Chapter II

I saw the whole scheme now. The bankrupt--for such I had no doubt he was--meant to make his power over Paquette and me a source of future revenue to himself; and I felt sure that when his last dollar was spent--by to-morrow, perhaps--he would present himself again with a fresh demand. Like one in a dream I went to the Bourse; but little or no business was done there that day, for war rumours were hourly growing more rife. There were riots in its neighbourhood, too. The tradesmen were "on strike," and the swords of the watch had been busy, for no less than seven unarmed men were cut down in the Adolphsplatz. Then, that evening I heard that a spy, supposed to be a Frenchman, had been hovering about the northern ramparts, near the Damthor, and had been seen to count the cannon on the Holstein-wall--a spy who had escaped alike the watch and the guard of the Seventy-sixth Regiment, and whom I heard described as a shabby man in a green coat, with a _mole_ on his cheek!

My heart leaped within me; could this personage and M. Baptiste Graindorge be one and the same? If so, neither Hamburg nor I was likely to be troubled by his presence again.

Before my usual hour, I hastened home--home to my pretty little villa among the rose-trees at Blankenese; but, alas! to find it desolate, and our servant, Trüey, a faithful young Vierlander, in tears, and filled with wonder; for her mistress had packed up some clothes, and leaving all her jewels, even to her wedding-ring, had departed, after writing a letter for me.

I tore it open, and found it to contain but a few words, to confirm my terror and fill up the cup of my misery.

"The Gräfine von Spitzberger has been with me. The man we saw is indeed my husband, M. Graindorge, the story of whose death has been all a mistake; and he proved _to her_ his identity, by his knowledge of all our family affairs. Oh, Carl! oh, my poor darling! the real husband of my heart and my only love! I must leave you--yes--and by the time you read this, shall be far on the railroad for France. Graindorge shall never see me more; my father's house or a convent must be my shelter now. My last hope is, that you will not attempt to follow me; my last prayer, that God may bless and comfort you."

The lines were written tremulously. I kissed my darling's wedding-ring, placed it by a ribbon at my neck, and wept bitterly. Then the room seemed to swim around me; I became senseless, and was ill in bed for days. Our home was broken now. It was desolate--oh, so desolate, without my Paquette! She was gone. She had left me for ever! And every object around seemed to recall her more vividly to me--her piano, her music, the little ornaments we had bought together at the Alster Arcade, and the pillow her cheek had rested on. "She will write to me," thought I; but no letter came. And something of jealousy began to mingle with the bitterness of my soul. Was she with Graindorge?

I think I should have gone mad but for the events that occurred so quickly now, for one week sufficed to change the whole face of affairs in Hamburg. France had declared war against Prussia. Trade stood still; silence reigned in our splendid Bourse, usually the most noisy and busy scene in the world; the Elbe was empty of shipping, for its buoys and lights were all destroyed. The Prussians, horse, foot, and artillery, were pouring towards Travemünde, where a landing of the French was expected. In one day nearly every horse in Hamburg was seized for military purposes, and the city was ordered to furnish eighteen thousand infantry for the Landwehr.

Of this force I was one. A strip of paper was left at my office one day, and the next noon saw me in the barracks near the Damthor-wall, and before the colonel, an officer of Scottish descent, the Graf von Hamilton. Then, like thousands of others, my plain clothes were taken from me, and I received in lieu a spiked helmet of glazed leather, a blue tunic faced with white, a goat-skin knapsack, great-coat, and camp-kettle, a needle-gun, bayonet, and sword. We were all accoutred without delay, and within two hours were at drill, under a burning sun, in the Heilinghaist-feld, between Hamburg and Altona. My desk, my office, my home, knew me no more; yet I often mounted guard near the chambers of our firm in the Admiralitatstrasse. Paquette and my previous existence seemed all a dream--a dream that had passed away for ever. And though the gay streets, the tall spires, the sights and sounds in our pleasure-loving city were all unchanged, I seemed to have lost my identity. My former life was completely blotted out.

From the Landwehr, with many others, I was speedily drafted into the Seventy-sixth Hanoverians, and in three weeks we were ordered to join the Army of the Rhine. Though I had studied in Berlin, I was not a Prussian, but a native of the free city of Hamburg. Like many of my comrades, who were fathers of families, or only sons, torn from their homes and peaceful occupations, I had no interest in the cruel and wanton war on which we were about to enter; and more than all, I loved France, for it was the native land of Paquette Champfleurie.

