"The Gräfine von Spitzberger has been with me. The man we saw is indeed my husband, M. Graindorge, the story of whose death has been all a mistake; and he proved to her his identity, by his knowledge of all our family affairs. Oh, Carl! oh, my poor darling! the real husband of my heart and my only love! I must leave you—yes—and by the time you read this, shall be far on the railroad for France. Graindorge shall never see me more; my father's house or a convent must be my shelter now. My last hope is, that you will not attempt to follow me; my last prayer, that God may bless and comfort you."
The lines were written tremulously. I kissed my darling's wedding-ring, placed it by a ribbon at my neck, and wept bitterly. Then the room seemed to swim around me; I became senseless, and was ill in bed for days. Our home was broken now. It was desolate—oh, so desolate, without my Paquette! She was gone. She had left me for ever! And every object around seemed to recall her more vividly to me—her piano, her music, the little ornaments we had bought together at the Alster Arcade, and the pillow her cheek had rested on. "She will write to me," thought I; but no letter came. And something of jealousy began to mingle with the bitterness of my soul. Was she with Graindorge?
I think I should have gone mad but for the events that occurred so quickly now, for one week sufficed to change the whole face of affairs in Hamburg. France had declared war against Prussia. Trade stood still; silence reigned in our splendid Bourse, usually the most noisy and busy scene in the world; the Elbe was empty of shipping, for its buoys and lights were all destroyed. The Prussians, horse, foot, and artillery, were pouring towards Travemünde, where a landing of the French was expected. In one day nearly every horse in Hamburg was seized for military purposes, and the city was ordered to furnish eighteen thousand infantry for the Landwehr.
Of this force I was one. A strip of paper was left at my office one day, and the next noon saw me in the barracks near the Damthor-wall, and before the colonel, an officer of Scottish descent, the Graf von Hamilton. Then, like thousands of others, my plain clothes were taken from me, and I received in lieu a spiked helmet of glazed leather, a blue tunic faced with white, a goat-skin knapsack, great-coat, and camp-kettle, a needle-gun, bayonet, and sword. We were all accoutred without delay, and within two hours were at drill, under a burning sun, in the Heilinghaist-feld, between Hamburg and Altona. My desk, my office, my home, knew me no more; yet I often mounted guard near the chambers of our firm in the Admiralitatstrasse. Paquette and my previous existence seemed all a dream—a dream that had passed away for ever. And though the gay streets, the tall spires, the sights and sounds in our pleasure-loving city were all unchanged, I seemed to have lost my identity. My former life was completely blotted out.
From the Landwehr, with many others, I was speedily drafted into the Seventy-sixth Hanoverians, and in three weeks we were ordered to join the Army of the Rhine. Though I had studied in Berlin, I was not a Prussian, but a native of the free city of Hamburg. Like many of my comrades, who were fathers of families, or only sons, torn from their homes and peaceful occupations, I had no interest in the cruel and wanton war on which we were about to enter; and more than all, I loved France, for it was the native land of Paquette Champfleurie.
In the then horror of my mind, the war was certainly somewhat of a change or relief, and the excitement around drew me from my own terrible thoughts. I was going towards Lorraine, where even while fighting against her poor countrymen, I might see my lost one, my wife—for such I still deemed her, despite the odious Baptiste Graindorge; and so I fondly and wildly speculated. The idea of being killed and buried where Paquette might perhaps pass near my grave, was even soothing to my now morbid soul, for I knew that she had loved me long before that man came between us with his wealth of gold napoleons; so she must love me still—Carl, whose heart had never wandered from her.
But there is something great and inspiring in war and its adjuncts, after all. I remember that on the day we left our beautiful Hamburg, when I heard the crash of the brass bands and saw the North German colours waving in the wind, above the long, long column of glazed helmets and bright bayonets, as our regiment, with the Forty-seventh Silesians, the Fifty-third Westphalians, and the Eighty-eighth Nassauers, defiled through the Damthor, and past the Esplanade towards the Bahnhof, I became infected by the enthusiasm around me, and found myself joining in the mad shouts of "Hurrah, Germania!" and in the old Teutonic song which the advanced guard of Uhlans struck up, brandishing their lances the while—
"O Tannebaum, O Tannebaum, wie grün sind deine Blatter!"
as we marched for the Rhine, towards which we were forwarded fast by road and rail.
We were soon face to face with the gallant French, and how fast those terrible battles followed each other at Weissenburg, Forbach, Spicheren, and elsewhere, the public prints have already most fully related. Though I did not seek death any more than others my comrades, I cared little for life, yet (until one night in October) I escaped in all three of those bloody conflicts, and many a daily skirmish, without a wound, though the chassepot balls whistled thickly round me, and more than once the fire of a mitrailleuse, a veritable stream of bullets, swept away whole sections by my side. I have had my uniform riddled with holes, my helmet grazed many times, and part of my knapsack shot away; yet somehow fate always spared poor Carl Steinmetz; for he had no enmity in his heart towards the poor fellows who fell before his needle-gun. At last we rapidly pushed on, and reduced many fortified places as we advanced to blockade Metz. Then Lorraine lay around us, and I gazed on the scenery with emotions peculiarly my own, for I thought of Paquette, of her animated face and all her pretty ways, and of all she had told me of her native province, its dense forests where wolves lurked, its wild mountains, its salt springs and lakes—Lorraine now, as in centuries long past, a subject for dispute between France and Germany.