Part 44
Referring to the Imperial Wedding number of the _Ladies’ Mentor_--into which entrancing periodical Mrs. Geogehagan,--acting during a delicate domestic crisis as nurse to a new baby of the Colonel’s lady--occasionally got a peep--it appears the Empress--already admitted to that title by the civil ceremony, was dazzling and _spirituelle_ in a dress and train of white _velours épinglé_, and a diadem of superb diamonds, with a veil of _point d’Angleterre_. The Emperor,--admitted to be at considerable disadvantage in point of height as compared with his stately bride,--wore the Grand Cross and Collar of the Legion of Honor, with many other Stars and Orders, above the uniform of a French General of Division,--ending in white doeskins, high boots with four-inch heels, and spurs.
Five Cardinal-Archbishops and ten Bishops tied the sacred knot between them. Hooroo, Jude! Mrs. Geogehagan blessed herself to think of that. And so, attended by Ladies of Honor, Ministers, Marshals of France, and other State dignitaries, with Foreign Envoys and Minister Plenipotentiaries, the wedding-guests and a tag-rag and bobtail of Notabilities, Personages, and gilded and upholstered Functionaries--the splendid procession returned to the Tuileries.
Nothing--observed the Imperial Press organs--could be more proper than the attitude of the people. Not a single hostile expression was heard by the official reporter along the route. A statement of the purest verity, for although the troops and the salaried hoorayers shouted “_Vive l’Empereur! Vive l’Impératrice!_” at certain fixed intervals, the frozen silence of the people as that leaden, puffy face of Monsiegneur’s passed by in the great creaking gilded coach beside the snow-white face of the beautiful Empress--was unbroken and profound.
He had become, perforce, accustomed to these silent acclamations, as, nodding as mechanically as any China Mandarin, he would be carried through the streets of the capital he had besmeared with blood. For though he had gagged the Assembly--swept the boulevards with discharges of grape, ridden down and sabered Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in broad daylight--locked the doors of the High Court of Justice--faked a _Senatus Consultum_, forged signatures to the Ballot Papers of the _Plebiscite_ by the cartload; refurbished old Napoleon’s dusty throne--mounted the seat--clapped his wings and cockadoodled the Prince of Knaves into the Emperor of Traitors--he could not make his people cheer.
Students and grisettes, artisans and their sweethearts, might exclaim at the beauty of the Empress and the splendor of her jewels. Not one woman envied her--not one man would have changed places with _him_. Wherever his puffy face and leaden eyes turned, as he bowed from side to side with the mechanical courtesy of a clockwork puppet or the Mandarin of China--not a hat was raised--not a handkerchief waved,--not a voice wished him long life or happiness. The regard that met his was as bleak, and cold, and nipping as the bitter January day.
He could intern those who had offended him in distant provincial townships. In cells of civil prisons, in dungeons of Military Fortresses, he could immure others, for the term of their natural lives. He could sentence yet others to be hugged to death by the Red Widow, or have them shot; and he did constantly. But none the more could he make the people cheer.
There were faces more exalted that as coldly regarded his pretensions. To wit, those Reigning Monarchs, parents of marriageable daughters who had declined the honor of his hand. Also the young Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, and more formidable than all these put together, the grim Colossus of the icy North.
By Nicholas Romanoff, Autocrat of all the Russias,--who lived as plainly as the humblest of his soldiers, and died on a sack of leather stuffed with hay--the Tsar to whom Monsiegneur--when merely Monsiegneur--had made secret and ineffectual overtures with a view to the dismemberment and division of the Ottoman Empire--the brand-new Imperial Majesty of France was treated with a distant civility that galled and stung--as possibly it was meant to do.
England, the ancient, tried, and proven ally of Russia, was presently to bind herself in monstrous alliance with the crowned adventurer. The chaste Victoria was to dance at his Embassy--visit his capital--kiss him upon both cheeks--strange pasture for lips so stainless!--and call him “Sire my Brother.”
But to Nicholas--until he became “Sire my Enemy,” he was never to be anything but “Sire my Friend.”
