Chapter 4

"Take my pocket-book," he whispered; "there is a letter you'll give my sister Marie. There are some five or six thousand francs--they are yours; you must be a pupil at the Polytechnique at Paris. If it should be your fortune to speak with General Bonaparte, say to him that when Charles de Meudon was dying--in exile--with but one friend left--he held his portrait to his lips, and, with his last breath, he kissed it."

A shivering ran through his limbs--a sigh--and all was still. He was dead.

"Halloa, there!" said a voice. The door opened, and a sergeant entered. "I have a warrant to arrest Captain de Meudon, a French officer who is concealed here. Where is he?"

I pointed to the bed.

"I arrest you in the king's name!" said the sergeant, approaching. "What----" He started back in horror. "He is dead!"

Then entered one I had seen before--Major Barton, the most pitiless of the government's agents in suppressing insurrection.

The sergeant whispered to him, and his eye ranged the little chamber till it fell on me.

"Ha!" he cried. "You here! Sergeant, here's one prisoner for you, at any rate."

Two soldiers seized me, and I was marched away towards Dublin. About noon the party halted, and the soldiers lay down and chatted on a patch of grass, while my own thoughts turned sadly back to the friend I had known.

Suddenly I heard a song sung by a voice I knew, and afterwards a loud clapping of hands. Darby M'Keown was there in the midst of the soldiers, and as I turned to look at him, my hand came in contact with a clasp-knife. I managed with it to free my arms from the ropes that fastened them, but what was to be done next?

"I didn't think much of that song of yours," said one of the soldiers. "Give us 'The British Grenadiers.'"

"I never heard them play but onst, sir," said Darby, meekly, "and they were in such a hurry I couldn't pick up the tune."

"What d'you mean?"

"'Twas the day but one after the French landed, and the British Grenadiers was running away."

The party sprang to their legs, and a shower of curses fell upon the piper.

"And sure," continued Darby, "'twasn't my fault av they took to their heels. Wouldn't anyone run for his life av he had the opportunity?"

These words were uttered in a raised voice, and I took the hint. While Darby was scuffling with the soldiers, I slipped away.

For miles I pressed forward without turning, and in the evening I found myself in Dublin. The union with England was being debated in the Parliament House; huge and angry crowds raged without. Remembering the tactics De Meudon had taught me, I sought to organize the crowd in a kind of military formation against the troops; but a knock on the head with a musket-butt ended my labours, and I knew nothing more until I came to myself in the quarters of an old chance acquaintance--Captain Bubbleton.

Here, in the house of this officer--an eccentric and impecunious man, but a most loyal friend--I was discovered by Major Barton and dragged to prison. I was released by the intervention of my father's lawyer, who claimed me as his apprentice.

For weeks I lived with Captain Bubbleton and his brother officers, and nothing could be more cordial than their treatment of me. "Tom Burke of 'Ours,'" the captain used proudly to call me. Only one officer held aloof from me, and from all Irishmen--Montague Crofts--through whom it came about that I left Ireland.

One day an uncouth and ragged woman entered the barracks, and addressed me. It was Darby M'Keown, and he brought me nothing less precious than De Meudon's pocket-book, which had been taken from me, and had been picked up by him on the road. A few minutes later Bubbleton lost a sum at cards to Crofts; knowing he could not pay, I passed a note quietly to him. When Bubbleton had gone, Crofts held up the note before me. It was a French note of De Meudon's! I demanded my property back. He refused, and threatened to inform against me. On my seeking to prevent him from leaving the room, he drew his sword, and wounded me; but in the nick of time a blow from a strong arm laid him senseless--dead, perhaps--on the floor.

"We must be far from this by daybreak," whispered Darby.

I walked out of the barracks as steadily as I could. For all I knew, I was implicated in murder--and Ireland was no place for me. In a few days I stood on the shores of France.

