Léon told me that he thought I must be in the house all the while, but that he had hesitated to break in until the assassins had fired it. When he found me, I stood alone by the wall, blinded and helpless, but not a Russian to be seen. Who could wonder when the whole garden was full of French bayonets.
I left the house with him and we went together to the governor's palace. None knew what had become of my horse, nor did I care overmuch. The Place du Gouvernement itself was alive with our soldiers called to put out the fire if they could. By these we went quickly, Léon asking me a hundred questions which I could not answer yet.
"There was a woman there," said I.
He interrupted me with a laugh.
"You think that I did not see her!" he asked.
It being Léon, I thought no such thing.
"We will hunt her out to-morrow," said he, and then we turned about and together watched the burning palace.
"A welcome to Moscow!" he cried sardonically.
Ah, if we had known how this welcome was to be repeated in the days to come!
My nephew, Léon, had sworn to seek out the beautiful young Frenchwoman, Valerie, whom we had last seen in the gardens of the burning house; but many days elapsed before that came to be, as you shall presently learn.
In the first place, there was far too much to do in Moscow for the army to think about women at all.
We had arrived at the end of our journey, and the twelve hundred leagues of marching had tired the strongest of us. Now we would rest at the heart of Russia, while the Emperor dictated peace to the Tsar and his army made good its losses. We never so much as dreamed that we had pursued a phantom, and that it would lead the Grand Army to its destruction.
So you must behold us for many days in Moscow enjoying the fruits of our labours and yet finding plenty of work to do. I have told you already that the Guards were quartered in the Palace of the Kremlin, whither the Emperor had repaired; and there I took up my residence with my nephew Léon, and was occupied for some days in attending to the sick who had accompanied us on our long journey from Smolensk. Though many rumours came to me of the strange things that were happening in the city beyond the palace, I paid little heed to them. His Majesty the Emperor had set out to conquer Russia, and here he was at the heart of their empire. What remained, then, but to sign a splendid peace and to return in triumph to Paris?
This is how things should have been, yet how different they were!
We had been prepared to find the Russian nobles fled from Moscow, but the absolute desertion of the city by its people astonished us beyond compare.
Often would I go forth into these magnificent streets, to find the great houses all shut up, their gardens a solitude, the cafés closed, and none but our own soldiers abroad.
Deserted houses everywhere! The hotels shut up and boarded against the stranger. All the shops denuded of their goods and shuttered and barred as though they were prisons.
Such Russians as we met had the most revolting aspect and were clad in the coarsest sheepskins. We knew that the best of them were convicts who had been released by the governor on our advent, and now they skulked like wolves to do us a mischief in every alley or by-street which sheltered them.
For the rest, Moscow might have been a mausoleum. We danced to the music of our own voices; the cheers that were raised were the cheers from French throats which heralded only a hollow victory.
The plunder that we seized came to our hands undisputed. No man contended with us save the brigands, and they were like jackals, whose howls were chiefly heard by night.
I have often wondered at the sang-froid with which all this was received at head-quarters. None of the staff appeared aware of the perils of our situation, nor did the fact that we were already running short of provisions alarm our leaders. Many things we had in abundance, and they should have provoked our irony. It was ridiculous to see whole companies of the Guard making merry over casks of French liqueur or wallowing like schoolgirls in boxes of sweetmeats. Yet such was the case, and nothing but the actual riches of the city blinded the rank and file to the truth.
Oh, what days of plunder they were, and how our good fellows revelled in them!
A man had but to sally forth with an axe in his hand to reach the riches of a Croesus. I have seen the veriest Gascons so laden with furs and jewels and the wealth of nobles that they themselves, could they have conveyed their burdens to Paris, might never have had an anxiety about their bread to the end of their days. It was the commonest thing to discover carts and wagons in Moscow piled high with the treasures of centuries and led uncontested to the camps of an enemy which had found the gates open and the ramparts undefended. Even the Imperial edict against pillage and rapine was useless to prevent this spoliation. The men had suffered much to reach the Holy City, and His Majesty the Emperor was wise enough to reward them according to their hopes.
Here I must tell you that the common troopers were by no means the only offenders in this respect. There was not an officer in or out of the Guards who did not claim his share of the plunder, while he shut his eyes to the doings of those under him. If I myself forbore to take a hand in this profitable amusement, it was because my burdens were heavy and owed not a little to the state of Moscow even in the early days of our occupation.
