XLVI
France had not taken kindly to the notion of aplebiscite. The good city of Paris had had an indigestion of proclamations—was beginning to suspect the motives of her leading citizen. And the capital roared and buzzed like a beehive of angry bees.
He needed very much to be Dictator for ten years at least, the little man with the lank, drab hair, arrayed in the uniform of a General, adorned with the redcordonand the jeweled Grand Cross and Star of the Legion ofHonor, who sat, upon this night of November, 1851, in a velvet armchair before the blazing wood-fire in his small private cabinet upon the ground-floor, with the tips of his spurred, wonderfully polished little boots upon the bar of a sumptuous, palatial fender of solid silver-gilt. Twelve millions of francsper annumfor nearly four years had left him deep in debt and horribly embarrassed. When he should drive out of the courtyard of the Elysée at the expiration of his tenure of office, the gaping jaws of a debtor’s prison were ready to engulf him. He knew that very well.
And he waited, on the horns of a dilemma, with the son of his mother, who secretly detested him; and Fleury, now his senior aide-de-camp, andSt.Arnaud, his War Minister, a lean, gaunt, dyed and painted personage who had once been an actor at a suburban theater, who had served in the Foreign Legion as a private soldier, who had seen much service, won promotion, and had now been recalled from Algeria by his friend. For the purpose of showing Parisians how warfare is conducted by civilized forces against Kabyles and Arabs and Moors.
Money, money!
As the neat white fingers of France’s First Citizen twisted comic figures out of paper, taken from a little inlaid table beside him where writing-materials were, his brain was busy with this vexing question of how to get more cash. Hundreds of millions of francs had been expended during his tenure of office. The china, pictures and other Art treasure of the Crown had been converted into bullion. The diamonds of the Crown and the Crown forests had become gold in the crucible of the auction-room. And—presto! the vast sums thus realized had vanished—nobody could exactly indicate how or whither—it was a puzzle to baffle Houdin. Nor could anyone point out the winners of the chief prizes advertized in the Lottery of the Golden Ingots, which had, with much tootling of official trumpets and banging of official drums, been drawn some days before.
Money!...
There was a reception upon this particular evening: the little Palace and its courtyard blazed with gas. A double line of carriages rolled ceaselessly in and out of high gilded gates, their twinkling lamps reflected in thecuirasses of the guard-of-honor. A steady stream of fire-worshipers, anxious to prostrate their foreheads in the dust before their god and luminary, rolled up the imposing flight of red-carpeted doorsteps and through the gilded vestibule to the small reception-rooms. Stars and Orders were not plentiful; Ambassadors were conspicuous by their absence: the Minister for the United States being the only exception to this rule. But lovely women were present; the whole galaxy of the Élysée scintillated in the heavens, and there were plenty of young attachés of Legation and clerks of the Diplomatic Corps. And silks and satins, feathers and diamonds, flaunted by gorgeous cocodettes of the fashionable world, mingled there with cotton-backed velvet, paste jewelry and cheap book-muslin; and gold-laced uniforms twinkling with decorations, jostled the black coat with the tricolor rosette, whose wearer had tramped in from Montrouge or Menilmontant to save a ’bus fare, and had stowed his overcoat and goloshes with the shawls and overshoes and umbrellas of his women-kind away behind the pedestal of some vestibule-bronze or group of statuary, to avoid the fee that must otherwise be paid to one of the large, stately footmen in the Presidential livery, in return for a wooden counter and the assumption of responsibility for these discarded coverings.
It was nearly midnight, and yet the sun had not risen; the magnificent band of the —th Hussars, stationed in the splendid gilt ballroom where the Prince-President had as a child witnessed the second abdication of the Emperor Napoleon, had not yet crashed intoPartant Pour La Syrie. It had been given out that Monseigneur was delayed by the non-arrival of dispatches, detained by urgent affairs of State. Detectives, mingling with the throng of guests in the reception-rooms, kept their ears open for unfavorable comments: their eyes skinned for the possible interception of significant glances. Of which, had they but chosen to step outside the courtyard-gates, they might have gathered store.
For to be plain, Paris was in a state of ferment and disruption. Disaffection prevailed. Insurrection was rising to its old high-water mark. And the cries were: “Down with Bonaparte! Long live the Republic! Long live Law! Long live the Constitution! Down with theArmy, the paid tool of the President who wants to be Emperor in spite of all his oaths!” And the ganglion of narrow streets that made the center of the city’s nervous system were being rapidly blocked by barricades built higher than before....
What wonder if at this juncture the crying need of Monseigneur for money opened a Gargantuan mouth for the bottle. Without money at this juncture, the contemplated masterstroke of policy must fall as harmlessly as a blow from Harlequin’s lathen sword.
Money, money, money!...
And there were twenty-five millions of francs, belonging to the Orleans Princes, lying in the Bank of France, which by a Presidential Decree, countersigned by the Home Secretary Count de Morny, might be profitably sequestrated. And, contained in a series of great painted and emblazoned deed-boxes, occupying a row of shelves in the strong-room at the Ministry of the Interior, were the title-deeds to estates of the value of three hundred thousand millions more, vested in the hands of mere Trustees; who might argue and protest, but could, if it proved necessary, be gagged. And de Morny had just threatened to resign the Home Secretaryship if Monseigneur persisted in his intention of laying violent hands on these unconsidered trifles—an exhibition of obstinacy both ill-timed and in bad taste.
