Part 45

"It was horrible here until you came!... I was so lonely! Everybody looks so strange, and no news comes through. It would have been better to have stayed at Metz, where there is fighting. But no! We were compelled to return to Châlons.... On our way we were nearly caught by the German cavalry. They are terribly daring ... they even ventured into our lines at Longeville.... But we got to Verdun and traveled to Châlons in a third-class carriage. Frightfully dirty, and full of things that bit.... And I washed my face in a thick glass tumbler, out of which I had drunk some wine they brought me.... Fact, I assure you!... But we soldiers don't mind hardships.... We get used to them, Mademoiselle!"

She looked up at the brightened face with the tenderness of an elder sister. He went on with increasing animation and growing confidence:

"Do you see that little black box standing there in the corner? That's my officer's kit--all the baggage we're allowed to have on Active Service. There are other boxes with other things..." He blushed. "The valets look after them.... But this I keep under my own eye. And here!... This I hold as a great treasure. Do you think I would show it to everyone?... _Non, merci!_ ... Behold, Mademoiselle!"

He took from a pocket beneath his tunic and showed her a splinter of rusty iron wrapped in an envelope.

"Guess what this is! A bit of a real German bombshell.... It burst quite close to the Emperor and me.... I thought a lot of old iron was being shot out of a cart, there was such a racket.... This should be a keepsake for the friend one loves above all, should it not? Otherwise I would give it you, Mademoiselle!"

She said:

"Monseigneur is too generous.... I need no token by which to remember him!... Have I not the remembrance of the sympathy and condescension with which my Prince has listened to a daughter's prayer?... Now, indeed, I must take leave of Monseigneur!..."

He persisted with boyish eagerness:

"No, no! M. d'Aure will certainly return at the end of our ten minutes. And I do like you so much, Mademoiselle!... Will you write and tell me when the Emperor obtains the release of M. le Colonel? ... Will you let me hear how you liked the little sketch I gave M. de Straz for you?"

She was puzzled, and looked it:

"Monseigneur will pardon me, but the name of M. de Straz is that of a stranger.... Yet he has received from Monseigneur a message for me?..."

Louis Napoleon explained. She listened with a gravity that chilled his amusement over the message he had sent to the supposedly elderly sender of the violets.

She said, looking at him steadily with her sincere eyes:

"I sent Monseigneur no violets, with messages written or otherwise. To have done so would have been presumptuous, and lacking in delicacy.... If this M. de Straz were but here.... If Monseigneur could but describe him!..."

Monseigneur caught up the unfinished caricature:

"Look, Mademoiselle! This is he!"

It was he.... The Assyrian head, great torso, and short legs had been grotesquely exaggerated. But the ferocity, sentimentality, and sensuality mingling in the exotic temperament of the Roumanian, had been conveyed with a mastery of technique and a grasp of character astonishing, considering the artist's youth. And seeing, Juliette recognized the man they had encountered in the vestibule. Just as he had passed them, Adelaide had cried out, and sunk down helplessly in a genuine swoon.

"Ah, yes, Monseigneur, I have seen this gentleman, but a few moments ago. We encountered him at the instant of entering the house. But I do not know him--I have never before met him! Why, then, should M. de Straz speak familiarly of me?"

The boy said, with a tactfulness that was ingratiating:

"Never mind!... He was playing some stupid trick!... He shall be punished if he offends you. See! I am tearing up the ugly picture!"

"Oh, Monseigneur!"

She was too late to save the drawing. He went on, tossing away the bits:

"Meanwhile--since the sketch I meant for you has been given to this person, you shall have my shell-splinter, though at first I meant it for--Cavaignac."

He had never uttered this name, about which so many lonely day-dreams clung, in the hearing of any second person. He could hardly believe that he had done so now as he went on:

"Take my souvenir, and shut your hand over it, and promise me you will never part with it. If you will, I can tell you about Cavaignac--my friend, Mademoiselle!"

She complied with his wish, smiling at the tone of authority. She thought, looking in the beautiful frank blue eyes, that Cavaignac must be proud of his high place in this princely young heart.

