CHAPTER VTHE RETREAT FROM PRAGUE

CHAPTER VTHE RETREAT FROM PRAGUEThe French quitted Prague on the evening of the 16th of December, leaving only a small garrison in the Hradcany; by the 18th the vanguard had reached Pürgitz at the crossing of the rivers, and then the snow, that had paused for two days, commenced towards evening and the cold began to increase almost beyond human endurance.At first their retreat had been harried by Austrian guns and charges of the Hungarian Pandours, but the enemy did not follow them far. The cannon was no longer in their ears; for twenty-four hours they marched through the silence of a barren, deserted country.The road was now so impassable, the darkness so impenetrable, the storm so severe, the troops so exhausted that M. de Belleisle ordered a halt, though all they had for camping-ground was a ragged ravine, a strip of valley by the river, and, for the Generals, a few broken houses in the devastated village of Pürgitz.The officers of therégiment du roireceived orders to halt as they were painfully making their way through the steep mountain paths; they shrugged and laughed and proceeded without comment to make their camp.It was impossible to put up the tents, both by reason of the heavy storm of snow and the rocky ground; the best they could do was to fix some of the canvas over the piled gun carriages and baggage wagons and so get men and horses into some kind of shelter.No food was sent them, and it was too dark for any search to be made. It was impossible to find a spot dry enough to light a fire on. The men huddled together under the rocks and rested with their heads on their saddles within the feeble protection of the guns and carts.The officers sat beneath a projecting point of rock, over which a canvas had been hastily dragged, and muffled themselves in their cloaks and every scrap of clothing they could find; behind them their horses were fastened, patient and silent.“I am sorry,” said M. de Vauvenargues, “that there are so many women and feeble folk with us.”“Another of M. de Belleisle’s blunders,” answered the Colonel calmly. “He should have forced them to remain in Prague.”“There was never a Protestant,” remarked Lieutenant d’Espagnac, “who would remain in Prague at the mercy of the Hungarians.”The other officers were silent; it seemed to them vexatious that this already difficult retreat should be further hampered by the presence of some hundred of refugees—men, women, and children, French travellers, foreign inhabitants of Prague, Bavarians who wished to return to their own country, Hussites who were afraid of being massacred by the Pandours.M. de Vauvenargues had it particularly in his mind; he had seen more than one dead child on the route since they left Prague. Eger was still many leagues off and both the weather and road increasing in severity and difficulty.“I wonder if Belleisle knew what he was doing,” he remarked thoughtfully.M. d’Espagnac laughed; his soaring spirits were not in the least cast down. He had just managed, with considerable difficulty, to light a lantern, which he hung from a dry point of rock. Its sickly ray illuminated the group and showed features a little white and pinched above the close wrapped cloaks; but Georges d’Espagnac bloomed like a winter rose. There was no trace of fatigue on his ardent countenance; he leant back against the cold grey rock under the lantern and began to hum an aria of Glück’s that had been fashionable when he last saw Paris. His hair was loosened from the ribbon and half freed from powder; it showed in streaks of bright brown through the pomade.“There will be no moving till dawn,” said M. de Biron with an air of disgust. The snow was beginning to invade their temporary shelter.Another officer spoke impatiently.“There must be food—many of our men have not eaten since they started. How many men does M. de Belleisle hope to get to Eger in this manner?”There was no answer: the blast of heavy snow chilled speech. Some faint distant shouting and cries were heard, the neighing of a horse, the rumble of a cart, then silence.Georges d’Espagnac continued his song; he seemed in a happy dream. Presently he fell asleep, resting his head against the shoulder of the other lieutenant. M. de Biron and the second captain either slept also or made a good feint of it. The Marquis rose and took the lantern from the wall; it was unbearable to him to sit there in the darkness, amid this silent company, while there was so much to do outside. The thought of his hungry men pricked him. The food wagons must have overlooked them. It was surely possible to find some member of the commissariat department. The army could not have reached already such a pitch of confusion.He stepped softly from under the canvas. To his great relief he found that the snow had almost ceased, but the air was glacial. As he paused, endeavouring to see his way by means of the poor rays of the lantern, his horse gave a low whinny after him. The Marquis felt another pang—the poor brutes must be hungry too. He began to descend the rocky path; he was cold even through his heavy fur mantle, and his hands were stiff despite his fur gloves. The path was wet and slippery, half frozen already, though the snow had only lain a moment.In every crevice and hole in the rocks the soldiers were lying or sitting; many of them were wrapped in the tent canvases and horses’ blankets; here and there was a dead mule with a man lying close for warmth, or a wounded trooper dying helplessly in his stiffening blood. The Marquis saw these sights intermittently and imperfectly by the wavering light of his lantern. He set his teeth; after nine years’ service he was still sensitive to sights of horror.When he reached the level ground by the river that was the principal camping ground, he stopped bewildered amidst utter confusion.There were neither tents, nor sentries, nor outposts, merely thousands of men, lying abandoned to cold and hunger, amidst useless wagons of furniture; and as the Marquis moved slowly across the field he saw no other sight than this.What might lie beyond the range of his lantern he could not tell, but all he could see seemed abandoned to despair.A man leading a mule knocked up against him; he also held a feeble lantern; his dress and the chests the mule carried showed him to be a surgeon.“This is a pitiful sight, Monsieur,” he said. “Most of the wagons were lost in that storm yesterday, and how am I to work with nothing?” He lifted his shoulders and repeated, “with nothing?”“Is there no food?” asked the Marquis.“In Pürgitz, yes—but who is to distribute it on such a night?”“We are like to have worse nights. Is M. de Belleisle in Pürgitz?”“And some regiments. They are in luck, Monsieur.”M. de Vauvenargues stood thoughtfully, and the surgeon passed on. Two officers rode up on horseback, attended by a soldier with a torch; the Marquis accosted them.“Messieurs, I am Vauvenargues of therégiment du roi,” he said. “We are encamped up the ravine, and there is no provision for men or horses——”By the light of the torch he recognized in the foremost officer M. de Broglie, whose bright hair gleamed above a pale face.“Maréchal,” he added, “I do not know how many will be alive by the morning.”“M. de Vauvenargues!” exclaimed the General, with a faint smile. “I am helpless—absolutely helpless. The food wagons have not come up—some, I believe, are lost.”The Marquis looked at him keenly; M. de Broglie was so careless in manner that the young officer suspected he was in truth deeply troubled.“Very well, Monsieur,” he answered. “I suppose we may look for some relief with the dawn?”“I think the orders will be to march at daybreak,” answered de Broglie. He touched his beaver and rode on, first adding gravely, “Pray God it does not snow again.”The Marquis remained holding the lantern and looking at the huddled shape of men and horses. A vast pity for the waste and unseen courage of war gripped his heart; none of these men complained, the horses dropped silently, the very mules died patiently—and what was the use of it? The war was wanton, unprovoked, expensive, and, so far, a failure; it had nothing heroic in its object, which was principally to satisfy the ambitious vanity of M. de Belleisle and the vague schemes of poor old well-meaning Cardinal Fleury who had never seen a battle-field in his life.The end seemed so inadequate to the sacrifice asked. The Marquis had seen the soldiers suffer and die in Prague with secret pangs, but this seemed a sheer devastation. It was impossible to stand still long in that cold; it was obvious that nothing could be done till the dawn. He pulled out his silver filigree watch, but it had stopped.Slowly he moved through the camp. Now the snow had ceased, several pitiful little fires were springing up in sheltered spots; and the men were moving about in their heavy wraps, and the surgeons coming in and out the groups of wounded and sick.A dog barked in a home-sick fashion; there was not a star visible. A Hussite pastor came within range of the Marquis’s lantern; he was carrying a limp child, and murmuring, in the strange Bohemian, what seemed a prayer.Soon the flickering orbit of light fell on a Catholic priest kneeling beside a dying man whose face was sharp and dull. He too prayed, but the familiar Latin supplications were as outside the Marquis’s sympathy as the Hussite’s appeal; he was tolerant to both, but his thoughts just touched them, no more. A strange haughty sadness came over his heart; he felt disdainful of humanity that could be so weak, so cruel, so patient.His lantern had evidently been near empty of oil, for it began to flicker and flare, and finally sank out.He put it from him and felt his way over a pile of rocks that rose up suddenly sheer and sharp.Nothing could be done till the dawn; it was doubtful even if he could find his way back to his own regiment. He seated himself on the rock, wrapped his cloak tightly about him, and waited.He thought that he must be in some kind of shelter, for he did not feel the wind, and here the cold was certainly less severe.His sombre mood did not long endure; he ceased to see the darkness filled with weary, dispirited, wounded men; rather he fancied it full of light and even flowers, which were the thoughts, he fancied, and aspirations of these poor tired soldiers.Obedience, courage, endurance, strength blossomed rich as red roses in the hearts of the feeblest of these sons of France—and in the bosom of such as Georges d’Espagnac bloomed a very glory, as of white passion flowers at midsummer and in his own heart there grew enough to render the bloodstained night fragrant.He smiled at his conceit, but it was very real to him. He had not eaten since early the previous day; he wondered if he was beginning to grow light-headed, as he had done once before in Italy when he had been without food and several hours in the sun.The reflection brought back a sudden picture of Italy, hard, brightly-coloured, gorgeous, brilliant; he shivered with a great longing for that purple sunshine that scorched the flesh and ran in the blood.In particular he recalled a field of wheat sloping to a sea which was like a rough blue stone for colour, and huge-leaved chestnut trees of an intense reddish green that cast a bronze shadow growing near, and the loud humming of grasshoppers persistently—no, he thought, that did not come in the wheat, but in the short dried grass, burnt gold as new clay by the sun; the sun—that sun he had scarcely seen since he left Paris.A shuddering drowsiness overcame him; his head fell on his bosom, and he sank to sleep.When he woke it was with a sense of physical pain and the sensation that light was falling about him in great flakes; his clearing senses told him that this was the dawn, and that he was giddy. He sat up, to find himself in a natural alcove of rock overgrown with a grey dry moss frozen and glittering; a jutting point partially shut off his vision, but he could see enough of dead men and horses and painfully moving troops in the strip of ravine immediately below him. He unfolded his cloak from his stiff limbs, and by the aid of his sword rose to his feet. As he did so, he raised his eyes, and then gave an involuntary cry of wonder and pleasure.Immediately behind him was a silver fir, perhaps a hundred feet high, as high at least as a village steeple, rising up, branch on branch, till it tapered to a perfect finish; and in the flat topmost boughs the sun, struggling through frowning blank grey clouds, rested with a melancholy radiance.The Marquis had seen many such trees in Bohemia, and there was nothing extraordinary that he should, unwittingly, have slept under one; yet his breath was shaken at the sight of the tall, unspoilt beauty of this common silver fir with the sun in the upper branches, and he could not tell why.He supported himself against the trunk and closed his eyes for a moment; his body was stabbed with pain, and his head seemed filled with restless waves of sensation. He had never been robust, and it had often been a keen trouble to him that he could not support hardship like some men, like most soldiers. He set his teeth and with an effort opened his eyes.The first sight they met was that of a woman riding a white horse coming round the fir tree.He knew her instantly for the Countess Koklinska, and she evidently knew him, for she reined up her horse, which she rode astride like a man, and looked down at him with a direct glance of recognition.“I have forgotten your name,” she said, “but I remember you, Monsieur. You are ill,” she added.He blushed that she should see his weakness, and mastered himself sufficiently to step to her stirrup.“I found a lodging in Pürgitz,” she said, “and food; but there has been great suffering among your men.”Her attire was the same as when he had seen her last—barbaric and splendid, dark furs, scarlet powdered with gold, turquoise velvet and crimson satin; her face was pinched and sallow, but her eyes were clear and expressive under the thick long lashes.“I wish we had no women with us,” said the Marquis faintly.She dismounted before he had divined her intentions, and drew a silver flask from her sash, and held it out to him in her white fur gloved hands.“Only a little poor wine,” she murmured humbly, and she had the cup ready and the red wine poured out.He thanked her gravely and drank with distaste; their heavy gloves touched as he handed the horn goblet back to her and again their eyes met.In the pale, clear winter morning he looked dishevelled, pallid, and sad, but his eyes were steady, and held the same look as had lightened them in the chapel of St. Wenceslas.“If there are no more storms, we shall do very well,” he remarked quietly. “I think there are no more than twenty leagues to Eger, and M. de Saxe took this route last year with but little loss.”“Not in this weather,” returned the Countess Carola. “And M. de Belleisle is not Maurice de Saxe.”Both her remarks were true, but the Marquis would not confirm them; he bowed gravely, as if displeased, and passed down the rocky path.She remained beside the silver fir looking after him. The cold clouds had closed over the feeble sun and the wind blew more icy; all the sounds of a moving camp came with a sharp clearness through the pure, glacial air.The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment bivouacked. His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower as he ascended, and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the unconscious dying. He turned a point of rock to see the figure of Georges d’Espagnac standing at the edge of a little precipice fanning some glimmering sticks into a flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a few flakes, then a dense storm that blended heaven and earth in one whirl of white and cold.

