Scharnhorst and Amelia hastened after him and kept him back.
"What do you wish to do?" asked Scharnhorst.
"I wish to pursue him!" exclaimed Blucher, vainly trying to
disengage himself from the hands of his wife and the general. "Let
me go--do not detain me! I must pursue him--I must take him
prisoner! If he has fled from his army, he must return to France,
and if he wants to return to France, he must pass through Germany.
Let me go! He must not be permitted to escape from Germany!"
"But he has already escaped," said Scharnhorst, smiling.
"What! Passed through Germany?" asked Blucher. "And no one has tried
to arrest him?"
"No one knew that he was there. He left his army on the 6th of
December; attended only by Caulaincourt and his Mameluke Roustan,
recognized by no one, expected by no one, he sped in fabulous haste
in an unpretending sleigh through the whole of Poland and Prussia.
Only after he set out was it known at the places where he stopped
that he had been there. He travelled as swiftly as the storm. On the
6th of December he was at Wilna, on the 10th of December at Warsaw,
and in the night of the 14th of December suddenly a plain sleigh
stopped in front of the residence of M. Serra, French ambassador at
Dresden: two footmen were seated on the box, and in the sleigh
itself there were two gentlemen, wrapped in furred robes, and so
much benumbed by the cold that they had to be lifted out.
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