CHAPTER VI.

THE OLD BONAPARTIST'S STORY.

'When I was young like you,' began the captain, 'I had my illusions. I came of a royalist family which had suffered much by the Revolution, and had stood up for the cause of the king as long as La Vendée was able to keep a square league of ground to itself or a square inch of its flag flying. But we had to give way; we could not conquer impossibilities: Fortune always sides with the big battalions, as the Man used to say. The domain passed from the hands of the Chauvins, and I, the heir of the house, was obliged to take service with those who had helped to uproot the family tree. I had no other alternative; my parents were dead; I, the only scion of the ancient stock left, owed my life to the care of my nurse, a brave peasant woman, who was married to a burly grenadier of the Republic. They were kind in their way to the young aristocrat, and they loved France. Poor Céline, to-day I could drop a tear over your quiet grass-covered grave down in Burgundy: and Tricot, too, he was a thorough soldier. He died on the retreat from Moscow the same day that Schramm--you know Schramm, who is president of an army commission here now--was made brigadier-general.

'Did you ever hear the story of his promotion?

'He was a colonel when we made that fatal invasion, and in one of the bloody fights on our retrograde march, fell, pierced by a bullet. The blood bubbled in hot gouts from his wound, but the tears came faster from his eyes. The Man saw him.

'"What, weeping!" he said. "Why do you cry?"

'"Because I'm going to die only a colonel," said Schramm.

'"We'll settle that," said Napoleon, and made him a brigadier-general on the spot. Schramm has not died since.

'But to return to myself. I showed a mathematical taste, and early was sent, at the expense of the commune in which Céline lived, to the Polytechnic School. They did not keep us long over our course in those times, and I was shortly appointed to a corps on active service. It was there I learned to love the Man who was then leading France to a higher eminence on the path of glory than she had ever reached. He was the idol of the army. I had my ambition, and I often recollected with a thrill of pride and hope that he, too, was a mathematician, and commenced his career as a subaltern of artillery. But, as I told you, I was only sub-lieutenant at Mont St. Jean, and that day finished the soldier's chances for that era in France--put a quencher on his aspirations. To one passion succeeds another. Our life is a series of agitations, coming changeful in aspect but regular in period as the tides of the sea--sometimes smooth and glistening under a bright sun, sometimes restless, sullen, heaving under the strong breath of the storm. To glory, in my breast, followed love. I had met the daughter of another Vendéan family in Paris, where she supported herself by giving lessons in music. Her mother received me (she had known my mother), and encouraged my little attentions to Caroline with her smiles. Alas; had I been rich, at that time, what happiness might not have been mine, what sorrows might not have been spared to her and me!'

Here the aged officer stopped and busied himself with his handkerchief about the region of the eyes.

'But, sir, an officer with us who has to live on his pay cannot afford himself the luxury of a wife. Caroline had no dowry, and I had no position. If we had espoused each other she would have had to do without a _trousseau_, and I certainly would not have been able to present her with a _corbeille_. We loved each other, and we parted--not without some sighing, and many wishes for our meeting again under happier circumstances. I was very fond of my cigar, and Caroline's mother detested smoking. It was a mania with her. She had an unaccountable, almost diseased, aversion to the habit. One evening, Caroline, out of play, induced me to light a cigar in the chamber while she was looking out of the window. I can never forget the fierce, pallid face with which her mother turned on me and ordered me to leave the room on the instant. It was only by a plentiful sprinkling of tears from Caroline that her heart was softened to accept my excuses.

'"It is his first fault, and I tempted him," said Caroline; "will you not give him absolution, mamma?"

