The inconvenient thing had happened on the night of the Ball at the
Élysée. Sire my Friend had dined early in private with the Empress--the
dinner at the English Embassy taking place upon that night--and now at
seven of the clock, the fairyland of imitation marble halls and green
gauze grottos filled with real and artificial flowers and illuminated
with blue and pink and yellow Chinese lights, not being appointed to
open before nine-thirty, he was smoking in his peculiar snuggery at
the Tuileries, one of a suite of low-ceiled rooms on the ground-floor
between the Pavillon d’Horloge and the Pavilion de Flore, containing a
splendid collection of arms, many priceless miniatures, and exquisite
articles of furniture and bijouterie and priceless Sèvres that had
belonged to Marie Antoinette. And with him were the Duke de Morny,
Persigny--also elevated to the Peerage--and the Commander-in-Chief of
his Eastern Forces, Marshal de St. Arnaud.
Time and an excessive indulgence in the pleasure of the senses had not
added to the personal attractions of Sire my Friend. He looked--despite
the artistic make-up of his valets and dressers--sick and sleepy,
sluggish and old. His person was soaked with scent; the side of the
middle and the top-joint of the first finger of the right hand were
dyed yellow with perpetual cigarette-smoking. It had played havoc with
his digestion, and his nerves, and his throat.... And the bevy of
enameled, dyed and bewigged _roués_ surrounding him, looked not one
whit better for world’s wear than their master. They bored him by
grumbling--perpetually grumbling.... He had poured out money in floods
upon them, and yet they were not content....
De Morny had had a million--Persigny a million--de Fleury the
appointment of aide-de-camp in chief and half-a-million--Kate Harvey
a quarter-of-a-million and the title of Comtesse de Belletaille.
Only some few who had loved and served him disinterestedly may have
been forgotten in this hour of his prosperity.... And how many of
the Henriettes were left to chew the cud of broken promises and
disappointed hopes....
To more than these he had been prodigal of promises, liberal of vows,
forgetting that these are birds that sooner or later come back to
roost. That oath of the Carbonari was presently to haunt his pillow,
dog his steps with the assassin’s soundless footfall; explode bombs--in
the hour of his triumph--that strewed his fated pathway with the dying
and the dead.
He sat and smoked and ruminated, upon this April night of ’54, much as
he had done upon that November night of ’51, when he had received news
of the laying of the Channel Cable. There was one now that reached from
Marseilles to Constantinople; he could dictate his will by the mouth
of his Ambassador to the Sublime Porte without delay or hindrance; by
tugging at the fiery rein of the live wire he would presently be able
to make his Army curvet or demivolt without exposing himself to the
discomforts of a campaign beyond seas. And the burden of his hidden
thought was that his Star had again befriended him. For when the time
came to broach the great secret, his followers would believe the
master-plan was solely his. There was no one now to start up before him
and claim the credit. Months back he had information.... Today decisive
intelligence had confirmed the report. The officer who had devised the
undertaking, the emissary who had been dispatched to carry out the
indispensable survey and make the secret treaties, was dead.
Dead.... Thenceforth Dunoisse’s vast capacity for toil, his discretion
and silence; his powers of concentration, his geographical,
topographical, and scientific knowledge; his consummate powers of
arrangement and organization, his command of tongues, were lost to his
master at the Tuileries. He was--his great task complete--to have had
high military rank and a great guerdon in money. He had been asked to
name his price, and he had stipulated for One Million One Hundred and
Twenty-Five Thousand Francs. Sire my Friend smiled, knowing this to be
the exact amount of a fortune its owner had squandered--remembering
who had helped Dunoisse to scatter the glittering treasure to the four
winds of the world. He wondered whether Madame de Roux had heard of
the death of her old lover? She came to Court but seldom now, and then
only to those unimportant functions to which the stars of lesser social
magnitude were invited. The violent colors and _bizarre_ fashions of
the Second Empire did not suit her style of beauty--only ugly women
looked really well in them!--or she was getting a little _passée_--the
poor Henriette! She had a new _liaison_--an intrigue with one of the
Generals of the Army of Algeria, recently appointed to the command of
the Fourth Division of his Eastern Forces. It was said that she was to
accompany Grandguerrier on the campaign. Pleasant for de Roux, who was
still at Algiers--very pleasant! The dull eyes of Sire my Friend almost
twinkled as this occurred to him. He smiled, caressing the chin-tuft
that had become an imperial.
Said de Morny, Duke and Peer of France, gracefully masking a yawn with
three long, slim fingers:
“Sire, if Your Majesty has anything amusing to impart to us--and your
smile conveys the idea that you have--we entreat you not to withhold
it. We are all dull, drowsy, and damnably out of spirits!... These
imported fogs of Britain have chilled us to the bone!”
