Chapter 5

She had every reason to suppose that her prayers were heard. Colonel D'Hubert passed through Lutzen, Bautzen, and Leipsic, losing no limbs and acquiring additional reputation. Adapting his conduct to the needs of that desperate time, he had never voiced his misgivings. He concealed them under a cheerful courtesy of such pleasant character that people were inclined to ask themselves with wonder whether Colonel D'Hubert was aware of any disasters. Not only his manners but even his glances remained untroubled. The steady amenity of his blue eyes disconcerted all grumblers, silenced doleful remarks, and made even despair pause.

This bearing was remarked at last by the emperor himself, for Colonel D'Hubert, attached now to the Major-General's staff, came on several occasions under the imperial eye. But it exasperated the higher strung nature of Colonel Feraud. Passing through Magdeburg on service this last allowed himself, while seated gloomily at dinner with the _Commandant de Place_, to say of his lifelong adversary: “This man does not love the emperor,”--and as his words were received in profound silence Colonel Feraud, troubled in his conscience at the atrocity of the aspersion, felt the need to back it up by a good argument. “I ought to know him,” he said, adding some oaths. “One studies one's adversary. I have met him on the ground half a dozen times, as all the army knows. What more do you want? If that isn't opportunity enough for any fool to size up his man, may the devil take me if I can tell what is.” And he looked around the table with sombre obstinacy.

Later on, in Paris, while feverishly busy reorganising his regiment, Colonel Feraud learned that Colonel D'Hubert had been made a general. He glared at his informant incredulously, then folded his arms and turned away muttering:

“Nothing surprises me on the part of that man.”

And aloud he added, speaking over his shoulder: “You would greatly oblige me by telling General D'Hubert at the first opportunity that his advancement saves him for a time from a pretty hot encounter. I was only waiting for him to turn up here.”

The other officer remonstrated.

“Could you think of it, Colonel Feraud! At this time when every life should be consecrated to the glory and safety of France!”

But the strain of unhappiness caused by military reverses had spoiled Colonel Feraud's character. Like many other men he was rendered wicked by misfortune.

“I cannot consider General D'Hubert's person of any account either for the glory or safety of France,” he snapped viciously. “You don't pretend, perhaps, to know him better than I do--who have been with him half a dozen times on the ground--do you?”

His interlocutor, a young man, was silenced. Colonel Feraud walked up and down the room.

“This is not a time to mince matters,” he said. “I can't believe that that man ever loved the emperor. He picked up his general's stars under the boots of Marshal Berthier. Very well. I'll get mine in another fashion, and then we shall settle this business which has been dragging on too long.”

General D'Hubert, informed indirectly of Colonel Feraud's attitude, made a gesture as if to put aside an importunate person. His thoughts were solicited by graver cares. He had had no time to go and see his family. His sister, whose royalist hopes were rising higher every day, though proud of her brother, regretted his recent advancement in a measure, because it put on him a prominent mark of the usurper's favour which later on could have an adverse influence upon his career. He wrote to her that no one but an inveterate enemy could say he had got his promotion by favour. As to his career he assured her that he looked no farther forward into the future than the next battlefield.

Beginning the campaign of France in that state of mind, General D'Hubert was wounded on the second day of the battle under Laon. While being carried off the field he heard that Colonel Feraud, promoted that moment to general, had been sent to replace him in the command of his brigade. He cursed his luck impulsively, not being able, at the first glance, to discern all the advantages of a nasty wound. And yet it was by this heroic method that Providence was shaping his future. Travelling slowly south to his sister's country house, under the care of a trusty old servant, General D'Hubert was spared the humiliating contacts and the perplexities of conduct which assailed the men of the Napoleonic empire at the moment of its downfall. Lying in his bed with the windows of his room open wide to the sunshine of Provence, he perceived at last the undisguised aspect of the blessing conveyed by that jagged fragment of a Prussian shell which, killing his horse and ripping open his thigh, saved him from an active conflict with his conscience. After fourteen years spent sword in hand in the saddle and strong in the sense of his duty done to the end, General D'Hubert found resignation an easy virtue. His sister was delighted with his reasonableness. “I leave myself altogether in your hands, my dear Léonie,” he had said.

