"Times there are when I know not whether I am of the living or the dead. It is twenty years since our happy days—twenty years since I was wounded at the battle of Idstedt—and it seems as if 'twere twenty ages."
"Old friend, I am indeed glad to meet you again."
"Yes, old you may call me with truth," said he, with a sad weary smile as he passed his hand tremulously over his whitened locks, which I could remember being a rich auburn.
All reserve was at an end now, and we speedily recalled a score and more of past scenes of merriment and pleasure, enjoyed together—prior to the campaign of Holstein—in Copenhagen, that most delightful and gay of all the northern cities; and, under the influence of memory, his now withered face seemed to brighten, and some of its former expression stole back again.
"Is this your fishing or shooting quarters, Carl?" I asked.
"Neither. It is my permanent abode."
"In this place, so rural—so solitary? Ah! you have become a Benedick—taken to love in a cottage, and so forth—yet I don't see any signs of——"
"Hush! for God's sake! You know not who hears us," he exclaimed, as terror came over his face; and he withdrew his hand from the table on which it was resting, with a nervous suddenness of action that was unaccountable, or as if hot iron had touched it.
"Why?—Can we not talk of such things?" asked I.
"Scarcely here—or anywhere to me," he said, incoherently. Then, fortifying himself with a stiff glass of cognac and foaming seltzer, he added: "You know that my engagement with my cousin Marie Louise Viborg was broken off—beautiful though she was, perhaps is still, for even twenty years could not destroy her loveliness of feature and brilliance of expression—but you never knew why?"