"Rittmaster Hume de Carrolside, with a troop of Scottish pistoliers, has arrived to reinforce Otto Louis, the rhine-grave."
"Scots again!" said Tilly, with a terrible smile, as he scratched his leg, which a Scottish musketeer had pierced by a bullet in the Hartz forest; "Maladetta! it is too much!—Ere-long we shall not have room to move between the Black Sea and the Baltic for this Protestant scum."
A mysterious sound was heard below the bed again; it sounded like the grunt of a pig, and Tilly raised his head to listen.
"Heaven keep Dreghorn awake!" thought I; "for if he sleeps and snores we are lost!"
"This old house is wonderfully full of rats," said Tilly; "well, have you heard any thing more?"
"Nothing, señor generalissimo, save that King Christian, by the erection of redoubts and turf sconces, is leaving nothing undone to secure every where the banks and the passage of the Elbe."
"The fool! when too late he will learn the power of the Empire."
"Your excellency is the greatest general under heaven; vaya usted à los infernos!" he added in a low voice, as he counted the gold pieces under the shade of the table. "Away to the infernal regions, for a beggarly old skinflint!"
"Go, my priceless Bandolo," said Tilly; "recross this muddy Elbe; become once more a Dane, a Dutchman, or a Holsteiner, for I know thou art a very Proteus, and spread every where the rumour that I am about to retire towards the Weser. I know that thou art faithful to the empire, Bandolo; though I have heard it said, that he who betrayeth one cause will betray another. The Count of Carlstein hath said to me more than once, that he considered the principle of secret intelligence as dishonourable. A chivalric fool! If a battle is gained, or a city won, what matters it whether or not the victors owe their success to force or fraud? No man is qualified to lead an army unless he is inclined to obtain tidings of the foe by every possible means that do not include open assassination or public dishonour."
Bandolo smiled.