LXXIV
The well-oiled machinery of his Secret Intelligence Department—that kept him informed of every movement not only of those Powers who were his enemies, but of those who might one day become so—had long ago placed on the Barbarian’s table, proofs that the grain, forage, and salted-provision merchants of the Levant were finding a customer upon a Brobdingnagian scale in Sire my Friend at the Tuileries. That the freightage, railway charges, and import-duties upon these had been reduced to a mere nothing by Imperial Decree, and that immense cargoes were daily shipped to Marseilles and Toulon, to be stored in huge Government magazines that were being built on all sides as though in preparation for war. A little later came the news that the salted-provision, forage, and grain-merchants of Roumelia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Transylvania and Galicia were basking in the patronage of the same liberal buyer; whose granaries and storehouses had sprung up like mushrooms on the Turkish coasts of the Black Sea. As also depots of horses, cattle, timber and wagons; the contractors who had supplied these things being bound by Secret Contracts under divers penalties....
“Not to supply grain, stores, requisites, and material to Us,” said the autocrat, shrugging a gentle shrug of calm, suave indifference, and blowing his nose in his copious, characteristic way. “Does this Bonaparte suppose the resources of my Empire to be so small that it would be possible to crippleMeby taking these precautions? Really, he lacks intelligence—or is very badly informed.”
And as a Barbarian may smile, knowing All the Russias, Poland, the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the vast grain-producing area of the Caucasus his to draw upon—(even had his State magazines and the huge storehouses upon the coasts of Mingrelia and Guria not been bursting with flour, groats, biscuits, hay, and straw) the Tsar smiled, leaning back in the big battered, chipped, ragged-armed chair that he liked best, and chewing at the feather-end of a disreputable old quill pen.
He was closeted with Gortchakoff in the Imperial study in the Winter Palace. You saw it as a big plain room, full of heavy writing-tables and bureaux. Laden bookcases full of works on Drill, Tactics, and Fortification climbed to the scagliola ceiling-frieze, and between these were stands, supporting glass cases containing colored wax models of Cavalry and Infantrymen, stiff as life, and fully accoutered, whilst battle-paintings executed by native artists—wherein the Russian Forces were depicted in the act of conquering enemies of various nationalities amidst seas of carmine blood and clouds of flake-white smoke—hung on the walls above. In an adjoining room, furnished with soldierly simplicity, the ruler of seventy-four and odd millions of men slept on a narrow camp-bedstead, with no other covering than a single rug, and in winter his fur-lined cloak. And—perhaps because his huge hereditary dignities came to him through the tainted blood of scrofulous, insane, and degenerate Romanoffs—the innumerable handkerchiefs with which the despot stanched his constitutional catarrh were scattered, thick as the leaves of Vallombrosa, on the tables, chairs, and floor.
Gortchakoff, ex-Imperialaide-de-campand Governor-General of Western Siberia, diversely represented by our Illustrated Papers—much to the confusion of Mrs. Geogehagan—as a mild, plump, spectacled, smiling personage, and a gaunt, grim, trap-jawed Fee-Fo-Fum—had, as newly-appointed General-in-Chief of the Southern Forces—beensummoned to take leave of his master before setting out—as simply as a junker returning from furlough—per telega and by relays of post-horses, for the frontiers washed by the Pruth. Now, at the close of the Imperial utterance recorded, to which he had listened in a bolt-upright attitude of respectful attention, he coughed dryly; and pulling a document from a sheaf of tied and docketed papers, placed it before the Tsar, whose head—even as its owner sat in his chair—overtopped his own.
Nicholas sniffed several times as he perused the document, which was worn in the folds and incredibly greasy; was written in the Little Russian dialect of Bessarabia, and proved to be a contract between a certain Kirilov, an Akerman dealer in timber, and the official representative of Sire my Friend, who signed himself in a bold, free, looping hand:
“H. M. A. Von Widinitz-Dunoisse. General of Brigade of the French Army. Acting Head of the Eastern European War Survey and Army Supply Department of the Imperial Government of France.”
“BySt.Peter andSt.Paul!” said the Tsar, blowing his nose noisily; “this Bonaparte has imagination. ‘Not to furnish supplies to the Chiefs of the Army of Great Britain, or assist her military forces in any way whatsoever!...’ Let me see the date of this!”
It bore date of three years back. A paper precisely similar—save that it was written in the Slavish Latin of Wallachia, and that the contracting party was a wealthy Boyard of that country—who bred and sold sheep, cattle and horses on a vast scale—was only three months old. The spectacles of Gortchakoff glittered like diamonds as he saw this fact sink through the calm blue eyes of the cold-faced handsome Tsar, into the big brain ramparted by the lofty forehead. Not long would Nicholas remain in doubt as to the breed of chicken that would soon chip the shell of the egg of Monseigneur.
