"No more!—there must be no more!... Pray cease, my friend!"
She had withdrawn her hands.... He said with a catch in his breath and with eyes that implored her:
"I do not offend you?..."
She looked at him full and drew off one glove and laid the bare hand in his extended palm. Warm and soft, it seemed incredibly small as it lay there. The touch of it infused a melting sweetness; a thrill went through the man from head to foot. Perhaps the thrill was communicated, for she drew her hand away quickly. She said:
"You are very generous to one who has so often deceived you.... How many times I have condemned myself for my wickedness, thinking: 'Of all those noble deeds I have described in the letters, not one has been really performed by M. Charles Tessier.... All are invented to make a good face!'"
He said in a whisper:
"I could forgive you for making even a worse fool of me—now I know you never were married! It was your telling me that knocked me out of time.... Nothing else mattered much afterward.... You said to Monseigneur yesterday that it was to retain your place in this house you pretended to be the wife of its master. But why did you pretend it in the first place tome?"
She began to change color from pale to red, and tried to free her hand. It was impossible. He said:
"I mean to know.... I have the right to know!..."
She faltered:
"See you well, Monsieur, I cannot explain...."
He said doggedly:
"Then I shall explain it for you. You told me that to make me jealous! Now, did you not?"
She winced.
"Monsieur ... not then!... Upon my faith, I assure you.... See you well, I had promised my father that M. Charles should be my husband.... I would have kept that promiseà tout hasard... had M. Charles not married Mademoiselle Basselôt. And so I told you I was married, not then to make you jealous ... that came after. But to make it ... possible to be true!"
He almost reeled under the sudden shock of the terrible, exquisite confession. He would have given a year of life to let himself go with the sweet roaring current that tumbled foaming through his veins and sent its red sparkling bubbles to his brain. But there were steps and voices on the other side of the high laurel hedge that divided the kitchen garden from the pleasance. He recognized Bismarck-Böhlen's snigger and Hatzfeldt's lazy, well-bred accents—telling an anecdote of the Minister one could not doubt. The languid voice reached their ears distinctly. It said:
"He was an officer of French Imperial Hussars, who had been taken prisoner at Sedan, and had broken hisparole. He had been taken again in arms against us, fighting under General Chancy at Le Mans. So she comes post-haste to Versailles, lays siege to the King, who will not see her—to the Crown Prince, who will not see her—and finally to Moltke, who will not see her, because all three of them are cowards at the sight of a woman's tears. Finally the Chief consents to receive her.... It was yesterday, in his room at the Prefecture. She comes in—all in black, which to a blonde of her type is very suitable, full of hope at not being made tocroquer le marmotfor long. She reels off a long tale about her Frederic, his bravery, and his excellent heart. The Chief listens sympathetically, looking at the clock from time to time. Again the heart is pressed upon his notice. It is heavy with grief at the thought of a life parting from Madame, who is Frederic's mistress, by the way—and not his wife!... It is weighed down with suspense at the delay of the PrussianKriegsrathin answering the loved ones his prayer.... She gets so far, when the Chief looks up at the clock, and says, touching his table bell: 'Madame, that excellent heart of your client is even heavier than it was five minutes ago....' 'How, Monseigneur?' cries Madame. 'He was shot,' says the Chief, 'just now when I looked up at the clock. And, as a rule, seven out of the ten bullets shot off by the firing party are found to have lodged in the region of the heart.' So the poor woman screamed and fainted. They carried her past me with her teeth set and all her fine hair hanging down...."
Bismarck-Böhlen's snigger greeted thedénouement. The footsteps grew fainter. Juliette and Breagh exchanged glances. She said with white lips:
"Monseigneur can be merciless! And yet, when I heard him tell my mother that did he know of my hiding place, he would not betray it, I said to myself: 'How you have misjudged this man!'"
Her comrade had started at the reference to Madame de Bayard, remembering the rendezvous to be kept that night. Juliette went on, with a liquid look:
"Monsieur, I have a favor to ask of you.... All those weeks when I struggled with that purpose from which you tried so faithfully to dissuade me, I did not once dare to set foot in Our Lord's House. But when I threw away that wicked bottle, I found that I could pray once more.... I went to the Carmelite Fathers and made my confession.... I received Our Lord in the Holy Communion ... and my soul began to be at peace again. Now it is Christmas Eve and I should much like to attend the Midnight High Mass, or the Second Mass at daybreak, and I had intended to ask you to take me, but I am uponparole.... Therefore, I entreat of you—pray for me when you make your own Communion. How much I need Divine pardon and guidance ... even you can hardly know...."
His conscience stung. He had not intended to evade the sacred obligation, yet he had wavered as to when he should comply with the command of the Church. He said:
"It shall be as you ask. I shall attend High Mass at the Church of the Carmelites at midnight. Afterward, I have an appointment—at a place some distance from here."
"So late, Monsieur?"
Her glance had not only surprise in it, but fear for him. He said lightly:
"Very late.... I may not get back until—some time near the second breakfast.... Madame Potier will have some hot coffee ready for me...."
She flushed and knitted her small hands together anxiously. She asked:
"Could you not—could you not take me into your confidence?"
He said bluntly:
"Not without myself committing a breach of confidence...." He added, holding out his strong hand: "Try to trust me. If it were possible to tell you, I would do it, you must know."
"I know it, and I trust you, Monsieur, always...."
There was faith in her eyes. He kissed her hands and released them, and turned with her silently.... They walked back together as far as the house.
At six o'clock, when the snow had ceased falling and the old moon of December glowed redly through a thinning veil of frost fog, the Crown Prince arrived to dine with the Minister.
The Heir Apparent of Prussia came with an escort of Dragoons of the Bodyguard, driving with one of his aides-de-camp in a closed sledge belonging to the exiled Empress, an exquisite vehicle, finished like an enameledbonbonnière, supplied with a great white Polar bearskin, and drawn by two superb black Orloffs, whose glossy coats had the burnish of old Italian armor in the ruddy light of torches held by orderlies and grooms.
The Minister, followed by Hatzfeldt and his Chief Privy Councilor, went down bareheaded, between a double row of Chancery attendants, dressed in their new dark-blue liveries, with black velvet facings, to welcome his Crown Prince. The broad breast of "Unser Fritz" displayed the OrderPour la Mérite, with the First-Class of the Iron Cross, and the Red Eagle, with an English Order, bestowed by Queen Victoria upon her son-in-law. He sported new shoulder straps, distinctive of his newly conferred rank as Field Marshal, and cut a very gallant figure, as may be supposed.
Perhaps you can see him at the head of the long table in the dining-room of the Tessier mansion, his Chancellor and host upon his left hand. Upon his right sat the Bavarian plenipotentiary, Count Maltzahn. Count Holnstein, another Bavarian Minister, newly arrived from Munich with a letter from his King, and the Bavarian Minister of War, Von Pranky, were severally disposed according to their degrees. Prince Putbus was there, and a certain Herr von Zadowski, a large red-faced man in a green Hussar uniform, wearing a white patch with a red Cross, the badge of the Knights of St. John, and the Iron Cross, was also present, and the Secretaries and Privy Councilors filled the lower end of the board; sporting the new Foreign Office uniform of dark blue, with black velvet side stripes to the trousers, and a black-velvet-collared, double-buttoned military frock. Sword belts and black-hilted swords with gold knots caused the more stout and elderly among the Councilors infinite discomfort, to the secret but acute delight of Bismarck-Böhlen and Count Hatzfeldt. The dinner, composed of love gifts from admiring German patriots to their Chancellor, was of a quality, quantity, lusciousness, and length calculated, as Privy Councilor Bucher piously whispered to a neighbor, "to make a guest imagine himself a banqueter in Abraham's bosom before the time."