_II.--A Blow for the Emperor_

By means of a letter of introduction to the head of the Polytechnique, which De Meudon had placed for me in his pocket-book, I was able to enter that military college, and, after a spell of earnest study, I was appointed to a commission in the Eighth Hussars. Proud as I was to become a soldier of France, yet I could not but feel that I was a foreigner, and almost friendless--unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the few friends I possessed. Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais, concerning whom I soon made two discoveries--that he was in the thick of an intrigue against the republic I served, and its First Consul, and that he was in love with Marie de Meudon, my dead friend's sister.

To her, as soon as an opportunity came, I gave the news of her brother's end, and his last message. She was terribly affected; and the love we bore in common to the dead, and her own wonderful beauty, aroused in me a passion that was not the less fervent because I felt it was almost hopeless. I did not dare to ask her love, but I had her friendship without asking. She it was who warned me of the dangerous intrigues of De Beauvais and his associates. She it was who, when I fell a victim to their intrigues, laboured with General d'Auvergne, who had befriended me while I was at college, to restore me to liberty.

I had heard that De Beauvais and his fellow royalists were plotting in a château near Versailles, and that a scheme was afoot to capture them. In hot haste I rode to the château, hoping secretly to warn my friend. He did indeed escape, but it was my lot to be caught with the conspirators. For the second time in my short life I saw the inside of a prison; I was in danger of the guillotine; despair had almost overpowered me, when I learnt that my friends had prevailed--my sword was returned to me. I became again an officer of the army of him who was now emperor, and I set forth determined to wipe out on the battlefield the doubts that still clung to my loyalty. Marie de Meudon was wedded, by the emperor's wish, to the gallant and beloved soldier on whose staff I proudly served--General d'Auvergne.

In four vast columns of march, the mighty army poured into the heart of Germany. But not until we reached Mannheim did we learn the object of the war. We were to destroy the Austro-Russian coalition, and the first blow was to be struck at Ulm. When Ulm had capitulated, General d'Auvergne and his staff returned to Elchingen, and on the night when we reached the place I was on the point of lying down supperless in the open air, when I met an old acquaintance, Corporal Pioche, a giant cuirassier of the Guard, who had fought in all Bonaparte's campaigns.

"Ah, mon lieutenant," said he, "not supped yet, I'll wager. Come along with me; Mademoiselle Minette has opened her canteen!"

Presently we entered a large room, at one end of which sat a very pretty Parisian brunette, who bade me a gracious welcome. The place was crowded with captains and corporals, lieutenants and sergeants, all hobnobbing, hand-shaking, and even kissing each other. "Each man brings what he can find, drinks what he is able, and leaves the rest," remarked Pioche, and invited me to take my share in the common stock.

All went well until I absent-mindedly called out, as if to a waiter, for bread. There was a roar of laughter at my mistake, and a little dark-whiskered fellow stuck his sword into a loaf and handed it to me. As I took the loaf, he disengaged his point, and scratched the back of my hand with it. Obviously an insult was intended.

"Ah, an accident, _morbleu_!" said he, with an impertinent shrug.

"So is this!" said I, as I seized his sword and smashed it across my knee.

"It's François, _maitre d'armes_ of the Fourth," whispered Pioche; "one of the cleverest duellists of the army."

I was hurried out to the court, one adviser counselling me to beware of François's lunge in tierce, another to close on him at once, and so on. For a long time after we had crossed swords, I remained purely on the defensive; at last, after a desperate rally, he made a lunge at my chest, which I received in the muscles of my back; and, wheeling round, I buried my blade in his body.

François lingered for a long time between life and death, and for several days I was incapacitated, tenderly nursed by Minette.

As soon as I was recovered the order came to advance.

Not many days passed ere the chance came to me for which I had longed-- the chance of striking a blow for the emperor. Hand-to-hand with the Russian dragoons on the field of Austerlitz, sweeping along afterwards with the imperial hosts in the full tide of victory, I learnt for the first time the exhilaration of military glory; and I had the good fortune to receive the emperor's favour--not only was I promoted, but I was appointed to the _compagnie d'élite_ that was to carry the spoils of victory to Paris.

A few weeks after my return to Paris, the whole garrison was placed in review order to receive the wounded of Austerlitz.

