The day was a busy one; and it was not till we halted for the night that I found an opportunity of speaking to Heinzel. I inquired of him how it was that he had not recognised Theodore Werner in his comrade Schmidt. He then informed me that he knew the lover of the unhappy Jacqueline only by name, and by his letters, but had never seen him. At the time of his abode in Frankfort, there were a large number of Prussian officers in garrison there, in consequence of the revolutionary attempt of 1833; and it was not till after Werner's sudden appearance in Herr Schraube's house, upon the day of the wedding, that Heinzel learned his surname. In the letters Theodore was the only name used. Heinzel seemed to have been greatly shaken and alarmed by that morning's unexpected meeting. He was a brave fellow in the field; but I could see that he did not relish the idea of a personal encounter with the man he had so deeply injured, and that he would be likely to do what he could to avoid it. There was no immediate necessity to think about the matter; for the squadron did not rejoin the regiment, as we had expected, but was attached to a Spanish brigade, and sent away in a different direction.
Two months elapsed before we again saw the main body of the regiment, and the various changes and incidents that intervened nearly drove from my memory Heinzel's story and his feud with Schmidt. At last we rejoined headquarters, one broiling day in June, at a small town of Old Castile. After so long a separation, in bustling times of war, comrades have much to say to each other, and soon the officers of the three squadrons were assembled at the posada, discussing the events that had filled the interval. The trumpet-call to evening stables produced a dispersion, at least of the subalterns, who went to ascertain that the horses were properly put up, and the men at their duty. My troop was quartered in half-a-dozen houses, adjacent to each other, and on arriving there, the sergeant-major reported all present except Heinzel. I was not very much surprised at his absence, but concluded that the heat of the day, and the abundance of wine,—particularly good and cheap in that neighbourhood,—had been too much for him, and that he was sleeping off, in some quiet corner, the effects of excessive potations. I mentally promised him a reprimand, and an extra guard or two, and returned to my billet. The next morning, however, it was the same story—Heinzel again absent, and had not been at his quarters all night. This required investigation. I could not think he had deserted; but he might have got quarrelsome in his cups, have fallen out with the Spaniards, and have been made away with in some manner. I went to the house where he was billeted. The stable, or rather cowshed, was very small, only fit for two horses, and consequently Heinzel and one other man, a Pole, were the only troopers quartered there. I found the Pole burnishing his accoutrements, and singing, in French most barbarously broken, the burden of a chanson à boire. He could give no account of his comrade since the preceding day. Towards evening Heinzel had gone out with another German, and had not since made his appearance. I inquired the name of the other German. It was Franz Schmidt. This immediately suggested very different suspicions from those I had previously entertained as to the cause of Heinzel's absence. On further questioning, the Pole said that Schmidt came into the billet, and spoke to Heinzel loudly and vehemently in German, of which language he (the Pole) understood little, but yet could make out that the words used were angry and abusive. Heinzel replied meekly, and seemed to apologise, and to try to soften Schmidt; but the latter continued his violence, and at last raised his hand to strike him, overwhelming him, at the same time, with opprobrious epithets. All this was extracted from the Pole by degrees, and with some difficulty. He could not, or would not, tell if Heinzel had taken his sabre with him, but there could be little doubt, for it was not to be found. The Pole was afraid of getting himself, or Heinzel, into trouble by speaking openly; but he evidently knew well enough that the two Germans had gone out to fight. I immediately went to the captain of Schmidt's troop, and found him in great anger at the absence of one of his best men. Several foreigners had deserted from the regiment within the last few months, and he suspected Schmidt of having followed their example, and betaken himself to the Carlists. What I told him scarcely altered his opinion. If the two men had gone out to fight, it was not likely that both were killed; and if one was, the survivor had probably deserted to escape punishment. The affair was reported to the colonel, and parties of foot and horse were sent to patrol the environs, and seek the missing men. At last they were found, in a straggling wood of willows and alder-bushes, that grew on marsh land about a mile from the town. Heinzel was first discovered. He lay upon a small patch of sandy soil, which had manifestly been the scene of a desperate struggle, for it was literally ploughed up by the heavy trampling and stamping of men's feet. He had only one wound, a tremendous sabre-thrust through the left side, which must have occasioned almost instant death. From his corpse a trail of blood led to that of Schmidt, which was found about a hundred yards off. The conqueror in this fierce duel, he had fared little better than his victim. He had received three wounds, no one of them mortal, but from which the loss of blood had proved fatal. He had made an effort to return to the town, but had sunk down exhausted, probably in a swoon, and had literally bled to death.