Long before his table companions had reached the zenith of their sensuous enjoyment, the Crown Prince had finished his temperate meal. The Chancellor commented mentally, glancing at the clear, rather set features of the great golden-bearded figure seated beside him:
"Fritz is endeavoring to impress myself and these Bavarians, with whom it rests to decide whether he is Emperor or no Emperor,par la fermeté de son attitudewith regard to the pleasures of the table, and by the Spartan simplicity of his habits and tastes. How I should like to offer him black broth and barley bread in a special wooden bowl and platter. But that, I suppose, would belèse majesté."
And closely emulated by Von Holnstein and Von Pranky, he gave free reign to his Gargantuan appetite, taking twice of nearly every course, and washing the huge meal down, as was his habit, with floods from Rheims and Épernay.
When the cloth was drawn and fresh relays of wine appeared, the Prince accepted but a single glass offine champagnewith his coffee. When the costly cigars were offered, he pulled from his pocket a porcelain pipe bearing his crest and monogram, painted and sent him by his English wife as a Christmas present, and said:
"I should prefer to smoke this, if Your Excellency does not mind."
Dinner over, His Royal Highness, with the Bavarians and the Minister, repaired to the salon. Overhead, Mademoiselle de Bayard, lonely in her prison bedroom on the second floor, heard their voices—deep, sonorous bass, shrill tenor, and penetrating, resonant baritone—engaged in discussion or joining in argument. At ten o'clock the Prince took leave, attended to his vehicle as previously by the Chancellor, to whom he said, in a low tone, as he pressed his hand:
"We are now no longer North Germans, but Germans. I shall urge upon my father the speedy proclamation of the Empire with all external state. Names, arms, titles, colors place us before the world in a proper light. I have never coveted a Crown Imperial. I denounce the idea of a bombardment as brutal and unnecessary. But I am willing to reap all the honors and advantages that can be gained from our victory. Impress this upon my father, who treats pomp and solemnity with indifference. As to demanding the old crown of Charlemagne from Vienna, I do not at all see the necessity for that. I shall write to my wife to-night!"
AndUnser Fritzgot into the exquisite sledge that had been given to the beautiful Empress by the Third Napoleon, and was whirled away in a glittering dust of snow, kicked up by the fiery Orloffs' heels. And the Chancellor, recovering from his deep, ceremonious bow, wheeled and went back up the steps, with his bald head glittering in the ruddy torchlight.... None might guess what savage triumph swelled the heart beating under his white full-dress uniform, upon this the night that set upon the fabric of the man's colossal labors the copingstone of Success.
The Bavarian plenipotentiaries took leave within ten minutes. Count Hatzfeldt had been summoned to the salon a few moments previously. When the unseen bustle of their departure had subsided, the Secretaries and Councilors, smoking and drinking tea in the dining-room, were unexpectedly joined by the Minister.
All rose up as he suddenly opened the folding doors, thrust in his head and shoulders, and surveyed them, smiling. Behind him was Hatzfeldt, pale and excited, and with eyes that seemed dancing out of his head. There was a silence of expectation, then the great figure moved to the table, and men scattered to make space for him as though his contact might have slain.
He wore full-dress White Cuirassier uniform, without the steel cuirass, and the First and Second Classes of the Iron Cross, and the Red Eagle, with the peculiar deporation that he always sported, and which had been given him in his young manhood for saving life. His bald forehead and great domed cranium were studded with shining drops of perspiration, under his tufted brows his blue eyes blazed with a triumph almost fearful; his straight-bridged, snub-ended nose, thick cheeks, and bulldog jowl were crimson and dripping. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped them—and the hand that held the linen palpably shook.
He said to them all, and they held their breath to listen:
"Gentlemen, the Bavarian business is settled, and everything signed and sealed. We have got our German Unity—and our German Empire!"
There was a deep silence for a moment, broken by Busch's request to be allowed to take the pens with which the treaty had been signed. He got permission.
"That little Busch," said the Minister, "will never lose anything for want of a tongue. If he thinks to find there the gold pen set with brilliants, that was sent me by the Hamburg jeweler, he is mistaken. Come!" he added, "this is a great occasion!" and bade Hatzfeldt ring for a servant and order up more champagne.
The wine was brought and opened. He said to the servant who officiated:
"Let the house steward know that some wine is to be sent to the clerks and decipherers in their room. The servants also are to have what they like best for drinking—I fancy Niederstedt will choose Old Nordhausen. But—short of my best liquor, let what each likes best be given to him. No!—not that glass. I will drink out of my biggest goblet!..."
With the fizzing bumper in hand, he waited until all had been served, looking, as he reared his great bulk at the head of the full table, the biggest man, mentally and physically, who had ever served the Hohenzollern. In his most powerful tones, he called the toast:
"Hoch!to His Imperial Majesty, our Kaiser Wilhelm!"
Every man there strained his lungs to the utmost, but the great bull voice of the Chancellor drowned every other there.
He talked a little more: "We should never have hooked the King of Bavaria, but for the pluck of Holnstein, who set off from Munich to tackle His Most Gracious at his Palace of Neuschwanstein, and—there being no railway—made in six days a journey of eighteen German miles on foot and on horseback over mountain passes, agreeably diversified by forest tracks and timber roads."
He drank and went on:
"He arrived, to find His Majesty nursing his toothache in absolute solitude, invisible to human eyes, save those belonging to the dentist, his valets and fiddlers and grooms. At first the King refused to receive him, but Holnstein was clever enough to gain over the dentist to deliver a letter from his own hand, and incidentally one written by myself...."
He went on, with a smile that curved the great mustache into lines of gayety:
"Knowing myself particularly detested by King Ludwig, I had taken pains to make my letter acceptable. I said in it that my family had enjoyed the patronage of his family a trifle of five hundred years ago. I mentioned that reinstitution in the Wittelsbach good graces had been the object of my whole life's labors. I incidentally pressed the claims of the King of Prussia to be made Emperor of Germany. I enclosed, with many apologies, the draft of a letter which expressed the concurrence of Bavaria. 'Your Majesty has only to copy this and sign it,' I added, 'and the troublesome business is closed.' What a prospect to a monarch afflicted by an obstinately throbbing gumboil! There was no paper or pen at hand with which to answer, so the dentist presented his patient with a sheet out of his pocketbook, and the patent ink reservoir pen with which he writes his prescriptions. King Ludwig sits up in bed, scrawls a copy of my draft reply, and the German Empire is made.... The Festival of the Orders and the Proclamation of the Emperor will come off in the Great Hall of Versailles upon a certain date not far off.... I will leave you to guess what the date is likely to be!..."
In the midst of a deafening tumult of joyful outcries and congratulations, he turned his great eyes upon one excited face after another, and drained his capacious glass and set it down.
