France had not taken kindly to the notion of a _plebiscite_. The good
city of Paris had had an indigestion of proclamations--was beginning to
suspect the motives of her leading citizen. And the capital roared and
buzzed like a beehive of angry bees.
He needed very much to be Dictator for ten years at least, the little
man with the lank, drab hair, arrayed in the uniform of a General,
adorned with the red _cordon_ and the jeweled Grand Cross and Star
of the Legion of Honor, who sat, upon this night of November, 1851,
in a velvet armchair before the blazing wood-fire in his small
private cabinet upon the ground-floor, with the tips of his spurred,
wonderfully polished little boots upon the bar of a sumptuous,
palatial fender of solid silver-gilt. Twelve millions of francs _per
annum_ for nearly four years had left him deep in debt and horribly
embarrassed. When he should drive out of the courtyard of the Elysée at
the expiration of his tenure of office, the gaping jaws of a debtor’s
prison were ready to engulf him. He knew that very well.
And he waited, on the horns of a dilemma, with the son of his mother,
who secretly detested him; and Fleury, now his senior aide-de-camp, and
St. Arnaud, his War Minister, a lean, gaunt, dyed and painted personage
who had once been an actor at a suburban theater, who had served in the
Foreign Legion as a private soldier, who had seen much service, won
promotion, and had now been recalled from Algeria by his friend. For
the purpose of showing Parisians how warfare is conducted by civilized
forces against Kabyles and Arabs and Moors.
Money, money!
As the neat white fingers of France’s First Citizen twisted comic
figures out of paper, taken from a little inlaid table beside him where
writing-materials were, his brain was busy with this vexing question
of how to get more cash. Hundreds of millions of francs had been
expended during his tenure of office. The china, pictures and other Art
treasure of the Crown had been converted into bullion. The diamonds
of the Crown and the Crown forests had become gold in the crucible
of the auction-room. And--presto! the vast sums thus realized had
vanished--nobody could exactly indicate how or whither--it was a puzzle
to baffle Houdin. Nor could anyone point out the winners of the chief
prizes advertized in the Lottery of the Golden Ingots, which had, with
much tootling of official trumpets and banging of official drums, been
drawn some days before.
Money!...
There was a reception upon this particular evening: the little Palace
and its courtyard blazed with gas. A double line of carriages rolled
ceaselessly in and out of high gilded gates, their twinkling lamps
reflected in the cuirasses of the guard-of-honor. A steady stream
of fire-worshipers, anxious to prostrate their foreheads in the dust
before their god and luminary, rolled up the imposing flight of
red-carpeted doorsteps and through the gilded vestibule to the small
reception-rooms. Stars and Orders were not plentiful; Ambassadors
were conspicuous by their absence: the Minister for the United
States being the only exception to this rule. But lovely women were
present; the whole galaxy of the Élysée scintillated in the heavens,
and there were plenty of young attachés of Legation and clerks of
the Diplomatic Corps. And silks and satins, feathers and diamonds,
flaunted by gorgeous cocodettes of the fashionable world, mingled there
with cotton-backed velvet, paste jewelry and cheap book-muslin; and
gold-laced uniforms twinkling with decorations, jostled the black coat
with the tricolor rosette, whose wearer had tramped in from Montrouge
or Menilmontant to save a ’bus fare, and had stowed his overcoat and
goloshes with the shawls and overshoes and umbrellas of his women-kind
away behind the pedestal of some vestibule-bronze or group of statuary,
to avoid the fee that must otherwise be paid to one of the large,
stately footmen in the Presidential livery, in return for a wooden
counter and the assumption of responsibility for these discarded
coverings.
* * * * *
It was nearly midnight, and yet the sun had not risen; the magnificent
band of the --th Hussars, stationed in the splendid gilt ballroom where
the Prince-President had as a child witnessed the second abdication of
the Emperor Napoleon, had not yet crashed into _Partant Pour La Syrie_.
It had been given out that Monseigneur was delayed by the non-arrival
of dispatches, detained by urgent affairs of State. Detectives,
mingling with the throng of guests in the reception-rooms, kept their
ears open for unfavorable comments: their eyes skinned for the possible
interception of significant glances. Of which, had they but chosen to
step outside the courtyard-gates, they might have gathered store.
For to be plain, Paris was in a state of ferment and disruption.
Disaffection prevailed. Insurrection was rising to its old high-water
mark. And the cries were: “Down with Bonaparte! Long live the Republic!
Long live Law! Long live the Constitution! Down with the Army, the
paid tool of the President who wants to be Emperor in spite of all his
oaths!” And the ganglion of narrow streets that made the center of the
city’s nervous system were being rapidly blocked by barricades built
higher than before....
What wonder if at this juncture the crying need of Monseigneur for
money opened a Gargantuan mouth for the bottle. Without money at
this juncture, the contemplated masterstroke of policy must fall as
harmlessly as a blow from Harlequin’s lathen sword.
Money, money, money!...
And there were twenty-five millions of francs, belonging to the Orleans
Princes, lying in the Bank of France, which by a Presidential Decree,
countersigned by the Home Secretary Count de Morny, might be profitably
sequestrated. And, contained in a series of great painted and
emblazoned deed-boxes, occupying a row of shelves in the strong-room
at the Ministry of the Interior, were the title-deeds to estates of
the value of three hundred thousand millions more, vested in the hands
of mere Trustees; who might argue and protest, but could, if it proved
necessary, be gagged. And de Morny had just threatened to resign the
Home Secretaryship if Monseigneur persisted in his intention of laying
violent hands on these unconsidered trifles--an exhibition of obstinacy
both ill-timed and in bad taste.