The French quitted Prague on the evening of the 16th of December, leaving only a small garrison in the Hradcany; by the 18th the vanguard had reached Pürgitz at the crossing of the rivers, and then the snow, that had paused for two days, commenced towards evening and the cold began to increase almost beyond human endurance.

At first their retreat had been harried by Austrian guns and charges of the Hungarian Pandours, but the enemy did not follow them far. The cannon was no longer in their ears; for twenty-four hours they marched through the silence of a barren, deserted country.

The road was now so impassable, the darkness so impenetrable, the storm so severe, the troops so exhausted that M. de Belleisle ordered a halt, though all they had for camping-ground was a ragged ravine, a strip of valley by the river, and, for the Generals, a few broken houses in the devastated village of Pürgitz.

The officers of therégiment du roireceived orders to halt as they were painfully making their way through the steep mountain paths; they shrugged and laughed and proceeded without comment to make their camp.

It was impossible to put up the tents, both by reason of the heavy storm of snow and the rocky ground; the best they could do was to fix some of the canvas over the piled gun carriages and baggage wagons and so get men and horses into some kind of shelter.

No food was sent them, and it was too dark for any search to be made. It was impossible to find a spot dry enough to light a fire on. The men huddled together under the rocks and rested with their heads on their saddles within the feeble protection of the guns and carts.

The officers sat beneath a projecting point of rock, over which a canvas had been hastily dragged, and muffled themselves in their cloaks and every scrap of clothing they could find; behind them their horses were fastened, patient and silent.

“I am sorry,” said M. de Vauvenargues, “that there are so many women and feeble folk with us.”

“Another of M. de Belleisle’s blunders,” answered the Colonel calmly. “He should have forced them to remain in Prague.”

“There was never a Protestant,” remarked Lieutenant d’Espagnac, “who would remain in Prague at the mercy of the Hungarians.”

The other officers were silent; it seemed to them vexatious that this already difficult retreat should be further hampered by the presence of some hundred of refugees—men, women, and children, French travellers, foreign inhabitants of Prague, Bavarians who wished to return to their own country, Hussites who were afraid of being massacred by the Pandours.

M. de Vauvenargues had it particularly in his mind; he had seen more than one dead child on the route since they left Prague. Eger was still many leagues off and both the weather and road increasing in severity and difficulty.

“I wonder if Belleisle knew what he was doing,” he remarked thoughtfully.

M. d’Espagnac laughed; his soaring spirits were not in the least cast down. He had just managed, with considerable difficulty, to light a lantern, which he hung from a dry point of rock. Its sickly ray illuminated the group and showed features a little white and pinched above the close wrapped cloaks; but Georges d’Espagnac bloomed like a winter rose. There was no trace of fatigue on his ardent countenance; he leant back against the cold grey rock under the lantern and began to hum an aria of Glück’s that had been fashionable when he last saw Paris. His hair was loosened from the ribbon and half freed from powder; it showed in streaks of bright brown through the pomade.

“There will be no moving till dawn,” said M. de Biron with an air of disgust. The snow was beginning to invade their temporary shelter.

Another officer spoke impatiently.

“There must be food—many of our men have not eaten since they started. How many men does M. de Belleisle hope to get to Eger in this manner?”

There was no answer: the blast of heavy snow chilled speech. Some faint distant shouting and cries were heard, the neighing of a horse, the rumble of a cart, then silence.

Georges d’Espagnac continued his song; he seemed in a happy dream. Presently he fell asleep, resting his head against the shoulder of the other lieutenant. M. de Biron and the second captain either slept also or made a good feint of it. The Marquis rose and took the lantern from the wall; it was unbearable to him to sit there in the darkness, amid this silent company, while there was so much to do outside. The thought of his hungry men pricked him. The food wagons must have overlooked them. It was surely possible to find some member of the commissariat department. The army could not have reached already such a pitch of confusion.

He stepped softly from under the canvas. To his great relief he found that the snow had almost ceased, but the air was glacial. As he paused, endeavouring to see his way by means of the poor rays of the lantern, his horse gave a low whinny after him. The Marquis felt another pang—the poor brutes must be hungry too. He began to descend the rocky path; he was cold even through his heavy fur mantle, and his hands were stiff despite his fur gloves. The path was wet and slippery, half frozen already, though the snow had only lain a moment.

In every crevice and hole in the rocks the soldiers were lying or sitting; many of them were wrapped in the tent canvases and horses’ blankets; here and there was a dead mule with a man lying close for warmth, or a wounded trooper dying helplessly in his stiffening blood. The Marquis saw these sights intermittently and imperfectly by the wavering light of his lantern. He set his teeth; after nine years’ service he was still sensitive to sights of horror.

When he reached the level ground by the river that was the principal camping ground, he stopped bewildered amidst utter confusion.

There were neither tents, nor sentries, nor outposts, merely thousands of men, lying abandoned to cold and hunger, amidst useless wagons of furniture; and as the Marquis moved slowly across the field he saw no other sight than this.

What might lie beyond the range of his lantern he could not tell, but all he could see seemed abandoned to despair.

A man leading a mule knocked up against him; he also held a feeble lantern; his dress and the chests the mule carried showed him to be a surgeon.

“This is a pitiful sight, Monsieur,” he said. “Most of the wagons were lost in that storm yesterday, and how am I to work with nothing?” He lifted his shoulders and repeated, “with nothing?”

“Is there no food?” asked the Marquis.

“In Pürgitz, yes—but who is to distribute it on such a night?”

“We are like to have worse nights. Is M. de Belleisle in Pürgitz?”

“And some regiments. They are in luck, Monsieur.”

M. de Vauvenargues stood thoughtfully, and the surgeon passed on. Two officers rode up on horseback, attended by a soldier with a torch; the Marquis accosted them.

“Messieurs, I am Vauvenargues of therégiment du roi,” he said. “We are encamped up the ravine, and there is no provision for men or horses——”

By the light of the torch he recognized in the foremost officer M. de Broglie, whose bright hair gleamed above a pale face.

“Maréchal,” he added, “I do not know how many will be alive by the morning.”

“M. de Vauvenargues!” exclaimed the General, with a faint smile. “I am helpless—absolutely helpless. The food wagons have not come up—some, I believe, are lost.”

The Marquis looked at him keenly; M. de Broglie was so careless in manner that the young officer suspected he was in truth deeply troubled.

“Very well, Monsieur,” he answered. “I suppose we may look for some relief with the dawn?”

“I think the orders will be to march at daybreak,” answered de Broglie. He touched his beaver and rode on, first adding gravely, “Pray God it does not snow again.”

The Marquis remained holding the lantern and looking at the huddled shape of men and horses. A vast pity for the waste and unseen courage of war gripped his heart; none of these men complained, the horses dropped silently, the very mules died patiently—and what was the use of it? The war was wanton, unprovoked, expensive, and, so far, a failure; it had nothing heroic in its object, which was principally to satisfy the ambitious vanity of M. de Belleisle and the vague schemes of poor old well-meaning Cardinal Fleury who had never seen a battle-field in his life.

The end seemed so inadequate to the sacrifice asked. The Marquis had seen the soldiers suffer and die in Prague with secret pangs, but this seemed a sheer devastation. It was impossible to stand still long in that cold; it was obvious that nothing could be done till the dawn. He pulled out his silver filigree watch, but it had stopped.

Slowly he moved through the camp. Now the snow had ceased, several pitiful little fires were springing up in sheltered spots; and the men were moving about in their heavy wraps, and the surgeons coming in and out the groups of wounded and sick.

A dog barked in a home-sick fashion; there was not a star visible. A Hussite pastor came within range of the Marquis’s lantern; he was carrying a limp child, and murmuring, in the strange Bohemian, what seemed a prayer.

Soon the flickering orbit of light fell on a Catholic priest kneeling beside a dying man whose face was sharp and dull. He too prayed, but the familiar Latin supplications were as outside the Marquis’s sympathy as the Hussite’s appeal; he was tolerant to both, but his thoughts just touched them, no more. A strange haughty sadness came over his heart; he felt disdainful of humanity that could be so weak, so cruel, so patient.

