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Updated: May 6, 2025
A stately smile was the answer to this tirade. I bowed, and retired. Within a hundred yards I met my two friends, Varnhorst and Guiscard, and poured out my whole catalogue of wrongs at once. Varnhorst shared my indignation, fiercely pulled his thick mustaches, and muttered some phrases about oppression, martinetism, and other dangerous topics, which fortunately were scattered on the air.
"They shall wait long enough if they wait till I sign them. I shall not attend this council." "Observe," said Varnhorst, "I have spoken only on conjecture. If I return without you, my candour will be rewarded by an instant sentence for Spandau." This decided me. I shook my gallant friend by the hand, the cloud passed from his brow, and we rode together to the council.
In the midst of the crowd, I met Varnhorst steering his charger with no small difficulty, and carrying a packet of notes in his hand. "Go to your quarters, and dress," said my good-humoured friend. "You will have a busy night of it. The duke has invited the French commandant and his officers to dine with him, and we are to have a ball and supper afterwards for the ladies. Lose no time."
The whole land rejects us, if it dares not repel; and, if we conquer, we shall have to colonize." "Well, we must fight them into it," said Varnhorst. "Or leave them to fight themselves out of it," I observed "my national prejudices not being favourable to reasoning at the point of the bayonet." "Or take the chances of the world, and float on wherever the surge carries us," laughed the duke.
While I was deliberating for a moment between the shame of a forced retreat, and the awkwardness of taking the bull by the horns, in the shape of the King's Guard, I heard a loud laugh, and my name pronounced, or rather roared, in the broadest accents of Germany. My friend Varnhorst was the man.
As we were standing on the last height at the entrance of the defile, "Look round," exclaimed Varnhorst, "and take your first lesson in our art, if you ever adopt the trade of soldiership. The Duke has outwitted the Frenchman. I suspected something of this sort in the morning, when I first heard his guns so far to the right.
But the conversation of the last hour made me anxious to obtain all the knowledge of the actual state of the country, and the prospects of the campaign, which could be obtained from Guiscard. Varnhorst, full of a soldier's impetuosity, was gone to the quarters of his grenadiers, and was busy with hurried preparations for the morrow.
Varnhorst and I were inseparable, and feasted on the scene, the gaiety, the oddity of the various characters, which campaigning developes more than any mode of existence.
But when he alluded to the proceedings of the day, and was informed by Varnhorst that the time appointed for his movement was come, I never saw a more rapid transition from the phlegm of the Netherlander to the vividness of the man of courage and genius.
The result of this powerful sortie was soon heard, for every thing was invisible under the thick cloud, which grew thicker every moment, in the volleys of musketry, and the shouts of the troops on both sides. Varnhorst now received an order from the chief of the staff, which produced its effect, in the rush of a squadron of Prussian cavalry on the flank of the enemy's column.
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