Naturally, every waking hour was spent in planning and dreaming of escape, but St. Arnaud counselled patience.
“Wait until we know something more of our surroundings and the people about us. I have an idea in my mind about the commandant. And, besides, we shall hear from Madame Ziska in time, and I have the greatest confidence in that woman’s friendship.” To all of which Gavin gave a grumbling assent.
In that time, St. Arnaud and Gavin, who, a month before, had never exchanged a word, came to know each other better than they knew any other men in the world. Gavin’s trustful and generous nature was filled with admiration at the calmness and even gayety with which St. Arnaud bore his misfortunes. He made a careful toilet every day, sang and whistled cheerfully, and amused himself and Gavin, too, by supplying what he called the deficiencies of a limited education. He studied German industriously, and succeeded in borrowing from the commandant a few old books on military science, which he read with diligence if not with profit.
“You see,” he said to Gavin, “I was taught no end of Latin and Greek and music and grammar and fencing, and all sorts of things that an officer should know; but this original person, the King of Prussia, has made all these things perfectly useless. Some of our generals whom he has defeated knew more Latin and Greek and fencing than I; but yet they were whipped. However, if England, your country, will continue to assist the Empress Queen, we may yet beat Frederick. And meanwhile I am doing my best to study the art of war, although, according to the books, the King’s tactics are all wrong.”
Gavin would smile at this and listen, but left to himself, he had not the calm fortitude of the older man. Nothing in the way of danger or privation could quench Gavin’s spirit as long as he was on horseback and roaming about the country; but the confinement of a prison for a week did more to depress him than a month of dangers and hazards. Often he would toss about on his narrow bed and groan loudly in the very anguish of his heart, and then be shamed into fortitude by St. Arnaud laughing at him. And St. Arnaud declined to consider either of them the most unfortunate of men.
“I grant you,” said he, “that I would rather be at Versailles, as I was a year ago, than shut up here in Glatz. But the other was an imprisonment, too. What do you think of getting up at five o’clock, spending the whole day in attendance on the King, in court clothes and periwig? Ah! how hot it was in summer, and how cold it was in winter! Never a moment to sit down, always wearing a grin, when one would much rather have scowled. I was freer when I was a captain in Dufour’s regiment than ever I was in the King’s Musketeers, where even the private soldiers are gentlemen.”
“But we will never get out. Prince Charles beaten, what is there to keep that long-nosed Frederick from marching to Vienna? Tell me that, I say.”
“Don’t trouble yourself about that. Let us see how we can get to Vienna ourselves. It is time we were hearing from Madame Ziska, for I am sure she has not forgotten us.”
The very next morning a parcel was brought them, with an unsealed letter. All had been opened and the letter read. It ran:
“Dear Captain St. Arnaud: Knowing you and your fellow-prisoner, Sublieutenant Hamilton, were well fed by the excellent commandant, I had difficulty in thinking of something you needed. But remembering how excessively particular you are about your toilet, I send you some powder and scented soap. I am leaving here to-day in hopes of some time reaching Vienna, where I expect to find an engagement at the opera house. I shall stop a few days on the road with some relatives of mine, honest shopkeepers. How strange is life! One day I sup with the greatest king in the world; the next I visit people who hang a bag of wool in one window and a hank of yarn in the other, to signify what they have to sell. I scorn, as you see, the common affectation of representing my family to be more important than it really is.