THE SONG OF FREEDOM
Revolution! The flame-winged Fury that swoops down on a people like
a sudden visitation of God, with the movement of a storm, and the
devastation of a plague in one! Who shall say how, or where, the seed
is sown that springs so swiftly to such thick harvest! Who can trace its
beginnings--and who can predict its end! Tragic and terrible as its work
has always seemed to the miserable and muddle-headed human units, whose
faults and follies, whose dissoluteness and neglect of the highest
interests of the people, are chiefly to blame for the birth of this
Monster, it is nevertheless Divine Law, that, when any part of God’s
Universe-House is deliberately made foul by the dwellers in it, then
must it be cleansed,--and Revolution is the burning of the rubbish,--the
huge bonfire in which old abuses blazon their destruction to an amazed
and terror-stricken world. Yet there have been moments, or periods, in
history, when the threatening conflagration could have been stayed and
turned back from its course,--when the useless shedding of blood might
have been foregone--when the fierce passions of the people might have
been soothed and pacified, and when Justice might have been nobly done
and catastrophe averted, if there had been but one brave man,--one
only!--and that man a King! But in nearly all the convulsive throes of
nations, kings have proved themselves the weakest, tamest, most cowardly
and ineffectual of all the heads of the time--ready and willing enough
to sacrifice the lives of thousands of brave and devoted men to their
own cause, but never prepared to sacrifice themselves. Hence the cause
of the triumph of Democracy over effete Autocracy. Kings may not be
more than men,--but, certes, they should never be less. They should not
practise vices of which the very day-labourer whom they employ, would be
ashamed; nor should they flaunt their love of sensuality and intrigue in
the faces of their subjects as a ‘Royal example’ and distinctive ‘lead’
to vulgar licentiousness. The loftier the position, the greater the
responsibility;--and a monarch who voluntarily lowers the social
standard in his realm has lost more adherents than could possibly be
slain in his defence on the field of honour.
The King who plays his part as the hero of this narrative, was now fully
aware in his own mind and conscience of the thousands of opportunities
he had missed and wasted on his way to the Throne when Heir-Apparent.
Since the day of his ‘real coronation,’ when as he had expressed it
to his thoughts, he had ‘crowned himself with his own resolve,’ he had
studied men, manners, persons and events, to deep and serious purpose.
He had learned much, and discovered more. He had been, in a moral sense,
conquered by his son, Prince Humphry, who had proved a match for him in
his determined and honourable marriage for love, and love only,--though
born heir to all the conventions and hypocrisies of a Throne. He,--in
his day,--had lacked the courage and truth that this boy had shown.
And now, by certain means known best to himself, he had fathomed an
intricate network of deception and infamy among the governing heads
of the State. He had convinced himself in many ways of the unblushing
dishonesty and fraudulent self-service of Carl Pérousse. And--yet--with
all this information stored carefully up in his brain he, to all
appearances, took no advantage of it, and did nothing remarkable,--save
the one act which had been so much talked about--the refusal of land
in his possession to the Jesuits for a ‘religious’ (and political)
settlement. This independent course of procedure had resulted in his
excommunication from the Church. Of his ‘veto’ against an intended war,
scarcely anything was known. Only the Government were aware of the part
he had taken in that matter,--the Government and--the Money-market! But
the time was now ripe for further movement; and in the deep and almost
passionate interest he had recently learned to take in the affairs of
the actual People, he was in no humour for hesitation.
He had mapped out in his brain a certain plan of action, and he was
determined to go through with it. The more so, as now a new and close
interest had incorporated itself with his life,--an emotion so deep
and tender and overwhelming, that he scarcely dared to own it to
himself,--scarcely ventured to believe that he, deprived of true love
so long, should now be truly loved for himself, at last! But on this he
seldom allowed his mind to dwell,--except when quite alone,--in the deep
silences of night;--when he gave his soul up to the secret sweetness
which had begun to purify and ennoble his innermost nature,--when he saw
visioned before him a face,--warm with the passion of a love so grand
and unselfish that it drew near to a likeness of the Divine;--a love
that asked nothing, and gave everything, with the beneficent glory of
the sunlight bestowing splendour on the earth. His lonely moments,
which were few, were all the time he devoted to this brooding luxury of
meditation, and though his heart beat like a boy’s, and his eyes grew
dim with tenderness, as in fancy he dreamed of joy that might be, and
that yet still more surely might never be his,--his determined mind,
braced and bent to action, never faltered for a second in the new
conceptions he had formed of his duty to his people, who, as he now
considered, had been too long and too cruelly deceived.
