Tower came back in half an hour, reporting failure in the attempt to pacify Brotherton, who nevertheless joined the Doctor's little party at the station, having apparently recovered his serenity of temper, and abandoned his determination to forswear his senior's company.
Beer, coffee, bread and meat were still being lavishly distributed among the troops continually parading for departure, and the train-loads of soldiers passing through. And the exodus of panic-stricken visitors, flying from the little up-Rhine watering places, in apprehension of the arrival of the Emperor with his mitrailleuses, continued; until, in another hour, the shrunken finger of the Warlock wagged, and thenceforth the Rhine Valley Railways were totally blocked for civilian passengers, and given over to the transport of men and munitions of war.
Presently, when a train of coal-trucks from Kreuznach came jolting into Bingen, bearing on their sable flanks the chalk hieroglyphics that signified their official emptiness, P. C. Breagh was destined to behold personages of the loftiest rank and the utmost exclusiveness, German Serene Highnesses, Austrian Duchesses, and English peeresses, with their children and lap-dogs, their maids, chefs, coachmen, lackeys, and grooms, packed into these grimy vehicles without precedence or selection, or any seating-accommodation other than that afforded by an empty sack or an armful of straw.
The troop-train conveying the mounted gendarmerie of the Third Army Corps—huge men equipped as dragoons—to Mayence, afforded accommodation to the men, horses and vans of the Doctor's party. Long before the fortifications came in sight the roads were blotted out by marching columns, and the fields were dotted with moving transport-trains.
At Mayence, whose stone-paved streets were roaring with the passage of iron-shod wheels, the trampling of iron-shod hoofs, and the measured tramping of infantry battalions, the Doctor, stepping from the train, was seized upon by friends. Yet after the first eager interchange of interrogations and answers, he found time to bestow a parting hand-grip on Carolan and a final word of advice.
"And—put this in your pocket—it'll be a help to you if it doesn't hang you. They're lithographed by the Prussian War Department, and every German officer has one. And here's something else, a lot more use than the revolver those chaps stole from you. You'll know better than to use it unless in case of need!"
This was a folding pocket-map of the Eastern Departments of France, with certain military routes very nicely marked in red upon it. While the something else proved to be a wicker-covered metal pocket-flask, containing about half-a-pint of the whisky of Kinahan.
The donor added:
"Remember, train your memory to pigeon-hole things for later description, and never be caught taking notes, or fighting on a side! And—be on your guard with women, pretty ones especially. And—there's a scrap of paper in the pocket of the map-cover, may come in handy, at a pinch. No, no thanks! General von Reigen, that's the light blue Würtemburg Hussar officer talking to Tower—tells me Moltke and his staff are quartered at the Hotel de Holland. If so, the King won't be far off. He thinks Bismarck has gone to a house outside the town, but he can't swear to it. There goes a carriage with the Red Prince's big buck-nigger on the box. Shows his Highness must be somewhere hereabouts. As for the Crown Prince, nobody will say anything. He's marching—with an end in view. And they say the French are shooting uncommonly badly—and that half of the Reserve men don't know how to use their chassepots. Well, they'll have practice enough before long. Good luck, and good-bye!"
The "scrap of paper," upon later examination, proved to be a five-pound note, placed there by the hand that later penned those wonderful war-letters—under a wayside hedge, at a corner of a plank bivouac-table, on the zinc counter of a wine-shop filled with carousing soldiers—at the ebony and tortoiseshell éscritoire of Madame la Marquise, in the boudoir of the château that had been so sorely battered by those big potatoes of Moltke's.