After a while the mother relented, but said she would not admit me to the same position in her esteem again, unless I consented to accept the penance she would impose on me. The penance was never to smoke again. I promised. This was when the wreck of our army was being re-formed at Paris, under Louis XVIII., and the allies who had violated our capital were beginning to get confident on the news which each ship conveyed from St. Helena of the hastening end of the Man whom Sir Lowe was doing to death. There was no chance of promotion for us if he did not come back; for the soldiers who loved Him, his death would indeed be the setting of the sun of Austerlitz. I had long given up the expectation of that marshal's bâton which every conscript fancies he carries in his knapsack; but still I had the conviction that some chance of distinction would present itself, even under the pacific Restoration, that might lead me to a rank sufficient to maintain my beloved Caroline in comfort as my wife. My regiment was ordered to Metz. The night I parted from her I confided to her ear the idea that was before my mind, and she looked such a cheerful, hope-inspiring look from her large liquid eyes into mine as would have put fire into a breast of stone. It was the pure lustre of a fresh innocent love, and as earnest that I accepted it as sacred, I gave her my first and last kiss of holy affection. Her mother reminded me at the door of the promise I had made about smoking, and gave me a letter of introduction to a cousin of hers who was an officer in the garrison to which we were ordered. This cousin, as I learned from a comrade who knew him, was of a haughty, overbearing temper, and I was in no hurry to hand him my credentials. About a week after my arrival I was strolling about the fortification in the cool breezy twilight of a sultry day, thinking of my future and of my Caroline, and looking up to the stars in the mood of the poet, to whom the lover is so like. I tried to shape out, in the light clouds that were flitting across the heavens in white flakes, some clue to my fortune. There that pale star, which is so small and distant to-night, but will go on steadily increasing in brightness and size until it attains its zenith, is the star of my destiny. At the instant I gazed on it a wanton scud shut it out from view; I tried to laugh, but I couldn't help feeling as if it were a presentiment of coming gloom. Then I turned towards a bank of cloud rising fantastically on the edge of the far blue horizon, and in fancy pictured to myself that a pair of jagged peaks projecting from its surface were the epaulettes of a general which awaited me; and, still looking, until my eyes had almost got as visionary as my mind, I framed out of a loose irregular mass of fleecy vapour the beamy figure of a woman, whom I had persuaded my senses into identifying as the genius of glory.

'"It is our Napoleon who comes back to France," said I; "the soldier will have his meat to carve again."

'At the moment a tall figure passed, and recalled me from my dreaming. I walked on, but somehow I was melancholic. I couldn't shake off the impression which that star, blotted out of sight as I looked, had made on my mind. I put my hand in the pocket of my uniform and involuntarily took something out of it. It was my cigar-case. Involuntarily still, I opened it--there was one cigar left. I was depressed in spirits, thinking sadly--and smoking, you know, kills thought.

'The bribe was strong. I forgot my promise to Caroline's mother, or encouraged myself to look upon it as a mere puerile engagement to humour a woman's whim, and lit the cigar. Scarcely did the red fire take at its end, and the first puff of smoke escape from my lips, when it was pulled out of my mouth and cast on the ground, and a tall man stood frowning before me, as well as I could distinguish in the dim light. My hand immediately flew to my sword-hilt, and I put myself in an attitude of defence.

'"How dare you smoke here? don't you know the magazine is beside you?" said the stranger, in a harsh voice.

'"I did not know it," I answered; "nor will I allow any fellow to make the fact known to me in that brutal manner."

'"Fellow!" and the stranger laughed; "_ma foi_, that's amusing; and the cockchafer has his hand on his butter-blade. Is your honour wounded, my gallant sir?"

'"Your body will be wounded shortly if you don't endeavour to civilize your tongue," I answered, enraged.

'"I positively think," said he, coolly twirling his moustaches, "that the Gascon would fight. Does your fancy run on being impaled like a frog? If so, follow me, Sir Braggart," and he moved off.

'I followed, wrath boiling in every vein. He stopped when he came to an angle in the works, totally secure from observation from any side. The moon burst out in full splendour; he cast a look upward, made a jesting remark on the politeness of the higher powers in lighting folk to kingdom come; and, throwing off his cloak, I discovered him to be a staff-officer of rank by the uniform underneath.

'"Has your courage failed yet?" he tauntingly asked, as he dexterously detached his sword from the scabbard.

'I was too vexed to speak. I said nothing, but fixed myself in the best position I knew to receive his expected attack.

'"Ha! Is that it?" he exclaimed, "think of your _maître d'armes_, and recommend your soul to God, if you believe in Him."

'At the last word he sprang forward, made a feint at my left leg, but carried his weapon round in a circle in the one swing, and was bringing it down on my sword-arm. But I knew the trick of old, and instead of attempting to parry the feint, I turned my body aside to the left, and held my weapon extended with a quick lunge to the front. He ran in straight upon it with a force that made it shiver. His sword fell from his grasp; his hands were thrown up over his head; he fell back, gave one convulsive shake of the limbs, and his life's blood gushed over the lips on which the taunts that brought him to his fate were yet trembling.

'I do not know how I found my way to my quarters on that dreadful night. The next thing I recollect was rising in the morning exhausted as if after the delirium of a fever, and descending feebly to my breakfast at the café opposite. A knot of officers were eagerly conversing outside the door.

'"Chauvin," said a comrade of mine from amongst them, "have you presented that letter yet?"

'I shook my head.

'"You may spare yourself the trouble; your friend was found at daybreak in a corner of the ramparts, dead as a burst shell, run through the right lung."