His lantern had evidently been near empty of oil, for it began to flicker and flare, and finally sank out.

He put it from him and felt his way over a pile of rocks that rose up suddenly sheer and sharp.

Nothing could be done till the dawn; it was doubtful even if he could find his way back to his own regiment. He seated himself on the rock, wrapped his cloak tightly about him, and waited.

He thought that he must be in some kind of shelter, for he did not feel the wind, and here the cold was certainly less severe.

His sombre mood did not long endure; he ceased to see the darkness filled with weary, dispirited, wounded men; rather he fancied it full of light and even flowers, which were the thoughts, he fancied, and aspirations of these poor tired soldiers.

Obedience, courage, endurance, strength blossomed rich as red roses in the hearts of the feeblest of these sons of France—and in the bosom of such as Georges d’Espagnac bloomed a very glory, as of white passion flowers at midsummer and in his own heart there grew enough to render the bloodstained night fragrant.

He smiled at his conceit, but it was very real to him. He had not eaten since early the previous day; he wondered if he was beginning to grow light-headed, as he had done once before in Italy when he had been without food and several hours in the sun.

The reflection brought back a sudden picture of Italy, hard, brightly-coloured, gorgeous, brilliant; he shivered with a great longing for that purple sunshine that scorched the flesh and ran in the blood.

In particular he recalled a field of wheat sloping to a sea which was like a rough blue stone for colour, and huge-leaved chestnut trees of an intense reddish green that cast a bronze shadow growing near, and the loud humming of grasshoppers persistently—no, he thought, that did not come in the wheat, but in the short dried grass, burnt gold as new clay by the sun; the sun—that sun he had scarcely seen since he left Paris.

A shuddering drowsiness overcame him; his head fell on his bosom, and he sank to sleep.

When he woke it was with a sense of physical pain and the sensation that light was falling about him in great flakes; his clearing senses told him that this was the dawn, and that he was giddy. He sat up, to find himself in a natural alcove of rock overgrown with a grey dry moss frozen and glittering; a jutting point partially shut off his vision, but he could see enough of dead men and horses and painfully moving troops in the strip of ravine immediately below him. He unfolded his cloak from his stiff limbs, and by the aid of his sword rose to his feet. As he did so, he raised his eyes, and then gave an involuntary cry of wonder and pleasure.

Immediately behind him was a silver fir, perhaps a hundred feet high, as high at least as a village steeple, rising up, branch on branch, till it tapered to a perfect finish; and in the flat topmost boughs the sun, struggling through frowning blank grey clouds, rested with a melancholy radiance.

The Marquis had seen many such trees in Bohemia, and there was nothing extraordinary that he should, unwittingly, have slept under one; yet his breath was shaken at the sight of the tall, unspoilt beauty of this common silver fir with the sun in the upper branches, and he could not tell why.

He supported himself against the trunk and closed his eyes for a moment; his body was stabbed with pain, and his head seemed filled with restless waves of sensation. He had never been robust, and it had often been a keen trouble to him that he could not support hardship like some men, like most soldiers. He set his teeth and with an effort opened his eyes.

The first sight they met was that of a woman riding a white horse coming round the fir tree.

He knew her instantly for the Countess Koklinska, and she evidently knew him, for she reined up her horse, which she rode astride like a man, and looked down at him with a direct glance of recognition.

“I have forgotten your name,” she said, “but I remember you, Monsieur. You are ill,” she added.

He blushed that she should see his weakness, and mastered himself sufficiently to step to her stirrup.

“I found a lodging in Pürgitz,” she said, “and food; but there has been great suffering among your men.”

Her attire was the same as when he had seen her last—barbaric and splendid, dark furs, scarlet powdered with gold, turquoise velvet and crimson satin; her face was pinched and sallow, but her eyes were clear and expressive under the thick long lashes.

“I wish we had no women with us,” said the Marquis faintly.

She dismounted before he had divined her intentions, and drew a silver flask from her sash, and held it out to him in her white fur gloved hands.

“Only a little poor wine,” she murmured humbly, and she had the cup ready and the red wine poured out.

He thanked her gravely and drank with distaste; their heavy gloves touched as he handed the horn goblet back to her and again their eyes met.

In the pale, clear winter morning he looked dishevelled, pallid, and sad, but his eyes were steady, and held the same look as had lightened them in the chapel of St. Wenceslas.

“If there are no more storms, we shall do very well,” he remarked quietly. “I think there are no more than twenty leagues to Eger, and M. de Saxe took this route last year with but little loss.”

“Not in this weather,” returned the Countess Carola. “And M. de Belleisle is not Maurice de Saxe.”

Both her remarks were true, but the Marquis would not confirm them; he bowed gravely, as if displeased, and passed down the rocky path.

She remained beside the silver fir looking after him. The cold clouds had closed over the feeble sun and the wind blew more icy; all the sounds of a moving camp came with a sharp clearness through the pure, glacial air.

The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment bivouacked. His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower as he ascended, and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the unconscious dying. He turned a point of rock to see the figure of Georges d’Espagnac standing at the edge of a little precipice fanning some glimmering sticks into a flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a few flakes, then a dense storm that blended heaven and earth in one whirl of white and cold.

