Chapter LIV: De Bitche

'M. l'Abbé, alias M. Blane de Blanerne, alias M. Scaramouche le Moucharde, welcome! most welcome to share the hospitality of Phalsbourg!' exclaimed De Bitche, twisting up his enormous black moustache; 'by Beelzebub, but this is a most unexpected pleasure, for we had quite given up all hope of seeing you again!'

'Perhaps so, M. le Comte, after murdering a poor soldier, in mistake for me, on the Nanci road.'

'Your predilection for wandering outside your own camp is marvellous; but we must cure you of it. Corboeuf! I would that Pappenheim were here, to share with me the pleasure of giving you a welcome.'

When I gazed on the demon-like eye of this infamous noble--a strangler, a gambler, and debaucher--I almost believed in the sorceries and diablerie imputed to him by the simple peasantry of Alsace and Lorraine.

'Well, mon condottiere,' continued the Count, in his bantering manner; 'you gaze at me curiously--you remember having met me before, I think?'

'Those who once behold your face, will never forget it;' said I, making a violent effort to repress my growing anger.

'Oh, milles demons! one could not be mistaken then?'

'No, M. le Comte--those who once see your visage, will never behold another like it.'

'Especially if they are in your perilous perdicament. You walk stiffly--your spurs drip blood. By St. Nicholas! M. Blane, you have ridden fast from Nanci; but not fast enough to escape me, who left it before you; though six miles further on you would have found Messieurs Hepburn and Lavalette, peppering Zaberne (a bitter reflection certainly) with culverin and caliver. Had your horse wings? But we shall not inquire. My dear M. Blane, I have you here snug enough, and here you shall remain; for unless you write me a little billet to my dictation, I shall hang you like a dog.'

'Hang?' I exclaimed, laying my hand on my sword.

He nodded his head, adding,

'Unless you pen for me a little billet.'

'A billet?'

'Milles demons! yes--I speak plain enough.'

'To whom?'

'Mademoiselle de Lorraine,' said he, in a hoarse whisper.

'Count, you are a villain!'

'M. le Commandant!' exclaimed at least twenty men, knitting their brows and grasping their swords.

'Nay, nay, gentlemen,' said he, 'be patient, I pray you. It is a defect of these Scots to be somewhat plainly spoken.'

'And to be truthful too,' I said with ungovernable fury, while unsheathing my sword; but it was barely out of the scabbard, when the rough hands of a crowd of armed men were laid upon me, and in a moment, I was denuded of my belt, with its poniard and pistols, my sword and purse of fifty crowns, with all my papers, while I was held so tightly on every side that I could scarcely breathe. My despatches were valueless to me, compared to the farewell note of Marie Louise.

'M. le Comte,' exclaimed a bloated young subaltern of Swiss, who was looking over my papers; 'here is a letter from mademoiselle--'

'De l'Orme--yes!' interrupted De Bitche, abruptly, closing the sentence to mislead his followers, and snatching the letter of Louise from the startled discoverer thereof; 'and on peril of your life,' he added, 'speak no more of it.'

'But, M. le Comte,' said Schreckhorn, 'here is a protection from Monseigneur le Duc, dated at Nanci, yesterday. This, at least, must be respected.'

'A vile forgery--put it in the fire; every spy has papers.'

The protection given to me by Vaudemont was then consigned to the flames.

'And here is a despatch sealed with the royal arms of France, and addressed to M. le Chevalier Hepburn, marshal and general of the Scots with the army of the Rhine.'

'Bon--diable! give me that!' shouted De Bitche, making a snatch at the envelope, which contained the brave Hepburn's diploma of Marshal of France; 'and now away with the moucharde to the turret above the river; but, off with his buff coat first. Aha, messieurs! 'tis laced, and of the true Parisian cut. Off with it, for by the favourite corn of St. Nicolas, he will never need it more!'

My buff coat was rudely torn off me by some half-drunken Swiss and Germans, among whom it formed an object of furious contention. I was then dragged through the hall, along a dark passage, and up a narrow stone stair, to a little arched door, through which I was thrust into an apartment lighted only by fitful gleams of the moon, across which the stormy clouds were hurrying in black masses; and there left to my own anxious and alarming thoughts.