The great parties at Chambord followed and lasted all through June. They were like the one in December, but they were not illuminated by the wit, the beauty, the ineffable charm of Francezka. It may be imagined how little I enjoyed them. My heart was like lead in my bosom. Every waking hour, and often in my dreams, I saw Francezka’s face as I had last seen it, pale and despairing.

There was something else besides pleasuring at Chambord; the fÊtes were meant to disguise more serious events. On an August morning at daylight Count Saxe changed his ball costume for his riding dress and set forth to take command of the van of Marshal Belle-Isle’s army, which was to cross the Rhine at Fort Louis, thirty miles below Strasburg. Gaston Cheverny was not to be with us. He was to go with the army of Marshal Maillebois, which was to cross the Rhine near DÜsseldorf.

Count Saxe had been in a quandary about inviting Gaston Cheverny to resume his old place as aide-de-camp. There could be no doubt that Gaston merited much from Count Saxe, as it was owing to Count Saxe’s own imprudence in remaining unguarded at HÜningen 449 that Gaston Cheverny had been lost to life and love for seven years. Yet my master felt toward him the same coldness of heart that I did. It is true that Gaston’s alleged inability to use his right arm properly would be a drawback, but one likely to be passed over by any commander who really wished his services, and especially by Count Saxe, taking the past into consideration. In truth there was every reason why Count Saxe should again offer a place in his military family to Gaston Cheverny. But he felt a singular indisposition to do it.

Gaston, ever quick of wit, relieved Count Saxe of his awkward predicament. He wrote, saying that Marshal Maillebois had made him an admirable offer, and while he recognized Count Saxe’s right to his services, he scarcely thought anything so promising could be given him in the army of Marshal Belle-Isle. My master jumped at this easy way out of his difficulty and wrote, desiring Gaston Cheverny to suit himself. At the same time he inclosed a letter highly recommending Gaston to Marshal Maillebois. Every word in that letter, which I wrote myself, was true, because it referred to the Gaston Cheverny we had known before 1740.

Gaston replied most handsomely, and so the matter was settled to everybody’s satisfaction. But it gave me a feeling of stupefaction that the person we were trying to part from decently, and to avoid with the greatest seeming tenderness, was the Gaston Cheverny whom I had loved the instant my eyes had rested on him, whom my master had bade me capture for Courland, who had served us as loyally as man could serve in all those adventurous days, who had been Count Saxe’s right-hand man, and whose readiness and devotion to Count 450 Saxe had cost such a price as Gaston had paid. It was staggering.

On that rosy August dawn Count Saxe, with a small escort, started for the Rhine by way of ChÂlons. This did not take us near Brabant, and there seemed no chance of my seeing Francezka. This gave me great uneasiness of mind. I was haunted by a whole troop of malignant fears, of dreadful apprehensions about that being, so ineffably dear to me. And these hideous shapes marched with me, and kept watch over me, and visited me nightly in my dreams. And to no one, not even to Count Saxe, could I speak of them! I could only go on steadfastly doing my duty.

We reached Fort Louis, and Count Saxe being put in command of the vanguard, consisting of about fifteen thousand men, of Marshal Belle-Isle’s army, we began the crossing of the river. We knew we were playing a game of war with loaded dice, but soldiers must not inquire too curiously into their orders. Marshal Belle-Isle had gone to Germany the year before with a basket of eggs, which he reckoned as full-grown chickens, but the eggs mostly addled and would not hatch, so the game with the loaded dice was substituted.

We were on the march early in September, through the blue Bavarian mountains, where the air, though sharp, was like good wine, and then into the wild Bohemian country, full of rocks and bogs and black chasms, and shaggy mountains, ever colder and bleaker, ever farther and farther away from our base. Marshal Saxe was troubled with the company of the King of Saxony, whom Marshal Belle-Isle made King of Moravia; 451 as Count Saxe said: “He is King of Moravia very much as I am Duke of Courland.”

At last, in the midst of the storms, the snows, the fierce winds of November in that wild Bohemian country, we found ourselves set down before Prague. And Prague we must take or starve—starve all of us—men and horses together.

