Tales from the German Volume I Part 3

'What, before me, upon the walls!' cried the royal hero, embracing the bleeding Arwed. 'There is yet a true Swede! You are a captain of the guards, Gyllenstierna.'

'We have two companies, prisoners,' said Siquier, stepping up to the king with a sanguinary expression of countenance. They have compelled us to storm the place, and their lives are forfeited. Does your majesty command their execution?'

'Right, Siquier,' answered Charles, affecting to misunderstand him, 'Let the poor creatures be fed in our camp,--and when they have satiated their appet.i.tes, let them promise not to fight against me again in this war--and then, in G.o.d's name, let them go in peace.'

'As your majesty commands!' said Siquier, grating his teeth and proceeding to the execution of the unwelcome commission.

'If the lord has remitted ten thousand shekels to us,' said Charles, turning graciously to Arwed, 'surely we can remit a trifling debt to our fellow men;--can we not, my dear captain?'

'Hail to the hero who knows how to pardon as well as to conquer!'

exclaimed Arwed with enthusiasm.

'No flattery!' cried Charles, stamping angrily. 'I know that it was fairly meant, but I do not like it.'

He departed. Arwed leaned against the breastwork and observed the trains of Danish prisoners who were being escorted into the camp. Then glancing proudly upon the blood-besprinkled place he had conquered--and afterwards towards the east, where Stockholm lay;--he sighed, 'had but Georgina seen me!'

CHAPTER V.

Brightly shone the light of chandelier and gueridon through the plate gla.s.s windows of the royal palace on the Ritterholm, and most beautifully was its brilliancy reflected by the quiet waters of the Malar lake. The princess Ulrika Eleonore, of Hesse, gave an a.s.sembly and card patty--and the variously adorned n.o.bility floated through the gilded rooms, soothing, caressing, deceiving, calumniating, fondling and boring each other. Behind the curtains of one of the most retired windows leaned the affectionate Georgina, gazing with anxious interest over the lake towards the Suedermalm, where in quiet obscurity lay before her the place where she had met and parted with her lover. Near her sat the princess, with the governor, Baron Taube, and the elder Gyllenstierna, at a card table.

'Is there any news from Norway?' asked Ulrika, shuffling the cards.

'From Armfelt's corps,' answered Taube, 'we have been a long time without intelligence,--but, as a friend writes me, the king has taken an important battery before Frederickshall.'

'It is well that some one yet holds correspondence in Sweden, said Ulrika with bitterness, hastily dealing the cards. 'My husband is not permitted to write openly upon the affairs of the campaign, and of the communications of my brother n.o.body in the capital is permitted to have a glimpse;--and least of all myself, who have the misfortune to be a woman.'

'Was our loss great?' asked old Gyllenstierna, a.s.sorting his cards.

'They speak of seven hundred,' answered the governor: 'and the loss would have been still greater and perhaps wholly in vain, had not the king himself and a young volunteer placed themselves at the head of the faltering troops and led them on to victory.'

A delightful antic.i.p.ation thrilled the bosom of the listening Georgina.

And in the self-forgetfulness of love, she was even upon the point of stepping forward and asking the narrator the unbecoming question of the name of the volunteer, when the father of her beloved spared her the pain of witnessing the courtier's contemptuous smile, by himself putting the question.

'My informant named him Gyllenstierna,' answered Taube: 'but as your excellency's son has gone to Armfelt's camp, I suppose I must have misunderstood him.'

'Who knows!' murmured the old count, calling to mind the last unavailing request of his son; and in pondering upon all the possibilities of the case he lost his game.

'Were it not for that,' proceeded Taube, 'I should have much pleasure in congratulating your excellency. The king advanced the brave volunteer to the grade of captain of the guards upon the spot.'

'My hero! my Arwed!' exulted Georgina in her heart, and her white hand waved a fond kiss towards the west.

'Such transient gleams of military success give me more anxiety than pleasure,' said Ulrika. 'They decide not the main question, and serve only to increase my brother's obstinacy. His game is lost beyond remedy. Continued misfortune would finally open his eyes and induce him to take the only course by which he can save himself.'