As the emperor rode forward bareheaded to greet his maimed veterans, I heard laughter among the staff that surrounded him. Stepping up, I saw my old friend Pioche, who had been dangerously wounded, with his hand in salute.

"Thou wilt not have promotion, nor a pension," said Napoleon, smiling. "Hast any friend whom I could advance?"

"Yes," answered Pioche, scratching his forehead in confusion. "She is a brave girl, and had she been a man----"

"Whom can he mean?"

"I was talking of Minette, our _vivandière_."

"Dost wish I should make her my aide-de-camp?" said Napoleon, laughing.

"_Parbleu_! Thou hast more ill-favoured ones among them," said Pioche, with a glance at the grim faces of Rapp and Daru. "I've seen the time when thou'd have said, 'Is it Minette that was wounded at the Adige and stood in the square at Marengo? I'll give her the Cross of the Legion!'"

"And she shall have it!" said Napoleon. Minette advanced, and as the emperor's own cross was attached to her buttonhole she sat pale as death, overcome by her pride.

For two hours waggon after waggon rolled on, filled with the shattered remnants of an army. Every eye brightened as the emperor drew near, the feeblest gazed with parted lips when he spoke, and the faint cry of "_Vive l'Empéreur_" passed along the line.

_III.--Broken Dreams_

Ere I had left Paris to join in the campaign against Prussia, I had made, and broken off, another dangerous friendship. In the _compagnie d'élite_ was an officer named Duchesne who took a liking to me--a royalist at heart, and a cynic who was unfailing in his sneers at all the doings of Napoleon. His attitude was detected, and he was forced to resign his commission; and his slights upon the uniform I wore grew so unbearable that I abandoned his company--little guessing the revenge he would take upon me.

Once more the Grand Army was set in motion, and the hosts of France pressed upon Russia from the south and west. Napoleon turned the enemy's right flank, and compelled him to retire and concentrate his troops around Jena, which was plainly to be the scene of a great battle.

My regiment was ordered on September 13, 1806, to proceed without delay to the emperor's headquarters at Jena, and I was sent ahead to make arrangements for quarters. In the darkness I lost my way, and came upon an artillery battery stuck fast in a ravine, unable to move back or forwards. The colonel was in despair, for the whole artillery of the division was following him, and would inevitably be involved in the same mishap. Wild shouting had been succeeded by a sullen silence, when a stern voice called out: "Cannoniers, dismount; bring the torches to the front!"

When the order was obeyed, the light of the firewood fell upon the features of Napoleon himself. Instantly the work began afresh, directed by the emperor with a blazing torch in his hand. Gradually the gun-carriages were released, and began to move slowly along the ravine. Napoleon turned, and rode off at full speed in the darkness towards Jena. It was my destination, and I followed him.

He preceded me by about fifty paces--the greatest monarch of the world, alone, his thoughts bent on the great events before him. On the top of an ascent the brilliant spectacle of a thousand watch-fires met the eye. Napoleon, lost in meditation, saw nothing, and rode straight into the lines. Twice the challenge "_Qui vive?"_ rang out. Napoleon heard it not. There was a bang of a musket, then another, and another. Napoleon threw himself from his horse, and lay flat on the ground. I dashed up, shouting, "The emperor! The emperor!" My horse was killed, and I was wounded in the shoulder; but I repeated the cry until Napoleon stepped calmly forward.

"Ye are well upon the alert, _mes enfants_," he said, smiling. Then, turning to me, he asked quickly, "Are you wounded?"

"A mere scratch, sire."

"Let the surgeon see to it, and do you come to headquarters when you are able."

In the morning I went to headquarters, but the emperor was busy; seemingly I was forgotten. My regiment was out of reach, so, at the invitation of my old duelling antagonist, François, I joined the Voltigeurs. My friends could not understand why, after tasting the delights of infantry fighting, I should wish to rejoin the hussars; but I went back to my old regiment after the victory, and rode with it to Berlin.

Soon after our arrival there I read my name in a general order among those on whom the Cross of the Legion was to be conferred. On the morning of the day when I was to receive the decoration, I was requested to attend the bureau of the adjutant-general. There I was confronted with Marshal Berthier, who held up a letter before me. I saw, by the handwriting, it was Duchesne's.

