THE ASCENT OF THE CAPITOL
I
And the triumphal march from the gulf of Jouan continued uninterrupted
to Paris.
After Laffray and Grenoble, Lyons, where the silk-weavers of La
Guillotière assembled in their thousands to demolish the barricades
which had been built up on their bridge against the arrival of the
Emperor, and watched his entry into their city waving kerchiefs and hats
in his honour, and tricolour flags and cockades fished out of cupboards,
where they had lain hidden but not forgotten for one whole year.
After Lyons, Villefranche, where sixty thousand peasants and workmen
awaited his arrival at the foot of the tree of Liberty, on the top of
which a brass eagle, the relic of some old standard, glistened like gold
as it caught the rays of the setting sun.
And Nevers, where the townsfolk urged the regiments as they march
through the city to tear the white cockades from their hats! And
Chalon-sur-Saône, where the workpeople commandeer a convoy of artillery
destined for the army of M. le Comte d'Artois!
The préfets of the various départements, the bureaucracy of provinces
and cities, are not only amazed but struck with terror:
"This is a new Revolution!" they cry in dismay.
Yes! it is a new Revolution! the revolt of the peasantry of the poor,
the humble, the oppressed! The hatred which they felt against that old
regime which had come back to them with its old arrogance and its former
tyrannies had joined issue with the cult of the army for the Emperor who
had led it to glory, to fortune and to fame.
The people and the army were roused by the same enthusiasm, and marched
shoulder to shoulder to join the standard of Napoleon--the little man in
the shabby hat and the grey redingote, who for them personified the
spirit of the great revolution, the great struggle for liberty and its
final victory.
The army of the Comte d'Artois--that portion of it which remained
loyal--was powerless against the overwhelming tide of popular
enthusiasm, powerless against dissatisfaction, mutterings and constant
defections in its ranks. The army would have done well in Provence--for
Provence was loyal and royalist, man, woman and child: but Napoleon took
the route of the Alps, and avoided Provence; by the time he reached
Lyons he had an army of his own and M. le Comte d'Artois--fearing more
defections and worse defeats--had thought it prudent to retire.
It has often been said that if a single shot had been fired against his
original little band Napoleon's march on Paris would have been stopped.
Who shall tell? There are such "ifs" in the world, which no human mind
can challenge. Certain it is that that shot was not fired. At Laffray,
Randon gave the order, but he did not raise his musket himself; on the
walls of Grenoble St. Genis, in command of the artillery and urged by
the Comte de Cambray, did not dare to give the order or to fire a gun
himself. "The men declare," he had said gloomily, "that they would blow
their officers from their own guns."
And at Lyons there was not militiaman, a royalist, volunteer or a pariah
out of the streets who was willing to fire that first and "single shot":
and though Marshal Macdonald swore ultimately that he would do it
himself, his determination failed him at the last when surrounded by his
wavering troops he found himself face to face with the conqueror of
Austerlitz and Jena and Rivoli and a thousand other glorious fights,
with the man in the grey redingote who had created him Marshal of France
and Duke of Tarente on the battlefields of Lombardy, his comrade-in-arms
who had shared his own scanty army rations with him, slept beside him
round the bivouac fires, and round whom now there rose a cry from end to
end of Lyons: "Vive l'Empereur!"
II
Victor de Marmont did not wait for the arrival of the Emperor at Lyons:
nor did he attempt to enter the city. He knew that there was still some
money in the imperial treasury brought over from Elba, and his
mind--always in search of the dramatic--had dwelt with pleasure on
thoughts of the day when the Emperor, having entered Fontainebleau, or
perhaps even Paris and the Tuileries, would there be met by his faithful
de Marmont, who on bended knees in the midst of a brilliant and admiring
throng would present to him the twenty-five million francs originally
the property of the Empress herself and now happily wrested from the
cupidity of royalist traitors.
The picture pleased de Marmont's fancy: he dwelt on it with delight, he
knew that no one requited a service more amply and more generously than
Napoleon: he knew that after this service rendered there was nothing to
which he--de Marmont--young as he was, could not aspire--title, riches,
honours, anything he wanted would speedily become his, and with these to
his credit he could claim Crystal de Cambray once more.
Oh! she would be humbled again by then, she and her father too, the
proud aristocrats, doomed once more to penury and exile, unless he--de
Marmont--came forth like the fairy prince to the beggarmaid with hands
laden with riches, ready to lay these at the feet of the woman he loved.
Yes! Crystal de Cambray would be humbled! De Marmont, though he felt
that he loved her more and better than any man had ever loved any woman
before, nevertheless had a decided wish that she should be humbled and
suffer bitterly thereby. He felt that her pride was his only enemy: her
pride and royalist prejudices. Of the latter he thought but little:
confident of his Emperor's success, he thought that all those hot-headed
royalists would soon realise the hopelessness of their cause--rendered
all the more hopeless through its short-lived triumph of the past
year--and abandon it gradually and surely, accepting the inevitable and
rejoicing over the renewed glory which would come over France.
