With his elbows on the blotting-pad, exposing to view the shiny places on the right-hand cuff of the old serge jacket, and his eyes vaguely staring at the strip of London sky seen above the chimney-pots of Bernard Street, P. C. Breagh would fall into a brown study, a dreamy reverie of the kind to which hopeful Youth is prone.
The outer angles of the eyebrows would lift, giving an eager, wistful look to the gray eyes that had specks of brown and golden dust in them, the nostrils of the short, determined nose would expand as though in imagination they were inhaling some rare, strange, delicate fragrance,—the upper lip would lift at the corners, showing the canines of the upper jaw—a mouth of this kind can be fierce, and yet you have an example of it in the Laughing Faun.
A delicate, rushing sweetness would envelop, enter and possess him, body and brain and mind and soul, and his heart would beat fiercely for a minute or so, and then not seem to beat at all; and he would scarcely be able to breathe for the strange new joy, and the subtle, mysterious sense of being drawn to and mingled with the being of another, some one wholly and unutterably beloved and dear....
A touch, light as a flower, would visit his forehead, and a voice, small and silvery-clear, and with a liquid tremble in it that might have been mirth or shyness, would sound in his ears again. He would sigh and lean back, shutting his eyes, and feel the slight yet firm support of the delicate limbs and slender body, and the small soft hand would stir and flutter in his palm like a captured bird, and he would find himself painting in the choicest colors of his mental palette upon the background of London sky or neutral-tinted wall-paper—a face that was not in the least like Krimhilde-Brünhilde's. And then he would frown, and shake himself as a red setter might have done, plunging back out of dripping sedges at the sound of its master's whistle, and hurl himself savagely upon the pile of blank pages before him, and never pause again until the daily task was done. Or—supposing this retrospective mood to have seized him at the ending of his stint of labor, he would set his teeth, summon up the image of his colossal beloved, and savagely add to her inches all that she had lost since his meeting with the frozen Infanta at the Convent, Kensington Square. For the truth must be told, and the painful fact faced,—that since that day the heroic Ideal of P. C. Breagh had been steadily shrinking; and the hour was coming when her golden tresses were to darken to the black-brown hue of rain-soaked oak leaves in Winter,—when her roseate cheeks were to blanch to the hue of old ivory, when her towering stature and robust limbs were to dwindle to the slender shape and delicate extremities of an elfin maiden's, and her late worshiper was shamelessly to dote upon the change.
But had this been foretold to P. C. Breagh, he would have scouted the prophet as an impostor, and laughed the prophecy to scorn. Came a day, when, fastidiously groomed, and dressed in well-cut, carefully chosen clothes, he called upon Monica at the Convent, this time to apprize her of the loss of his inheritance, and to assure her of his present well-being, despite the change in his prospects brought about by the defalcations of Mustey and Son.
He had not intended to ask after the Infanta; the query slipped out quite accidentally. But when Monica returned that by the latest advice received from France, the health of Mademoiselle Bayard might be pronounced excellent, the querist was conscious of a tightness within his collar, and a sudden rush of blood reddened him to the hair as his sister added:
"She may be 'Madame' and not 'Mademoiselle' to-day, since what date is uncertain. For her marriage was to take place almost instantly on her return to Paris, she told us. Her father—he is Colonel of the 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard—had set his heart on this—she worships him—she would consent to any sacrifice—would let herself be cut to pieces if he but wished it. Dear Juliette!"
P. C. Breagh got out, with difficulty, "Then—but—look here, doesn't she love the fellow?"
The word last but three got out with difficulty. His throat was hurt by its passage. He gulped as he stared at Monica, moistening his dry lips.
"The fellow." Her eyes widened. "You don't call the Colonel—that?..."
"Of course not. I referred to the young lady's husband. Actual or yet expectant." He boggled horribly in the attempt to seem natural and at ease. "Why should it be a sacrifice to obey her father—what has the—the affair got in common with cutting to pieces if she—if she——"
He stuck there. Monica, of all Juliette's friends alone held worthy to share the aching secret, had not been told, for her own peace of mind. Yet, loving much, she had seen much. Now she sat silent. But a little line of distress came between her placid eyebrows, and tears were gathering behind the beautiful, tender eyes, in readiness to fall when next they might unseen. Carolan went on, not looking at her:
"She said he was a noble gentleman,—master of the sword, and brave as a lion. That doesn't suggest that she—would think herself sacrificed in marrying him?"
A sigh heaved Monica's breast and exhaled unnoticed. He mumbled with a hangdog grace:
"Could you, when you happen to write, just give her a message? Don't ask what it means—it has to do with something we spoke of here the other day when you were out of the room."
His eyes sought one particular square in the center of the beeswaxed parquet, where he had sat leaning against the Infanta's knees.
"Tell her that the man—a fellow-student of mine at Schwärz-Brettingen—realized not long after the—the girl—she will remember the girl's name!—after the girl had made the offer—she will not have forgotten what that was!—from how kind and generous a heart it came. And she will believe—she must believe!—that he has loathed himself heartily for the brutal way in which he answered her. And he entreats her to forgive, and he thanks her with all——"
Something splashed upon the clenched hand with which he had unconsciously emphasized his utterance. He wiped off the drop furtively, and said, still not looking at Monica, but scowling at that particular square in the middle of the parquet:
"With all his heart! You won't forget?"
He made her promise it, and left her wondering.
Being a daughter of France, and a Parisienne to the finger-tips, it could not be that the return to Paris, delightful capital where all the brilliancy,esprit, good taste, and refinement of modern life were concentrated, should fail to rejoice the heart of Mademoiselle de Bayard. Her characteristic quality of humor, a trait not derived from the paternal strain, made her omit three items from the list of purchases commanded by M. le Colonel. To supply oneself beforehand with a complete bridal costume in the view of immediate union with a husband never to one's knowledge previously beheld, could anything be more outrageously impossible! Juliette knew that she would titter hysterically behind the stately backs of the powdered and frock-coated gentlemen who parade Departments, and probably laugh to madness in the faces of the powdered and frizzled young ladies who should seek to minister to her needs.
And so, though the fresh and charming toilettes of the evening, the promenade and the theater, with the suitable lingerie, were added to Juliette's wardrobe, the nuptial robe, crown, and veil remained unbought.
Paris, a seething pot since the Auteuil assassination early in that January, was in a state of ebullition upon Juliette's return. Passing in afiacrealong the Champs Élysées, the progress of Mademoiselle's hired vehicle was stopped. A regiment of mounted Chasseurs and a detachment of the Guides blocked the Avenue to stem the black torrents of people rolling toward Neuilly, to attend the funeral of the murdered journalist Victor Noir. The National Guards occupied the Place de la Concorde, and in front of the Corps Législatif was a battalion of infantry, besides a force ofsergents de ville. Yet by other thoroughfares inky streams of men and women poured steadily nor'-west, and a vast concourse packed the Passage Massena, where the dead man had lived, and when his coffin was brought out, weeping friends unharnessed the bony black horses from the shabby hearse, and six of them, hugging the pole, drew it to the Cemetery.
But no speeches were made, though an instant previous to the lowering of the coffin a disheveled, red-eyed woman leaped upon the plinth of a memorial column that neighbored the grave dug in the Jewish quarter of the Cemetery, and shrieked:
"He was only twenty-two, and was to have been married in a few days! Vengeance upon the nephew of the Corsican wild boar! Death to the murderer Bonaparte and all his bloody race!..."
