CHAPTER XLII.

RETRIBUTION.

Some days after this, I was hastening from the Frankendör towards the residence of Ernestine, when, at a corner of the Bourse, where the merchants were wont to meet, but where the rank grass grew between the untrodden stones, I observed a provision shop, or victualler's, the last in the street, which as yet maintained the aspect of having any thing like business, which all its less fortunate neighbours had long since hopelessly abandoned.

Upon the front wall of the house, there were cut and gilded the date 1600, with one of those verses, then so common in Stralsund, recording, in barbarous Latin, that Jaromar prince of Rügen had fortified the city, after it had been burned by the Danes and Pomeranians. Half concealing this, a gaudy sign-board was nailed over it, bearing the name and occupation of the retailer, the aspect of whose stock made me remember (what I seldom forgot) the larder of Ernestine's establishment; and, being without money, I twisted a few golden links from the chain her father had given me in more prosperous times, and desiring a soldier to follow me, entered the shop, the entire goods of which consisted of three somewhat shrivelled hams, a side of suspicious-like bacon, and a few strings of freshly made, but still more suspicions sausages, the material of which, at such a time, when the marshal and burgomaster had been living for months on horse-flesh or little better, made me resolve to have nothing to do with them. But then every thing was scrupulously neat and clean; the Mernel floor and counters were scrubbed to the whiteness of snow; the tin and brass work shone like silver and gold. An elderly man, with wiry grey mustaches, and wearing a nightcap and long apron of spotless white cotton, was busy with a chopping-knife preparing more sausages, which he seasoned profusely with garlic, salt, and pepper.

He appeared considerably disconcerted on my entrance, and, despite the deference usually paid by his class and all cits to a long mustache and long sword, he doggedly continued his occupation; but his wife, a smart little woman, with lively black eyes, and a face that was wofully ravaged by the small-pox, tripped forward to ask me what I would have.

The question had scarcely left her lips, when she grew paler than her white coif, trembled, and cast down her eyes. Her voice and her _tout ensemble_ were familiar to me. I felt myself change colour in turn, and mingled emotions of pleasure, anger, and surprise ran through me.

"What a change is here!" said I; "is it possible that I find the Señora Prudentia--the sylph-like dancer, whose actions were so full of grace and beauty--the songstress who warbled like a fairy bird in summer--transformed into a little vender of sausages and ham!"

Perhaps there was something spiteful in this remark; but I had a lively recollection of the doubloons and the ring, bought from an honest jeweller of the Hebrew race in the Burgerplatz at Glückstadt.

"Herr Captain," she replied modestly and timidly, and with an air that well became her then, with her plain white linen coif, her large neckerchief, and short bunchy petticoats of scarlet cloth (for every way she had fairly become the little burgher's wife), "adversity has taught me a good lesson; I was vain, I was beautiful and wicked, and God has punished me. He sent a severe illness which robbed me of my beauty, and my vanity went with it. I should always have remembered that beauty fades like the summer, but, unlike the summer, returns no more. I shall never be beautiful again--never! (this was said with some bitterness.) I shall never sing more; for the same envious illness robbed me of my fine voice; but it matters not--I am at least content; yet _ay de mi Espana_! I shall never see Spain more. My husband----"

"What---you are then married at last!"

"My husband is an honest man, and I am become an industrious little housewife. We should make quite a fortune but for this unhappy siege; and shall we not yet, Herr Spürrledter?--look up, and speak for yourself."

"Spürrledter--how--is your spouse my old acquaintance, the corporal of Imperial horse?" said I with new astonishment, as that personage, on being thus compelled to show his face, doffed his white nightcap, and stood soldierly erect before me.

"I am sorry to see you here, corporal," said I; "for if Stralsund is taken, the Imperialists will hang you as surely as the sun is shining."