'That would have happened long ago,' whispered Taube to her, 'did not baron Goertz, through his _fata morgana_, know how to keep up his sinking hopes.'

'Very true!' said Gyllenstierna. 'And had it not been for his experiment of debasing the coin, this campaign would have been impossible.'

'Indeed,' added Taube: 'were the old heathen G.o.ds, whom he has conjured up from the vasty deep, to bring national bankruptcy upon Sweden, what would the foreigner care?'

'I know not among men one whom I so cordially hate as this Goertz,'

said Ulrica in an under tone, and her eyes gleamed so fiercely that Georgina, who from her concealment saw the look, shrunk with fear, although she did not hear the words that accompanied it.

A chamberlain in service now announced to Ulrika that baron Goertz, who had just arrived from Aland, and was pa.s.sing through Stockholm on his way to Frederickshall, begged permission to wait upon her royal highness.

'It is not granted!' said Ulrika with cold disdain.

'I know not,' whispered Taube to her, 'if your highness would do well to render your displeasure palpable to this cunning man. The mortified ambition of a parvenu is revengeful, and Goertz proceeds hence directly to his majesty.'

'Am I not mistress even in my own apartment!' cried Ulrika with vehemence. 'It has come to a fine pa.s.s!' She arose from the table and laid down her cards. 'I am indisposed,' said she to the chamberlain: 'am about to withdraw to my chamber, and can see no one.'

The servant bowed and retired to deliver the ungracious message. The princess called her ladies and hurried from the saloon, which was soon filled with the timid murmurs of the courtiers. Taube took the arm of Gyllenstierna, and walked up and down the room in a low and anxious conversation with him.

'My poor father! how hast thou with thy warm, and generous heart, strayed to this cold and hostile kind!' cried Georgina, who had closely observed the last scene;--and, careless of the remarks which her disregard of etiquette might elicit, she hastened from the a.s.sembly to greet her beloved father.

CHAPTER VI.

The fieldmarshal Rhenskioeld sat waiting, upon the sofa in the cabinet of baron von Goertz. The latter returned from the palace, and his indignation at the offensive answer he had received, gave way to the joy of again meeting his friend.

'I thank you, my worthy friend,' said he, embracing Rhenskioeld, 'that you have complied with my request so promptly. It was _my_ duty to visit you, but my hours are all numbered. I shall be compelled to labor through the whole night, and in the morning I shall be on my way towards Frederickshall.'

'You come from Aland?' eagerly asked Rhenskioeld: 'what news from thence?'

'Thank G.o.d!' cried Goertz with clasped hands: 'I bring you peace with Russia.'

'Peace!' exclaimed Rhenskioeld, springing from his seat. 'Peace between the shrewd czar, who never fails to follow up an advantage, and our Charles, whom misfortune only renders the more inflexibly? It is impossible! Even could you really obtain tolerable conditions yet would the king never accept them.'

'The splendid conditions which I bring will certainly be ratified by him,' answered Goertz. 'Peter retains nothing of his conquests except Livonia, a part of Ingermanland and Caralia. He yields back all besides.'

'Peter give any thing back!' screamed Rhenskioeld, with astonishment.

'Russia,' proceeded Goertz, 'binds herself with us, to set upon the throne of Poland the same Stanislaus whom she formerly chased from it, and furnishes 80,000 men to enthrone the same august personage against whom she has been fighting the last ten years.'

'You must be relating to me, a fable from the thousand and one nights!'

said Rhenskioeld incredulously.

'Russia,' proceeded Goertz, 'is to furnish s.h.i.+pping for the conveyance of 10,000 Swedes to England to sustain the Pretender. In connection with Sweden, she seizes upon Hanover. We take Bremen and Verden, re-establish the duke of Holstein, force Prussia to give up her booty, and compel the emperor to observe the treaty of Altranstadt.'

'And now are you awake?' asked the fieldmarshal with a satirical smile: 'for thus do such narrations usually terminate, when the narrator has only been dreaming.'

Goertz stopped, and gazed at his auditor. He however conquered his impetuosity, went to his writing desk, took from it a ma.n.u.script, and with the exclamation, 'read,' gave it to the fieldmarshal.