There was a multitude of counselors, each counseling some different form of folly, and only my master, with one or two to support him steadfastly proclaiming that we must take Prague or be lost. There were innumerable objections made; it was a stupendous undertaking, for we had nothing fit for besieging, only our good swords and Maurice of Saxe to lead us. But at last, seeing ruin advancing upon us in the shape of an Austrian army, while starvation stood sentry over us, the King of Saxony and the rest of them were visited with a great light and concluded to let my master have his way; and the night of the twenty-seventh of November, 1741, was fixed upon to assault the town. It was a cold, clear night, with a moon that made all things white and light.

At midnight, when the town was sleeping, and only the sentries waked and walked, a tremendous cannonade broke out all around the walls, heaviest toward the south. This was but a sham attack, but the best part of the garrison hastened there to repel it. And then Count Saxe, advancing from the gardens and cottages on the Wischerad side, came to the walls. The men rushed forward with the scaling ladders, but they were full ten feet too short. Despair and blankness fell upon 452 us, until Count Saxe, seeing a great, weird Thing standing gaunt and black in the white moonlight—this Thing, the gallows tree—cried out cheerfully:

“See, my lads, yonder are likely to be some short ladders; these we will splice with rope, and so make the scalade!”

And it was done, Count Saxe himself being the first man on the rampart. He had for his body-guard, my Uhlans—men fit to be the body-guard of Mars himself. But the gods of war are invisibly protected. All the books upon war say that generals should take care of their skins. I have often noticed, however, that generals who try to take care of their skins usually get shot every time they go within the enemy’s range.

Count Saxe, however, without getting a single scratch, found himself at the head of his men in the great open market-place, where the French made their rendezvous, and there we soon found ten thousand of our fifteen thousand brave fellows. Prague was ours, and almost without the loss of a man, so masterly had been Count Saxe’s dispositions.

There is something appalling in the sight of a town taken in the night. Although Prague was supposed to be taken by assault, it was really carried by strategy, and there were none of the horrors of a capture by storming. But the horrible fears of the inhabitants, the terrors of the women and children, the dreadful midnight awakening—all, all, have in them something calculated to affright the soul.

These things passed through my mind, when, with my men posted according to Count Saxe’s orders, I listened to the cries, the screams of frightened creatures, 453 and imagined the shuddering terrors behind the walls of those tall old houses, their peaks shining in the white moonlight. And then, by an accident in handling a torch, one of those tall old houses by the market-place caught fire. Instantly, it was like Bedlam; at every one of the many windows appeared people shrieking, praying, crying. And glancing into one of those windows, where an old woman was screaming frantically, I saw a strange, a mysterious sight: upon a wretched bed lay a sick man—lay Gaston Cheverny!

I had not been brought up in the streets of Paris and forced to soldier it since my fourteenth year without becoming tolerably free from superstition. This sudden glimpse of Gaston Cheverny lying ill in a miserable garret in Prague, when I supposed him on the personal staff of Marshal Maillebois, did not prevent me from taking all possible measures to save that quarter of the town from burning, and striving to allay the panic. Both I found almost impossible. The old house blazed like tinder, the flames reddening the moonlit sky. I gave orders to blow up the houses on each side, in order to save the town. The horrible explosions, the smoke and smell of powder, the shrieking, terrified people, the soldiers battling with mob and fire—the mob believing the soldiers to have started the fire—were hideous. I have been in many a worse place than the market-place of Prague on that bleak November night, but never one which had a greater outward aspect of horror.

Toward daylight, ashes and ruins replaced the fire, trembling terror and pale exhaustion, the frantic alarm of the people, and the quarter was saved. Through it 454 all, I had Gaston Cheverny in my mind. I could not understand how he, an officer in Marshal Maillebois’s army, could be in Prague at all, but I had seen him in the glare of the blazing building as plainly as if the sun had been at the noon mark.

In the gray of the dawn, I began to investigate concerning Gaston, but he could not be found. I thought it not strange that in so much danger, terror and confusion he had disappeared for a time, but I confidently reckoned on his being found within a few days. Next day, I put the official inquiry on foot, but there was no record of any such person having been in Prague. It was difficult to account, under any circumstances, for Gaston’s being there. Yet, had not these eyes seen him? It was one more mystery and misery about this man, once the frankest, freest, most open-hearted of men. It did not lessen those vague and terrible fears which had haunted me about Francezka.

The next few days were busy enough, and I scarce rested by night or day. A week passed, and, hearing nothing of Gaston Cheverny, I tried to persuade myself that my eyes had been deceived. Truly, although I have been a thousand times in places of much greater danger, I do not think I have ever known greater excitement, or conditions when a man could be more readily deceived than that midnight in the market-place of Prague. I said this to myself many times. It is strange how a man will argue with himself to believe a thing which he can not believe, and will silence, without convincing, himself.

I was revolving these things in my mind one night, about a week afterward, on my way alone through the 455 narrow, dark unlighted streets, lying black in the shadows of the overhanging houses. And then there passed across my path, a figure in a ragged black cloak—a figure with the face of Gaston Cheverny. I followed him, but I seemed to be following a ghost; for in the tangle of streets and lanes, he was lost to me. I spent two full hours hunting this shade; but had it been actually a ghost it could not have disappeared more completely.

I went to Count Saxe’s quarters. It was then near midnight, and Count Saxe had gone to bed; but on the table, wide open, with some other letters for me to read, was a letter from Gaston Cheverny to Count Saxe, dated the very day before the capture of Prague.

So I was deceived. He was not and never had been in Prague. I had been deceived by some chance resemblance. It was upon events like these that Madame Riano based her absurd belief in second sight.

But let it not appear that I am a man easily deluded when I declare that from the hour I saw the man I took for Gaston Cheverny in the burning house at Prague, I knew that Francezka was in sore distress, and even in need of her poor Babache. Something within me was ever calling—calling, in Francezka’s name—“Come to me!”

There are degrees in these superstitions of the heart. Sometimes they usurp the scepter of the brain. Then, indeed, are they dangerous and foolish. Again, it is known to be only the cry of the heart; and the poor, tormented heart waits patiently upon its master, the brain. So it was with me. Deep as was my yearning to see Francezka, I said no word of it to the most 456 indulgent of masters, until the time was ripe that I might go. Francezka herself was governed by the law of common sense; she would not wish me to come to her when it was against my duty. So I fulfilled all my duty, in spite of the burden of the spirit—the strange, almost irresistible call for me to leave all and go straight to Francezka, until I could, in honor, ask for leave.

We were settled then in winter quarters. We had heard twice in this time from Gaston Cheverny. Being near home, in the borders of Hanover, for the winter, he had got leave—so he wrote—and would spend six weeks at the chÂteau of Capello, with Francezka. He wished that Count Saxe and I might take advantage of the lull in hostilities and come to Capello.

It was when I was in the act of reading this letter that my reserve broke down, and I told Count Saxe all—all—and that I desired to go to Francezka. And then, for the first time since I was a little, smooth-cheeked boy, playing in the weedy gardens of the Marais with Adrienne Lecouvreur, I wept like a woman. Count Saxe sat and looked at me with more than a brother’s tenderness. He knew I was not a coward, for I had led his Uhlans, and what he said to me was this:

“Lose not a moment in going, Babache. It is because you love her so much that you know she is in distress. I think you would know as much, if it were I instead of Francezka.”

Which was true. I can not believe that Count Saxe should need me, and I not know it, were I at the other end of the world.

And Count Saxe helping and hastening me in every 457 way, as became such a soul as his, I set forth at once on my journey. It was the latter part of December when I left Prague behind me.

The journey was a terrible one; the season harsh beyond comparison. The ground was deeply covered with snow, which the wild winds piled in great drifts, in which both men and beasts were sometimes lost. Rain and sleet alternated with snow. The sun scarcely shone at all. The sufferings of dumb creatures were dreadful; horses plunged amid the snow, and died in it; the gaunt cattle froze in the fields; even the birds dropped dead from the icy roofs and trees. I think I never saw so much misery in any journey I ever made, as in that journey to Capello. Even when I reached the flat country of the lower Rhine, there was but little amelioration. I traveled as rapidly as I could, both night and day, but my progress was slow. My eager heart outstripped my laggard body, and it seemed to me that every hour the urgency of Francezka’s call for me grew greater. I could actually hear that sweet, penetrating voice, now full of agony, crying to me, “Babache! Babache! Come quickly—quickly, or you will be too late!”