WANDERING
I
A primrose dawn of spring touched the mountains as Madame de Ferrier and
I stepped into the tunnel's mouth. The wind that goes like a besom
before sunrise, swept off the fog to corners of the sky, except a few
spirals which still unwound from the lake. The underground path to De
Chaumont's manor descended by terraces of steps and entered blackness.
A rank odor of earth filled it; and I never passed that way without
hearkening for the insect-like song of the rattlesnake. The ground was
slippery, and thick darkness seemed to press the soul out of the body.
Yet I liked it; for when we reached the staircase of rock that entered
the house, she would vanish.
And so it was.
She did say--"Good-night--and good-morning."
And I answered, "Good-morning and good-night."
We were both physically exhausted. My head swarmed as with sparkles, and
a thousand emotions tore me, for I was at the age when we risk all on
chances. I sat alone on the steps, unmindful of that penetrating chill
of stone which increases rather than decreases, the longer you sit upon
it, and thought of all that had been said by my new friend at the
camp-fire, while the moon went lower and lower, the potter turned his
wheel, and the idiot slept.
The mixed and oblique motives of human nature--the boy's will--worked
like gigantic passions.
She had said very little to me in the boat, and I had said very little
to her; not realizing that the camp talk, in which she took no part,
separated us in a new way.
Sitting alone on the steps I held this imaginary conversation with her.
"I am going to France!"
"You, monsieur?"
"Yes, I!"
"How are you going?"
"I don't know; but I am going!"
"The Duke of Orleans did not mention such a thing."
"Bother the Duke of Orleans!"
"When are you going?"
"Now!"
"But it may not be best to go at this time."
"It is always best to go where you are!"
"Monsieur, do not throw away your future on an unconsidered move."
"Madame, I will throw away my eternity!"
Then I went back through the tunnel to the beach, stripped, and took a
plunge to clear my head and warm my blood, rubbing off with my shirt.
On reaching my room the first thing I did was to make a bundle of
everything I considered necessary and desirable. There was no reason for
doing this before lying down; but with an easier mind I closed my eyes;
and opened them to find sunset shining through the windows, and Doctor
Chantry keeping guard in an arm-chair at my side.
"Nature has taken her revenge on you, my lad," said he. "And now I am
going to take mine."
"I have slept all day!"
"Renegades who roam the woods all night must expect to sleep all day."
"How do you know I have been in the woods all night?"
"I heard you slipping up the tunnel stairs without any shoes on at
daylight. I have not been able to sleep two nights on account of you."
"Then why don't you go to bed yourself, my dear master?"
"Because I am not going to let you give me the slip another time. I am
responsible for you: and you will have me on your back when you go
prowling abroad again."
"Again?" I questioned innocently.
"Yes, again, young sir! I have been through your luggage, and find that
you have packed changes of clothing and things necessary and unnecessary
to a journey,--even books."
"I hope you put them neatly together"--
"Nothing of the kind. I scattered them."
"Do you want me to go bare into the world?" I laughed.
"Lazarre," said my master, "you were a good lad, studious and zealous
beyond anything I ever saw."
"And now I am bad and lazy."
"You have dropped your books and taken to wild ways."
"There is one thing, dear master, I haven't done: I haven't written
poetry."
He blinked and smiled, and felt in his breast pocket, but thought better
of it, and forebore to draw the paper out. There was no escaping his
tenacious grip. He sat by and exercised me in Latin declensions while I
dressed. We had our supper together. I saw no member of the household
except the men, Pierre and Jean. Doctor Chantry ordered a mattress put
in my room and returned there with me.
We talked long on the approaching departure of the count and Madame de
Ferrier. He told me the latest details of preparation, and tremulously
explained how he must feel the loss of his sister.
"I have nothing left but you, Lazarre."
"My dear master," I said, patting one of his shriveled hands between
mine, "I am going to be open with you."
I sat on the side of my bed facing his arm-chair, and the dressing-glass
reflected his bald head and my young head drawn near together.
"Did you ever feel as if you were a prince?"
Doctor Chantry wagged a pathetic negative.
"Haven't you ever been ready to dare anything and everything, because
something in you said--I must!"
Again Doctor Chantry wagged a negative.
"Now I have to break bounds--I have to leave the manor and try my
fortune! I can't wait for times and seasons--to be certain of this--to
be certain of that!--I am going to leave the house to-night--and I am
going to France!"
"My God!" cried Doctor Chantry, springing up. "He is going to
France!--Rouse the servants!--Call De Chaumont!" He struck his gouty
foot against the chair and sat down nursing it in both hands. I
restrained him and added my sympathy to his groans.
"Have you as much as a Spanish real of your own, my lad?" he catechised
me, when the foot was easy.
I acknowledged that I had not.
"It costs dear to travel about the world. It is not like coming down the
trail from St. Regis to Lake George. How are you to travel without
money?"
I laughed at the very uncertainty, and answered that money would be
found.
"Found! It isn't found, I tell you! It is inherited by the idle, or
gathered by the unscrupulous, or sweated and toiled for! It costs days
and years, and comes in drops. You might as well expect to find a
kingdom, lad!"
"Maybe I shall find a kingdom, master!"
"Oh, what a thing it is to be young!" sighed Doctor Chantry.
I felt it myself, and hugged my youth.
"Do you know how to reach the sea-port?" he continued.
I said anybody could follow the Hudson to New York.
"You're bitten, my poor lad! It's plain what ails you. You might as well
try to swim the Atlantic. De Chaumont intends her for himself. And in
the unjust distribution of this world, your rival has the power and you
have the feelings. Stay where you are. You'll never forget it, but it
will hurt less as years go by."
"Master," I said to him, "good sense is on your side. But if I knew I
should perish, I would have to go!"
And I added from fullness of conviction--
"I would rather undertake to do something, and perish, than live a
thousand years as I am."
Doctor Chantry struck the chair arm with his clenched fist.
"My lad, so would I--so would I!--I wish I had been dowered with your
spirit!--I'm going with you!"
As soon as he had made this embarrassing resolution my master blew his
nose and set his British jaws firmly together. I felt my own jaw drop.
"Have you as much as a Spanish real of your own?" I quoted.
"That I have, young sir, and some American notes, such as they are, and
good English pounds, beside."
"And do you know how to reach the seaport?"
"Since I came that way I can return that way. You have youth, my lad,
but I have brains and experience."
"It's plain what ails you, Doctor Chantry. And you might as well try to
swim the Atlantic."
My poor master dropped his head on his breast, and I was ashamed of
baiting him and began to argue tenderly. I told him he could not bear
hardships; he was used to the soft life in De Chaumont's house; while my
flesh had been made iron in the wilderness. I intended to take a boat
from those hidden at our summer camp, to reach the head of Lake George.
But from that point to the Hudson river--where the town of Luzerne now
stands--it was necessary to follow a trail. I could carry the light
canoe over the trail, but he could not even walk it.
The more I reasoned with him the more obstinate he became. There was a
wonderful spring called Saratoga, which he had visited with De Chaumont
a few years before as they came into the wilderness; he was convinced
that the water would set him on foot for the rest of the journey.
"It is twenty-nine miles above Albany. We could soon reach it," he
urged.
"I have heard of it," I answered. "Skenedonk has been there. But he says
you leave the river and go into the woods."
"I know the way," he testily insisted. "And there used to be near the
river a man who kept horses and carried visitors to the spring."
The spirit of reckless adventure, breaking through years of extreme
prudence, outran youth.
"What will you do in France?" I put to him. He knew no more than I what
I should do.
And there was Count de Chaumont to be considered. How would he regard
such a leave-taking?
Doctor Chantry was as insensible to De Chaumont as I myself. Still he
agreed to write a note to his protector while I prepared my quill to
write one to Madame de Ferrier. With the spirit of the true parasite he
laid all the blame on me, and said he was constrained by duty to follow
and watch over me since it was impossible to curb a nature like mine.
And he left a loop-hole open for a future return to De Chaumont's easy
service, when the hardships which he willingly faced brought him his
reward.
This paper he brazenly showed me while I was struggling to beg Madame de
Ferrier's pardon, and to let her know that I aimed at something definite
whether I ever reached port or not.
I reflected with satisfaction that he would probably turn back at
Saratoga. We descended together to his room and brought away the things
he needed. In bulk they were twice as large as the load I had made for
myself. He also wrote out strict orders to Pierre to seal up his room
until his return. The inability of an old man to tear himself from his
accustomed environment cheered my heart.
We then went back to bed, and like the two bad boys we were, slept
prepared for flight.
II
"This is fine!" said Doctor Chantry, when we descended from the rough
stage which had brought us across a corduroy trail, and found ourselves
at the entrance of a spacious wooden tavern. "When I passed Saratoga
before there were only three log houses, and the inn had two rooms below
and one above. It was lighted by pine torches stuck in the chinks of the
wall--and see how candles shine through these windows!"
The tavern stood in a cleared place with miles of forest around it, and
a marsh stretching near by. Dusk could not prevent our seeing a few log
habitations, one of them decorated with a merchant's sign. We entered
among swarming crowds, a little world dropped into the backwoods. This
was more surprising because we had just left behind us a sense of wild
things gathering to their night haunts, and low savage cries, and
visions of moose and deer through far-off arches.
A man who appeared to be the host met us, his sprightly interest in our
welfare being tempered by the consciousness of having many guests; and
told us the house was full, but he would do what he could for us.