His Imperial Majesty exhaled a cloud of smoke, leaning his long thick
body back in the well-cushioned corner of an Oriental sofa. He wore,
as customary upon gala occasions, the levee uniform of a General
of Division, adorned with many blazing Orders and Stars. His short
legs--clad in white kid knee-breeches fastened with diamond buckles,
white silk stockings, and high-heeled pumps of white patent leather,
also diamond-buckled--were crossed, and as he ruminated he stroked one
well-turned ankle with his dainty womanish hand. He glanced at the hand
appreciatively as he dropped his cigarette-ash on the costly carpet.
Then, barely lifting those sick, faded eyes of his to the face of de
Morny, he answered in his drawling, nasal tones:
“Since my smile must be translated into words, it had at that moment
occurred to me how consummately foolish our British guests would look,
did they know why they were embarking on this Eastern Expedition.” He
caressed his high instep with musing approbation. De Morny said:
“_Sapristi!_ I presume they are no more ignorant than ourselves that
this is a war without an adequate reason. Monseigneur the Duke of
Bambridge, if he be ever to succeed the Earl of Dalgan at the War
Office, must see some Active Service--that is undeniable. M. de St.
Arnaud requires a dress-rehearsal with volleys of real ball-cartridge,
in his _rôle_ of a Marshal of France. Also, your Army is plethoric--its
health requires blood-letting. Beyond these reasons--none that I can
see.... Unless you, Sire, by personally leading your hosts to battle,
intend to follow the glorious example of the Emperor Napoleon the
First?”
Sire my Friend detecting a supercilious smile upon the face of the
speaker, bestowed on him between his narrow lids a glance of fraternal
hate. De Morny--now President of the Legislative Council--carried the
diplomatic swallow-tail of dark blue velvet, heavily encrusted with
silver oak-branches and palm-leaves, upon his tall, well-bred figure,
with the grace and ease that were distinctive of him. He wore the
broad red ribbon of a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor beneath
his single-breasted waistcoat of white cashmere. His white lawn
cravat was a dream of perfection. His long, well-made legs, encased
in silver-striped, faultlessly-cut trousers of white cashmere, and
buckled pumps of black patent leather, nearly as small as those of
Imperial Majesty, were fraught with offense to Sire my Friend, always
sensitively conscious of the shortness of his own.
For this reason that stumpy Jove did not rise to hurl the thunderbolt.
He leaned back, with an exaggerated affectation of indolence, and said
deliberately:
“As a fact, my dear fellow, I weary of the achievements of my glorious
uncle. I am not disposed to emulate them at all! One is not born into
the world for the purpose of copying one’s predecessors.... I prefer
to strike out a line extraordinary--astounding--marvelous--above all,
original and new!”
De Moray merely bowed, but the bow was to Sire my Friend superlatively
offensive. He rose up, forgetful of his disadvantages of stature, and
said, looking round upon the dyed heads of hair and painted elderly
faces surmounting the brilliantly laced and bedizened uniforms--and as
of habit, assuming his Napoleonic attitude.
“These English are bound to the East to carry out my Mission--to
fulfill the destiny presaged by my Fortunate Star. You, my brother, who
found it inconvenient to know me when that Star was below the horizon,
have since accused me to your confidants of abrogating to myself the
credit of successes that others have helped me to achieve. You taunt
me perpetually with the desire to emulate the First Napoleon. Well! I
shall show you soon--very soon--some things accomplished that he could
not do. I will avenge at one blow the catastrophe of the Moskva, the
defeat of Waterloo, and the humiliation of St. Helena. How? Did you ask
how? By all means you shall learn!”
He laughed, and that outrageous mirth did such violence to the sense of
hearing that even de Moray shuddered, and St. Arnaud made a clicking
sound of dismay with his tongue against his teeth. The speaker resumed,
looking glassily about him:
“My uncle would have declared War against the nation he designed to
crush and conquer. His nephew, wiser than he, will share with her
the apple of amity, cut, Borgia-fashion, with a knife poisoned only
on one side! Needed only to further my plan that Russia should pick
a quarrel with Turkey. The old question of her authority over the
Eastern Christians--the smoldering grudge in the matter of her claim to
precedence of admission to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher--served me
excellently! And I have championed the cause of the Sultan--I take the
field against the Northern Power, with England my Ally!”
He lifted the drooping lids of those eyes of his, and they were dim and
lack-luster no longer. They blazed with a radiance that was infernal
and malign. He said--and the breathless silence of his hearers was
intoxicating joy to him:
“And, blinded by that stiff-necked pride of hers, she will walk into
a death-trap, planned and devised and perfected by the man she has
despised! Russia shall have supremacy over the Danubian Principalities.
I may even cede her Constantinople--I am not quite certain....
But Great Britain shall be France’s footstool and East India her
warming-pan!”