Both the deceased men being Protestants, the Spanish priesthood would of course do nothing for them, and we had no chaplain. They were buried soldier-fashion in the same grave, near the place of their death, and the funeral service of the Church of England was read over them. A rough block of stone, that lay near at hand, was rolled to the grave, and partly imbedded in the earth; and I got a soldier, who had been a stone-cutter, to carve on it a pair of crossed swords, a date, and the letters T. W. None could understand the meaning of these initials, until I told that evening, after mess, the story of the Intercepted Letters.
GREENWICH TIME.
"The time is out of joint—oh, cursed spite!"—Hamlet.
We are no friends to modern miracles. Whether these be wrought at Trêves, Loretto, or Edinburgh, we protest and make head against them all; and we care not a farthing for the indignation of the miracle-monger, be he pope, prelate, priest, potentate, protector, or provost. The interference of modern town-councils, to which we have all been long accustomed, has at last reached a point which borders upon absolute impiety. Not content with poking their fingers into every civic and terrestrial mess—not satisfied with interfering in the functions of the superintendent of the city fulzie, and giving gratuitous and unheeded advice to prime ministers—they have at last aspired to control the sun, and to regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies according to their delectable will. Pray, do these gentlemen ever read their Bibles? Do they really think that they are so many Joshuas? Do they know what they are doing when they presume to interfere with the arrangements of Providence and of nature—to alter times and seasons, and to confound the Sabbath with the week? Our amazement at their unjustifiable proceedings is only surpassed by our wonder at the apathy which prevails among the insulted population. Beyond one or two feeble letters in the newspapers, there have been no symptoms of resistance. Surely they have some respect left for their beds and their religion—for their natural and their commanded rest. It will not do to remain suffering under this last monstrous outrage in apathy and indifference. The bailies shall not be permitted to eclipse Phœbus, and proclaim false hours to us with impunity. We are ready and willing to head a crusade upon this matter, and we call upon all sorts and sundries of our fellow-citizens to join us in insurrection against the nuisance.
How stand the facts of the case? Listen and perpend. At twelve of the night of Saturday the thirteenth day of January, one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, the public clocks of the city of Edinburgh were altered from their actual time by command of the Town Council, and advanced by twelve minutes and a half. To that extent, therefore, the clocks were made to lie. They had ceased to be regulated by the sun, and were put under civic jurisdiction. The amount of the variation matters little—it is the principle we contend for: at the same time it is quite clear that, if the magistrates possess this arbitrary power, they might have extended their reform from minutes to hours, and forced us, under the most cruel of all possible penalties, to rise in the depth of winter at a time when nature has desired us to be in bed.
Now, we beg once for all to state that we shall not get up, for the pleasure of any man, a single second sooner than we ought to do; and that we shall not, on any pretext whatever, permit ourselves to be defrauded, in the month of January, of twelve minutes and a half of our just and natural repose. Life is bitter enough of itself without enduring such an additional penalty. In our hyperborean regions, the sacrifice is too hard to be borne; and one actually shudders at the amount of human suffering which must be the inevitable consequence, if we do not organise a revolt. For let it be specially remembered, that this monstrous practical falsehood is not attended with any alleviating relaxations whatever. It is a foul conspiracy to drag us from our beds, and to tear us from connubial felicity. The law courts, the banks, the public offices, the manufactories, all meet at the accustomed matutinal hour; but that hour, be it six, eight, or nine, is now a liar, and has shot ahead of the sun. Countless are the curses muttered every morning, and not surely altogether unheard, from thousands of unhappy men, dragged at the remorseless sound of the bell from pallet and mattress, from bed of down or lair of straw, from blanket, sheet, and counterpane, to shiver in the bitter frost of February, for no better reason than to gratify the whim of a few burgesses congregated in the High Street, who have a confused notion that the motions of the sun are regulated by an observatory at Greenwich.