"Why is the house full?" fretted Doctor Chantry. "What right have you,
my dear sir, to crowd your house and so insure our discomfort?"
"None at all, sir," answered the host good naturedly. "If you think you
can do better, try for lodgings at the store-keeper's."
"The store-keeper's!" Doctor Chantry's hysterical cry turned some
attention to us. "I shall do nothing of the kind. I demand the best you
have, sir."
"The best I can give you," amended our host. "You see we are very full
of politicians from Washington. They crowd to the spring."
My master turned his nose like the inflamed horn of a unicorn against
the politicians from Washington, and trotted to the fireplace where
blazing knots cheered a great tap-room set with many tables and benches.
And there rested Skenedonk in silent gravity, toasting his moccasins.
The Iroquois had long made Saratoga a gathering place, but I thought of
this Oneida as abiding in St. Regis village; for our people did not come
to the summer hunting in May.
Forgetting that I was a runaway I met him heartily, and the fawn eyes in
his bald head beamed their accustomed luster upon me. I asked him where
my father and mother and the rest of the tribe were, and he said they
had not left St. Regis.
"And why are you so early?" I inquired.
He had been at Montreal, and had undertaken to guide a Frenchman as far
as Saratoga. It is not easy to surprise an Indian. But I wondered that
Skenedonk accepted my presence without a question, quite as if he had
himself made the appointment.
However, the sights to be seen put him out of my head. Besides the
tap-room crowded with men there was a parlor in which women of fashion
walked about, contrasting with the place. They had all been to a spring
to drink water; for only one spring was greatly used then; and they
talked about the medicinal effects. Some men left the stronger waters,
which could be had at a glittering portcullised bar opposite the
fireplace in the tap-room, to chat with these short-waisted beauties. I
saw one stately creature in a white silk ball costume, his stockings
splashed to the knees with mud from the corduroy road.
But the person who distinguished himself from everybody else by some
nameless attraction, was a man perhaps forty years old, who sat in a
high-backed settle at a table near the fire. He was erect and thin as a
lath, long faced, square browed and pale. His sandy hair stood up like
the bristles of a brush. Carefully dressed, with a sword at his side--as
many of the other men had--he filled my idea of a soldier; and I was not
surprised to hear his friends sitting opposite call him General Jackson.
An inkstand, a quill and some paper were placed before him, but he
pushed them aside with his glass of toddy to lift one long fore-finger
and emphasize his talk. He had a resonant, impressive voice, with a
manner gentle and persuasive, like a woman's: and he was speaking of
Aaron Burr, the man whose duel had made such a noise in the newspapers.
[Illustration: He pushed them aside with his glass of toddy to lift one
long fore-finger and emphasize his talk.]
"I disagree with you, Mr. Campbell. You are prejudiced against Mr. Burr
on account of his late unfortunate affair. Even in that case I maintain
every man has a right to honor and satisfaction. But he loves the
Spanish on our southwestern borders no better than I do,--and you know
how I love the Spanish!"
The other man laughed, lounging against the table.
"You can't believe anything ill of Aaron Burr, General."
I might have given attention to what they were saying, since here were
men from Washington, the very fountain of government, if Doctor Chantry
had not made me uneasy. He chose the table at which they were sitting
and placed himself in the seat nearest the fire, with the utmost nicety
about his own comfort. He wiped his horn spectacles, and produced his
own ink and quill and memorandum from a breast pocket. I had begged the
doctor to keep strict account between us, that I might pay back from my
pension whatever he spent on me, and with fine spider-like characters he
was proceeding to debit me with the stage fare, when another quill
barred his entrance to his ink-horn.
He took off his spectacles and glared pink-eyed at the genial gentleman
with sandy upright hair.
"Sir!" he cried, "that is my ink!"
General Jackson, absorbed in talk, did not notice Doctor Chantry, who
half arose and shouted directly at his ear,
"Sir, that is my ink!"
He knocked the interloping quill in the direction of its owner.
The genial sandy gentleman changed countenance in a way to astonish
beholders.
"Have I disputed it, sir?"
"No, sir, but you have dipped into it without asking leave."
"By God, sir, what is a fip'ny-bit's worth of ink?"
"But it's mine, sir!"
"I see, sir; you're a Yankee, sir!"
"I'm not, sir; I'm English--the finest race in the world!"
General Jackson looked him up and down as they rose fronting each other,
and filled the air with dazzling words.
"I should judge so, sir, by the specimen I see before me!"
Doctor Chantry was like a fighting-cock, and it was plainly his age
which kept the other from striking him. He was beginning our journey
well, but I felt bound to intercept whatever fell upon him, and stood
between them. The other men at the table rose with General Jackson.
"Gentlemen," I pleaded with the best words I could command in the
language, "do not forget your dignity, and disturb the peace of this
house for a bottle of ink!"
The quarrel was ridiculous, and the Southerners laughed. General
Jackson himself again changed countenance, and gave me, I do not know
why, a smile that must have been reflected from the face of a woman he
adored. But my poor master showed the bull-dog; and taking him by the
arm and the collar I toddled him away from that table to a dark entry,
where I held him without any admonition save a sustained grip. He became
like a child, weeping and trembling, and declaring that everybody was in
league against him. Argument is wasted on people having such infirmity
of temper. When he was well cooled I put him in an arm-chair by a fire
in the ladies' parlor, and he was soon very meek and tractable, watching
the creatures he so admired.
"You must go to bed as soon as you have your supper," I said to him.
"The journey to Saratoga has been a hard one for you. But Skenedonk is
here fortunately, and he can take you home again."
My master looked at me with the shrewishness of an elephant. I had not
at that time seen an elephant. When I did see one, however, the shifting
of its eyes brought back the memory of Doctor Chantry when I had him at
bay by the fire.
"You are not going to get away from me," he responded. "If you are tired
of it, so am I. Otherwise, we proceed."
"If you pick quarrels with soldiers and duelists at every step, what are
we to do?"
"I picked no quarrel. It is my luck. Everyone is against me!" He hung
his head in such a dejected manner that I felt ashamed of bringing his
temperament to account: and told him I was certain no harm would come
of it.
"I am not genial," Doctor Chantry owned; "I wish I were. Now you are
genial, Lazarre. People take to you. You attract them. But whatever I
am, you are obliged to have my company: you cannot get along without me.
You have no experience, and no money. I have experience,--and a few
pounds:--not enough to retire into the country upon, in England; but
enough to buy a little food for the present."
I thought I could get along better without the experience and even the
few pounds, than with him as an encumbrance; though I could not bring
myself to the cruelty of telling him so. For there is in me a fatal
softness which no man can have and overbear others in this world. It
constrains me to make the other man's cause my own, though he be at war
with my own interests.
Therefore I was at the mercy of Skenedonk, also. The Indian appeared in
the doorway and watched me. I knew he thought there was to be trouble
with the gentleman from Washington, and I went to him to ease his mind.
Skenedonk had nothing to say, however, and made me a sign to follow him.
As we passed through the tap-room, General Jackson gave me another
pleasant look. He had resumed his conversation and his own ink-bottle as
if he had never been interrupted.
The Indian led me upstairs to one of the chambers, and opened the door.
In the room was Louis Philippe, and when we were shut alone together, he
embraced me and kissed me as I did not know men embraced and kissed.
"Do you know Skenedonk?" I exclaimed.
"If you mean the Indian who brought you at my order, he was my guide
from Montreal."
"But he was not with you at the potter's camp."
"Yes, he was in the hut, wrapped in his blanket, and after you drove the
door in he heard all that was said. Lazarre"--Louis Philippe took my
face in his hands--"make a clean breast of it."
We sat down, and I told him without being questioned what I was going to
do. He gravely considered.
"I saw you enter the house, and had a suspicion of your undertaking. It
is the worst venture you could possibly make at this time. We will begin
with my family. Any belief in you into which I may have been betrayed is
no guaranty of Monsieur's belief. You understand," said Louis Philippe,
"that Monsieur stands next to the throne if there is no dauphin, or an
idiot dauphin?"
I said I understood.
"Monsieur is not a bad man. But Bellenger, who took charge of the
dauphin, has in some manner and for some reason, provided himself with a
substitute, and he utterly denies you. Further: supposing that you are
the heir of France, restored to your family and proclaimed--of what use
is it to present yourself before the French people now? They are
besotted with this Napoleon. The Empire seems to them a far greater
thing than any legitimate monarchy. Of what use, do I say? It would be a
positive danger for you to appear in France at this time! Napoleon has
proscribed every Bourbon. Any prince caught alive in France will be put
to death. Do you know what he did last year to the Duke d'Enghien? He
sent into Germany for the duke, who had never harmed him, never
conspired against him--had done nothing, in fact, except live an
innocent life away from the seat of Napoleon's power. The duke was
brought to Paris under guard and put in the dungeons of Vincennes. He
demanded to see Bonaparte. Bonaparte would not see him. He was tried by
night, his grave being already dug in the castle ditch. That lovely
young fellow--he was scarcely above thirty--was taken out to the ditch
and shot like a dog!"
I stood up with my hands clenched.
"Sit down," said Louis Philippe. "There is no room in the world at this
time for anybody but that jealous monster."
"He shall not tie me here," I said.
"You intend to go?"
"I intend to go."
"This Bonaparte," said Louis Philippe, "has his troubles. His brother
Jerome has married an American in Baltimore. A fine explosion that will
make when it reaches his ears. Where are you going to land, Lazarre?"
