The major was confounded by all the charming mask told him of his most secret affairs; the amount of his income--his expectations from his uncle the Baron of Uberg, and his cousin the Count of Flensbörg; his love adventures, too, were all known to her--it was very perplexing! Pinneberg was reached--the major proposed they should alight at the door of a celebrated restaurant, but the lady declined peremptorily, and he was compelled to let her please herself. They stopped at the door of a charming little house; the servants were richly liveried, the vestibule lighted and carpeted. She led him up-stairs into a magnificent apartment, where a cold collation--wine, fruit, crystal and plate--lay on a spotless table-cloth, under the perfumed light of wax candles placed in beautiful girandoles. "I am dying with curiosity," said the major; "do tell me your name, or at least shew me the charming face I have come so far to see!" The lady took off her mask, and he beheld his own mother--the Baroness Fritz of Vibürg, who he thought was at Vienna. The old lady laughed heartily at the trick she had played, and repeated all her son's soft speeches over again. At first he was ready to sink with mortification--then he uttered a shout of laughter; but the most serious part was to follow. The old lady--for, notwithstanding her youthful figure and grace, she was very old--told him, that she had come all the way from Vienna to Glückstadt, for the purpose of entrapping him, and bringing him over from the allegiance to the paltry Count of Holstein (Christian IV.), that he might enter the Imperial service, where higher honours and greater rewards awaited him than could ever be obtained by adherence to falling Denmark. "I am extremely sorry, madam, that it is quite out of my power to gratify you," replied the major, as he walked towards the door. "Ah--treacherous old devil!" he muttered, on finding himself confronted by six or eight of Camargo's stoutest pikemen. By this trick, and his own folly, he was made a prisoner, and carried away to Vienna; after which, for a long time we heard no more of him. After a four days' halt, the companies of Major Wilson were commanded to march with all speed to the Upper Elbe, with orders to cross into Silesia, and join Major-general Slammersdorf, who, on that side of the river, was maintaining a desperate and desultory struggle with the Imperialists. "Dioul!" said Ian, as, with our pipes playing, we marched from Glückstadt on a dark foggy morning about the end of August; "Heaven be praised we are again out of this dull solemn town, with its high bastions and deep ditches, where the slime floats and the frogs squatter in the mud--its dull canals and duller streets--its fat burghers and close-clipped trees. I would give a bonnet full of silver for one glimpse of a dark pine forest or a steep heather mountain; for there is nothing about us but what is flat and stale as Rostock beer."