Hence, something like an earthquake shock sent its tremor through the
country, when two things were suddenly announced without warning, as the
apparent results of the various Cabinet Councils held latterly so often,
and in such haste. The first was, that not only had his Majesty accepted
the resignation of the Marquis de Lutera as Premier, but that he
had decided--provided the selection was entirely agreeable to the
Government--to ask M. Carl Pérousse to form a Ministry in his place. The
second piece of intelligence, and one that was received with much more
favour than the first, by all classes and conditions of persons, was
that the Government had issued a decree for the complete expulsion of
the Jesuits from the country. By a certain named date, and within a
month, every Jesuit must have left the King’s dominions, or else
must take the risk of a year’s imprisonment followed by compulsory
banishment.
Much uproar and discussion did this mandate excite among the clerical
parties of Europe,--much indignation did it breed within that Holy of
Holies situate at the Vatican,--which, having launched forth the ban of
excommunication, had no further thunderbolts left to throw at the
head of the recreant and abandoned Royalty whose ‘temporal power’ so
insolently superseded the spiritual. But the country breathed freely;
relieved from a dangerous and mischievous incubus. The educational
authorities gave fervent thanks to Heaven for sparing them from long
dreaded interference;--and when it was known that the excommunicated
King was the chief mover in this firm and liberating act, a silent wave
of passionate gratitude and approval ran through the multitudes of
the people, who would almost have assembled under the Palace walls
and offered a grand demonstration to their monarch, who had so boldly
carried the war into the enemy’s country and won the victory, had they
not been held back and checked from their purpose by the counter-feeling
of their disgust at his Majesty’s apparently forthcoming choice of Carl
Pérousse as Prime Minister.
Swayed this way and that, the people were divided more absolutely than
before into those two sections which always become very dangerous
when strongly marked out as distinctly separated,--the Classes and
the Masses. The comfortable wedge of Trade, which,--calling itself the
Middle-class,--had up to the present kept things firm, now split asunder
likewise,--the wealthy plutocrats clinging willy-nilly to the Classes,
to whom they did not legitimately belong; and the men of moderate income
throwing in their lot with the Masses, whose wrongs they sympathetically
felt somewhat resembled their own. For taxation had ground them down
to that particularly fine powder, which when applied to the rocks of
convention and usage, proves to be of a somewhat blasting quality. They
had paid as much on their earnings and their goods as they could or
would pay;--more indeed than they had any reasonable right to pay,--and
being sick of Government mismanagement, and also of what they still
regarded as the King’s indifference to their needs, they were prepared
to make a dash for liberty. The expulsion of the Jesuits they naturally
looked upon as a suitable retaliation on Rome for the excommunication of
the Royal Family; but beyond the intense relief it gave to all, it could
not be considered as affecting or materially altering the political
situation. So, like the dividing waves of the Red Sea, which rolled up
on either side to permit the passage of Moses and his followers--the
Classes and the Masses piled themselves up in opposite billowy sections
to allow Sergius Thord and the Revolutionary party to pass triumphantly
through their midst, adding thousands of adherents to their forces from
both sides;--while they were prepared to let the full weight of the
billows engulf the King, if, like Pharaoh and his chariots, he assumed
too much, or proceeded too far.
Professor von Glauben, seated in his own sanctum, and engaged in the
continuance of his “Political History of Hunger,” found many points in
the immediate situation which considerably interested him and moved him
to philosophical meditation.