The rest was lost in the strangled whoopings of hysteria. But upon the ten thousand faces that had turned her way a crimson glow was thrown, as though, the sun of Imperial glory were indeed about to set, and a yell went up that might have reached the ears of the princely homicide lodged in the Conciergerie by order of his Imperial relative, pending that extravagant farce of the Tribunal of Tours. There was a rush of police, and the woman was pulled down and spirited away, it is said, by Revolutionists! But theMarseillaisehad already cried more loudly than the red-eyed woman, and had been heard to greater effect. Indeed, upon the previous day M. Rochefort had attended the tribune of the Corps Législatif, and protested in the name of the people against the decree ordering for the trial of the noble criminal a Special High Court of Justice composed of Judges notoriously amenable to Imperial influence;—proceeding to draw between Bonapartes and Borgias some extremely uncomplimentary parallels.
The newspaper was seized upon the morning of the interment at Neuilly, and its editor and proprietor served on behalf of the Crown with a writ of prosecution for libel, by the special authorization of the Corps Législatif. Thus M. Rochefort was rendered too late for the ceremony. But one of the huge crowds of assistant mourners, rolling back upon Paris, encountered him, in a hackney cab on one of the boulevards, and the human torrent surging and eddying about the vehicle, turned it round; and so rolled and roared with it and its occupant in triumph to his home.
The savage faces, the sinister cries, the significant tokens of popular disaffection and incipient revolt affected Mademoiselle Bayard but little, it must be owned. Her dear Parisians were for some reason boiling over. How many times had she not beheld them in a state of ebullition? French blood is easily heated, see you well! A little patience and the people would quiet down.
In the eyes of Juliette and how many other daughters of the Empire, the personality of the stoutish little gentleman with the heavy sallow face, dull regard, spiky mustache and dyed brown chin-tuft was invested with an aureole of semi-divinity. To her as to her sisters, the Emperor stood for France.
Born nineteen years before in the very month of the Coup d'État of 1851, what should she know of the betrayals, treacheries, crimes that had been so many steps in the ladder leading the man on to success. A tidal wave of human blood had set him upon the throne of St. Louis; the Church, first duped, afterward to be shorn by him of power, had poured her hallowed oils upon his head; titles, dignities, gold, had streamed from his open hands upon his supporters; the tradition of the Army that had throned him was devotion to his name.
And Juliette was a soldier's daughter. How, then, not reverence the Emperor, from whose ermined purples Field-Marshal's bâtons, Grand Crosses of the Legion of Honor, coveted commands, desired steps, constantly dropped. That the blind, unreasoning support hitherto accorded to him by the Army was weakening,—that 50,000 private soldiers' votes would be recorded against him in the forthcomingplebiscitum,—how was a mere girl to conceive of this?
That her beloved Paris, transformed by him into the gayest and most splendid of European capitals, was tottering on the verge of bankruptcy, she would not have believed. Had she been told that High Finance is too often synonymous with knavish trickery, that those who carry out great civic works may drain treasuries of the national millions—it would have conveyed nothing to her. You cannot talk to a school-girl in the shibboleth of the Bourse.
But one sign of the trend of popular resentment etched itself as by a biting acid on her memory. When the sulky driver of the ramshackle vehicle pulled up in the Avenue of the Champs Élysées, in obedience to the upraised sword-arm and authoritative voice of a lieutenant of mounted Chasseurs, Juliette, thrilling with girlish delight at the sight of the dear, familiar uniform, let down the window and thrust forth her charming head. And at that moment a party of four equestrians, followed by two grooms in the Imperial livery, came galloping westward, from the direction of the Pont Royal.
Pray picture to yourself the congested condition of this part of the Avenue, the squadron blocking its throat, the halted cab, and the lengthy queue of phaetons, Americaines, britzkas, dogcarts, and Victorias, forming up on the left hand of the road to rear of it, containing ladies old and young, pretty or plain, accompanied by the males of their species; while nursemaids pushing babies in perambulators, elderly gentlemen out for constitutionals, and other harmless pedestrians, were marshaled on the right, under the surveillance of imperious policemen, who meddled not at all with certain isolated clumps of somber-looking persons dressed in black; broken links of one of the huge processions of mourners, checked upon their way to the Cemetery at Neuilly.
There was a stir of interest, and every eye was drawn to the little cavalcade, previously mentioned, whose leaders, seeing the barrier of humanity, horseflesh and steel drawn across the thoroughfare, checked their horses and came forward at a walk. Military Governor was written large upon a double-chinned, stiff-necked, gray-mustached and imperialed personage who bestrode a high-actioned brown charger, and wore the undress uniform of a General of Division of the Service of Engineers. When he leaned to speak in the ear of the slender, brown-haired, blue-eyed boy who rode upon his right hand, you saw in the wearer of the glossy silk topper, the accurately cut, single-breasted black coat and dark gray-strapped trousers—ending in the daintiest of little polished boots, with gold spurs—the heir of the Imperial throne of France.
A cocked-hatted, white-plumed Imperialaide-de-campin blue-and-gold, and a green-and-silver Palace equerry followed in attendance, succeeded at a respectful distance by two grooms in the livery of the Tuileries; and a troop of the glorious beings known as Cent Gardes came clattering after, balanced to a hair on their shiny, prancing black horses, the long white horse-tails streaming from their polished steel helmets, with tricolored side-plumes and eagled brass plates, their brass-nutted steel cuirasses reflecting their lacquered mustaches and the adoring glances of enamored femininity, their sky-blue tunics with the scarlet and golden collars, their golden epaulettes and aiguillettes, their gauntleted gloves of white leather, their skin-tight breeches of snowy buckskin, their brilliantly polished boots with huge brass roweled, steel-spiked spurs, glancing and dancing, clinking and twinkling in the sun.
Ah me! Their morals were doubtful, those mustached and chin-tufted Antinouses of the Guard, as not only giddy work-girls and milliners, but fast variety actresses and frisky ladies of fashion were perfectly aware. But they were splendid, stately, expensive creatures, and so worthy to clatter at Imperial heels.
And so gallant was the youthful figure they attended and guarded; so well-graced the seat upon the spirited English chestnut, so light the boyish hand upon the mare's snaffle-rein, so frank and debonair the smile with which he acknowledged the scanty salutations of a few of the bystanders; that Juliette's heart flew to him with her eyes, and there broke from her in a voice so clear and thrilling that the object of her homage started in his saddle:
"Vive le Prince! Vive le Prince Impérial!"
The French are tender to youth and beauty, accessible to sentiment, lovers of Romance. Other voices joined in the cry, hats not ominously furbished with crape were lifted in salutation; a charming dignity was manifested in the boy's reception of these tokens of good-will.
You can conceive the picture, set in the beautiful scenery of the Champs Élysées, to the roll of carriages in the great avenues, the glint of wintry sunshine on still or leaping water, the nip of keen sweet air, perfumed with the scent of damp grass and dead leaves and wood-smoke. Delicate tracery of branches as yet bare, interspersed with the hardy green of pines, laurels, and larches against a sky pale blue as harebell, streaked with broad floating scarves of gray-white vapor, made a background for the green-jacketed, red-breeched Chasseurs on their bony, brown horses,—for the knots of strollers, curious or contemptuous,—for the broken masses of the crowd of would-be demonstrators, arrested in their progress by the blocking of the way. In the right foreground suppose the slim young Napoleon sitting easily on the fidgety, fretful chestnut,—the Military General balanced on his big champing charger,—the blue-and-gold aide and the green-and-silver equerry, the grooms and the escort of Cent Gardes looking decorously between the ears of their well-trained, shining beasts. To the left place the debilitatedfiacrewith its weary Rosinante and red-nosed sulky Jehu, and leaning from the open window of the vehicle—Juliette.