"He is brave, Mademoiselle, and handsome and wonderfully clever. Once he gained the second prize for Greek translation at the Concours General. And Greek is horribly difficult. M. Edeline could never teach it me. I find the grammar so dreadfully dull! And yet Alexander the Great was a Greek general, and would have told me all about his campaigns in the Greek language.... I think I must find it hard to study because the figures of people mean more to me than letters and words!... I like better to draw caricatures of my masters than to listen to them!"

Juliette said, with something maternal in her accent:

"That is unwise, Monseigneur.... For the better we learn, the sooner we part with the teacher, do not we?"

He said, in a tone of wounded pride rather than vanity:

"I have always attended carefully to my Military Governor when he gave us lessons in scientific warfare. For a Napoleon must always be a soldier and a strategist.... Riding came easily--anybody can learn to ride well!... When I have pleased my tutors most, my reward has been--unless it was in July or August--a day with the stag-hounds at Fontainebleau, or St. Germain or Compiègne.... The Emperor has given me two magnificent Irish hunters...." He added with naïve boyish vanity: "And the uniform of our Imperial Hunt is splendid, you know.... Gold-laced cocked hat with white plumes, green coat with crimson velvet facings, white leathers and jack-boots. Last night I dreamed I was hunting with Cavaignac ... the brown forest flying by as we galloped through the frosty fern.... The sky was pale red, and a diamond star hung just under the tip of the new moon of November. We were foremost of all when the stag turned to bay at the Pools of Saint Pierre.... Then the horns sounded the _hallali_, the Chief Huntsman offered me the knife, and I said to him: '_M. Leemans, you will give it to my friend, M. Cavaignac!_' ..."

"And then, Monseigneur?..."

He had told the dream with unexpected spirit and fire. That gallop through the wintry forest-rides had been stimulatingly real to Juliette. She had thrilled as the hard-pressed buck had leaped into the pool, and turned with antlers lowered against the ravening jaws of the pack. Now, though she shrank from the thought of the spilled blood--she wanted to hear the rest of it. She wished always to remember this story, told solely for her, by the son of her Emperor....

"Shall I tell you? The end is not as nice as the beginning or the middle...." He hesitated, frowning a little, then took up the broken thread: "I thought I took the knife and held it out to him, and he suddenly snatched it and I felt the blade pierce my heart right through.... He said, with his dark, bright eyes on mine: '_Son of my father's enemy, I slay despots, not animals!_' ... And I felt the hot blood bubbling in my throat as I answered: '_You have killed a great faith and a great love!_'"

It was rhetoric of a bombastic, youthful kind, but not without pathos. His lips quivered. He nipped them together, and blinked away the stinging salt moisture that had risen in his bright eyes. Juliette said, aching to console him:

"Dreams go by contraries, according to my schoolmates of the Convent. Your friendship with M. Cavaignac will not be severed by the blade of a hunting-knife."

He shook his head.

"Or rather it is by my hand that the stab will be given.... Yet how could that be, when I like him so very, very much? ... Is it not strange, I have never spoken to Cavaignac, and yet I would have chosen him for my companion above all others, before even Espinasse or Chino Murat!..."

"I think I understand..." Juliette said, feeling the tug of his craving for affection and sympathy, realizing the loneliness that had found relief in hero-worship, and heartily pitying her Emperor's son. "When the heart speaks, one cannot shut one's ears; one must listen always.... Among hundreds of faces there is one that paints itself upon the memory ... there is one voice that makes good music when others only tire the ear.... There is one nature that seems more open, fresh, and candid than others.... Without knowing that you do so, you continually compare it with them.... And when you are sad or lonely, you would wish that person to be near you.... You remember his gray eyes with specks of brown and golden in them, and the curly hair, and the pleasant lips. You regret that when you met him you were not more charming, more amiable.... You feel chagrin to remember that you were neither of these things.... You would like to hold out the hand as they do in England, and say, 'Pardon, pardon, that I misunderstood you, my friend!'"

The boy's blue eyes rounded. His fair brows puckered in perplexity. Too well-bred to interrupt, he listened with increasing surprise.