“For,--take the feeling of the People as it now is,” he said to himself;
“It starts in Hunger! The taxes,--the uncomfortable visit of the
tax-gatherer! The price of the loaf,--concerning which the baker, or the
baker-ess, politely tells the customer that it is costly, because of the
Government tax on corn; then from the bread, it is marvellous how the
little clue winds upward through the spider-webs of Trade. The butcher’s
meat is dearer,--for says he--‘The tax on corn makes it necessary for me
to increase the price of meat.’ There is no logical reason given,--the
fact simply _is_! So that Hunger commences the warfare,--Hunger of Soul,
as well as Hunger of body. ‘Why starve my thought?’ says Soul. ‘Why tax
my bread?’ says Body. These tiresome questions continue to be asked,
and never answered,--but answers are clamoured for, and the people
complain--and then one fierce day the gods hear them grumble, and begin
to grumble back! Ach! Then it is thunder with a vengeance! Now in my own
so-beloved Fatherland, there has been this double grumbling for a
long time. And that the storm will burst, in spite of the
so-excellently-advertising Kaiser is evident! Hoch!--or _Ach_? Which
should it be to salute the Kaiser! I know not at all,--but I admit it is
clever of him to put up a special Hoarding-announcement for the private
view of the Almighty God, each time he addresses his troops! And he will
come in for a chapter of my history--for he also is Hungry!--he would
fain eat a little of the loaf of Britain!--yes!--he will fit into my
work very well for the instruction of the helpless unborn generations!”
He wrote on for a while, and then laid down his pen. His eyes grew
dreamy, and his rough features softened.
“What has become of the child, I wonder!” he mused; “Where has she
gone, the ‘Glory-of-the-Sea’! I would give all I have to look upon her
beautiful face again;--and Ronsard--he, poor soul--silent as a stone,
weakening day after day in the grasp of relentless age,--would die
happy,--if I would let him! But I do not intend to give him that
satisfaction. He shall live! As I often tell him, my science is of no
avail if I cannot keep a man going, till at least a hundred and odd
years are past. Barring accidents, or self-slaughter, of course!” Here
he became somewhat abstracted in his meditations. “The old fellow is
brave enough,--brave as a lion, and strong too for his years;--I have
seen him handle a pair of oars and take down a sail as I could never do
it,--and--he has accepted a strange and difficult situation heroically.
‘You must not be involved in any trouble by a knowledge of our
movements.’ So Prince Humphry said, when I saw him last,--though I did
not then understand the real drift of his meaning. And time goes on--and
time seems wearisome without any tidings of those we love!”
A tap at the door disturbed his mental soliloquy, and in answer to his
‘Come in,’ Sir Roger de Launay entered.
“Sorry to interrupt work, Professor!” he said briefly; “The King goes to
the Opera this evening, and desires you to be of the party.”
“Good! I shall obey with more pleasure than I have obeyed some of his
Majesty’s recent instructions!” And the Professor pushed aside his
manuscript to look through his spectacled eyes at the tall equerry’s
handsome face and figure. “You have a healthy appearance, Roger! Your
complexion speaks of an admirable digestion!”
De Launay smiled.
“You think so? Well! Your professional approval is worth having!” He
paused, then went on; “The party will be a pleasant one to-night. The
King is in high spirits.”
“Ah!” And Von Glauben’s monosyllable spoke volumes.
“Perhaps he ought not to be?” suggested Sir Roger with a slight touch of
anxiety.
“I do not know--I cannot tell! This is the way of it, Roger--see!” And
taking off his spectacles, he polished them with due solemnity. “If
I were a King, and ruled over a country swarming with dissatisfied
subjects,--if I had a fox for a Premier,--and was in love with a woman
who could not possibly be my wife,--I should not be in high spirits!”
“Nor I!” said De Launay curtly. “But the fox is not Premier yet. Do you
think he ever will be?”
Von Glauben shrugged his shoulders.
“He is bound to be, I presume. What else remains to do? Upset
everything? Government, deputies and all?”
“Just that!” responded Sir Roger. “The People will do it, if the King
does not.”
“The King will do anything he is asked to do--now--” said the Professor
significantly; “If the right person asks him!”
“You forget--she does not know--” Here checking himself abruptly, Sir
Roger walked to the window and looked out. It was a fair and peaceful
afternoon,--the ocean heaved placidly, covered with innumerable
wavelets, over which the seabirds flew and darted, their wings shining
like silver and diamonds as they dipped and circled up and down and
round the edges of the rocky coast. Far off, a faint rim of amethyst
under a slowly sailing white cloud could be recognized as the first line
of the shore of The Islands.
“Do you ever go and see the beautiful ‘Gloria’ girl now?” asked Sir
Roger suddenly. “The King has never mentioned her since the day we saw
her. And you have never explained the mystery of your acquaintance with
her,--nor whether it is true that Prince Humphry was specially attracted
by her. I shrewdly suspect----”
“What?”
“That he has been sent off, out of harm’s way!”
“You are right,” said the Professor gravely; “That is exactly the
position! He has been sent off out of harm’s way!”
