THE ATTACK.
On M. Hardy's learning from the confidential go-between of the lovers,
that his mistress had been taken away by her mother, he turned from Rodin
and dashed away in a post carriage. At the same moment, as loud as the
rattle of the wheels, there arose the shouts of a band of workmen and
rioters, hired by the Jesuit's emissaries, coming to attack Hardy's
operatives. An old grudge long existing between them and a rival
manufacturer's--Baron Tripeaud--laborers, fanned the flames. When M.
Hardy had left the factory, Rodin, who was not prepared for this sudden
departure, returned slowly to his hackney-coach; but he stopped suddenly,
and started with pleasure and surprise, when he saw, at some distance,
Marshall Simon and his father advancing towards one of the wings of the
Common Dwelling-house; for an accidental circumstance had so far delayed
the interview of the father and son.
"Very well!" said Rodin. "Better and better! Now, only let my man have
found out and persuaded little Rose-Pompon!"
And Rodin hastened towards his hackney-coach. At this moment, the wind,
which continued to rise, brought to the ear of the Jesuit the war song of
the approaching Wolves.
The workman was in the garden. The marshal said to him, in a voice of
such deep emotion that the old man started; "Father, I am very unhappy."
A painful expression, until then concealed, suddenly darkened the
countenance of the marshal.
"You unhappy?" cried father Simon, anxiously, as he pressed nearer to the
marshal.
"For some days, my daughters have appeared constrained in manner, and
lost in thought. During the first moments of our re-union, they were mad
with joy and happiness. Suddenly, all has changed; they are becoming more
and more sad. Yesterday, I detected tears in their eyes; then deeply
moved, I clasped them in my arms, and implored them to tell me the cause
of their sorrow. Without answering, they threw themselves on my neck, and
covered my face with their tears."
"It is strange. To what do you attribute this alteration?"
"Sometimes, I think I have not sufficiently concealed from them the grief
occasioned me by the loss of their mother, and they are perhaps miserable
that they do not suffice for my happiness. And yet (inexplicable as it
is) they seem not only to understand, but to share my sorrow. Yesterday,
Blanche said to me: 'How much happier still should we be, if our mother
were with us!--'"
"Sharing your sorrow, they cannot reproach you with it. There must be
some other cause for their grief."
"Yes," said the marshal, looking fixedly at his father; "yes--but to
penetrate this secret--it would be necessary not to leave them."
"What do you mean?"
"First learn, father, what are the duties which would keep me here; then
you shall know those which may take me away from you, from my daughters,
and from my other child."
"What other child?"
"The son of my old friend, the Indian Prince."
"Djalma? Is there anything the matter with him?"
"Father, he frightens me. I told you, father, of his mad and unhappy
passion for Mdlle. de Cardoville."
"Does that frighten you, my son?" said the old man, looking at the
marshal with surprise. "Djalma is only eighteen, and, at that age, one
love drives away another."
"You have no idea of the ravages which the passion has already made in
the ardent, indomitable boy; sometimes, fits of savage ferocity follow
the most painful dejection. Yesterday, I came suddenly upon him; his eyes
were bloodshot, his features contracted with rage; yielding to an impulse
of mad furry, he was piercing with his poinard a cushion of red cloth,
whilst he exclaimed, panting for breath, 'Ha blood!--I will have blood!'
'Unhappy boy!' I said to him, 'what means this insane passion?' 'I'm
killing the man!' replied he, in a hollow and savage voice: it is thus he
designates his supposed rival."
"There is indeed something terrible," said the old man, "in such a
passion, in such a heart."
"At other times," resumed the marshal, "it is against Mdlle. de
Cardoville that his rage bursts forth; and at others, against himself. I
have been obliged to remove his weapons, for a man who came with him from
Java, and who appears much attached to him, has informed me that he
suspected him of entertaining some thoughts of suicide."
"Unfortunate boy!"
"Well, father," said Marshal Simon, with profound bitterness; "it is at
the moment when my daughters and my adopted son require all my
solicitude, that I am perhaps on the eve of quitting them."
"Of quitting them?"
"Yes, to fulfil a still more sacred duty than that imposed by friendship
or family," said the marshal, in so grave and solemn a tone, that his
father exclaimed, with deep emotion: "What can this duty be?"
"Father," said the marshal, after remaining a moment in thoughtful
silence, "who made me what I am? Who gave me the ducal title, and the
marshal's baton?"
"Napoleon."
"For you, the stern republican, I know that he lost all his value, when
from the first citizen of a Republic he became an emperor.
"I cursed his weakness," said Father Simon, sadly; "the demi-god sank
into a man."
"But for me, father--for me, the soldier, who have always fought beside
him, or under his eye--for me, whom he raised from the lowest rank in the
army to the highest--for me, whom he loaded with benefits and marks of
affection--for me, he was more than a hero, he was a friend--and there
was as much gratitude as admiration in my idolatry for him. When he was
exiled, I would fain have shared his exile; they refused me that favor;
then I conspired, then I drew my sword against those who had robbed his
son of the crown which France had given him."
"And, in your position, you did well, Pierre; without sharing your
admiration, I understood your gratitude. The projects of exile, the
conspiracies--I approved them all--you know it."