I said that must depend on the ship I took.
"And what are you going to do when you land?"
I said I would think that out later.
Then the spirit being upon me, I burst bounds and told him impetuously
that I was going to learn what the world held for me. Without means,
without friends, or power or prospects, or certainty of any good
results--impudent--reckless--utterly rash--"I am going," I cried,
"because I must go!"
"There is something about you which inspires love, my boy," said Louis
Philippe; and I heard him with astonishment. "Perhaps it comes from the
mother; she was a witcher of all mankind."
"I cannot understand why any one should love so ignorant a creature, but
God grant there be others that love me, too; for I have lived a life
stinted of all affection. And, indeed, I did not know I wanted it until
last year. When we talked late the other night, and you told me the
history of all my family, the cruelest part of my lot seemed the
separation from those that belonged to me. Separation from what is our
own ought not to be imposed upon us even by God Himself!"
"What!" said Louis Philippe, "is he following a woman!"
My face burned, and probably went white, for I felt the blood go back on
my heart. He took my hand and stroked it.
"Don't chain yourself behind that chariot. Wait a little while for your
good star to rise. I wish I had money. I wish I could be of use to you
in France. I wish I stood nearer to Monsieur, for your sake. Every one
must love this bold pure face. It bears some resemblance to Madame
Royal. The sister of the dauphin is a good girl, not many years your
senior. Much dominated by her uncles, but a royal duchess. It is the
fashion now to laugh at chivalry. You are the most foolish example of it
I ever saw! It is like seeing a knight without horse, armor, or purse,
set out to win an equipment before he pursues his quest! Yet I love you
for it, my boy!"
"It would be well for me if I had more friends like you."
"Why, I can be of no use! I cannot go back to France at this time, and
if I could, what is my influence there? I must wander around in foreign
parts, a private gentleman eking out my living by some kind of industry.
What are you going to do with the fretful old fellow you have with you?"
I groaned and laughed.
"Carry him on my back. There is no getting rid of him. He is following
me to France. He is my lesson-master."
"How will you support him?"
"He is supporting me at present. But I would rather take my chances
alone."
"You have another follower," said Louis Philippe. "Your Indian has been
in France, and after hearing our talk at the camp, he foresaw you might
be moved to this folly, and told me he intended to guide you there, or
wherever you go!"
"And Skenedonk, too!"
I shook with laughter. It was so like Skenedonk to draw his conclusions
and determine on the next step.
"What shall I do with them?"
"The old master can be your secretary, and as for the Indian, you can
take him for your servant."
"A secretary and a servant, for an outcast without a penny to his
pouch!"
"You see the powers that order us are beginning well with you. Starting
with a secretary and a servant, you may end with a full household and a
court! I ought to add my poor item of tribute, and this I can do. There
is a ship-master taking cargo this month in New York bay, who is a
devoted royalist; a Breton sailor. For a letter from me he will carry
you and your suite to the other side of the world; but you will have to
land in his port."
"And what will the charges be?"
"Nothing, except gratitude, if I put the case as strongly to him as I
intend to do. God knows I may be casting a foul lot for you. His ship is
staunch, rigged like the Italian salt ships. But it is dirty work
crossing the sea; and there is always danger of falling into the hands
of pirates. Are you determined?"
I looked him in the eyes, and said I was; thanking him for all his
goodness to one who had so little expectation of requiting him. The
sweet heartiness of an older man so far beyond myself in princely
attainments and world knowledge, who could stoop to such a raw savage,
took me by storm.
I asked him if he had any idea who the idiot was that we had seen in
Bellenger's camp. He shook his head, replying that idiots were
plentiful, and the people who had them were sometimes glad to get rid of
them.
"The dauphin clue has been very cleverly managed by--Bellenger, let us
say," Louis Philippe remarked. "If you had not appeared, I should not
now believe there is a dauphin."
I wanted to tell him all the thoughts tossing in my mind; but silence is
sometimes better than open speech. Facing adventure, I remembered that I
had never known the want of food for any length of time during my
conscious life. And I had a suspicion the soft life at De Chaumont's had
unstrung me for what was before me. But it lasted scarce a year, and I
was built for hardship.
He turned to his table to write the ship-master's letter. Behold, there
lay a book I knew so well that I exclaimed----
"Where did you get my missal?"
"Your missal, Lazarre? This is mine."
I turned the leaves, and looked at the back. It was a continuation of
the prayers of the church. There were blank leaves for the inscribing of
prayers, and one was written out in a good bold hand.
"His Majesty Louis XVI composed and wrote that prayer himself," said
Louis Philippe. "The comfort-loving priests had a fashion of dividing
the missal into three or four parts, that a volume might not be so heavy
to carry about in their pockets. This is the second volume. It was
picked up in the Tuileries after that palace was sacked."
I told him mine must be the preceding volume, because I did not know
there was any continuation. The prayers of the church had not been my
study.
"Where did you get yours, Lazarre?"
"Madame de Ferrier gave it to me. When I saw it I remembered, as if my
head were split open to show the picture, that my mother had read from
that very book to me. I cannot explain it, but so it was."
"I am not surprised she believes, against Bellenger's evidence, that you
are Louis of France."
"I will bring my book and show it to you."
We compared the volumes after supper, and one was the mate of the other.
The inn dining-room had one long table stretched down its entire length,
heaped with wild meats and honey and pastries and fish in abundance.
General Jackson sat at one end, and at the other sat the landlord,
explaining to all his guests what each dish was, and urging good
appetite. I sat by Louis Philippe, whose quality was known only to
myself, with Doctor Chantry on the other side fretting for the
attendance to which Jean had used him.
My master was so tired that I put him early to bed; and then sat talking
nearly all night with the gracious gentleman to whom I felt bound by
gratitude and by blood.
III
Dieppe, high and glaring white above the water, will always symbolize to
me the gate of France. The nobility of that view remained in my thoughts
when half the distance to Paris was traversed.
I could shut my eyes and see it as I lay on the straw in a post-house
stable. A square hole in the front of the grenier gave upon the
landscape. Even respectable houses in that part of the country were then
built with few or no windows; but delicious masses of grayness they
were, roofed with thick and overhanging thatch.
"The stables of France are nothing but covered dunghills," Doctor
Chantry grumbled; so when I crept with the Indian to lodgings over the
cattle, one of the beds in the house was hired for the gouty master.
Even at inns there were two or three beds in a room where they set us to
dine.
"An English inn-keeper would throw their furniture into the fire!" he
cried in a language fortunately not understood.
"But we have two good rooms on the ground floor, and another for
Skenedonk," I sometimes remonstrated with him, "at three shillings and
sixpence a day, in your money."
"You would not see any man, let his rank be what it may," Doctor
Chantry retorted, "dining in his bedroom, in England. And look at these
walls!--papered with two or three kinds of paper, the bare spots hung
with tapestry moth-eaten and filled with spiders! And what have we for
table?--a board laid on cross-bars! And the oaken chairs are
rush-bottomed, and so straight the backs are a persecution! The door
hinges creak in these inns, the wind blows through--"
So his complaints went on, for there never was a man who got so much out
of small miseries. Skenedonk and I must have failed to see all in our
travels that he put before us. For we were full of enjoyment and wonder:
at the country people, wooden shod, the women's caps and long cloaks; at
the quiet fair roads which multiplied themselves until we often paused
enchanted in a fairy world of sameness; at market-towns, where fountains
in the squares were often older than America, the country out of which
we arrived.
Skenedonk heard without shifting a muscle all Doctor Chantry's
grievances; and I told him we ought to cherish them, for they were views
of life we could not take ourselves. Few people are made so delicately
that they lose color and rail at the sight of raw tripe brought in by a
proud hostess to show her resources for dinner; or at a chicken coming
upon the table with its head tucked beneath its wing.
"We are fed with poulet, poulet, nothing but poulet," said Doctor
Chantry, "until the poulets themselves are ashamed to look us in the
face!"
We fared well, indeed, and the wine was good, and my master said he must
sustain himself on it though it proved his death. He could not march as
Skenedonk and I regularly marched. We hired a cart to lift him and our
knapsacks from village to village, with a driver who knew the road to
Paris. When the distances were long we sometimes mounted beside him. I
noticed that the soil of this country had not the chalk look of other
lands which I afterwards saw to the east and north; but Napoleon was
already making good the ancient thoroughfares.
When my master was on shipboard he enjoyed the sea even less than the
free air of these broad stretches; for while he could cast an eye about
and approve of something under the sky--perhaps a church steeple, or the
color of a thatch which filled me with joy--he could not approve of
anything aboard a ship. Indeed, it was pity to have no delight in
cleaving the water, and in the far-off spouting of whales, to say
nothing of a living world that rides in undulations. For my part, I
loved even the creaking of a ship, and the uncertainty of ever coming to
port, and the anxiety lest a black flag should show above every sail we
passed. The slow progress of man from point to point in his experience,
while it sometimes enrages, on the whole interests me; and the monotony
of a voyage has a sweetness like the monotony of daily bread. I looked
out of the grenier window upon the high road, and upon the June sun in
the act of setting; for we had supped and gone early to rest after a
hard day. Post horses were stamping underneath, all ready for some noble
count who intended to make another stage of his journey before
nightfall.
