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That evening, as the general accompanied the consul down to the gateway and the waiting carriage, a figure in uniform ran spontaneously before them and shouted “Heraus!” to the sentries. But the general promptly checked “the turning out” of the guard with a paternal shake of his finger to the over-zealous soldier, in whom the consul recognized Karl. “He is my Bursche now,” said the general explanatorily. “My wife has taken a fancy to him. Ach! he is very popular with these women.” The consul was still more surprised. The Frau Generalin Adlerkreutz he knew to be a pronounced Englishwoman,–carrying out her English ways, proprieties, and prejudices in the very heart of Schlachtstadt, uncompromisingly, without fear and without reproach. That she should follow a merely foreign society craze, or alter her English household so as to admit the impossible Karl, struck him oddly.

A month or two elapsed without further news of Karl, when one afternoon he suddenly turned up at the consulate. He had again sought the consular quiet to write a few letters home; he had no chance in the confinement of the barracks.

“But by this time you must be in the family of a field-marshal, at least,” suggested the consul pleasantly.

“Not to-day, but next week,” said Karl, with sublime simplicity; “THEN I am going to serve with the governor commandant of Rheinfestung.”

The consul smiled, motioned him to a seat at a table in the outer office, and left him undisturbed to his correspondence.

Returning later, he found Karl, his letters finished, gazing with childish curiosity and admiration at some thick official envelopes, bearing the stamp of the consulate, which were lying on the table. He was evidently struck with the contrast between them and the thin, flimsy affairs he was holding in his hand. He appeared still more impressed when the consul told him what they were.

“Are you writing to your friends?” continued the consul, touched by his simplicity.

“Ach ja!” said Karl eagerly.

“Would you like to put your letter in one of these envelopes?” continued the official.

The beaming face and eyes of Karl were a sufficient answer. After all, it was a small favor granted to this odd waif, who seemed to still cling to the consular protection. He handed him the envelope and left him addressing it in boyish pride.

It was Karl’s last visit to the consulate. He appeared to have spoken truly, and the consul presently learned that he had indeed been transferred, through some high official manipulation, to the personal service of the governor of Rheinfestung. There was weeping among the Dienstmadchen of Schlachtstadt, and a distinct loss of originality and lightness in the gatherings of the gentler Hausfrauen. His memory still survived in the barracks through the later editions of his former delightful stupidities,–many of them, it is to be feared, were inventions,–and stories that were supposed to have come from Rheinfestung were described in the slang of the Offiziere as being “colossal.” But the consul remembered Rheinfestung, and could not imagine it as a home for Karl, or in any way fostering his peculiar qualities. For it was eminently a fortress of fortresses, a magazine of magazines, a depot of depots. It was the key of the Rhine, the citadel of Westphalia, the “Clapham Junction” of German railways, but defended, fortified, encompassed, and controlled by the newest as well as the oldest devices of military strategy and science. Even in the pipingest time of peace, whole railway trains went into it like a rat in a trap, and might have never come out of it; it stretched out an inviting hand and arm across the river that might in the twinkling of an eye be changed into a closed fist of menace. You “defiled” into it, commanded at every step by enfilading walls; you “debouched” out of it, as you thought, and found yourself only before the walls; you “reentered” it at every possible angle; you did everything apparently but pass through it. You thought yourself well out of it, and were stopped by a bastion. Its circumvallations haunted you until you came to the next station. It had pressed even the current of the river into its defensive service. There were secrets of its foundations and mines that only the highest military despots knew and kept to themselves. In a word–it was impregnable.