"Well, then, that disinherited child, in whose name I conspired seventeen
years ago, is now of an age to wield his father's sword."
"Napoleon II!" exclaimed the old man, looking at his son with surprise
and extreme anxiety; "the king of Rome!"
"King? no; he is no longer king. Napoleon? no; he is no longer Napoleon.
They have given him some Austrian name, because the other frightened
them. Everything frightens them. Do you know what they are doing with the
son of the Emperor?" resumed the marshal, with painful excitement. "They
are torturing him--killing him by inches!"
"Who told you this?"
"Somebody who knows, whose words are but too true. Yes; the son of the
Emperor struggles with all his strength against a premature death. With
his eyes turned towards France, he waits--he waits--and no one comes--no
one--out of all the men that his father made as great as they once were
little, not one thinks of that crowned child, whom they are stifling,
till he dies."
"But you think of him?"
"Yes; but I had first to learn--oh! there is no doubt of it, for I have
not derived all my information from the same source--I had first to learn
the cruel fate of this youth, to whom I also swore allegiance; for one
day, as I have told you, the Emperor, proud and loving father as he was,
showed him to me in his cradle, and said: 'My old friend, you will be to
the son what you have been to the father; who loves us, loves our
France.'"
"Yes, I know it. Many times you have repeated those words to me, and,
like yourself, I have been moved by them."
"Well, father! suppose, informed of the sufferings of the son of the
Emperor, I had seen--with the positive certainty that I was not
deceived--a letter from a person of high rank in the court of Vienna,
offering to a man that was still faithful to the Emperor's memory, the
means of communicating with the king of Rome, and perhaps of saving him
from his tormentors--"
"What next?" said the workman, looking fixedly at his son. "Suppose
Napoleon II. once at liberty--"
"What next?" exclaimed the marshal. Then he added, in a suppressed voice:
"Do you think, father, that France is insensible to the humiliations she
endures? Do you think that the memory of the Emperor is extinct? No, no;
it is, above all, in the days of our country's degredation, that she
whispers that sacred name. How would it be, then, were that name to rise
glorious on the frontier, reviving in his son? Do you not think that the
heart of all France would beat for him?"
"This implies a conspiracy--against the present government--with Napoleon
II. for a watchword," said the workman. "This is very serious."
"I told you, father, that I was very unhappy; judge if it be not so,"
cried the marshal. "Not only I ask myself, if I ought to abandon my
children and you, to run the risk of so daring an enterprise, but I ask
myself if I am not bound to the present government, which, in
acknowledging my rank and title, if it bestowed no favor, at least did me
an act of justice. How shall I decide?--abandon all that I love, or
remain insensible to the tortures of Emperor--of that Emperor to the son
of the whom I owe everything--to whom I have sworn fidelity, both to
himself and child? Shall I lose this only opportunity, perhaps, of saving
him, or shall I conspire in his favor? Tell me, if I exaggerate what I
owe to the memory of the Emperor? Decide for me, father! During a whole
sleepless night, I strove to discover, in the midst of this chaos, the
line prescribed by honor; but I only wandered from indecision to
indecision. You alone, father--you alone, I repeat, can direct me."
After remaining for some moments in deep thought, the old man was about
to answer, when some person, running across the little garden, opened the
door hastily, and entered the room in which were the marshal and his
father. It was Olivier, the young workman, who had been able to effect
his escape from the village in which the Wolves had assembled.
"M. Simon! M. Simon!" cried he, pale, and panting for breath. "They are
here--close at hand. They have come to attack the factory."
"Who?" cried the old man, rising hastily.
"The Wolves, quarrymen, and stone-cutters, joined on the road by a crowd
of people from the neighborhood, and vagabonds from town. Do you not hear
them? They are shouting, 'Death to the Devourers!'"
The clamor was indeed approaching, and grew more and more distinct.
"It is the same noise that I heard just now," said the marshal, rising in
his turn.
"There are more than two hundred of them, M. Simon," said Olivier; "they
are armed with clubs and stones, and unfortunately the greater part of
our workmen are in Paris. We are not above forty here in all; the women
and children are already flying to their chambers, screaming for terror.
Do you not hear them?"
The ceiling shook beneath the tread of many hasty feet.
"Will this attack be a serious one?" said the marshal to his father, who
appeared more and more dejected.
"Very serious," said the old man; "there is nothing more fierce than
these combats between different unions; and everything has been done
lately to excite the people of the neighborhood against the factory."
"If you are so inferior in number," said the marshal, "you must begin by
barricading all the doors--and then--"
He was unable to conclude. A burst of ferocious cries shook the windows
of the room, and seemed so near and loud, that the marshal, his father,
and the young workman, rushed out into the little garden, which was
bounded on one side by a wall that separated it from the fields. Suddenly
whilst the shouts redoubled in violence, a shower of large stones,
intended to break the windows of the house, smashed some of the panes on
the first story, struck against the wall, and fell into the garden, all
around the marshal and his father. By a fatal chance, one of these large
stones struck the old man on the head. He staggered, bent forward, and
fell bleeding into the arms of Marshal Simon, just as arose from without,
with increased fury, the savage cries of, "Death to the Devourers!"