As for her pride! well! that was going to be humbled, along with the
pride of the Bourbon princes, of that fatuous old king, of all those
arrogant aristocrats who had come back after years of exile, as
arrogant, as tyrannical as ever before.
These were pleasing thoughts which kept Victor de Marmont company on his
way between Lyons and Fontainebleau. Once past Villefranche he sent the
bulk of his escort back to Lyons, where the Emperor should have arrived
by this time: he had written out a superficial report of his expedition,
which the sergeant in charge of the little troop was to convey to the
Emperor's own hands. He only kept two men with him, put himself and them
into plain, travelling clothes which he purchased at Villefranche, and
continued his journey to the north without much haste; the roads were
safe enough from footpads, he and his two men were well armed, and what
stragglers from the main royalist army he came across would be far too
busy with their own retreat and their own disappointment to pay much
heed to a civilian and seemingly harmless traveller.
De Marmont loved to linger on the way in the towns and hamlets where the
news of the Emperor's approach had already been wafted from Grenoble, or
Lyons, or Villefranche on the wings of wind or birds, who shall say?
Enough that it had come, that the peasants, assembled in masses in their
villages, were whispering together that he was coming--the little man in
the grey redingote--l'Empereur!
And de Marmont would halt in those villages and stop to whisper with the
peasants too: Yes! he was coming! and the whole of France was giving him
a rousing welcome! There was Laffray and Grenoble and Lyons! the army
rallied to his standard as one man!
And de Marmont would then pass on to another village, to another town,
no longer whispering after a while, but loudly proclaiming the arrival
of the Emperor who had come into his own again.
After Nevers he was only twenty-four hours ahead of Napoleon and his
progress became a triumphant one: newspapers, despatches had filtrated
through from Paris--news became authentic, though some of it sounded a
little wild. Wherever de Marmont arrived he was received with
acclamations as the man who had seen the Emperor, who had assisted at
the Emperor's magnificent entry into Grenoble, who could assure citizens
and peasantry that it was all true, that the Emperor would be in Paris
again very shortly and that once more there would be an end to tyranny
and oppression, to the rule of the aristocrats and a number of
incompetent and fatuous princes.
He did not halt at Fontainebleau, for now he knew that the Court of the
Tuileries was in a panic, that neither the Comte d'Artois, nor the Duc
de Berry, nor any of the royal princes had succeeded in keeping the army
together: that defections had been rife for the past week, even before
Napoleon had shown himself, and that Marshal Ney, the bravest soldier
in France, had joined his Emperor at Auxerre.
No! de Marmont would not halt at Fontainebleau. It was Paris that he
wanted to see! Paris, which to-day would witness the hasty flight of the
gouty and unpopular King whom it had never learned to love! Paris
decking herself out like a bride for the arrival of her bridegroom!
Paris waiting and watching, while once again on the Tuileries and the
Hôtel de Ville, on the Louvre and the Luxembourg, on church towers and
government buildings the old tricolour flag waved gaily in the wind.
He slept that night at a small hotel in the Louvre quarter, but the
whole evening he spent on the Place du Carrousel with the crowd outside
the Tuileries, watching the departure from the palace of the infirm King
of France and of his Court. The crowd was silent and obviously deeply
moved. The spectacle before it of an old, ailing monarch, driven forth
out of the home of his ancestors, and forced after an exile of three and
twenty years and a brief reign of less than one, to go back once more to
misery and exile, was pitiable in the extreme.
Many forgot all that the brief reign had meant in disappointments and
bitter regrets, and only saw in the pathetic figure that waddled
painfully from portico to carriage door a monarch who was unhappy,
abandoned and defenceless: a monarch, too, who, in his unheroic,
sometimes grotesque person, was nevertheless the representative of all
the privileges and all the rights, of all the dignity and majesty
pertaining to the most ancient ruling dynasty in Europe, as well as of
all the humiliations and misfortunes which that same dynasty had
endured.
III
It is late in the evening of March 20th. A thin mist is spreading from
the river right over Paris, and from the Place du Carrousel the lighted
windows of the Tuileries palace appear only like tiny, dimly-flickering
stars.
Here an immense crowd is assembled. It has waited patiently hour after
hour, ever since in the earlier part of the afternoon a courier has come
over from Fontainebleau with the news that the Emperor is already there
and would be in Paris this night.