In the then horror of my mind, the war was certainly somewhat of a change or relief, and the excitement around drew me from my own terrible thoughts. I was going towards Lorraine, where even while fighting against her poor countrymen, I might see my lost one, my wife--for such I still deemed her, despite the odious Baptiste Graindorge; and so I fondly and wildly speculated. The idea of being killed and buried where Paquette might perhaps pass near my grave, was even soothing to my now morbid soul, for I knew that she had loved me long before _that man_ came between us with his wealth of gold napoleons; so she must love me still--Carl, whose heart had never wandered from her.

But there is something great and inspiring in war and its adjuncts, after all. I remember that on the day we left our beautiful Hamburg, when I heard the crash of the brass bands and saw the North German colours waving in the wind, above the long, long column of glazed helmets and bright bayonets, as our regiment, with the Forty-seventh Silesians, the Fifty-third Westphalians, and the Eighty-eighth Nassauers, defiled through the Damthor, and past the Esplanade towards the Bahnhof, I became infected by the enthusiasm around me, and found myself joining in the mad shouts of "Hurrah, Germania!" and in the old Teutonic song which the advanced guard of Uhlans struck up, brandishing their lances the while--

"O Tannebaum, O Tannebaum, wie grün sind deine Blatter!"

as we marched for the Rhine, towards which we were forwarded fast by road and rail.

We were soon face to face with the gallant French, and how fast those terrible battles followed each other at Weissenburg, Forbach, Spicheren, and elsewhere, the public prints have already most fully related. Though I did not seek death any more than others my comrades, I cared little for life, yet (until one night in October) I escaped in all three of those bloody conflicts, and many a daily skirmish, without a wound, though the chassepot balls whistled thickly round me, and more than once the fire of a mitrailleuse, a veritable stream of bullets, swept away whole sections by my side. I have had my uniform riddled with holes, my helmet grazed many times, and part of my knapsack shot away; yet somehow fate always spared poor Carl Steinmetz; for he had no enmity in his heart towards the poor fellows who fell before his needle-gun. At last we rapidly pushed on, and reduced many fortified places as we advanced to blockade Metz. Then Lorraine lay around us, and I gazed on the scenery with emotions peculiarly my own, for I thought of Paquette, of her animated face and all her pretty ways, and of all she had told me of her native province, its dense forests where wolves lurked, its wild mountains, its salt springs and lakes--Lorraine now, as in centuries long past, a subject for dispute between France and Germany.

The Seventy-sixth, under the Graf von Hamilton, formed part of the army which, under Prince Frederick Carl, blockaded Metz with such cruel success; and we had severe work in the wet nights of October, while forming the _feld-wacht_ in the advanced rifle-pits. Often when lying there alone, in the damp hole behind a sand-bag or sap-roller, waiting for a chance shot in the early dawn at some unfortunate Frenchman, I thought bitterly and sadly of our once happy home, of Paquette, my lost wife, and wondered where she was _now_, or if, when she saw the Prussian columns, with all their bright-polished barrels and spiked helmets shining in the sun, she could dream that I, Carl Steinmetz, was a unit in that mighty host. Then I would marvel in my heart whether I, with the spiked helmet and needle-gun, loaded with accoutrements and spattered with mud, was the same Carl Steinmetz who, but a few months before, sat daily at his desk in the Admiralitatstrasse, and had the sweet smiles of Paquette to welcome him home and listen to his news from the Bourse. Was this military transformation madness or witchcraft? It was neither, but stern reality, as an unexpected shot from a hedge about four hundred yards distant, tore the brass eagle from my helmet and fully informed me.

This was just about daybreak on the morning of the 26th October last, and when I could see all the village quarters, from Mars-la-Tour to Mazières, lit up, and all the bivouac fires burning redly on our left and in the rear.

With a few others I started from the rifle-pits, and we made a dash at the hedge, which we believed to conceal some of those Francs-tireurs, whom we had orders to shoot without mercy, though they were only fighting for home and country. We were on the extreme flank of the blockading force, and the hedge in question surrounded a villa which stood somewhat apart from the road to Château Salins. Led by the Graf's son, a young captain, we rushed forward, and found it manned by some fifty men of the French line, who had crept out of Metz intending to desert, for Bazaine permitted them to do so when provisions began to fail. "A bas les Pru-essiens!" cried their leader--a tall sub-officer in very tattered uniform--thus accentuating the word in the excess of his hatred.