"And with all this, gentlemen, our hopes might have foundered.... The Royal sign manual might have availed us nothing!... the Treaty might never have been signed!... Everything has depended upon a question as trivial and ridiculous as indeed are most of our human vanities. Imagine the gravity of the question at issue!... Whether the Bavarian officers are in future to wear the marks of their military rank upon their collars as heretofore, or on their shoulders, like us North Germans?... Upon that the German Empire has dangled, do you hear? Ah! how many times," he said, "I have been tempted to break out and tell those fellows in the devil's name to sew their stars and badges on the seats of their breeches. But I comforted myself with the old adage:Politeness as far as the last step of the gallows, but hanging for all that!"
They roared with laughter. He called:
"Fresh bottles! A little excess may be pardoned, upon this of all the nights in the year. Really, I need a buck-up after all that I have suffered, what with this Bavarian business, with Gortchakoff's Note, and the bumptiousness of the English, who, without knowing why or wherefore, are bellowing for war. All that danger has been avoided by the exercise of a little diplomacy.... But how can we expect to be taken seriously by the Powers when we procrastinate in the matter of the Paris Bombardment—which ought to begin at once!"
There was a hubbub of acquiescence, from which only the voices of Hatzfeldt and Abeken were missing.
Bismarck-Böhlen begged leave to propose a toast. The Minister asked, tolerantly regarding his young relative, who vibrated with suppressed hiccups, and was palpably unsteady upon his long legs:
"What is this toast we are to drink?"
Bismarck-Böhlen, in labor with speech, got out with a final effort:
"The—hic!—bombar—hic!—ment! Big—hic!—potarroes for Paris!"
"Ah, as God lives!" he said to them, "I must drink that toast!"
It went round. Hatzfeldt followed with:
"Our glorious Chancellor!"
"Our glorious Chancellor! Our great, ineffable, powerful Kaiser-maker!Hoch!the Fürst von Bismarck-Schönhausen, Imperial Germany's master-mind!"
Sobs mingled with their acclamations. Their faces were now purple red with the exception of Hatzfeldt's, which was ghastly, and Bismarck-Böhlen's, which presented a combination of shades, in which pea green and orange predominated, as, bathed in tears, he staggered to embrace his august relative. He was turned off with a single jerk of the Minister's wrist, to fall weeping on the bosom of Privy Councilor Abeken, who, shocked at finding himself involved in something approaching to an orgie, was in the act of escaping from the room.
"My thanks for the toast!" said the resonant voice in their dulled and singing ears, "but pray all remember that I am no longer the North German Chancellor, or even the Chancellor of the Germanic Federation, but Chancellor of the German Empire, which has a better sound! And this is now, or will be by the New Year—the Imperial German Chancellery, and Foreign Office, while you, my friends, are Imperial Privy Councilors, Secretaries, and so on. We will baptize your green honors in a fresh round of champagne, and then I must leave you. I have yet before me some hours of hard work, and must keep my head clear and cool."
He held his great glass to the now drunken servant to be filled up.
"Prosit!" he said, and lifted the capacious vessel high, and tossed off the wine and dashed the costly goblet into the fireplace, where it exploded in crystal fragments and sparkling dust. Had they tried, his satellites could not have followed his example. Their leaden arms could only lift the wine to their dribbly lips. They drank—and one by one each toper collapsed and buckled as though the solid oak floor had given way under his boneless feet. Hatzfeldt sank prone across a chair. Bismarck-Böhlen had rolled under the table some moments previously, where, judging by the ominous nature of the sounds that asserted his presence, Madame Tessier's Brussels carpet was suffering for his excess. Similar noises, stertorous snores were reëchoed from other quarters as the Minister surveyed his fallen warriors:
"Men cannot drink in these days!" he commented, and left the room.
He threw on his cap and his great white cavalry cloak lined with Russian sables and passed out by the front door into the still white night. The snowstorm was over, the fall had lessened to the merest sprinkle. The bitter northerly wind no longer drove the blizzards screaming before it, each tree stood immovable under its burden, the overloaded evergreen bushes lay flat upon the ground. And the moon sailed high, drifting away eastward. Through the tatters of the frost-fog shone the great blazing jewels of the stars.
Twelve o'clock struck near and far, and from the great Cathedral of the Place St. Louis, as from every bell-graced tower and steeple in Versailles, rang the Christmas carillon. Many voices broke upon the piercing, windless quiet. Many footsteps were passing through the snowy streets. Catholics were going to their Midnight Mass and Communion to be celebrated by permission of the Prussian Minister. He pictured the crowds that would flock to the great churches of Paris—how Notre Dame would be packed to the doors, and Ste. Marguerite, also the great Church of the Carmelites, and the ancient church of the Augustine Fathers in the Place des Victoires....
He imagined the flower-decked High Altars in the churches and chapels of Versailles thronged about with war-weary, famine-bitten refugees and residents. German Catholics would mingle with them—the conqueror and the conquered kneeling side by side. Wounded soldiers of both nations would help each other to limp to the Communion rail; the atmosphere of the hushed, crowded sanctuaries would throb and vibrate with prayer....
For what boon would all these suppliants entreat High Heaven most fervently? Pacing in and out of the snowy garden alleys, his giant shadow passing over the moveless tree shadows, he asked himself the question. There was but one reply:
For Peace.... They would pray to GOD for Peace ... that Bismarck was not going to give them yet a while. Under the icicles that had formed on his great mustache he laughed. And a Satanic pride swelled within him as he told himself that this was his crowning hour of life.
The wild sweet frenzy of the bells was dying down. Distant refrains of sturdy German carols came from the military quarters and the barracks. The bells stopped, wavered, broke out again, grew faint, and were still. And it seemed to the man standing in the chill silence of the snowy garden as though he heard the Spirit of France and the Spirit of Germany communing in the depths of this Christmas Night.
It was the voice of France that wept:
"Alas! miserable that I am, what hast thou done to me? Why have thy fierce hordes rolled down upon me from the strange Pagan lands in the inclement East? Was it my fame, or my wealth, or my beauty that tempted thy Hunnish warriors, the yellow-haired footmen, with hard, blue-eyed faces and huge hairy limbs, and the uncouth, fierce tanned horsemen, who ride as though they were one with their beasts? Woe is met for my white breasts that were kissed by the conquering Roman! must I yield them again to be bruised by the ravishing Frank? A curse on thee! thou treacherous, deep-flowing, swift river, that hast again proved no barrier to the Prussian invader! I am fallen a prey to the Confederation set up by the Corsican upon the Rhine. Oh! hard as the nether millstone! Wilt thou unpitying, behold Famine devour my beauty? See, the white limbs that show through my tattered garment are fleshless! No man who looks upon me would desire me more! For what hast thou dug a pit about me and set up thy terrible war engines? Was I not willing to make terms with thee, as the conqueror?"