It is the same crowd which twenty-four hours ago shed a tear or two in
sympathy for the departing monarch: now it stands here--waiting,
excited, ready to cheer the return of a popular hero--half-forgotten,
wildly acclaimed, madly welcomed, to be cursed again, and again
forgotten so soon. It was a heterogeneous crowd forsooth! made up in
great part of the curious, the idle, the indifferent, and in great part,
too, of the Bonapartist enthusiasts and malcontents who had groaned
under the reactionary tyranny of the Restoration--of malcontents, too,
of no enthusiasm, who were ready to welcome any change which might bring
them to prominence or to fortune. With here and there a sprinkling of
hot-headed revolutionaries, cursing the return of the Emperor as
heartily as they had cursed that of the Bourbon king: and here and there
a few heart-sick royalists, come to watch the final annihilation of
their hopes.
Victor de Marmont, wrapped in a dark cloak, stood among the crowd for a
while. He knew that the Emperor would probably not be in Paris before
night, and he loved to be in the very midst of the wave of enthusiasm
which was surging higher and ever higher in the crowd, and hear the
excited whispers, and to feel all round him, wrapping him closely like a
magic mantle of warmth and delight, the exaltation of this mass of men
and women assembled here to acclaim the hero whom he himself adored.
Closely buttoned inside his coat he had scraps of paper worth the ransom
of any king.
Among the crowd, too, Bobby Clyffurde moved and stood. He was one of
those who watched this enthusiasm with a heart filled with forebodings.
He knew well how short this enthusiasm would be: he knew that within a
few weeks--days perhaps--the bold and reckless adventurer who had so
easily reconquered France would realise that the Imperial crown would
never be allowed to sit firmly upon his head. None in this crowd knew
better that the present pageant and glory would be short-lived, than did
this tall, quiet Englishman who listened with half an ear and a smile of
good-natured contempt to the loud cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" which rose
spontaneously whenever the sound of horses' hoofs or rattles of wheels
from the direction of Fontainebleau suggested the approach of the hero
of the day. None knew better than he that already in far-off England
another great hero, named Wellington, was organising the forces which
presently would crush--for ever this time--the might and ambitions of
the man whom England had never acknowledged as anything but a usurper
and a foe.
And closely buttoned inside his coat Clyffurde had a letter which he had
received at his lodgings in the Alma quarter only a few moments before
he sallied forth into the streets. That letter was an answer to a
confidential enquiry of his own sent to the Chief of the British Secret
Intelligence Department resident in Paris, desiring to know if the
Department had any knowledge of a vast sum of money having come
unexpectedly into the hands of His Majesty the King of France, before
his flight from the capital.
The answer was an emphatic "No!" The Intelligence Department knew of no
such windfall. But its secret agents reported that Victor de Marmont,
captain of the usurper's body-guard, had waylaid M. le Marquis de St.
Genis on the high road not far from Lyons. The escort which had
accompanied Victor de Marmont on that occasion had been dismissed by him
at Villefranche, and the information which the British Secret
Intelligence Department had obtained came through the indiscretion of
the sergeant in charge of the escort, who had boasted in a tavern at
Lyons that he had actually searched M. de St. Genis and found a large
sum of money upon him, of which M. de Marmont promptly took possession.
When Bobby Clyffurde received this letter and first mastered its
contents, the language which he used would have done honour to a Toulon
coal-heaver. He cursed St. Genis' stupidity in allowing himself to be
caught; but above all he cursed himself for his soft-heartedness which
had prompted him to part with the money.
The letter which brought him the bad news seemed to scorch his hand, and
brand it with the mark of folly. He had thought to serve the woman he
loved, first, by taking the money from her, since he knew that Victor de
Marmont with an escort of cavalry was after it, and, secondly, by
allowing the man whom she loved to have the honour and glory of laying
the money at his sovereign's feet. The whole had ended in a miserable
fiasco, and Clyffurde felt sore and wrathful against himself.
And also among the crowd--among those who came, heartsick, hopeless,
forlorn, to watch the triumph of the enemy as they had watched the
humiliation of their feeble King--was M. le Comte de Cambray with his
daughter Crystal on his arm.
They had come, as so many royalists had done, with a vague hope that in
the attitude of the crowd they would discern indifference rather than
exultation, and that the active agents of their party, as well as those
of England and of Prussia, would succeed presently in stirring up a
counter demonstration, that a few cries of "Vive le roi!" would prove to
the army at least and to the people of Paris that acclamations for the
usurper were at any rate not unanimous.
But the crowd was not indifferent--it was excited: when first the Comte
de Cambray and Crystal arrived on the Place du Carrousel, a number of
white cockades could be picked out in the throng, either worn on a hat
or fixed to a buttonhole, but as the afternoon wore on there were fewer
and fewer of these small white stars to be seen: the temper of the crowd
did not brook this mute reproach upon its enthusiasm. One or two
cockades had been roughly torn and thrown into the mud, and the wearer
unpleasantly ill-used if he persisted in any royalistic demonstration.
Crystal, when she saw these incidents, was not the least frightened. She
wore her white cockade openly pinned to her cloak; she was far too
loyal, far too enthusiastic and fearless, far too much a woman to yield
her convictions to the popular feeling of the moment; and she looked so
young and so pretty, clinging to the arm of her father, who looked a
picturesque and harmless representative of the fallen regime, that with
the exception of a few rough words, a threat here and there, they had so
far escaped active molestation.