“I heard,” went on De Launay, “that the girl--or some girl of remarkable
beauty had been seen here--actually here in the Palace--before the
Prince left! And such an odd way he left, too--scuttling off in his
own yacht without--so far as I have ever heard--any farewells, or
preparation, or suitable companions to go with him. Still one hears such
extraordinary stories----”
“True!--one does!” agreed the Professor; “And after proper experience,
one hears without listening!”
De Launay looked at him curiously.
“The girl was certainly beautiful,” he proceeded meditatively; “And her
adopted father,--Réné Ronsard,--was not that his name?--was a quaint
old fellow. A republican, too!--fiery as a new Danton! Well! The King’s
curiosity is apparently satisfied on that score,--but”--here he began to
laugh--“I shall never forget your face, Von Glauben, when he caught you
on The Islands that day!--never! Like an overgrown boy, discovered with
his fingers in a jam-pot!”
“Thank you!” said the Professor imperturbably; “I can assure you that
the jam was excellent--and that I still remember its flavour!”
Sir Roger laughed again, but with great good-humour,--then he became
suddenly serious.
“The King goes out alone very often now?” he said.
“Very often,” assented the Professor.
“Are we right in allowing him to do so?”
“Allowing him! Who is to forbid him?”
“Is he safe, do you think?”
“Safer, it would seem, my friend, than when laying a foundation-stone,
with ourselves and all his suite around him!” responded the Professor.
“Besides, it is too late now to count the possible risks of the
adventure he has entered upon. He knows the position, and estimates
the cost at its correct value. He has made himself the ruler of his own
destiny; we are only his servants. Personally, I have no fear,--save of
one fatality.”
“And that?”
“Is what kills many strong men off in their middle-age,” said Von
Glauben; “A disease for which there is no possible cure at that
special time of life,--Love! The love of boys is like a taste for
green gooseberries,--it soon passes, leaving a disordered stomach and
a general disrelish for acid fruit ever afterwards;--the love of
the man-about-town between the twenties and thirties is the love of
self;--but the love of a Man, after the Self-and-Clothes Period has
passed, is the love of the full-grown human creature clamouring for its
mate,--its mate in Soul even more than in Body. There is no gainsaying
it--no checking it--no pacifying it; it is a most disastrous business,
provocative of all manner of evils,--and to a king who has always been
accustomed to have his own way, it means Victory or Death!”
Sir Roger gazed at him perplexedly,--his tone was so solemn and full of
earnest meaning.
“You, for example,” continued the Professor dictatorially, fixing his
keen piercing eyes full upon him; “You are a curious subject,--a very
curious subject! You live on a Dream; it is a good life--an
excellent life! It has the advantage, your Dream, of never becoming a
reality,--therefore you will always love,--and while you always love,
you will always keep young. Your lot is an exceedingly enviable one,
my friend! You need not frown,--I am old enough--and let us hope wise
enough--to guess your secret--to admire it from a purely philosophic
point of view--and to respect it!”
Sir Roger held his peace.
“But,” continued the Professor, “His Majesty is not the manner of man
who would consent to subsist, like you, on an idle phantasy. If he
loves--he must possess; it is the regal way!”
“He will never succeed in the direction _you_ mean!” said Sir Roger
emphatically.
“Never!” agreed Von Glauben with a profound shake of his head; “Strange
as it may seem, his case is quite as hopeless as yours!”
The door opened and closed abruptly,--and there followed silence. Von
Glauben looked up to find himself alone. He smiled tolerantly.
“Poor Roger!” he murmured; “He lives the life of a martyr by choice!
Some men do--and like it! They need not do it;--there is not the least
necessity in the world for their deliberately sticking a knife into
their hearts and walking about with it in a kind of idiot rapture. It
must hurt;--but they seem to enjoy it! Just as some women become nuns,
and flagellate themselves,--and then when they are writhing from their
own self-inflicted stripes, they dream they are the ‘brides of Christ,’
entirely forgetting the extremely irreligious fact that to have so many
‘brides’ the good Christ Himself might possibly be troubled, and would
surely occupy an inconvenient position, even in Heaven! Each man,--each
woman,--makes for himself or herself a little groove or pet sorrow, in
which to trot round and round and bemoan life; the secret of the whole
bemoaning being that he or she cannot have precisely the thing he or she
wants. That is all! Such a trifle! Church, State, Prayer and Power--it
can all be summed up in one line--‘I have not the thing I want--give it
to me!’”