He fancied de Morny about to interrupt, and said, turning upon him with
a tigerish suavity:
“Proofs--you require proofs! Assuredly, you shall have them. Be good
enough to follow me. This way, Messieurs!”
He led the way to a room at the end of the suite, the walls of which
were hung with maps, plans and diagrams, and lined with bookshelves
and presses; whose tables were loaded with models of public buildings,
steam-boilers, and engines of artillery; and where the gilded cornices
and moldings were chipped with rifle and revolver bullets, as had been
those of the smaller cabinet at the Élysée. Lamps burning under green
shades illuminated this place of labor. He took a Bramah key from under
the setting of a signet ring he wore, unlocked a press and racked back
the sliding doors in their grooves with a gesture of the theater. The
alphabetically-numbered shelves were loaded with papers. He said,
indicating these:
“You see there the fruit of three years of unremitting labor, performed
in secrecy. To-night there is an end to secrecy. I hardly thought the
hour would come so soon!”
He took from a compartment of the shelves two square sheets of yellow,
semi-transparent tracing-paper, and turned to face his audience exactly
as an actor would have done upon the stage. He was master of the
situation--he was making the great disclosure just as he had mentally
rehearsed it. Not for nothing had he trusted in his Destiny and his
Star.
“The sealed orders you, M. de St. Arnaud, were to have received from
me upon your departure for Marseilles to-morrow,” he said, addressing
the Commander-in-Chief of his Eastern Army, “would have made you sole
participator in my secret. Yet I feel no hesitation or reluctance at
enlarging the circle of my confidence,” he added, as he encountered
the satirically-smiling glance of de Morny. “To betray me would be an
act of madness. For--insignificant as I may appear--I am the Empire!
Remember that, Messieurs!”
He delicately laid one of the semi-transparent, crackling papers upon
the lamp-illumined Russia leather surface of a writing-table near him.
A pencil tracing of just such a map of Eastern Europe as was habitually
in use at his Ministry of War, and in his Military Institutes--only
that the tracing was enriched with added lines, diagrams and notes,
in red and blue and various-colored inks. He said, as his followers
crowded to look at this--and now there was a shiny gray dampness on his
cheeks and forehead, and he secretly dried the palms of his hands with
his delicate handkerchief:
“These numbered circles and squares in colored inks represent depots
of timber, cattle, salted provisions, forage, and grain, established
by me--under private names of ownership--at Sinope, Bourgas, Varna,
Kustendje, and other places on the shores of the Black Sea. So that,
in the case of an Army of Invasion marching from Varna towards the
frontiers of Bessarabia, or maintaining a siege, shall we say?--of any
fortified harbor on the coasts of the Crimea----You are surprised, M.
de Morny? That is gratifying indeed!”
De Morny had given vent to a long shrill street-boy’s whistle, about as
expressive of astonishment as it could be. But he did not possess the
quality of reverence. He sang, in English, thrusting his hands into the
pockets of his wide-hipped, silver-striped, white cashmere pantaloons,
and executing a _cancan_ step cleverly and neatly:
“That’s the way the milliard went!
Pop! goes the weasel!”
and ceased as Sire my Friend went on, rolling his
handkerchief--dampened with his hidden agony of exultation--into a ball
between his palms:
“Immense contracts for the further supply of cattle, provisions,
cereals and fodder to France, have been signed by the heads of
the principal firms in the Levant and Eastern Europe. Much of the
land-transport throughout the Danubian Principalities had already been
chartered by Russian agents--a partial check, I will admit, to my views
in this direction. Yet thousands of wagons, arabas, telegas, and other
vehicles; hundreds of teams of horses, yokes of bullocks, strings
of baggage-mules, are at my sole disposal--their proprietors having
received liberal payment on account, and having before them the hope of
treatment still more generous. Do I weary you? Am I prosy? Do stop me
if I bore you!” entreated Sire my Friend.
Nobody stirred or spoke. He went on, savoring his triumph, tasting each
sentence as a morsel of some delicate dish:
“Without spies, informers, interpreters, and agents of all grades,
an Invading Army is blindfold and helpless. Thus, the assistance
of pachas, boyards, consuls, attachés, secretaries, postmasters,
innkeepers, will be ours, having been secured on liberal terms. Every
Commissariat-clerk, commercial traveler and correspondent who could be
bought to serve my purpose has found in me a ready purchaser. And every
Turk or Tartar has made oath upon the beard of the Prophet--every Jew
is sworn upon the Ark of the Tabernacle--every Bulgarian is pledged
upon the Blessed Sacrament--not to supply the English with wood for
gabions or shelters, with provisions, grain, fodder, horses, wagons or
carts. Wherefore, if they need these things, they must draw supplies
from Great Britain, or from Italy. And, failing these sources----”
The speaker shrugged again, and said with a sardonic affectation of
humility:
“For the unworthy successor of my glorious uncle, it seems to me that I
have hit upon a very good idea!”