"There, sir, that letter belongs to you," he said. "There is enough in it to make your conduct the matter of a court-martial; but I am satisfied that a warning will be sufficient. I need hardly say that you will not receive the Cross of the Legion."

I glanced at the letter, and realised Duchesne's treachery. Knowing that all doubtful letters were opened and read by the authorities, he had sent me a letter bitterly attacking the emperor, and professing to regard me as a royalist conspirator.

Exasperated, I drew my sword.

"I resign, sir," I said. "The career I can no longer follow honourably and independently, I shall follow no more."

With a half-broken heart and faltering step, I regained my quarters; the whole dream of life was over. Broken in spirit, I made my way slowly back through Germany to Paris, and back to Ireland.

_IV.--The Call of the Sword_

On reaching my native country I found that my brother had died, and that I had inherited an income of £4,000 a year. I sought to forget the past. But a time came when I could resist the temptation no longer, and the first fact I read of was the burning of Moscow. As misfortune followed misfortune, an impulse came to me that it was useless to resist. My heart was among the glittering squadrons of France. I thought suddenly, was this madness? And the thought was followed by a resolve as sudden. I wrote some lines to my agent, saddled my horse, and rode away. At Verviers I offered my sword to the emperor as an old officer, and went forward in charge of a squadron to Brienne. This place was held by the Prussians, and Blücher and his Prussians were near at hand. Once more I beheld the terrific spectacle of an attack by the army of Napoleon. But alas! the attack was vain; I heard the trumpet sound a retreat. And as I turned, I saw the body of an aged general officer among a heap of slain. With a shriek of horror, I recognized the friend of my heart, General d'Auvergne. Round his neck he wore a locket with a portrait of his wife--Marie de Meudon. I detached the locket, and bade the dead a last adieu.

Why should I dwell on a career of disaster? Retreat followed retreat, until the fate of Napoleon's empire depended on the capture of the bridge of Montereau. Regiment after regiment strove to cross, only to be shattered and mangled by the tremendous fire of the enemy. Four sappers at length laid a petard beneath the gate at the other side of the bridge. But the fuse went out.

"This to the man who lights the fuse!" cried Napoleon, holding up his great Cross of the Legion.

I snatched a burning match from a gunner beside me, and rushed across the bridge. Partly protected by the high projecting parapet, I lit the fuse, and then fell, shot in the chest. My senses reeled; for a time I knew nothing; then I felt a flask pressed to my lips. I looked up, and saw Minette. "Dear, dear girl, what a brave heart is thine!" said I, as she pressed her handkerchief to my wound.

Her fingers became entangled in the ribbon of the general's locket that I had tied round my neck, and by accident the locket opened. She became deathly pale as she saw its contents; then, springing to her feet, she gave me one glance--fleeting, but how full of sorrow!--and ran to the middle of the bridge. The petard had done its work. She beckoned to the column to come on; they answered with a cheer. Presently four grenadiers fell to the rear, carrying between them the body of Minette.

They gave her a military funeral; and I was told that a giant soldier, a corporal it was thought, kneeled down to kiss her before she was covered with the earth, then lay quietly down in the grass. When they sought to move him, he was stone dead.

When I had recovered from my wound, it was nothing to me that Napoleon, besides giving me his Grand Cross, had made me general of brigade. For Napoleon was no longer emperor, and I would not serve the king who succeeded him. But ere I left France I saw Marie de Meudon, it might be, I thought, for the last time. At the sight of her my old passion returned, and I dared to utter it. I know not how incoherently the tale was told; I can but remember the bursting feeling of my bosom, as she placed her hand in mine, and said, "It is yours."

* * * * *

M.G. LEWIS

Ambrosio, or the Monk

There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk," would give nightmares to few modern readers. Its author, who was born in London on July 9, 1775, and published "The Monk" in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and also several plays--one of which, "The Castle Spectre," caused the hair of Drury Lane audiences to stand on end for sixty successive nights, a long run in those days. Lewis, who was a wealthy man, sat for some years in Parliament; he had many distinguished friends among men of letters--Scott and Southey contributed largely to the first volume of his "Tales of Wonder." He died on May 13, 1818.

