It was a tedious drive to the quarters courteously provided for them, and both St. Arnaud and Gavin suspected that they were being driven in a roundabout manner, to confuse their sense of locality. Arrived at their quarters, the Prussian officer, Lieutenant Bohlen, led them, into a room, and exacting the usual promises from them that they would not leave the house without permission and an escort, removed the handkerchiefs from their eyes. He then left, to report their arrival at headquarters, after ordering dinner to be sent them. The dinner was very good, and they were still at it when Lieutenant Bohlen returned.
“The King will see you to-night after he has supped, and meanwhile desires that you be made comfortable.”
Gavin spent a good part of the afternoon making a toilet for the King of Prussia. He bathed and shaved, and put on clean linen from top to toe, and his handsome white uniform and varnished boots.
“And I think,” he complacently remarked to St. Arnaud, “the King will find me a different person from the great gaby he hauled out of the closet. Oh, I shall never forgive myself for not knocking him down—I could have done it so easily.”
St. Arnaud, too, had made an elaborate toilet, and as he surveyed himself and Gavin, he rather wounded Gavin’s self-love by saying:
“You and I are obliged to dress well. The King of Prussia is shabbier than any captain in his army—but—he is the King of Prussia, and he can afford to be shabby.”
About eight o’clock in the evening, another officer, Major Count von Armfeld, appeared, and politely introducing himself as aide-de-camp to his Majesty, requested them to go with him.
It was a beautiful moonlight night as the party emerged into one of the quaintest and oldest streets of Breslau. They were near a splendid bridge across the Oder, and the moon shone brightly on the placid bosom of the river. Everywhere were the signs of military occupation. Churches had been turned into barracks, public buildings into arsenals, and nearly every house had officers billeted in it.
After crossing the bridge, they entered a handsome street, at the end of which was a large and splendid mansion. A couple of sentinels were pacing before the door.
“That is where his Majesty lives,” said Von Armfeld. “It is called the King’s House. It has a garden to it, in which the King takes exercise.”