Then, as afterwards, fire was our almost daily enemy. One day it would be in the bazaars; the next in the poorest quarters of the city; again in the houses of the rich, which our troopers had pillaged. We were told the convicts fired the buildings by the governor's orders. We could not believe it, and yet we hunted the rascals down as though they were vermin.
I have often wondered what His Majesty the Emperor would have done had he known the true state of affairs in Moscow. He did not know them, however, and he was still anxious to propitiate those whom he believed to be its people. Every day we heard the story of the peace which was to be signed, and of the profit which was to come to our arms thereby; and every day we who served were abroad in street or alley wrestling with the flames and smoke of the burning houses, or hanging and shooting the incendiaries who had become the enemy.
Little wonder that my nephew Léon had no time for love-making. Often would I ask him if he had heard of or seen the beautiful Valerie again. The rascal pretended that he had forgotten her very existence, and yet I knew in my heart that he had remembered her. It was no surprise to me when, at the end of the third week, I heard from his servant, Gascogne, that he had received a letter from Valerie herself, and that it had contained an invitation to dinner in a house beyond the suburbs of the city. When I charged Léon with it he shook his head and smiled in his boyish way.
"Oh, mon oncle," he protested, "what time have I for anything like that?"
I rejoined that a man has always time for a pretty woman, and at that he laughed loudly.
"She asked me to dinner," says he, "but, of course, I shall not go. Why, my dear uncle, it would be very dangerous to do so. Do you not know that her friend is Prince Nicholas, who has sworn a vendetta against every Frenchman in Moscow? I should be a fool to do anything of the kind."
I agreed that he would be, and really I was not a little astonished at his common sense.
Captains of the Guard are rarely prudent where a pretty face is concerned, and Valerie St. Antoine was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in all my life. It was amazing to me that Léon should have learned so much wisdom in so short a space of time, and I plumed myself upon his sagacity. Oh, how easily do we old fogeys deceive ourselves! Not three days had elapsed before I learned that he had written to the lady, and on the fourth I heard with some regret that he had gone to dine with her.
Now, I do not know why it was, but this affair had caused me much uneasiness from the beginning, and when I heard, upon the evening of September 28, that my nephew had left the palace and gone to dine with Valerie, a disquietude quite beyond ordinary attended the discovery.
Possibly Léon's own words had something to do with it. He had said that such an invitation might be a trap, and although the opinion was expressed as a joke, there remained a doubt in my own mind which no mere assurance could remove.
Remember the circumstances. We had discovered already that Valerie St. Antoine was the friend, and more than the friend, of a man who had sworn to exterminate the French in Moscow. The reality of the tie which bound them had been made apparent to me when I was with her in Prince Boris's house, and I could conceive no honest circumstance which would justify the invitation to my nephew Léon. When I questioned his servant, Gascogne, that good fellow seemed no less uneasy than I myself.
"There have been five officers from this regiment lost in Moscow this very week," said he. "I warned Captain Léon, but he would not listen to me. A woman. Faugh! It is the usual story, major. They all have a rendezvous, and none of them returns. Why did not the captain consult you? I told him that it was a trick, and he answered me by putting on his best uniform and calling a droshky. Major, we shall be lucky if we see him again."
I took no such view as this, and yet a certain foreboding of ill was not lightly to be put aside.
Léon had done as so many others in his regiment, and some of those had never returned to the palace. It might even be that the girl Valerie had not written the letter at all; and this latter thought was so disquieting that I sent Gascogne out to seek the driver of the droshky and to bring the fellow to the palace. When he came, a few sharp words soon had the truth from him.
"My good fellow," said I, "you will drive me immediately to the house to which you have just taken my nephew, Captain de Courcelles. If you play any trick upon me I will have you hanged at the gate of the Kremlin. Now, choose for yourself."
This was no idle threat, nor was it without its effect. The man fell into a frenzy of fear, while great drops of sweat stood upon his forehead, and he protested his innocence before God and the saints.
"Then let him put it to the proof," said I to the interpreter, "and bring his droshky here immediately."
Ten minutes later we were passing out of the western gate, and Sergeant Bardot, of the Fusiliers, was at my side. They called him "the antelope" in the regiment, and there was no nimbler fellow in all the Guards.
