"At Gravelotte, Count."
The General raised his eyebrows, the President put on his eye-glasses, the young ladies glanced at each other again—Else this time with a thrill of delight, while Mieting almost broke out into unrestrained laughter at the puzzled expression of the Count.
"That is, to be accurate," continued Reinhold, whose cheeks were flushed by the attention which his last word had excited, as he turned to the General; "on the morning of that day I was on the march from Rezonville to St. Marie. Then, when it was learned, as the General knows, that the enemy was not retreating along the northern road, and the second army had executed the great flank movement to the right toward Berneville and Amanvilliers, we—the eighteenth division—came under fire at half-past eleven in the morning in the neighborhood of Berneville. Our division had the honor of opening the battle, as the General will recall."
Reinhold passed his hand over his brow. The dreadful scenes of those fateful days again came to his mind. He had forgotten the offensive scorn which had been couched in the Count's question, and which he wished to resent by his account of his participation in the battle.
"Did you go through the whole campaign?" asked the General; and there was a peculiar, almost tender tone in his deep voice.
"I did, General, if I may include the two weeks from the eighteenth of July to the first of August, when I was drilling in Coblenz. As a native Hamburger and a seaman I had not had the good fortune of thoroughly learning the military discipline in my youth."
"How did you happen to enter the campaign?"
"It is a short story, and I will tell it briefly. On the fifteenth of July I lay with my ship at the Roads of Southampton, destined for Bombay—captain of a full-rigged ship for the first time. On the evening of the sixteenth we were to sail. But on the morning of the sixteenth the news came that war had been declared; at noon, having already secured a suitable substitute, I severed my connection with the ship-owners and with my ship; in the evening I was in London; during the nights of the sixteenth and seventeenth on the way to Ostende by way of Brussels, down the Rhine to Coblenz, where I offered myself as a volunteer, was accepted, drilled a little, sent on, and—I don't know how it happened—assigned to the Ninth Corps, Eighteenth Division, —— Regiment, in which I went through the campaign."
"Were you promoted?"
"To the rank of Corporal at Gravelotte; on the first of September, the day after the great sally of Bazaine, to the rank of Vice-Sergeant-Major; on the fourth of September——"