The night was unusually serene; the month was August; and, as I looked back at Zaberne, I felt somewhat influenced by the beauty of the scenery and the silence of the hour. Around the city, the Sarre wound between woods of chestnut, and over it, on a lofty rock, stood a castle of the Bishops of Strasbourg, in the deep arched windows of which, red lights that twinkled, showed where Cardinal de Lavalette still held revel with some of his officers; for that old fortress was his head-quarters.
While leaving the city by its only avenue, a steep and narrow path, hewn through the solid rock in the olden time, the French cavalry trumpets—sharp, shrill, and warlike—rang in the clear atmosphere, as they played a stirring march; while the aspect of the successive sections of steel-trapped horsemen, as they defiled by threes from the ancient arch of the town-gate, and dipped into the deep path of echoing rock, with helmets, swords, and corslets glinting to the moon—their bridles and scabbards clanking—was sufficiently stirring and picturesque to raise even my sombre spirit from the thoughts on which it had brooded for some days past.
'There sleep the brave whom no earthly trumpet will ever rouse again,' said Sir Quentin Home to me, as we passed the long and gloomy mound which marked where we buried the dead.
'By this time to-morrow many of us may be still and cold, as they are to-night,' thought I.
As we penetrated into the mountains, the music ceased, and we rode in silence; even conversing in the ranks being forbidden.
The moon shed her clear cold light in a brilliant flood along the rocky vale. At the bottom of the latter ran a torrent towards the Rhine. It was bordered by groves of pale-green willow, the branches and tremulous leaves of which swept up the foam that gleamed on the chafed rocks and rushing water. In some places, olive-trees and flowering osiers mingled with them. Apart from the dull, monotonous tramp of nine hundred horse upon the road or sward, the silence was broken only by the occasional bark of a shepherd's dog, as its wakeful ear caught the distant sound; or the ominous bay of a wolf, prowling on the wooded peaks of the Vosges, and by some strange instinct scenting blood and slaughter on the midnight breeze already.
A ride of some miles brought us to a cascade, the white foam of which sparkled like a torrent of pearls as it plunged over the brow of a rock into a chasm. A single fairy-like rib of stone, forming an arch high above us, with its span clearly defined against the moon-lighted sky, gave access over this cascade to the small, but strong feudal castle of the Counts of Lutzelstein. This torrent flowed from a little lonely lake which bathed its walls, and was fed by the snowy rills of the Vosges.
Under Lieutenant Francis Ruthven, in this castle there was a garrison composed of eighty Scottish musketeers of Ramsay's regiment; but all was dark and sombre in tower and turret as we defiled through the valley below, and rode on, on our errand of death, unchallenged and unseen.
It was now that dark, cold hour which always precedes the dawn.
The Marquis ordered strict silence in the ranks, for we were about to debouch and form squadrons in the flat and open valley occupied by the bivouac of Pappenheim's cavalry.