And the crowd presently had so much to see that it ceased to look out
for white cockades, or to bait the sad-eyed royalists. A procession of
carriages, sparse at first and simple in appearance, had begun to make
its way from different parts of the town across the Place du Carrousel
toward the Tuileries. They arrived very quietly at first, with as little
clatter as possible, and drew up before the gates of the Pavillon de
Flore with as little show as may be: the carriage doors were opened
unostentatiously, and dark, furtive figures stepped out from them and
almost ran to the door of the palace, so eager were they to escape
observation, their big cloaks wrapped closely round them to hide the
court dress or uniform below.
Ministers, dignitaries of the Court, Councillors of State; majordomos,
stewards, butlers, body-servants; they all came one by one or in groups
of twos or threes. As the afternoon wore on these arrivals grew less and
less furtive; the carriages arrived with greater clatter and to-do, with
finer liveries and more gorgeous harness. Those who stepped out of the
carriage doors were no longer quick and stealthy in their movements:
they lingered near the step to give an order or to chat to a friend; the
big cloak no longer concealed the gorgeous uniform below, it was allowed
to fall away from the shoulder, so as to display the row of medals and
stars, the gold embroidery, the magnificence of the Court attire.
The Emperor had left Fontainebleau! Within an hour he would be in Paris!
Everyone knew it, and the excitement in the crowd that watched grew more
and more intense. Last night these same men and women had looked with
mute if superficial sympathy on the departure of Louis XVIII. through
these same palace gates: many eyes then became moist at the sight, as
memory flew back twenty years to the murdered king--his flight to
Varennes, his ignominious return, his weary Calvary from prison to court
house and thence to the scaffold. And here was his brother--come back
after twenty-three years of exile, acclaimed by the populace, cheered by
foreign soldiers--Russians, Austrians, English--anything but French--and
driven forth once more to exile after the brief glory that lasted not
quite a year.
But this the crowd of to-day has already forgotten with the completeness
peculiar to crowds: men, women, and children too, they are no longer
mute, they talk and they chatter; they scream with astonishment and
delight whenever now from more and more carriages, more and more
gorgeously dressed folk descend. The ladies are beginning to arrive: the
wives of the great Court dignitaries, the ladies of the Court and
household of the still-absent Empress: they do not attempt to hide their
brilliant toilettes, their bare shoulders and arms gleam through the
fastenings of their cloaks, and diamonds sparkle in their hair.
The crowd has recognised some of the great marshals, the men who in the
Emperor's wake led the French troops to victory in Italy, in Prussia, in
Austria: Maret Duc de Bassano is there and the crowd cheers him, the Duc
de Rovigo, Marshal Davout, Prince d'Eckmühl, General Excelmans, one of
Napoleon's oldest companions at arms, the Duke of Gaeta, the Duke of
Padua, a crowd of generals and superior officers. It seems like the
world of the Sleeping Beauty and of the Enchanted Castle--which a kiss
has awakened from its eleven months' sleep. The Empire had only been
asleep, it had dreamed a bad dream, wherein its hero was a prisoner and
an exile: now it is slowly wakening back to life and to reality.
The night wears on: darkness and fog envelop Paris more and more.
Excitement becomes akin to anxiety. If the Emperor did leave
Fontainebleau when the last courier said that he did, he should
certainly be here by now. There are strange whispers, strange waves of
evil reports that spread through the waiting crowd: "A royalist fanatic
had shot at the Emperor! the Emperor was wounded! he was dead!"
Oh! the excitement of that interminable wait!
At last, just as from every church tower the bells strike the hour of
nine, there comes the muffled sound of a distant cavalcade: the sound of
horses galloping and only half drowning that of the rumbling of coach
wheels.
It comes from the direction of the embankment, and from far away now is
heard the first cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" The noise gets louder and more
clear, the cries are repeated again and again till they merge into one
great, uproarious clamour. Like the ocean when lashed by the wind, the
crowd surges, moves, rises on tiptoe, subsides, falls back to crush
forward again and once more to retreat as a heavy coach, surrounded by
a thousand or so of mounted men, dashes over the cobbles of the Place du
Carrousel, whilst the clamour of the crowd becomes positively deafening.
"Vive l'Empereur!"
The officers in the courtyard of the palace rush to the coach as it
draws up at the Pavillon de Flore: one of them succeeds in opening the
carriage door. The Emperor is literally torn out of the carriage,
carried to the vestibule, where more officers seize him, raise him from
the crowd, bear him along, hoisted upon their shoulders, up the
monumental staircase.
Their enthusiasm is akin to delirium: they nearly tear their hero to
pieces in their wild, mad, frantic welcome.