He resumed his writing, and did not interrupt it again till it was time
to join the Royal party at the Opera.
That evening was one destined to be long remembered in the annals of the
kingdom. The beautiful Opera-house, a marvel of art and architecture,
was brilliantly full; all the fairest women and most distinguished men
occupying the boxes and stalls, while round and round, in a seemingly
never-ending galaxy of faces, and crowded in the tiers of balconies
above, a mixed audience had gathered, made up of various sections of the
populace which filled the space well up to the furthest galleries.
The attraction that had drawn so large an audience together was not
contained in the magnetic personality of either the King or Queen, for
those exalted individuals had only announced their intention of being
present just two hours before the curtain rose. Moreover, when their
Majesties entered the Royal box, accompanied by their two younger
sons, Rupert and Cyprian, and attended by their personal suite, their
appearance created very little sensation. The fact that it was the
first time the King had showed himself openly in public since his
excommunication from the Church, caused perhaps a couple of hundred
persons to raise their eyes inquisitively towards him in a kind of
half-morbid, half-languid curiosity, but in these days the sentiment
of Self is so strong, that it is only a minority of more thoughtful
individuals that ever trouble themselves seriously to consider the
annoyances or griefs which their fellow-mortals have to endure, often
alone and undefended.
The interest of the public on this particular occasion was centred in
the new Opera, which had only been given three times before, and in
which the little dancer, Pequita, played the part of a child-heroine.
The _libretto_ was the work of Paul Zouche, and the music by one of
the greatest violinists in the world, Louis Valdor. The plot was slight
enough;--yet, described in exquisite verse, and scattered throughout
with the daintiest songs and dances, it merited a considerably higher
place in musical records than such works as Meyerbeer’s “Dinorah,” or
Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” The thread on which the pearls of poesy and harmony
were strung, was the story of a wandering fiddler, who, accompanied by
his only child (the part played by Pequita), travels from city to
city earning a scant livelihood by his own playing and his daughter’s
dancing. Chance or fate leads them to throw in their fortunes with a
band of enthusiastic adventurers, who, headed by a young hare-brained
patriot, elected as their leader, have determined to storm the Vatican,
and demand the person of the Pope, that they may convey him to
America, there to convene an assemblage of all true Christians (or
‘New Christians’), and found a new and more Christ-like Church. Their
expedition fails,--as naturally so wild a scheme would be bound to
do,--but though they cannot succeed in capturing the Pope, they secure
a large following of the Italian populace, who join with them in singing
“The Song of Freedom,” which, with Paul Zouche’s words, and Valdor’s
music was the great _chef d’oevre_ of the Opera, rousing the listeners
to a pitch of something like frenzy. In this,--the last great
scene,--Pequita, dancing the ‘Dagger Dance,’ is supposed to infect the
people with that fervour which moves them to sing “The Freedom Chorus,”
and the curtain comes down upon a brilliant stage, crowded with
enthusiasts and patriots, ready to fight and die for the glory of their
country. A love-interest is given to the piece by the passion of the
wandering fiddler-hero for a girl whose wealth places her above his
reach; and who in the end sacrifices all worldly advantage that she may
share his uncertain fortunes for love’s sake only.
Such was the story,--which, wedded to wild and passionate music, had
taken the public by storm on its first representation, not only on
account of its own merit, but because it gave their new favourite,
Pequita, many opportunities for showing off her exquisite grace as a
dancer. She, while preparing for the stage on this special night, had
been told that her wish was about to be granted--that she would now, at
last, really dance before the King;--and her heart beat high, and
the rich colour reddened in her soft childish face, as she donned her
scarlet skirts with more than her usual care, and knotted back her raven
curls with a great glowing damask rose, such as Spanish beauties
fasten behind tiny shell-like ears to emphasise the perfection of their
contour. Her thoughts flew to her kindest friend, Pasquin Leroy;--she
remembered the starry diamond in the ring he had wished to give her,
and how he had said, ‘Pequita, the first time you dance before the King,
this shall be yours!’
Where was he now, she wondered? She would have given anything to know
his place of abode, just to send him word that the King was to be at the
Opera that night, and ask him too, to come and see her in her triumph!