“Who the devil, my dear fellow,” he asked, “will bid for cities, forests, palaces and villages, even if you put these up to auction at reasonable prices, when the titles to these properties must remain—to put it delicately—uncertain? A new Government may arise which suffers from the excess of scruples. In that case the estates will be returned to those whose property they are.”
De Morny, with his insufferable air of superiority, and the grand manner which indubitably belonged to him, lounged against the mantelshelf and looked down on Monseigneur.St.Arnaud, his long, lank form arrayed in the uniform of a Marshal, encrusted with bullion and blazing with decorations, lay on a sofa, sucking at the jeweled mouthpiece of achibuk. De Fleury puffed out his cheeks as he blew cigarette-smoke into the fluffy, puzzled face of a gray Persian kitten that had climbed upon the shelfof an ivory cabinet loaded with costly china, and spat as he teased it with the plumes of his cocked hat.
“Who will buy? The answer is cut and dried. No one! And this appropriation—as a first flight of the Imperial eagle—will make you infernally unpopular; not to warn you of this would be,” said de Moray, “alachesupon my part. Every petty shopkeeper who has two thousand francs in the savings-bank—every peasant who has a little plot of land, will say to himself: ‘This fellow sticks at nothing. Poor devil though I am, I may be the next to be plundered.’ If you carry out this project of yours, it will not be with my assistance. I will help you take an Empire very willingly, but not to plunder a strong-box.”
He looked at his watch, bowed with his easy grace, and went out. The man who was his brother, and envied him, following the tall departing figure with eyes of sickly hate.
“M. de Morny follows the cynical advice that is given in the Gospel ofSt.Luke,” he said with a bitter sneer. “He would keep on bowing-terms with the Princes of the House of Orleans, so that, should I fail, they may receive him into their favor. His is the principle of hedge and trim. Well, we know his breaking-point! In the event of his kicking over the traces,” he spoke the words in English, a familiar language to Persigny and de Fleury, “there is another upon whom I can depend.”
And he exchanged a look of intelligence with Persigny, his shadow. For the ex-sergeant-quartermaster of dragoons would not fail him, he knew, upon a point of honor or at a pinch of conscience. Persigny was without these inconvenient things.
Meanwhile the door flew open again to re-admit de Morny, who insisted that the night grew old; that the reception-rooms were crowded to suffocation; that the long-delayed appearance of the President had provoked unfavorable comparisons, and created a bad impression; that he must come without delay.
“Let them wait!” he said, with a dull flash of ill-humor, in answer to the expostulations of Persigny. “Who are they, that they should not be kept waiting? Whom have we? A damnable rabble of bankers, stockbrokers, judges, generals, senators, Representatives and their wives andmistresses.... You know very well that what the English would call the ‘best people’ are those who do not come....”
Which was true. The private secretaries of the aged Duchesse de Veillecour, of the FaubourgSt.Honoré, and of the venerable Marquis de l’Autretemps, being invariably instructed to return M. Bonaparte’s card of invitation, with the intimation that their respective employers had not the honor of knowing the gentleman who had sent it,—or with no intimation at all....
“Let them wait!” he said again. “Am I not waiting? For this message from Walewski—for this ultimatum of my Lord Walmerston—for this establishment of the submarine electric telegraph between England and France. That gutta-percha covered wire stretching between the cave under the South Foreland at Dover and the cliff station at Cape Grisnez is the jugular vein of my whole system of policy. Had it not broken twice, should I not have prepared Paris with my proclamations—should I not have struck the blow?”
He stuck out his chin as he rolled his head upon the cushioned back of his armchair and stared at the painted ceiling, and went on in his droning voice:
“That is, if I had had money—sufficient funds at my disposal. That a man like me should want money at such a moment proves that the Devil is a fool.”
St.Arnaud turned his long emaciated body and sagacious grayhound-face towards the speaker. The sofa creaked beneath his weight, and one of his gold spurs, catching in the costly brocade cover, tore it with a little ugly, sickening sound. He said, stroking the dyed tuft upon his chin with a gaunt pale hand glittering with rings of price:
“Monseigneur, pray do the personage you mention better justice. He really has served you better than you think!”
He had. The steam-packetGoliathof Dover, towing the ancient cable-hulkBlazer, the latter rolling fearfully, with a direfully seasick crew, and a hold containing but a few hundred yards or so of the twenty-seven miles of cable which had been smoothly paid out over the Channel sea-floor, had dropped her anchors off Cape Grisnez an hour before sunset; and the end of the wire-bound ropeon which so much depended having been landed at the village of Sangatte, distant some three miles or so from Calais, communication had been established with the operators in the cave under the South Foreland lighthouse at Dover. And a gun had been fired from the Castle; and telegrams announcing the fact had been sent by the Chief Magistrate of Dover to the Queen and the Prince Consort, the Duke of Wellington, the King of Prussia, and a few other important personages. And the Mayor had then despatched a message of congratulation to the French Prince-President, which was being transmitted to Paris by means of Ampère’s coil and needle, and the under-ground wire that followed the track of the Great Northern Railway Line.
But meanwhile a courier from the Embassy of France in Belgrave Square, London, chilled and hoarse from rapid traveling in the wintry weather, had arrived with the letter from Walewski. And when the neat white hands for which it was destined had snatched the envelope from the sumptuous golden salver upon which it was respectfully presented by the President’s second aide-de-camp, its contents proved discouraging, to say the least.
Count Walewski had pleaded his relative’s cause with eloquence. The enclosure would prove with what result.
A check for two thousand pounds, enfolded in a sheet scrawled with a brief intimation in my Lord Walmerston’s stiff, characteristic handwriting, that no more of the stuff was to be had.