To be brief, after a hard ride round the shore of the gulf, and seeing every where the poor peasantry flying at our approach to moor, morass, and woodland, we reached the great fortress of Fredricksort, only to find it a pile of dismantled and blackened ruins; for in some of their wild excesses, Merodé's officers (on the very night we were bombarding Kiel) had set their quarters on fire. They were thus compelled to remove to a neighbouring village, from whence—by orders received direct from Wallenstein—they had marched no one knew whither; but by certain smoky indications at the horizon, we supposed their route lay towards Flensborg. Merodé had several ladies with him in caleches, and a number of other women, and a vast quantity of plunder, in waggons and on horses; thus his regiment marched off like a triumphal procession, singing in chorus, with all their drums beating and colours flying, and with crowds of camp followers mingling and shouting among their riotous and disorderly ranks.
Such was the account we received from the tall Jesuit, Father Ignatius, who had visited Fredricksort on the same good errand that had brought us from Kiel, and whom we met fortunately, in a narrow green lane (near the ruined castle), where the good man had dismounted from his mule, and taken off its bridle, that the animal might crop the herbage that grew by the wayside.
Accompanied by the Jesuit, we returned towards Kiel with the unpleasant conviction that our journey had been perfectly futile; and having a fresh source of anxiety in the doubt, whether Merodé had taken Gabrielle away with his ladies who occupied the carriages, or whether the poor girl had perished among the flames of the burning fortress.
"There were no less than six waggons crowded by soldiers' wives, all as drunk as liquor could make them," said Father Ignatius.
"'Tis fortunate for those ladies that the old Roman law, by which a husband could slay his wife if her breath indicated wine, no longer exists," said I.
"But those ammunition wives smelt only of schnaps and brandy," said the priest, turning up his eyes.
Book the Tenth
CHAPTER XX.
THE HIGHLAND OUTPOST.
Through tracts of level land, as yet unscathed by war; along bridle-roads, bordered by rich meadows and comfortable farmhouses; and through little towns, that were as picturesque and as pretty as bright red bricks, spotless plaster, and paint could make them, we rode back by the way we had come. On one side lay the gulf; on the other, occasional tarns and groves of wood, covering the gentle slopes that rose almost imperceptibly from the margin of the dark blue sea. Yet the denizens of those pleasant places were all bondsmen; and, without consent of the lord from whom they held their hufe by tenure, could neither marry nor give in marriage, become craftsmen, or engage in service elsewhere than in the land on which they were born.