Perhaps you can see her, a little toque of Persian lambskin, with a blue wing in it, on her high-piled hair,—with a coquettish jacket of corduroy-velvet of the shade known in the spring of that year as Bismarck gray,—trimmed with the lambskin, fitting close to her slender shape. She wore a plain black silk skirt looped high over a vivid red cloth petticoat—it was a fashionable style of costume that year—and very much worn. A bright rose bloomed in each cheek, pale as she was ordinarily; and her black brows were spread and lifted joyously, and her eyes shone blue as sapphires in contrast with a little knot of violets at her breast and the big bunch held in her little gray-gloved hand. And with a very fair aim she threw the latter so that the bundle of wet fragrance lightly hit the saddleflap close to the knee of the Imperial stripling, and behind the shoulder of the swerving chestnut, as she cried again:
"Vive le Prince Impérial!"
The boy bowed to her, blushing at her beauty and her loyal enthusiasm,—the equerry, slimmest of the officers in attendance, dismounted and picked up the flowers. A trumpet sounded, a short, sharp order was given, there was a trampling of hoofs and a clinking of bridles as the files wheeled right and left, leaving a broad road open between a double rank of saluting troopers, and the Prince with his Governor and following rode down this open vista and cantered away by route of the Avenue de l'Impératrice, in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne.
The boy held in his whip-hand the bunch of violets handed him by the equerry. Only a little grayish sand clung to some of the dark, shining leaves. He sniffed their fragrance and glanced back as the trumpet rang out behind them, and the Avenue was once more blocked with mounted Chasseurs.
He was fourteen, delicate and rather backward for his age, owing to the inevitable drawbacks of his environment. Since the salvo of a hundred-and-one guns announcing the birth of a Prince Imperial had crashed from the battery of the Esplanade of the Invalides, to be echoed from every fortress throughout the Empire; and bells had pealed from every steeple, flags had broached from every staff-head, and dusk-fall had seen every city, town, or village, ablaze with illumination,—had he not been environed with precautions, lapped in luxury? Where another baby would have slumbered in a wicker bassinette, the child of France cried in a cradle of artistic goldsmithery. And the three great official bodies of the State, the Delegates from all the constituted Authorities paid homage. And they enrolled him in the First Regiment of Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard on the day of his birth, and pinned the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor on his bib when he was forty-eight hours old.
To gratify the paternal ambition of a father who had dreaded the stigma of childlessness, this graft of his race was to be forced into precocious maturity. You might have seen the little creature at six months of age strapped in a cane chair-saddle upon the back of a Shetland pony. At five he could ride a military charger. Dressed in the white-faced blue uniform of the First Grenadiers of the Guard, his tiny face hidden in a huge fur shako with a white plume andgalonsand a huge brass-eagled fore-plate, you saw him with the Emperor at Imperial Reviews.
It is uncertain whether he was ever soothed to sleep with the French equivalent of the rhyme of Baby Bunting, whether he ever learned of the Archer who shot at a frog, or was thrilled by the adventures of Jack the Giant Killer. We know that the Napoleonic tradition was his ABC, the Third Empire his primer. At the time of the war with Italy, he being then some three years of age, his utterances on the subject were quoted in the daily papers as miracles of wisdom—marvels of acumen. His seventh birthday had been celebrated by the production of a Military Spectacle, in the course of which real cannon were fired and real military evolutions performed upon the stage. His great-uncle on a white horse, in the little cocked hat and gray capote of History, was the hero, you may be sure; and three hundred soldiers' sons of his own age filled the dress circle, stalls and upper tiers. One likes the pretty story of the fair-haired child going down among these little comrades to distribute smiles and bonbons. One can understand the father's pride in the laborious pot-hooks and hangers that compliment him upon the taking of Mexico—word of ill omen in Imperialist ears!—and the scrawled postscript that tells how his horse kicked at exercise that morning, but that he sat tight and did not fall. It was not for a long, long time to dawn upon the expanding mind behind the beautiful, bright blue eyes, that the Throne Imperial of France was a saddle insecurely girthed upon a kicking charger, and that the paternal horsemanship had been, and frequently was severely taxed in the effort to stick on.
You may imagine the query, Why?—forming in the mind of seven years. Perhaps you see him in his lace-collared, belted blouse and wide Breton breeches of black velvet, scarlet silk stockings and buckled shoes, curled up upon the blue-and-golden cushion of the gilded chair of State upon the three-step daïs in the Throne Boom of the Tuileries, where, while their Imperial Majesties dined, he loved to play hide-and-seek with his tutor and anaide-de-campor so; and wearied with play, conceive him dreaming under the gorgeous crimson velvet canopy powdered with golden N's and symbolical bees, edged with laurel leaves of beaten gold, and surmounted by a great golden eagle, perched with outstretched wings upon a laurel Crown.
Under the brooding wings of the Eagle on the Crown this child of the Empire wondered about many things.... Did any discovery connected with the peculiar duties devolving upon the Cent Gardes and the Tuileries Police ever make the bright young head toss restlessly on its pillow of down? For he must one day have learned that noiseless footsteps patroled the corridors, that observant eyes twinkled at every keyhole—that sharp ears were listening at every chink for suspicious sounds not only by night, for the terror that walketh in the noonday is the peculiar bugbear of Emperors and Kings and Presidents.
One may be very sure that long ere another seven years had browned the fair hair, he was familiar with the fact that the guardian angels of M. Hyrvoix and M. Legrange kept unsleeping watch over the personal safety of his father, his mother, and himself. That officials, functionaries, ladies of the Court, and lackeys, male and female, were maintained under constant and vigilant surveillance. That there were even Police to watch the Police who kept the Police under observation. That precautions of a peculiarly special and delicate nature were observed with regard to the food prepared in the Imperial Kitchens and the wine that came from the Imperial Cellars, lest deadly poison should be mingled therein by those who did not love the name of Bonaparte.
He learned, next,—perhaps the knowledge floated in the air he breathed like some strange pollen, or was realized from certain experiences garnered during Imperial Progresses, Distributions of Awards, Opening Ceremonies, and other public Functions,—that there were many of these naughty people, who, while the soldiers and certain of the townsfolk in the streets cried "Vive l'Empereur!" "Vive l'Impératrice!" and "Vive le Prince Impérial!" remained silent even though they uncovered, and a vast number who not only did not cheer, but kept their hats on, and sometimes hissed. Following, came the shocking discovery that there existed a party of extremists who were not content with being rude and making ugly noises, but had even tried—and tried more than once—to kill the Emperor....
"To kill papa, who is so good to me! ..."
In a glass case in the Empress's cabinet were preserved the crush-hat and the cloak worn by the Emperor on the night of Orsini's attempt outside the Opera, and damaged by a splinter from one of the exploding bombs. Perhaps that glass case now yielded up its sinister secret to the curious questionings of a child.
The discovery that this father, so indulgent, so tender, and so much beloved, should be the object of such destroying hate as was cherished by these nameless men was terrible. You may go farther into the thing, and suppose its breaking in upon him presently that many thousands of his father's subjects, not criminals or murderers, but rather estimable persons than otherwise, thrilled with something else than tenderness at the mention of the paternal name, and that the Empire, which had hitherto signified for him the adamantine hub on which rests the pivot of this spinning world of ours—was not as solidly founded as his pedagogues had taught him. That the Army, the Peasantry, certain of the Nobility—not of the Ancient Régime—and a section of the Bourgeoisie supported it; but that by the educated middle-class, and by the intellectual, professional and working-classes it was held in abomination—execrated and detested; hated with a bitterness that intensified from day to day.
