CHAPTER XXVI.

The Spanish nature is contagious, thought Hans Eitelfritz, tossing on his couch in Ulrich’s tent.  What a queer fellow the gay young lad has become!  Sighs are cheap with him, and every word costs a ducat.  He is worthy all honor as a soldier.  If they make him Eletto, it will be worth while to join the free army.

Ulrich had briefly told the lansquenet, how he had obtained the name of Navarrete and how he had come from Madrid and Lepanto to the Netherlands.  Then he went to rest, but he could not sleep.

He had found his mother again.  He now possessed the best gift Ruth had asked him to beseech of the “word.”  The soldier’s sweetheart, the faithless wife, the companion of his rival, whom only yesterday he had avoided, the fortune-teller, the camp-sibyl, was the woman who had given him birth.  He, who thought he had preserved his honor stainless, whose hand grasped the sword if another looked askance at him, was the child of one, at whom every respectable woman had the right to point her finger.  All these thoughts darted through his brain; but strangely enough, they melted like morning mists when the sun rises, before the feeling of joy that he had his mother again.

Her image did not rise before his memory in Zorrillo’s tent, but framed by balsams and wall-flowers.  His vivid imagination made her twenty years younger, and how beautiful she still was, how winningly she could glance and smile.  Every appreciative word, all the praises of the sibyl’s beauty, good sense and kindness, which he had heard in the camp, came back freshly to his mind, and he would fain have started up to throw himself on her bosom, call her his mother, hear her give him all the sweet, pet names, which sounded so tender from her lips, and feel the caress of her soft hands.  How rich the solitary man felt, how surpassingly rich!  He had been entirely alone, deserted even by his mother!  Now he was so no longer, and pleasant dreams blended with his ambitious plans, like golden threads in dark cloth.

When power was once his, he would build her a beautiful, cosy nest with his share of the booty.  She must leave Zorrillo, leave him to-morrow.  The little nest should belong to her and him alone, entirely alone, and when his soul longed for peace, love, and quiet, he would rest there with her, recall with her the days of his childhood, cherish and care for her, make her forget all her sins and sufferings, and enjoy to the full the happiness of having her again, calling a loving mother’s heart his own.

At every breath he drew he felt freer and gayer.  Suddenly there was a rustling at the tent-door.  He seized his two-handed sword, but did not raise it, for a beloved voice he recognized, called softly:  “Ulrich, Ulrich, it is I!”

He started up, hastily threw on his doublet, rushed towards her, clasped her in his arms, and let her stroke his curls, kiss his cheeks and eyes, as in the old happy days.  Then he drew her into the tent, whispering “Softly, softly, the snorer yonder is the German.”