CHAPTER VION THE HEIGHTSThe snow fell without a break for three days; on the morning of the fourth it ceased a little, and by the time M. de Belleisle had reached Chiesch stopped.The army had now been a week on the road, and the Maréchal hoped by a forced march to reach Eger, on the borders of Bavaria, with those who remained of the thirty thousand men who had marched out of Prague.The famousrégiment du roi, reduced to half their number, had fallen out of the vanguard, and stumbled along as best they might through the rocky ravines and high mounting roads. There was no longer any order in the army; the retreat had been one horror of death; men fell every moment, and were quickly buried in the silent snow; the wretched refugees died by the hundred. The waste of life was appalling; M. de Vauvenargues felt sick and delirious from the constant spectacle of this helpless agony; men dropped to right and left of him, he passed them at every step on the route; two of his fellow-officers had died the same night; it was like a shrieking nightmare to the Marquis to have to leave them, carrion in the snow; and now the strength of young Georges d’Espagnac began to fail; both had long ago lost their horses; M. de Biron himself was walking; there was indeed scarcely an animal left in the army; gun carriages and wagons had been abandoned all along the route as the mules died.As the sombre evening obscured the awful sights along the line of march, the thing that the Marquis had been dreading for the last two days happened: Georges d’Espagnac lurched and fell insensible by his side.M. de Biron looked over his shoulder.“Poor child,” he murmured; then, to the Marquis, “It is death to stop; you can do no good. Come on.”But M. de Vauvenargues shook his head and drew the wasted young figure out of the ghastly march.A wagon with a broken wheel rested close by with two dead mules still in the traces and the corpse of a fair-haired woman flung across them, just as she had crawled out of the way. The Marquis wondered vaguely why they should have dragged this wagon so far; the covering at the back was open, and the heavy canvas flaps rose and fell sluggishly in the bitter wind, while from the interior had fallen a silver dessert service that glittered curiously on the thick snow and some rolls of straw-coloured silk that the Marquis had once seen hanging on the walls of M. de Belleisle’s room in the Hradcany castle.He winced at the bitter irony of it; yet the rolls of silk, when shaken out, were some covering for the young Lieutenant, and the wagon was some protection from the wind.Beyond this he could do nothing; he knelt and took d’Espagnac’s head on his knee for greater warmth, and waited.It was little over a week since he had looked at the beautiful inspired face turned upwards in the chapel of St. Wenceslas; he gazed down now at the poor head on his lap, and the tears rose under his lids.Georges d’Espagnac was wasted till his blue uniform, tarnished and torn, hung on him loosely; his face was so thin that even the hollows in the temples showed clearly and of a bluish tinge, while the lips were strained and distorted; all powder and dressing had left his hair, which hung in a mass of damp locks of a startling brightness about his shoulders; his right cheek was bruised by the fall from the saddle when his horse died, and his gloveless right hand was cracked and bleeding.The Marquis felt his heart, and it was beating reluctantly and wearily.There was no hope, he knew; at any moment the snow might begin again, and this lovely life must go out as the other lives were going out, unnoticed, unsweetened by any care, regret, or tenderness.But it never occurred to M. de Vauvenargues to leave him, though he knew that his own best, perhaps his only, chance of life lay in movement, in pressing on.The darkness fell slowly and with a certain dreadful heaviness; the added ugliness of the distant bark of wolves completed the speechless horror of the Marquis’s mood.Still the army was trailing past him, bent figures supporting each other, a few Generals still on horseback, a few wounded and women in sledges or carts.From an officer of the Black Musqueteers he begged a little wine that brought a tinge of colour into d’Espagnac’s cheeks and proved how pitifully easy it would have been to save him by warmth and care.“There is only rough nursing here, Monsieur,” said the musqueteer kindly; “leave him and save your own life, for I think the snow will begin again.”“Monsieur,” replied the Marquis gently, “he is so very young. And maybe he will be conscious before he dies, and find himself alone and hear the wolves. And it is such a little thing I do.”And still the army went past like a procession in a dream of hell, and every moment it became darker, until the fir trees and the rocks were being lost in blackness and the howls of the wolves sounded nearer. Presently came a woman walking with more energy than most, yet stumbling under some burden that she held in her arms. At that moment d’Espagnac suddenly recovered consciousness, and cried in a clear voice—“Let us get on our way, my dear Marquis—we ought to be at Eger to-morrow night.”The words made the woman pause and look round. The Marquis gazed at her; he had last seen her on a white horse beneath a silver fir; and though he had forgotten her since, he had now a passionate desire that she should stop and speak to him.As if in answer to this wish, she crossed directly to the wagon. The young Count had fallen into a weak swoon again, and she looked down on him calmly.“Your friend is dying,” she said. “My God, how many more!”She sat down on a round grey stone and put her hand to her head; then the Marquis saw that she carried, wrapped to her breast, a small sick child.“You must go on,” he said, with energy. “You must not stop for us, Mademoiselle.”“I cannot walk any more,” she answered. “I am very strong, but I cannot walk farther.”“Where is your brother?” he asked.“Dead,” she replied.“Dead!”“The word seems to mean nothing. I have a child here, dying too. I thought it might be happier dying in some one’s arms.”It was exactly his own thought about Georges; he smiled with his courteous, sad sweetness, and putting the lieutenant’s head gently on one of the still rolled-up curtains, rose.“We are on the heights, are we not?” asked Carola. “I seem to have been climbing all day.”He approached her. “I think we are very high up,” he said gently. “Will you give me the child, Mademoiselle?”She resigned the pitiful burden without a word; the Marquis shuddered as he felt the frail weight in his arms.“So cold,” he murmured. “How could they bring children on such a march as this! How far have you carried him?” he added.“Since morning,” answered Carola; “and it is a girl, Monsieur.”The Marquis looked down into the tiny crumpled white face in the folds of the fur mantle, and laid the little creature down beside d’Espagnac.“What can we do?” asked the Countess, in a broken voice.“Nothing,” he answered gravely; “but if you have any strength at all, you should join the march. It is your only chance, Mademoiselle.”She shook her delicate head. “Please permit me to stay with you. We might help each other. This is very terrible—the wolves are the worst.” She set her lips, and her pinched face had a look of decided strength. “Will the army be passing all night?” she added.“I do not think so—surely there cannot be many more.”“I was thinking when they go—perhaps the wolves——” She paused.He was unused to these severe latitudes; there were wolves in France, but they had never troubled him.“They might attack us,” she finished, seeing he did not comprehend.He took his pistols from his belt and laid them on the ground beside him.“I am armed,” he answered.The Countess rose stiffly; her thick fur-lined cloak fell apart and showed the bright colours of her dress beneath, the tags and braids of gold, the vermilion sash and ruffled laces. “It is strange that I should live and my brother die, is it not?” she said wearily. “He fell from his horse and struck his head on a broken gun. Then he died very quickly.” There was dried blood on her fur gloves and on the bosom of her shirt. She went to the unconscious child and knelt beside her, moved the wrappings from the pallid, dead-coloured face, and touched the cheek. “I think she will never wake again—but your friend?” She glanced at the Marquis, who was standing looking down at M. d’Espagnac.“I can only watch him die,” he said.The Countess drew from her bosom the flask she had offered to M. de Vauvenargues four days before.“This was filled this morning,” she explained, “and I cannot take it for it makes me giddy.” She moved to the side of M. d’Espagnac and raised his head tenderly and forced the spirits between his teeth.“I think there is a lantern in the wagon,” said the Marquis, and went to find it. The dark was now so thick that they could scarcely see each other’s features, but he found the lantern and flint and tinder and lit it, and the long yellow beams were some comfort in the overwhelming sadness of the night.The effect of the brandy on M. d’Espagnac was sudden and almost terrible: he sat up amid the tumbled rolls of silk, and his cheeks were red with fever and his eyes open in a forced fashion. He appeared clear-headed and master of his senses; his glance rested on the Polish lady and then on the Marquis. “You should not have waited for me,” he muttered. “On—on to Eger. I shall soon be well.” He raised his wasted, bleeding hands to his brilliant hair. “I am sick from seeing people die,” he said. “It could never have been meant. O God, what have we done?” He crossed himself.“This is war, Georges,” answered the Marquis. “Remember the chapel of St. Wenceslas and the words we spoke there.”M. d’Espagnac shuddered and fell back on to the cloaks the Marquis had piled under his head. Carola took his poor torn hand.“Rest a little longer,” she said, “and then we can continue on our way.”Save for a few stragglers, the army had passed now. The isolation seemed to increase with the dark, and the greedy howls of the wolves came nearer.The lieutenant struggled up again and cried impetuously, “I am not going to die! That would be folly, for I have done nothing yet.”“No, you shall not die,” answered Carola, and grasped his hand tighter. The Marquis was on the other side of him. Georges d’Espagnac laughed.“You must not wait for me, Monsieur.” Then he closed his eyes, and shiver after shiver shook his limbs.The baby stirred and wailed dismally; in a moment Carola had it caught up and pressed to her heart. The sick man whispered and moaned, then suddenly sat up in violent delirium.“I will not see any more die!” he cried. “No more, do you hear? These people might havedonesomething—what were they born for? How much farther? No food—no rest. How much farther? How far to Provence?”The Marquis started; he was himself Provençal, and had not known M. d’Espagnac came from his country; the word stirred agony in the heart he controlled with such difficulty.“Provence!” repeated the lieutenant. “They will want news of me, you know, Monsieur. I must tell them—the quest of glory——”Again the words stabbed M. de Vauvenargues. “Georges,” he murmured, bending over him, “perhaps you have attained the quest.”M. d’Espagnac laughed again.“What a jest if I should die!” he muttered wildly. “My heart is quite cold, it is freezing my blood. Perhaps I am in my grave, and this is some one else speaking. How far to Eger?—how long to the Judgment Day?”“I am with you, Georges d’Espagnac,” said the Marquis. “We are alive.”He seemed to hear that.“Where?” he demanded.“On the heights,” said M. de Vauvenargues.It was now quite dark save for the light of the wagon lamp that fell over the straw-coloured silk hangings of M. de Belleisle, the beautiful anguished face framed in the gorgeous hair, the woman in her barbaric splendour clasping the feeble child, and the slender figure of the Marquis in his blue and silver uniform; it glimmered, too, on the pieces of the Maréchal’s dessert service, and the sparkle of them caught Carola’s eye.“Do you travel with such things?” she asked. “Our nobles sleep on the ground, and drink from horn——”“M. de Belleisle must travel as a Maréchal de France,” answered the Marquis. “But these things seem foolish now.”A great giddy sickness was on him, and a distaste of life that could be so wretched; the spirit within him was weary of the miserable flesh that suffered so pitifully.“Give me my sword,” said M. d’Espagnac. “I am starting out on a quest. Do you hear? Jesu, have mercy upon me!”Carola rose and walked up and down with the child.“You are Catholic?” she asked.“No,” answered the Marquis.“An atheist?” she questioned.“An ugly word, Mademoiselle”—he gave a little sigh; “but yes—perhaps.”“I am sorry for you,” said Carola; at which he smiled. “But your friend?” she added. “We have no priest!” She seemed distressed at the thought.“His soul does not need shriving,” replied M. de Vauvenargues.But the words seemed to have penetrated the lieutenant’s clouded consciousness; he clamoured for a priest, for the last Sacrament, for the Eucharist.The Marquis caught him in his arms and held him strongly.“None of that matters,” he said with power. “You are free of all that—upon the heights.”The voice calmed M. d’Espagnac; he rested his head on his captain’s breast, and shuddered into silence.The Marquis looked up to see Carola with empty arms.“Where is the child?” he asked.“Dead,” she answered, in a tired voice. “And I have laid her under the wagon with my crucifix. I think she was a Hussite, but perhaps God will forgive her, for she was too young to know error.”“Do you suppose God’s charity less than yours, Mademoiselle?” answered M. de Vauvenargues gently. “You sheltered a heretic child all day—will not God shelter her through all eternity?”She looked at him strangely.“I feel very weary,” she said; “the wolves sound nearer.”The Marquis thought of the two dead mules and the woman’s corpse that Carola had not seen; he was stretching out his hand for his pistol when d’Espagnac lifted his head.“Thank you, Monsieur,” he said, and his voice was sweet and sane; “I fear I incommode you and Mademoiselle.” He smiled and raised himself on one arm. “You must not stay for me. I am very well. Dying, I know—but very well.”Carola came closer to him.“I know the prayers of my church—shall I say them for you?”He faintly shook his head.“Thank you for your thought. But we are so far from churches.”He was silent again, and the Marquis noticed with a shudder that the great snowflakes were beginning to fall once more.“How can we endure it?” murmured Carola, and the tears clung to her stiff lids.M. d’Espagnac moved again. “There are some letters in my pockets—if you should return to France——”“Yes, yes,” said the Marquis.The lieutenant gave a little cough, and seemed to suddenly fall asleep; they wrapped him up as well as they could and chafed his brow and hands.The snow increased and drifted round the wagon and began to cover them softly.Presently, as there was no further sound, the Marquis held a scrap of the feather trimming of his hat before d’Espagnac’s lips and slipped his hand inside the fine cold shirt.They discovered that he was dead; had evidently drawn his last breath on the word “France,” and resigned his soul without a sigh or struggle.It was horrible and incredible to the Marquis in those first minutes; why should he, never robust, and a girl of delicate make survive, and Georges d’Espagnac, so young, strong, and full of vitality, die as easily as the ailing child?He bent low over the sunken face, and the loose strands of his hair touched the frozen snow.“The Quest of Glory,” said Carola, in a strange voice.The Marquis looked up at her, and his eyes were full of light.“Yes, Mademoiselle,” he said simply, and drew the heavy cloak over the face of Georges d’Espagnac.“A joyful quest!” she cried, in a hollow voice.“Yes,” he said again, “a joyful quest.”He rose, and the snow drifted on to his argent epaulettes, his torn lace cravat and his loose hanging hair. He leant against the wagon and put his hand to his side; now that they had the covered form of the dead between them, the hideous loneliness became a hundredfold intensified. Heavy tears forced themselves with difficulty from under Carola’s lids and ran down her wan cheeks, but she made no sound of sobbing.“You are a brave woman,” said the Marquis very gently. “You must not die. Give me your hand.”She shook her head.“Leave me here. Why should you trouble? Go on your way.”She bent her head and then felt his hand on her shoulder, drawing her, very tenderly, to her feet; she resisted her giddiness, which nearly flung her into his arms, and murmured in a firmer voice—“Very well. We are companions in misfortune and will stay together.” She crossed herself and whispered some prayer over the dead. “It is horrible to leave them,” she added, thinking of the wolves.“He is not there,” answered the Marquis, “but ahead of us on the way already.”He unfastened the lantern from the wagon and, taking it in his left hand, offered the right to the Countess.An extraordinary sweetness had sprung up between them; they felt a great tenderness for each other, a great respect.As they made the first steps on the terrible, difficult route, with the snow-filled blackness before them and their poor light showing only death and horror, the Marquis said to his companion—“If I could have spared you, Mademoiselle, any of this——”She broke in upon his speech—“We shall never forget each other all our lives, Monsieur.”Then in silence they followed in the blood-stained track of the army towards Eger.

The snow fell without a break for three days; on the morning of the fourth it ceased a little, and by the time M. de Belleisle had reached Chiesch stopped.

The army had now been a week on the road, and the Maréchal hoped by a forced march to reach Eger, on the borders of Bavaria, with those who remained of the thirty thousand men who had marched out of Prague.