Small obtrusive cares, such as the desire that my shoes should last well
into Paris, mingled with joy in the smell of the earth at sunset, and
the looking forward to seeing Madame de Ferrier again. I wrapped myself
every night in the conviction that I should see her, and more freely
than I had ever seen her in America.
There was a noise of horses galloping, and the expected noble count
arrived; being no other than De Chaumont with his post coaches. He
stepped out of the first, and Ernestine stepped out of the second,
carrying Paul. She took him to his mother. The door flew open, and the
woman I adored received her child and walked back and forth with him.
Annabel leaned out while the horses were changed. I saw Miss Chantry,
and my heart misgave me, remembering her brother's prolonged lament at
separation from her.
He was, I trusted, already shut into one of those public beds which are
like cupboards; for the day had begun for us at three of the morning.
But if he chose to show himself, and fall upon De Chaumont for luxurious
conveyance to Paris, I was determined that Skenedonk and I should not
appear. I wronged my poor master, who told me afterwards he watched
through a crack of the cupboard bed with his heart in his mouth.
The pause was a very short one, for horses are soon changed. Madame de
Ferrier threw a searching eye over the landscape. It was a mercy she did
not see the hole in the grenier, through which I devoured her, daring
for the first time to call her secretly--Eagle--the name that De
Chaumont used with common freedom! Now how strange is this--that one
woman should be to a man the sum of things! And what was her charm I
could not tell, for I began to understand there were many beautiful
women in the world, of all favors, and shapely perhaps as the one of my
love. Only her I found drawing the soul out of my body; and none of the
others did more than please the eye like pictures.
The carriages were gone with the sun, and it was no wonder all fell gray
over the world.
De Chaumont had sailed behind us, and he would be in Paris long before
us.
I had first felt some uneasiness, and dread of being arrested on our
journey; though our Breton captain--who was a man of gold that I would
travel far to see this day, if I could, even beneath the Atlantic, where
he and his ship now float--obtained for us at Dieppe, on his own pledge,
a kind of substitute for passports. We were a marked party, by reason of
the doctor's lameness and Skenedonk's appearance. The Oneida, during his
former sojourn in France, had been encouraged to preserve the novelty
of his Indian dress. As I had nothing to give him in its place it did
not become me to find fault. And he would have been more conspicuous
with a cocked hat on his bare red scalp, and knee breeches instead of
buckskins. Peasants ran out to look at him, and in return we looked at
them with a good will.
We reached the very barriers of Paris, however, without falling into
trouble. And in the streets were so many men of so many nations that
Skenedonk's attire seemed no more bizarre than the turbans of the east
or the white burnous of the Arab.
It was here that Skenedonk took his rôle as guide, and stalked through
narrow crooked streets, which by comparison made New York, my first
experience of a city, appear a plain and open village.
I do not pretend to know anything about Paris. Some spots in the mystic
labyrinth stand out to memory, such as that open space where the
guillotine had done its work, the site of the Bastille, and a long
street leading from the place of the Bastille, parallel with the river;
and this I have good reason to remember. It is called Rue St. Antoine. I
learned well, also, a certain prison, and a part of the ancient city
called Faubourg St. Germain. One who can strike obscure trails in the
wilderness of nature, may blunt his fine instincts on the wilderness of
man.
This did not befall the Indian. He took a bee line upon his old tracks,
and when the place was sighted we threaded what seemed to be a rivulet
between cliffs, for a moist depressed street-center kept us straddling
something like a gutter, while with outstretched hands we could brace
the opposite walls.
We entered a small court where a gruff man, called a concierge, having a
dirty kerchief around his head, received us doubtfully. He was not the
concierge of Skenedonk's day. We showed him coin; and Doctor Chantry sat
down in his chair and looked at him with such contempt that his respect
increased.
The house was clean, and all the stairs we climbed to the roof were well
scoured. From the mansard there was a beautiful view of Paris, with
forest growth drawing close to the heart of the city. For on that side
of the world men dare not murder trees, but are obliged to respect and
cherish them.
My poor master stretched himself on a bed by the stooping wall, and in
disgust of life and great pain of feet, begged us to order a pan of
charcoal and let him die the true Parisian death when that is not met on
the scaffold. Skenedonk said to me in Iroquois that Doctor Chantry was a
sick old woman who ought to be hidden some place to die, and it was his
opinion that the blessing of the church would absolve us. We could then
make use of the pouch of coin to carry on my plans.
My plans were more ridiculous than Skenedonk's. His at least took sober
shape, while mine were still the wild emotions of a young man's mind.
Many an hour I had spent on the ship, watching the foam speed past her
side, trying to foresee my course like hers in a trackless world. But it
seemed I must wait alertly for what destiny was making mine.
We paid for our lodgings, three commodious rooms, though in the mansard;
my secretary dragging himself to sit erect with groans and record the
increasing debt of myself and my servant.
"Come, Skenedonk," I then said. "Let us go down to the earth and buy
something that Doctor Chantry can eat."
That benevolent Indian was quite as ready to go to market as to abate
human nuisances. And Doctor Chantry said he could almost see English
beef and ale across the channel; but translated into French they would,
of course, be nothing but poulet and sour wine. I pillowed his feet with
a bag of down which he had kicked off his bed, and Skenedonk and I
lingered along the paving as we had many a time lingered through the
woods. There were book stalls a few feet square where a man seemed
smothered in his own volumes; and victual shops where you could almost
feed yourself for two or three sous; and people sitting outdoors
drinking wine, as if at a general festival. I thought Paris had comfort
and prosperity--with hereditary kings overthrown and an upstart in their
place. Yet the streets were dirty, with a smell of ancientness that
sickened me.
We got a loaf of bread as long as a staff, a pat of butter in a leaf,
and a bottle of wine. My servant, though unused to squaw labor, took on
himself the porterage of our goods, and I pushed from street to street,
keenly pleased with the novelty, which held somewhere in its volatile
ether the person of Madame de Ferrier.
Skenedonk blazed our track with his observant eye, and we told ourselves
we were searching for Doctor Chantry's beef. Being the unburdened hunter
I undertook to scan cross places, and so came unexpectedly upon the Rue
St. Antoine, as a man told me it was called, and a great hurrahing that
filled the mouths of a crowd blocking the thoroughfare.
"Long live the emperor!" they shouted.
The man who told me the name of the street, a baker all in white, with
his tray upon his head, objected contemptuously.
"The emperor is not in Paris: he is in Boulogne."
"You never know where he is--he is here--there--everywhere!" declared
another workman, in a long dark garment like a hunting-shirt on the
outside of his small clothes.
"Long live the emperor!--long live the emperor!"
I pushed forward as two or three heavy coaches checked their headlong
speed, and officers parted the crowd.
"There he is!" admitted the baker behind me. Something struck me in the
side, and there was Bellenger the potter, a man I thought beyond the
seas in America. His head as I saw it that moment put the emperor's head
out of my mind. He had a knife, and though he had used the handle, I
foolishly caught it and took it from him. With all his strength he then
pushed me so that I staggered against the wheel of a coach.
"Assassin!" he screamed; and then Paris fell around my ears.
If anybody had seen his act nobody refrained from joining in the cry.
"Assassin! Assassin! To the lamp post with him!"
I stood stupefied and astonished as an owl blinking in the sunshine, and
two guards held my collar. The coaches lashed away, carrying the man of
destiny--as I have since been told he called himself--as rapidly as
possible, leaving the victim of destiny to be bayed at by that
many-headed dog, the mongrel populace of Paris.
IV
The idiot boy somewhere upon the hills of Lake George, always in a world
of fog which could not be discovered again, had often come to my mind
during my journeys, like a self that I had shed and left behind. But
Bellenger was a cipher. I forgot him even at the campfire. Now here was
this poor crazy potter on my track with vindictive intelligence, the day
I set foot in Paris. Time was not granted even to set the lodging in
order. He must have crossed the ocean with as good speed as Doctor
Chantry and Skenedonk and I. He may have spied upon us from the port,
through the barriers, and even to our mansard. At any rate he had found
me in a crowd, and made use of me to my downfall: and I could have
knocked my stupid head on the curb as I was haled away.
One glimpse of Skenedonk I caught while we marched along Rue St.
Antoine, the gendarmes protecting me from the crowd. He thought I was
going to the scaffold, where many a strapping fellow had gone in the
Paris of his youth, and fought to reach me, laying about him with his
loaf of bread. Skenedonk would certainly trail me, and find a way to be
of use, unless he broke into trouble as readily as I had done.
My guards crossed the river in the neighborhood of palaces, and came by
many windings to a huge pile rearing its back near a garden place, and
there I was turned over to jailers and darkness. The entrance was
unwholesome. A man at a table opened a tome which might have contained
all the names in Paris. He dipped his quill and wrote by candlelight.
"Political offender or common criminal?" he inquired.
"Political offender," the officer answered.
"What is he charged with?"
"Trying to assassinate the emperor in his post-chaise."
"La, la, la!" the recorder grunted. "Another attempt! And gunpowder put
in the street to blow the emperor up only last week. Good luck attends
him:--only a few windows broken and some common people killed. Taken in
the act, was this fellow?"
"With the knife in his hand."
"What name?" the recorder inquired.
I had thought on the answer, and told him merely that my name was
Williams.
"Eh, bien, Monsieur Veeleeum. Take him to the east side among the
political offenders," said the master-jailer to an assistant or turnkey.
"But it's full," responded the turnkey.
"Shove him in some place."