Had I been less of a soldier, I am certain that the recollection of the desperate love I had once made to Prudentia would have embarrassed me; but there was something as comical in the transformation of the wiry and ferocious old corporal of Reitres into a maker of sausages, as there was something melancholy in the change of the beautiful dancer into a plain-looking citizen's wife, with an enormous white coif, red skirt, and bunch of keys.

"And now, Herr Captain," said she with a business-like air, to cut short an unpleasant pause; "in what can we serve you?"

"By placing your best ham in the hands of this soldier," said I, hesitatingly.

She gave me a glance of mingled archness and sadness, and lifted down the ham, while I, who once would not have allowed her to pluck a flower unaided, stood stoically by.

"We have been so shamefully plundered, Mein Herr!" said old Spürrledter; "'tis only a day since Major Fritz, that tall cavalier with the short beard, and two yellow feathers in his hat, marched off with all our best and last Bologna sausages."

"And to-day," added Prudentia with something of her old air, "another insolent biped without feathers carried away our only fowl."

"For Heaven's sake, do not be alarmed, Fraü Spürrledter!" I replied hastily; "I am not foraging, as your corporal has no doubt done many a day. I require the provant; and must have it; but having no money, beg to leave these six links of pure gold, which are more than enough to pay for thrice my purchase. And now," I added, as the soldier marched off with it; "I trust, Fraü, you have not, as at Glückstadt, any acquaintances beyond the walls; for I am not now the fool I was in those days."

"Fool!--oh, how can you use a term so harsh? and I am not the pretty knave I was in those days either--oh no!" she added sadly and archly. "I beseech you not to think so, and not to discover to the marshal all I have done in other times--nor to say I am the sister of--of him you know. Ah! your eyes sparkle; and I believe with reason. If you can extend protection to my husband and myself, it will be a favour--yea, it will be a mercy, which we shall do our best to merit; for in a city surrounded by ferocious besiegers, and defended by desperate and starving soldiers of fortune, the situation of the poor citizens is not very enviable."

I felt somewhat moved by the severe and complete retribution that had fallen on this once proud and artful coquette, and I promised to yield all the protection in my power. She declined to receive the golden links; but I insisted upon her doing so, and remembering, with something of awkwardness, the different relation in which we now stood to each other, and all the flowery love-speeches and magniloquent nonsense I had said to her in other times, I was in some haste to be gone, and bade her adieu.

As I issued into the Bourse, accompanied by the Highlander who bore my unsentimental purchase, which the hollow-cheeked passers beheld with eager and wolfish eyes, old Spürrledter hurried after me, and raising a hand to his white nightcap in the old style of his military salute--

"Herr Captain," said he, "I believe you know what a devil of a brother-in-law I have. Well: though an old soldier who has smelt powder at Prague and Fleura, I have a mortal terror of such a relation, and despite all your guards and gates he has been twice (the Lord alone knows how) in Stralsund here, and has robbed us each time of every thaler we possessed."

"What--within Stralsund?"

"Ay, here--in Stralsund."

"This rascal must be cunning as a lynx."

"Cunning as Lucifer, Herr Captain, and more wicked withal. I have the honour to point out to you, that this reputable relation of mine is hovering like a jackal about the Imperial camp, and, as I believe you have some dark scores to settle with him, he might be lured within reach of a party, and consigned to the care of the provost-marshal."

At these words, a glow of vengeance swelled up in my breast. I thanked the ex-corporal of Reitres, and promised to call again; but other events frustrated his kind intention of sending his troublesome brother-in-law in search of another world. With a light heart I hastened to the residence of Ernestine, yet remembering with something of shame--a shame that made my love for her the more pure and noble--my transient folly at Glückstadt.

After that day I never again saw Prudentia; for though I was three months longer in Stralsund, I avoided the shop at the corner of the Bourse; for I had no wish that Ian, or any of our officers or friends--especially Major Fritz--should discover in the plump little victualler, the Prudentia of my early days of soldiering--my "mysterious countess," as Karl called her in jest; moreover, the progress and incidents of that disastrous siege soon gave me other and graver things to think of.