He was still laid up when, the credit of his brother-in-law's family being exerted on his behalf, he received from the Royal Government not only the confirmation of his rank but the assurance of being retained on the active list. To this was added an unlimited convalescent leave. The unfavourable opinion entertained of him in the more irreconcilable Bonapartist circles, though it rested on nothing more solid than the unsupported pronouncement of General Feraud, was directly responsible for General D'Hubert's retention on the active list. As to General Feraud, his rank was confirmed, too. It was more than he dared to expect, but Marshal Soult, then Minister of War to the restored king, was partial to officers who had served in Spain. Only not even the marshal's protection could secure for him active employment. He remained irreconcilable, idle and sinister, seeking in obscure restaurants the company of other half-pay officers, who cherished dingy but glorious old tricolour cockades in their breast pockets, and buttoned with the forbidden eagle buttons their shabby uniform, declaring themselves too poor to afford the expense of the prescribed change.

The triumphant return of the emperor, a historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General D'Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse. Neither could he walk very well. These disabilities, which his sister thought most lucky, helped her immensely to keep her brother out of all possible mischief. His frame of mind at that time, she noted with dismay, became very far from reasonable. That general officer, still menaced by the loss of a limb, was discovered one night in the stables of the château by a groom who, seeing a light, raised an alarm of thieves. His crutch was lying half buried in the straw of the litter, and he himself was hopping on one leg in a loose box around a snorting horse he was trying to saddle. Such were the effects of imperial magic upon an unenthusiastic temperament and a pondered mind. Beset, in the light of stable lanterns, by the tears, entreaties, indignation, remonstrances and reproaches of his family, he got out of the difficult situation by fainting away there and then in the arms of his nearest relatives, and was carried off to bed. Before he got out of it again the second reign of Napoleon, the Hundred Days of feverish agitation and supreme effort passed away like a terrifying dream. The tragic year 1815, begun in the trouble and unrest of consciences, was ending in vengeful proscriptions.

How General Feraud escaped the clutches of the Special Commission and the last offices of a firing squad, he never knew himself. It was partly due to the subordinate position he was assigned during the Hundred Days. He was not given active command but was kept busy at the cavalry depot in Paris, mounting and despatching hastily drilled troopers into the field. Considering this task as unworthy of his abilities, he discharged it with no offensively noticeable zeal. But for the greater part he was saved from the excesses of royalist reaction by the interference of General D'Hubert.

This last, still on convalescent leave but able now to travel, had been despatched by his sister to Paris to present himself to his legitimate sovereign. As no one in the capital could possibly know anything of the episode in the stable, he was received there with distinction. Military to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for. All the rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the man who had _never_ loved the emperor--a sort of monster essentially worse than a mere betrayer.

General D'Hubert shrugged his shoulders without anger at this ferocious prejudice. Rejected by his old friends and mistrusting profoundly the advances of royalist society, the young and handsome general (he was barely forty) adopted a manner of punctilious and cold courtesy which at the merest shadow of an intended slight passed easily into harsh haughtiness. Thus prepared, General D'Hubert went about his affairs in Paris feeling inwardly very happy with the peculiar uplifting happiness of a man very much in love. The charming girl looked out by his sister had come upon the scene and had conquered him in the thorough manner in which a young girl, by merely existing in his sight, can make a man of forty her own. They were going to be married as soon as General D'Hubert had obtained his official nomination to a promised command.

One afternoon, sitting on the _terrasse_ of the Café Tortoni, General D'Hubert learned from the conversation of two strangers occupying a table near his own that General Feraud, included in the batch of superior officers arrested after the second return of the king, was in danger of passing before the Special Commission. Living all his spare moments, as is frequently the case with expectant lovers a day in advance of reality, as it were, and in a state of bestarred hallucination, it required nothing less than the name of his perpetual antagonist pronounced in a loud voice to call the youngest of Napoleon's generals away from the mental contemplation of his betrothed. He looked round. The strangers wore civilian clothes. Lean and weather-beaten, lolling back in their chairs, they looked at people with moody and defiant abstraction from under their hats pulled low over their eyes. It was not difficult to recognise them for two of the compulsorily retired officers of the Old Guard. As from bravado or carelessness they chose to speak in loud tones, General D'Hubert, who saw no reason why he should change his seat, heard every word. They did not seem to be the personal friends of General Feraud. His name came up with some others; and hearing it repeated General D'Hubert's tender anticipations of a domestic future adorned by a woman's grace were traversed by the harsh regret of that warlike past, of that one long, intoxicating clash of arms, unique in the magnitude of its glory and disaster--the marvellous work and the special possession of his own generation. He felt an irrational tenderness toward his old adversary, and appreciated emotionally the murderous absurdity their encounter had introduced into his life. It was like an additional pinch of spice in a hot dish. He remembered the flavour with sudden melancholy. He would never taste it again. It was all over.... “I fancy it was being left lying in the garden that had exasperated him so against me,” he thought indulgently.