They searched me, and the turnkey lighted another candle. The meagerness
of my output was beneath remark. When he had led me up a flight of
stone steps he paused and inquired,
"Have you any money?"
"No."
"So much the worse for you."
"What is the name of this prison?" I asked.
"Ste. Pélagie," he answered. "If you have no money, and expect to eat
here, you better give me some trinket to sell for you."
"I have no trinkets to give you."
He laughed.
"Your shirt or breeches will do."
"Are men shut up here to starve?"
The jailer shrugged.
"The bread is very bad, and the beans too hard to eat. We do not furnish
the rations; it is not our fault. The rule here is nothing buys nothing.
But sleep in your breeches while you can. You will soon be ready enough
to eat them."
I was ready enough to eat them then, but forbore to let him know it. The
whole place was damp and foul. We passed along a corridor less than four
feet wide, and he unlocked a cell from which a revolting odor came.
There was no light except what strained through a loophole under the
ceiling. He turned the key upon me, and I held my nose. Oh, for a deep
draught of the wilderness!
There seemed to be an iron bed at one side, with a heap of rags on top.
I resolved to stand up all night before trusting myself to that couch.
The cell was soon explored. Two strides in each direction measured it.
The stone walls were marked or cut with names I could dimly see.
I braced my back against the door and watched the loophole where a gray
hint of daylight told that the sun must be still shining. This faded to
a blotch in the thick stone, and became obliterated.
Tired by the day's march, and with a taste of clean outdoor air still in
my lungs, I chose one of the two corners not occupied by the ill odored
bed, sat down, and fell asleep, dropping my cares. A grating of the lock
disturbed me. The jailer pushed a jug of water into the room, and
replaced his bolts.
Afterwards I do not remember anything except that the stone was not
warm, and my stomach craved, until a groan in my ear stabbed sleep. I
sat up awake in every nerve. There was nobody in the cell with me.
Perhaps the groan had come from a neighboring prisoner.
Then a faint stir of covering could be heard upon the bed.
I rose and pressed as far as I could into my corner. No beast of the
wilderness ever had such terror for me as the unknown thing that had
been my cell-mate half a night without my knowledge.
Was a vampire--a demon--a witch--a ghost locked in there with me?
It moaned again, so faintly, that compassion instantly got the better of
superstition.
"Who is there?" I demanded; as if the knowledge of a name would cure
terror of the suffering thing naming itself.
I got no answer, and taking my resolution in hand, moved toward the bed,
determined to know what housed with me. The jug of water stood in the
way, and I lifted it with instinctive answer to the groan.
The creature heard the splash, and I knew by its mutter what it wanted.
Groping darkly, to poise the jug for an unseen mouth, I realized that
something helpless to the verge of extinction lay on the bed, and I
would have to find the mouth myself or risk drowning it. I held the
water on the bed-rail with my right hand, groped with the other, and
found a clammy, death-cold forehead, a nose and cavernous cheeks, an
open and fever roughened mouth. I poured water on my handkerchief and
bathed the face. That would have been my first desire in extreme
moments. The poor wretch gave a reviving moan, so I felt emboldened to
steady the jug and let drop by drop gurgle down its throat.
Forgetting the horror of the bed I sat there, repeating at intervals
this poor ministration until the porthole again dawned, and blackness
became the twilight of day.
My cell-mate could not see me. I doubt if he ever knew that a hand gave
him water. His eyes were meaningless, and he was so gaunt that his body
scarcely made a ridge on the bed.
Some beans and mouldy bread were put in for my rations. The turnkey
asked me how I intended to wash myself without basin or ewer or towels,
and inquired further if he could be of service in disposing of my shirt
or breeches.
"What ails this man?"
He shrugged, and said the prisoner had been wasting with fever.
"You get fever in Ste. Pélagie," he added, "especially when you eat the
prison food. This man ought to be sent to the infirmary, but the
infirmary is overflowing now."
"Who is he?"
"A journalist, or poet, or some miserable canaille of that sort. He will
soon be out of your way." Our guard craned over to look at him.
"_Oui_--da! He is a dying man! A priest must be sent to him soon. I
remember he demanded one several days ago."
But that day and another dragged through before the priest appeared. I
sent out my waistcoat, and got a wretched meal, and a few spoonfuls of
wine that I used to moisten the dying man's lips. His life may or may
not have been prolonged; but out of collapse he opened his mouth
repeatedly and took the drops. He was more my blessing than I was his.
For I had an experience which has ever since given me to know the souls
of prisoners.
The first day, in spite of the cell's foulness, I laughed secretly at
jailers and felt at peace, holding the world at bay. I did not then know
that Ste. Pélagie was the tomb of the accused, where more than one
prisoner dragged out years without learning why he was put there. I was
not brought to any trial or examination.
But gradually an uneasiness which cannot be imagined by one who has not
felt it, grew upon me. I wanted light. The absence of it was torture!
Light--to vivify the stifling air, which died as this man was dying--as
I should die--in blinding mirk!
Moisture broke out all over my body, and cold dew stood on my forehead.
How could human lungs breathe the midnight of blackening walls? The
place was hot with the hell of confinement. I said over and over--"O
God, Thou art Light!--in Thee is no darkness at all!"
This anguish seemed a repetition of something I had endured once before.
The body and spirit remembered, though the mind had no register. I
clawed at the walls. If I slept, it was to wake gasping, fighting upward
with both hands.
The most singular phase was that I reproached myself for not soaking up
more sun in the past. Oh, how much light was going to waste over wide
fields and sparkling seas! The green woods, the green grass--they had
their fill of sun, while we two perished!
I remembered creeping out of glare under the shadow of rocks, and
wondered how I could have done it! If I ever came to the sun again I
would stretch myself and roll from side to side, to let it burn me well!
How blessed was the tan we got in summer from steeping in light!
Looking at my cell-mate I could have rent the walls.
"We are robbed," I told his deaf ears. "The light, poured freely all
over the city, the light that belongs to you and me as much as to
anybody, would save you! I wish I could pick you up and carry you out
where the sun would shine through your bones! But let us be glad, you
and I, that there is a woman who is not buried like a whitening sprout
under this weight of stone! She is free, to walk around and take the
light in her gray eyes and the wind in her brown hair. I swear to God if
I ever come out of this I will never pass so much as a little plant
prostrate in darkness, without helping it to the light."
It was night by the loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I
heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they
entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old
fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of
sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who was beyond
confession.
"Bring us something for a temporary altar," he commanded the turnkey,
who stood candle in hand.
The turnkey gave his light to the sacristan, and taking care to lock us
in, hurried to obey.
I measured the lank, ill-strung assistant, more an overgrown boy than a
man of brawn, but expanded around his upper part by the fullness of a
short white surplice. He had a face cheerful to silliness.
The turnkey brought a board supported by crosspieces; and withdrew,
taking his own candle, as soon as the church's tapers were lighted.
The sacristan placed the temporary altar beside the foot of the bed,
arrayed it, and recited the Confiteor.
Then the priest mumbled the Misereatur and Indulgentiam.
I had seen extreme unction administered as I had seen many another
office of the church in my dim days, with scarcely any attention. Now
the words were terribly living. I knew every one before it rolled off
the celebrant's lips. Yet under that vivid surface knowledge I carried
on as vivid a sequence of thought.
The priest elevated the ciborium, repeating,
"Ecce Agnus Dei."
Then three times--"Domine, non sum dignus."
I heard and saw with exquisite keenness, yet I was thinking,
"If I do not get out of here he will have to say those words over me."
He put the host in the parted mouth of the dying, and spoke--
"Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vetam
aeternam."
I thought how easy it would be to strip the loose surplice over the
sacristan's head. There was a swift clip of the arm around your
opponent's neck which I had learned in wrestling, that cut the breath
off and dropped him as limp as a cloth. It was an Indian trick. I said
to myself it would be impossible to use that trick on the sacristan if
he left the cell behind the deaf old priest. I did not want to hurt him.
Still, he would have a better chance to live after I had squeezed his
neck, than I should have if I did not squeeze it.
The priest took out of a silver case a vessel of oil, and a branch. He
sprinkled holy water with the branch, upon the bed, the walls, the
sacristan and me, repeating,
"Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem
dealbabor."
While I bent my head to the drops, I knew it was impossible to choke
down the sacristan, strip off his surplice, invest myself with it and
get out of the cell before priest or turnkey looked back. The sacrilege
of such an attack would take all the strength out of me.
The priest said the Exaudi nos, exhorted the insensible figure, then
recited the Credo and the Litany, the sacristan responding.
Silence followed.
I knew the end was approaching. My hands were as cold as the nerveless
one which would soon receive the candle. I told myself I should be a
fool to attempt it. There was not one chance in a hundred. I should not
squeeze hard enough. The man would yell. If I were swift as lightning
and silent as force, they would take me in the act. It was impossible.
But people who cannot do impossible things have to perish.
The priest dipped his thumb in oil, and with it crossed the eyes, ears,
nose, mouth, and hands of him who was leaving the use of these five
senses and instruments of evil.
Then he placed a lighted candle in the stiffened fingers, and ended
with--
"Accipe lampadem ardentem custodi unctionem tuam."
I said to myself--"I cannot do it! Nobody could! It is impossible!"
The sacristan now began to strip the altar and pack all the sacred
implements into their cases: preparing his load in the center of the
room.
The man was dead.