It was the Voice of Germany that answered:
"O Gaulish Queen! thou wert willing, but not for the conquered is it to appoint the sum of the ransom, or hold parley with the victors regarding the price of blood! Hearest thou, O fallen one? I withdraw my triumphant legions when it pleases me. This is a land where the wine and the women are luscious. When we have drunken deep enough, we shall load ourselves with spoil and treasure and go. Yet ere I withdraw, I shall have known thee as a lover, whose desire is kindled the fiercer because of thy hate. Death shall be the priest who celebrates our espousals. He shall unite us with a ring of steel and fire. Then I depart, leaving thee to the enemies of thine own household, who shall wreak thee greater ruin than thy foes. But a child shall be born of thy long resistance and my fierce triumph and our brief mingling, who shall be called Peace! Hearest thou, O France?"
He listened, standing on the hard-frozen, white-powdered garden path between the swept-up snow mounds. There was no answer. He returned, stamping the snow from his clogged spurs, to the house.
The door stood open as he had left it. The even tread of the sentries came from the Rue de Provence. He had heard the guard being changed at the entrance gates and beyond the wall at the bottom of the garden. Those without were vigilant if those within were not. He remembered, noting the absence of the usual Chancery attendant from the hall bench, that he had given permission to the servants, without distinction, to make merry upon this night. He could hear no clinking of glasses and bottles belowstairs. Perhaps sleep had overtaken them as it had the revelers in the dining-room. He softly opened the double doors of that apartment. A stench combined of stale tobacco, spilled wine, and alcoholic humanity offended his nose, and he withdrew it. But not before he had ascertained that with the exception of Abeken, who had left early, and Count Hatzfeldt, who must have been taken home—the Staff slept there.
He looked into the drawing-room. The fire lay in gray ashes between the fire dogs. On the table lay the signed Treaty with Bavaria. He picked it up and rolled it, looking at the mantelshelf, where the bat-winged bronze demon brooded over the ormolu clock.
The room, whose hearth was cold, whose windows, closely shuttered, bolted and blinded, had the curtains drawn close over them, was lighted by a yellow ray shining through the glass door opening into the conservatory. He crossed to this door and looked through. Commendably sober, the two officers of the guard of Green Jaegers who were quartered here sat chatting in whispers and smoking by the stove. Between them on an upturned tub bottom stood a little, twinkling, taper-lit Christmas tree.
"Von Uslar! Bleichröder!..."
The Minister opened the glass door and looked in. The officers sprang to their feet and stood saluting him. He smiled at the little tree, and asked, nodding at the door at the end of the conservatory, leading to a room where the library of the late M. Tessier had peaceably moldered until the clerks and decipherers of the Prussian Foreign Office had been assigned it for their quarters:
"Have those fellows yet gone to bed?"
And even as he queried he knew by the peculiar smile upon the faces of Captain von Uslar and his subaltern, that the scene in the dining-room was repeated here. He said with a shrug:
"Oh, well!... They had my permission to make a night of it. One would like to be sure, though, that there are no candles to upset!"
The junior officer moved to the library door and opened it, setting free a puff of hot air laden with wine fumes, and a chorus of snores ranging from piping alto to deep bass. Nothing could be seen except the vague outlines of prostrate bodies, revealed by a pale gleam of moonlight that made its way down the chimney and shone upon the dead ashes of the hearth.
"Shall I wake anybody?" queried the lieutenant's look. The Minister made a sign in the negative, bade a pleasant good night to the two officers, and withdrew, shutting the glass door. He quitted the drawing-room, went into the hall, tried the fastenings of the hall door, and crossed to the hatchway under the main staircase that led to the kitchen quarters. A gas jet was flaring in a draught at the bottom of the staircase. He went down, regulated the light as he passed to a safer volume, and tried the handle of the door leading to what had been a housekeeper's parlor, and was now used by the house steward and the Chancery attendants as an upper servants' hall. A gasalier of flaring jets revealed five persons in here, wrapped in the heavy sleep of drunkenness. One, the house steward, snored, recumbent on a sofa; Grams and Engelberg, those monuments of rigid respectability, reposed with their heads and shoulders resting on the table, appropriately decorated with empty bottles and upset glass beakers, and in the center of which stood a great china bowl.
The Minister peeped into this vessel curiously. Apples stuck with cloves, and cinnamon sticks left high and dry at the bowl bottom testified to the Yuletide correctness of the punch, brewed by the skilled hand of the Foreign Office cook. He, the artist responsible for the dinner which had astonished the three Bavarian plenipotentiaries, leaned back, slumbering profoundly in a high-backed armchair. A china pipe, gayly tasseled and painted, drooped from one side of his relaxed mouth. His feet rested upon the sprawling back of the gigantic Niederstedt, who had gone to sleep upon a sheepskin rug in front of the wood stove. His huge right hand still grasped an empty bottle that had contained his favorite Old Nordhausen. He opened one eye as the Minister stooped to inspect him—uttered a stertorous snort, and relapsed again into his hoggish Nirvana, leaving the Minister, as he deliberately turned out the gas and quitted the steward's room, to realize that, save himself, the two officers smoking in the winter garden, and the women presumably sleeping on the second floor, the house whose outer precincts were so vigilantly guarded, did not contain a sober head.
"Well, well! A bout of drunkenness may well be condoned in the servants when the master himself gave the signal for revelry!"
He told himself so, smiling as he made the round of the basement house doors. Nothing had disturbed his equanimity saving the discovery that Niederstedt was incapable of speech or movement. For with his strange characteristic mingling of audacity and caution, the Minister, while leaving Mademoiselle de Bayard practically free within the house limits, had insured by private orders that the giant East Prussian should sleep henceforth outside his master's bedroom door.
Again, as the master's long strides carried him upstairs to the hall again, and he took his bedroom candle from the row on the Empire console, he knew a moment of inward f rat. There was nobody to help him undress, and put away his clothes. Wherever Fate and the Intendant General had assigned the Minister's sleeping quarters, the deft Grans, or the attentive Engelberg had always appeared—or, failing these, the stolid Niederstedt—to render these and other personal services, the lack of which after long use is keenly felt.
Is was a hellish nuisance to a middle-aged man to have to get himself out of his full-dress uniform. One grew hot at the mere thought of unfastening the shoulder belt and sword belt, collar hooks, buckles, swivels, and so on. Last, but not least, the final wrestle with the polished, spurred jack boots....
"God be thanked, I am not wearing the cuirass!" he said to himself devoutly, as he laid hand upon his bedroom door.
It swung back, and then his vexation passed from him. On a little table near the hearthside, where yet some embers of a fire glowed redly, stood a little gayly-caparisoned Christmas tree. Under its branches, adorned with red-and-white tapers as yet unlighted, lay the gifts that came from home.
He crossed the room in two long steps and stood smiling before the little fir tree. The purplish redness died out of his great cheeks and jowl, the congested veins no longer stood out like ropes upon his throat and temples. The great eyes that had blazed with Satanic pride softened into tenderness, as he picked up the gifts one by one and looked at them.
"From His Daughter to Papachen," said an embroidered tobacco pouch. "From Bill" and "From Herbert" a gold fusee box and a smoker's knife were respectively labeled. "From thy wife Johanna" was written on a slip of paper attached to the case that contained a handsome cup of Tula ware. He turned the cup in his hands many times before he returned it to its outer husk. He said fondly, familiarly, as though the giver were standing beside him:
"Little thou carest, thou good heart!—whether thou art wife to a Chancellor of the North German Confederation, or the Chancellor of the German Empire. One object in life thou hast—and that is to get the old man home again!" After a moment he added, pitching the Bavarian Treaty on the center table, unhooking and removing his sword belt, and throwing it on the couch: "Babel must be bombarded, or thou wilt not be pleased with me ... am I not a good pupil, to have learned my lesson so well?"
