in favour of older officers, - and then
finally complied with what he found to be the sincere wish of the company by
frankly accepting it. Paulina had grown up amongst military men, and had been
early trained to a sympathy with military merit - the very court of the Emperor
had something of the complexion of a camp - and the object of her own youthful
choice was elevated in her eyes, if it were at all possible that he should be
so, by this ratification of his claims on the part of those whom she looked up
to as the most competent judges.
    Before nine o'clock the van of the party was in motion; then, with a short
interval, came all the carriages of every description, and the Papenheim
dragoons as a rearguard. About eleven, the sun began to burst out, and
illuminated, with the cheerful crimson of a frosty morning, those horizontal
draperies of mist which had previously stifled his beams. The extremity of the
cold was a good deal abated by this time; and Paulina, alighting from her
carriage, mounted a led horse, which gave her the opportunity, so much wished
for by them both, of conversing freely with Maximilian. For a long time the
interest and animation of their reciprocal communications, and the magnitude of
the events since they had parted, affecting either or both of them directly, or
in the persons of their friends, had the natural effect of banishing any
dejection which nearer and more pressing concerns would else have called forth.
But, in the midst of this factitious animation, and the happiness which
otherwise, so undisguisedly possessed Maximilian at their unexpected reunion, it
shocked Paulina to observe in her lover a degree of gravity almost amounting to
sadness, which argued, in a soldier of his gallantry, some overpowering sense of
danger. In fact, upon being pressed to say the worst, Maximilian frankly avowed
that he was ill at ease with regard to their prospects when the hour of trial
should arrive; and that hour he had no hope of evading. Holkerstein, he well
knew, had been continually receiving reports of their condition, as they reached
their nightly stations, for the last three days. Spies had been round about
them, and even in the midst of them, throughout the darkness of the last night.
Spies were keeping pace with them as they advanced. The certainty of being
attacked was therefore pretty nearly absolute. Then, as to their means of
defence, and the relations of strength between the parties, in numbers it was
not impossible that Holkerstein might triple themselves. The elite of their own
men might be