The sacristan's last office was to fix the two lighted altar candles on
the head and foot railing of the bed. They showed the corpse in its
appalling stillness, and stood like two angels, with the pit between
them.
The sacristan rapped upon the door to let the turnkey know it was time
to unlock.
I drew the thick air to my lung depths. The man who would breathe no
more was not as rigid as I stood. But there was no use in attempting
such a thing!
The turnkey opened a gap of doorway through which he could see the
candles and the bed. He opened no wider than the breadth of the priest,
who stepped out as the sacristan bent for the portables.
There was lightning in my arm as it took the sacristan around the neck
and let him limp upon the stones. The tail of the priest's cassock was
scarcely through the door.
"Eh bien! sacristan," called the turnkey. "Make haste with your load. I
have this death to report. He is not so pretty that you must stand
gazing at him all night!"
I had the surplice over the sacristan's head and over mine, and backed
out with my load, facing the room.
If my jailer had thrust his candle at me, if the priest had turned to
speak, if the man in the cell had got his breath before the bolt was
turned, if my white surplice had not appeared the principal part of me
in that black place--.
It was impossible!--but I had done it.
V
The turnkey's candle made a star-point in the corridor. He walked ahead
of the priest and I walked behind. We descended to the entrance where
the man with the big book sat taking stock of another wretch between
officers. I saw as I shaded my face with the load, that his inattentive
eye dwelt on my surplice, which would have passed me anywhere in France.
"Good-night, monsieur the curé," said the turnkey, letting us through
the outer door.
"Good-night, good-night," the priest responded.
"And to you, sacristan."
"Good-night," I muttered, and he came a step after me. The candle was
yet in his hand, showing him my bulk, and perhaps the small clothes he
had longed to vend. I expected hue and cry, but walked on after the
priest, and heard the heavy doors jar, and breathed again.
Hearkening behind and in front, on the right and the left, I followed
him in the direction of what I have since learned to call the Jardin des
Plantes. It is near Ste. Pélagie.
The priest, wearied by his long office, spoke only once about the
darkness; for it was a cloudy night; and did not attend to my muttered
response. I do not know what sympathy the excellent old man might have
shown to an escaped prisoner who had choked his sacristan, and I had no
mind to test it. He turned a corner, and with the wall angle between us,
I eased down the sacred furniture, drew off the surplice and laid that
upon it, and took to my heels up the left hand street; for the guard had
brought me across the river to Ste. Pélagie.
I had no hat, and the cut of my coat showed that I had lost a waistcoat.
Avoiding the little circles of yellowness made by lamp posts, I reached
without mishap of falling into the hands of any patrol, a bridge
crossing to an island point, and from the other side of the point to the
opposite shore. At intervals along the parapet dim lights were placed.
Compared to Lake George, which wound like a river, and the mighty St.
Lawrence as I remembered it, the Seine was a narrow stream. Some boats
made constellations on the surface. The mass of island splitting it into
two branches was almost the heart of Paris. There were other foot
passengers on the bridge, and a gay carriage rolled by. I did not see
any gendarmes, and only one foot passenger troubled me.
I was on the bridge above the left arm of the river when an ear trained
in the woods caught his footstep, pausing as mine paused, and hurrying
as mine hurried. If the sacristan had been found in Ste. Pélagie a
pursuer would not track me so delicately, and neither would Skenedonk
hold back on the trail. I stopped in the shade when we two were alone on
the second span, and wheeled, certain of catching my man under the
flare of a cresset. I caught him, and knew that it was Bellenger
following me.
My mind was made up in an instant. I walked back to settle matters with
him, though slaughter was far from my thoughts. I had done him no harm;
but he was my enemy, and should be forced to let me alone.
The fellow who had appeared so feeble at his cabin that I opened the
door for him, and so poor-spirited that his intellect claimed pity,
stood up as firm as a bear at my approach, and met my eyes with perfect
understanding.
Not another thing do I remember. The facts are simply these: I faced
Bellenger; no blows passed; my mind flashed blank with the partial
return of that old eclipse which has fallen upon me after strong
excitement, in more than one critical moment. The hiatus seems brief
when I awake though it may have lasted hours. I know the eclipse has
been upon me, like the wing-shadow of eternity; but I have scarcely let
go of time.
I could not prove that Bellenger dragged me to the parapet and threw me
into the river. If I had known it I should have laughed at his doing so,
for I could swim like a fish, through or under water, and sit on the
lake bottom holding my breath until Skenedonk had been known to dive for
me.
When next I sensed anything at all it was a feeling of cold.
I thought I was lying in one of the shallow runlets that come into Lake
George, and the pebbles were an uneasy bed, chilling my shoulders. I was
too stiff to move, or even turn my head to lift out of water the ear on
which it rested. But I could unclose my eyelids, and this is what I
saw:--a man naked to his waist, half reclining against a leaning slab of
marble, down which a layer of water constantly moved. His legs were
clothed, and his other garments lay across them. His face had sagged in
my direction. There was a deep slash across his forehead, and he showed
his teeth and his glassy eyes at the joke.
Beyond this silent figure was a woman as silent. The ridge of his body
could not hide the long hair spread upon her breast. I considered the
company and the moisture into which I had fallen with unspeakable
amazement. We were in a low and wide stone chamber with a groined
ceiling, supported by stone pillars. A row of lamps was arranged above
us, so that no trait or feature might escape a beholder.
That we were put there for show entered my mind slowly and brought
indignation. To be so helpless and so exposed was an outrage against
which I struggled in nightmare impotence; for I was bare to my hips
also, and I knew not what other marks I carried beside those which had
scarred me all my conscious life.
Now in the distance, and echoing, feet descended stairs.
I knew that people were coming to look at us, and I could not move a
muscle in resentment.
I heard their voices, fringed with echoes, before either speaker came
within my vision.
"This is the mortuary chapel of the Hôtel Dieu?"
"Yes, monsieur the marquis, this is the mortuary chapel."
"Um! Cheerful place!"
"Much more cheerful than the bottom of the river, monsieur the marquis."
"No doubt. Never empty, eh?"
"I have been a servant of the Hôtel Dieu fourteen years, monsieur the
marquis, and have not yet seen all the marble slabs vacant."
"You receive the bodies of the drowned?"
"And place them where they may be seen and claimed."
"How long do you keep them?"
"That depends. Sometimes their friends seek them at once. We have kept a
body three months in the winter season, though he turned very green."
"Are all in your present collection gathering verdure?"
"No, monsieur. We have a very fresh one, just brought in; a big stalwart
fellow, with the look of the country about him."
"Small clothes?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Buckle shoes?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Hair light and long?"
"The very man, monsieur the marquis."
"I suppose I shall have to look at him. If he had to make himself
unpleasant he should have stayed at the chateau where his mother could
identify him. He is one of my peasants, come to Paris to see life! I
must hold my nose and do it."
"It is not necessary to hold the nose, monsieur."
"After fourteen years, perhaps not."
I heard the snap of a snuff-box lid as the marquis fortified himself.
My agony for the woman who was to be looked at turned so sharp that I
uttered a click in my throat. But they passed her, and merely glanced at
my next neighbor.
The old marquis encountered my fixed stare. Visibly it shocked through
him. He was all gray, and curled and powdered, instead of being clipped
close and smooth in the style of the Empire; an exquisite, thin-featured
man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as
ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his
presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine
supercilious hairs.
I did not look at the servant of the Hôtel Dieu. The old noble and I
held each other with unflinching gaze.
"Do you recognize him, monsieur?"
"I do," the old noble deliberately answered. "I should know this face
anywhere. Have him taken to my carriage directly."
"Your carriage, monsieur! He can be sent--"
"I said take him to my carriage."
"It shall be done. His eyes have opened since he came in. But they
sometimes look as if they would speak! Their faces change constantly.
This other man who is grinning to-night may be quite serious to-morrow."
"And by the end of the month sorry enough, eh?"
The servant of the Hôtel Dieu tittered amiably, and I knew he was going
for help to lift me off the slab, when he uttered a cry of surprise. The
old marquis wheeled sharply, and said:
"Eh, bien! Is this another of them, promenading himself?"
I felt the Oneida coming before his silent moccasins strode near me. He
did not wait an instant, but dragged me from the wet and death cold
marble to the stone floor, where he knelt upon one knee and supported
me. O Skenedonk! how delicious was the warmth of your healthy body--how
comforting the grip of your hunter arms! Yet there are people who say an
Indian is like a snake! I could have given thanks before the altar at
the side of the crypt, which my fixed eyes encountered as he held me.
The marble dripped into its gutter as if complaining of my escape.
"Oh, my dear friend!" cried the servant.
Skenedonk answered nothing at all.
"Who is this gentleman," the marquis inquired, "that seems to have the
skin of a red German sausage drawn tight over his head?"
"This is an American Indian, monsieur the marquis."
"An Indian?"
"Yes, monsieur; but he understands French."
"Thank you for the hint. It may save me from having a German sausage
drawn tight over my head. I have heard that American Indians practice
giving their friends that appearance. How do you know he understands
French?"
"I think it is the man who used to come to the Hôtel Dieu years ago,
when I was new in its service. He was instructed in religion by
churchmen in Paris, and learned the language. Oh, my dear monsieur--I
think it is Iroquois that he is called--I am aware the Americans have
different manners, but here we do not go into the mortuary chapel of the
Hôtel Dieu and disarrange the bodies without permission!"
