'I thank you, my worthy friend,' said he, embracing Rhenskioeld, 'that you have complied with my request so promptly. It was my duty to visit you, but my hours are all numbered. I shall be compelled to labor through the whole night, and in the morning I shall be on my way towards Frederickshall.'
'You come from Aland?' eagerly asked Rhenskioeld: 'what news from thence?'
'Thank God!' cried Goertz with clasped hands: 'I bring you peace with Russia.'
'Peace!' exclaimed Rhenskioeld, springing from his seat. 'Peace between the shrewd czar, who never fails to follow up an advantage, and our Charles, whom misfortune only renders the more inflexibly? It is impossible! Even could you really obtain tolerable conditions yet would the king never accept them.'
'The splendid conditions which I bring will certainly be ratified by him,' answered Goertz. 'Peter retains nothing of his conquests except Livonia, a part of Ingermanland and Caralia. He yields back all besides.'
'Peter give any thing back!' screamed Rhenskioeld, with astonishment.
'Russia,' proceeded Goertz, 'binds herself with us, to set upon the throne of Poland the same Stanislaus whom she formerly chased from it, and furnishes 80,000 men to enthrone the same august personage against whom she has been fighting the last ten years.'
'You must be relating to me, a fable from the thousand and one nights!' said Rhenskioeld incredulously.
'Russia,' proceeded Goertz, 'is to furnish shipping for the conveyance of 10,000 Swedes to England to sustain the Pretender. In connection with Sweden, she seizes upon Hanover. We take Bremen and Verden, re-establish the duke of Holstein, force Prussia to give up her booty, and compel the emperor to observe the treaty of Altranstadt.'
'And now are you awake?' asked the fieldmarshal with a satirical smile: 'for thus do such narrations usually terminate, when the narrator has only been dreaming.'