LXXIII
In the summer of the fateful year of 1853, a city of canvas tents sprang up, like a growth of giant mushrooms, on Chobham Common, and the evolutions of the troops encamped thereon, converted that usually bare and arid expanse of heath into the semblance of a vast market-garden crammed with perambulatory beds of the gayest and most flaunting flowers. Ere long a Grand Military Display took place under the eyes of British Royalty and various Foreign Crowned Heads--not to mention a hundred thousand representatives of the British Public, whom coaches, carriages, brakes, vans, gigs, market-carts, shandrydans, nags, and the humble efforts of Shank’s Mare had brought to the scene of action.
Do you hear the trumpets crying and the bugles calling, and the batteries of the Royal Artillery thundering from the sandy heights overlooking the arena of mimic warfare? while withering volleys of blank cartridge from a line of white-duck trousered Infantry two miles long, shattered the glass of windows at Bagshot Hall (and, it is said, at Farnborough) and--to the profound relief of the Special Artists employed by the illustrated newspapers--caused the subsequent charge of the Cavalry Brigade commanded by H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge, to be executed under cover of a dense and impenetrable cloud of smoke, jagged through with spurting jets of fire.
The same sort of thing--strange to record--was taking place on the other side of the Channel. Upon the extensive green billiard-table of the Bruyeres, sufficiently near the French Military barrack-camp of Helfaut, the training-maneuvers of some ten thousand representatives of every service branch of the French Army were duly succeeded by a Grand Inspection, carried out by Monsiegneur the Marshal de St. Arnaud, Minister of War. A sham battle followed in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, fresh from a triumphal tour throughout the North of France.
You are to suppose the heavy brazen field-guns belching and bellowing, whole miles of Minié rifles blazing and cracking, the crowds of spectators scattering for their lives as the Chasseurs de Vincennes advanced in column at the gymnastic pace of one hundred and eighty steps a minute, and the mounted Chasseurs charged, thundering over the wet soggy ground. Decorations were distributed to distinguished commanders, and a few smart sous-officiers in brand-new uniforms. Louis David painted the beautiful Empress in the braided tunic of a Hussar, wearing a beaver with a military plume, and mounted on a handsome charger. What earthly brush, asked the Imperial Press organ in a gush of inky rapture, could do justice to the grace of the Emperor?
In sober truth, the little, big-headed man with the long body and the short legs, was a finished master of the equestrian _haute école_. Few men in France could handle a horse better; and as he passed along the lines upon some splendid animal, he would turn its head towards the eagle-topped standard of each regiment, compelling his beast to bow and caracole as its rider did homage to the avuncular emblem. This circus-rider’s trick, no matter how often repeated--never failed to elicit a genuine shout of “_Vive l’Empereur!_”
And what of the Northern potentate, England’s old friend and ally, for whose warning and instruction these remarkable international demonstrations of military power had been devised and carried out? Physically the biggest man in his vast Empire, there was no moral littleness about Nicholas. He was wary and subtle and diplomatic, but he was not cunning or sly. He was a galloping terror to dishonest, peculating officials--it is on record what retribution followed his hawklike swoop upon the Imperial Dockyard at Cronstadt, where stores and materials of war--being conveyed in at one of the three gates, and duly registered by the clerks of the Receiving Department, were by a second gate, _convanient_--as Mrs. Geogehagan would have said--smuggled out again, and brought back _per_ medium of the third; once more to be debited against, and paid for by the Russian Government. Also, there was at this date--sweeping the streets of Sevastopol in company with other persons, distinctively attired, shaven in sections, and adorned as to the legs with irons--a convict who had--previously to the Tsar’s last visit to that important naval stronghold--shone glorious in bright green cloth, belaced cocked hat, and golden epaulets, as Governor of that place.
For--though this Tsar would have dearly liked to be sole master of Europe--though he would have gladly renamed the Bosphorus and built a new St. Petersburg at the mouth of the Dardanelles--though it would have gratified him to add Afghanistan and India to his dominions--though he was often unscrupulous in the spreading of nets for the catching of able men--though he would sacrifice soldiers in hundreds of thousands, did he deem it necessary for the safety of his State and his religion--though he punished Treason--real or imaginary--with the knout and imprisonment, Siberian exile or death--one cannot deny him to have been a high-minded and honest-souled, if prejudiced and narrow gentleman; who strove, according to his lights, to be just towards men, and upright before God.
