Now the hour had come. His hour! He would die--give his life for the Fatherland, and expiate his father's sin with his own blood.
In the volunteer Jäger Baumgart, who rode into Königsberg on the 5th of March 1813, no one recognised the youthful Baron von Schranden, who, just five years before, had fled from the town unable to face the dishonour brought upon his name; and there were many now hailing him with shouts and cheers of welcome, who then would have driven him out with stones and brickbats.
He attached himself to a cluster of intrepid sons of the soil, from whose mouths the dialect of his lost home fell familiarly and musically on his ear. He became their friend and their leader, till suddenly a well-known face cropped up in the camp, the sight of which immediately drove Lieutenant Baumgart out of it.
Felix Merckel, he knew too well, would not have hesitated to betray him to his comrades, and to inform them who it was that led them to battle.
What followed was like a ghastly confused phantasmagoria, in which bloodshed, salvoes, and death-rattles played their part. Why had he not died? How had he lived through it? These were the questions he asked himself on first regaining consciousness and opening his eyes on the world, after lying for months between life and death. For him, then, no French sabre had been sharpened, no French bullet fired.
The one complete atonement his conscience told him it was in his power to make had been denied him. Was a heavier one awaiting him now, as he drew near the dusky woodlands of his birthplace in the dim, grey dawn of day?
CHAPTER IV
It was eight o'clock in the morning, and already the rays of the sun had strengthened, as Boleslav left the wild tangle of the forest behind him, and beheld his home stretched out at his feet.
He had not set eyes on it for ten years. His first fierce impulse now was to shake his fist at the village which lay there so hypocritically idyllic in the calm of early morning, with its white toy cottages set in bowers of green bushes, its curls of blue-grey smoke, and opalescent slate church spire rising peacefully against the sky.
Beyond were the magnificent groups of old trees with dark, almost black foliage and yellowish trunks belonging to the Castle park, which sloped away on the eastern side of the hill. But the Castle itself, that had crowned the hill with its shining battlemented twin-towers, and had queened the landscape far and wide--where was it? Had the earth opened and swallowed the imposing structure whole? For a moment he was startled and shocked at its total disappearance. Then he remembered. How stupid it was to have forgotten! They had burnt it down, razed it to the ground.