That portion of the stream which I now approached, though broad, was shallow and frozen hard. Its banks were thickly fringed by willow trees, amid which the morning mist was rolling lazily. Here and there some of those great masses of detached copper-coloured rock which stud the scenery of Waldeck overhung the stream, and had their bases crusted with frozen foam.
The region being high and hilly, and the season midwinter, the atmosphere was intensely cold, yet I was dubious of the strength of the ice, and feared that my horse, with its wounded off hind leg, might flounder and fall if its hoofs pierced the covering of the stream. As this idea occurred to me I was about to dismount, and hold the animal by the bridle, when the appearance of a well-bearded human visage regarding me steadily from a cleft in the rocks, made me pause with a hand on my holster-flap, a motion which made the person instantly vanish.
The mist enveloping the willow-covered bank I had to traverse before reaching the stream was dense, and curling up in the sunshine, and it seemed to me that certain objects which at first resembled stumps of trees suddenly took the form of men, clad in white coats, the uniform of the French line; and, as the event proved, here were six men of the Regiment de Bretagne, a foraging party suborned by Bourgneuf to cut me off, and with them was the identical peasant whom Monjoy and I had met near the ruins of the old schloss—Karl Karsseboom.
I had the marshal's signed passport, but feared to ride forward or deliver it, and for a time remained unchallenged and irresolutely watching those men whose white-clad figures amid the frosty mist and tossing willows seemed indistinct and wavering, like Banquo's shadowy line of kings, or the weird sisters in "Macbeth."
I waved aloft the paper given me by Bourgneuf, the immediate reply to which was the levelling of four muskets; but three flashed in the pan, the priming having probably become wet over night. The bullet from the fourth, however, knocked my grenadier cap awry.
I then shook a white handkerchief, and demanded a parley; but a fifth and sixth musket flashed redly out of the white mist, making a hundred reverberations amid the river's bed, and another bullet grazed my left ear like a hot searing-iron. I was full of fury now, and while these would-be assassins were casting about and reloading, I heard a voice shout clearly in French, and with a mocking laugh—
"Peste! Arnaud de Pricorbin—il ne sait pas distinguer une femme d'une girouette!" (He knows not a woman from a weathercock—meaning that he was a bad shot, and could hit neither.)
The brother of the executed Volontaire de Clermont was here, and had preceded me to the ford; thus I was in peculiarly bad hands it would appear. Their six muskets were unserviceable as yet, so, spurring furiously, I rushed sword in hand at the whole group, firing a pistol and hurling it after the shot as I advanced.
Gored by the spurs, the poor old horse forgot his wound, and swept through my adversaries, crashing among the frozen willows, reeds, icicles, and rotten ice. For a moment I saw six fierce, dark-visaged fellows, with white coats, red epaulets, and black crossbelts, with their muskets clubbed to beat me down. By a backhanded stroke I slashed one across the face; but at the same moment a bayonet pierced my horse in the bowels, and he received a long wound that ripped open his near hind flank; this was from the musket of the German forester, who levelled it deliberately over a fragment of rock.
Maddened by pain and fury, the animal reared wildly back upon its haunches, and then, instead of riding towards the ford, swerved round, and treading some of our assailants under his hoofs, galloped straight along a road which led towards Wildungen, in a direction nearly opposite to that I wished to pursue.