The shoulder belt came off with a slight degree of twisting and fumbling. He laid it aside, and moved to the slaving glass, and by its aid unfastened from his collar swivel the Iron Cross. "Good!" he commented, and laid it on top of a dispatch box on the center table. Then he began slowly and methodically to unfasten the other Orders from his breast. As he pricked a finger with the pin of one in wrenching at it angrily, it occurred to him that it would have been perfectly feasible to have removed his dress tunic with all its decorations, and this discovery stung him to wrath.
"Kreuzdonnerwetter!—am I, then, such a sheep's head?" he said angrily to himself. Something dropped upon the floor with a tinkle and rolled away merrily under a chair, leaving its owner with the thick silver pin that had secured it gripped between his finger and thumb. It was the medallion bestowed upon him in '42 for an act of gallantry, the obverse a shield of silver on a circle, bearing a red-enameled Prussian eagle, and on the reverse the inscription: "Für Rettung aus Gefahr."
The pin remained in his hand. Cursing his own clumsiness, he took the lighted candle he had placed upon the center table upon entering, and stooped to recover the evasive prize. Both hands were required for the task, that was quickly apparent. Half unconsciously he reverted to a habit for which his wife had often playfully scolded him—nipped the broken silver pin between his teeth and bent down to resume his search upon the floor.
As he stooped, the detonation of a driving charge and the deafening roar and shriek of a huge shell were followed by an ear-splitting explosion. His practiced ear told him. that the shell had been fired from the Fortress of St. Valérien. Half a dozen others followed in rapid succession. No alarm trumpet sounded. Dogs barked, near and far, the echoes of the cannonade rattled among the woods and high grounds, then died out. He said to himself: "Those sugar plums have done damage somewhere near St. Germain.... Now, then, where is this runaway medal?"
As he queried, a sudden spasm of the windpipe shot him to the perpendicular. He coughed and hawked as he had never done before. With a hand upon his side, he coughed, straining horribly. With streaming, starting eyes he coughed, clutching at his throat.
And then, with a sudden stab of pain beneath the uvula and a strangling access of coughing, he realized that a familiar home prediction had been fulfilled:
"Otto, you will certainly swallow that pin!..."
He could almost hear the voice of his wife speaking. How absurd! he thought, and laughed; and the agony in his lacerated gullet brought on a fit of choking worse than those that had gone before. He seized the candle and held it to his face before the shaving mirror, opening his powerful jaws to their widest and straining his eyes that were too blind with tears to see his own swollen, discolored features. He spat furiously, ejecting showers of saliva streaked with blood, but not the obstacle that was choking him.... He thrust his hand into his mouth, and groped as far down his throat as his fingers could reach—all to no avail....
"Help!..."
He gasped the word, realizing that if no help came, he was a dead man. And he seized the bell rope and rang furiously, until the rope came down in his hand as had that of the reception-room a day or so previously, followed by a long trail of rusty wire that, when tugged, evoked no metal clang below.
"Help! For the love of God!" he croaked, and whirling vertigo seized him. Whooping with a dreadful croupy intake, he tripped over a footstool, and fell upon his hands and knees, and struggled up again in a last strangling effort, and staggered to the door.
The door handle seemed to stick, or could it be that his grasp had lost its power? In the light of the gas and his yet flaring candle, he looked at his knuckles and saw that they were turning blackish blue.... A wave of blackness rose and fell, swamping consciousness. He emerged from drowning waters, and found himself upon the landing, gripping some round object that proved to be the wrenched-off door handle, and moaning in the whisper that he thought a shout:
"Help, help, help!..."
Bismarck, the man whom Kings and Emperors meant when they spoke of Prussia—the great Minister who had made three Wars—was dying. Would no one come? Not one of those who loved the man would ever know the true story of his sordid, solitary ending.... Not one of those who hated him but would hear every ugly detail of it, and recount it for others, smiling at its grim, grotesque absurdity....
Choked by a pin!... An end rather less noble for a great Chancellor than being run over by a donkey cart or smothered in a midden pit full of liquid manure....
Someone was groaning horribly, close beside him. Deep ruckling, gasping groans with a rattle and a catch midway. Were they his own death groans? What was this? The walls were melting and vanishing. Clear, vivid, definite, there unrolled before his filming eyes a picture of Varzin, his Pomeranian country home. It was Spring. The dark pines about the house shone as though newly varnished. The larches were caparisoned with tassels of pale green. The blue sky was vivid as Persian turquoise. He saw his daughter in a white dress step out from the low wide porch and stand smiling upon the terrace. She had a bunch of primroses in her belt, and his great hound Tyras had followed her and was rubbing his great head against her sleeve.
"Dying!" he tried to say to her. "Help your father!" ... But it seemed to him that he uttered nothing but a groan. There was a thundering in his ears like the noise of a field battery. His great bulk reeled toward her.... He pitched forward and fell heavily....
He heard a scared voice crying: "Monseigneur!..." and knew no more.
Juliette had not gone to bed, this snowy night of the Noël. She had said her Rosary and waited until the Christmas carillon. Then she knelt and prayed for her own pardon, for light and guidance, for a blessing upon those living friends she held most dear, for the souls of the beloved departed. And then she had waited, pacing solitary in her bedroom or sitting by her fire, for the sound of Breagh's return.
Madame Potier had gone to the Midnight Mass at the Cathedral. There would be crowds of communicants—she might not reach home before three. And in her absence had Juliette wished to sleep, sleep would have been banished by the sounds of revelry going on in the regions belowstairs.
Those first shouts for the Kaiser had been followed by others for the Chancellor. Even in her remote eyrie she could hear the clinking of glasses and the popping of corks. Then after a wild outburst of cheering she had seen, peeping between the frost flowers on her window into the snowy, moonlit garden, the great figure in the white Cuirassier cloak move down the path between the snow-laden trees.
She was possessed by a great sense of loneliness, and a vague unreal sensation of living somebody else's life, and not the life proper of Juliette Bayard. She locked her door and built up the fire to a cheerful hearth blaze, and sat upon the rug in her white dressing gown, combing and brushing her glorious hair.
Never again need those superb waves of jet-black spun silk be confined in the chenille net of Madame Charles Tessier. One could be charming if one chose—there was no grim reason for being ugly, thought Mademoiselle, as she brushed and brushed....
What was that?
So strange a sound from below that she dropped comb and hairbrush and sprang to her feet quivering.... She had heard such a groan uttered when the lance of the Uhlan had plunged through the body of my Cousin Boisset....
Again! ... the sound of a door thrust violently open. Heavy footsteps thudded on the gaslit landing of the next floor, and a muffled voice cried out as though for help.
A man's voice.... Again it cried. No voice sounded in answer. She unlocked her door, and set her foot upon the stairs.
A few steps down.... Then she saw him, the tottering giant with the distorted, blue face, and the open mouth that trickled with saliva and blood. What had befallen Juliette's enemy and France's pitiless oppressor? His huge staring eyes were fixed on her. Tears rolled from them as the deep groans issued from his gaping mouth and his broad chest heaved and labored vainly for air.