"Captain Léon has gone to meet a woman," said I. "It may be a trap, and, if so, we must get him out of it. I can count upon your discretion, sergeant?"
He answered that he was altogether at my service, and I could see that the prospect of an adventure pleased him greatly.
"They are devils, these Russians," said he, "and it is just as well that we should go. I trust we shall be in good time, major. The regiment could not afford to lose Captain Léon. There is no better officer in the Guards."
I agreed with that. There was no better officer in the Guards. If he were in any danger we must save him. So many had fallen in Moscow at a woman's nod that I ceased to ask myself what part curiosity played in this adventure.
Sufficient that Léon had gone to dine with Nicholas, the Russian, who had sworn a vendetta against every French officer in the city.
It was nine o'clock when we left the barracks, and half an hour later when the droshky rolled out upon the great north road to Petersburg.
So hot was it that hundreds of our fellows were sleeping in the open parks which abound on the border of the city, and their bivouac fires glowed beneath the pines and showed many a scene of tipsy revelry. With them were some of those women who cling to the skirts of an army as flies to a pasty, and these hussies capered about the fires in song and dance, while the sorriest music set them whooping like wild men at a fair. We paid little attention to them, but thought rather of the wide road ahead of us and of our unknown destination.
Now, this was a hazardous journey, as any man who was with me in Moscow will bear witness.
It is true that the city and surrounding country were wholly in our power; but we knew very well that bands of wild Cossacks ravaged the neighbourhood and were ready enough to butcher any Frenchman they could find. The road itself lay chiefly through pine woods, which afforded good harbourage to these brigands, and more than once I thought that I saw a horseman watching us as we went. When I mentioned as much to the sergeant he pooh-poohed it, as such a man would, declaring that our own patrols were in the district and would deal with such scum.
"We are not worth powder and shot," he said with a laugh, "and, in any case, we shall have the satisfaction of shooting the driver if anything happens to us."
This seemed to afford him some consolation. I noticed that he took out his pistol and primed it, as though very ready to begin if the miserable coachman afforded him any pretext. We, however, drove on without event, and when we had covered perhaps a couple of leagues the driver turned suddenly down a grassy path through the wood and presently declared that we had reached our destination.
It was not very dark here, and for the moment I thought that the fellow had played a trick upon us.
We appeared to have reached a veritable forest, great chestnut trees taking the place of the pines and a wide pool shining under the moon's rays where the roadway ended. Presently, however, I discerned the glimmer of a lamp amidst a copse upon the right-hand side, and the droshky driver indicated with his whip that it was the house which Captain Léon had visited.
An uglier place could not be imagined. The dark groves of stupendous trees, the silent pool, the remote situation of the habitation, affected me strangely. I was convinced by this time that my nephew had fallen into a trap, and that we should be lucky men if we found him alive. Even the imperturbable Bardot could not put a good face upon it. He showed his pistol to the coachman and commanded him to stay where he was. Then he followed me down the grove towards the house.
I have told you that it was hidden in the trees; but this will give you but a poor idea of its situation. We saw upon nearer approach that the pool or lake was fed by a winding river, upon an island of which the house was built, so that it was entirely surrounded by water, which a mediæval drawbridge spanned.
The building itself had all the air of the keep of an ancient castle, being no more than a great round tower built upon the island, with a miserable outhouse at its foot and a barn-like structure to the south, which served, I doubt not, for a stable. Save for a glimmer of light which showed through a considerable loophole above the drawbridge, there was no evidence of occupation either above or below. The place seemed as silent as the grave; our own footsteps upon the sward were a heavy sound upon the silence of that summer's night.
To be sure, we approached very cautiously. We must have been at least fifty paces from the water's edge when Bardot went down flat upon his stomach and began to crawl towards the river.
"If I whistle," he said, "come to me."
I answered that I would; and after an interminable interval of waiting I heard his signal. When I came up to his side he pointed to the figure of a man who stood sentry beyond the bridge.
"Look," he said. "The fellow is drunk. They are all drunk in this cursed country. If we sounded the réveillé he would not hear us. We must go over and tell him so. You can swim, of course?"