The two strangers at the next table had fallen silent upon the third mention of General Feraud's name. Presently, the oldest of the two, speaking in a bitter tone, affirmed that General Feraud's account was settled. And why? Simply because he was not like some big-wigs who loved only themselves. The royalists knew that they could never make anything of him. He loved the Other too well.

The Other was the man of St. Helena. The two officers nodded and touched glasses before they drank to an impossible return. Then the same who had spoken before remarked with a sardonic little laugh:

“His adversary showed more cleverness.”

“What adversary?” asked the younger as if puzzled.

“Don't you know? They were two Hussars. At each promotion they fought a duel. Haven't you heard of the duel that is going on since 1801?”

His friend had heard of the duel, of course. Now he understood the allusion. General Baron D'Hubert would be able now to enjoy his fat king's favour in peace.

“Much good may it do to him,” mumbled the elder. “They were both brave men. I never saw this D'Hubert--a sort of intriguing dandy, I understand. But I can well believe what I've heard Feraud say once of him--that he never loved the emperor.”

They rose and went away.

General D'Hubert experienced the horror of a somnambulist who wakes up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from his view in the flood of moral distress. Everything he had ever been or hoped to be would be lost in ignominy unless he could manage to save General Feraud from the fate which threatened so many braves. Under the impulse of this almost morbid need to attend to the safety of his adversary General D'Hubert worked so well with hands and feet (as the French saying is) that in less than twenty-four hours he found means of obtaining an extraordinary private audience from the Minister of Police.

General Baron D'Hubert was shown in suddenly without preliminaries. In the dusk of the minister's cabinet, behind the shadowy forms of writing desk, chairs, and tables, between two bunches of wax candles blazing in sconces, he beheld a figure in a splendid coat posturing before a tall mirror. The old _Conventional_ Fouché, ex-senator of the empire, traitor to every man, every principle and motive of human conduct, Duke of Otranto, and the wily artisan of the Second Restoration, was trying the fit of a court suit, in which his young and accomplished _fiancée_ had declared her wish to have his portrait painted on porcelain. It was a caprice, a charming fancy which the Minister of Police of the Second Restoration was anxious to gratify. For that man, often compared in wiliness of intellect to a fox but whose ethical side could be worthily symbolised by nothing less emphatic than a skunk, was as much possessed by his love as General D'Hubert himself.

Startled to be discovered thus by the blunder of a servant, he met this little vexation with the characteristic effrontery which had served his turn so well in the endless intrigues of his self-seeking career. Without altering his attitude a hair's breadth, one leg in a silk stocking advanced, his head twisted over his left shoulder, he called out calmly:

“This way, general. Pray approach. Well? I am all attention.”

While General D'Hubert, as ill at ease as if one of his own little weaknesses had been exposed, presented his request as shortly as possible, the minister went on feeling the fit of his collar, settling the lappels before the glass or buckling his back in his efforts to behold the set of the gold-embroidered coat skirts behind. His still face, his attentive eyes, could not have expressed a more complete interest in those matters if he had been alone.

“Exclude from the operations of the Special Commission a certain Feraud, Gabriel Florian, General of Brigade of the promotion of 1814?” he repeated in a slightly wondering tone and then turned away from the glass. “Why exclude him precisely?”

“I am surprised that your Excellency, so competent in the valuation of men of his time, should have thought it worth while to have that name put down on the list.”

“A rabid Bonapartist.”

“So is every grenadier and every trooper of the army, as your Excellency well knows. And the individuality of General Feraud can have no more weight than that of any casual grenadier. He is a man of no mental grasp, of no capacity whatever. It is inconceivable that he should ever have any influence.”

“He has a well-hung tongue though,” interjected Fouché.

“Noisy, I admit, but not dangerous.”

“I will not dispute with you. I know next to nothing of him. Hardly his name in fact.”

“And yet your Excellency had the presidency of the commission charged by the king to point out those who were to be tried,” said General D'Hubert with an emphasis which did not miss the minister's ear.

“Yes, general,” he said, walking away into the dark part of the vast room and throwing himself into a high-backed armchair whose overshadowed depth swallowed him up, all but the gleam of gold embroideries on the coat and the pallid patch of the face. “Yes, general. Take that chair there.”

General D'Hubert sat down.

“Yes, general,” continued the arch-master in the arts of intrigue and betrayal, whose duplicity as if at times intolerable to his self-knowledge worked itself off in bursts of cynical openness. “I did hurry on the formation of the proscribing commission and took its presidency. And do you know why? Simply from fear that if I did not take it quickly into my hands my own name would head the list of the proscribed. Such are the times in which we live. But I am minister of the king as yet, and I ask you plainly why I should take the name of this obscure Feraud off the list? You wonder how his name got there. Is it possible that you know men so little? My dear general, at the very first sitting of the commission names poured on us like rain off the tiles of the Tuileries. Names! We had our choice of thousands. How do you know that the name of this Feraud, whose life or death don't matter to France, does not keep out some other name?...”