"Choking! Help!" his gesture seemed to say to her, and a terrible shudder convulsed her as the huge body crashed down prone at her feet.
With a strange mingling of pity and aversion she knelt down beside him and looked at him closely by the light of the flaring gas jet that illuminated the landing and stairs.
He had turned a little in falling. His blackening face and staring, agonized eyes spoke to his desperate condition.... What was to be done?... The obstruction in the throat must be removed somehow.... She rose up and went into the empty room upon her left hand, and felt in the darkness for the bell. There was none. The bell rope had been pulled down by the hand of the Minister, for this was the torture chamber, where M. Thiers underwent his periodical ordeal of thumbscrew and rack.
Air.... He must have fresh air. She desperately flung both the windows open, admitting a gush of piercing cold. He still groaned, but more faintly. The man was dying. Was not this the Judgment of Heaven?
In the hour of his triumph the sword had fallen. France would be saved—there would be no bombardment of Paris if the enemy were to die to-night. This she told herself, standing in the sharp draught from the open windows, and knew a thrill of intolerable triumph, thinking:
"Our Lord has delivered him into hands as weak as mine!"
Ting!...
Her heart leaped and stood still. She looked breathlessly from the window. Along the middle of the snowy Rue de Provence, where pedestrians must walk to avoid the dangers of the frozen sideways, a lantern moved, carried by a squat, muffled shape. A taller figure followed, moving steadily.
Ting-ting-ting!...
A shock and thrill of mingled awe and terror passed through her. To some dying Catholic, saint or sinner, in the dawn of this day of the Christ-birth, the Body of the Virgin-born was being conveyed.... Was it not to aid a soul in dire temptation—two souls, it might be—that He had bidden His minister pass this way?
She bent the knee and made the Sign of the Cross, trembling, then rose and sped back to the suffocating man. With a strength that she could not have believed herself possessed of, she raised his discolored head upon her lap.... His great jaws were wide open. She thrust the tiny hand within them. Shuddering, sickening, she probed with her slender fingers, thrusting them down into the contracting, gulping throat.
Something bright projected beneath the swollen uvula, wedged firmly into the membrane, blocking the orifice of the trachea. She nipped the projecting end in the little fingers and pulled. It yielded. He gave a gulp of relief. As the big teeth snapped together, she plucked the little hand from peril, bringing with it the broken silver pin.
He was instantly, tremendously sick, as an overeaten ogre might have been in an Eastern story. When he had finished vomiting, he heaved up his huge, shuddering bulk. She put her slight shoulder under the groping hand, and guided him. With this slight aid he reached his room. The couch stood drawn forward at an angle toward the fireplace. He staggered to it, let himself drop upon it, and said, in a groan:
"Drink!..."
He pointed to the night stand at his bedside. When she poured from the jug that stood there into the glass and brought it to him, he gulped the contents greedily.
"Barley water ... good for the throat!" he gasped, giving the glass back. She filled it again, and again he emptied it.
His sweat-dabbled face was regaining a more natural color. She went to the washstand, filled a small shaving basin with cold water from the hand jug, and brought it with a fine clean towel to his side. She dipped the towel in the water and laved his face and forehead. That he experienced relief and refreshment from this she saw by the placid air with which he submitted, leaning his head back against the pillowed sofa end, and closing his eyes.
She dried his face, and suddenly the great eyes opened. The voice of the Chancellor said:
"There.... That will do!"
From the passive victim he had suddenly reverted to the master; potent—authoritative....
"Go to bed, Mademoiselle de Bayard, and sleep," he told her. "I am comfortable ... I shall do well enough!"
She replaced the basin and towel in silence, bent her head to the figure sitting upright on the sofa, and moved noiselessly to the door. As she touched the broken handle, he said to her abruptly:
"You will be silent upon the subject of to-night's—misadventure?..."
She answered:
"I will be silent, Monseigneur!"
He said, lifting a finger to detain her yet another instant:
"Do not err in supposing me ungrateful. I know very well that you have saved my life!"
A shudder passed through her slight figure. She averted her eyes, remembering.... He finished:
"I lunch with the King at the Prefecture to-morrow. I will see you before I leave the house."
"As you will, Monseigneur!"
He added with something like a twinkle:
"With regard to all that ...débrisupon the landing ... it will not be the first time Niederstedt has been guilty in that way. Good night, Mademoiselle—or, rather, good morning.... Hark! Was not that the bell of the house door?"
"I—am not sure, Monseigneur!"' she said, in hesitation, for so ragged and weakly a peal had been evolved by the ringer that the sound might have passed unnoticed by ears less keen than his.
"They are all asleep or drunk belowstairs!" He began to raise himself stiffly from the sofa. "I will go down...."
"No; I will go!" she said.
And she left the room. He let himself sink back on the sofa. "Grosser Gott!" he said to himself. "How near a thing! ... And that the little Fury should have stopped the brand from quenching.... Well, now, at this rate, I may live another thirty years. Not that I should find much zest in a prolonged spell of power and authority. The King-Emperor in the ordinary course must die before long. My master in that event would be a good-natured booby, who in assuming the supreme dignities of Imperial authority would value the stage setting beyond anything else!"
He quoted with acerbity increased by recent suffering:
"'Pomp and solemnity' ... 'The ancient Crown of Charlemagne from Vienna' ... 'I shall write to my wife to-night' ... Pray do!... And while Your Royal Highness is about it you had better consult little Prince William, who would probably give you as valuable advice."
His thoughts reverted to the fair-haired, puny-limbed eleven-year-old urchin in kilt and plaid of Royal Stuart tartans.... "Now," said he, "what sort of a future Emperor may be enclosed in that husk?... That the boy has a crippled left arm, and a capital set of sharp teeth, which he uses on the calves of his Military Governor and tutors, is practically all I know of him.... Come in!"
He had been so lost in thought as to miss the sound of chains undone and bolts drawn back, though he had shivered unconsciously as the opening of the hall door had admitted a volume of fresh, piercing air to the heated house. Now he reared himself upright upon the sofa, stared for a moment at the figure that responded to his gruff "Come in!" and burst into an irresistible laugh.
"Quite right, Mr. Breagh!" he said, in his clear and fluent English. "I told you to come up to me at whatever hour you might get back. But I forgot that you would naturally visit Madame de Bayard in the costume proper to Jean Jacques Potier, to whom I suppose that extraordinary overcoat and the wolfskin cap must have belonged. Frankly, I did not recognize you.... The condition of your clothes, and that bandage on your forehead are responsible, more than my lapse of memory. You certainly look rather shaken. Let me hope you have sustained no serious hurt?"
P. C. Breagh grinned mirthlessly, and looked ruefully down at his snowy boots and trousers, from which the melting snow was beginning to drip in little rills upon the carpeted floor. By the light of the two gas lamps depending above the table, it could be seen that the gory bandage surmounting his pale face had been applied by an experienced hand. He needed no immediate surgical aid. But his blue lips and drawn and pallid features betrayed him exhausted. The Minister, noting this, pointed to a chair.
"Sit down," he said, "and rest before you speak! There is brandy in that flask that stands upon the bureau.... But something hot would be better for you—that is what you most need."