I shook my head, for the truth was I could not swim a stroke. When I discovered that he was in a like predicament, the tragic irony of our position began to be realised for the first time. There we were, fifty paces from the door, behind which poor Léon might already be in jeopardy. I knew now that the girl Valerie had not written the letter, and this was just the trap I had supposed it to be. Yet there we stood, as helpless as any child from a woodlander's hut. Even Bardot could make nothing of it.
"If I had known!" he would say, just as though it had been in my power to tell him. Such folly angered me. I got up regardless of the risk of discovery, and began to make my way back to the carriage. The man should gallop back to Moscow, said I, and we would return within the hour with a troop of cavalry, and this time we would bring our own bridge.
This was in my mind, though the despair of it needs no apology.
"A thousand to one," I argued, "that Léon will not be alive when we return; and yet we might avenge him!"
A fierce desire to beat down the walls of the accursed house, to break in upon the assassins and to butcher them where they stood, possessed me as a fever. There was not a man in the regiment who, would not have galloped through the night at Léon's call. Pity then if we might not avenge him.
This I had said, when another whistle from the river bank arrested my attention and sent me back to Bardot.
He still lay behind the bush which concealed us, and his hand was raised in warning. When I rejoined him he pulled me down, and speaking in a deep whisper, he bade me listen. A boat was being rowed across the river. We saw it plainly in the moonlight—a great, crazy tub with a frail girl for its pilot. It touched the bank some fifty yards from the place where we lay hidden, and instantly the girl leapt from it and disappeared in the brushwood.
"Valerie St. Antoine, by all that is holy!" said I.
The mystery was deepening truly, but we were nearer to it now, and without a word spoken we strode toward the deserted boat and immediately began to pull across the river.
Meanwhile what of Léon, and what had happened to him since he left Moscow? I shall try to tell you in a few words, that you may understand both his situation and ours, and the meaning of what was to come after.
The letter he had received was such as a soldier of the Guard is well acquainted with, and he discovered in it nothing out of the ordinary.
A pretty woman had fallen in love with him and desired to see him again. There must have been two hundred who had done that since he quitted Paris, yet few who drew from him so swift a response.
Was not Mademoiselle Valerie a fellow-countrywoman, and had not these two looked into each other's eyes as lovers are wont to do?
I remembered the impression she had made upon him in the prince's palace, and how he had sworn to hunt her out at Moscow; and I for one could not wonder that his heart leapt when she wrote to him and named a rendezvous to his liking.
He was to dine with her, the letter said, and her carriage would carry him to the barracks afterwards. He little knew the kind of journey that it was meant to be, nor what would lie under the tarpaulin which the assassins had made ready for him.
So off goes our gay cavalier, dressed in his best and as cock-a-hoop as a page-boy who has been kissed by a duchess.
The warnings he received fell on deaf ears. He knew that the regiment had lost good officers who went out upon just such a foolish errand as this; but they had gone to Russian houses, while Valerie was a Frenchwoman who bore an honoured name. There could be nothing to fear in such society. He would dine with her and tell her what she most desired to hear. This was a Guardsman's proper employment, and he would not be doing his duty if he shirked it. To give him his due, Léon was rarely remiss in these matters.
So you will understand why he did not suspect anything—even when they drove through the wood and came to the drawbridge. She would desire secrecy, of course, and this place appeared to be a very citadel of love. Léon merely remarked that aspect of it when he crossed the bridge and the great gate which Ivan the Terrible had built was shut upon him.
She would be alone, and he would find her complacent. The words were hardly said when he found himself face to face with Nicholas, the princely assassin, whose name had struck terror to the heart of many a French prisoner. Now a man trained to the surprises of war has some command of himself whatever the circumstances.
Léon was such a man, and you may be sure he did not betray himself.
Though the peril of the situation was now fully revealed, and he understood the trap into which he had fallen, what should he do but bow in a grand manner to his Highness, and declare his pleasure at thatrencontre? The prince in his turn affected to be as agreeably surprised. He apologised for the absence of Mademoiselle Valerie, whom he declared to be confined to her room with an indisposition; and upon that he led the way immediately to the great apartment in which the supper was to be served.
This was nothing else than the round tower which Ivan had built, and a strange place it was, surely, for the entertainment of a man's friends. Léon observed that the walls of the apartment were hung entirely in black velvet, while at the northern arch there was a platform similarly draped in black, but with its plain boards strewn with rushes, as they strew a scaffold in my own country. So ominous was this that even my nephew's sang-froid was hard put to it to forbear a remark; but the prince smiled affably all the time, and appeared to be quite unaware that there was anything extraordinary about this habitation. Léon admitted that he spoke French like a fellow-countryman, and his first act was to introduce my nephew to some dozen officers of the Russian Guard who had come to the house to make merry with him.