But she had no time to study ways and means for sending a message to
him, either through Sholto, her father, who always waited patiently
for her behind the scenes,--or through Paul Zouche, who, though as
_librettist_ of the opera, and as a poet of new and rising fame, was
treated by everyone with the greatest deference, still made a special
point of appearing in the shabbiest clothes, and lounging near the
side-wings like a sort of disgraced tramp all the time the performance
was in progress. Neither of them knew Leroy’s address;--they only met
him or saw him, when he himself chose to come among them. Besides,--the
sound of the National Hymn played by the orchestra, warned her that the
King had arrived; and that she must hold herself in readiness for her
part and think of nothing else.
The blaze of light in the Opera-house seemed more dazzling than usual
to the child, when her cue was called,--and as she sprang from the wings
and bounded towards the footlights, amid the loud roar of applause which
she was now accustomed to receive nightly, she raised her eyes towards
the Royal box, half-frightened, half-expectant. Her heart sank as she
saw that the King had partially turned away from the stage, and was
chatting carelessly with some person or persons behind him, and that
only a statuesque woman with a pale face, great eyes, and a crown
of diamonds, regarded her steadily with a high-bred air of chill
indifference, which was sufficient to turn the little warm beating heart
of her into stone. A handsome youth stared down upon her smiling,--his
eyes sleepily amorous,--it was the elder of the King’s two younger sons,
Prince Rupert. She hated his expression, beautiful though his features
were,--and hated herself for having to dance before him. Poor little
Pequita! It was her first experience of the insult a girl-child can be
made to feel through the look of a budding young profligate. On and on
she danced, giddily whirling;--the thoughts in her brain circling as
rapidly as her movements. Why would not the King look at her,--she
thought? Why was he so indifferent, even when his subjects sought most
to please him? At the end of the second act of the Opera a great fatigue
and lassitude overcame her, and a look of black resentment clouded her
pretty face.
“What ails you?” said Zouche, sauntering up to her as she stood behind
the wings; “You look like a small thunder-cloud!”
She gave an unmistakable gesture in the direction of that quarter of the
theatre where the Royal box was situated.
“I hate him!” she said, with a stamp of her little foot.
“The King? So do I!” And Zouche lit a cigarette and stuck it between
his lips by way of a stop-gap to a threatening violent expletive; “An
insolent, pampered, flattered fool! Yet you wanted to dance before
him; and now you’ve done it! The fact will serve you as a kind of
advertisement! That is all!”
“I do not want to be advertised through _his_ favour!” And Pequita
closed her tiny teeth on her scarlet under-lip in suppressed anger; “But
I have not danced before him yet! I _will_!”
Zouche looked at her sleepily. He was not drunk--though he had,--of
course,--been drinking.
“You have not danced before him? Then what have you been doing?”
“Walking!” answered Pequita, with a fierce little laugh, her colour
coming and going with all the quick wavering hue of irritated and
irritable Spanish blood, “I have, as they say ‘walked across the stage.’
I shall dance presently!”
He smiled, flicking a little ash off his cigarette.
“You are a curious child!” he said; “By and by you will want severely
keeping in order!”
Pequita laughed again, and shook back her long curls defiantly.
“Who is that cold woman with a face like a mask and the crown of
diamonds, that sits beside the King?”
It was Zouche’s turn to laugh now, and he did so with a keen sense of
enjoyment.
“Upon my word!” he exclaimed; “A little experience of the world has
given you what newspaper men call ‘local colour.’ The ‘cold woman with
the face like a mask,’ is the Queen!”
Pequita made a little grimace of scorn.
“And who is the leering boy?”
“Prince Rupert.”
“The Crown Prince?”
“No. The Crown Prince is travelling abroad. He went away very
mysteriously,--no one knows where he has gone, or when he will come
back.”
“I am not surprised!” said Pequita; “With such a father and mother, and
such impudent-looking brothers, no wonder he wanted to get away!”
Zouche had another fit of laughter. He had never seen the little girl in
such a temper. He tried to assume gravity.
“Pequita, you are naughty! The flatteries of the great world are
spoiling you!”
“Bah!” said Pequita, with a contemptuous wave of her small brown hands.
“The flatteries of the great world! To what do they lead? To _that_!”
and she made another eloquent sign towards the Royal box;--“I would
rather dance for you and Lotys, and Sergius Thord, and Pasquin Leroy,
than all the Kings of the world together! What I do here is for my
father’s sake--_you_ know that!”