There was a sound upon the landing ... a faint tap upon the door panel.
"See who it is!" said the Chancellor.
As Breagh rose, the door opened, wide enough to admit a little tray bearing two steaming coffee cups.
"Capital!" said His Excellency, addressing the unseen cup-bearer. "Now, that I call an excellent thought!"
He took a cup from the tray Breagh offered, bidding him:
"Sit down and drink the other. I should have got none except for you!" When the steaming cup was empty, "Proceed," he said, ignoring the gray daylight outlining the curtain poles and filtering between the drawn curtains.
"At what hour did you get to Maisons Lafitte? For I presume you did get there?"
P. C. Breagh said:
"I got there at about two o'clock.... I had an appointment at the Cathedral, otherwise I should have started before."
"I hope she was pretty!" said the Minister, smiling.
P. C. Breagh went on, as though he had not heard:
"The snow was beginning to freeze. It was not such bad walking, but that hill of St. Germain was a winder, and in the Forest I lost my way.... If a party of men—peasants in sheepskin caps and jackets—forest keepers possibly—had not turned out of an avenue and kept marching ahead, I might never have got as far as the Seine road...."
"The men were marching, and not walking," commented the Minister, and his great brows scowled, and his bulldog jowl hardened as he added: "And they carried guns, or you would not have taken them for keepers.... I have no doubt that they wereFrancs-tireurs."
"I lost them where the road winds by the Seine," P. C. Breagh continued. "And then I had a real stroke of luck. I came across a hack cab from Versailles at a regular standstill. The snow had balled in the wretched horse's feet, and the driver was as drunk as David's sow. The fare was asleep inside, but he woke as I opened the cab door and flashed one of the lamps in his face, and then he said"—the narrator unconsciously gave the tone and accent of the Doctor—"'By the piper that played before Moses, my boyo! I was dreaming of you, and here you are.'"
The Minister broke in:
"That man was the English correspondent ofThe Timesnewspaper. He is of the same surname, though no relative of Odo Russell, the English Envoy, who has been sent out here upon a Mission to our German Court.... Ill-natured diplomatists whisper that Great Britain is jealous of the great successes of Prussia, and does not welcome the prospect of a United Imperial Germany.Au fond, we Germans have a kind of sentimental regard for your nation. She is an offshoot of the great Germanic stem—it is impossible that we should not regard her as nearer to us than others.... Though, should we ever seriously quarrel, it may be found that the bitterest variance may exist between those of the same blood.... And so you have never confided to your friend the secret of your presence in Versailles! Reticence in the young is an unusual gift. Possibly he gave you a lift in his vehicle?"
"——Till the unlucky Rosinante gave out," acquiesced Breagh, "and we had to leave her with her Jehu at the wreck of the railway station, and then the Doctor stopped at the diggings of the friends he was on the way to look up, a half squadron of Barnekow's Hussars who are quartered in a deserted chateau. They gave me some sandwiches and beer, and then I went on by myself to the Villa Laon where Madame de Bayard"—he stopped and added in a low voice—"used to live."
Something in the tone attracted the attention of the Chancellor. He repeated:
"Used to.... Does she not, then, live there now? Has she gone with M. de Straz—the pair of love birds together?..."
Said P. C. Breagh, seized with a shudder that knocked his knees together, and speaking in a low voice:
"I—I beg of Your Excellency to spare her your irony.... Madame de Bayard is dead!"
"So!..."
The Minister's ejaculation was followed by the order:
"Now the details!... Has she died naturally, or by accident—or by a murderer's hand?"
P. C. Breagh said, lowering his voice apprehensively:
"She was killed by a shell. There was a bombardment from Mont Valérien.... It broke out at about a quarter past two this morning—just as I reached the Villa Laon...."
"Ah! now I understand how you got that love token on your forehead!" said the Minister.
Breagh nodded, and wiped his wet forehead with a blood-stained handkerchief, and shuddered and went on:
"Nobody had gone to bed when I got to the villa. The blinds of what I could see was a dining-room were drawn up and the curtains all drawn back. The room was brilliantly lighted, lots of mirrors and crystal girandoles. It was like a scene on the stage, looking at it from the snowy garden. Shin-deep in snow, because the paths had not been cleared.... You could not tell where the paths were, in fact, so I steered my course by the big shining window. Then I saw him, moving before me——"
Queried His Excellency:
"By him, you mean whom?..."
"A man," said P. C. Breagh, "whom I saw moving along before me, taking cover behind snowy bushes and clumps of frosted prairie grass. When he stood up, I saw that he was short in figure and had immensely broad shoulders. I was quite sure that I had seen the fellow before. In fact——"
"In fact," the Minister sharply interrupted, "you recognized him as the man who posed as M. Charles Tessier, and who can have been nobody but M. Straz. Now tell me, whom was he watching? Madame and a companion, I venture to guess?" He added, as P. C. Breagh assented: "What was the man? A civilian or an officer?"
P. C. Breagh answered, repressing another shudder:
"A tall, fair officer of the Prussian Guard Infantry. He and Madame were at supper, or they had just finished. He had opened a fresh bottle of champagne and was leaning over to fill Madame's glass when I noticed the short man standing still, watching them closely. He seemed to have his right hand in his pocket. He drew it out and then—I don't know very well what happened. There was the heavy boom of a big gun, and a shell came shrieking like an express train.... I remember how the spitting flare of the fuse lit up the sky. And there was a terrific crash—and something hit me on the head—a bit of masonry, it must have been—for when I came to myself other shells were hurtling, and hitting, and bursting.... One smashed the stables of the chateau where the Hussars are quartered, and another has dug a crater, they tell me, in the side of the Terrace of St. Germain. The flashes made everything show up clear like lightning, and I picked myself up.... The blood was running down into my eyes, blinding me. But I'm not likely to forget what I saw. It was ... so awfully stagey ... so like a picture of the sensational, blood-curdling, highly colored kind."
"Go on!"
"It was like this. The upper story of the Villa had been shaved off—simply. There was the interior of the dining-room before me, all color and mirrors and gilding and twinkling wax candles in crystal girandoles. The French windows had been shattered, and there was a great hole in the ceiling. On the mantelshelf, just in front of me, between two Sèvres candlesticks, was a clock, the hands pointing to half-past two. There were Sèvres figures on each side of the clock—I have seen them here in the shop windows, 'Pierrot qui rit' and 'Pierrot qui pleure.' The crying Pierrot had been smashed by the shell splinter that shivered the mantel mirror, but the laughing Pierrot was untouched. He seemed to be holding his sides and screaming at Valverden sprawling across the table with his skull shattered, and Madame de Bayard sitting stone-dead in her chair. She had the cigarette in her fingers, still alight.... It must have been painless.... There was only a small blue hole in her temple—just here."
The Minister was repeating:
"Valverden!... Are you clear that you mean Count Max Valverden?... But of course you are! There is no other officer of that name in the Prussian Guard Infantry. How you came to be acquainted you shall tell me to-morrow." He laughed harshly, looking at the clock upon the mantel. "I should say to-day, at a somewhat later hour." He added, as Breagh rose: "Have you told anything of this matter to Mademoiselle de Bayard? Then, I advise you, do not enlighten her at all. Or, if you must do so, tell her after you are married!"
