The boy bent his head in token of submission, but never spoke.
“It will be the proudest hour of my life, Frank, when you can throw off this reproach, and stand forth a thorough Dalton, unshaken in truth and honor. But, to do this, you must be calm and quiet now,—not speak, nor even think of these things. You shall remain with me.”
Here the boy's tears fell upon the old man's hand. For a second or two not a word was spoken. At last he went on,——
“Yes; you shall not leave me from this hour. Our fortunes are the same. With you it remains to show that we are worthy soldiers of our Kaiser.”
Frank pressed the old Count's hand upon his heart, as though to call its very pulses to bear witness to his fealty. This simple action seemed to have exhausted his last energy, for he now sank back in his chair and fainted.
The excitement he had gone through appeared to have utterly prostrated him, for he now lay for hours motionless and unconscious. Except a heavy sigh at long intervals, he gave no sign of life; and the surgeons, having exhausted all their resources to stimulate him, gave but faint hope of his recovery. They who only knew the old Count as the stern soldier, bold, abrupt, and peremptory, could not conceive by what magic he had been changed into a mould of almost womanly tenderness. There was no care he did not bestow on the sick youth. The first surgeons of the Staff were sent for, and all that skill and affection could suggest were enlisted in his service. The case, however, was of gloomy presage. It was the relapse fever after a wound, aggravated by mental causes of deep influence.
The greatest sympathy was felt for the old Count's position. His comrades came or sent frequently to him. Kind messages reached him from quarters wherein once lay all his pride and glory; and a young archduke came himself to offer his new litter to convey Frank to Verona, where the Imperial headquarters were stationed. These were the very flatteries which once Von Auersberg would have prized above all that wealth could give; these were the kind of recognitions by which he measured his own career in life, making him to feel where he stood; but now one grief had so absorbed him he scarcely noticed them. He could not divest his mind, either, of the thought that the boy's fate was intended as a judgment on himself for his own cold and ungenerous treatment of him. “I forgot,” would he say to himself,——“I forgot that he was not a castaway like myself. I forgot that the youth had been trained up amidst the flow of affectionate intercourse, loving and beloved, and I compared his position with my own.”
And such was in reality the very error he committed. He believed that by subjecting Frank to all the hard rubs which once had been his own fate he was securing the boy's future success; forgetting the while how widely different were their two natures, and that the affections which are moulded by habits of family association are very unlike the temperament of one unfriended and unaided, seeking his fortune with no other guidance than a bold heart and strong will. The old Count was not the only one, nor will he be the last, to fall into this mistake; and it may be as well to take a warning from his error, and learn that for success in the remote and less trodden paths of life the warm affections that attach to home and family are sad obstacles.
It was ten days before Frank could be removed, and then he was carried in a litter, arriving in Verona on the fourth day. From his watchful cares beside the sick-bed, the old General was now summoned to take part in the eventful councils of the period. A great and momentous crisis had arrived, and the whole fate, not only of Austria, but of Europe, depended on the issue. The successes of the Italian arms had been, up to this point, if not decisive, at least sufficiently important to make the result a question of doubt. If the levies contributed by the States of the Church and Tuscany were insignificant in a warlike point of view, they were most expressive signs of popular feeling at least. Austria, besides, was assailed on every flank, with open treason in her capital; and the troops which might have conquered Lombardy were marching northward on Prague, or turning eastward towards Hungary. It then became a grave question whether, even at the cost of the whole Milanais, a peace should not be at once concluded, and Austria merely stipulate for certain commercial advantages, and the undisturbed possession of the Venetian States. If the more dispassionate heads that rule cabinets saw wisdom in this plan, the warmer and less calculating hearts of soldiers deemed it a base humiliation. Long accustomed to treat the Italians with a haughty contempt, they could not endure the thought of recognizing them as equals, not to say superiors. There were thus two parties in the Council,——the one eager for a speedy termination of the war, and the other burning to erase the memory of late defeats, and win back the fair provinces of their Emperor. To such an extent had this spirit of discordance at last gone, that the cabinet orders of Vienna were more than once overruled at headquarters, and the very decrees of the Government slighted by the commander-in-chief. It was a time of independent will and personal responsibility; and probably to this accident is owing the salvation of the Imperial House.
At last, when the sympathies of France and England with the cause of Italy became more than a mere suspicion, when troops marched southward towards the Alps, and diplomatic messages traversed Europe, counselling, in all the ambiguous courtesy of red tape, “wise and reasonable concessions to the fair demands of a people,” the cabinet of Vienna hastily despatched an envoy to Lombardy, with orders to concert with the generals, and treat for a peace.