There was not a drop of coward’s blood in him--those who hated him most were ready to admit that. He would, in his grandson’s place, have gone out from the Winter Palace alone to meet the strikers who carried the ikons, on that 18th of January, 1905. He threw all Russia into mourning, but he would never have marked upon the Calendar that red St. Vladimir’s Day. Nor, having converted a peaceable demonstration into a general massacre of children, nursemaids, discontented workmen, and harmless citizens--would he have sat shuddering and shaking in his guarded palace, and left his mother to play the man.
* * * * *
Though getting somewhat stout, stiff, and elderly by this time, Nicholas was still what Mrs. Geogehagan, seeing his portrait in the illustrated newspapers borrowed from the Mess by the Colonel’s lady--approvingly termed “a fine upstanding figure av a man.” After the Peace of 1815, being then a handsome young Colossus of twenty, he had cut a dashing figure at the various Courts of Europe.... English Society had adored and _fêted_ him--adipose elderly dowagers who had at that date been famous dancing beauties, boasted of having been his partners in the then newly-imported waltz.
* * * * *
In the _Memoirs_ of the late Dowager-Duchess of Strome--who as Lady Margaretta Bawne, was a Maid of Honor to Princess Victoria, and subsequently Lady of the Bed-chamber to the young Queen--you will find in the chapter headed “How We Danced when I was Young” a vivid description of a waltz experienced with the superb Grand Duke at one of Almack’s Balls.
“It was,” says the venerable _raconteuse_, “like dancing with a human cyclone. After the first glissade and twirl my sandals quitted the floor--seldom to revisit it until the stopping of the music put a termination to the furious revolutions of the dance. During the ordeal--witnessed by an admiring crowd comprising several Crowned Heads and half the notabilities of Europe--I lost my slippers--my coronet--my combs--and finally my consciousness--which returned to me--in a shock of alarmed modesty--with the resounding salute imprinted on my cheek by His Imperial Highness at the final arpeggio.”
Lord! how we had flattered and praised and quoted him--the huge hard man whom, for some occult reason, we now stigmatized as “The Northern Barbarian.” He had ceased to dance when he commenced to reign--unlike Sire my Friend, who gyrated for the admiration of his Court--as he made his charger caracole for the approval of his Army. The Emperor who, unarmed and unattended by even an _aide-de-camp_, had quelled an insurrection among his Guards by giving the order to pile arms in that bellowing Minotaur voice of his, would have ridden over--not before--those soldiers who did not cheer.
He had no reason to be pleased with the Ruler of the Ottoman Empire--whose tottering throne he had bolstered in 1833 and again--in alliance with England and the two leading Powers of Germany--in 1840. A Firman issued by the Sultan, according to the Latin Church the Key of the great door of the Church at Bethlehem, and a Key to each of the doors of the Altar of the Sacred Manger--and bestowing upon France the permission to inlay on the floor of the Grotto of the Divine Nativity an arrogant Silver Star,--doubtless emblazoned with the Imperial Eagle--had kindled the Autocrat of all the Russias--in his anointed character as Supreme Head of the Orthodox Church--to flaming indignation. Nor had the diplomatic representative of Great Britain at Constantinople--by terming the resulting dispute “a wordy war of denominational trivialities”--cast else but oil upon the roaring flame.
Later, when Moslem troops under Omar Pasha were dispatched by the Sublime Porte--acting under advice from a certain suspected quarter--to operate against the Greek Christian rayahs of Montenegro--a pretty euphemism for the plundering and burning of farms and villages--the torture of men--the violation of women and the cutting of children’s throats--the Barbarian of the North dispatched a small installment of fifty thousand troops into the Danubian Principalities--picketed the shaggy horses of his Cavalry with their noses against the frontiers of Moldavia--ascertained that upon a certain date the foundries of Rostof and Taganrog would infallibly carry out their contract to deliver a mere trifle of nine hundred thousand iron projectiles of all sorts and sizes--and sat down to play the game.