_I.--The Recluse_

The Church of the Capuchins in Madrid had never witnessed a more numerous assembly than that which gathered to hear the sermon of Ambrosio, the abbot. All Madrid rang with his praises. Brought mysteriously to the abbey door while yet an infant, he had remained for all the thirty years of his life within its precincts. All his days had been spent in seclusion, study, and mortification of the flesh; his knowledge was profound, his eloquence most persuasive; his only fault was an excess of severity in judging the human feelings from which he himself was exempted.

Among the crowd that pressed into the church were two women--one elderly, the other young--who had seats offered them by two richly habited cavaliers. The younger cavalier, Don Lorenzo, discovered such exquisite beauty and sweetness in the maiden to whom he had given his seat--her name was Antonia--that when she left the church he was desperately in love with her.

He had promised to see his sister Agnes, a nun in the Convent of St. Clare; so he remained in the church, whither the nuns were presently to come to confess to the Abbot Ambrosio. As he waited he observed a man wrapped up in a cloak hurriedly place a letter beneath a statue of St. Francis, and then retire.

The nuns entered, and removed their veils out of respect to the saint to whom the building was dedicated. One of the nuns dropped her rosary beside the statue, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she dexterously removed the letter and placed it in her bosom. As she did so, the light flashed full in her face.

"Agnes, by Heaven!" cried Lorenzo.

He hastened after the cloaked stranger, and overtook him with drawn sword. Suddenly the cloaked man turned and exclaimed, "Is it possible? Lorenzo, have you forgotten Raymond de las Cisternas?"

"You here, marquis?" said the astonished Lorenzo. "You engaged in a clandestine correspondence with my sister?"

"Her affections have ever been mine, and not the Church's. She entered the convent tricked into a belief that I had been false to her; but I have proved to her that it is otherwise. She had agreed to fly with me, and my uncle, the cardinal, is securing for her a dispensation from her vows."

Raymond told at length the story of his love, and at the end Lorenzo said, "Raymond, there is no one on whom I would bestow Agnes more willingly than on yourself. Pursue your design, and I will accompany you."

Meanwhile, Agnes tremblingly advanced toward the abbot, and in her nervousness let fall the precious letter. She turned to pick it up. The abbot claimed and read it; it was the proposal of Agnes's escape with her lover that very night.

"This letter must to the prioress!" said he sternly.

"Hold father, hold!" cried Agnes, flinging herself at his feet. "Be merciful! Do not doom me to destruction!"

"Hence, unworthy wretch! Where is the prioress?"

The prioress, when she came, gazed upon Agnes with fury. "Away with her to the convent!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Raymond, save me, save me!" shrieked the distracted Agnes. Then, casting upon the abbot a frantic look, "Hear me," she continued, "man of a hard heart! Insolent in your yet unshaken virtue, your day of trial will arrive. Think then upon your cruelty; and despair of pardon!"

_II.--The Abbot's Infatuation_

Leaving the church, Ambrosio bent his steps towards a grotto in the abbey garden, formed in imitation of a hermitage. On reaching the grotto, he found it already occupied. Extended upon one of the seats, lay a man in a melancholy posture, lost in meditation. Ambrosio recognised him; it was Rosario, his favourite novice, a youth of whose origin none knew anything, save that his bearing, and such of his features as accident had discovered--for he seemed fearful of being recognised, and was continually muffled up in his cowl--proved him to be of noble birth.

"You must not indulge this disposition to melancholy, Rosario," said Ambrosio tenderly.

The youth flung himself at Ambrosio's feet.

"Oh, pity me!" he cried. "How willingly would I unveil to you my heart! But I fear------"

"How shall I reassure you? Reveal to me what afflicts you, and I swear that your secret shall be safe in my keeping."

"Father," said Rosario, in faltering accents, "I am a woman!"

The abbot stood still for a moment in astonishment, then turned hastily to go. But the suppliant clasped his knees.