'Your hospitality, Monseigneur, would endanger my honour as a loyal soldier,' said I, impatient to leave for ever the home and vicinity of one who had cost my heart so dear.
'Well—well; the main-body of your army is far from here, beyond the Rhine, under the Marechal de la Force. How stand you for funds?'
'I am at zero, Monseigneur,' said I; for I had spent so much in procuring luxuries for my fair companion, that I had scarcely a denier left.
The Duke wrote for me an order on his Comptroller-General of Finance for a thousand crowns; but when presented, only fifty were forthcoming; for war and impending conquest had sorely impaired the resources of his once princely inheritance.
He presented me with a beautiful pair of silver-mounted girdle pistols; and now many gentlemen and cavaliers of his court, who had hitherto held coldly aloof, pressed around me, with those compliments and congratulations that flow so readily from a courtier's oily tongue; but I observed that still the suspicious or haughty Pappenheim, and the sullen De Bitche, were resolved to shun me. After some frivolous conversation I retired, and was conducted, by M. Schreckhorn, the Swiss, to my own apartments, where again I seated myself at the table as before, to ponder over all that had passed.
CHAPTER XLIX
DEFIANCE.
The cheers of the people still rang in the streets, where several puncheons of wine were set abroach by the master of the household; the contents of these were quaffed by the German troops, who thereafter, with great liberality, gave the loyal citizens the purple staves to suck.
In my chamber I found my valise, which in the hurry and excitement of recent events I had quite forgotten, although it contained the king's despatches to the Duc de Lavalette, and Sir John Hepburn's baton and diploma as Marechal of France. The documents I resolved to secure about my person for the future, until I could place them in the hands of those to whom they were addressed.
'How came this portmanteau here?' I asked my servant.