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Albert was disturbed in these meditations by his groom, who kept about twenty paces behind him, and whom he heard cry out, “Eh! Paul Talkebarth, where the deuce do you come from?” He turned his horse, and perceived that a horseman, who had just trotted past him, and whom he had not particularly observed, was standing still with his groom, beating out the cheeks of the large fox-fur cap with which his head was covered, so that soon the well-known face of Paul Talkebarth, Colonel Victor von S—-‘s old groom, was made manifest, glowing with the finest vermilion.

Now Albert knew at once what it was that impelled him so irresistibly from Liege to Aix-la-Chapelle, and he could not comprehend how the thought of Victor, his most intimate and dearest friend, whom he had every reason to suppose at Aix, merely lay dimly in his soul, and attained nothing like distinctness. He now also cried out, “Eh! Paul Talkebarth, whence do you come? Where is your master?”

Paul curvetted up to him very gracefully, and said, holding the palm of his hand against the far-too-large cockade of his cap, by way of military salutation: “Yes, ‘faith, I am Paul Talkebarth indeed, gracious lieutenant-colonel. We’ve bad weather here, Zermannoere ( sur mon honneur ). But the groundsel brings that about. Old Lizzy always used to say so. I cannot say, gracious lieutenant-colonel, if you know Lizzy: she lives at Genthin, but if one has been at Paris, and has seen the wild goat in the Schartinpland ( Jardin des Plantes ).–Now, what one seeks for one finds near, and here I am in the presence of the gracious lieutenant-colonel, whom I was to seek at Liege. The spirus familis ( spiritus familiaris ), whispered yesterday evening into my master’s ear, that the gracious lieutenant-colonel had come to Liege. Zackermannthoe ( sacre mon de Dieu ), there was delight! It may be as it will, but I have never put any faith in the cream-colour. A fine beast, Zermannoere, but a mere childish thing, and the baronness did her utmost–that is true! There are decent sort of people here, but the wine is good for nothing–and when one has been in Paris–! Now, the colonel might have marched in, like one through the Argen trumph ( Arc de triomphe ), and I should have put the new shabrach on the white horse; gad, how he would have pricked up his ears! But old Lizzy,–she was my aunt, at Genthin, was always accustomed to say–I don’t know, gracious lieutenant-colonel, whether you–“

“May your tongue be lamed,” said Albert, interrupting the incorrigible babbler. “If your master is at Aix, we must make haste, for we have still above five leagues to go.”

“Stop,” cried Paul Talkebarth, with all his might; “stop, stop, gracious lieutenant-colonel, the weather is bad here; but for fodder–those who have eyes like us, that shine in the fog.”

“Paul,” cried Albert, “do not wear out my patience. Where is your master? Is he not in Aix?”

Paul Talkebarth smiled with such delight, that his whole countenance puckered up into a thousand folds, like a wet glove, and then stretching out his arm he pointed to the building, which might be seen behind the wood, upon a gentle declivity, and said, “Yonder, in the castle!” Without waiting for what Paul might have to prattle further, Albert struck into the path that led from the high road, and hurried on in a rapid trot. After the little that he has said, honest Paul Talkebarth must appear to the gracious reader as an odd sort of fellow. We have only to say, that he being an heir-loom of the family, served Colonel Victor von S—- from the moment when the latter first put on his officer’s sword, after having been the intendent-general and maitre des plaisirs of all the sports and mad pranks of his childhood. An old and very odd magister, who had been tutor to the family through two generations, completed, with the amount of education which he allowed to flow to honest Paul, those happy talents for extraordinary confusion and strange Eulenspiegelei [1] with which nature had by no means scantily endued him. At the same time he was the most faithful soul that could possibly exist. Ready every moment to sacrifice his life for his master, neither his advanced age nor any other consideration could prevent the good Paul from following him to the field in the year 1813. His own nature rendered him superior to every hardship; but less strong than his corporeal was his spiritual nature, which seemed to have received a strange shock, or at any rate some extraordinary impulse during his residence in France, especially in Paris. Then, for the first time, did he properly feel that Magister Spreugepileus had been perfectly right when he called him a great light, that would one day shine forth brightly. This shining quality Paul had discovered by the aptness with which he had accommodated himself to the manners of a foreign people, and had learned their language. Therefore, he boasted not a little, and ascribed it to his extraordinary talent alone, that he could often, in respect to quarters and provisions, obtain that which seemed unattainable. Talkebarth’s fine French phrases, the gentle reader has already been made acquainted with some pleasant curses–were current, if not through the whole army, at any rate through the corps to which his master was attached. Every trooper who came to quarters in a village, cried to the peasant with Paul’s words, “Pisang! de lavendel pur di schevals!” ( Paysan, de l’avoine pour les chevaux.)