"In Heaven's name, protect his person," exclaims the Duc de Vicence
anxiously; and he and Lavalette manage to get hold of the banisters and
by dint of fighting and pushing succeed in walking backwards step by
step in front of the Emperor, thus making a way for him.
Lavalette can hardly believe his eyes, and the Duc de Vicence keeps
murmuring: "It is the Emperor! It is the Emperor!"
And he--the little stout man in green cloth coat and white
breeches--walks up the steps of his reconquered palace like a man in a
dream: his eyes are fixed apparently on nothing, he makes no movement to
keep his too enthusiastic friends away: the smile upon his lips is
meaningless and fixed.
"Vive l'Empereur!" vociferates the crowd.
Vive l'Empereur for one hundred days: a few weeks of joy, a few weeks of
anxiety, a few weeks of indecision, of wavering and of doubt. Then
defeat more irrevocable than before! exile more distant! despair more
complete.
Vive l'Empereur while we shout with excitement, while we remember the
disappointments of the past year, while we hope for better things from
a hand that has lost its cunning, a mind that has lost its power.
Vive l'Empereur! Let him live for an hundred days, while we forget our
enthusiasm and Europe prepares its final crushing blow. Let him live
until we remember once again the horrors of war, the misery, the famine,
the devastated homes! until once more we see the maimed and crippled
crawling back wearily from the fields of glory, until our ears ring with
the wails of widows and the cries of the fatherless.
Then let him no longer live, for he it is who has brought this misery on
us through his will and through his ambition, and France has suffered so
much from the aftermath of glory, that all she wants now is rest.
IV
Gradually--but it took some hours--the tumult and excitement in and
round the Tuileries subsided. The Emperor managed to shut himself up in
his study and to eat some supper in peace, while gradually outside his
windows the crowd--who had nothing more to see and was getting tired of
staring up at glittering panes of glass--went back more or less quietly
to their homes.
Only in the courtyard of the Tuileries, the troopers of the cavalry
which had formed the Emperor's escort from Fontainebleau tethered their
horses to the railings, rolled themselves in their mantles and slept on
the pavements, giving to this portion of the palace the appearance of a
bivouac in a place which has been taken by storm.
One of the last to leave the Place du Carrousel was Bobby Clyffurde. The
crowd was thin by this time, but it was the tired and the
indifferent--the merely curious--who had been the first to go. Those who
remained to the last were either the very enthusiastic who wanted to set
up a final shout of "Vive l'Empereur!" after their idol had entirely
disappeared from their view, or the malcontents who would not lose a
moment to discuss their grievances, to murmur covert threats, or suggest
revolt in some shape or form or kind.
Bobby slipped quickly past several of these isolated groups, indifferent
to the dark and glowering looks of suspicion that were cast at his tall,
muscular figure with the firm step and the defiant walk that was vaguely
reminiscent of the British troops that had been in Paris last year at
the time of the foreign occupation. He had skirted the Tuileries gardens
and was walking along the embankment which now was dark and solitary
save for some rowdy enthusiasts on ahead who, arm in arm in two long
rows that reached from the garden railings to the parapet, were
obstructing the roadway and shouting themselves hoarse with "Vive
l'Empereur!"
Clyffurde, who was walking faster than they did, was just deliberating
in his mind whether he would turn back and go home some other way or
charge this unpleasant obstruction from the rear and risk the
consequences, when he noticed two figures still further on ahead walking
in the same direction as he himself and the rowdy crowd.
One of these two figures--thus viewed in the distance, through the mist
and from the back--looked nevertheless like that of a woman, which fact
at once decided Bobby as to what he would do next. He sprinted toward
the crowd as fast as he could, but unfortunately he did not come up with
them in time to prevent the two unfortunate pedestrians being surrounded
by the turbulent throng which, still arm in arm and to the accompaniment
of wild shouts, had formed a ring around them and were now vociferating
at the top of raucous voices:
"À bas la cocarde blanche! À bas! Vive l'Empereur!"
A flickering street lamp feebly lit up this unpleasant scene. Bobby saw
the vague outline of a man and of a woman, standing boldly in the midst
of the hostile crowd while two white cockades gleamed defiantly against
the dark background of their cloaks. To an Englishman, who was a
pastmaster in the noble art of using fists and knees to advantage, the
situation was neither uncommon nor very perilous. The crowd was noisy it
is true, and was no doubt ready enough for mischief, but Clyffurde's
swift and scientific onslaught from the rear staggered and disconcerted
the most bold. There was a good deal more shouting, plenty of cursing;
the Englishman's arms and legs seemed to be flying in every direction
like the arms of a windmill; a good many thuds and bumps, a few groans,
a renewal of the attack, more thuds and groans, and the discomfited
group of roisterers fled in every direction.
Bobby with a smile turned to the two motionless figures whom he had so
opportunely rescued from an unpleasant plight.