The famousrégiment du roi, reduced to half their number, had fallen out of the vanguard, and stumbled along as best they might through the rocky ravines and high mounting roads. There was no longer any order in the army; the retreat had been one horror of death; men fell every moment, and were quickly buried in the silent snow; the wretched refugees died by the hundred. The waste of life was appalling; M. de Vauvenargues felt sick and delirious from the constant spectacle of this helpless agony; men dropped to right and left of him, he passed them at every step on the route; two of his fellow-officers had died the same night; it was like a shrieking nightmare to the Marquis to have to leave them, carrion in the snow; and now the strength of young Georges d’Espagnac began to fail; both had long ago lost their horses; M. de Biron himself was walking; there was indeed scarcely an animal left in the army; gun carriages and wagons had been abandoned all along the route as the mules died.

As the sombre evening obscured the awful sights along the line of march, the thing that the Marquis had been dreading for the last two days happened: Georges d’Espagnac lurched and fell insensible by his side.

M. de Biron looked over his shoulder.

“Poor child,” he murmured; then, to the Marquis, “It is death to stop; you can do no good. Come on.”

But M. de Vauvenargues shook his head and drew the wasted young figure out of the ghastly march.

A wagon with a broken wheel rested close by with two dead mules still in the traces and the corpse of a fair-haired woman flung across them, just as she had crawled out of the way. The Marquis wondered vaguely why they should have dragged this wagon so far; the covering at the back was open, and the heavy canvas flaps rose and fell sluggishly in the bitter wind, while from the interior had fallen a silver dessert service that glittered curiously on the thick snow and some rolls of straw-coloured silk that the Marquis had once seen hanging on the walls of M. de Belleisle’s room in the Hradcany castle.

He winced at the bitter irony of it; yet the rolls of silk, when shaken out, were some covering for the young Lieutenant, and the wagon was some protection from the wind.

Beyond this he could do nothing; he knelt and took d’Espagnac’s head on his knee for greater warmth, and waited.

It was little over a week since he had looked at the beautiful inspired face turned upwards in the chapel of St. Wenceslas; he gazed down now at the poor head on his lap, and the tears rose under his lids.

Georges d’Espagnac was wasted till his blue uniform, tarnished and torn, hung on him loosely; his face was so thin that even the hollows in the temples showed clearly and of a bluish tinge, while the lips were strained and distorted; all powder and dressing had left his hair, which hung in a mass of damp locks of a startling brightness about his shoulders; his right cheek was bruised by the fall from the saddle when his horse died, and his gloveless right hand was cracked and bleeding.

The Marquis felt his heart, and it was beating reluctantly and wearily.

There was no hope, he knew; at any moment the snow might begin again, and this lovely life must go out as the other lives were going out, unnoticed, unsweetened by any care, regret, or tenderness.

But it never occurred to M. de Vauvenargues to leave him, though he knew that his own best, perhaps his only, chance of life lay in movement, in pressing on.

The darkness fell slowly and with a certain dreadful heaviness; the added ugliness of the distant bark of wolves completed the speechless horror of the Marquis’s mood.

Still the army was trailing past him, bent figures supporting each other, a few Generals still on horseback, a few wounded and women in sledges or carts.

From an officer of the Black Musqueteers he begged a little wine that brought a tinge of colour into d’Espagnac’s cheeks and proved how pitifully easy it would have been to save him by warmth and care.

“There is only rough nursing here, Monsieur,” said the musqueteer kindly; “leave him and save your own life, for I think the snow will begin again.”

“Monsieur,” replied the Marquis gently, “he is so very young. And maybe he will be conscious before he dies, and find himself alone and hear the wolves. And it is such a little thing I do.”

And still the army went past like a procession in a dream of hell, and every moment it became darker, until the fir trees and the rocks were being lost in blackness and the howls of the wolves sounded nearer. Presently came a woman walking with more energy than most, yet stumbling under some burden that she held in her arms. At that moment d’Espagnac suddenly recovered consciousness, and cried in a clear voice—

“Let us get on our way, my dear Marquis—we ought to be at Eger to-morrow night.”

The words made the woman pause and look round. The Marquis gazed at her; he had last seen her on a white horse beneath a silver fir; and though he had forgotten her since, he had now a passionate desire that she should stop and speak to him.

As if in answer to this wish, she crossed directly to the wagon. The young Count had fallen into a weak swoon again, and she looked down on him calmly.

“Your friend is dying,” she said. “My God, how many more!”

She sat down on a round grey stone and put her hand to her head; then the Marquis saw that she carried, wrapped to her breast, a small sick child.

“You must go on,” he said, with energy. “You must not stop for us, Mademoiselle.”

“I cannot walk any more,” she answered. “I am very strong, but I cannot walk farther.”

“Where is your brother?” he asked.

“Dead,” she replied.

“Dead!”

“The word seems to mean nothing. I have a child here, dying too. I thought it might be happier dying in some one’s arms.”

It was exactly his own thought about Georges; he smiled with his courteous, sad sweetness, and putting the lieutenant’s head gently on one of the still rolled-up curtains, rose.

“We are on the heights, are we not?” asked Carola. “I seem to have been climbing all day.”

He approached her. “I think we are very high up,” he said gently. “Will you give me the child, Mademoiselle?”

She resigned the pitiful burden without a word; the Marquis shuddered as he felt the frail weight in his arms.

“So cold,” he murmured. “How could they bring children on such a march as this! How far have you carried him?” he added.

“Since morning,” answered Carola; “and it is a girl, Monsieur.”

The Marquis looked down into the tiny crumpled white face in the folds of the fur mantle, and laid the little creature down beside d’Espagnac.

“What can we do?” asked the Countess, in a broken voice.

“Nothing,” he answered gravely; “but if you have any strength at all, you should join the march. It is your only chance, Mademoiselle.”

She shook her delicate head. “Please permit me to stay with you. We might help each other. This is very terrible—the wolves are the worst.” She set her lips, and her pinched face had a look of decided strength. “Will the army be passing all night?” she added.

“I do not think so—surely there cannot be many more.”

“I was thinking when they go—perhaps the wolves——” She paused.

He was unused to these severe latitudes; there were wolves in France, but they had never troubled him.

“They might attack us,” she finished, seeing he did not comprehend.

He took his pistols from his belt and laid them on the ground beside him.

“I am armed,” he answered.

The Countess rose stiffly; her thick fur-lined cloak fell apart and showed the bright colours of her dress beneath, the tags and braids of gold, the vermilion sash and ruffled laces. “It is strange that I should live and my brother die, is it not?” she said wearily. “He fell from his horse and struck his head on a broken gun. Then he died very quickly.” There was dried blood on her fur gloves and on the bosom of her shirt. She went to the unconscious child and knelt beside her, moved the wrappings from the pallid, dead-coloured face, and touched the cheek. “I think she will never wake again—but your friend?” She glanced at the Marquis, who was standing looking down at M. d’Espagnac.

“I can only watch him die,” he said.

The Countess drew from her bosom the flask she had offered to M. de Vauvenargues four days before.

“This was filled this morning,” she explained, “and I cannot take it for it makes me giddy.” She moved to the side of M. d’Espagnac and raised his head tenderly and forced the spirits between his teeth.

“I think there is a lantern in the wagon,” said the Marquis, and went to find it. The dark was now so thick that they could scarcely see each other’s features, but he found the lantern and flint and tinder and lit it, and the long yellow beams were some comfort in the overwhelming sadness of the night.

The effect of the brandy on M. d’Espagnac was sudden and almost terrible: he sat up amid the tumbled rolls of silk, and his cheeks were red with fever and his eyes open in a forced fashion. He appeared clear-headed and master of his senses; his glance rested on the Polish lady and then on the Marquis. “You should not have waited for me,” he muttered. “On—on to Eger. I shall soon be well.” He raised his wasted, bleeding hands to his brilliant hair. “I am sick from seeing people die,” he said. “It could never have been meant. O God, what have we done?” He crossed himself.

“This is war, Georges,” answered the Marquis. “Remember the chapel of St. Wenceslas and the words we spoke there.”

M. d’Espagnac shuddered and fell back on to the cloaks the Marquis had piled under his head. Carola took his poor torn hand.

“Rest a little longer,” she said, “and then we can continue on our way.”

Save for a few stragglers, the army had passed now. The isolation seemed to increase with the dark, and the greedy howls of the wolves came nearer.

The lieutenant struggled up again and cried impetuously, “I am not going to die! That would be folly, for I have done nothing yet.”

“No, you shall not die,” answered Carola, and grasped his hand tighter. The Marquis was on the other side of him. Georges d’Espagnac laughed.

“You must not wait for me, Monsieur.” Then he closed his eyes, and shiver after shiver shook his limbs.

The baby stirred and wailed dismally; in a moment Carola had it caught up and pressed to her heart. The sick man whispered and moaned, then suddenly sat up in violent delirium.

“I will not see any more die!” he cried. “No more, do you hear? These people might havedonesomething—what were they born for? How much farther? No food—no rest. How much farther? How far to Provence?”

The Marquis started; he was himself Provençal, and had not known M. d’Espagnac came from his country; the word stirred agony in the heart he controlled with such difficulty.

“Provence!” repeated the lieutenant. “They will want news of me, you know, Monsieur. I must tell them—the quest of glory——”

Again the words stabbed M. de Vauvenargues. “Georges,” he murmured, bending over him, “perhaps you have attained the quest.”

M. d’Espagnac laughed again.

“What a jest if I should die!” he muttered wildly. “My heart is quite cold, it is freezing my blood. Perhaps I am in my grave, and this is some one else speaking. How far to Eger?—how long to the Judgment Day?”

“I am with you, Georges d’Espagnac,” said the Marquis. “We are alive.”

He seemed to hear that.

“Where?” he demanded.

“On the heights,” said M. de Vauvenargues.

It was now quite dark save for the light of the wagon lamp that fell over the straw-coloured silk hangings of M. de Belleisle, the beautiful anguished face framed in the gorgeous hair, the woman in her barbaric splendour clasping the feeble child, and the slender figure of the Marquis in his blue and silver uniform; it glimmered, too, on the pieces of the Maréchal’s dessert service, and the sparkle of them caught Carola’s eye.

“Do you travel with such things?” she asked. “Our nobles sleep on the ground, and drink from horn——”

“M. de Belleisle must travel as a Maréchal de France,” answered the Marquis. “But these things seem foolish now.”

A great giddy sickness was on him, and a distaste of life that could be so wretched; the spirit within him was weary of the miserable flesh that suffered so pitifully.

“Give me my sword,” said M. d’Espagnac. “I am starting out on a quest. Do you hear? Jesu, have mercy upon me!”

Carola rose and walked up and down with the child.