“Who the devil, my dear fellow,” he asked, “will bid for cities,
forests, palaces and villages, even if you put these up to auction at
reasonable prices, when the titles to these properties must remain--to
put it delicately--uncertain? A new Government may arise which suffers
from the excess of scruples. In that case the estates will be returned
to those whose property they are.”
De Morny, with his insufferable air of superiority, and the grand
manner which indubitably belonged to him, lounged against the
mantelshelf and looked down on Monseigneur. St. Arnaud, his long,
lank form arrayed in the uniform of a Marshal, encrusted with bullion
and blazing with decorations, lay on a sofa, sucking at the jeweled
mouthpiece of a _chibuk_. De Fleury puffed out his cheeks as he blew
cigarette-smoke into the fluffy, puzzled face of a gray Persian kitten
that had climbed upon the shelf of an ivory cabinet loaded with costly
china, and spat as he teased it with the plumes of his cocked hat.
“Who will buy? The answer is cut and dried. No one! And this
appropriation--as a first flight of the Imperial eagle--will make you
infernally unpopular; not to warn you of this would be,” said de Moray,
“a _laches_ upon my part. Every petty shopkeeper who has two thousand
francs in the savings-bank--every peasant who has a little plot of
land, will say to himself: ‘This fellow sticks at nothing. Poor devil
though I am, I may be the next to be plundered.’ If you carry out this
project of yours, it will not be with my assistance. I will help you
take an Empire very willingly, but not to plunder a strong-box.”
He looked at his watch, bowed with his easy grace, and went out. The
man who was his brother, and envied him, following the tall departing
figure with eyes of sickly hate.
“M. de Morny follows the cynical advice that is given in the Gospel of
St. Luke,” he said with a bitter sneer. “He would keep on bowing-terms
with the Princes of the House of Orleans, so that, should I fail, they
may receive him into their favor. His is the principle of hedge and
trim. Well, we know his breaking-point! In the event of his kicking
over the traces,” he spoke the words in English, a familiar language to
Persigny and de Fleury, “there is another upon whom I can depend.”
And he exchanged a look of intelligence with Persigny, his shadow. For
the ex-sergeant-quartermaster of dragoons would not fail him, he knew,
upon a point of honor or at a pinch of conscience. Persigny was without
these inconvenient things.
Meanwhile the door flew open again to re-admit de Morny, who insisted
that the night grew old; that the reception-rooms were crowded to
suffocation; that the long-delayed appearance of the President had
provoked unfavorable comparisons, and created a bad impression; that he
must come without delay.
“Let them wait!” he said, with a dull flash of ill-humor, in answer to
the expostulations of Persigny. “Who are they, that they should not be
kept waiting? Whom have we? A damnable rabble of bankers, stockbrokers,
judges, generals, senators, Representatives and their wives and
mistresses.... You know very well that what the English would call the
‘best people’ are those who do not come....”
Which was true. The private secretaries of the aged Duchesse de
Veillecour, of the Faubourg St. Honoré, and of the venerable Marquis
de l’Autretemps, being invariably instructed to return M. Bonaparte’s
card of invitation, with the intimation that their respective employers
had not the honor of knowing the gentleman who had sent it,--or with no
intimation at all....
“Let them wait!” he said again. “Am I not waiting? For this message
from Walewski--for this ultimatum of my Lord Walmerston--for this
establishment of the submarine electric telegraph between England and
France. That gutta-percha covered wire stretching between the cave
under the South Foreland at Dover and the cliff station at Cape Grisnez
is the jugular vein of my whole system of policy. Had it not broken
twice, should I not have prepared Paris with my proclamations--should I
not have struck the blow?”
He stuck out his chin as he rolled his head upon the cushioned back
of his armchair and stared at the painted ceiling, and went on in his
droning voice:
“That is, if I had had money--sufficient funds at my disposal. That a
man like me should want money at such a moment proves that the Devil is
a fool.”
St. Arnaud turned his long emaciated body and sagacious grayhound-face
towards the speaker. The sofa creaked beneath his weight, and one of
his gold spurs, catching in the costly brocade cover, tore it with a
little ugly, sickening sound. He said, stroking the dyed tuft upon his
chin with a gaunt pale hand glittering with rings of price:
“Monseigneur, pray do the personage you mention better justice. He
really has served you better than you think!”
He had. The steam-packet _Goliath_ of Dover, towing the ancient
cable-hulk _Blazer_, the latter rolling fearfully, with a direfully
seasick crew, and a hold containing but a few hundred yards or so of
the twenty-seven miles of cable which had been smoothly paid out over
the Channel sea-floor, had dropped her anchors off Cape Grisnez an hour
before sunset; and the end of the wire-bound rope on which so much
depended having been landed at the village of Sangatte, distant some
three miles or so from Calais, communication had been established with
the operators in the cave under the South Foreland lighthouse at Dover.
And a gun had been fired from the Castle; and telegrams announcing the
fact had been sent by the Chief Magistrate of Dover to the Queen and
the Prince Consort, the Duke of Wellington, the King of Prussia, and
a few other important personages. And the Mayor had then despatched a
message of congratulation to the French Prince-President, which was
being transmitted to Paris by means of Ampère’s coil and needle, and
the under-ground wire that followed the track of the Great Northern
Railway Line.
But meanwhile a courier from the Embassy of France in Belgrave Square,
London, chilled and hoarse from rapid traveling in the wintry weather,
had arrived with the letter from Walewski. And when the neat white
hands for which it was destined had snatched the envelope from the
sumptuous golden salver upon which it was respectfully presented by the
President’s second aide-de-camp, its contents proved discouraging, to
say the least.
Count Walewski had pleaded his relative’s cause with eloquence. The
enclosure would prove with what result.
A check for two thousand pounds, enfolded in a sheet scrawled with
a brief intimation in my Lord Walmerston’s stiff, characteristic
handwriting, that no more of the stuff was to be had.