“What marriage?” asked Ordener and Schumacker with a single voice.
“By the cut of your clothes, sir stranger,” cried the lieutenant, clapping his hands, “I guessed that you came from some other world. Your present question turns my doubt to certainty. You must have landed only yesterday on the banks of the Nidder in a fairy-car drawn by two winged dragons; for you could not have travelled through Norway without hearing of the wonderful marriage of the viceroy’s son and the lord chancellor’s daughter.”
“What! Is Ordener Guldenlew to marry Ulrica d’Ahlefeld?”
“As you say,” replied the officer; “and it will all be settled before the fashion of French farthingales reaches Copenhagen.”
“Frederic’s son must be about twenty-two years old, for I had been in Copenhagen fortress a year when the news of his birth reached me. Let him marry young,” added Schumacker with a bitter smile. “When disgrace comes upon him, at least no one can accuse him of having aspired to a cardinal’s hat.”
The old favorite alluded to one of his own misfortunes, of which the lieutenant knew nothing.
“No, indeed,” said he, laughing heartily. “Baron Ordener will receive the title of count, the collar of the Order of the Elephant, and a colonel’s epaulettes, which would scarcely match with the cardinal’s hat.”
“So much the better,” answered Schumacker. Then after a pause he added, shaking his head as if he saw his revenge before him, “Some day they may make an iron collar of his fine order; they may break his count’s coronet over his head; they may strike him in the face with his colonel’s epaulettes.”
“For the sake of your hatred, sir, do not curse an enemy’s good fortune before you know whether it be good fortune in his eyes.”
“Pooh!” said the lieutenant. “What are the old fellow’s railings to Baron Thorwick?”
“Lieutenant,” cried Ordener, “they may be more to him than you think. And,” he added, after a brief silence, “your grand marriage is not so certain as you suppose.”
“_Fiat quod vis_,” rejoined the lieutenant, with an ironical bow; “the king, the viceroy, and the chancellor have, it is true, made every arrangement for the wedding; but if it displeases you, Sir Stranger, what matter the lord chancellor, the viceroy, and the king!”