“August.... Dated on the 30th of August at Kustendje,” said Nicholas, reaching out his hand to take a fresh pocket-handkerchief from a little pile of these necessaries. He added: “A vessel of our Black Sea Steam Navigation Company touches at that port once a fortnight, taking mails and passengers for Varna and Constantinople.”He added: “The railway between Paris and Marseilles is nearly completed.... This Dunoisse would be in touch with the Tuileries, easily—passably easily. He would be kept informed of the march of political events.... And Sire my Friend, was at Dieppe in the beginning of July—Lucien Buonaparte the guest of the Queen of England at Windsor.... The Secret Treaty of Alliance was signed.... The combined Fleets were anchored in the Bay of Besika. And yet, in the event of war, the ally of France is to be denied assistance!... What does it mean? Let me think!...”
He had so much of the Oriental Satrap about him, that even his terrible Grand Wazir was no more than a piece of furniture when he desired to commune in private with the other man who dwelt within himself. The short daylight died as he sat, huge and massive and silent, profoundly thinking. The great Winter Palace leaped into a blaze of brilliancy, but the core of it, the study where the Tsar sat plunged in meditation, became so dark that you could not even distinguish the gleam of Gortchakoff’s spectacles as the late Governor-General of Western Siberia stood, stiff and immovable as a statue of ebony, beside his Little Father’s chair.
“Umph! Are you there, Peter Michailowitch?” said the deep voice out of the heart of the blackness, and the Prince answered with chattering teeth—for no one daring to enter unsummoned the room where the Tsar sat closeted with the newly-appointed General-in-Chief of his Southern Forces—the fire in the great stove of gilded porcelain had died to a pale red glow. “I have thought it out, and the man is even less of a gentleman than I have esteemed him. He would play the old game of the ape who made the cat pull the chestnuts out of the fire—the confidence-trick of the London swell mobsman.... Listen! England is to pay for her triumph at Trafalgar and the defeat of Waterloo through this alliance with Sire my Friend. She is to be drained of her blood and of her gold until she sinks down dying—and then he will offer me Great Britain with her East Indies, and the Danubian Provinces of Turkey in exchange for Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land—he will be anointed Emperor of Palestine upon the Savior’s Sepulcher, and if the child prove a son—create him Crown Prince of Bethlehem——”
“Supposing you, Bátiushka,” deftly put in Gortchakoff—who called him Little Father simply as a soldier or a peasant would have done—“choose to accept his terms?”
“That will I never, so help me God and Our Blessed Lady the Virgin!” said Nicholas, rising to his colossal height and crossing himself as he bowed in the direction of the ikons. He added: “This is an able man, this General Dunoisse, who spins his web for him. Of course, he is of their Training Institute for Staff Officers.... I should like to have that man.” He added, simply and Orientally: “I will have him. Get him at any price!”
“He is not to be bought, Bátiushka,” was the answer.
“Absurd, Peter Michailowitch!” said the autocrat. “All men are to be bought. This one as well as the others.” He added, as a stray gleam of light from a wind-blown lamp in the great courtyard evoked no responsive twinkle from the Prince’s spectacle-glasses: “Unless you mean that he is dead?”
“Look, Sire, when there is light, at the signature to the later document,” said Gortchakoff. “It is the feeble scrawl of a dying man. This officer had undergone many hardships in the past three years—surveying and traveling alone—or with only a peasant to guide him—he knew the country from the Balkans to the Sea of Azov—he had the Danubian Principalities at his fingers’ ends—he was, as Bátiushka says, a man worth any price. But—the day after the last contract was signed he left Kustendje for the delta of the Dobrudja. He had made his way up there from Varna on foot—and he had the fever of the country upon him”—Gortchakoff shrugged—“but he did not stay for that. He pushed on into the Dobrudja, taking the road that goes by the Chain of Lakes—and then the wilderness opened and swallowed him. And—that is now three months ago, and he has not been spit up yet.”
“Akh!” said Nicholas, who was to lose thousands of men in the poisonous marshes, as on the waterless steppes of that same region. “But I should not make sure that he is dead, even now. Men who do not value life are difficult to kill. My Russian soldiers hold it cheap when it comes to a question of obeying the orders of their Emperor.... They will prove themselves in 1854 what they were in 1812. And though Austria desert me and Prussia play the knave, I have Three Allies,” boomed thegreat bull-voice through the chilly darkness. “Pestilence, and Hunger, and Cold—that never yet failed to serve a Russian Tsar. As for England—I tell you, Peter Michailowitch!—between Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and her Army Contractor”—it would appear that this remarkably well-informed Barbarian had even heard of Jowell—“she will yet climb her Calvary with her Cross upon her shoulders—we shall see her crucified between two thieves!” He rose, and said, clapping his General-in-Chief quite genially upon the shoulder: “This room is cold, and I have a deputation from the Peace Society of England waiting to address me. Come and listen to these Quakers—they seem very honest men!...”
He received the three representatives of the English Society of Friends courteously and kindly. He heard the Address with tolerance and patience. Somewhat after this fashion he replied:
“I do not desire War, but since England and France have sided with the enemies of Christianity; and, without warning to Russia have sent their fleets to Constantinople and thence into the Black Sea—to encourage the Turks and impede our battleships in the protection of our coasts—it would appear that both these Western Powers seek War. I will not attack—but I shall act in self-defense! Now, since I think you have not met my wife and daughter, will you come and be introduced to them? It will give them very great pleasure, you may be assured.”