He pressed her to his breast, and starting, awoke, to find it all but a dream; that the clock of the French village was striking the hour of three, and that around him were the weary Thuringians, sleeping in their blue greatcoats and spiked helmets, between their piles of loaded muskets, but to his half-awakened senses her voice seemed to linger in his ear, and he still felt her soft warm kiss on his lips.
He closed his eyes and strove to sleep, in the hope of that dear vision coming back again; but he strove in vain: he was thoroughly awakened now; so dreams or slumber come no more to Charlie Pierrepont.
The dawn of the 7th August came in, and the Prussian troops began their march on Forbach.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LETTER OF ERNESTINE.
The events of the war succeeded each other with frightful speed. Marshal MacMahon's spirited address to the army and his promise, 'with God's help, soon to take a brilliant revenge,' failed to inspire with courage the troops of France, whose military prowess seemed gone. The excitement in the army and at Paris grew terrible. Saarbrück was retaken by the Prussians; the French were again defeated at Forbach; vast bodies of prisoners taken in battle or by capitulation began to pour through the towns of Germany, where they were kindly received; the once great Empire of France seemed tottering to its fall, and on the 13th of August the Prussian scouts were at Pont-à-Mousson, on the Moselle.
Then, more fully to cut off MacMahon's communications with Metz, the 95th Thuringians, now greatly reduced in strength by fighting, and other troops, took post in the pleasant valley where the river divides the town in two parts. The town was soon filled by Prussian troops, but the hardy Thuringians pitched their tents near a village on the bank of the river, on a pretty wooded slope; and there on the first evening of the halt, Charlie received some intelligence from Frankenburg, which caused him much perplexity and thought.
Most of the furniture from the village had been brought into camp; before the tent of Captain Schönforst stood a table and chairs, and there he, with Charlie, Heinrich, and two other officers, sat smoking and drinking, and making merry, while their servants prepared a repast for them.
The aspect of the camp was very picturesque; it was now the beginning of evening, the August sun was sinking behind a wooded mountain range, the 'blue Moselle' looked bluer than ever between its green and fertile banks, and the rooks were cawing noisily overhead in the stately old beeches, amid which the tents of the 95th were pitched.
A single day's halt had enabled the officers to remove all the mud of the march; parade suits of uniform with fresh lace had been donned in lieu of old 'fighting jackets;' boots were polished and spurs burnished, and Schönforst wore a sword of which he was justly vain, as he had received it from the hands of King William after a battle in the campaign of 1866, when he was but a feldwebel, but won his silver shoulder-straps by bravery.