These were fine fellows, clad, as he, in the splendid white and gold uniform of the Tsar's cuirassiers. They welcomed a brother officer with professed cordiality, and the prince commanding that supper should be served, they turned with one accord to the table and began to fall upon the viands as though ravenous with hunger. Will you be surprised to hear that Léon did not imitate them in this? I shall tell you why in a word: he had seen a dead body in the straw upon the platform, and, looking at it a second time, he perceived that it was a trunk without a head.
You may imagine what this discovery meant—even to a man of Léon's disposition. At first he would have it that the whole thing was one of Nicholas's jokes—the draping of the room, the straw upon the mock scaffold, and the ghastly figure which the rushes tried to hide. Then he remembered the prince's evil reputation and the stories of his savagery, which had been told at many a bivouac. Here was one of those fanatics who believed that Moscow was the holy city, and that we, the French, were so many barbarians who had profaned the sacred shrine of Russia. No trick was too treacherous to be employed against us, no trap was not justified which had Frenchmen for its object. Again and again, as we had marched across Russia, the throats of our fellows had been cut in many a lonely farmhouse, and many a courtesan had lured honest men to their destruction.
So Léon sat there with his eyes fixed upon the body and the secret words of warning drumming in his ears. What hope had he of escape from such a place? He remembered the moat and the drawbridge, the lonely wood and the dark groves about it, and despair fell upon him. It remained but to die as the Guards know how; and, believing that his death was imminent, he refused no longer the goblets of wine which were offered to him, and affected a merriment as loud as that of the noble assassins who had entrapped him.
A remarkable feast, truly, as you shall: judge by his own account of it. The meats! were served on dishes of solid gold; the goblets were of the same precious metal. They drank champagne from our own kingdom of France; the rich red wines of Italy, while the joyous fruits of the Rhineland vineyards were not lacking. The food itself had an Eastern flavour, and many of the dishes were highly spiced and Eastern. For music there were fiddles in a gallery above, and even the distant voices of women singing a light chanson at the back of the stage.
Léon raised his eyes to the musicians' gallery from time to time, and fell to wondering if Valerie were among the singers. Surely she had never written the letter which brought him to this house—she, a Frenchwoman! He could not believe it; and yet the note had been in a woman's handwriting. Possibly the writer was one of those who now sang disreputable songs behind the curtains of the gallery. Léon pitied rather than condemned the poor wretch who had been the prince's instrument. When he remembered that Valerie loved this man he could have taken a knife from the table and killed him where he sat.
His Highness may have guessed what was in the young man's mind, but if he did so, a courtly art concealed it. Never was there a gayer companion. He told stories of all the cities to which peace or war had carried him—of our own Paris and gloomy Petersburg, of gay Vienna and that monstrously dull town of London, of which the English boast. Nearly all concerned the women of these places and the successes he had had among them.
His companions meanwhile listened with a deference which so high a personage commanded. Their jokes were oftensotto voce, and when the prince laughed they laughed in sycophantine imitation. With all this Léon plainly perceived that the feast was but a preparation for some greater scene to come. His eyes went often now to the curtain above the gallery, as though he would read a secret there. I do not think he was astonished when for one brief instant the same curtain trembled and was drawn a little way back, to disclose the face of Valerie. She was in the house, then, after all! He began to believe that she had written the letter, and for that he would have strangled her willingly. Then he heard the prince speaking to him, and, the curtain being dropped back, he turned to listen to a disquisition upon French politics.
"Your Revolution," said his Highness, "was the greatest event in history. I have just been telling my friend, Count Rafalovitch here, that my father was in Paris in the year 1794, and that his dearest friend, the Chevalier Constantini, was executed by the miscreants on the Place de la Grève. He brought with him to Russia a model of the guillotine, by which so many of your great men perished. I have it here in this house, if you are curious to see it. It was made by the great Dr. Guillotin himself, one of the first to fall by his own invention, as you know. Shall we have it built up on yonder platform, M. le Capitaine? It will help us to pass the time until the musicians have refreshed themselves."