"Pardon that I regarded you as a brusque, untidy boy, when you had been robbed, and were homeless, and suffering from hunger. For Monica's sake, you hid it. And I applaud that noble silence! I admire you with all my heart!..."

The Prince broke in:

"But Cavaignac has not been robbed, and who ever said he was hungry? He lives with Madame, his mother ... they are not rich, certainly! As Madame is a widow and he an only son, he is exempt from military service. He is to embrace the profession of Literature--he will write great books or great plays, or edit a newspaper.... And I would like to help him to climb to the very top of the ladder.... Secretly--because he would never accept anything that came from me!... Am I stupid, Mademoiselle?"

She said with warmth that covered a slight confusion, caused by that slip of the tongue an instant before:

"Ah, no, indeed! but very kind and generous. Perhaps, if it were possible, M. Cavaignac would be proud and glad to know you were his friend. It may be that the affection he inspires in you, he returns, though he does not own it. There can be no harm in thinking this, at least!"

The Prince said, with animation:

LVI

"I saw him, I am convinced, when we left Saint-Cloud, outside the station near the Gate of Orleans. He stood apart from the soldiers and the people.... He was all in black, and had grown older and taller. He looked at me earnestly, and slightly raised his hat as the carriage drove up. I saluted in answer, and the Empress asked me: '_Who is that grave young man? Do you know him?_' I said: '_My mother, I have never spoken to him in my life!_' ... You would have thought the Empress very brave, if you had seen her, Mademoiselle. Nobody could have guessed she had been weeping. Though the night before we left for Metz ... when she came to me in my bed..."

His lips twitched, and one big tear brimmed over and splashed on the sleeve of his piou-piou's uniform. He flushed bright red, and whisked it off as though it were a wasp that would have stung.

"She brought me a new medal to hang on the collar I wear always." He slid a finger inside the edge of his stiff military stock, and hooked up an inch of gold chain. "It has on one side a figure of Our Blessed Lady crushing the head of the serpent, and on the other there is the Cross with two hearts. The Holy Father has blessed it; it was sent to Rome purposely.... Mothers are anxious when their sons are called upon Active Service.... It is natural, is it not?"

Juliette's eyes were wet with pity for the Empress. She bent her head in assent. The boy went on, shrugging his slender shoulders:

"For me--I like better to have soldiers about me than a lot of people in embroidered tail-coats. If I had been twenty, I should have been at Wörth with the Duke of Magenta.... I would have died at the head of my troops rather than have consented to that shameful retreat.... '_Over my body!_' ... that is what I would have said to them.... '_Do you wish me to dishonor the blood of Napoleon the Great?_'"

He crossed to the fireplace and stood upon the Turkey hearthrug, a boyish figure reflected in the great Venetian mirror that hung above the carved stone mantelpiece. The outpouring had relieved the nervous tension; the red flush had died out of his fair temples, the smooth forehead was no longer disfigured with a scowl.

"If I might only have remained with the Army at Metz, I would have asked nothing better. But instead of staying to fight the Prussians, we drove away when they came in sight. It was ignominious.... It made me feel horribly!... And the Emperor would not show it, but I know he suffered, too. Then the camp was beastly.... There was no pretense of discipline. Their officers could hardly restrain the mobilists. There was even mutiny among those who had returned from Alsace-Lorraine--the Algerian troops of the Army of MacMahon!"

His agitation made him stutter as the words came pouring from him.

"They wanted to be led once more against the Germans!--to be avenged for all their losses and misfortunes!... I understood why they were difficult.... They did not understand why we did not march at once to the northeast frontier. No more did I.... I was unreasonable, like them! But now we are advancing--soon, soon, you will hear something!... We will effect a junction of our Army with M. de Bazaine's, and sweep the Prussians out of France!"

He was walking up and down, swinging his arms, gesticulating, grinding his heels into the arabesques of the Aubusson carpet at every turn.

"Then there will be great popular rejoicings--the Emperor will receive his due--there will be no more misunderstandings. For the Emperor is terribly misunderstood, Mademoiselle, and he is no longer young or strong.... He has so many bitter enemies.... I have heard him say so, weeping--the Emperor, Mademoiselle!..."

"Oh, hush, Monseigneur!"