"Just a few turbulent blackguards," he said lightly, as he made a quick
attempt at readjusting the set of his coat and the position of his satin
stock. "There was not much fight in them really, and . . ."
He had, of course, lost his hat in the brief if somewhat stormy
encounter and now--as he turned--the thin streak of light from the
street-lamp fell full upon his face with its twinkling, deep-set eyes,
and the half-humorous, self-deprecatory curl of the firm mouth.
A simultaneous exclamation came from his two protégés and stopped the
easy flow of his light-hearted words. He peered closely into the gloom
and it was his turn now to exclaim, half doubting, wholly astonished:
"Mademoiselle Crystal . . . M. le Comte. . . ."
"Indeed, Sir," broke in the Comte slowly, and with a voice that seemed
to be trembling with emotion, "it is to my daughter and to myself that
you have just rendered a signal and generous service. For this I tender
you my thanks, yet believe me, I pray you when I say that both she and
I would rather have suffered any humiliation or ill-usage from that
rough crowd than owe our safety and comfort to you."
There was so much contempt, hatred even, in the tone of voice of this
old man whose manner habitually was a pattern of moderation and of
dignity that for the moment Clyffurde was completely taken aback.
Puzzlement fought with resentment and with the maddening sense that he
was anyhow impotent to avenge even so bitter an insult as had just been
hurled upon him--against a man of the Comte's years and status.
"M. le Comte," he said at last, "will you let me remind you that the
other day when you turned me out of your house like a dishonest servant,
you would not allow me to say a single word in my own justification? The
man on whose word you condemned me then without a hearing, is a
scatter-brained braggart who you yourself must know is not a man to be
trusted and . . ."
"Pardon me, Monsieur," broke in the Comte with perfect sangfroid, "even
if I acted on that evening with undue haste and ill-considered judgment,
many things have happened since which you yourself surely would not wish
to discuss with me, just when you have rendered me a signal service."
"Your pardon, M. le Comte," retorted Clyffurde with equal coolness, "I
know of nothing which could possibly justify the charges which, not
later than last Sunday, you laid at my door."
"The charge which I laid at your door then, Mr. Clyffurde, has not been
lifted from its threshold yet. I charged you with deliberately
conspiring against my King and my country all the while that you were
eating bread and salt at my table. I charged you with striving to render
assistance to that Corsican usurper whom may the great God punish, and
you yourself practically owned to this before you left my house."
"This I did not, M. le Comte," broke in Clyffurde hotly. "As a man of
honour I give you my word, that except for my being in de Marmont's
company on the day that he posted up the Emperor's proclamation in
Grenoble, I had no hand in any political scheme."
"And you would have me believe you," exclaimed the Comte, with
ever-growing vehemence, "when you talk of that Corsican brigand as 'the
Emperor.' Those words, Sir, are an insult, and had you not saved my
daughter and me just now from violence I would--old as I am--strike you
in the face for them."
With an impatient sigh at the old man's hot-headed obstinacy, Clyffurde
turned with a look of appeal to Crystal, who up to now had taken no part
in the discussion: "Mademoiselle," he said gently, "will you not at
least do me justice? Cannot you see that I am clumsy at defending mine
own honour, seeing that I have never had to do it before?"
"I only see, Monsieur," she retorted coldly, "that you are making vain
and pitiable efforts to regain my father's regard--no doubt for purposes
of your own. But why should you trouble? You have nothing more to gain
from us. Your clever comedy of a highwayman on the road has succeeded
beyond your expectations. The Corsican who now sits in the armchair
lately vacated by an infirm monarch whom you and yours helped to
dethrone, will no doubt reward you for your pains. As for me I can only
echo my father's feelings: I would ten thousand times sooner have been
torn to pieces by a rough crowd of ignorant folk than owe my safety to
your interference."
She took her father's arm and made a movement to go: instinctively
Clyffurde tried to stop her: at her words he had flushed with anger to
the very roots of his hair. The injustice of her accusation maddened
him, but the bitter resentment in the tone of her voice, the look of
passionate hatred with which she regarded him as she spoke, positively
appalled him.
"M. le Comte," he said firmly, "I cannot let you go like this, whilst
such horrible thoughts of me exist in your mind. England gave you
shelter for three and twenty years; in the name of my country's kindness
and hospitality toward you, I--as one of her sons--demand that you tell
me frankly and clearly exactly what I am supposed to have done to
justify this extraordinary hatred and contempt which you and
Mademoiselle Crystal seem now to have for me."
"One of England's sons, Monsieur!" retorted the Comte equally firmly.
"Nay! you are not even that. England stands for right and for justice,
for our legitimate King and the punishment of the usurper."
"Great God!" he exclaimed, more and more bewildered now, "are you
accusing me of treachery against mine own country? This will I allow no
man to do, not even . . ."
