Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Heinzel, or Wolff, staggered back in consternation. His jaw dropped,
and his eyes stared with an expression of vague alarm. Grinding his
teeth with fury, Schmidt returned his gaze for a moment or two, then,
flashing his sabre from the scabbard, he struck his newly-found enemy
across the face with the flat of the weapon, and drew back his arm to
repeat the blow. The pain and insult roused Heinzel from his
stupefaction; he bared his sword, and the weapons clashed together. It
was time to interfere. I had my sheathed sabre in my hand; I struck up
their blades, and stood between them.
"Return your swords instantly," I said. "Stand to your horse, Schmidt;
and you, Heinzel, remain here. Whatever your private quarrels, this is
no time or place to settle them."
Heinzel dropped his sabre point, and seemed willing enough to obey,
but his antagonist glared fiercely at me; and pressed forward, as if
to pass me and get at his enemy, who had retreated a pace or two. I
repeated my command more imperatively than before. Still Schmidt
hesitated between thirst for revenge and the habit of obedience, when,
just at that moment, the trumpets clanged out the first notes of the
reveillée. The Spanish bands were already playing the _diana_; the sky
grew gray in the east, a few dropping shots were heard, exchanged by
the hostile outposts whom the first glimmer of day rendered visible to
each other. Heinzel hurried to his horse; and the instinct of
discipline and duty prevailing with Schmidt, he sheathed his sabre and
gloomily rejoined his squadron. The men hastily bridled up, and had
scarcely done so when the word was given for the left squadron (which
was mine) to mount. We were no sooner in the saddle than we were
marched away under the guidance of a Spanish staff-officer.
The day was a busy one; and it was not till we halted for the night
that I found an opportunity of speaking to Heinzel. I inquired of him
how it was that he had not recognised Theodore Werner in his comrade
Schmidt. He then informed me that he knew the lover of the unhappy
Jacqueline only by name, and by his letters, but had never seen him.
At the time of his abode in Frankfort, there were a large number of
Prussian officers in garrison there, in consequence of the
revolutionary attempt of 1833; and it was not till after Werner's
sudden appearance in Herr Schraube's house, upon the day of the
wedding, that Heinzel learned his surname. In the letters Theodore was
the only name used. Heinzel seemed to have been greatly shaken and
alarmed by that morning's unexpected meeting. He was a brave fellow in
the field; but I could see that he did not relish the idea of a
personal encounter with the man he had so deeply injured, and that he
would be likely to do what he could to avoid it. There was no
immediate necessity to think about the matter; for the squadron did
not rejoin the regiment, as we had expected, but was attached to a
Spanish brigade, and sent away in a different direction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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