He smiled upon them, saying it, and between that swelling sense of
achievement, and his inward laughter at having thus duped and distanced
those who thought they swayed and guided him, he seemed to increase in
stature and gain in dignity. Even de Morny was momentarily bankrupt of
a gibe to throw at him. De Fleury could only gape and goggle at him.
St. Arnaud said, in a voice broken by surprise and admiration:
“My master--my Emperor, you are greater than Napoleon the Great!”
Persigny went over and knelt down upon the carpet before him. He bent
over and kissed one of the little diamond-buckled pumps fervently, as a
Dervish might have kissed the Holy Stone of Mecca. He said, in a voice
that shook and wobbled:
“I say that you are neither my master or my Emperor. From this moment
you are my god!”
“Absurd!” said Sire my Friend. But he smiled as Nero might have smiled
upon Tigellinus, and said, still smiling:
“Wait--wait! I have not told everything! You have yet to look at the
second chart!”
He laid it down upon the first, which it exactly resembled, save that
the numbered rounds and squares indicating the depots were missing,
and that along the conjectural route of the Army of Invasion certain
areas were staked off with green or blue or vermilion dots, and labeled
“Malarious,” or “Insalubrious,” or “Salubrious,” as the case might be,
and others “Pestilential,” in a tremulous, uncertain handwriting that
told its story to at least one pair of eyes there. Looking up with a
vexatious expression of cynical intelligence on his well-bred, rakish
countenance, said de Morny:
“And your man, your administrative, polyglot genius who planned
and carried out”--he tapped the first chart with a polished
finger-nail--“this masterpiece of organization, and later made this
survey of Death’s garden--what has become of Dunoisse?” He added: “For
this is Dunoisse’s handwriting--and two years ago he went East upon
your business, and has not since been heard of. Did he die out there
in Death’s garden? or--as the possessor of an inconvenient amount of
secret information--have you quodded him in some snug dungeon at the
Fortress of Vincennes, or the Prison of Mazas? Or have you had him
shot, or scragged him, before putting him to bed in quicklime blankets?
_Kif--kif--burrico!_--a quietus, either way!”
Horribly meaningful as the words were, the gesture accompanying them
was even more significant. It brought a dull, scorched flush into
the pasty cheeks of Sire my Friend. But he maintained his boasted
imperturbability, and answered, with his quiet smile of menace:
“It pleases you to be offensive. Pursue your vein if you imagine
it will serve you--I am indifferent to your opinion of me! As for
General Dunoisse--who, as you rightly guess, acted as my instrument
in carrying out these comprehensive arrangements for Commissariat
and Transport--who completed this sanitary survey of the debatable
ground--that unhappy officer expired of fever in the swamps of the
Dobrudja, some months ago. These charts were brought me by his
confidential secretary--one Michaëlis Giusko--to whom the dying man
entrusted them.” He added, in answer to de Morny’s smile: “Your
perspicuity is not at fault.... Lest his silence and discretion should
fail us at this crucial moment--M. Giusko is in safe keeping--where,
there is no need to say!... As for this second chart of the Unseen
Dangers, by following its guidance our Army will not encamp within
insalubrious or pestilential areas. While our Allies--unless they have
taken similar precautions--are likely more or less to suffer!” He ended
meditatively, stroking his imperial:
“We share with them the Borgian apple--we take the half that is not
poisoned. The whole thing is simple. It is not we who die!”
He opened his eyes widely and looked upon his followers. It seemed to
them that through those blazing windows they saw down into Hell. As he
said again how simple the thing was, a rattling oath of the canteen and
the barrack-room escaped from de Fleury, that caused the green shades
of the table-lamps to shiver in their gilded sockets. Persigny’s teeth
were chattering, though the April night was almost sultry. De Morny
broke out peevishly as he wiped his clammy face:
“_Zut!_--there is no doubt you have got them in the treacle! But why
did your Majesty not wait to tell us this until Lord Dalgan and the
Duke had left for Marseilles? I am sick in my stomach with funk,
absolutely!--at the thought of doing the civil to them and their men
to-night!”
“Be uncivil, then,” advised his Imperial master. “Between your
compliments and your insults there is so subtle a distinction that
neither the Duke or Dalgan will be the wiser, you may be sure!”
St. Arnaud roared at this mordant witticism. De Morny was about
to launch a return-shaft, when there came a gentle, significant
knocking--not upon the door through which they had previously passed,
but another, communicating with the outer gallery.
“Enter!” commanded Sire my Friend, for the knocker had given the
prescribed number of taps that heralded his Private Military Secretary.
And the door opened, and there entered, gently closing it behind him,
the very man who had died in the marshes of the Dobrudja months before.