But he did not heed Juliette's entreaty.

"I have heard him crying out to God in his room at midnight, when he thought everyone was asleep, and he was quite alone: '_My God! is this the beginning of the punishment? Must the price of my success be ruin, defeat, disgrace!_'... Then I stole away and made a prayer for him and for myself, Mademoiselle.... I say it regularly every night since then."

His boyish pompousness, pride, and vanity had fallen from him like a tinsel diadem. Chivalry and loyalty, unselfishness and devotion shone from and irradiated the child.

"'_My God, if Thou dost save up happiness for me, I pray Thee to take it away, and give it to my father, who needs it so badly.... And, my God, if Thou indeed art angry with him, I beseech Thee to grant him Thy pardon, and punish me, instead. All I ask Thee for myself is that I may know Thy Will, and obey It, that I may do my duty bravely, and die when the end of my life comes without dishonor and without fear!_' Is that a good prayer, do you think, Mademoiselle?"

Before she could command herself sufficiently to answer, there was a knock at the door, and the equerry came in. He looked eager and vexed, excited and disappointed. Varying emotions seemed to clash in him. But he said, smiling and saluting as the Prince turned toward him:

"The ten minutes are over, Monseigneur!"

"Ten minutes ago, Monsieur, to speak correctly," said Monseigneur, with a mischievous look. Then his face changed. "News!" he called out eagerly. "You have dispatches from the Emperor!... Don't play a farce with me, Count, I beg of you! when there is the telegram sticking out of your cuff!"

And with the nimbleness of a gamin and the audacity of a spoiled princeling, he threw himself upon the equerry and captured the prize.

"From the Emperor at Rheims--no! don't retire, Mademoiselle! You are discreet--not like women who talk! ... You shall share my good news with me.... He says: '_There has been furious fighting at Mars la Tour. Battles are raging at Flauville, Flavigny, and Vionville. The Prince will remain for the present at Bethel, where the Emperor will rejoin him on the 27th. As it is not considered advisable to effect a junction with Bazaine, the march of the Army of Châlons is directed upon Sedan._'"

The mischief died out of the dancing eyes, the mobile face whitened with disappointment. He repeated, staring blankly at the paper:

"For what did we leave Châlons, if not to assist Bazaine?... _Mon Dieu!_... What infamy!... Why am I not a man?"

He grew crimson and burst into a tempest of sobbing. He tore the pale green paper into fragments and trampled them beneath his feet. His eyes blazed through the tears that streamed from them as he stammered between his gasps and chokings:

"Cowards!... Traitors!... Disgraced forever!... Is there no honor left in France?"

"Come, Mademoiselle, in pity!" entreated the equerry, as deadly pale as Monseigneur was red. He held open the door with a shaking hand, and Juliette hurriedly quitted the drawing-room. The door shut upon the sobs and outcries. The Count said, with a sigh of relief, wiping the perspiration from his face:

"You will not speak of this? His Imperial Highness is overwrought and excited. It will pass presently. Let me conduct you downstairs!"

The hall of the Prefecture reached, a servant in the livery of the establishment approached the equerry. It appeared that the lady who had accompanied Mademoiselle had recovered from her indisposition, and departed, leaving no message for her young friend.

"Madame will have returned to her hotel," said the equerry. He added: "By chance, Mademoiselle, the dispatches we have just received contain proof that your friend has been misled by false intelligence. Colonel le Bayard has not been taken prisoner. He is now in command of his regiment with the First Brigade of Cavalry of General Clérambault's Division, now engaged with the Third Corps in the neighborhood of Metz."

Then as Juliette turned red and pale, and looked at him in breathless questioning, he added, pulling a vestibule-chair from its place near the wainscot and making her sit down:

"Rest there one moment.... I will speak to Colonel Watrin. He is now at mess with his officers in the Prefect's billiard-room."

Watrin of the Bodyguard, Chief of the Prince Imperial's escort, came clanking and jingling from his dinner to confirm the fact as stated by the equerry. The 777th Chasseurs, belonging to de Clérambault's Division of the Third Corps of the Army of Bazaine, were certainly now engaged in the neighborhood of Gravelotte. But as certainly they had not come into contact with the enemy previously to the fifteenth of the month.

