The Tsar was right. Men who desire Death very keenly and bitterly, who
seek the grim tyrant in his very citadel, find him difficult of access,
as a rule.
Something that had been a man came staggering back out of the poisonous
swamps of the delta of the Dobrudja, and--more dead than alive--reached
the port of Kustendje on the Black Sea, what time Protestant England
and Catholic France had allied with the Moslem against Christian
Russia; and Lord Dalgan, Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, and
H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge, were being entertained by Sire my Friend,
at Paris.
As though the out-at-elbows refugee, the borrowing adventurer, the
temporary occupant of the Presidential armchair had never existed,
you are to see him Sire my Friend as the Ally of Great Britain, the
gracious patron and protector of the Sick Man. He had had his will; his
plot had blossomed in this gorgeous flower of International War--the
Allied Fleets were in the Black Sea--France was rent with the shouting
of trumpets and the screaming of bugles; she quaked with the tramping
of cavalry, the ceaseless passing of batteries of artillery, and trains
of wagons and ammunition-carts. And day by day his crowded transports
steamed for the East from Toulon and Brest and Marseilles.
He was happy. The Northern potentate who would not call him
brother--the Army he had bribed with stolen millions to enthrone
him--which he feared, and which openly ridiculed him--the English
Sovereign and her Consort, who had despised and condescended to
him--these were destined to drink of a cup that had taken years to mix.
England’s trust in him entertained him hugely. She took the leap,
with all its tragic possibilities, like a generous horse ridden
by a reckless sportsman at a killing fence; ignoring the deadly
possibilities of the stake, and the barbed wire, and the back-breaking
deep ditch beyond.
To gratitude, good faith, rectitude, loyalty to vows a stranger--all
must smart sooner or later, who had trusted this man.... Thus, France
paid in the end in other things than her virtue for that furious
midnight ride upon the saddle-bow. But her new owner amused her; and
she was prosperous, or seemed to be.
For this was the era of great Booms in zinc, and charcoal, and foreign
bonds, and American steel rails. It was also the age of folly,
flummery, flippancy, and frolic. The ponderous classicism of the Empire
style, the rococo ugliness of the Monarchy, both were kicked into the
dustbin on the arrival of the Second Empire. Gaudy colors, _bizarre_
fashions, gay, sparkling music, _chic_ saucy women, men who amused
themselves--where Sire my Friend reigned, these reigned. Ashtaroth,
Belphegor, and Belial were worshiped at the Tuileries and Compiègne.
But the High-Priest of their mysteries improved Paris if he corrupted
her--that must be allowed.
After Nero, he was possibly the greatest designer of landscape-gardens,
the most gifted layer-out of streets and promenades, that has ever
existed. He inspired Haussman. He dreamed in avenues wide enough
to maneuver cavalry in; he thought in boulevards down which whole
batteries of artillery could sweep. He who had been immured in a prison
loved Freedom, Air, Light, Space--and he gave these good things to his
capital. Also he gave her the Cocodette.
The _lionne_ of 1848--of her we know something.... She was passionate,
wayward, exquisite, and unprincipled. In three words, she was
Henriette. But in exchanging her for the cocodette of the Second
Empire, France paid in the resultant loss of beauty. With her limbs
eased in the steel cage of the crinoline that hid the fault; with
her little hat tilted above her mountains of bleached hair; with her
fringe, her panniers puffed above the artificial deformity that later
became the bustle--with her huge and tasteless lockets and chains,
belts and dog-collars of precious metal--she is a type of the decadence
of the Age of Sire my Friend.
The cocodette was giddy of brain, false from the love of deceit, impure
without passion, hideous in the extreme; and knew not her absurdity
or her ugliness any more than the Frenchwoman of to-day--whom her
English and American sisters ape, in their hobble or harem skirts, and
their waste-paper-basket hats, trimmed with patches of brocade, whole
fowls, and lumps of velvet. Elegance has fled--Grace has departed--Good
Taste conceals her face--Beauty has ceased to exist, in France, since
Religion was abolished. How should it be otherwise when from His
peculiar country, men have driven out God?
