LXXX
The Tsar was right. Men who desire Death very keenly and bitterly, who seek the grim tyrant in his very citadel, find him difficult of access, as a rule.
Something that had been a man came staggering back out of the poisonous swamps of the delta of the Dobrudja, and—more dead than alive—reached the port of Kustendje on the Black Sea, what time Protestant England and Catholic France had allied with the Moslem against Christian Russia; and Lord Dalgan, Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, and H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge, were being entertained by Sire my Friend, at Paris.
As though the out-at-elbows refugee, the borrowing adventurer, the temporary occupant of the Presidential armchair had never existed, you are to see him Sire my Friend as the Ally of Great Britain, the gracious patron and protector of the Sick Man. He had had his will; his plot had blossomed in this gorgeous flower of International War—the Allied Fleets were in the Black Sea—France was rent with the shouting of trumpets and the screaming of bugles; she quaked with the tramping of cavalry, the ceaseless passing of batteries of artillery, and trains of wagons and ammunition-carts. And day by day his crowded transports steamed for the East from Toulon and Brest and Marseilles.
He was happy. The Northern potentate who would not call him brother—the Army he had bribed with stolen millions to enthrone him—which he feared, and which openly ridiculed him—the English Sovereign and her Consort,who had despised and condescended to him—these were destined to drink of a cup that had taken years to mix.
England’s trust in him entertained him hugely. She took the leap, with all its tragic possibilities, like a generous horse ridden by a reckless sportsman at a killing fence; ignoring the deadly possibilities of the stake, and the barbed wire, and the back-breaking deep ditch beyond.
To gratitude, good faith, rectitude, loyalty to vows a stranger—all must smart sooner or later, who had trusted this man.... Thus, France paid in the end in other things than her virtue for that furious midnight ride upon the saddle-bow. But her new owner amused her; and she was prosperous, or seemed to be.
For this was the era of great Booms in zinc, and charcoal, and foreign bonds, and American steel rails. It was also the age of folly, flummery, flippancy, and frolic. The ponderous classicism of the Empire style, the rococo ugliness of the Monarchy, both were kicked into the dustbin on the arrival of the Second Empire. Gaudy colors,bizarrefashions, gay, sparkling music,chicsaucy women, men who amused themselves—where Sire my Friend reigned, these reigned. Ashtaroth, Belphegor, and Belial were worshiped at the Tuileries and Compiègne. But the High-Priest of their mysteries improved Paris if he corrupted her—that must be allowed.
After Nero, he was possibly the greatest designer of landscape-gardens, the most gifted layer-out of streets and promenades, that has ever existed. He inspired Haussman. He dreamed in avenues wide enough to maneuver cavalry in; he thought in boulevards down which whole batteries of artillery could sweep. He who had been immured in a prison loved Freedom, Air, Light, Space—and he gave these good things to his capital. Also he gave her the Cocodette.
Thelionneof 1848—of her we know something.... She was passionate, wayward, exquisite, and unprincipled. In three words, she was Henriette. But in exchanging her for the cocodette of the Second Empire, France paid in the resultant loss of beauty. With her limbs eased in the steel cage of the crinoline that hid the fault; with her little hat tilted above her mountains of bleached hair; with her fringe, her panniers puffed above the artificialdeformity that later became the bustle—with her huge and tasteless lockets and chains, belts and dog-collars of precious metal—she is a type of the decadence of the Age of Sire my Friend.
The cocodette was giddy of brain, false from the love of deceit, impure without passion, hideous in the extreme; and knew not her absurdity or her ugliness any more than the Frenchwoman of to-day—whom her English and American sisters ape, in their hobble or harem skirts, and their waste-paper-basket hats, trimmed with patches of brocade, whole fowls, and lumps of velvet. Elegance has fled—Grace has departed—Good Taste conceals her face—Beauty has ceased to exist, in France, since Religion was abolished. How should it be otherwise when from His peculiar country, men have driven out God?
When the Athenians lost the sense of loveliness that lies in the pure vigorous line, that was the commencement of Greek degradation. In like manner the boneless ugliness called The New Art was a symptom of disease and decay. Buildings without angles are as faces without noses. Design that is all curves marks exhaustion in the brain that conceived it, and impotence in the hand that executed—nothing more.
But Sire my Friend was pleased, and extremely well contented. In the popular acclamations accorded to H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge and the Commander of Britannia’s Forces, their host had had his share. Also, the Empress’s Monster Ball at the Élysée—given in honor of these distinguished visitors—had come off successfully. Though M. Chose, Secretary to the venerable Duchesse de Viellecourt, and Mademoiselle Mirepoix, amanuensis of the aged and purblind Marquis de l’Autretemps, had returned their respective employers’ cards, with the intimation that neither enjoyed the acquaintance of M. and Madame Bonaparte.
All through Good Friday, and its night, and the following day, sleepless workmen toiled at the Palace of the Élysée; and there rose under their cracked and bleeding hands a vast and flimsy edifice, of unseasoned wood and hurriedly-laid brick.... One may regard it as a typical and apt representation of the Second Empire, when, its walls of wet plaster covered with satin draperies, their gaping cracks concealed with gilded moldings, huge mirrors,trophies of arms and garlands of real and artificial flowers, it stood at length complete and challenged admiration.
Christ hung upon the Cross—the Tabernacles stood empty of the Blessed Sacrament—the faithful crowded the black-draped churches—priests, gaunt with fasting, succeeded one another in the pulpit; but still the workmen toiled like busy ants, and still the great ballroom went on growing—in honor of the bluff Protestant Duke, who in his own way, with a high hat and a black coat, hot-cross buns, a service in church, and salt fish at dinner, held sacred that Day of Days.
The Soul of Man’s Redeemer, breathed forth on Calvary, passed downwards on the way to Purgatory, with the saved thief trotting in His footsteps like a dog. He descended to those regions where souls under penalty lie writhing in the torture of purifying fires. His tidings of pardon and salvation fell like cooling dews upon their expiatory anguish, ere He rose like the sun upon the spirits of the Blessed, walking before His dawn in the calm fields of Paradise. But before he ascended to His Throne of Glory He came to comfort a little knot of sorrowing men and women gathered together in a bare chamber at Jerusalem—and to rejoice His Mother with the sight of her risen Son.
But the honored guests of the Empire attended a Review on the Champ de Mars, and inspected the Barracks of the famous Regiment of Guides, and dined at the Tuileries in state, and entertained Ministers of the Crown, Foreign Ambassadors, Nobles of the Empire and distinguished members of the Senate, royally at the British Embassy; and the Monster Ball went off like an Arabian Night before they departed—amidst the united strains of massed bands playing the British National Anthem, andPartant Pour La Syrie—and cries of “Vive la Reine Victoria!” “Vive le Duc!” “Vivent les Anglais!” for Marseilles. They and their Staffs were banqueted there by Marshal deSt.Arnaud and his Staff—while the great screw-transports, chock-full of men and horses, guns and stores of all kinds, were scurrying away from Toulon and Brest and Marseilles as fast as steam could carry them—en routefor the Dardanelles.
And presently—both French and English Commanders-in-Chiefwith their Staffs having sailed for Constantinople—Sire my Friend could draw unhampered breath. Despite his boast of belonging to the genus of Imperturbables, his pulses had been unpleasantly quickened by something that had happened. For a moment he had seen the basilisk that Time and opportunity had hatched out of that egg of his, in danger; he had known the torture bred of long-meditated, almost-consummated vengeance that is about to be foiled. But all was well!—prompt measures had been taken.... Still, it was inconvenient that the man had lived to return....