The voice out of the armchair stopped. General D'Hubert sat still, shadowy, and silent. Only his sabre clinked slightly. The voice in the armchair began again. “And we must try to satisfy the exigencies of the allied sovereigns. The Prince de Talleyrand told me only yesterday that Nesselrode had informed him officially that his Majesty, the Emperor Alexander, was very disappointed at the small number of examples the government of the king intends to make--especially amongst military men. I tell you this confidentially.”

“Upon my word,” broke out General D'Hubert, speaking through his teeth, “if your Excellency deigns to favour me with any more confidential information I don't know what I will do. It's enough to make one break one's sword over one's knee and fling the pieces...”

“What government do you imagine yourself to be serving?” interrupted the minister sharply. After a short pause the crestfallen voice of General D'Hubert answered:

“The government of France.”

“That's paying your conscience off with mere words, general. The truth is that you are serving a government of returned exiles, of men who have been without country for twenty years. Of men also who have just got over a very bad and humiliating fright.... Have no illusions on that score.”

The Duke of Otranto ceased. He had relieved himself, and had attained his object of stripping some self-respect off that man who had inconveniently discovered him posturing in a gold-embroidered court costume before a mirror. But they were a hot-headed lot in the army, and it occurred to him that it would be inconvenient if a well-disposed general officer, received by him on the recommendation of one of the princes, were to go and do something rashly scandalous directly after a private interview with the minister. In a changed voice he put a question to the point:

“Your relation--this Feraud?”

“No. No relation at all.”

“Intimate friend?”

“Intimate... yes. There is between us an intimate connection of a nature which makes it a point of honour with me to try...”

The minister rang a bell without waiting for the end of the phrase. When the servant had gone, after bringing in a pair of heavy silver candelabra for the writing desk, the Duke of Otranto stood up, his breast glistening all over with gold in the strong light, and taking a piece of paper out of a drawer held it in his hand ostentatiously while he said with persuasive gentleness:

“You must not talk of breaking your sword across your knee, general. Perhaps you would never get another. The emperor shall not return this time.... _Diable d'homme!_ There was just a moment here in Paris, soon after Waterloo, when he frightened me. It looked as though he were going to begin again. Luckily one never does begin again really. You must not think of breaking your sword, general.”

General D'Hubert, his eyes fixed on the ground, made with his hand a hopeless gesture of renunciation. The Minister of Police turned his eyes away from him and began to scan deliberately the paper he had been holding up all the time.

“There are only twenty general officers to be brought before the Special Commission. Twenty. A round number. And let's see, Feraud. Ah, he's there! Gabriel Florian. _Parfaitement_. That's your man. Well, there will be only nineteen examples made now.”

General D'Hubert stood up feeling as though he had gone through an infectious illness.

“I must beg your Excellency to keep my interference a profound secret. I attach the greatest importance to his never knowing...”

“Who is going to inform him I should like to know,” said Fouché, raising his eyes curiously to General D'Hubert's white face. “Take one of these pens and run it through the name yourself. This is the only list in existence. If you are careful to take up enough ink no one will be able to tell even what was the name thus struck out. But, _par example_, I am not responsible for what Clarke will do with him. If he persist in being rabid he will be ordered by the Minster of War to reside in some provincial town under the supervision of the police.”

A few days later General D'Hubert was saying to his sister after the first greetings had been got over:

“Ah, my dear Léonie! It seemed to me I couldn't get away from Paris quick enough.”

“Effect of love,” she suggested with a malicious smile.

“And horror,” added General D'Hubert with profound seriousness. “I have nearly died there of... of nausea.”

His face was contracted with disgust. And as his sister looked at him attentively he continued:

“I have had to see Fouché. I have had an audience. I have been in his cabinet. There remains with one, after the misfortune of having to breathe the air of the same room with that man, a sense of diminished dignity, the uneasy feeling of being not so clean after all as one hoped one was.... But you can't understand.”

She nodded quickly several times. She understood very well on the contrary. She knew her brother thoroughly and liked him as he was. Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the Jacobin Fouché, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, every virtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his whole generation and died obscurely as Duke of Otranto.

“My dear Armand,” she said compassionately, “what could you want from that man?”

“Nothing less than a life,” answered General D'Hubert. “And I've got it. It had to be done. But I feel yet as if I could never forgive the necessity to the man I had to save.”