“You are Catholic?” she asked.

“No,” answered the Marquis.

“An atheist?” she questioned.

“An ugly word, Mademoiselle”—he gave a little sigh; “but yes—perhaps.”

“I am sorry for you,” said Carola; at which he smiled. “But your friend?” she added. “We have no priest!” She seemed distressed at the thought.

“His soul does not need shriving,” replied M. de Vauvenargues.

But the words seemed to have penetrated the lieutenant’s clouded consciousness; he clamoured for a priest, for the last Sacrament, for the Eucharist.

The Marquis caught him in his arms and held him strongly.

“None of that matters,” he said with power. “You are free of all that—upon the heights.”

The voice calmed M. d’Espagnac; he rested his head on his captain’s breast, and shuddered into silence.

The Marquis looked up to see Carola with empty arms.

“Where is the child?” he asked.

“Dead,” she answered, in a tired voice. “And I have laid her under the wagon with my crucifix. I think she was a Hussite, but perhaps God will forgive her, for she was too young to know error.”

“Do you suppose God’s charity less than yours, Mademoiselle?” answered M. de Vauvenargues gently. “You sheltered a heretic child all day—will not God shelter her through all eternity?”

She looked at him strangely.

“I feel very weary,” she said; “the wolves sound nearer.”

The Marquis thought of the two dead mules and the woman’s corpse that Carola had not seen; he was stretching out his hand for his pistol when d’Espagnac lifted his head.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” he said, and his voice was sweet and sane; “I fear I incommode you and Mademoiselle.” He smiled and raised himself on one arm. “You must not stay for me. I am very well. Dying, I know—but very well.”

Carola came closer to him.

“I know the prayers of my church—shall I say them for you?”

He faintly shook his head.

“Thank you for your thought. But we are so far from churches.”

He was silent again, and the Marquis noticed with a shudder that the great snowflakes were beginning to fall once more.

“How can we endure it?” murmured Carola, and the tears clung to her stiff lids.

M. d’Espagnac moved again. “There are some letters in my pockets—if you should return to France——”

“Yes, yes,” said the Marquis.

The lieutenant gave a little cough, and seemed to suddenly fall asleep; they wrapped him up as well as they could and chafed his brow and hands.

The snow increased and drifted round the wagon and began to cover them softly.

Presently, as there was no further sound, the Marquis held a scrap of the feather trimming of his hat before d’Espagnac’s lips and slipped his hand inside the fine cold shirt.

They discovered that he was dead; had evidently drawn his last breath on the word “France,” and resigned his soul without a sigh or struggle.

It was horrible and incredible to the Marquis in those first minutes; why should he, never robust, and a girl of delicate make survive, and Georges d’Espagnac, so young, strong, and full of vitality, die as easily as the ailing child?

He bent low over the sunken face, and the loose strands of his hair touched the frozen snow.

“The Quest of Glory,” said Carola, in a strange voice.

The Marquis looked up at her, and his eyes were full of light.

“Yes, Mademoiselle,” he said simply, and drew the heavy cloak over the face of Georges d’Espagnac.

“A joyful quest!” she cried, in a hollow voice.

“Yes,” he said again, “a joyful quest.”

He rose, and the snow drifted on to his argent epaulettes, his torn lace cravat and his loose hanging hair. He leant against the wagon and put his hand to his side; now that they had the covered form of the dead between them, the hideous loneliness became a hundredfold intensified. Heavy tears forced themselves with difficulty from under Carola’s lids and ran down her wan cheeks, but she made no sound of sobbing.

“You are a brave woman,” said the Marquis very gently. “You must not die. Give me your hand.”

She shook her head.

“Leave me here. Why should you trouble? Go on your way.”

She bent her head and then felt his hand on her shoulder, drawing her, very tenderly, to her feet; she resisted her giddiness, which nearly flung her into his arms, and murmured in a firmer voice—

“Very well. We are companions in misfortune and will stay together.” She crossed herself and whispered some prayer over the dead. “It is horrible to leave them,” she added, thinking of the wolves.

“He is not there,” answered the Marquis, “but ahead of us on the way already.”

He unfastened the lantern from the wagon and, taking it in his left hand, offered the right to the Countess.

An extraordinary sweetness had sprung up between them; they felt a great tenderness for each other, a great respect.

As they made the first steps on the terrible, difficult route, with the snow-filled blackness before them and their poor light showing only death and horror, the Marquis said to his companion—

“If I could have spared you, Mademoiselle, any of this——”

She broke in upon his speech—

“We shall never forget each other all our lives, Monsieur.”

Then in silence they followed in the blood-stained track of the army towards Eger.

