Public-domain ebook
by Victor Hugo
Language: en663 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Historical Novels·Novels·French Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #65215.
The opening · free to read
Peter, good fellow, has lost his all at dice.--RÉGNIER.
The regiment of musketeers from Munkholm was on the march through the narrow passes lying between Throndhjem and Skongen. Sometimes it moved along the brink of a torrent, and the long line of bayonets crept through the ravine like a huge serpent with glittering scales; sometimes it wound around a mountain, making it look like one of those triumphal columns about which curves an army of heroes in bronze.
The soldiers marched with trailing weapons and cloaks dragging in the dust, looking surly and tired, for these noble fellows are averse to anything but battle or inaction. The coarse banter and threadbare jests which delighted them but yesterday had lost their savor. The air was chill, the sky clouded. Nothing would raise a laugh in the ranks, unless one of the sutler-women should get an awkward tumble from her little Barbary horse, or a tin saucepan should happen to roll over the precipice and rebound from rock to rock.
To while away the monotony of the journey, Lieutenant Randmer, a young Danish baron, accosted old Captain Lory, who had risen from the ranks. The captain, moody and silent, moved with a heavy but confident step; the lieutenant, light and agile, played with a twig which he had plucked from the bushes that lined the read.
“Well, Captain, what ails you? You seem depressed.”
“And I should say I had good cause,” replied the old officer, without raising his eyes.
“Come, come, no regrets! Look at me. Am I depressed? And yet I would wager that I have quite as much cause as you.”
“I doubt it, Baron Randmer; I have lost all I possessed; I have lost everything I loved.”
“Captain Lory, our misfortunes are precisely the same. It is not a fortnight since Lieutenant Alberick won my castle and estate at a single deal of the cards. I am ruined; but am I the less gay?”
The captain answered in a very melancholy tone: “Lieutenant, you have only lost your castle; but I have lost my dog.”
At this answer the light-minded baron seemed uncertain whether to laugh or sympathize; but he said: “Be comforted, Captain. Only think, I, who have lost my castle--”
“He was all I ever had to love,” he added; “I never knew my parents. God grant them peace, and my poor Drake too! Lieutenant Randmer, he saved my life in the Pomeranian war. I called him Drake in honor of the famous admiral. My good dog! He never changed, as did my fortunes. After the battle of Oholfen, the great General Schack patted him, and said: ‘You’ve a fine dog there, Sergeant Lory!’--for I was only a sergeant then.”
“Ah!” interrupted the young baron, slashing his switch, “how queer it must seem to be a sergeant.”
The old soldier of fortune did not hear him; he appeared to be talking to himself, and Randmer could only catch a word here and there.
“Poor Drake! After surviving so many breaches and trenches, to be drowned like a blind kitten in that confounded Throndhjem fjord! My poor dog! my trusty friend! You deserved to die on the field of battle, as I hope to do.”
“Come, come, Captain!” cried the lieutenant, “how can you be so despondent? We may get a chance to fight to-morrow.”
“Yes,” contemptuously answered the old captain, “with a pretty enemy!”
“What! do you despise those rascally miners, those devilish mountaineers?”
“Stone-cutters, highwaymen, fellows who don’t know the first rudiments of warfare! A fine set of blackguards to face a man like me, who has served in all the wars in Pomerania and Holstein, in the campaigns of Scania and Dalecarlia; who fought under the glorious General Schack and the brave Count Guldenlew!”
“But don’t you know,” interrupted Randmer, “that these fellows are led by a formidable chief,--a giant as big and as brutal as Goliath, a rascal who drinks nothing but human blood, a very Satan incarnate?”
“And who may he be?” asked the captain.
“Why, the famous Hans of Iceland!”
“Pooh! I’ll wager that this great general does not know how to shoulder a musket or handle a carbine properly.”
Randmer laughed.
“Yes, you may laugh,” continued the captain. “It will be very funny, no doubt, to cross swords with scurvy pickaxes, and pikes with pitchforks! Here are worthy foes indeed! My brave Drake would have scorned to snap at their heels!”
The captain was still giving free vent to his indignation, when he was interrupted by the arrival of an officer, who ran up to them all out of breath,--
“Captain Lory! my dear Randmer!”
“Well?” asked both at once.
“My friends, I am faint with horror! D’Ahlefeld, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld, the lord chancellor’s son! You know, my dear Randmer, that Frederic--such a dandy! such a fop!”
“Yes,” replied the young baron, “a great dandy! Still, at the last ball at Charlottenburg my costume was in much better taste than his. But what has happened to him?”
“I know whom you mean,” said Lory; “you mean Frederic d’Ahlefeld, lieutenant of Company Three. The men wear blue facings. He neglects his duty sadly.”
“You will not have to complain of him again, Captain Lory.”
“Why not?” said Randmer.
“He is garrisoned at Wahlstrom,” coldly added the old officer.
“Exactly,” said the new-comer; “the colonel has just received a message. Poor Frederic!”
“But what has happened? Captain Bollar, you alarm me.”
Old Lory added: “Nonsense! The popinjay was absent from roll-call, I suppose, and the captain has sent the lord chancellor’s son to prison: that is the misfortune which distresses you so sadly; I am sure it is.”
Bollar clapped him on the shoulder.
“Captain Lory, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld has been devoured alive.”
The two captains looked each other in the face; and Randmer, startled for an instant, suddenly burst out laughing.
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