With movings of Divisions and Brigades, and marchings and counter-marchings. With Imperial Inspections, Reviews, and sham fights on a scale as colossal as himself. With repetitions of that effect of the vast market-garden of perambulatory beds of the most brilliantly-hued flowers, when a hundred thousand troops of all arms were maneuvered at the Camp of Krasnoé Sélo. Replying to great Naval Demonstrations at Spithead and Queenstown, Havre, and Brest and Toulon, culminating in combined visits of the French and English fleets to Turkish waters, with ominous increase of activity at Cronstadt and Revel, and menacing, ominous movements of steam and sailing-squadrons in the Baltic and on the Black Sea.
LXXIV
The well-oiled machinery of his Secret Intelligence Department--that kept him informed of every movement not only of those Powers who were his enemies, but of those who might one day become so--had long ago placed on the Barbarian’s table, proofs that the grain, forage, and salted-provision merchants of the Levant were finding a customer upon a Brobdingnagian scale in Sire my Friend at the Tuileries. That the freightage, railway charges, and import-duties upon these had been reduced to a mere nothing by Imperial Decree, and that immense cargoes were daily shipped to Marseilles and Toulon, to be stored in huge Government magazines that were being built on all sides as though in preparation for war. A little later came the news that the salted-provision, forage, and grain-merchants of Roumelia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Transylvania and Galicia were basking in the patronage of the same liberal buyer; whose granaries and storehouses had sprung up like mushrooms on the Turkish coasts of the Black Sea. As also depots of horses, cattle, timber and wagons; the contractors who had supplied these things being bound by Secret Contracts under divers penalties....
“Not to supply grain, stores, requisites, and material to Us,” said the autocrat, shrugging a gentle shrug of calm, suave indifference, and blowing his nose in his copious, characteristic way. “Does this Bonaparte suppose the resources of my Empire to be so small that it would be possible to cripple ME by taking these precautions? Really, he lacks intelligence--or is very badly informed.”
And as a Barbarian may smile, knowing All the Russias, Poland, the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the vast grain-producing area of the Caucasus his to draw upon--(even had his State magazines and the huge storehouses upon the coasts of Mingrelia and Guria not been bursting with flour, groats, biscuits, hay, and straw) the Tsar smiled, leaning back in the big battered, chipped, ragged-armed chair that he liked best, and chewing at the feather-end of a disreputable old quill pen.
He was closeted with Gortchakoff in the Imperial study in the Winter Palace. You saw it as a big plain room, full of heavy writing-tables and bureaux. Laden bookcases full of works on Drill, Tactics, and Fortification climbed to the scagliola ceiling-frieze, and between these were stands, supporting glass cases containing colored wax models of Cavalry and Infantrymen, stiff as life, and fully accoutered, whilst battle-paintings executed by native artists--wherein the Russian Forces were depicted in the act of conquering enemies of various nationalities amidst seas of carmine blood and clouds of flake-white smoke--hung on the walls above. In an adjoining room, furnished with soldierly simplicity, the ruler of seventy-four and odd millions of men slept on a narrow camp-bedstead, with no other covering than a single rug, and in winter his fur-lined cloak. And--perhaps because his huge hereditary dignities came to him through the tainted blood of scrofulous, insane, and degenerate Romanoffs--the innumerable handkerchiefs with which the despot stanched his constitutional catarrh were scattered, thick as the leaves of Vallombrosa, on the tables, chairs, and floor.
Gortchakoff, ex-Imperial _aide-de-camp_ and Governor-General of Western Siberia, diversely represented by our Illustrated Papers--much to the confusion of Mrs. Geogehagan--as a mild, plump, spectacled, smiling personage, and a gaunt, grim, trap-jawed Fee-Fo-Fum--had, as newly-appointed General-in-Chief of the Southern Forces--been summoned to take leave of his master before setting out--as simply as a junker returning from furlough--per telega and by relays of post-horses, for the frontiers washed by the Pruth. Now, at the close of the Imperial utterance recorded, to which he had listened in a bolt-upright attitude of respectful attention, he coughed dryly; and pulling a document from a sheaf of tied and docketed papers, placed it before the Tsar, whose head--even as its owner sat in his chair--overtopped his own.
