“Well, Major, what’s this? Have you made a prisoner? or is this some one to be quartered on us?”
“A visitor for the General, Captain,” replied Francis, stepping past him, and giving me a hint to follow her.
“Had a deuced bad luncheon! Waited half an hour for the Freule; the eggs too hard, the beefsteak like leather, his Excellency out of humour—and all this because the Freule takes it into her head to ride out at inconvenient hours, and return on foot to the fortress leading the hero of this pretty adventure in triumph behind her,” growled the Captain, in a half-angry, half-jesting tone, as he followed us.
Francis turning round said—
“All this, Captain, is because your Major—you understand me, your Major—has had the pleasure of meeting with her cousin, Jonker Leopold van Zonshoven; let that suffice you, and if you have any more complaints, put them in your report-book.”
After this I followed Francis through the vestibule, where a servant received us with a military salute, and showed us into an immense drawing-room hung with embossed gilt leather. Here the General was taking a nap in a high-backed easy-chair. Francis entered the room softly enough, but the loud heavy step of the Captain, who thought fit to follow us, awoke the sleeper with a start.
Instead of the pourfendeur I had conjured up in my fancy from old Aunt Roselaer’s accounts, I perceived a little, thin, grey-headed old man, the traits of whose face showed him to be a person of superior breeding, wrapped in a very threadbare damask dressing-gown. His nose was long and straight, his lips thin and pale, his eyes of a soft blue, with an expression of lethargy or fatigue. His white, dry hands had very prominent veins; and he wore a large signet-ring, with which he kept playing in a nervous, agitated manner all the time he was speaking.
Francis introduced me in her own peculiar way—
“Grandfather, I bring you Jonker Leopold van Zonshoven, to whom you must give a hearty welcome, for he is a curiosity in our family.”
“In our family! Jonker van Zonshoven—ah! yes, I remember, I understand,” he said, in a surprised and embarrassed tone, which proved his recollection to be of the vaguest; but he bowed politely, and offered me his hand, which I shook cordially.