“I know!” and Zouche smoked on, and shook his wild head
sentimentally,--murmuring in a _sotto-voce_:
“What I do _here_, is for the need of gold,--
What I do _there_, is for sweet love’s sake only;
Love, ever timid _there_, doth _here_ grow bold,--
And wins such triumph as but leaves me lonely!”
“Is that yours?” said Pequita with a sudden smile.
“Mine, or Shakespeare’s,” answered Zouche indolently; “Does it matter
which?”
Pequita laughed, and her cue being just then called, again she bounded
on to the stage; but this time she played her part, as the stock phrase
goes, ‘to the gallery,’ and did not once turn her eyes towards the place
where the King sat withdrawn into the shadow of his box, giving no sign
of applause. She, however, had caught sight of Sergius Thord and some of
her Revolutionary friends seated ‘among the gods,’ and that was enough
inspiration for her. Something,--a quite indefinable something,--a touch
of personal or spiritual magnetism, had been fired in her young soul;
and gradually as the Opera went on, her fellow-players became infected
by it. Some of them gave her odd, half-laughing glances now and
then,--being more or less amazed at the unusual vigour with which she
sang, in her pure childish soprano, the few strophes of recitative and
light song attached to her part;--the very prima-donna herself caught
fire,--and the distinguished tenor, who had travelled all the way from
Buda Pesth in haste, so that he might ‘create’ the chief rôle in the
work of his friend Valdor, began to feel that there was something
more in operatic singing than the mere inflation of the chest, and the
careful production of perfectly-rounded notes. Valdor himself played the
various violin solos which occurred frequently throughout the piece, and
never failed to evoke a storm of rapturous plaudits,--and many were
the half-indignant glances of the audience towards the Royal shrine of
draped satin, gilding, and electric light, wherein the King, like an
idol, sat,--undemonstrative, and apparently more bored than satisfied.
There was a general feeling that he ought to have shown,--by his
personal applause in public,--a proper appreciation of the many gifted
artists playing that evening, especially in the case of Louis Valdor,
the composer of the Opera itself. But he sat inert, only occasionally
glancing at the stage, and anon carelessly turning away from it to
converse with the members of his suite.
The piece went on;--and more and more the passion of Pequita’s pent-up
little soul communicated itself to the other performers,--till they
found themselves almost unconsciously obeying her ‘lead.’ At last came
the grand final act,--where, in accordance with the progress of the
story, the bold band of ‘New Christians’ are fought back from the gates
of the Vatican by the Papal Guard; and the Roman populace, roused to
enthusiasm, gather round their defeated ranks to defend and to aid them
with sympathy and support in their combat,--breaking forth all together
at last in the triumphant ‘Song of Freedom.’ Truly grand and majestic
was this same song,--pulsating with truth and passion,--breathing with
the very essence of liberty,--an echo of the heart and soul of strong
nations who struggle, even unto death, for the lawful rights of humanity
denied to them by the tyrants in place and power. As the superb roll and
swell of the glorious music poured through the crowded house, there was
an almost unconscious movement among the audience,--the people in the
gallery rose _en masse_, and at the close of the first verse, responded
to it by a mighty cheer, which reverberated through and through the
immense building like thunder. The occupants of the stalls and boxes
exchanged wondering and half-frightened looks,--then as the cheer
subsided, settled themselves again to listen, more or less spell-bound,
as the second verse began. Just before this had merged into its
accompanying splendid and soul-awakening chorus,--Pequita,--having
obtained the consent of the manager to execute her ‘Dagger Dance’ in the
middle of the song, instead of at the end,--suddenly sprang towards
the footlights in a pirouette of extravagant and exquisite
velocity--while,--checked by a sign from the conductor, the singers
ceased. Without music, in an absolute stillness as of death, the girl
swung herself to and fro, like a bell-flower in the breeze,--anon she
sprang and leaped like a scarlet flame--and again sank into a slow and
voluptuous motion, as of a fairy who dreamingly glides on tiptoe over
a field of flowers. Then, on a sudden, while the fascinated spectators
watched her breathlessly,--she seemed to wake from sleep,--and running
forward wildly, began to toss and whirl her scarlet skirts, her black
curls streaming, her dark eyes flashing with mingled defiance and scorn,
while drawing from her breast an unsheathed dagger, she flung it in the
air, caught it dexterously by the hilt again, twisted and turned it in
every possible way,--now beckoning, now repelling, now defending,--and
lastly threatening, with a passionate intensity of action that was
well-nigh irresistible.