Now, all this was said pleasantly enough, as though it were the merriest of jests, and yet to Léon it was not without significance. The cat-like manner of the speaker; the sudden lust of blood which came into his eyes as he leaned over the table and addressed my nephew; the restless movements of the others round about; all betrayed a design so dastardly that no pretence could conceal it. Instantly it dawned upon Léon that the man whose body lay in the rushes had been murdered by that very instrument. Death no Guardsman fears, but the humiliation of such a death as this might have appalled the stoutest heart; and Léon believed now that they meant to kill him. He drained the heavy goblet of its wine to hide his face from those who watched him so curiously, and when he had set the goblet down there was a smile upon his lips.
"I should like to see it, by all means," he said to the prince. "It is odd that I, a Frenchman, am so ignorant, but, upon my word of honour, I have never met 'Dr. Guillotine' in all my life."
"Then you shall meet him now," said his Highness, and touching a bell upon the table, he summoned his servants to the room.
Sergeant Bardot and myself, meanwhile, had crossed the river, as you may well have guessed. We found the tub old and crazy, and were but poor watermen. Yet we reached the parapet upon the farther side, and clambering up, we stood and listened if any had discovered us. The sentry, however, made no motion, and perceiving that he was drunk, as we had imagined, we crept towards him and were upon him before he could utter a sound. A moment later he went, a cloth about his mouth, headlong into the moat below us, and we stood there watching his struggles, his musket in Bardot's hands.
It had been a swift coup, and some have complained of what we did. But remember that this was a Russian stronghold, and that it imprisoned a good comrade, and few will condemn us. It was our life or his, and we did not hesitate for Léon's sake. I would do the same to-morrow for the meanest trooper in the Emperor's army.
I say that we killed the man, and yet for the moment the deed did not help us. There was the great gate, shut and barred against the stranger, and twenty men might not have opened it. If we beat upon it and they answered us, what then? The house would be full of Russians, and we were but two against them. By a stratagem alone could we save Léon's life, and calling upon our wits, we began to make a tour of the house to spy out its weaknesses if we could.
These were not readily apparent. Even to an old soldier like Bardot the place seemed impregnable. Everywhere the rugged stone walls confronted us. There was no door other than that which the sentry had guarded. The windows were so many slits in those ramparts of stone. There was not even a water-pipe upon which a man could have got a foothold. We could but stand there and gaze impotently upon that prison which had defied the centuries. It was a torture to me to remember that these impregnable walls answered for the liberty of one so dear to me as my nephew.
I have told you that there had been a glimmer of light shining from a loop-hole in the tower when first we drove up to the place. It was beneath this we came to a halt and stood to reckon with the situation. Bardot's eyes were quick as an animal's, and it was he who perceived a second opening in the wall, but not so high as the other, and without a light beyond to disclose it. When he suggested that he should climb up on my shoulders and get a footing at this spot, I could but ask him what he hoped to effect thereby.
"Had you a rope," said I, "perchance we could look through the window, but since you have not a rope——"
He interrupted me with a little cry. "Major," says he, "there was a rope in the boat."
I retorted that we had used it to make the ship fast, but he laughed at that.
"We shall return by the drawbridge," says he. "Do you stand sentinel here, and I will get what we want." And with that he was off like a shot, and for some minutes I saw him no more.
The interval was spent in listening to a sound of distant music, which I could not hear very plainly. There were women's voices and the music of fiddles, and it seemed to me that I had heard some of their songs in the casinos of my own Paris. Such a surprise was very welcome and put heart into me. Léon could hardly be in peril while women were singing to him. I told Bardot as much when he returned, and his curiosity concerning the voices was not less than my own.
"Let us have a look at them," says he. And with that he climbed upon my shoulders, and throwing the rope he had brought from the boat deftly about the iron bar of the window he pulled himself up like a monkey, and so gained a foothold on the ledge.
For a long time now he did not utter a word. I thought that I heard him laughing softly, and then, of a sudden, he appeared to grow deeply interested in what was happening in the room.
"What do you see, Bardot?" I asked him, anxiety getting the better of me.
He did not reply, but peered the closer betwixt the bars.
"Oh!" cried I impatiently, "there will be some woman for a certainty."
His answer was to take a pistol from his belt and to look to the priming. I could see him quite clearly, one arm being about the iron bar and the other upon the trigger, which he had cocked.