The fifteenth!--the very day on which Adelaide had baited her trap with an imprisoned father.... Joy at the discovery, indignation at having been so easily cajoled into captivity, brought back the red to Juliette's pale cheeks and the light to her sad eyes.

This strange, wayward, mysterious mother might exercise over her daughter a certain degree of maternal authority. The supreme obedience, the first duty was to the father, that was clear. Now she was going straight to him, wherever he might be. She was strong enough, for his dear sake, to take whatever risks were involved.

Suppose Adelaide insisted on accompanying her? It was unthinkable that even so hardy an offender should venture into the presence of one so wronged.... Meet his look!... Read in his face his scorn of perfidy! Juliette put away the possibility from her with both hands.

We know that Madame Adelaide had contemplated this very move upon occasion. But she had not met Mademoiselle de Bayard then. Since the encounter had taken place she had realized that the establishment of maternal influence, strong enough to make of her daughter a confederate and ally, was a task beyond her powers.

Her grace, her charm, were lost upon this pale, frigid, obstinate little being, in whom she saw her mother-in-law over again. For than this girl, sprung of her own flesh, whose veins were filled with her blood, nothing could be more unlike Adelaide, that magnificent creature of impulses and desires and appetites....

Dominion over de Bayard could never be regained and established while his daughter sat by his hearth a virgin unwed. Why had Adelaide hindered her marriage to M. Tessier? Pacing the Turkey carpet of the Prefect's library, Madame admitted that she had acted inadvisedly. That the plan of bringing Juliette into contact with the Prince Imperial would be discounted by the innocence of the girl and the inexperience of the boy.

She could imagine the dialogue they were holding at that moment, all, "_Oh, Mademoiselle!_" and "_Ah, Monseigneur!_"... The girl should have been permitted to celebrate her nuptials with this dull young husband of her father's choosing.... Then a few years later would have come the opportunity. She ground her teeth, thinking how her precipitation had spoiled everything ... thrust her.... Ah, Heaven! how one shuddered at the recollection, almost into the clutches of the Wielder of the Bowstring, the ingenious inventor of the Ordeal of the Looking-Glass....

Straz.... At the sight of him her heart had stopped beating. In imagination those strangling silken folds had closed, shutting out light and breath....

How he had leered, rolling those fierce black eyes of his. "_So,_" his jeering smile had said, "_my Sultana and her slave have met again. Did I not prophesy truly, sweet one, tell me? when I said you would never again look in your toilette-mirror without remembering me!_"

Her nerves were raveled to threads--her will was weakening.... Despite her hatred and her overwhelming fear of the man, she knew that he was her master. That if he fixed those eyes upon her and beckoned _Come!_ she would have to obey....

Was he still here? The book-lined walls seemed closing in on her. The atmosphere was suffocating ... she must escape from this place or go mad.

The Prefect's wife had been called away, after kindly ministrations with smelling-salts and red lavender. Adelaide opened the library door a little way, and looked forth cautiously. Except the two Cent Gardes on duty at the foot of the principal staircase, there was nobody stirring in the hall or vestibule.

As she told herself so, a red baize-covered door at a flagged rear passage-end was opened. The Prince's equerry came out with the Chief of the Bodyguard, an oblong pale green paper was in the equerry's hand. Both officers' faces were pale. Colonel Watrin's was livid and distorted with emotion. He said to his companion in a low voice, and with a despairing gesture:

"It needed but this to hasten the catastrophe!... All is over!... The Empire is lost!"

Then he went back. The red baize door shut upon him. The equerry came through the passage, entered the hall, and went quickly up the stairs. He was going to break to the Emperor's son the news of some terrible disaster ... to say to him, as Watrin had said: "_All is over!... The Empire is lost!_"

With all a woman's intuition, Adelaide leaped at the truth and comprehended the situation. What did she in the galley of a ruined, sinking Empire? What advantage was to be gained by reconciliation with Henri de Bayard now? And with Straz in the neighborhood, what madness to remain here....

As for the girl, she was possessed of money. Let her go to her father, or to her friends, or elsewhere....