The cat came out of the bag a full-grown tiger. Revelations, discoveries, succeeded one another. Disillusions came crowding thick and fast. When it was discovered that he was backward for his age, and the question of a new private tutor was being discussed, he had asked his Governor:
"Could I not go to a day-school like Corvisart and Fleury and the Labédoyère boys?"
"Impossible, Monseigneur!" was the answer.
He urged:
"But,mon cher Général, you answer that to so many questions. Pray, this time explain why?"
Horribly nonplussed, the military governor stammered:
"The heir to an Imperial Throne could not be sent twice daily to a day-school. Not to be dreamed of! Such an innovation would be the signal for fresh insults, provocation of new perils.... Never could it be allowed!"
The boy's were rather dreamy eyes, under the silken plume of hair, chestnut-brown like his beautiful mother's. They were proud eyes, too, when they had flashed at the word "insult." And brave, for mention of "perils" only made them smile. He said thoughtfully that morning, leaning his elbow on an unfinished Latin exercise that lay on the table in the window of his study at the Château of St. Cloud:
"An 'innovation' means something that is new. But Primoli and Joachim Murat are being educated at a French College, and did not the late King send his sons to be boarders at the Lycée Henri IV.? Could not I be a boarder at the Lycée Napoléon, or the Lycée Bonaparte, M. le Général?"
With labored clearness and a great deal of circumlocution, M. le Général explained:
"The heir of a Democratic Empire, Monseigneur, and the sons of a bourgeois Royalty cannot be regarded upon the same level, or educated upon identical principles. But a plan has been devised for bringing your Imperial Highness into actual touch with the life of a public school...."
"How? Tell me quickly, M. le Général!"
The child's delicate face flushed bright red. His eyes shone. He sat upright in his chair as though a vivifying breath had passed through him, waiting the reply. It came....
"One of the Professors of the Elementary Class has been engaged to take your Imperial Highness through the course prescribed for the other pupils. He will attend daily here, or at the Tuileries."
The child said, with a catching of the breath that was almost a sob, and a look of bitter disappointment:
"The boys.... Then I shall not know the boys?"
"No, Monseigneur, except by hearsay. The Professor will tell you their names, ages, and—ah!—leading characteristics.... You will learn with them, and every week you will write a composition with them, recapitulating what you have learned. And that they will hear of you goes without saying. Frequently, Monseigneur, but frequently!"
His pupil interrupted:
"They will hear of me, but what is that? They will never see me—I shall never see them! Never join in their games—never be just another boy with them! Never be friends or foes with them—never beat them or be—— No! I should not like to be beaten at all!"
M. le Général rejoined solemnly:
"That degrading possibility, and graver dangers still, will be averted by the fact that their Imperial schoolfellow will not be—ah!—bodily present in their midst, my Prince. Perhaps your Imperial Highness would like to see the Professor now?"
And so the Professor came, and from him the boy eagerly gleaned information about his little schoolfellows of the Seventh Form. He had friends of his own who came to him after High Mass on Sundays and on all holidays. But except Espinasse, they had been chosen for him. The joy of selection and choice he was not to know.
Thus, many men of mark from different Lycées succeeded one another in the work-room at the Château and successively occupied the arm-chair at the end of the leather-covered table in one of the three windows of his corner study on the third story of the Pavilion de Flore at the Tuileries—and when he had been attentive and pleased his Professor,—his reward would be to hear about the boys.... Some were noble, splendid fellows, full of cleverness, energy and spirits; others were funny by reason of sheer stupidity, or some quaint characteristic or absurd failing which had gained them nicknames among the rest. A few were spoken of almost with reverence, as being dowered with the magical gift of genius: poets, dramatists, novelists, scientists in embryo, budding naval or military commanders, explorers who were to plant the Flag of France in virgin corners of the earth and proudly add them to the Empire that would one day be his own....
He met his longed-for boys at last. One likes to picture him—having once taken a First Place in the Arithmetic Class—as being permitted to join in the St. Charlemagne fête of the Lycée Bonaparte. He sat in the center of one of the long tables, with long vistas of boys, boys, boys opening out before him whichever way he turned his head. And he was happy, but for this thing; that though most of the boys in whom he had been particularly interested were presented to him, he did not find—as secretly he hoped to find—the friend of whom he dreamed....
He tried to bebon camarade; to combine—and he had a special gift in this—easy good-fellowship with graciousness. But the boys did not respond as he would have liked. They stood to attention, and looked him in the face, and answered, "Yes, Monseigneur! No, Monseigneur!" boldly, or they shuffled and blinked, and answered, "No, Monseigneur! Yes, Monseigneur!" mumblingly, and that was all.
He wished, secretly yet ardently, for brave, proud eyes to meet his own, and strike out the sacred spark of chaste and mutual fire that kindles the pure, undying flame of Friendship's altar. He longed for a grave, melodious voice to match the noble, youthful face and the fine form of his chosen friend. He sought a nature to lean upon, which should be stronger, greater, than his own.... Superior talents, greater capacities, ambitions to share, successes to emulate. And he found none. Not a boy here was a patch upon the shoe of gay, gallant, lovable, merry Espinasse, who had never come up to his Prince's notion of a bosom-friend. Could it be that the other self did not exist anywhere? We turned from that thought, we who were lonely when we were young. It made the world feel so big and cold.
The Fête of St. Charlemagne having passed off without any untoward incident or disagreeable demonstration, an unhappy inspiration on the part of M. Victor Duruy prompted the suggestion that the Emperor's heir should preside at the distribution of prizes for the Concours Général, and thus be for the second time brought into sympathetic touch with the intellectual youth of France.
You are to imagine the picture of the stately entry into the great Hall upon the first-floor of the Sorbonne upon an evening in mid-August; the reception by the Minister of Public Instruction, gowned and capped and hooded, and the Representatives of the Faculties; the ominously restricted and frigid applause of professors and students, greeting references made in the Rector's Latin speech to the presence of an Imperial Prince in the classic groves of Akademos.
Hostility, hidden behind a mask of frigid indifference, was to dash down the brittle sham, and show the fierce eyes of scorn and the livid hue of hatred, and the writhed lips dumb with reproaches unutterable. Contempt and mockery were to be conveyed in the small sibilants'ss! that rippled from parterre to gallery, and by the intolerable jeering titter that replied.
Yet all might have passed off tolerably but for the beldam Fate, who had arranged that the second prize for Greek translation, a trio of calf-bound, gilt-backed volumes containing the Works of Thucydides, had—together with a laurel crown—fallen to Louis-Eugène Cavaignac.
The young voice had not faltered in reading the name upon the illuminated scroll. What did its owner know of the Revolutionary soldier, the dauntless foe of Abd-el-Kader? The Governor-General of Algeria who had been recalled to Paris to assume the functions of Minister at War to the Republican Government of 1848. The man who had upheld the office of Dictator during the period of terror that had followed the fatal days of June! The candidate for the Presidency of the Republic who had scorned to bribe; who had calmly accepted his defeat, and taken his place in the National Assembly, when Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the good citizen, was elected to the arm-chair upon the tribune, and took the oath of fidelity to the Republic of France. Who had been imprisoned in the Fortress of Ham, with other Representatives of the Left,—his gaoler a commandant named Baudot, whom he himself had appointed in '48,—his guards the 40th Regiment of the Line, which had been subject to his orders so short a time before.