"Good God!" I cried. "You will bring them out on us."
He did not heed me, but throwing his head back, he said in a loud whisper: "They are going to butcher your nephew." At the same moment I heard a dreadful scream from the tower itself.
"Help me up!" cried I, gone mad at my own impotence. "Why do you not fire at them?"
He nodded his head, and thrusting his pistol through the bars, he snapped at an unseen enemy. The weapon did not fire, and he threw it down to me angrily. "Your own," he cried, and came a little way down the rope to reach it.
The next minute there was a loud report, and upon that a hollow sound, as though a great bell had been struck a heavy blow by a hammer.
"Now," cried Bardot quickly, "to the bridge!"
I did not question him, and we ran round together to fling down the bridge, the windlass running out with the sound of a great ship's cable. It seemed inconceivable that the Russians in the place did not attack us. This, however, did not happen.
We ran across the bridge and there crouched as two hunters who themselves were hunted.
"Listen!" says Bardot, bending his ear to the earth.
I imitated him, and heard a strange sound. It was the thunder of cavalry through the wood.
"The Cossacks!" cried I. It seemed to me then that I should never see poor Léon again.
Within the tower the prince was now introducing my nephew to "Dr. Guillotine."
All the resources of a barbarous masquerade were employed in this sorry entertainment.
The stage itself would have served for a miniature Théâtre Français. Brawny Cossacks, clad like thesansculottesof the Revolution, swarmed up on the mock scaffold and cried curses upon their prisoner. The executioner was a huge Tartar with a monstrous black beard and a knife at his girdle. The knitting women of the Place de la Grève were not forgotten. A bevy of hags squatted about the platform and pointed their lean fingers at the miserable prisoner.
Had Léon a doubt hitherto as to the meaning of this foul business, it must have surrendered at the moment when he recognised one of his old troopers among the mock condemned, and perceived that the Russians meant to kill him.
Leaping to his feet, he cried an oath upon the outrage and commanded them to stop.
It was a vain outburst. Two of the prince's men had him by the arms at the first movement and pinned him to his chair, while his Highness derided his courage.
"Here is a French Guardsman who has a woman's heart," said he, his fellows shouting with ironic laughter at the sally. "We give him a little play, such as we have seen in Paris, and behold! he is ready to faint. A glass of wine, Michael, for the poor gentleman! Do you not see how ill he is?"
A goblet of wine was offered to and spurned by my nephew. He perceived that he was helpless and that the reputation of the Guards lay in his keeping. It remained to bear himself with what dignity he could, and turning to the prince, he exclaimed very coolly: "I apologise to your Highness, for it is not possible that you can be in earnest." And so he watched the drama to the end.
They had now dragged the struggling hussar to the plank of the guillotine and thrown and bound him there. Very deliberately they pushed him beneath the great knife, and then, all crying "Death to the French!" the blade fell and silenced for ever the shrieks of the unhappy wretch they had butchered.
Léon declares that from this moment Prince Nicholas was little better than a madman. His cries of "Bravo!" were such as the insane might have uttered. Clutching my nephew by the arm, he dragged him to the scaffold, saying:
"You do not know 'Dr. Guillotine'? Come and be introduced, then. Come and hear his music. You are a Frenchman and ignorant? Impossible, my friend, impossible."
So he raved, while all in the room took up the cry of "Impossible!" and began to shout and dance in their drunken frenzy like madmen.
Léon fought for his life then as he had never fought before in all wars our Emperor has waged. A strong man, he threw even the Cossacks from him, struck them senseless with any weapon that came to his hands, and was up and down like a cork upon a billow; but all useless, as you may well imagine.
When they got him to the scaffold he knew that his hour had come, and a great calm possessed him.
"I congratulate the Prince of the Assassins," said he to his Highness. "It is only in such a country as this that the butchers are ennobled." And with that he walked straight towards the executioner and held out his hands.
The man seized him as though he were a sheep. The prince himself began to raise the knife by the rope and to caress its gleaming edge. Surely Léon had but a moment to live. He thought as much, and a passionate desire for life set him trembling. That he, so young, he whom so many loved, he to whom day was so fair a thing and the night but a witchery of woman's eyes—that he should perish here, butchered by the insane in an hour of their frenzy! God surely would not permit such a crime as that! Alas! he had forgotten how to pray these many years, and he but stood there, defying them as any one of his Majesty's Guards would have done.