'I shuddered and felt as if my spine were turned to ice. Feigning urgent private business, I sought leave of absence, and flew to Paris to acquaint the mother of her whom I looked upon as my _fiancée_ with the dreadful secret. She heard me, never changed colour, said she believed me; his conduct was in keeping with his character, which was head-strong; she did not blame me for killing him--it was done in self-defence; but, added she in the end, this would not have happened if you had kept your promise not to smoke. "The man who cannot keep his word shall be no suitor for my daughter's hand--never again approach me or mine----"

'"But Caroline whom I love," I cried.

'"Whom _you_ love," she said, in a cutting voice--"there, there, take your mistress to your breast," and she cast an old cigar-case at my feet as she shut the door in my face.

'I never saw Caroline again. I returned to my regiment, said nothing about the fatal duel--nay, even wore mourning for my adversary, who was not very much regretted. He left after him one pretty boy, a love-child; I was not able to adopt him myself, but I watched over him and got him admitted into the regiment as _enfant de troupe_--a brave, truthful, but hot-headed, passionate boy. He died a soldier's death at the taking of the Smala of Abd-el-Kader, under Lamoricière. His daughter has his candour and generosity, without his ebullitions of temper. She's somewhat giddy, perhaps, but very good-natured. Don't you think so?'

'How should I know, captain?' said O'Hara, who had been a patient listener to this moving story.

'Ah, me! How an old man's brain wanders! Do you know,' he continued, after a little hesitation, 'I feel the better for having opened my bosom to you, my young friend, and I don't care for making half-confidences. I may trust your discretion, I think,' and he smiled amiably. 'Berthe, my Song-bird, the sunbeam in my house, is the daughter of the boy, the grand-daughter of him I had the misfortune to slay at Metz. No, not to slay,' he added quickly, correcting himself, 'I did not slay him; he rushed on his own death.'

'Did Caroline's mother ever divulge the secret of your confession?' inquired O'Hara.

'Never, oh no! She was one of the old nobility, the mirror of honour. She would not look upon any casualty in an affair of the kind other than as a matter of ordinary course, even of professional necessity, in the life of a soldier.'

'And you never saw Caroline? Did she learn anything about it, do you think?'

Captain Chauvin sighed.

'Sometimes I think she did, but I am sure she forgave me if she heard all as it happened. She was too good in herself to think evil of anyone. Ah! my dear sir, she was a woman. The sex, the sex! we, soldiers and men of feeling, ought to have no commerce with it, but be let walk our ways straightly.'

O'Hara was fiddling with a certain parcel which he had stolen from his bosom.

'She married a rich politician, one of the damn---- pardon me, my dear sir, one of the bourgeoisie class, and as Louis Philippe was king, the bourgeoisie was everything, and Caroline's husband was a favourite and a great man. I think she married him out of duty to her mother, to save her declining days from poverty. When Louis Philippe was sent to the right-about, the mean bourgeois politician went to the right-about too, and his fortune with him. Poor Caroline had died in giving birth to daughters, twins. Luckily, their nurse, one of the people, had a heart; she kept a wine-shop at Choisy-le-Roi, and she took care of the two poor orphans: yes, they were orphans, for that shabby Orleans rascal, who skirted, was never a real living man, nor his master either. Damn---- pardon me, sir, but Louis Philippe was no king--he was a grocer, sir, a grocer.'

'At best he was a usurper, but a singularly mild one,' remarked O'Hara.

'We shall not talk of him, sir,' said the captain; 'but now let me complete an old man's confidences. I adopted one of those twins, she was so like her mother in manner; she is my housekeeper. If Berthe is my Song-bird, it is Caroline who keeps the nest tidy.'

'That superb brunette!'

'Ah! you think her superb,' cried the aged officer, pleased. 'Superb--that's right; she is the born image of her mother.'

'And the other,' pursued O'Hara eagerly, a dark suspicion taking hold of his imagination.

A shade passed over the old man's face. 'Ah! I know nothing of her. She was her father's daughter, not her mother's. She preferred the noisy wine-shop to my quiet home, and three years ago she disappeared from our sight altogether. But the night waxes late. I must be going. So you haven't seen your friend since?'

'No, and I have anxiously desired to see him, to clear off some obligations I am under to him.'

'Well, again good-night. I pray you don't be such a stranger as he; but sometimes call up to Victor Chauvin's humble quarters. It gladdens his spirit to converse with youth.'

O'Hara gave assurance that he would esteem it a happiness and an honour to visit one with whom he had so many kindred sympathies.

'It grows late' said the officer, 'and my pair of pretty birds will be anxiously looking out for me if I delay. Good-night, my child, good-night.'

And as O'Hara escorted Captain Chauvin to the door, Pat accompanied them, but only with a valedictory bark. The truth is he was too well fed, and he was not used to it. With dogs, as with men, high feeding begets indolence, and the indolent are not over-polite.