Suddenly he observed near him, while lingering over his wine in the speise-saal, which had emptied of guests, the Baron Rhineberg and, of all men in the world, Baron Grünthal, busy with their meerschaums and tankards of beer. Both seemed very quiet and taciturn; they had been speaking very little, which perhaps was the reason that, in his abstraction, they had hitherto been unnoticed by Charlie, who now held up the Staats Anzeiger between them and him, as he had no wish to be recognised by either. However, they were a link between him and Frankenburg, so he could not help listening intently to whatever they said.
They were talking at slow intervals of some recent sorrow they had sustained; but so great was the slaughter of the French war, that everyone in Germany then was wearing crape or mourning for the loss of some friend.
'Ach Gott—yes,' said Rhineberg; 'it is certainly a great calamity even to the city of Aachen.'
'When I saw the black flag flying on the old Schloss,' responded Grunthal, 'and the hatchment with its sixteen quarters over the gate, I—I knew that the dreaded event had taken place at last.'
'That we had lost a dear friend?'
'Yes. The poor old Graf!' said Grünthal, with a sigh.
Charlie felt startled—almost inclined to speak and discover himself, but restrained the inclination, and listened intently, thinking, 'Well, the poor old veteran of Ligny and Waterloo could not be expected to live for ever.'
'He has never suffered more, I think,' said Rhineberg, after taking a long pull at his pipe, and watching the smoke thoughtfully as it ascended in concentric rings towards the lofty ceiling of the speise-saal, 'never, since that morning when the devilish Extra Blatt had in it the mutilated telegram concerning the capture of Heinrich by the Francs-Tireurs.'
'And the severe wounding—was it not mortally?—of the Englander, Herr Pierrepont,' added Grunthal, with something in his throat that sounded, as Charlie thought, exceedingly like a chuckle of satisfaction.
But Heinrich, his dear friend and comrade, had been taken by the Francs-Tireurs! Knowing, from experience, how the Francs-Tireurs and the Prussians were in the habit of handling each other, this was an event to cause him anxiety, but, as it happened, only for a few minutes.