"Assassins!" he cried; and then, as a challenge: "There is not one of you that would dare to cross swords with me!"
They but laughed at him the more, and the prince now pulled the knife so high that all in the room could see it. He was still laughing; but some glimmer of reason had come to him, and that spirit of vengeance which animated him could no longer be denied.
"You murdered twenty thousand honest people with your guillotine in Paris," says he to Léon, as though a hussar of the year 1812 could be responsible for what was done in Paris twenty years before. "Now you must come here to burn the Holy City. Very well; we are going to teach you a lesson."
He turned to the executioner, and giving him the sign, the wretch threw Léon upon the plank.
It was then that Bardot, at the window, fired his pistol and struck the great bell high in the tower above. How much would I have given could I have been at his side at that moment. All that I heard were the loud shouts of surprise, the cries of one man to the other that this was an ambush, and, above all, the prince's screams when the great knife fell and severed his arm at the elbow as neatly as any surgeon could have done.
Such was the truth. At the moment of the alarm Prince Nicholas had loosed the rope, and, trying to catch it again, he stumbled forward and the great blade caught him by the elbow, and his hand and arm went rolling to the floor.
With a loud cry Léon now wrenched himself from his executioners. All were making for the gate of the tower, for they believed that the French were upon them, and no man thought of anything but his own safety.
Bardot and myself believed that the Cossacks were galloping to the place, and we lay in the shadow of the bridge, hardly daring to breathe lest the Russians in the house should discover us. When the latter came headlong out of the tower this alarm seemed unnecessary, for it was plain they were making for the forest.
"In five minutes," I said, "they will meet their fellows and all return again to the butchery."
I little knew that Valerie St. Antoine had found the droshky in the wood, and commanding the driver in the name of Prince Nicholas, had driven at full gallop to the barracks to bring help to her countrymen.
Such was the case, however, and the men who now rode to Ivan's Tower were of Léon's own troop; honest fellows who swore a bitter vengeance while they rode. They fell upon the Russians at the heart of the wood, and what they did there is best told at a bivouac. I went immediately to the tower and looked there for my nephew.
When I found him he lay senseless upon the scaffold, and at first I thought he was dead. The Guard, however, is obstinate in refusing to die, and when we had forced brandy between his lips and had bathed his forehead, he opened his eyes and asked where he was.
This I feared to tell him, but presently he sat up and looked about him.
"Ah!" he said, "I remember." And then he asked: "Where is Valerie St. Antoine?"
"She should be in Moscow by this time," said I. "Why do you ask?"
"Because," said he, "I am still looking for her, mon oncle."
I shook my head. It seemed to me that the young woman in question had proved herself to be but the harbinger of ill. And yet I could see that my nephew's mind was made up, and that what he had done to-night he would do again if Valerie St. Antoine did but lift her pretty hand to beckon him.
It was on the 18th day of October in the year 1812 that we first heard of His Majesty's intention to abandon Moscow.
This came to us as a very great surprise.
It is true that we had had a terrible time in the city, which was now become a ruin, the convicts having burned down a great part of it; but we had learned to make the best of affairs and what with our plunder and our pleasures the time went merrily enough. I myself was perhaps the hardest-worked man in the regiment. So many people were burned by the fires in Moscow, so many were injured in the street brawls, that the hospitals were quite full, and I rarely knew a moment of leisure.
My nephew, Captain Léon, was situated very differently. There was hardly a day that he did not tell me of some new adventure with a woman, and when I would reproach him he reminded me that I had been young myself and should know the habits of a soldier better.
This was in Moscow after Valerie St. Antoine had done us so great a service upon a memorable night. Though Léon watched for her and offered five hundred francs to any man who would tell him of her whereabouts, he never saw her again while we were in the city, and when we did meet her this great army of ours was but a skeleton.
How little we foresaw the doom awaiting us when we quitted Moscow on that sunny October day!
Everything went as merry as a marriage bell then. We knew that we were returning to our own France and we cared not a scudo for the reason. The Emperor, we said, had been too much for these wily Russians, and they had surrendered everything. The truth was far otherwise—it was the Russians who had been too clever for us, and burning down their beautiful city, had left us to a woeful fate. Of this I am now about to speak to you.