"Vorwarts--für Vaterland--hurrah, Germania!" shouted the young Von Hamilton. A volley that killed ten of our number tore among us, but we broke through and fell upon them with the bayonet. Clubbing his chassepot the French sous-officier, with a yell on his lips, beat down poor Hamilton; then he rushed upon me, and what was my emotion--what my astonishment, to find myself face to face with Graindorge--he who had robbed me of Paquette--the same beer-bloated and scurvy-looking fellow, with the huge black mole, whom I had last seen in Hamburg! I charged him with my bayonet breast high, but agitation so bewildered me that he easily eluded my point, and felled me to the earth with his clubbed rifle. Now came a sense of confusion, of light flashing from my eyes, the clash of steel, the _ping_ of passing balls; then darkness seemed to envelop me, and death to enter my heart as I became senseless.

I remained long thus, for the sun was in the west when full consciousness returned. The thick leather helmet had saved my head from fracture, but dried blood plastered all my face, and I found my right arm broken by a bullet. All the French in the rear of the hedge had been shot down or bayoneted, and they presented a terrible spectacle. All were dead save one--the sous-officier, who lay near me, dying of many bayonet wounds. Our wounded had been removed, but ten of the Seventy-sixth lay near me stiff and cold. What a scene it was in that pretty garden, amid the rose-trees, the last flowers of autumn, and the twittering sparrows, to see all those poor fellows, made in God's fair image, butchered thus--and for WHAT? My wounds were sore, my heart was sad and heavy; oh, when was it otherwise now? Staggering up I turned to the Frenchman, whose half-glazing eyes regarded me with a fiercely defiant expression, for he doubted not that in this _guerre à la mort_ his last moment had come. I took off my battered helmet, and then with a thrill of terror he seemed to recognize me.

"Carl Steinmetz of Hamburg!" said he, with difficulty.

"You know me then?" I asked grimly.

"Oh, yes--in God's name give me water--I am dying!"

My canteen was empty; but I found some wine in that of a corpse which lay near. I poured it down his throat and it partially revived him.

"Yes, fellow," said I, "in me you see that Steinmetz who was so happy till you came and my wife fled; so we know each other, Monsieur Baptiste Graindorge."

"I am _not_ Baptiste--_he_ is lying quiet in his grave on the shore of the Senegal river."

"Who, in the name of Heaven, are you?"

"Achille Graindorge--his cousin. I took advantage of our casual but strong resemblance to impose upon you--and--and get money--when in Hamburg--acting----"

"As a spy--eh?"

"Yes."

"Has she--has Paquette seen you since?"

"No--for she would at once have detected the cheat."

"And you know not where she is?"

"As I have Heaven soon to answer--no," he gasped out, and sinking back, shortly after expired, his last breath seeming to issue from the wounds in his chest. I had no pity for him, but felt a glow of joy in my heart, as I turned away, and crept--for I was unable to stand--towards the door of the villa in search of succour, the agony of my thirst and wounds being so great that I cared little whether the inmates aided or killed me.

However, the coincidences of this day were not yet over.

The door, on which I struck feebly with my short Prussian sword, was opened ultimately by an old gentleman, beyond whom I saw a female, shrinking back in evident terror. I recognized M. de Champfleurie, my father-in-law; but being now unable to speak, I could only point to my parched lips and powerless arm, as I sank at his feet and fainted.

When I recovered, my uniform was open, my accoutrements were off; I was lying upon a sofa with my aching head pillowed softly--on what?--The tender bosom of Paquette, my darling little wife; for she had recognized me, though disguised alike by dress and blood, and now her tears were falling on my weather-beaten face.

It chanced that, flying from place to place in Lorraine, before our advancing troops, and having failed to reach Metz, they had taken shelter in that abandoned villa; and thus happily I could reveal the secret of our separation before the burial party bore away the body of Achille Graindorge, who had actually been quartered at Senegal when his cousin Baptiste died there.

My story is told. On the following day Metz capitulated, and poor M. Champfleurie danced with rage on learning that Bazaine had surrendered with two other Marshals of the Empire, 173,000 prisoners and 20,000 sick, wounded, and starving men. My fighting days were over now; Paquette was restored to me, and happiness was again before us.

For their kindness in succouring me, the Graf von Hamilton gave M. de Champfleurie and his daughter a pass to the rear, and we speedily availed ourselves of it, for I was discharged with a shattered arm; and now I write these lines, again in pleasant Blankenese, our dear home, with the broad Elbe shining blue beneath our windows, and the autumn leaves falling fast from the thick woods that cover all its green and beautiful shore.

APPARITIONS AND WONDERS.