I felt somewhat moved by the severe and complete retribution that had fallen on this once proud and artful coquette, and I promised to yield all the protection in my power. She declined to receive the golden links; but I insisted upon her doing so, and remembering, with something of awkwardness, the different relation in which we now stood to each other, and all the flowery love-speeches and magniloquent nonsense I had said to her in other times, I was in some haste to be gone, and bade her adieu.
As I issued into the Bourse, accompanied by the Highlander who bore my unsentimental purchase, which the hollow-cheeked passers beheld with eager and wolfish eyes, old Spürrledter hurried after me, and raising a hand to his white nightcap in the old style of his military salute—
"Herr Captain," said he, "I believe you know what a devil of a brother-in-law I have. Well: though an old soldier who has smelt powder at Prague and Fleura, I have a mortal terror of such a relation, and despite all your guards and gates he has been twice (the Lord alone knows how) in Stralsund here, and has robbed us each time of every thaler we possessed."
"What—within Stralsund?"
"Ay, here—in Stralsund."
"This rascal must be cunning as a lynx."
"Cunning as Lucifer, Herr Captain, and more wicked withal. I have the honour to point out to you, that this reputable relation of mine is hovering like a jackal about the Imperial camp, and, as I believe you have some dark scores to settle with him, he might be lured within reach of a party, and consigned to the care of the provost-marshal."
At these words, a glow of vengeance swelled up in my breast. I thanked the ex-corporal of Reitres, and promised to call again; but other events frustrated his kind intention of sending his troublesome brother-in-law in search of another world. With a light heart I hastened to the residence of Ernestine, yet remembering with something of shame—a shame that made my love for her the more pure and noble—my transient folly at Glückstadt.
After that day I never again saw Prudentia; for though I was three months longer in Stralsund, I avoided the shop at the corner of the Bourse; for I had no wish that Ian, or any of our officers or friends—especially Major Fritz—should discover in the plump little victualler, the Prudentia of my early days of soldiering—my "mysterious countess," as Karl called her in jest; moreover, the progress and incidents of that disastrous siege soon gave me other and graver things to think of.