Of his seven fellow-captives between those grim and oozing walls, one was paralyzed upon release, others were victims to chronic rheumatism. Cavaignac had lived in retirement until the elections of June, 1857, when he was chosen as one of the Deputies for the Seine, in opposition to an Imperialist candidate. A few weeks later he had died suddenly, leaving a wife and a son three years old.
This son, who had half-risen from his place upon the bench at the sound of the voice that called upon him in the name that had been his father's, had all these memories in his flaming eyes. He did not seem to hear the applause that greeted his triumph; he gazed steadily into the face of the young Bonaparte, and then looked toward his mother. And Madame Cavaignac, seated, beautiful and stern as a matron of old Rome, relentless as Fate, in the front of the gallery opposite, signed to him with an imperious gesture to sit down. He obeyed her. And then round upon round of deafening plaudits made the walls and rafters of the ancient building shake; and brought the gray dust of six centuries drifting down upon the black or brown or golden locks of the hopeful youth of France.
After that episode the heir of the Imperial dignities was not again brought in contact with the students of the lyceums. He made no reference to the prize-winner who had refused the prize tendered by the son of his dead father's relentless enemy. But the insult had gone to the quick. Recalling it, he would clench his hands until the nails dug deep into the delicate flesh, crying inwardly:
"Oh! to be a man full-grown, and avenge that day with blood!"
At other times he would weep passionately in secret over the memory of the outrage; for, being of a sensitive, affectionate and generous nature, it sorely hurt to find himself the object of such hatred from one in whom,—it seemed to him, and perhaps indeed it was so!—he might have found the bosom-friend andalter ego, so keenly longed for and so eagerly sought.
The bright dark eyes and clear-cut features, the well-set head and athletic form, the dignified, yet modest bearing of this boy, so superior to himself in everything but wealth and station, fitted the niche previously prepared. And when he fell to dreaming, young Cavaignac's resolute face and calm, contemptuous bearing were invariably opposed to his own unslumbering resentment, and finally-conquering generosity. For, varied as the plot might be, thedénouementof each little drama would always be the same.
They would meet, in manhood, upon some field of bloody battle, during the great war beginning with the French invasion of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ending with the conquest of Germany and the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine. A youth upon the verge of manhood, the dreamer would have performed such prodigies of valor in command of his regiment as to justify his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army of Invasion. He had not decided what would happen. There would be a great charge of cavalry led against overwhelming odds, under a deadly fire of infantry and artillery, by himself. He would cut down or shoot a gigantic Prussian trooper, who had wounded a French officer. He would lightly leap from his own charger—the Arab "Selim" given him by Sultan Abdul Aziz—and aid the prostrate man to rise and mount. Their looks would meet, the blue-gray and the fiery black eyes would strike out a spark of mutual recognition. Oh! the joy of heaping coals of fire upon that beautiful, rebellious head!
Or Cavaignac would not then recognize his saviour, but long afterward, the Prince having become Emperor, would head a conspiracy to dethrone him. Moving, as would be the wont of the Fourth Napoleon, in disguise through the public places of his capital, mingling with every rank and class, a mystery to men, an enigma to women, worshiped by all, known by none; he would have discovered the plot and laid a counter-plot, which, of course, would be successful. The mine would explode harmlessly—the conspirators would be seized. Their leader,—lying under sentence of death in a military fortress—probably Mont Valérien—bedded upon damp straw, loaded with massive fetters, would be visited by a young officer. He would recall the features of his deliverer of long ago, and fall upon his neck, crying: "Alas! my noble friend, long sought, unfound till now, thou comest late, but in time, for I am to die to-morrow!" "Die! Is it possible! Of what art thou guilty, then?" Cavaignac would answer coldly: "Of having conspired to dethrone the young Emperor!" "Dost thou indeed hate him so?" "Ay! we have been enemies since boyhood's days." Choking with emotion, dissembled under a pale and resolute exterior, the visitor would return: "And he hates thee not! Were he here he would say as much to thee!" "Can it be possible? How, then——?" "I swear it upon the soul of my father! Thy Emperor is thy truest friend! Here is my sword. Behold this undefended breast, cage of a heart that has ever loved thee! Thrust, I command thee, if thou hast the power!" "Sire, I am conquered; I have lived for a Republic—I die the Emperor's most loyal subject!" "To my arms, then, Cavaignac! Embrace me—thou art forgiven!"
Impossible, beautiful dreams, grandiose and absurd, ridiculous and touching....
He was mentally carrying on one of these endless duologues as he rode through the wintry avenues of the Bois, and dismounted at my Lord Hertford's exquisite villa of Bagatelle, set in beautiful, secluded grounds adjoining the park.
Born of a whim of the Comte d'Artois, gay Monsieur, brother of the Sixteenth Louis, built in fifty-four days by the architect Bellanger, at a cost of six hundred thousand livres, Bagatelle had always served as a shelter for gallant adventures, not all of them set in what Republicans scornfully termed "the night of monarchy."
Mademoiselle de Charolais, beautiful and haughty; Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, handsome, sensual, and unscrupulous; Madame Tallien, constant, noble, and courageous; the Duchesse de Berri, and how many other women, famous or infamous, had trodden its velvet lawns and swept over its floors of rare marquetry or its pavements of mosaic? The blood of the Beauharnais mingled in this boy's own veins, with the Corsican and Spanish tides and the dash of canny Scots derived from distant Kirkpatricks. That Celtic strain was responsible, it may be, for his dreaminess and love of solitude.
He was dreaming as he rode through the forest; the spell of his dream was still upon him as he turned his Arab in at the gilded gates of Bagatelle, and dismounted before its portico, in the shadow of the Gothic tower.
From childhood many of the happiest hours of this son of the Empire had been spent at Bagatelle. In its labyrinths of myrtle and oleander, laurel and syringa, he had hidden, bursting with childish laughter, when his playmates were seeking him; he had galloped his Shetland pony and raced with his dogs over its green lawns. Upon its broad sheets of crystal water he had sailed his miniature yacht-squadrons. At his entreaty, the Emperor, always an indulgent father, had endeavored to buy the place from its English owner. In vain! my lord of Hertford was not to be tempted by gold, possessing so much of the stuff, or allured by rank, who was a premier English Marquess, Knight of the Garter, and so forth. Yet he was a generous nobleman, and made the Imperial urchin free of his coveted fairyland whenever he, the owner of the place, should be from home.
To-day's dream, for a wonder, was not the usual duologue between the friend and the unfriend. Albeit innocently, it was tinged by sex, it assumed the shape of the triangle; and worked out, though, to the satisfaction of the dreamer, the eternal Rule of Three. Louis and his dear enemy, men grown, madly loved one woman; a bewitching creature, with a sparkling rose-flushed face, eyes like blue jewels under a pile of black hair, crowned with a little cap of velvet and gray fur, with a blue wing set at the side. She adored the Prince who had won her love in the disguise of a simple officer. Fortified by this passion, she could hear Cavaignac plead unmoved. He, driven to frenzy by jealousy, would conceal himself here, for the Imperial lover would have settled Bagatelle with all its treasures upon his lady-love!—and at midnight when a step echoed in the gallery of arms, and the fair one, reclining upon this very fauteuil in the window commanding the grass-plot centered by the Cellini fountain,—sprang up with a cry of joy to welcome her lover,—the rejected aspirant would leap from behind yonder trophy of sixteenth-century pageant-shields, topped with the magnificent embossed and damascened one bearing the monogram and insignia of Diane de Poitiers; and, seizing yonder rapier from its stand, would challenge his successful rival there and then, to a duelà outrance.
