II
The clear, cold star which had been shining in the steel blue sky had disappeared.
Vignerte started. “What time is it?”
I lit my electric torch. “Ten minutes to twelve,” I said.
I awakened the two runners.
“Henriquez, go to the third section, tell the adjutant to see to the relief of the second platoon and report to Lieutenant Vignerte. Damestoy, go to the second section and tell the section officer to do the same for the first platoon. He mustn’t forget the two o’clock patrol. It will be supplied by the eleventh squad, Corporal Toulet. Got that? Come, look sharp!”
The two men climbed out. For two seconds the patch of blue sky was hidden.
A weird, soundless night. A stray rifle shot at long intervals. The guns silent.
Vignerte resumed his story.
HAVE you ever read Baron von Heidenstamm? Meyer Forster has borrowed something for it from Tolstoy—the whole chapter on the race for the Emperor’s Cup is taken from Anna Karenina—and a good deal, unfortunately, from our Octave Feuillet. Still, you shouldn’t miss the description of Hanover, life in a German garrison town, and the royal park in snow. The impressions you get are very much what I felt on my arrival at Lautenburg at ten o’clock on the morning of Sunday, October 26th, 1913.
For the previous eight hours I had been watching the gradual displacement of the Walpurgis Harz, shrouded to the south in copper-coloured clouds by a fertile but ugly, featureless plain. When the train had crossed the Aller the country became more undulating. Foaming in its basaltic bed appeared the winding river Melna which joins the Aller some forty miles below Lautenburg. I was nearing my destination.
The sky was dull and grey. The town, clinging to the slopes of a hill in a bend of the Melna, had a certain resemblance to Pau, or, rather, Saint-Gaudens, thanks to its red-brick houses. Crowning all, in a distant clump of trees, I saw an old tower. The Castle, I thought.
Like a horse with its head for home the train put on steam. We ran along and over a number of streams gliding between willow-lined banks. The white patches where the water ran over boulders and the swaying of the vegetation spoke of the gentle murmur we could not hear. You would call it clean, peaceful country, not unlike the Ile-de-France; yes, a country you could live and be happy in.
Lautenburg station, on the other hand, was frankly monstrous, a smaller but more extravagant copy of the famous station of Metz. But before I had time to take in the details, I heard an obsequious murmur of: “Professor Vignerte?” from a man in a peaked cap who took my ticket.
Marçais had wired the time of my arrival. The man in the cap signalled and two huge lackeys in black and gold livery suddenly appeared before me. One of them took my luggage while the other assisted me to enter an enormous limousine which started at once. In ten minutes we had passed through Lautenburg and were entering at top speed what I took to be the great courtyard of the Castle. At all events a sentry presented arms.
“Will the Herr Professor kindly get out?” said the lackey, opening the door while the chauffeur sounded his horn.
A round, red-faced steward appeared on the steps and bowed three or four times.
“Has the Herr Professor had a pleasant journey? Will he be kind enough to follow me and I will take him to his room.”
With all the fellowships rolled into one I shouldn’t have been addressed as “Professor” as many times in ten years in France as I was in Lautenburg on the morning of my arrival alone.
My luggage was in my room. I admit that it was not without a feeling of approval that I saw a very enticing meal spread out on the table.
“If the Herr Professor wants anything, he has only to ring. Ludwig, his valet, is at hand, entirely at his service.”
As he was going out the stout functionary bowed even lower than before and handed me an envelope studded with red seals.
“Will the Herr Professor kindly accept the letter left for him by Major von Kessel.”
Major von Kessel, the tutor of his Highness Duke Joachim, offered his apologies for his inability to receive me on my arrival. Unfortunately the whole Court of Lautenburg had gone hunting and he himself had to accompany his pupil. He therefore suggested my spending the day in making myself at home in the palace. He would have the honour to receive me at a quarter to ten on the following morning, Monday, with a view to presenting me to the Grand Duke Frederick-Augustus.
Wishing to test my new powers at once, I rang. Ludwig appeared.
“Good Lord!” I thought, “if M. Thierry could only see you he’d feel reassured.”
The fellow, thirty years old or so, had the most amazingly inexpressive face I had ever beheld before I went to Germany. Subsequently I became quite used to these good-natured, blue-eyed bran-bags. His head was that of nine out of ten of our prisoners.
I only managed to extract from Ludwig one piece of information, that I should take my meals on the ground floor (my room was on the floor above) in a room reserved for the civil and military establishment of Duke Joachim, that is to say myself, Major von Kessel and Professor Cyrus Beck, of Kiel University. In addition we could all have meals served in our own rooms if we wished.
Vignerte had hitherto spoken in the same level tone, finding no difficulty in recalling the smallest detail of a story with which he visibly lived night and day. But at this point he paused.
I see, my friend, that my tale is not boring you, but I begin to be conscious now of the difficulties of my task. Hitherto chronological order has been enough, but at this point I must change it for a time or I shall risk confusing you and obscuring the broad outline with a mass of petty detail. Let me give you now a detailed description of Lautenburg and its inhabitants. When I have done this we will return to the course of events. They will group the picture.