When the Athenians lost the sense of loveliness that lies in the pure
vigorous line, that was the commencement of Greek degradation. In
like manner the boneless ugliness called The New Art was a symptom of
disease and decay. Buildings without angles are as faces without noses.
Design that is all curves marks exhaustion in the brain that conceived
it, and impotence in the hand that executed--nothing more.
But Sire my Friend was pleased, and extremely well contented. In the
popular acclamations accorded to H.R.H. the Duke of Bambridge and the
Commander of Britannia’s Forces, their host had had his share. Also,
the Empress’s Monster Ball at the Élysée--given in honor of these
distinguished visitors--had come off successfully. Though M. Chose,
Secretary to the venerable Duchesse de Viellecourt, and Mademoiselle
Mirepoix, amanuensis of the aged and purblind Marquis de l’Autretemps,
had returned their respective employers’ cards, with the intimation
that neither enjoyed the acquaintance of M. and Madame Bonaparte.
All through Good Friday, and its night, and the following day,
sleepless workmen toiled at the Palace of the Élysée; and there rose
under their cracked and bleeding hands a vast and flimsy edifice, of
unseasoned wood and hurriedly-laid brick.... One may regard it as a
typical and apt representation of the Second Empire, when, its walls of
wet plaster covered with satin draperies, their gaping cracks concealed
with gilded moldings, huge mirrors, trophies of arms and garlands of
real and artificial flowers, it stood at length complete and challenged
admiration.
Christ hung upon the Cross--the Tabernacles stood empty of the Blessed
Sacrament--the faithful crowded the black-draped churches--priests,
gaunt with fasting, succeeded one another in the pulpit; but still the
workmen toiled like busy ants, and still the great ballroom went on
growing--in honor of the bluff Protestant Duke, who in his own way,
with a high hat and a black coat, hot-cross buns, a service in church,
and salt fish at dinner, held sacred that Day of Days.
The Soul of Man’s Redeemer, breathed forth on Calvary, passed downwards
on the way to Purgatory, with the saved thief trotting in His footsteps
like a dog. He descended to those regions where souls under penalty
lie writhing in the torture of purifying fires. His tidings of pardon
and salvation fell like cooling dews upon their expiatory anguish, ere
He rose like the sun upon the spirits of the Blessed, walking before
His dawn in the calm fields of Paradise. But before he ascended to His
Throne of Glory He came to comfort a little knot of sorrowing men and
women gathered together in a bare chamber at Jerusalem--and to rejoice
His Mother with the sight of her risen Son.
But the honored guests of the Empire attended a Review on the Champ
de Mars, and inspected the Barracks of the famous Regiment of Guides,
and dined at the Tuileries in state, and entertained Ministers of the
Crown, Foreign Ambassadors, Nobles of the Empire and distinguished
members of the Senate, royally at the British Embassy; and the Monster
Ball went off like an Arabian Night before they departed--amidst the
united strains of massed bands playing the British National Anthem,
and _Partant Pour La Syrie_--and cries of “_Vive la Reine Victoria!_”
“_Vive le Duc!_” “_Vivent les Anglais!_” for Marseilles. They and
their Staffs were banqueted there by Marshal de St. Arnaud and his
Staff--while the great screw-transports, chock-full of men and horses,
guns and stores of all kinds, were scurrying away from Toulon and Brest
and Marseilles as fast as steam could carry them--_en route_ for the
Dardanelles.
And presently--both French and English Commanders-in-Chief with their
Staffs having sailed for Constantinople--Sire my Friend could draw
unhampered breath. Despite his boast of belonging to the genus of
Imperturbables, his pulses had been unpleasantly quickened by something
that had happened. For a moment he had seen the basilisk that Time
and opportunity had hatched out of that egg of his, in danger; he had
known the torture bred of long-meditated, almost-consummated vengeance
that is about to be foiled. But all was well!--prompt measures had
been taken.... Still, it was inconvenient that the man had lived to
return....