Need it be said that the Prince's well-known mastery of the sword would enable him,—by a lightningcoup, following a feint—to disarm his antagonist; upon whom he would finally bestow not only the lady, but the villa, with its treasures of paintings by ancient and modern masters, its marvelous miniatures and enamels, its rooms of porcelain, cabinets of priceless coins and gems, galleries of antique sculpture, its costly furniture, its matchless grounds and gardens, ending a great many nobly turned sentences with the dignified peroration:
"Take her, Cavaignac, with all these riches! I ask nothing in return, but your esteem!"
Could Juliette have known how she had been disposed of in a boy's imagination, perhaps the Spanish Infanta would have replaced the rosy nymph. But while her Prince dreamed, her jingling vehicle had crossed the Port de St. Cloud, and so by Ville d'Avray up the long avenue between the breasting woods, stately and glorious still, though stripped by the blasts of January, to the clean white town that had sprung up, nearly three hundred years before (upon the site of a little village patronized by wagoners), where an ancient feudal castle stood on a plateau surrounded by lake, forest, and marsh.
A touch of a King's scepter changed this ancient castle to a Royal Hunting-Lodge, a whim of his successor transformed the humbler dwelling to a Palace. Courtiers, officials, functionaries, guards, valets, lackeys, pimps, cooks, barbers and innumerable hangers-on are necessary to the upkeep of State; and these must be housed in stately fashion. Behold whole streets of buildings, with noble avenues, radiating like the sticks of a fan from the sunlike center, uprising like fungi from the swampy soil. Behold, as the power and glory of the monarch redoubled,—no less than thirty thousand workmen engaged in enlarging and beautifying the residence of His Majesty, while a regiment of Swiss Guards dig out the lake. And when pneumonia, fever, and ague carry off so many thousands of these hapless toilers that the dead have to be carted away by night, and secretly dumped into pits dug for the purpose, and the bottoms of the Royal coffers are seen through a thinning layer of gold, and the Building Accounts of the Crown Demesne show totals of unpaid debts sufficiently colossal to stagger a lightning-calculator, and Ministers grow dizzy, seeing a Kingdom on the brink of financial ruin, the sublime forehead beneath the bediamonded hat and the towering wig is illuminated by an inspiration. "Ha! We have it! Quick! commence new works! Pile on the national taxes, press a million unpaid laborers into the Royal service. Let rivers of tears flow to swell the sources of our dwindling fountains. Upon the uncounted corpses of vulgar toilers erect fresh monuments to all the glories of France!"
No ghastly visions disturbed the royal dreams, no awful Finger wrote the dreadful sentence upon the marble friezes of his banqueting-halls. The shadow of the little cocked hat that was to overtop his tallest wig by the whole height of a Crown Imperial was never shown him in Witch Montespan's magic mirror. The bees that were to swarm over his lilies and drain their golden honey were not to be hatched for many years yet. He deemed himself immortal in spite of the twinges of the gout, until it took him in the stomach and carried him off, at seventy-seven, leaving France to shudder in the embraces of a far worse man than himself. Until, aphrodisiacs and apoplexy having made an end of the infamous Regent, and Louis the Well-Beloved having succumbed to vice and smallpox, and the Red Widow having hugged the heads off Louis the Locksmith and his fair young Queen, the Terror ushered in the Revolution, Era of Liberty, Equality, and Universal Phlebotomy; until men, wearied of serving many masters, looked about for one to lead them, and the Little Corporal with the pale hatchet-face and the inscrutable gray-blue eyes under the great marble forehead rose up and said, "Here am I!"
The Court of his nephew was just now at the Tuileries. You saw the town of Versailles in its winter slumber, undisturbed by the roll of innumerable carriages, luggagefourgons, pastrycooks' and tradesmen's vans, and other vehicles, over its historic and venerable cobblestones.... Fashionable people lived there all the year round; many of the crack regiments of the Imperial Guard were quartered in the innumerable barracks; there was no lack of society—not the cream of the cream, perhaps, but charming, lively and gay.
The 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard were garrisoned in that antique quarter of barracks and churches, convents and Royal harems, once known as the Parc aux Cerfs. South of the great central avenue leading from the Place d'Armes to Paris, you found its huge monumental entrance on the right of the Rue de l'Orangerie, once the Hotel of the Gardes du Corps du Roi. It boasted a frontage at once chaste and imposing. The high window of the mess-room, balconied and dominated by a lofty pediment, surmounted the great gates of wrought-iron rolling back upon a wide sanded courtyard. If I do not err, the quarters of M. le Colonel were upon the second-floor upon the left-hand side of the gate, immediately above a confectioner's, whence rose delicious odors of baking pastry and simmering chocolate to titillate the nostrils of Mademoiselle. The sleeping-chamber and boudoir, described in the Colonel's letter as hung with rosebud chintz, and elegantly furnished; the little kitchen on the same floor, full of pots and bright pans, scoured by the Colonel's soldier-servant into dazzling brilliancy, more than fulfilled the expectations provoked beforehand. I rather think that the dinner—an inexpensive and savory little meal, consisting of vegetable soup with fillets of sole Normande, an infinitesimal steakjardinière, an omelettesoufflée, Brie cheese (nowhere upon earth does one get such Brie as at Versailles), and dessert—had come from the pastrycook's on the street-floor. After the cooking one got at the Convent and in default of the much better dinner Mademoiselle could have evolved out of similar materials, it was a meal for demi-gods. And you do not know Juliette if you imagine she did not dispose of her share.
"I amgourmande, me," she would assure her confidantes in all sincerity, fitting the tip of a slender finger into a dint that would have needed slight persuasion to become a dimple. "I love good dishes, or how should I be able to cook them? One of these days it is possible that I may even grow fat. Believe me, I am not joking. Already I perceive the beginning of a double chin!"
M. le Colonel had excused himself from attendance at Mess that he might dine with his daughter. Both Monsieur and Mademoiselle were prodigiously gay, you may conceive. But even while Juliette laughed and clapped her little hands in delight at the paternal witticisms, while she leaned upon her Colonel's shoulder, or sat upon the arm of his chair; while her slender arm twined round his neck, and her cheek, no longer ivory-pale, but painted by the delicate brush of the artist Joy with the loveliest rose-flush, was tickled by the waxed end of his martial mustachio, the hateful shadow of the faceless Charles rose up and thrust itself between. It blotted out the last rays of the red wintry sun, it sprawled across the shade of the Argand lamp. It was heavy though impalpable, and diffused a numbing chill throughout the little apartment.
Perhaps the father felt it, for as they sat together talking by the cheerful fire of crackling beech-billets that burned upon the open hearth, he gradually fell silent.
You can see him in his undress uniform jacket of green cloth, braided, frogged, and with fur edging, unhooked at the neck and showing the white shirt, stiff linen collar, and scarlet tie. His polished boots and bright spurs, buttons, buckles, and so forth, reflected the dancing firelight. His forage-cap, a head-dress gaudy and bizarre enough to have come out of a Christmas cracker, crowned a porcelain bust of a young negress, chocolate-hued, with purplish-crimson lips, pink protruding tongue, and rolling onyx eyes (an art-object left behind as too fragile for transport by the previous occupant of the quarters)—while his long saber leaned against her wooden pedestal.
His handsome face was very grave, almost somber, as he pulled his crisp imperial, and stared at the little dancing hearth-flames, forgetful of the excellent cigar burning itself away to ash between the first and second fingers of his well-kept right hand. The other hand sometimes rested on his knee, sometimes touched his daughter's hair; for Juliette had slipped from her previous seat to the carpet, where she sat leaning against him.
