a Patent of Generalcy: 'Just received from Court, my Friend,
on account of your merits old and late.'--'Aha,' said Barenklau,
congratulating warmly: 'Dine with me, then, Herr General Mentzel,
this very day. The Prince himself is to be there, Highness of
Hessen-Darmstadt, and who not; all are impatient to drink your health!'
Mentzel had a glorious dinner; still more glorious drink,--Prince
Karl and the others, it is said, egging him into much wild bluster and
gasconade, to season their much wine. Eminent swill of drinking, with
the loud coarse talk supposable, on the part of Mentzel and consorts did
go on, in this manner, all afternoon: in the evening, drunk Mentzel came
out for air; went strutting and staggering about; emerging finally on
the platform of some rampart, face of him huge and red as that of
the foggiest rising Moon;--and stood, looking over into the Lorraine
Country; belching out a storm of oaths, as to his taking it, as to
his doing this and that; and was even flourishing his sword by way of
accompaniment; when, lo, whistling slightly through the summer air, a
rifle-ball from some sentry on the French side (writers say, it was a
French drummer, grown impatient, and snatching a sentry's piece) took
the brain of him, or the belly of him; and he rushed down at once, a
totally collapsed monster, and mere heap of dead ruin, never to trouble
mankind more." [_Guerre de Boheme,_ iii. 165.] For which my readers and
I are rather thankful. Voltaire, and perhaps other memorable persons,
sometimes mention this brute (miraculous to the Plebs and Gazetteers);
otherwise eternal oblivion were the best we could do with him. Trenck
also, readers will be glad to understand, ends in jail and bedlam by and
by.

"Prince Karl had not the least intention of crossing by this Cowhead
Island. Nevertheless he set about two other Bridges in the neighborhood,
nearer Mainz (few miles below that City); kept manoeuvring his Force,
in huge half-moon, round that quarter, and mysteriously up and down;
alarming Coigny wholly into the Mainz region. For the space of ten
days; and then, stealing off to Schrock, a little Rhine Village above
Philipsburg, many miles away from Coigny and his vigilantes, he--

"NIGHT OF 30th JUNE-1st JULY, Suddenly shot Pandour Trenck, followed
by Nadasti and 6,000, across at Schrock who scattered Seckendorf's poor
outposts thereabouts to the winds; 'built a bridge before morning, and
next day another.' Next day Pri