"Then, Sir, I pray you," rejoined Crystal proudly, "go and seek a
quarrel with the man who has unmasked you; who caught you red-handed
with the money in your possession which you had stolen from us, who
forced you to give up what you had stolen, and whom then you and your
friend Victor de Marmont waylaid and robbed once more. Go then, Mr.
Clyffurde, and seek a quarrel with the Marquis de St. Genis, who has
already struck you in the face once and no doubt will be ready to do so
again."
And what of Clyffurde's thoughts while the woman whom he loved with all
the strength of his lonely heart poured forth these hideous insults upon
him? Amazement, then wrath, bewilderment, then final hopelessness, all
these sensations ran riot through his brain.
St. Genis had behaved like an abominable blackguard! this he gathered
from what she said: he had lied like a mean skunk and betrayed the man
who had rendered him an infinitely great service. Of him Clyffurde
wouldn't even think! Such despicable, crawling worms did exist on God's
earth: he knew that! but he possessed the happy faculty, the sunny
disposition that is able to pass a worm by and ignore its existence
while keeping his eyes fixed upon all that is beautiful in earth and in
the sky. Of St. Genis, therefore, he would not think; some day, perhaps,
he might be able to punish him--but not now--not while this poor,
forlorn, heartsick girl pinned her implicit faith upon that wretched
worm and bestowed on him the priceless guerdon of her love. An infinity
of pity rose in his kindly heart for her and obscured every other
emotion. That same pity he had felt for her before, a sweet, protecting
pity--gentle sister to fiercer, madder love which had perhaps never been
so strong as it was at this hour when, for the second time, he was about
to make a supreme sacrifice for her.
That the sacrifice must be made, he already knew: knew it even when
first St. Genis' name escaped her lips. She loved St. Genis and she
believed in him, and he, Clyffurde, who loved her with every fibre of
his being, with all the passionate ardour of his lonely heart, could
serve her no better than by accepting this awful humiliation which she
put upon him. If he could have justified himself now, he would not have
done it, not while she loved St. Genis, and he--Clyffurde--was less than
nothing to her.
What did it matter after all what she thought of him? He would have
given his life for her love, but short of that everything else was
anyhow intolerable--her contempt, her hatred? what mattered? since
to-night anyhow he would pass out of her life for ever.
He was ready for the sacrifice--sacrifice of pride, of honour, of peace
of mind--but he did want to know that that sacrifice would be really
needed and that when made it would not be in vain: and in order to gain
this end he put a final question to her:
"One moment, Mademoiselle," he said, "before you go will you tell me one
thing at least; was it M. de St. Genis himself who accused me of
treachery?"
"There is no reason why I should deny it, Sir," she replied coldly. "It
was M. de St. Genis himself who gave to my father and to me a full
account of the interview which he had with you at a lonely inn, some few
kilomètres from Lyons, and less than two hours after we had been
shamefully robbed on the highroad of money that belonged to the King."
"And did M. de St. Genis tell you, Mademoiselle, that I purposed to use
that money for mine own ends?"
"Or for those of the Corsican," she retorted impatiently. "I care not
which. Yes! Sir, M. de St. Genis told me that with his own lips and when
I had heard the whole miserable story of your duplicity and your
treachery, I--a helpless, deceived and feeble woman--did then and there
register a vow that I too would do you some grievous wrong one day--a
wrong as great as you had done not only to the King of France but to me
and to my father who trusted you as we would a friend. What you did
to-night has of course altered the irrevocableness of my vow. I owe,
perhaps, my father's life to your timely intervention and for this I
must be grateful, but . . ."
Her voice broke in a kind of passionate sob, and it took her a moment or
two to recover herself, even while Clyffurde stood by, mute and with
well-nigh broken heart, his very soul so filled with sorrow for her that
there was no room in it even for resentment.
"Father let us go now," Crystal said after a while with brusque
transition and in a steady voice; "no purpose can be served by further
recriminations."
"None, my dear," said the Comte in his usual polished manner.
"Personally I have felt all along that explanations could but aggravate
the unpleasantness of the present position. Mr. Clyffurde understands
perfectly, I am sure. He had his axe to grind--whether personal or
political we really do not care to know--we are not likely ever to meet
again. All we can do now is to thank him for his timely intervention on
our behalf and . . ."
"And brand him a liar," broke in Clyffurde almost involuntarily and with
bitter vehemence.
"Your pardon, Monsieur," retorted the Comte coldly, "neither my daughter
nor I have done that. It is your deeds that condemn you, your own
admissions and the word of M. de St. Genis. Would you perchance suggest
that he lied?"
"Oh, no," rejoined Clyffurde with perfect calm, "it is I who lied, of
course."
He had said this very slowly and as if speaking with mature
deliberation: not raising his voice, nor yet allowing it to quiver from
any stress of latent emotion. And yet there was something in the tone of
it, something in the man's attitude, that suggested such a depth of
passion that, quite instinctively, the Comte remained silent and awed.
