Pappenheim, with General Goltz and all the mounted men of his party trotted rapidly off; while I, bareheaded, disarmed, downcast and heartbroken, was marched on foot, guarded by ten musketeers of the regiment de Vaudemont, towards the capital of Lorraine. To attempt escaping would only have insured to me a sudden and barbarous death; and when marched off I struck my hands wildly together, and could have wept, but for very grief and shame, as I thought of my own helplessness and inability to unravel the mystery that enveloped the future fate of my unfortunate but beloved Nicola. CHAPTER XLV. NANCI. My captor, Wolfgang Count Pappenheim, the intended son-in-law of Duke Charles, was the son and heir of the great Pappenheim of the German wars, he who had received no less than fourteen wounds at the battles of Leipzig and Prague, and was surnamed _le Balafré_, as he bore on his person exactly one hundred scars received in the field of honour. Young Pappenheim had won himself a high reputation for bravery in those wars, especially by his defence of the castle of Wilsburg, a stronghold of the Margravine of Anspach, when it was assailed by the King of Sweden, who was anxious to secure it for the Protestants of the Franconian circle; but when summoned, Wolfgang replied-- 'I will never surrender to a king of Sweden, but shall perish here, and the ruins of Wilsburg will be my monument.' Gustavus believed him on his father's reputation, and consequently abandoned the siege. Thus I had 'the mortifying honour,' as Sergeant Alsfeldt told me, 'of having surrendered my sword to one of the finest soldiers in the army of the German emperor.' In a state of anxiety that amounted almost to agony, I marched towards Nanci, along a road the darkness of which, as it was buried among coppice, was in unison with the gloom and loneliness that oppressed my heart. The cold white moon waned and went down beyond the level horizon. The country thereabout, though richly wooded, is flat and uninteresting, until the plain is bounded by the Vosges. The scenery grew dark, and the orangeries, vineyards, and coppice that bordered the way seemed black and sombre, as the stars, like diamonds in a dark-blue dome, twinkled in the early morning sky. The yellow dawn began to gild its eastern quarter above the distant chain of the Vosges; green hill tops brightened in the rising tide of light, and the vanes of village spires and of old châteaux embosomed among oaks that were perhaps coeval with Lothario, king of Lorraine, glittered in the rosy beams. Squirrels and rabbits fled before us across the road from hedge to hedge; the larks began to sing joyously, as the brilliant morning came to gladden the hearts of all, apparently, but me; for I had but one thought--Nicola! 'Where was she, then? Where, how, and with whom had she passed the weary hours since our fatal separation?'