He drove the sentence home with another that left the listener gasping:
"For of course you will marry, you are capitally suited to one another. The mother exists no longer and M. Straz if he escaped, which is most likely, will not be able to interfere. Let me recommend you to get some rest. You will require it. For at twelve you leave Versailles with Mademoiselle de Bayard en route for England. Now go!..."
P. C. Breagh and Juliette met upon the morrow in the same spot near the rose tree that had borne pink blossoms undismayed through the bitter wintry months.
"You have bestowed upon me no Christmas present, Monsieur," Juliette said to him gravely. "Now I will have you gather one of those roses and give it to me...."
He strode into the drift, mid-leg deep, and cut a bud that was upon the sheltered side next the wall.
"Be careful of the thorns, lest they prick you!" Juliette cried to him. "Do not cut your fingers! Do not get wet!"
"You shall not have this rose," he said, withholding the frozen flower, "until you have given my Christmas gift to me!"
Her blue eyes rose, brimming, to meet his.
"Ah! what is there I can give you? Tell me, my friend!" she said softly.
He got out, blushing, and swallowing a lump that rose in his throat:
"We have been through so much ... we have seen strange and terrible things together!... We have shared dangers ... we have seen a great nation in the death throes.... Nothing could ever make us strangers whatever came to pass.... But now we are going back to England. Before we leave this garden where we have been so happy——"
"It is true.... We have been happy here!" she answered.
Winged smiles were hovering about her mouth. Jeweled gleams played between the black fringes of her eyelashes, as though fairy kingfishers were diving for some new joy in those sapphire depths. She asked demurely, as the clumsy male creature choked and boggled:
"What do you seek, Monsieur? Some souvenir.... Some token of friendship?"
He said, in a low, dogged voice:
"I have never asked mere friendship from you. But if you—if you——" He got it out with a desperate effort:
"Before we leave this ... if you would kiss me—once..."
She drew back. A terrible dignity vested her sloping shoulders. Modesty veiled her eyes. He was going miserably away, when she beckoned to him, with that splendid sweep of the arm that might have belonged to Krimhilde-Brünhilde-Isolde-Britomart and the whole covey of Romance Ideals.... He returned.... She spoke, and her eyes were wavering under the eager fire of his:
"See you well, Monsieur, a young lady cannot bestow a gift of that kind. It is for the gentleman, having obtained consent, to take..."
Breagh caught her to his broad breast and snatched the coveted guerdon. He cried to her in wonder and triumph:
"You love me!... A fellow like me?... And you will be my wife? We are not going to England to be parted! I am not a beggar any more! I will try again for my practicing degree in Medicine, and get it! I will write books and make a name for myself in Literature. But not unless you'll marry me!... Oh, Juliette! say when you will marry me?"
She said, with downcast eyelids that veiled laughter, though the rose flush had dyed her very temples, and the beating of her heart shook her slight frame:
"Monsieur, my grandmother would have answered: 'Under the circumstances, the marriage cannot take place too soon.... Once a young girl has been kissed, she must be married.' And"—the smile peeped out—"I was taught always to obey my grandmother...."
"Admirably spoken!" said the Chancellor.
He had come upon the lovers, of set purpose it may have been. Now he stood surveying them in an ogreish, yet not unamiable fashion, as they stood before him hand in hand.
He said, and the resonant tones were veiled by a painful hoarseness, of which the reason was known to Mademoiselle alone:
"Mr. Breagh, Count Hatzfeldt has the necessary papers of which I spoke to you. You will find him in the drawing-room waiting to complete some slight formalities inseparable from the granting of passports in time of War.... Good-bye to you, good luck and all happiness. I am on the point of departure for the Prefecture, so I shall not again see you. For a moment I detain Mademoiselle."
As Breagh bowed to Juliette and His Excellency and hastened toward the house, the Chancellor said to Juliette:
"It is too cold to stand here ... it will be wiser to walk a little. There is a path that leads us out near the wall at the bottom of the shrubbery."
It was where the mask of the Satyr, now with long icicles hanging from his eyebrows and goat-beard, jutted from the ivy of the boundary wall.
The little spring had not frozen, the ferns and grasses round its margin were still quite green. A few pinched violets peeped from among their broad leaves. Juliette stooped and gathered one or two of the faintly-fragrant blossoms and a leaf of fern and a sprig of ivy. As she slipped them into the inner pocket of her jacket, the Chancellor spoke:
"Mademoiselle, I have to thank you for my life..... Now, last night——" He squarely confronted her, his powerful eyes looking down upon the little figure so frail and slender. "Now, last night," he repeated, "had you really believed that my death meant the salvation of your country.... Well!... Did you not hold me in the hollow of your hand?"
She met his stern regard with a look that was clear as crystal. She said in her silver tones:
"It is true, Monseigneur. Our Lord granted me my wish. You so great, so strong, so powerful, were helpless as an infant.... I had only not to put out my finger—and you were a dead man! The power of Life and Death was mine, yet I could not let you perish, for Almighty God would not permit it.... He willed that you should not die.... Crush France or spare her, you will not be carrying out the wishes of Count Bismarck. You will do what God permits you to do—no more and no less! But when you are most strong and most powerful ... when you play with Kings and Emperors like pawns, then I ask you to remember Juliette de Bayard!"
She quivered in every limb, but she went on resolutely:
"You are not a good man, Monseigneur!... Hard, subtle, arrogant, cruel and unscrupulous, God made you to be the Fate of France. One day she will lift up her face from the mire into which you have trodden it, and the star will be burning unquenched upon her forehead. We may both be dead before that day dawns. But rest assured that when next your armies cross the Rhine they will not gain an easy victory!... We shall be prepared and ready, Monseigneur, when the Germans come again!"
He looked at her and listened to her in silence, perhaps in wonder. She seemed the Spirit of France incarnate, a pale reed shaken by prophetic winds from Heaven.
"It may be so," he said to her gravely. "And now, Mademoiselle de Bayard, I shall ask you to give me your hand at parting!"
"Take it, Monseigneur," she bade him.
He held it in his an instant, saying in his clear-cut French:
"I desire no evil to France when I say that I wish that every Frenchman had a daughter like you!..." He added: "Thanks for thebeignets.... I shall always remember you when I am served with them.... And for last night again thank you!... Farewell and all happiness attend you, Mademoiselle!"
His heavy footsteps crunched the snow. He was gone, and she had almost called after him:
"Monseigneur, I do not hate you so much as I have said...."
On the morning of the 27th of January eighteen seventy-one French guns on Fort Montrouge had been keeping up a brisk cannonade of the German investing-works. Meeting no response their thunder ceased. There, upon the east and north of beleaguered Paris—with a simultaneous uprush of fierce white flame from the muzzles of seventy giant howitzers, with the detonation of driving-charges, and the piercing scream and deafening crash of the percussion of Krupp's huge siege-projectiles, the bombardment of the doomed Queen City of Cities had begun....
A few moments before, as Juliette de Bayard and her lover set foot upon the steamer-pier at Dover, an aged French lady, who had stopped Count Bismarck on the steps of the Prefecture, had imploringly said to him:
"O! Monseigneur, donnez nous la paix!"
And the Iron Chancellor had replied to her almost smilingly: