CHARLIE PIERREPONT

A week after this, a drochski deposited a smart-looking young officer, in the uniform of the 95th Thuringian regiment—blue with red facings and silver epaulettes, spike-helmet and black belt—at the entrance of the Pariser Hof of Cologne, a comfortable and moderate hotel, suitable to that style of economy continental military men are usually constrained to practise.

Though wearing the well-known uniform of the Prussian army, it was impossible not to recognize in the new arrival, as he sprang lightly up the steps of the hotel, that he was an Englishman, a genuine Briton, for he was the Carl Pierrepont mentioned by young Frankenburg in his letter to the Countess. Carl—or Charlie, as he was known when he was wont to hold his wicket in the playing-grounds of Rugby against the best bowler in the three hundred, and to con his studies in the white brick Tudor school-house, or in the long avenue called Addison's Walk—was a great favourite with all his regiment, and already had the honour of being specially noticed on parade by our Princess Royal when her husband was reviewing the Prussian troops, and of receiving from his hand the much-coveted Iron Cross when almost in his boyhood.

One great cause, perhaps, of Charlie's popularity among the Thuringians was, that as an Englishman he was destitute of that aristocratic hauteur which causes the well-born German officer to regard all under his command as an inferior order of beings, a style of bearing and sentiment unknown alike in the armies of Britain and France.

His face was fair, his features handsome, and he was verging on thirty years of age. His character, like his figure, was fully developed and formed; the expression of his eyes betokened intelligence and promise; while his lithe and manly form had all that muscular strength and activity that women often prefer to intellect in men, and which is frequently the result of the out-door sports in the playgrounds of Rugby, Eton, and Harrow, a portion of our English system of education.

Though the son of a fox-hunting Warwickshire squire, who knew every cover in Stoneleigh, the Brailes, and the Edgehills, the head of an old but certainly embarrassed family, so far as mortgages and so forth went, he was barely deemed among the wohlgeborn, according to the Prussian standard; and poor Charlie had nothing as yet but his epaulettes and sword, his pay as a soldier of Fortune, with the privileges usually accorded to Continental officers, such as going everywhere at half-price in virtue of their being in uniform—privileges which ours would decline 'with thanks.'

Charlie Pierrepont was everywhere a great favourite with the other sex; and perhaps there was no species of flirtation in which he was not a skilled hand, and he had carefully studied the whole 'scale of familiarities, the gamut of love,' as he was wont to call it, from a touch of the hand or the elevation of an eyebrow, upward, to the extremity of tenderness; and thus much of his time had been passed pleasantly for some ten years in every garrison town between the Elbe and the Vistula; but he had always come off scot-free, for he was possessed, as we have said, of but his epaulettes and sword, while many of the girls he met were as finished flirts as himself; and some, after a short acquaintance, would show their hands with a laugh, and, as it were, throw up their cards.

'Kellner! let me have a room on the lowest étage that is unoccupied,' said he, as his portmanteaus were carried in by the hausknecht.

'Yes, mein Herr,' replied the oberkellner, or head-waiter.

'Is the young Count Von Frankenburg here—an officer of the Thuringians?'

'Yes; he is now at the table d'hôte. The bell has just rung, so mein Herr is exactly in time for dinner.'

'Very good.'

'This way, mein Herr,' said the waiter, bowing; 'but, though in the Prussian uniform, I think the Herr is an Englishman.'

'How do you know that I am so?'

'Because I myself am one, and I recognized you by your voice.'

And, sooth to say, Charlie was very unlike a German in that respect, and had the pleasantly modulated voice of a well-trained English gentleman, and few voices are more agreeable to listen to.

He entered the stately speise-saal, or dining-hall of the hotel, where the landlord, in the kindly German fashion, sat at the head of the table, presiding over all his guests, more than a hundred in number, and already the waiters were busy. A single glance showed Pierrepont where his comrade sat—a smart and handsome young officer in undress uniform, who was caressing a dark moustache, and making himself agreeable to a lady beside him. He rose and beckoned to the new arrival.

'Welcome to Cologne, Carl!'

'Thanks, Heinrich. How are you?'

They shook hands simply, as Charlie had a genuine English repugnance to salute a man in the German fashion on the cheek. He then took the chair which his friend, the Count, had reversed and placed against the table, for service beside his own.

'Kellner! die speise-karte!' The wine card was called for next, and the serious business of the meal began, amid all that noise and hubbub peculiar to a German table d'hôte, where Counts and Barons, with ribbons and orders, may be seen handling their knives and forks like English ploughmen, and pretty frauleins tugging away at chicken bones with the whitest of teeth, and the most perfect air of self-possession. The first conversation was, of course, about the expected war concerning the Spanish succession, the political sketches in the Kladderadatch, the official accounts in the Staats Anzeiger; how all Paris was brimming over with enthusiasm, rage, and vengeance; that crowds were always in the streets shouting, 'Down with Prussia!' 'To the Rhine! to the Rhine!' 'To Berlin!' How the 'Marseillaise' was being sung, and the hotel of the Prussian ambassador was only saved from total destruction by the intervention of the gendarmerie; for the time had now come when the Prussians spoke exultingly of Leipzig, even as the French did of Jena, and also raised the cry of 'To the Rhine!' while the national songs of the Fatherland were constantly sung in hoarse but martial chorus.

Dinner over, the lighted candles came, as a hint for the ladies to retire, and rising like a covey of partridges they withdrew. The cloth was removed, and fresh bottles of wine, or lager-beer, with tobacco and cigars, were provided on all hands, and the conversation became more general, and, if possible, more noisy than before.

As the subject of the coming war was discussed, many eyes were turned to the two friends in the uniform of the 95th Thuringians, for both seemed gentlemen and soldiers, and no troops in the world look more like our own in bearing, and in firm, manly physique, than the Prussians. Charlie Pierrepont had acquired many of the ways of the latter, and would join, when on the march, 'Was is des Deutschen Vaterland,' as lustily as if his father had been some Rhenish Baron, and not a hearty Warwickshire squire.

'I am already sick of this subject of the war,' said Charlie, as he lingered over a cigar; 'one hears so much of it everywhere. By the way, have you yet seen your fair cousin, Heinrich?'

'Yes.'

'And found her charming?'

'Beyond my fondest hopes; but she knew not that I had seen her, nor, in truth, did I care much to intrude upon her.'

'Intrude!—upon your intended?'

'That is the word,' said the Count, with a strange smile.

'Why, Herr Graf?'

'Don't "Herr Graf" me. Call me Heinrich.'

'Well?'

'A deuced fellow, named Ludwig Mansfeld (I found it so in the Fremden Buch, at the Grand Hotel), has cut me out—quite.'

'Have him out in another fashion, and I am the man to measure the ground for you.'

'Thanks, Carl, but I would rather fire at my own figure in a mirror,' said Frankenburg, laughing.

'You are sure your friends expect me at the Schloss?'

'Yes, at Frankenburg; they are familiar with your name there. I have written so often of you to Ernestine, my sister.'

'She was educated in England, I believe?'

'With Herminia at the west end of London; so you and she will get on famously together. As you are a musician, you will like her immensely, Carl.'

'I have no doubt of that.'

Little indeed could poor Charlie Pierrepont foresee all Ernestine was yet to be to him.

'I am a bad fellow, I fear,' said the Count reflectively; 'I have trifled with too many women in my time, and fear that I am not worthy of this sweet cousin of mine, even if she would have me.'

'Nay, nay, Heinrich——'

'Somebody writes, that "if we were all judged by our deservings, there is scarcely a man on earth would find a woman bad enough for him."'

'That is taking a low estimate of mankind in general.'

'And of the 95th Thuringians in particular,' added the young Count, laughing; 'to-morrow we shall start for Frankenburg in an open britzka—it is only twenty-five miles from this; and now, one bottle more of St. Julian, and then we shall go and see the girls at the gardens of the Prinz Carl.'

'Half German and half French—some of them are, no doubt, very pretty.'

'Nay, I hope they are wholly German now. It was in those gardens I first met my beautiful cousin, with that devil of a fellow, who, somehow, got introduced to her. Let us go then; the band of the 76th Hanoverians plays there every evening. This time to-morrow will find us at dear old Frankenburg, where, as I shall have the girl all to myself, I hope to turn the flank of this Herr Mansfeld. I am in love with my cousin—actually in love with her at last.'

'My simple comrade, of what are you talking? Is this any age of the world in which to wear your heart upon your sleeve? Is this fellow Mansfeld good-looking?'

'Rather,' said the Count, twirling the points of his moustaches, and eyeing himself complacently in the depths of a great mirror opposite; 'but I wish I had your general success, Carl.'

'In what—I took honours in nothing at dear old Rugby.'

'Indeed—not even in flirtation?'

'In that I might have had the golden medal, had golden medals been given for such excellence.'

They assumed their spike helmets and swords, which the Prussian officers wear through a perforation in the left skirt, as their belt is worn under the coat, and thus bantering each other, cigar in mouth and arm-in-arm, they proceeded laughingly towards the crowded gardens of the Prinz Carl Hotel.

Next day saw them off for Frankenburg in an open britzka. The day was a lovely one in summer, and the scenery around them grand. Charlie, of course, apostrophized the Rhine, and quoted Byron. They passed Düren and the valley of the Ruhr, with the picturesque hamlet of Riedeggen perched on its lofty rock; Merodé, the cradle of the Merodeur; industrious Stolberg, with its château crowning a hill, and the beautiful wood named the Reichswald.

Young Frankenburg was in excellent spirits, and bantered the driver, calling him schwager (brother-in-law), a singular title for post-boys, and so forth, the origin of which is unknown. He was rather too liberal to him in the matter of trinkgeld (drink money); thus the britzka was driven at a thundering rate down that basin of beautiful hills which surround Aix, while Heinrich waved his forage-cap, and sung verses from the war-song of Arndt:

'My own Fatherland, my brave Germany on!

We'll sing them a terrible strain.

For what ages ago, their vile policy won—
Of Strasburg, of Metz, and Lorraine.

They shall hand it all back to the uttermost mite,
Since for life or for death they compel us to fight.

To shout, "To the Rhine, to the Rhine, and advance!

All Germany onward, and march into France!"'