And all at once the chill barrier of reserve broke down. It was when a heavy tear splashed upon the hand that rested on the knee of the crimson overall, a strong, brown, manly hand, rather hairy on the back. It clenched as though the single drop had been of molten metal, and then Juliette caught it in both her own and spoke:
"Oh, my father, why must this marriage take place? We have not said one word, but I know well that what is in my mind is in yours also. Feel!"—she drew the prisoned hand closely to her—"here lies your letter over where my heart is beating so. Much of it I comprehend, but the rest is anguish—mystery! War is threatened—that at least is clear. The regiment will sooner or later be ordered on active service. And—were your daughter the wife of a gentleman of her father's profession, you fear that she might suffer as her grandmother—as her own beloved dead mother did. But though my grandmother lost her husband, War spared her son. You returned to her and to my mother, not even wounded, darling! And if you apprehend for me a lot less fortunate, why need I marry any one? Take me with you or leave me behind, I am your obedient daughter always—always! But I had rather you would take me, dear!"
Not trusting himself to speak, the father took the little head between his palms and kissed the blue-veined temples and the clear space between the wide-arched eyebrows. The candid eyes met his, that were cloudy and troubled. He searched for phrases to disguise a truth that must stab.
"If I met death upon the field, you by my side, you would be left alone and unprotected. Were I to leave you behind even, in the care of Madame Tessier, you would none the less be alone. There is safety in permanent ties; but only when her husband is by her side does the sacrament of marriage open a haven to a young girl where the libertine and the seducer dare not enter. I speak with certainty—only when her husband is by her side!"
So women were not to be trusted! ... His palms might have been burned had he not withdrawn them, so fiery the sudden blush that rose in the clear, pale cheeks.
Barely comprehending his meaning, she faltered:
"Yet my grandmother——"
The Colonel broke in hastily:
"My mother was a Saint! What I have said does not apply to her!"
"And my mother?"
Something like a groan broke from the man. She felt him wince and shudder as she leaned upon him, saw the strong square teeth of the upper-jaw nip the ruddy lower lip, noted the ashen grayness that replaced the ebbed color, and the points of moisture that broke out upon his temples where his rich black hair was frosted with white. And looking, she bleached and shuddered in sympathy. His haunted eyes and haggard face bent over an upturned white mask, that had little of the grace of girlhood left in it. The distended pupils encroached upon the blue until her eyes seemed inky-black. He would have withdrawn the hand she held in both hers, but the soft little fingers turned to living steel, and he could not free himself. And the blue-black eyes staring out of the pinched elfin face quested in search of something that his own eyes strove to hide. As though his had been the weaker nature and hers the stronger (impossible, the creature being feminine), he felt his loathed secret being relentlessly drawn to light. The clear, unshaken question:
"Was not my mother good?" compelled him to truthful utterance. He heard a voice unlike his own replying:
"At the beginning—yes! I would stake my soul upon it. But during the war in the Crimea, when the Allies watered with the best blood of France and England that fatal soil, her loyalty to the absent husband weakened—her heart strayed!" He struck himself upon the breast passionately. "Yet here beat a heart that would have throbbed for love in death, had her lips kissed the shape of icy clay that housed it. It burns now with shame that I must strip off the veil of secrecy that until this moment has hidden from thee thy mother's sin!"
The head bent, a swift kiss touched his hand. Her mouth felt very cold. He went on, realizing that she demanded it:
"She fled with her lover upon the very day of the re-entry of the Army into Paris. After the triumph I hastened to Auteuil, where she and her child were living with my mother. That sainted soul met me at the door—the first glimpse of her face told the terrible intelligence. Had other lips than those beloved ones stabbed me with the truth, that night my revolver would have ended it!—I would not have lived to endure the pity in the faces of the friends who loved me—the curiosity in strangers' eyes."
A deep sigh stirred her, quickening in him the knowledge that since she had kissed his hand she had listened without breathing. She murmured now:
"Poor, dearest, best father! How old was I when she——"
He said tenderly:
"Let me see ... it was the August of 1856; thou hadst five years, and thy curls were as soft and as yellow as chicken-down. Thy mother used to say,Juliette will never be black like me!"
That disloyal mother had been the darkest of brunettes, ivory-skinned, and ebon-haired, with eyes of tawny wine-color, and the tall, lithe, exuberant form of a goddess of Grecian myth. To question the man she had deserted with regard to his betrayer seemed hideous, and yet... Juliette strung herself to the effort, faltering:
"And for whom...? with whom...? Do not tell me if it costs thee too much!"
His comprehension was instant. Very coldly the answer came:
"He was a personage of rank in his own country. A military attaché of the Prussian Embassy in Paris. They had met at one of the Imperial receptions at the Tuileries."
"Is he alive?"
The whispered words might have been shrieked in his ear, such a leap of the heart and such a thrilling of the nerves responded. He rose to his feet and said sternly, not looking at his daughter, but directly at the wall before him:
"The man is dead! But he did not fall in a duel. He lived to meet his end during the Prusso-Austrian War. He had left Parisen routefor Berlin when my representative called at the Prussian Embassy. Strive as I would, I could gain no answer from him. Nor might the utmost influence I could command obtain a response to mycartel. This being so, the disgrace is his—not mine!"
He grew quite tall in saying this, so dignified was the little tubby man, so noble in his soldierly simplicity. His daughter looked up at him, wondering at him, loving him, sorrowing over him; yet yearning to hear more of that beloved, faithless one who had dealt those bleeding wounds he now bared in the sight of the child she had deserted, and plowed such deep lines in his wrung and suffering face. The words would break out, though she nipped her lips to stop them:
"And my mother ... did she repent and ask your pardon? Did you not forgive her before she died?"
"She did not die!"
The little Colonel had a great voice. His "Garde à vous!" roared down the files like a spherical mortar-shell, his "Chargez!" might have set dead men and horses up and galloping. Indeed, his nickname among the troopers of his regiment was, I believe, nothing less than "Bouche à feu!" When he thundered the answer to Juliette's question, not only did Mademoiselle Bayard leap to her feet, vibrating in every fiber of her slender, rigid body, but the crystal drops of the mantelshelf chandeliers left by the previous tenant danced and tinkled, and the panes of the windows rattled in their frames. What more the Colonel might have said was drowned, as the customary fanfare of trumpets sounded from the Mess, heralding the loyal toast. Then the "Vive l'Empereur!" rang out, and the regimental band crashed into "Partant Pour La Syrie," and very soon afterward, from the uncurtained window commanding the barrack-square, lights could be seen moving across the shadowy space as the dispersing officers returned to their quarters or went about their duty, attended by orderlies carrying stable-lanterns of the smoky, smelly, tallow-burning kind. The Colonel's own duty called him elsewhere, and he was glad of it. He muttered an inaudible word, his eyes averted from his daughter; took his cap, gloves, and riding-whip, and strode jingling from the room.
Ah, it would need a great artist in words to depict the swift and changing emotions that swelled and wrung the heart of the poor girl he left behind him, and give some adequate idea of the storm that swept over her in that lonely hour. Joy at the discovery that the adored mother of her childish memories yet lived was drowned in anguish at the piercing thought, "She lives, but not for me!" Shame burned her cheeks to crimson, grief washed them white again; her heart bounded in her bosom, or sank, heavy as lead. Except Madame Suchard, the soldier's wife who had been engaged to wait upon Mademoiselle de Bayard, and who now might be heard washing up the dinner-plates and dishes in the little kitchen, there was no earthly woman near to whom she might turn for comfort in this her hour of need.
But as she wept, not the freely-flowing tears of girlhood, but with the dry sobbings and painful convulsions that tortured women know, there chimed from the great cathedral Church of St. Louis close by, the first long triple of the Angelus, echoed by the thinner-sounding bells from the Convent of the Augustinian Sisters, from the Priory of the Bernardine Fathers, from the House of the Sœurs de l'Esperance, from the House of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Mechanically Juliette's hand went to her bosom, her pale lips moved, shaping the sacred words. And then she went to her room and knelt at the little straw-bottomedprie-Dieuthat stood before her Crucifix, and prayed with passionate earnestness that He, Who when hanging upon His Cross of Agony gave His Mother to be our Mother, would hear Her pure prayer of intercession for that mother who had deserted her child. Wherever she might be, however low she might have fallen, whatever the sins, vices, follies that yet environed her, held her back or dragged her down, the ray of Divine Grace had power to reach her, raise her up, and lead her back by the path of Penance into the Way of Peace.
And pending the miracle, toward which end Masses should be offered and Communions given; obedience to that father so cruelly betrayed, so bitterly wronged, must, more than ever, be the watchword of Juliette. For the conviction began to dawn in her that belief in the innate purity and truth of her sex having been destroyed in him by the unfaith of that most beloved, most unhappy one; he sought to safeguard her daughter's virtue by means of a husband, who, being the only son of a widow, and therefore exempt from the obligations of military service, must always be on the spot. Sorrowfully she sought her bed, to remember, the moment her head touched the pillow, that although she had mustered courage to plead against the Colonel's sentence of marriage, provoking him thereby to reveal the long-hidden secret of his betrayal, she had never mentioned Charles except by inference.
What was he like, this young man, pious, virtuous, devoted to his mother, energetic, frugal, a manufacturer of, and merchant in, the commodity of woolen cloth? Could one build a husband out of such materials? Was it possible?
She tried once more. The effort led to tossing and turning. Conscience is most active in the night-watches. Juliette's bosom-monitor reproached her with having boasted to dear Monica's untidy brother of the faceless Charles's mastery of the art of fence. Other lapses from the strict line of veracity had preceded and followed. She had told one curious girl that Charles owned the form of an athlete, and hair of ruddy chestnut; another had reaped the information that he possessed a profile resembling that of Edgar Ravenswood, with dark, melancholy eyes, and a jet-black mustache of the kind that is silky and sweeps. Yet another eager inquirer had elicited the information that Charles was quite a duodecimo edition of a lover, slender, brilliantly fair, and not much taller than the bride-elect. Should it occur to these girls to compare notes in some hour of recess or exercise, what would be the impression conveyed to the Great Class?
One had left School, however, and one was glad of it. To go back with that tragic secret locked in one's bosom, and mingle with fortunate girls whose mothers were good women, happily alive or safely in Paradise, how could one have borne that?
A well-known footstep outside the door of her room, which opened from the little salon, and a gentle rustling sent a shiver through her. When the step moved away with its soldierly jingle of spurs accompanying it, De Bayard's daughter sat up in bed and kissed both hands to him, passionately; stretching out her arms with a wide gesture as though something of the maternal mingled with her love for him now.... When "Lights Out" sounded, and the gas was extinguished, and no line of yellow showed under the door, and the footsteps retreated and his door shut upon them, Juliette crept out of bed, lighted the candle, and picked up the scrap of paper that had been pushed across her threshold by the strong, beloved hand.
It proved to be a note dated that day, and addressed from the Tessier's house in the Rue de Provence, in Madame's angular, spidery caligraphy. Felicitations to her dear friend on the safe return of his cherished one were followed by regrets. "My Charles, alas! will be detained in Belgium at least until the Mardigras. The meeting of these dear young people must necessarily be deferred until that date. But to-morrow being the Feast of Saint Polycarpe, possibly M. le Colonel would bring Mademoiselle to visit a friend, old and most affectionate, punctually at the hour of onemidi?" With tender remembrances the note concluded. Beneath the signature—Marie-Anastasie Tessier—M. le Colonel had scrawled in pencil the curt intimation: "Arranged.—H.A.A. de B."
Knowing Charles safely bestowed in Belgium, Juliette sank back upon her pillow, and soon was calmly sleeping between her two great hair-plaits. But slippered footsteps patroled the Colonel's room until gray dawn showed between the slits of the window-shutters, and the heavy sighs and muttered words that broke from him would have wrung his daughter's faithful heart. Sleepless and haggard, the first pale beams of January daylight found him still pacing his brown-striped drugget, a letter—the cause of his own and another's misery,—crushed in his strong right hand:
"555, AVENUE DE L'ALMA, PARIS,"December18, 1869.
"MONSIEUR,
"Acting upon instructions received from the senior partner of the Berlin branch of our firm, we beg to acknowledge your reply to his communication of the 7th instant, and must point out to you that the attitude you assume with regard to our client is equally unjust and indefensible. No legal remedy was sought by you for the injuries you allege that you sustained through the infidelity of the lady who until the autumn of 1856 occupied—and without reproach—the position of your wife.
"Further, during the years of her absence from your side, she has neither asked nor received from you any monetary payments toward her support and maintenance, facts which certainly appear to suggest consent and knowledge upon your part. You may further be aware that His deceased Excellency, Count Maximilian von Schön-Valverden, late junior militaryattachéto the Prussian General Staff, fully atoned for an indiscretion of his earlier years, by making an ample settlement upon Madame de Bayard; and that she is now in a position to render liberal assistance to relatives whom Fortune has not dowered with ample means.
"Under the circumstances, we have advised our client, whose natural affection for her daughter strongly urges her to assert her maternal rights to the society of Mademoiselle de Bayard, to enforce her claim by the reëstablishment of personal influence.
"The young lady in question is still unmarried, under age, and therefore subject to maternal authority; and our client does not disguise her hope that, by awakening the long silent chords of filial tenderness, she may gain a powerful advocate upon the side of reconciliation, reunion, and that unblemished and peaceful happiness which is only to be found by the domestic fireside.
"Recollect, Monsieur, that no legal bar exists to this most virtuous and irreproachable aspiration. And understand that unless a favorable answer is shortly received by our firm to the application now made by us to you on behalf of our client, her next appeal will be made to your daughter and hers.
"We remain, etc.,"WIEGELT, NADIER AND BIDUQUET,"Solicitors."
By the chill light of the new day the Colonel for the twentieth time re-read the letter, and its cunning mixture of truth and falsehood, the venomed hint at knowledge and complicity, struck fangs once more into his quivering heart.
A devout Catholic, he had never sought to divorce the wife who had betrayed him. Thus a civil marriage with her paramour had been rendered impossible to Adelaide, even had the Count desired it. Now, furnished with ample means by the generosity of her dead lover, did the false wife seek at the hands of the injured husband rehabilitation, in return for a heap of tainted gold?
Horrible thought! The walls of the room seemed to close upon De Bayard suffocatingly. He opened the window and leaned out, drawing in deep drafts of the frosty morning air. It cleared his brain; he realized, in the event of his contemptuous rejection of the hideous bargain, a menace to his daughter's peace of mind.
Motherhood is of all earthly relationships the most sacred. Yet there are mothers who in revenge for disappointed hopes and thwarted ambitions have not hesitated to strike, through their own offspring, at husbands abhorred. More than ever the husband of Adelaide bent to his determination of placing Juliette, at the earliest moment, safe out of reach of that spotted maternal embrace.