Caught by the marvellous subtlety of her performance, quite one half
the audience now rose instinctively, all eyes being fixed on the strange
evolutions of this whirling, flying thing that seemed possessed by
the very devil of dancing! The King at last attracted, leaned slightly
forward from his box with a tolerant smile,--the Queen’s face was
as usual, immovable,--the Princes Rupert and Cyprian stared,
open-mouthed--while over the whole brilliant scene that remarkable
silence brooded, like the sultry pause before the breaking of a storm.
Triumphant, reckless, panting,--scarcely knowing what she did in her
excitement,--Pequita, suddenly running backward, with the lightness of
thistle-down flying before the wind, snatched the flag of the country
from a super standing by, and dancing forward again, waved it aloft,
till with a final abandonment of herself to the humour of the moment,
she sprang with a single bound towards the Royal box, and there--the
youthful incarnation of living, breathing passion, fury, patriotism, and
exultation in one,--dropped on one knee, the flag waving behind her, the
dagger pointed straight upward, full at the King!
A great roar,--like that of hundreds of famished wild beasts,--answered
this gesture; mingled with acclamations,--and when ‘The Song of Freedom’
again burst out from the singers on the stage, the whole mass of
people joined in the chorus with a kind of melodious madness. Shouts of
‘Pequita! Pequita!’ rang out on all sides,--then ‘Valdor! Valdor!’--and
then,--all suddenly,--a stentorian voice cried ‘Sergius Thord!’ At
that word the house became a chaos. Men in the gallery, seized by some
extraordinary impulse of doing they knew not what, and going they knew
not whither, leaped over each other’s shoulders, and began to climb down
by the pillars of the balconies to the stalls,--and a universal panic
and rush ensued. Terrified women hurried from the stalls and boxes in
spite of warning, and got mixed with the maddened crowd, a section of
which, pouring out of the Opera-house came incontinently upon the King’s
carriage in waiting,--and forthwith, without any reflection as to the
why or the wherefore, smashed it to atoms! Then, singing again ‘The Song
of Freedom,’--the people, pouring out from all the doors, formed into a
huge battalion, and started on a march of devastation and plunder.
Sergius Thord, grasping the situation from the first, rushed out of the
Opera-house in all haste, anxious to avert a catastrophe, but he was too
late to stop the frenzied crowd,--nothing could, or would have stopped
them at that particular moment. The fire had been too long smouldering
in their souls; and Pequita, like a little spark of fury, had set it in
a blaze. Through private ways and back streets, the King and Queen and
their sons, escorted by the alarmed manager, escaped from the Opera
unhurt,--and drove back unobserved to the Palace in a common fiacre--and
a vast multitude, waiting to see them come out by the usual doors, and
finding they did not come, vented their rage and disgust by tearing up
and smashing everything within their reach. Then, remembering in good
time, despite their excitement, that the manager of the Opera had done
nothing to deserve injury to himself or his property, they paused in
this work of destruction, and with the sudden caprice of children, gave
out ringing cheers for him and for Pequita;--while their uncertainty as
to what to do next was settled for them by Paul Zouche, who, mounting on
one of the pedestals which supported the columns of the entrance to
the Opera, where his wild head, glittering eyes and eager face looked
scarcely human, cried out:
“Damnation to Carl Pérousse! Why do you idle here, my friends, when you
might be busy! If you want Freedom, seek it from him who is to be your
new Prime Minister!”
A prolonged yell of savage approval answered him,--and like an angry
tide, the crowd swept on and on, gathering strength and force as it
went, and pouring through the streets with fierce clamour of shouting,
and clash of hastily collected weapons,--on and on to the great square,
in the centre of which stood the statue of the late King, and where the
house of Carl Pérousse occupied the most prominent position. And the
moon, coming suddenly out of a cloud, stared whitely down upon the
turbulent scene,--one too often witnessed in history, when, as Carlyle
says, ‘a Nation of men is suddenly hurled beyond the limits. For Nature,
as green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations, and Pan,
to whose music the Nymphs dance, has a cry in him that can drive all men
distracted!’
In such distraction, and with such wild cry, the night of Pequita’s
long-looked-for dance before the King swept stormily on towards day.