Skenedonk's eyes probably had less of the fawn in them than usual. I
felt the guttural sound under his breast.
"I have found him, and now I will take him."
"But that is the marquis' servant!"
"The marquis is his servant!"
"Oh, my dear monsieur the Indian! You speak of a noble of France, the
Marquis du Plessy! Be satisfied," pleaded the servitor of the Hôtel
Dieu, "with this other body, whom no one is likely to claim! I may be
permitted to offer you that, if you are determined--though it may cost
me my place!--and after fourteen years' service! It you would appease
him, monsieur the marquis--though I do not know whether they ever take
money."
"I will appease him," said the old noble. "Go about your errand and be
quick."
The servant fled up the stairs.
"This man is not dead, my friend," said the Marquis du Plessy.
Skenedonk knew it.
"But he will not live long in this cursed crypt," the noble added. "You
will get into my carriage with him, we will take him and put him in hot
sheets, and see what we can do for him."
I could feel Skenedonk's antagonism giving way in the relaxing of his
muscles.
But maintaining his position the Oneida asserted:
"He is not yours!"
"He belongs to France."
"France belongs to him!" the Indian reversed.
"Eh, eh! Who is this young man?"
"The king."
"We have no king now, my friend. But assuming there is a man who should
be king, how do you know this is the one?"
If Skenedonk made answer in words it was lost to me. The spirit sank to
submergence in the body, I remember combating motion like a drugged
person.
Torpor and prostration followed the recurring eclipse as that followed
excitement and shock. I was not ill; and gathered knowledge of the
environment, which was different from anything I had before experienced.
De Chaumont's manor was a wilderness fortress compared to this private
hotel of an ancient family in the heart of Paris.
I lay in a bed curtained with damask, and looked through open glass
doors at a garden. Graveled walks, bosky trees and masses of flowers,
plats of grass where arbored seats were placed, stretched their vista to
a wall clothed in ivy, which proved to be the end of a chapel. For high
over the curtain of thick green shone a rose window. The afternoon sun
laid bare its fine staining, but only in the darkness when the church
was illuminated and organ music rolled from it, did the soul of that
window appear struck through with light.
Strange servants and Doctor Chantry by glimpses, and the old noble and
the Oneida almost constantly, were about me. Doctor Chantry looked
complacently through the curtains and wished me good-morning. I smiled
to see that he was lodged as he desired, and that his clothes had been
renewed in fine cloth, with lawn to his neck and silk stockings for his
shrunk calves. My master was an elderly beau; and I gave myself no care
that he had spent his money--the money of the expedition--on foppery.
Skenedonk also had new toggery in scarfs and trinkets which I did not
recognize, and his fine buckskins were cleaned. The lackeys appeared
subservient to him, and his native dignity was never more impressive
than in that great house. I watched my host and my servant holding
interviews, which Skenedonk may have considered councils, on the benches
in the garden, and from which my secretary, the sick old woman, seemed
excluded. But the small interest of seeing birds arrive on branches, and
depart again, sufficed me; until an hour when life rose strongly.
I sat up in bed, and finding myself alone, took advantage of an
adjoining room where a marble bath was set in the floor. Returning
freshened from the plunge, with my sheet drawn around me, I found one of
those skilled and gentle valets who seem less men than he-maids.
"I am to dress monsieur when monsieur is ready," said this person.
"I am ready now," I answered, and he led me into a suite of rooms and
showed me an array which took my breath: dove-colored satin knee
breeches, and a long embroidered coat of like color, a vest sprigged
with rosebuds, cravat and lace ruffles, long silk stockings and shoes to
match in extravagance, a shirt of fine lawn, and a hat for a nobleman.
"Tell your master," I said to the lackey, "that he intends me great
kindness, but I prefer my own clothes."
"These are monsieur's own clothes, made to his order and measure."
"But I gave no order, and I was not measured."
The man raised his shoulders and elbows with gentlest dissent.
"These are only a few articles of monsieur's outfit. Here is the key. If
monsieur selects another costume he will find each one complete."
By magic as it seemed, there was a wardrobe full of fineries provided
for my use. The man displayed them; in close trousers and coats with
short fronts, or knee breeches and long tails; costumes, he said, for
the street, for driving, riding, traveling, for evening, and for
morning; and one white satin court dress. At the marquis' order he had
laid out one for a ball. Of my old clothes not a piece was to be seen.
The miracle was that what he put upon me fitted me. I became transformed
like my servant and my secretary, and stood astonished at the result.
VI
"Enter the prince of a fairy tale," said the Marquis du Plessy when the
lackey ushered me into the garden.
It was a nest of amber at that time of sunset, and he waited for me at a
table laid for supper, under a flat canopy of trees which had their tops
trained and woven into a mat.
I took his hand to kiss, but he rose up and magnificently placed me in a
chair opposite himself.
"Your benefits are heavy, monsieur," I said. "How shall I acknowledge
them?"
"You owe me nothing at all," he answered; "as you will see when I have
told you a true story. It would sound like a lie if anything were
incredible in these fabulous times."
"But you do not know anything about me."
"I am well instructed in your history, by that charming attendant in
fringed leather breeches, who has been acquainted with you much longer
than you have been acquainted with yourself."
"Yet I am not sure of deserving the marquis' interest."
"Has the marquis admitted that he feels any interest in you? Though this
I will own: few experiences have affected me like your living eyes
staring out of the face of my dead king!"
We met each other again with a steady gaze like that in the mortuary
chapel.
"Do you believe I am ----?"
"Do I believe you are ----? Who said there was such a person in
existence?"
"Louis Philippe."
"The Duke of Orleans? Eh, bien! What does he know of the royal family?
He is of the cadette branch."
"But he told me the princess, the dauphin's sister, believes that the
dauphin was taken alive from the Temple and sent to America."
"My dear Lazarre, I do not say the Duke of Orleans would lie--far be it
from me--though these are times in which we courageously attack our
betters. But he would not object to seeing the present pretender ousted.
Why, since his father voted for the death of Louis XVI, he and his are
almost outlawed by the older branch! Madame Royal, the Duchess of
Angoulême, cannot endure him. I do not think she would speak to him!"
"He is my friend," I said stoutly.
"Remember you are another pretender, and he has espoused your cause. I
think him decent myself--though there used to be some pretty stories
told about him and the fair sentimentalist who educated him--Madame de
Genlis. But I am an old man; I forget gossip."
My host gave lively and delicate attention to his food as it was
brought, and permitted nothing to be overheard by his lackeys.
The evening was warm, and fresh with the breath of June; and the garden,
by a contrivance of lamps around its walls, turned into a dream world
after sunset faded.
It was as impossible to come to close terms with this noble of the old
régime as with a butterfly. He alighted on a subject; he waved his
wings, and rose. I felt a clumsy giant while he fluttered around my
head, smiling, mocking, thrusting his pathos to the quick.
"My dear boy, I do not say that I believe in you; I do not observe
etiquette with you. But I am going to tell you a little story about the
Tuileries. You have never seen the palace of the Tuileries?"
I said I had not.
"It has been restored for the use of these Bonapartes. When I say these
Bonapartes, Lazarre, I am not speaking against the Empire. The Empire
gave me back my estates. I was not one of the stringent emigrés. My
estates are mine, whoever rules in France. You may consider me a
betwixt-and-betweener. Do so. My dear boy, I am. My heart is with my
dead king. My carcass is very comfortable, both in Paris and on my
ancestral lands. Napoleon likes me as an ornament to his bourgeois
court. I keep my opinion of him to myself. Do you like garlic, my boy?"
I told him I was not addicted to the use of it.
"Garlic is divine. God gave it to man. A hint of it in the appropriate
dish makes life endurable. I carry a piece in a gold box at the bottom
of my vest pocket, that I may occasionally take it out and experience a
sense of gratitude for divine benefits."
He took out his pet lump, rubbed it on the outside of his wine bottle,
poured out a glassful and drank it, smiling adorably at me in ecstasy!
"We were speaking of the Tuileries. You should have seen the place when
it was sacked after the flight of the royal family. No, you should not
have seen it! I am glad you were gone. Mirrors were shattered, and
lusters, vases, china, gold candlesticks, rolled about and were trampled
on the floor. The paintings were stabbed with pikes; tables, screens,
gilt stools, chairs crushed, and carpets cut to pieces; garments of all
kinds strewn and torn; all that was not carried off by pillagers being
thus destroyed. It was yet a horrible sight days after the mob had done
their work, and slaughtered bodies of guards had been carried away, and
commissioners with their clerks and assistants began to restore order."
"Did you see the Tuileries at that time, monsieur?"
"I did. I put on the clothes of one of my peasants, slumped in Jacquot's
wooden shoes, and kept my mouth open as well as I could for the dust.
The fantastic was yet in my blood. Exile takes that out of everybody
except your royal uncle of Provence. But I knew in my heart what I would
help do with that mob, if our turn ever came again!"
His dark eyes rested on the red wine as on a pool of blood.
"Sick of the ruin, I leaned out to look in the garden, from a window in
the queen's own apartment. I stepped on a shelf, which appeared fixed
under the window; but it moved, and I found that it could be pushed on
grooves into the wall. There was a cavity made to hold it. It had
concealed two armchairs placed opposite each other, so cunningly that
their paneled sides yet looked a part of the thick wall. I sat down in
one of them, and though the cushion was stiff, I felt something hard
under it."
