I had but time to give him my despatch, as we passed through the court which led to the governor's apartments. I was searched in the presence of that important functionary, a meagre old captain of invalids, who had been roused from his bed, and was evidently half asleep. I stoutly denied my being "the criminal who had offended the majesty of the people." But as the governor himself, on gazing at me with his purblind eyes, was perfectly satisfied of my identity, there was no use in contesting the point. A couple of sentinels were placed at the door of my cell, and I was left, like himself, to my slumbers. Before the door closed, I grasped my guide by the throat. The thought that I had been entrapped, actually agonized me.
"Am I betrayed?" I asked, in a whisper of fury.
The only answer was, "Mordecai."
I felt security in the word, and, without a further pang, heard his tread echoing along the distant corridor.
Time rolls on, whether we are happy or miserable. Morning came, and found me feverish from a thousand dreams. Noon came, and my impatience grew with the hour. Evening came, and yet no symptom of my liberation. If, "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," confidence duped, and blindly, weakly, rashly duped, turns to torture.
Why trust a known agent of the police? Why put my liberty into his hands? Why, above all, make him master of my papers? I was overwhelmed with shame. I writhed with remorse. As hour after hour dragged into slow length along, I sank from dejection to dejection, or burst from rage to rage. But at last, when the drums of the garrison were making their final flourish for the night, the key turned in the door of my cell, and the Jew entered. I almost sprang upon him, and his life would have been worth little, but for the words—"You may now leave the fortress." He told me, further, that my absence was fortunate, for a domiciliary visit had been paid to my apartments by direction of the municipality; my trunks examined, and my doors sealed. My absence was imputed to flight; and, as jails were then the only safe residences in France, I had escaped actual imprisonment simply by my volunteer detention; to watch the event, had been the source of his delay. All was speedily settled with the old commandant, who was now as perfectly "convinced, on his own knowledge," that I was not the chevalier, as he had been convinced on the night before that I was. Mendoza's proofs were registered in due form; and with unspeakable delight I once again mounted his cabriolet, and heard the chains of the drawbridge rattle behind me.
My Jew had been true to his pledge. I found horses provided for me at a lonely cabaret, a league off. With the minute foresight which men of his trade learn, he had provided for me a couple of disguises—the garb of a peasant, which I was to use when I passed among the soldiery; and the uniform of an aide-de-camp, with which I was to keep down enquiries when I came among the peasantry. But I was weary of disguise. It had never thriven with my temperament. I was determined, at all events, now to trust to chance and my proper person; and if I must fail, have the satisfaction of failing after my own style. The only recompense which my magnanimous police-officer would receive, was a promise that I should mention his conduct to Mordecai; and, gathering up his rejected wardrobe, he departed.
Fortunately I found disguises unnecessary, though at any other time they might have been essential. The country was all in a state of flight, and every man was too much employed in securing himself, to think of laying hold of others. Thus galloped I through hill and dale, through bush and brier, unquestioned and almost unseen; until, on the evening of the fourth day, as I plunged into a forest, which for the last half hour I had been imagining into a scene of fairyland, a bower where a pilgrim might finish his journey for life, or a man, "crazed by care, or crossed in hopeless love," might forget woman and woe together—I was awakened to the realities of things by the whistle of a bullet, which struck off a branch within an inch of my head, followed by a fierce howl for the countersign. By all the laws of war, the howl should have come first; but these were not times for ceremony. A troop of Hulans rushed round me, sabre in hand. I stood like a stoic; and, of course, attempted to tell who I was. But my German was unintelligible to my captors, and my French, a suspicious language on a Prussian outpost, only confirmed their opinion that I was born to be stripped. Accordingly one demanded my watch, another my purse, and I was in a fair way of entering the Prussian lines in a state of pauperism, or of being "left alone in my glory" by shot or sabre, when an officer rode up, whom I had casually known in some Parisian circle. To him I could explain myself, and to him I exhibited the envelope of my letter, inscribed with the words, "Grand Quartier General." My new friend bowed to this awful address like a Turk to the firman of the padisha, poured out a volley of wrath on the troop, ordered the instant and very reluctant restitution of my property, and with a couple of the squadron at our heels, took me under his escort, to deliver my papers in person.
After an hour's gallop through rocks, rivulets, and brambles, which seemed without end, and totally uninhabited, except by an occasional patrol of the irregulars of the Austrian and Prussian forces—barbarians as savage-looking as ever were Goth or Hun, and capital substitutes for the wolves and wild-boars which they had ejected for the time—a sudden opening of the forest brought us within view of the immense camp of the combined armies.
All the externals of war are splendid; it is the interior, the consequences, the operation of that mighty trampler of man that are startling. This was my first sight of that most magnificent of all the atrocious inventions of human evil—an army. The forces of the two most warlike monarchies of Europe were spread before me; nearly a hundred and fifty thousand troops, with all the numberless followers of a host in the field, covering a range of low hills which circled the horizon. While we were still at a considerable distance, a gun was fired from the central hill, answered by others from the flanks. The rolling of drums set the vast line in motion, and just at the moment when the sun was lying on the edge of the west, the brigades, descending each from its height, halted on the slope. The whole vast manoeuvre was executed with the exactness of a single mind. The blaze of the sun on the arms, the standards, and the tents crowning the brow of the hills, was magical. "Are they marching to battle?" was my amazed question to my companion. His only answer was to check his charger, take off his shako, and bend his forehead to his saddle-bow. A burst of universal harmony, richer than I had ever yet conceived, explained the mystery. It was the evening prayer. The fine bands of the regiments joined the voices of the soldiery, and I listened, in unbroken rapture and reverence, until its close. In court or cathedral, in concert or shrine, I had never before so much felt the power of sound. It finished in a solemn chorus, and accumulation of music. I could have almost imagined it ascending, embodied, to heaven.