I made my acknowledgments for his highness's condescension. Business then took the lead.
"You will now have a good despatch to transmit to our friends in England. The Count Clairfait has shown himself worthy of his reputation. I understand that the enemy's force consisted chiefly of the household troops of France; if so, we have beaten the best soldiers of the kingdom, and the rest can give us but little trouble. You will remark upon these points; and now for Paris."
A cry, or rather a shout of assent from the circle of officers, echoed the words, and we all put spurs to our horses, and followed the cortège through the noble old groves. But before we reached its confines, the firing had wholly ceased, and the enemy were hurrying down the slope of the Argonne, and crossing in great disorder a plain which separated them from their main body. Our light troops and cavalry were dashing in pursuit, and prisoners were continually taken. From the spot where we halted, the light of the sinking day showed us the rapid breaking up of the fugitive column, the guns, one by one, left behind; the muskets thrown away; and the soldiers scattered, until our telescopes could discover scarcely more than a remnant reaching the protection of the distant hill.
We supped that night on the green sward. The duke had invited his own staff, and that of Clairfait, to his tent, in honour of the day, and I never spent a gayer evening. His incomparable finish of manners, mingled with the cordiality which no man could more naturally assume when it was his pleasure, and his mixture of courtly pleasantry with the bold humour which campaigning, in some degree, teaches to every one, made him, if possible, more delightful, to my conception, than even in our first interview. Towards the close of the supper, which, like every thing else round him, was worthy of Sardanapalus, he addressed himself to me, and giving a most gracious personal opinion of what my "services had merited from the English minister," said that, "limited as his own means of rewarding zeal and ability might be, he begged of me to retain a slight memorial of his friendship, and of our day together on the heights of Argonne." Taking from the hand of Guiscard the riband and star of the "Order of Merit," the famous order instituted by the Great Frederic, he placed it round my neck, and proposed my health to the table as a "Knight of Prussia."
This was a flattering distinction, and, if I could have had entire faith in all the complimentary language addressed to me by the sitters at that stately table, I should have had visions of very magnificent things. But there is no antidote to vanity equal to an empty purse. If I had been born to one of the leviathan fortunes of our peerage, I might possibly have imagined myself possessed of all the talents of mankind, and with all its distinctions waiting for my acceptance; but I never could forget the grave lesson that I was a younger son. I sat, like the Roman in his triumph, with the slave, to lecture him, behind. However, I had a more ample evidence of the sincerity with which those compliments were paid, in the higher degree of trust reposed in me from day to day.
After the repast was ended, and the principal part of the guests had withdrawn, I was desired to wait for the communication of important intelligence—Guiscard and Varnhorst being the only officers of the staff who remained. A variety of papers, taken in the portfolio of one of the French generals who had fallen in the engagement of the day, were laid before us, and our little council proceeded to examine them. They were of a very various kind, and no bad epitome of the mind of a gallant and crackbrained coxcomb. Reflections on the conduct of the Allied armies, and conjectures on their future proceedings—both of so fantastic a kind, that the duke's gravity often gave way, and even the grim Guiscard sometimes wore a smile. Then came in a letter from some "confrère" in Paris, a tissue of gossip and grumbling, anecdotes of the irregularities of private life, and merciless abuse of the leaders of party. Interspersed with those were epistles of a more tender description; from which it appeared that the general's heart was as capacious as his ambition, and that he contrived to give his admiration to half a dozen of the élite of Parisian beauty at a time. Varnhorst was delighted with this portion of the correspondence; even the presence of the duke could not prevent him from bursting into explosions of laughter; and he ended by imploring possession of the whole, as models of his future correspondence, in any emergency which compelled him to put pen to paper in matters of the sex. But nearly the last of the documents in the portfolio was one deserving of all attention. It was a statement of the measures which had been enjoined by the Republican government for raising the population in arms; and, as an appendix, the muster-roll of the various corps which were already on their way to join the army of Dumourier. The duke read this paper with a countenance from which all gaiety had vanished and handed it to Guiscard to read aloud.
"What think you of that, gentlemen?" asked the duke, in his most deliberate tone.
Varnhorst, in his usual unhesitating style, said—"It tells us only that we shall have some more fighting; but, as we are sure to beat them, the more the better. Your highness knows as well as any man alive, that the maxim of our great master was, 'Begin the war by fighting as many pitched battles as you can. Skirmishes teach discipline to the rabble; allow the higher orders time to escape, the government to tamper, and to encourage the resistance of all. Pitched battles are thunderbolts; they finish the business at once; and, like the thunderbolts, they appear to come from a source which defies resistance by man.'"
"I think," said Guiscard, with his deep physiognomy still darkening, "that we lost, what is the most difficult of all things to recover—time."
The duke bit his lip. "How was it to be helped, Guiscard? You know the causes of the delay; they were many and stubborn."