With Frederick the Great | Page 8

same reason. She of Austria has a better cause, for she has never forgiven the loss of Silesia; and it is the enmity of these women, as much as the desire to partition Prussia, that is about to plunge Europe into a war to the full as terrible as that of the thirty years."
Keith now rung a bell, and a soldier entered.
"Tell Lieutenant Lindsay that I wish to speak to him."
A minute later an officer entered the room, and saluted stiffly.
"Lindsay, this is a young cousin of mine, Fergus Drummond. The king has appointed him to a cornetcy in the 3rd Royal Dragoon Guards, but he is going to be one of my aides-de-camp. Now that things are beginning to move, you and Gordon will need help.
"Take him first to Tautz. I have written a note to the man, telling him that he must hurry everything on. There is still a spare room on your corridor, is there not? Get your man to see his things bestowed there. I shall get his appointment this evening, I expect, but it will be a day or two before he will be able to get a soldier from his regiment. He has a horse to sell, and various other matters to see to. At any rate, look after him, till tomorrow. 'Tis my hour to go to the king."
Lindsay was a young man of two or three and twenty. He had a merry, joyous face, a fine figure, and a good carriage; but until he and Fergus were beyond the limits of the palace, he walked by the lad's side with scarce a word. When once past the entrance, however, he gave a sigh of relief.
"Now, Drummond," he said, "we will shake hands, and begin to make each other's acquaintance. First, I am Nigel Lindsay, very much at your service. On duty I am another person altogether, scarcely recognizable even by myself--a sort of wooden machine, ready, when a button is touched, to bring my heels smartly together, and my hand to the salute. There is something in the air that stiffens one's backbone, and freezes one from the tip of one's toes to the end of one's pigtail. When one is with the marshal alone, one thaws; for there is no better fellow living, and he chats to us as if we were on a mountain side in Scotland, instead of in Frederick's palace. But one is always being interrupted; either a general, or a colonel, or possibly the king himself, comes in.
"For the time, one becomes a military statue; and even when they go, it is difficult to take up the talk as it was left. Oh, it is wearisome work, and heartily glad I shall be, when the trumpets blow and we march out of Berlin. However, we are beginning to be pretty busy. I have been on horseback, twelve hours a day on an average, for the past week. Gordon started yesterday for Magdeburg, and Macgregor has been two days absent, but I don't know where. Everyone is busy, from the king himself--who is always busy about something--to the youngest drummer. Nobody outside a small circle knows what it is all about. Apparently we are in a state of profound peace, without a cloud in the sky, and yet the military preparations are going on actively, everywhere.
"Convoys of provisions are being sent to the frontier fortresses. Troops are in movement from the Northern Provinces. Drilling is going on--I was going to say night and day, for it is pretty nearly that--and no one can make out what it is all about.
"There is one thing--no one asks questions. His majesty thinks for his subjects, and as he certainly is the cleverest man in his dominions, everyone is well content that it should be so.
"And now, about yourself. I am running on and talking nonsense, when I have all sorts of questions to ask you. But that is always the way with me. I am like a bottle of champagne, corked down while I am in the palace, and directly I get away the cork flies out by itself, and for a minute or two it is all froth and emptiness.
"Now, when did you arrive, how did you arrive, what is the last news from Scotland, which of the branches of the Drummonds do you belong to, and how near of kin are you to the marshal? Oh, by the way, I ought to know the last without asking; as you are a Drummond, and a relation of Keith, you can be no other than the son of the Drummond of Tarbet, who married Margaret Ogilvie, who was a first cousin of Keith's."
"That is right," Fergus said. "My father fell at Culloden, you know. As to all your other questions, they