked at once without listening much to each other.