Friedrich's dinner had gone on with deliberation for about two hours, Friedrich's intentions not yet known to any, but everybody, great and small, waiting eagerly for them, like greyhounds on the slip,--when Adjutant Gaudi, who had been on the House-top the while, rushes into the Dining-room faster than he ought, and, with some tremor in his voice and eyes, reports hastily:
"At Schevenroda, at Pettstadt yonder! Enemy has turned to left.
Clearly for the left."--"Well, and if he do? No flurry needed, Captain!" answered Friedrich,--(NOT in these precise words;but rebuking Gaudi, with a look not of laughter wholly, and with a certain question, as to the state of Gaudi's stomachic part, which is still known in traditionary circles, but is not mentionable here);--and went, with due gravity, himself to the roof, with his Officers. "To the left, sure enough; meaning to attack us there:"the thing Friedrich had despaired of is voluntarily coming, then;--and it is a thing of stern qualities withal; a wager of life, with glorious possibilities behind.
Friedrich earnestly surveys the phenomenon for some minutes;in some minutes, Friedrich sees his way through it, at least into it, and how he will do it. Off, eastward; march! Swift are his orders; almost still swifter the fulfillment of them. Prussian Army is a nimble article in comparison with Dauphiness! In half an hour's time, all is packed and to the road; and, except Mayer and certain Free-Corps or Light-Horse, to amuse St. Germain and his Almsdorf people, there is not a Prussian visible in these localities to French eyes. "At half-past two," says the Squire's Man,--or let us take him a sentence earlier, to lose nothing of such a Document: "At noon his Majesty took dinner; sat till about two o'clock; then again went to the roof; and perceived that the Enemy's Army at Pettstadt were turning about the little Wood there northeastward, as if for Lunstadt [into the Lunstadt road];--such cannonading too," from those Almsdorf people, "that the balls flew over our heads,"--or I tremulously thought so. "At half-past two, the word was given, March! And good speed they made about it, in this Herrenhaus, and out of doors too, striking their tents, and cording up and trimly shouldering everything with incredible brevity," as if machinery were doing it; "and at three, on the Prussian part, all was packed and out into the court for being carried off; and, in fact, the Prussian Army was on march at three." Seidlitz, with all his Horse, vanishing round the corner of the Height; speeding along, invisible on his northern slope there, straight for the Janus-Polzen Hill part; the Infantry following, double-quick;--well knowing, each, what he has got to do.
But at this interesting point, the Editors--small thanks to them, authentic but thrice-stupid mortals--cut short our Eye-witness, not so much as telling us his name, some of them not even his date or whereabouts; and so the curtain tumbles down (as if its string had been cut, or suddenly eaten by unwise animals), and we are left to gray hubbub, and our own resources at second-hand. Except only that a French Officer--one of those cannonading from Almsdorf, no doubt --declares that "it was like a change of scene in the Opera (DECORATION D'OPERA)," [Letter in MULLER: p. 60. In WESTPHALEN(ii. 128-133) is a much superior French Letter, intercepted somewhere, and fallen to Duke Ferdinand; well worth reading, on Rossbach and the previous Affairs.] so very rapid; and that "they all rolled off eastward at quick time." At extremely quick time;--and soon, in the slight hollow behind Janus Hugel, vanished from sight of these Almsdorf French, and of the Soubise-Hildburghausen Army in general. Which latter is agreeably surprised at the phenomenon; and draws a highly flattering conclusion from it.
"Gone, then; off at double-quick for Merseburg; aha!" think the Soubise-Hildburghausen people: "Double-quick you too, my pretty men, lest they do whisk away, and we never get a stroke at them,!"--Seidlitz meanwhile, with his cavalry (thirty-eight squadrons, about 4,000 horse), is rapidly doing the order he has had. Seidlitz at a sharp military trot, and the infantry at doublequick to keep up near him, which they cannot quite do, are, as we have said, making right across for the Polzen-Hill and Janus-Hill quarter;their route the string, French route the bow; and are invisible to the French, owing to the heights between. Seidlitz, when he gets to the proper point eastward, will wheel about, front to southward, and be our left wing; infantry, as centre and right, will appear in like manner; and--we shall see!
The exultant Dauphiness, or Soubise-Hildburghausen Army (let us call it, for brevity's sake, Dauphiness or French, which it mainly was), on that rapid disappearance of the Prussians, never doubted but the Prussians were off on flight for Merseburg, to get across by the Bridge there. Whereat Dauphiness, doubly exultant, mended her own pace, cavalry at a sharp trot, infantry double-quick, but unable to keep up,--for the purpose of capturing or intercepting the runaway Prussians. Speed, my friends,--if you would do a stroke upon Friedrich, and show the Versailles people a King at last!
Thus they, hurrying on, in two parallel columns,--infantry, long floods of it, coming double-quick but somewhat fallen behind;cavalry 7,000 or so, as vanguard,--faster and faster;sweeping forward on their southern side of the Janus-and-Polzen slope, and now rather climbing the same.