At length, however, the answer to the petition arrived, and, to his great relief, he found himself condemned to pay a fine of twenty thalers to the almshouse of Halle; and no further mention was made of his visit to the theatre.

CHAPTER VI

The battle of Sohr.

Deep silence reigned in the encampment which the Prussians had established near the village of Sohr.  The brave soldiers, wearied with their long march, were sleeping quietly, although they knew that the Austrian army, which far outnumbered their own, was hastening toward them, and would attack them within a few hours.  This knowledge did not alarm them, they had not so soon forgotten their signal victory over Karl von Lothringen, with his Austrians, Bavarians, and Saxons, at Hohenfriedberg.  They did not fear a defeat at Sohr, although the grand duke was now the leader of forty thousand men, and Frederick’s army had been so diminished by the forces he had sent to Saxony and Silesia, that it consisted of scarcely twenty thousand men.  The Prussian soldiers relied confidently upon the good fortune and the strategic talent of their king; they could sleep quietly, for Frederick watched beside them.

The watch-fires had died out, the lights in the tents of the officers were extinguished.  Now and then might be heard the measured tread of a sentinel, or the loud breathing of some soldier dreaming perhaps of his distant home or forsaken bride.  No other sounds broke upon the night air.  The Prussian army slept.  Alas! how many of them were now dreaming their last earthly dream; how many on the morrow would lie with gaping wounds upon a bloody battle ground, with staring glassy eyes turned upward, and no one near to wipe the death-drops from their brows!  They know not, they care not, they are lost in sleep.  There can be no pressing danger, for the king is in their midst—­the light has been extinguished in his tent also.  He sleeps with his army.

It is midnight, the hour of wandering spirits.  Is that a spirit which has just left so noiselessly the tent of the king, and has so quickly vanished in the tent of the adjutant, which adjoins that of the king?  No, not vanished, for it has already reappeared; but there are now three of these shadowy beings quietly approaching the white tents of the officers, disappearing for an instant into each tent, then reappearing, and continuing their course.

Where they have been may now be heard a low whispering and moving.  Soon another dark figure is visible; it moves cautiously forward toward the soldiers’ tents in which it disappears, and from these may be heard the same low whispering, and like a murmuring brook this babbling glides through the entire camp, always following the first three shadows who have gone noiselessly and with the rapidity of the wind through the camp.

Why have these three shadows driven sleep from the encampment? why have they ordered the horses to be prepared?  No one has been told to mount, no “Forward!” has been thundered through the camp; and but for the dark figures which may now be seen on all sides, the silence is so profound that one might almost think the camp still buried in sleep.