For the moment, however, Clyffurde seemed to have forgotten the older
man's presence; wounded in every fibre of his being by the woman whom he
loved so tenderly and so devotedly, he had spoken only to her,
compelling her attention and stirring--even by this simple admission of
a despicable crime--an emotion in her which she could not--would not
define.
She turned large inquiring eyes on him, into which she tried to throw
all that she felt of hatred and contempt for him. She had meant to wound
him and it seemed indeed as if she had succeeded beyond her dearest
wish. By the dim, flickering light of the street-lamp his face looked
haggard and old. The traitor was suffering almost as much as he
deserved, almost as much--Crystal said obstinately to herself--as she
had wished him to do. And yet, at sight of him now, Crystal felt a
strong, unconquerable pity for him: the womanly instinct no doubt to
heal rather than to hurt.
But this pity she was not prepared to show him: she wanted to pass right
out of his life, to forget once and for all that sense of warmth of the
soul, of comfort and of peace which she had felt in his presence on that
memorable evening at Brestalou. Above all, she never wanted to touch his
hand again, the hand which seemed to have such power to protect and to
shield her, when on that same evening she had placed her own in it.
Therefore, now she took her father's arm once more: she turned
resolutely to go. One more curt nod of the head, one last look of
undying enmity, and then she would pass finally out of his life for
ever.
V
How Clyffurde got back to his lodgings that night he never knew.
Crystal, after his final admission, had turned without another word from
him, and he had stood there in the lonely, silent street watching her
retreating form--on her father's arm--until the mist and gloom swallowed
her up as in an elvish grave. Then mechanically he hunted for his hat
and he, too, walked away.
That was the end of his life's romance, of course. The woman whom he
loved with his very soul, who held his heart, his mind, his imagination
captive, whose every look on him was joy, whose every smile was a
delight, had gone out of his life for ever! She had turned away from him
as she would from a venomous snake! she hated him so cruelly that she
would gladly hurt him--do him some grievous wrong if she could. And
Clyffurde was left in utter loneliness with only a vague, foolish
longing in his heart--the longing that one day she might have her wish,
and might have the power to wound him to death--bodily just as she had
wounded him to the depth of his soul to-night.
For the rest there was nothing more for him to do in France. King Louis
was not like to remain at Lille very long: within twenty-four hours
probably he would continue his journey--his flight--to Ghent--where once
more he would hold his court in exile, with all the fugitive royalists
rallied around his tottering throne.
Clyffurde had already received orders from his chief at the Intelligence
Department to report himself first at Lille, then--if the King and court
had already left--at Ghent. If, however, there were plenty of men to do
the work of the Department it was his intention to give up his share in
it and to cross over to England as soon as possible, so as to take up
the first commission in the new army that he could get. England would be
wanting soldiers more urgently than she had ever done before: mother and
sisters would be well looked after: he--Bobby--had earned a fortune for
them, and they no longer needed a bread-winner now: whilst England
wanted all her sons, for she would surely fight.
Clyffurde, who had seen the English papers that morning--as they were
brought over by an Intelligence courier--had realised that the debates
in Parliament could only end one way.
England would not tolerate Bonaparte; she would not even tolerate his
abdication in favour of his own son. Austria had already declared her
intention of renewing the conflict and so had Prussia. England's
decision would, of course, turn the scale, and Bobby in his own mind had
no doubt which way that decision would go.
The man whom the people of France loved, and whom his army idolised, was
the disturber of the peace of Europe. No one would believe his
protestations of pacific intentions now: he had caused too much
devastation, too much misery in the past--who would believe in him for
the future?
For the sake of that past, and for dread of the future, he must go--go
from whence he could not again return, and Bobby Clyffurde--remembering
Grenoble, remembering Lyons, Villefranche and Nevers--could not
altogether suppress a sigh of regret for the brave man, the fine genius,
the reckless adventurer who had so boldly scaled for the second time the
heights of the Capitol, oblivious of the fact that the Tarpeian Rock was
so dangerously near.
VI
At this same hour when Bobby Clyffurde finally bade adieu to all the
vague hopes of happiness which his love for Crystal de Cambray had
engendered in his heart, his whilom companion in the long ago--rival and
enemy now--Victor de Marmont, was laying a tribute of twenty-five
million francs at the feet of his beloved Emperor, and receiving the
thanks of the man to serve whom he would gladly have given his life.
"What reward shall we give you for this service?" the Emperor had
deigned to ask.
"The means to subdue a woman's pride, Sire, and make her thankful to
marry me," replied de Marmont promptly.
"A title, what?" queried the Emperor. "You have everything else, you
rogue, to please a woman's fancy and make her thankful to marry you."
"A title, Sire, would be a welcome addition," said de Marmont lightly,
"and the freedom to go and woo her, until France and my Emperor need me
again."
"Then go and do your wooing, man, and come back here to me in three
months, for I doubt not by then the flames of war will have been kindled
against me again."