CHAPTER VIITHE HOME AT AIXThe winter of the year 1742 had been the coldest, in every part of Europe, that had been known since 1709, and the following spring was also remarkable—for heat and sunshine and rainless days and nights.By early April the chestnuts outside the residence of the Clapiers family in Aix were in perfect bloom and the white, golden-hearted flowers sprang from the wide bronze-green leaves and expanded to the summer-like sun; beneath the trees was a deep rich-coloured shade that lay up the double steps of the house and across the high door with its fine moulding of handsome wood. The shutters were closed against the heat; the whole street was empty of everything save the perfume of the lilac, roses, and syringa growing in the gardens of the mansions.This languid peace of afternoon was broken by the arrival of a gentleman on horseback followed by a servant; he drew rein under the chestnut trees, dismounted, gave his horse to the man, and rather slowly ascended the pleasant shaded steps. Without knocking he opened the door and stepped at once into the dark, cool hall. A clock struck three, and he waited till the chimes had ceased, then opened a door on his left and entered a large low room full of shadow that looked out on to a great garden and a young beech covered with red-gold leaves in which the sun blazed splendidly.Luc de Clapiers stood gazing at the home he had not seen for nine years. Nothing was altered. On just such a day as this he had left it; but he remembered that the beech tree had been smaller then and not so prodigal of glorious foliage.There were the same dark walls, the same heavy mahogany furniture, the same picture of “The Sacrifice of Isaac” opposite the window, the same carved sideboard bearing silver and glass, the candlesticks and snuffers, the brass lamp and the taper-holders. Above the mantelpiece were, deep carved, the de Clapiers arms, still brightly coloured, fasces of argent and silver and the chief or—and on the mantelpiece the same dark marble clock.Luc crossed to the window that was not far above the ground and looked down the garden; in the distance were two gentlemen—one young and one old—followed by three bright dogs.Luc put his hand to his eyes, then unlatched the window, that opened casement fashion. The sound, slight as it was, carried in the absolute stillness; the two gentlemen who were approaching the house glanced up.They beheld, framed in the darkness of the room, the slim figure of a young soldier in a blue and silver uniform, wearing a light grey travelling cloak.“Luc!” cried the younger, and the other gave a great start.Luc stepped from the window and crossed to his father. He went simply on his knees before him and kissed his hands, while the old Marquis murmured, “You never wrote to me! You never wrote to me!”“No,” added the younger brother reproachfully, “you never wrote to us, Luc.”Luc admitted that he had not, beyond the first letter that told of his return from Bohemia.“I did not know if I should be able to come to Aix,” he said, “forgive me, Monseigneur.”“You have got leave now, my child?” cried the old Marquis, grasping his shoulder.“Yes, my father, I have some leisure now,” he answered rather sadly.“Come into the house,” said his brother, who was much moved. “I can hardly believe it is you—you have changed a great deal in nine years.”They entered the house—the Marquise was abroad; the servants were roused. Luc heard the orders for the preparation of his chamber and the stabling of his horse with a thrill of pure pleasure; it seemed that he had been very long away from home.His father made him sit by his right at the long black table that was now covered with wine glasses and dishes of fruit, and kept his eyes fixed on him with an earnest look of affection.“You are very pale and thin,” he said.The brother touched the young soldier’s hand lovingly. “Have you been ill, Luc?” he asked.Luc blushed; he was conscious of his frail appearance, of his occasional cough, of his languid movements.“Yes, I was ill at Eger,” he admitted reluctantly, “after the retreat from Prague.”The other two men were silent. By that retreat M. de Belleisle’s name had become accursed through France: in ten days he had lost nearly twenty-two thousand men. The scandal and horror of it had brought M. de Fleury to patch a hasty peace with Austria.“And do you recall,” added Luc sadly, “Hippolyte de Seytres, Marquis de Caumont, whom I wrote of to you very often? He was my ‘sous lieutenant.’ I heard last week that he had died in Prague just before the garrison capitulated in January.”“I am sorry for de Caumont!” exclaimed the old Marquis, thinking of the father.“He was only eighteen,” said Luc, “and a sweet nature. M. d’Espagnac, also, who came from Provence, died in my arms. I became delirious with death.”“It was very terrible?” questioned his father gravely.“Ah, it was of all campaigns the most disastrous, the most unfortunate. Let me not recall those black nights and days—those marches with hunger and cold beside us, the disorder, the misery—the poor remnant of a glorious army that at last reached the frontier of France—leaving our blood and bones thick on the fields of Germany.” His eyes and voice flashed and a clear colour dyed his cheek. “Belleisle is punished,” he added. “His pride is cast down, his war ended in failure. But is he humiliated enough for all the lives he so wantonly flung away?”“They say Cardinal Fleury cannot sleep at night because of it,” remarked the old Marquis, “that he always sees snow and blood about him. But you have returned to us, my son.”Luc gave him a long, soft, mournful look, then glanced at his brother Joseph.“Yes, I lived,” he said thoughtfully; “but I have not come home gloriously.”“There is time ahead of you,” answered his father proudly. “I know that promotion is slow. But M. de Biron told me he had no fault to find with you.”Luc sat silent. He was gazing intently at the fine figure and noble face of the old man in his murrey-coloured velvet and delicate lawn cravat, powdered peruke, and long embroidered satin waistcoat, his firm right hand with the white cornelian signet ring that rested on the table. His delicate features and steady eyes, his pose and movements were all instinct with tradition, nobility of race, and nobility of nature. He belonged to the pure stock of the provincial aristocracy that had never waited at any court or been favoured by any king, but who had been “grand seigneur” at the time of the Crusades.The younger brother was like him and like Luc: sweetness and dignity mingled in his features. He was dressed richly, but far from extravagantly, and in a fashion some years old. His handsome brown hair hung in natural curls round his face, unconfined by any ribbon. His expression was at once more simple and less ardent than that of the young captain, at whom he gazed with affection, respect, and admiration.Luc looked from one to the other of these two fair faces, both so serene and loving in expression, and the paleness of his countenance increased, a lustre as of tears came into his eyes. He put his hand on to his father’s and clasped it so firmly that the signet ring was pressed into his palm.“No, not now,” he said—“not now.”“What not now?” smiled the old Marquis.“That is all I have to say, Monseigneur,” replied Luc, with a sudden air of weariness. “Tell me what has happened in Provence.”He turned his eyes on Joseph, who blushed and declared humbly that the news of Aix was not worth offering to one who had seen Paris and foreign countries.“But heretics are spreading ever among us,” put in the older M. de Vauvenargues. “And we very often hear the pernicious name of Voltaire.”The captain’s hazel eyes dropped; he held his father’s hand even more firmly.“If there is a man who should be burnt in the market-place it is M. de Voltaire,” continued the old Marquis. “He and his books and his doctrines burnt—together.”Luc removed his hand and rose; he asked if his mother would not soon return, then raised his hitherto untouched glass of amber white wine and drank it slowly. Joseph had a delicate feeling that his brother would like to be alone with their father.“I will see if your chamber is set,” he excused himself, and left them quietly.The Marquis was following him, but Luc set down his glass sharply and said, “Father!”The old man turned. He thought that this was the explanation of the “not now” of Luc. He closed the door and returned to the table.Luc stood with his head a little bent on his bosom, the sun, that filtered through the beech leaves without, setting his silver broideries aquiver with light and sparkling in the loosened threads of his brown locks.“My poor boy,”—his father took him gently by the shoulders—“you are ill.”Luc raised steady and beautifully smiling eyes. “No, Monseigneur, not ill.” He paused a moment, then added, “But not strong—not strong enough for a soldier.”The Marquis did not comprehend. Luc laid his hands on his father’s breast and a look of faintness came over his face, but his eyes glowed more ardent and brilliant than ever.“I must leave the army, father. I must send in my resignation to-night. Bohemia broke my health. France—France has no further need of me.”“Luc!”The old man stepped back and stood rigid, as if the words were so many arrows to pinion him.The young soldier took hold of the back of the dark mahogany chair in which he had been sitting.“Monseigneur,” he said with great sweetness, “I am a disappointment to you that must be hard to bear.... I have been nine years in the army and am no more than captain. I must now leave this honourable employment with ruined health and a ruined fortune.”The Marquis stood without movement. Luc proceeded to tell him, gently and with courage, of the great expenses of the war, of his illness at Eger, of the necessity he had been under of parting with most of his property in Paris to meet his debts, of the doctor’s advice that the bitter hardship of the retreat from Prague had sown the seeds of perpetual weakness and suffering in his breast.“But I shall live many years,” he finished, “and there are other ways of glory.”With these simple words was the tale told of his life’s hopes, his dearest dreams utterly vanquished by brutal circumstance. Even his father did not know what ambitions he had warmed in his heart only a few months ago; even his father did not know from what horrors of despair he had won his lofty sweetness of acceptance.“You must not grieve, Monseigneur—soldiers expect such fates, and I——” Then quite suddenly his voice failed him, and he turned away his head, almost violently, and gazed at the placid gardens and the gorgeous beech tree.The Marquis’s chin sank on his bosom; he also had had his secret dreams that he was now called upon to relinquish. This was his favourite son standing before him and saying he was a useless invalid. “A useless invalid”—the words surged up in the old noble’s throat till he felt as if he had spoken them.“Forgive me,” he muttered; “I was not expecting this—no, not expecting this.” He raised his head and said in a firmer voice, “M. de Caumont would be glad to be speaking to his son on any terms. I must not be ungrateful—no, I must not be ungrateful.”Luc turned towards his father eyes that seemed to have widened and darkened. “I have thought of that,” he replied. “I once indeed wished to die as Hippolyte and M. d’Espagnac, but I felt——” He paused again; a certain diffidence that had always made him reserved and a true modesty prevented him from uttering his deep conviction of gifts—nay, genius—that must yet find expression and recognition.No such thought consoled the old Marquis. He saw his son’s career broken at the beginning and his son’s fortune lost. He was not himself a wealthy man; he could do little more than give him a home—and it was an inglorious end.But the noble rallied.“Your mother will be glad,” he said, with a pathetic smile. “I think she has not had an easy moment since you went to the war.”Luc could not answer. He saw that his father was looking not at him, but at the famous uniform of therégiment du roithat he wore, and, like a picture suddenly thrust before his eyes, came the long-forgotten recollection of the day his father had bought him his commission and of their mutual pride in the trappings and symbols of war: there had been a de Clapiers in the army for many hundred years. Thinking of this, and seeing the old man’s wistful glance, Luc felt the bitterness that had smitten him on his sick couch at Eger re-arise in his heart.“My God!” he cried softly, “it is hard to be a useless man.”He kissed his father’s hand, and then went up softly to that chamber he had left nine years ago in a tumult of glorious anticipation, of surging ambitions, of pure resolutions. The anticipations had been disappointed, the ambitions had ended, but the resolutions had been kept. Luc de Clapiers had done nothing since he had left his boyhood’s home of which any man could be ashamed.He thought of his mother as he entered the room, for she had promised to leave it untouched for him, and he saw at once how lovingly she had kept her word. Certainly, the red and gold hangings on the bed and the windows had been removed, but carefully preserved, for the servants had already brought them out and laid them across the cabinet by the window—the beautiful curved bow-window with the latticed panes bearing the little coat of arms in each in leaded, coloured glass.There were his chairs, his books, his candlesticks, his low, wide bed with the four carved posts, his crucifix, his picture of St. Cecilia with her music from the Italian, even his violin and his old torn papers in a green portfolio. He went round the room, vaguely touching these objects that were free even from a speck of dust.Only one thing was missing—a wooden figure of St. George that had stood on a bracket in the corner. Luc had been fervently religious in his youth and passionately devoted to this image that he had even wished to take to the army with him. His mother, he remembered, had never liked this figure, which she had declared uncouth and hideous. Now, it seemed, she had taken her revenge, for the bracket was empty.Luc went to the window, where the chestnut leaves were peering against the pane. The green of them, with the sun behind, was translucent as jade, and the workmanship of the white curling flowers seemed a beauty beyond bearing.As Luc looked at them he took off his sword, his sash, his scarf, his coat, and laid them across the old wand-bottomed chair in the window-seat.Then he crossed to the square tortoiseshell-framed mirror that hung by the bed and looked at himself in the murky, greenish glass.No longer a soldier ... he had taken off his uniform for the last time. He stood the same as when he had last left this chamber, save that it was then all before him, now all behind. He gazed at his own face, white above the white shirt, still noble and pleasing, still young, but frail and wasted and sad.Instinctively he turned, as he had done in his childish troubles, to the corner where St. George had stood. The loss struck him afresh as he, for a second time, beheld an empty bracket, and was symbolic also, for he had travelled far from the help of Christianity since he used to pray to St. George; yet the vacant place smote him. He turned at the opening of the door; a woman came towards him speechlessly, her lips moving and her eyes full of a kind of trembling light.He sprang to meet her and clasped her strongly; she thrust into his arms what seemed a lump of wood.“Safe, dear, safe. Did you think I had destroyed it?” she managed to say.He kissed her cheek and then her hands. She began crying with pleasure. “St. George, Luc,” she murmured. “I have kept him very carefully.”The young soldier looked at the idol of his childhood; his emotions reached the unbearable agony caused by dim recollections the hand of tenderness beckons from the past. He laid St. George on the bed.“Oh, my mother!” he cried, in a sinking voice. He fell on his knees, hid his face, and wept.

The winter of the year 1742 had been the coldest, in every part of Europe, that had been known since 1709, and the following spring was also remarkable—for heat and sunshine and rainless days and nights.

By early April the chestnuts outside the residence of the Clapiers family in Aix were in perfect bloom and the white, golden-hearted flowers sprang from the wide bronze-green leaves and expanded to the summer-like sun; beneath the trees was a deep rich-coloured shade that lay up the double steps of the house and across the high door with its fine moulding of handsome wood. The shutters were closed against the heat; the whole street was empty of everything save the perfume of the lilac, roses, and syringa growing in the gardens of the mansions.

This languid peace of afternoon was broken by the arrival of a gentleman on horseback followed by a servant; he drew rein under the chestnut trees, dismounted, gave his horse to the man, and rather slowly ascended the pleasant shaded steps. Without knocking he opened the door and stepped at once into the dark, cool hall. A clock struck three, and he waited till the chimes had ceased, then opened a door on his left and entered a large low room full of shadow that looked out on to a great garden and a young beech covered with red-gold leaves in which the sun blazed splendidly.

Luc de Clapiers stood gazing at the home he had not seen for nine years. Nothing was altered. On just such a day as this he had left it; but he remembered that the beech tree had been smaller then and not so prodigal of glorious foliage.

There were the same dark walls, the same heavy mahogany furniture, the same picture of “The Sacrifice of Isaac” opposite the window, the same carved sideboard bearing silver and glass, the candlesticks and snuffers, the brass lamp and the taper-holders. Above the mantelpiece were, deep carved, the de Clapiers arms, still brightly coloured, fasces of argent and silver and the chief or—and on the mantelpiece the same dark marble clock.

Luc crossed to the window that was not far above the ground and looked down the garden; in the distance were two gentlemen—one young and one old—followed by three bright dogs.

Luc put his hand to his eyes, then unlatched the window, that opened casement fashion. The sound, slight as it was, carried in the absolute stillness; the two gentlemen who were approaching the house glanced up.

They beheld, framed in the darkness of the room, the slim figure of a young soldier in a blue and silver uniform, wearing a light grey travelling cloak.

“Luc!” cried the younger, and the other gave a great start.

Luc stepped from the window and crossed to his father. He went simply on his knees before him and kissed his hands, while the old Marquis murmured, “You never wrote to me! You never wrote to me!”

“No,” added the younger brother reproachfully, “you never wrote to us, Luc.”

Luc admitted that he had not, beyond the first letter that told of his return from Bohemia.

“I did not know if I should be able to come to Aix,” he said, “forgive me, Monseigneur.”

“You have got leave now, my child?” cried the old Marquis, grasping his shoulder.

“Yes, my father, I have some leisure now,” he answered rather sadly.

“Come into the house,” said his brother, who was much moved. “I can hardly believe it is you—you have changed a great deal in nine years.”

They entered the house—the Marquise was abroad; the servants were roused. Luc heard the orders for the preparation of his chamber and the stabling of his horse with a thrill of pure pleasure; it seemed that he had been very long away from home.

His father made him sit by his right at the long black table that was now covered with wine glasses and dishes of fruit, and kept his eyes fixed on him with an earnest look of affection.