Nicholas sniffed several times as he perused the document, which was worn in the folds and incredibly greasy; was written in the Little Russian dialect of Bessarabia, and proved to be a contract between a certain Kirilov, an Akerman dealer in timber, and the official representative of Sire my Friend, who signed himself in a bold, free, looping hand:
“H. M. A. Von Widinitz-Dunoisse. General of Brigade of the French Army. Acting Head of the Eastern European War Survey and Army Supply Department of the Imperial Government of France.”
“By St. Peter and St. Paul!” said the Tsar, blowing his nose noisily; “this Bonaparte has imagination. ‘Not to furnish supplies to the Chiefs of the Army of Great Britain, or assist her military forces in any way whatsoever!...’ Let me see the date of this!”
It bore date of three years back. A paper precisely similar--save that it was written in the Slavish Latin of Wallachia, and that the contracting party was a wealthy Boyard of that country--who bred and sold sheep, cattle and horses on a vast scale--was only three months old. The spectacles of Gortchakoff glittered like diamonds as he saw this fact sink through the calm blue eyes of the cold-faced handsome Tsar, into the big brain ramparted by the lofty forehead. Not long would Nicholas remain in doubt as to the breed of chicken that would soon chip the shell of the egg of Monseigneur.
* * * * *
“August.... Dated on the 30th of August at Kustendje,” said Nicholas, reaching out his hand to take a fresh pocket-handkerchief from a little pile of these necessaries. He added: “A vessel of our Black Sea Steam Navigation Company touches at that port once a fortnight, taking mails and passengers for Varna and Constantinople.” He added: “The railway between Paris and Marseilles is nearly completed.... This Dunoisse would be in touch with the Tuileries, easily--passably easily. He would be kept informed of the march of political events.... And Sire my Friend, was at Dieppe in the beginning of July--Lucien Buonaparte the guest of the Queen of England at Windsor.... The Secret Treaty of Alliance was signed.... The combined Fleets were anchored in the Bay of Besika. And yet, in the event of war, the ally of France is to be denied assistance!... What does it mean? Let me think!...”
He had so much of the Oriental Satrap about him, that even his terrible Grand Wazir was no more than a piece of furniture when he desired to commune in private with the other man who dwelt within himself. The short daylight died as he sat, huge and massive and silent, profoundly thinking. The great Winter Palace leaped into a blaze of brilliancy, but the core of it, the study where the Tsar sat plunged in meditation, became so dark that you could not even distinguish the gleam of Gortchakoff’s spectacles as the late Governor-General of Western Siberia stood, stiff and immovable as a statue of ebony, beside his Little Father’s chair.
“Umph! Are you there, Peter Michailowitch?” said the deep voice out of the heart of the blackness, and the Prince answered with chattering teeth--for no one daring to enter unsummoned the room where the Tsar sat closeted with the newly-appointed General-in-Chief of his Southern Forces--the fire in the great stove of gilded porcelain had died to a pale red glow. “I have thought it out, and the man is even less of a gentleman than I have esteemed him. He would play the old game of the ape who made the cat pull the chestnuts out of the fire--the confidence-trick of the London swell mobsman.... Listen! England is to pay for her triumph at Trafalgar and the defeat of Waterloo through this alliance with Sire my Friend. She is to be drained of her blood and of her gold until she sinks down dying--and then he will offer me Great Britain with her East Indies, and the Danubian Provinces of Turkey in exchange for Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land--he will be anointed Emperor of Palestine upon the Savior’s Sepulcher, and if the child prove a son--create him Crown Prince of Bethlehem----”
“Supposing you, Bátiushka,” deftly put in Gortchakoff--who called him Little Father simply as a soldier or a peasant would have done--“choose to accept his terms?”
“That will I never, so help me God and Our Blessed Lady the Virgin!” said Nicholas, rising to his colossal height and crossing himself as he bowed in the direction of the ikons. He added: “This is an able man, this General Dunoisse, who spins his web for him. Of course, he is of their Training Institute for Staff Officers.... I should like to have that man.” He added, simply and Orientally: “I will have him. Get him at any price!”
“He is not to be bought, Bátiushka,” was the answer.