“You are very pale and thin,” he said.

The brother touched the young soldier’s hand lovingly. “Have you been ill, Luc?” he asked.

Luc blushed; he was conscious of his frail appearance, of his occasional cough, of his languid movements.

“Yes, I was ill at Eger,” he admitted reluctantly, “after the retreat from Prague.”

The other two men were silent. By that retreat M. de Belleisle’s name had become accursed through France: in ten days he had lost nearly twenty-two thousand men. The scandal and horror of it had brought M. de Fleury to patch a hasty peace with Austria.

“And do you recall,” added Luc sadly, “Hippolyte de Seytres, Marquis de Caumont, whom I wrote of to you very often? He was my ‘sous lieutenant.’ I heard last week that he had died in Prague just before the garrison capitulated in January.”

“I am sorry for de Caumont!” exclaimed the old Marquis, thinking of the father.

“He was only eighteen,” said Luc, “and a sweet nature. M. d’Espagnac, also, who came from Provence, died in my arms. I became delirious with death.”

“It was very terrible?” questioned his father gravely.

“Ah, it was of all campaigns the most disastrous, the most unfortunate. Let me not recall those black nights and days—those marches with hunger and cold beside us, the disorder, the misery—the poor remnant of a glorious army that at last reached the frontier of France—leaving our blood and bones thick on the fields of Germany.” His eyes and voice flashed and a clear colour dyed his cheek. “Belleisle is punished,” he added. “His pride is cast down, his war ended in failure. But is he humiliated enough for all the lives he so wantonly flung away?”

“They say Cardinal Fleury cannot sleep at night because of it,” remarked the old Marquis, “that he always sees snow and blood about him. But you have returned to us, my son.”

Luc gave him a long, soft, mournful look, then glanced at his brother Joseph.

“Yes, I lived,” he said thoughtfully; “but I have not come home gloriously.”

“There is time ahead of you,” answered his father proudly. “I know that promotion is slow. But M. de Biron told me he had no fault to find with you.”

Luc sat silent. He was gazing intently at the fine figure and noble face of the old man in his murrey-coloured velvet and delicate lawn cravat, powdered peruke, and long embroidered satin waistcoat, his firm right hand with the white cornelian signet ring that rested on the table. His delicate features and steady eyes, his pose and movements were all instinct with tradition, nobility of race, and nobility of nature. He belonged to the pure stock of the provincial aristocracy that had never waited at any court or been favoured by any king, but who had been “grand seigneur” at the time of the Crusades.

The younger brother was like him and like Luc: sweetness and dignity mingled in his features. He was dressed richly, but far from extravagantly, and in a fashion some years old. His handsome brown hair hung in natural curls round his face, unconfined by any ribbon. His expression was at once more simple and less ardent than that of the young captain, at whom he gazed with affection, respect, and admiration.

Luc looked from one to the other of these two fair faces, both so serene and loving in expression, and the paleness of his countenance increased, a lustre as of tears came into his eyes. He put his hand on to his father’s and clasped it so firmly that the signet ring was pressed into his palm.

“No, not now,” he said—“not now.”

“What not now?” smiled the old Marquis.

“That is all I have to say, Monseigneur,” replied Luc, with a sudden air of weariness. “Tell me what has happened in Provence.”

He turned his eyes on Joseph, who blushed and declared humbly that the news of Aix was not worth offering to one who had seen Paris and foreign countries.

“But heretics are spreading ever among us,” put in the older M. de Vauvenargues. “And we very often hear the pernicious name of Voltaire.”

The captain’s hazel eyes dropped; he held his father’s hand even more firmly.

“If there is a man who should be burnt in the market-place it is M. de Voltaire,” continued the old Marquis. “He and his books and his doctrines burnt—together.”

Luc removed his hand and rose; he asked if his mother would not soon return, then raised his hitherto untouched glass of amber white wine and drank it slowly. Joseph had a delicate feeling that his brother would like to be alone with their father.

“I will see if your chamber is set,” he excused himself, and left them quietly.

The Marquis was following him, but Luc set down his glass sharply and said, “Father!”

The old man turned. He thought that this was the explanation of the “not now” of Luc. He closed the door and returned to the table.

Luc stood with his head a little bent on his bosom, the sun, that filtered through the beech leaves without, setting his silver broideries aquiver with light and sparkling in the loosened threads of his brown locks.

“My poor boy,”—his father took him gently by the shoulders—“you are ill.”

Luc raised steady and beautifully smiling eyes. “No, Monseigneur, not ill.” He paused a moment, then added, “But not strong—not strong enough for a soldier.”

The Marquis did not comprehend. Luc laid his hands on his father’s breast and a look of faintness came over his face, but his eyes glowed more ardent and brilliant than ever.

“I must leave the army, father. I must send in my resignation to-night. Bohemia broke my health. France—France has no further need of me.”

“Luc!”

The old man stepped back and stood rigid, as if the words were so many arrows to pinion him.

The young soldier took hold of the back of the dark mahogany chair in which he had been sitting.

“Monseigneur,” he said with great sweetness, “I am a disappointment to you that must be hard to bear.... I have been nine years in the army and am no more than captain. I must now leave this honourable employment with ruined health and a ruined fortune.”

The Marquis stood without movement. Luc proceeded to tell him, gently and with courage, of the great expenses of the war, of his illness at Eger, of the necessity he had been under of parting with most of his property in Paris to meet his debts, of the doctor’s advice that the bitter hardship of the retreat from Prague had sown the seeds of perpetual weakness and suffering in his breast.

“But I shall live many years,” he finished, “and there are other ways of glory.”

With these simple words was the tale told of his life’s hopes, his dearest dreams utterly vanquished by brutal circumstance. Even his father did not know what ambitions he had warmed in his heart only a few months ago; even his father did not know from what horrors of despair he had won his lofty sweetness of acceptance.

“You must not grieve, Monseigneur—soldiers expect such fates, and I——” Then quite suddenly his voice failed him, and he turned away his head, almost violently, and gazed at the placid gardens and the gorgeous beech tree.

The Marquis’s chin sank on his bosom; he also had had his secret dreams that he was now called upon to relinquish. This was his favourite son standing before him and saying he was a useless invalid. “A useless invalid”—the words surged up in the old noble’s throat till he felt as if he had spoken them.

“Forgive me,” he muttered; “I was not expecting this—no, not expecting this.” He raised his head and said in a firmer voice, “M. de Caumont would be glad to be speaking to his son on any terms. I must not be ungrateful—no, I must not be ungrateful.”

Luc turned towards his father eyes that seemed to have widened and darkened. “I have thought of that,” he replied. “I once indeed wished to die as Hippolyte and M. d’Espagnac, but I felt——” He paused again; a certain diffidence that had always made him reserved and a true modesty prevented him from uttering his deep conviction of gifts—nay, genius—that must yet find expression and recognition.

No such thought consoled the old Marquis. He saw his son’s career broken at the beginning and his son’s fortune lost. He was not himself a wealthy man; he could do little more than give him a home—and it was an inglorious end.

But the noble rallied.

“Your mother will be glad,” he said, with a pathetic smile. “I think she has not had an easy moment since you went to the war.”

Luc could not answer. He saw that his father was looking not at him, but at the famous uniform of therégiment du roithat he wore, and, like a picture suddenly thrust before his eyes, came the long-forgotten recollection of the day his father had bought him his commission and of their mutual pride in the trappings and symbols of war: there had been a de Clapiers in the army for many hundred years. Thinking of this, and seeing the old man’s wistful glance, Luc felt the bitterness that had smitten him on his sick couch at Eger re-arise in his heart.

“My God!” he cried softly, “it is hard to be a useless man.”

He kissed his father’s hand, and then went up softly to that chamber he had left nine years ago in a tumult of glorious anticipation, of surging ambitions, of pure resolutions. The anticipations had been disappointed, the ambitions had ended, but the resolutions had been kept. Luc de Clapiers had done nothing since he had left his boyhood’s home of which any man could be ashamed.

He thought of his mother as he entered the room, for she had promised to leave it untouched for him, and he saw at once how lovingly she had kept her word. Certainly, the red and gold hangings on the bed and the windows had been removed, but carefully preserved, for the servants had already brought them out and laid them across the cabinet by the window—the beautiful curved bow-window with the latticed panes bearing the little coat of arms in each in leaded, coloured glass.

There were his chairs, his books, his candlesticks, his low, wide bed with the four carved posts, his crucifix, his picture of St. Cecilia with her music from the Italian, even his violin and his old torn papers in a green portfolio. He went round the room, vaguely touching these objects that were free even from a speck of dust.

Only one thing was missing—a wooden figure of St. George that had stood on a bracket in the corner. Luc had been fervently religious in his youth and passionately devoted to this image that he had even wished to take to the army with him. His mother, he remembered, had never liked this figure, which she had declared uncouth and hideous. Now, it seemed, she had taken her revenge, for the bracket was empty.

Luc went to the window, where the chestnut leaves were peering against the pane. The green of them, with the sun behind, was translucent as jade, and the workmanship of the white curling flowers seemed a beauty beyond bearing.

As Luc looked at them he took off his sword, his sash, his scarf, his coat, and laid them across the old wand-bottomed chair in the window-seat.

Then he crossed to the square tortoiseshell-framed mirror that hung by the bed and looked at himself in the murky, greenish glass.

No longer a soldier ... he had taken off his uniform for the last time. He stood the same as when he had last left this chamber, save that it was then all before him, now all behind. He gazed at his own face, white above the white shirt, still noble and pleasing, still young, but frail and wasted and sad.

Instinctively he turned, as he had done in his childish troubles, to the corner where St. George had stood. The loss struck him afresh as he, for a second time, beheld an empty bracket, and was symbolic also, for he had travelled far from the help of Christianity since he used to pray to St. George; yet the vacant place smote him. He turned at the opening of the door; a woman came towards him speechlessly, her lips moving and her eyes full of a kind of trembling light.

He sprang to meet her and clasped her strongly; she thrust into his arms what seemed a lump of wood.

“Safe, dear, safe. Did you think I had destroyed it?” she managed to say.

He kissed her cheek and then her hands. She began crying with pleasure. “St. George, Luc,” she murmured. “I have kept him very carefully.”

The young soldier looked at the idol of his childhood; his emotions reached the unbearable agony caused by dim recollections the hand of tenderness beckons from the past. He laid St. George on the bed.

“Oh, my mother!” he cried, in a sinking voice. He fell on his knees, hid his face, and wept.

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