Monsieur du Plessy glanced around in every direction to satisfy himself
that no ears lurked within hearing.
"Eh, bien! Under the cushion I found the queen's jewel-case!
Diamonds--bags of gold coin--a half circlet of gems!--since the great
necklace was lost such an array had not seen the light in France. The
value must be far above a million francs."
The marquis fixed his eyes on me and said:
"What should I have done with it, Lazarre?"
"It belonged to the royal family," I answered.
"But everything which belonged to the royal family had been confiscated
to the state. I had just seen the belongings of the royal family
trampled as by cattle. First one tyrant and then another rose up to tell
us what we should do, to batten himself off the wretched commonwealth,
and then go to the guillotine before his successor. As a good citizen I
should have turned these jewels and stones and coins over to the state.
But I was acting the part of Jacquot, and as an honest peasant I whipped
them under my blouse and carried them away. In my straits of exile I
never decreased them. And you may take inventory of your property and
claim it when we rise from the table."
My heart came up in my throat. I reached across and caught his hands.
"You believe in me--you believe in me!"
"Do I observe any etiquette with you, Lazarre? This is the second time I
have brought the fact to your notice. I particularly wish you to note
that I do not observe any etiquette with you."
"What does a boy who has been brought up among Indians know about
etiquette! But you accept me, or you could not put the property you have
loyally and at such risk saved for my family, into my hands."
"I don't accept even your uncle of Provence. The king of Spain and I
prefer to call him by that modest title. Since you died or were removed
from the Temple, he has taken the name of Louis XVIII, and maintained a
court at the expense of the czar of Russia and the king of Spain. He is
a fine Latinist; quotes Latin verse; and keeps the mass bells
everlastingly ringing; the Russians laugh at his royal masses! But in my
opinion the sacred gentleman is either moral slush or a very deep
quicksand. It astonishes me," said the Marquis du Plessy, "to find how
many people I do disapprove of! I really require very little of the
people I am obliged to meet."
He smoothed my hands which were yet holding his, and exploded:
"The Count of Provence is an old turtle! Not exactly a reptile, for
there is food in him. But of a devilish flat head and cruel snap of the
jaws!"
"How can that be," I argued, "when his niece loves him so? And even I,
in the American woods, with mind eclipsed, was not forgotten. He sent me
of the money that he was obliged to receive in charity!"
"It is easy to dole out charity money; you are squeezing other people's
purses, not your own. What I most object to in the Count of Provence, is
that assumption of kingly airs, providing the story is true which leaked
secretly among the emigrés. The story which I heard was that the dauphin
had not died, but was an idiot in America. An idiot cannot reign. But
the throne of France is not clamoring so loud for a Bourbon at present
that the idiot's substitute must be proclaimed and hold a beggar's
court. There are mad loyalists who swear by this eighteenth Louis. I am
not one of them. In fact, Lazarre, I was rather out of tune with your
house!"
"Not you!" I said.
"I do not fit in these times. I ought to have gone with my king and my
friends under the knife. Often I am ashamed of myself for slipping away.
That I should live to see disgusting fools in the streets of Paris,
after the Terror was over!--young men affecting the Greek and Roman
manner--greeting one another by wagging of the head! They wore gray
coats with black collars, gray or green cravats, carried cudgels, and
decreed that all men should have the hair plaited, powdered, and
fastened up with a comb, like themselves! The wearer of a queue was
likely to be knocked on the head. These creatures used to congregate at
the old Feydeau theater, or meet around the entrance of the Louvre, to
talk classical jargon, and wag!"
The Marquis du Plessy drew himself together with a strong shudder. I had
the desire to stand between him and the shocks of an alien world. Yet
there was about him a tenacious masculine strength, an adroitness of
self-protection which needed no champion.
"Did the Indian tell you about a man named Bellenger?" I inquired.
"Bellenger is part of the old story about the dauphin's removal. I heard
of him first at Coblenz. And I understand now that he is following you
with another dauphin, and objecting to you in various delicate ways.
Napoleon Bonaparte is master of France, and in the way to be master of
Europe, because he has a nice sense of the values of men, and the best
head for detail that was ever formed in human shape. There is something
almost supernatural in his grasp of affairs. He lets nothing escape him.
The only mistake he ever made was butchering the young Duke
d'Enghien--the courage and clearness of the man wavered that one
instant; and by the way, he borrowed my name for the duke's incognito
during the journey under arrest! England, Russia, Austria and Sweden are
combining against Napoleon. He will beat them. For while other men
sleep, or amuse themselves, or let circumstance drive them, he is
planning success and providing for all possible contingencies. Take a
leaf out of the general's book, my boy. No enemy is contemptible. If you
want to force the hand of fortune--scheme!--scheme!--all the
time!--out-scheme the other fellow!"
The marquis rose from the table.
"I am longer winded," he said, "than a man named De Chaumont, who has
been importuning Bonaparte, in season and out of season, to reinstate an
American emigré, a Madame de Ferrier."
"Will Bonaparte restore her lands?" I asked, feeling my voice like a
rope in my throat.
"Do you know her family?"
"I knew Madame de Ferrier in America."
"Their estate lies next to mine. And what is the little De Ferrier like
since she is grown?"
"A beautiful woman."
"Ah--ah! Bonaparte's plan will then be easy of execution. You may see
her this evening here in the Faubourg St. Germain. I believe she is to
appear at Madame de Permon's, where Bonaparte may look in."
My host bolted the doors of his private cabinet, and took from the
secret part of a wall cupboard the queen's jewel-case. We opened it
between us. The first thing I noticed was a gold snuffbox, set with
portraits of the king, the queen, and their two children.
How I knew them I cannot tell. Their pictured faces had never been put
before my conscious eyes until that moment. Other portraits might have
been there. I had no doubt, no hesitation.
I was on my knees before the face I had seen in spasms of
remembrance--with oval cheeks, and fair hair rolled high--and open
neck--my royal mother!
Next I looked at the king, heavier of feature, honest and straight
gazing, his chin held upward; at the little sister, a smaller miniature
of the queen; at the softly molded curves of the child that was myself!
The marquis turned his back.
Before I could speak I rose and put my arms around him. He wheeled, took
my hand, stood at a little distance, and kissed it.
We said not one word about the portraits, but sat down with the
jewel-case again between us.
"These stones and coins are also my sister's, monsieur the marquis?"
He lifted his eyebrows.
"I had ample opportunity, my dear boy, to turn them into the exchequer
of the Count of Provence. Before his quarrel with the late czar of
Russia he maintained a dozen gentlemen-in-waiting, and perhaps as many
ladies, to say nothing of priests, servants, attendants of attendants,
and guards. This treasure might last him two years. If the king of Spain
and his majesty of Russia got wind of it, and shut off their pensions,
it would not last so long. I am too thrifty a Frenchman to dissipate the
hoards of the state in foreign parts! Yet, if you question my taste--I
will not say my honesty, Lazarre--"
"I question nothing, monsieur! I ask advice."
"Eh, bien! Then do not be quite as punctilious as the gentleman who got
turned out of the debtor side of Ste. Pélagie into an alley. 'This will
not do,' says he. So around he posts to the entrance, and asks for
admittance again!"
"Catch me knocking at Ste. Pélagie for admittance again!"
"Then my advice is to pay your tailor, if he has done his work
acceptably."
"He has done it marvelously, especially in the fitting."
"A Parisian workman finds it no miracle to fit a man from his old
clothes. I took the liberty of sending your orders. Having heard my
little story, you understand that you owe me nothing but your society;
and a careful inventory of this trust."
We were a long time examining the contents of the case. There were six
bags of coin, all gold louis; many unset gems; rings for the hand; and
clusters of various sorts which I knew not how to name, that blazed
with a kind of white fire very dazzling. The half-way crown was crusted
thick with colored stones the like of which I could not have imagined in
my dreams. Their names, the marquis told me, were sapphires, emeralds,
rubies; and large clear diamonds, like beads of rain. When everything
was carefully returned to place, he asked:
"Shall I still act as your banker?"
I begged him to hide the jewel box again, and he concealed it in the
wall.
"We go to the Rue Ste. Croix, Lazarre, which is an impossible place for
your friend Bellenger at this time. Do you dance a gavotte?"
I told him I could dance the Indian corn dance, and he advised me to
reserve this accomplishment.
"Bonaparte's police are keen on any scent, especially the scent of a
prince. His practical mind would reject the Temple story, if he ever
heard it; and there are enough live Bourbons for him to watch."
"But there is the Count de Chaumont," I suggested.
"He is not a man that would put faith in the Temple story, either, and I
understand he is kindly disposed towards you."
"I lived in his house nearly a year."
"He is not a bad fellow for the new sort. I feel certain of him. He is
coaxing my friendship because of ancient amity between the houses of Du
Plessy and De Ferrier."
"Did you say, monsieur, that Bonaparte intends to restore Madame de
Ferrier's lands?"
"They have been given to one of his rising officers."
"Then he will not restore them?"
"Oh, yes, with interest! His plan is to give her the officer for a
husband."
VII
Even in those days of falling upon adventure and taking hold of life
with the arrogance of young manhood, I knew the value of money, though
it has always been my fault to give it little consideration. Experience
taught me that poverty goes afoot and sleeps with strange bed-fellows.
But I never minded going afoot or sharing the straw with cattle.
However, my secretary more than once took a high hand with me because he
bore the bag; and I did mind debt chasing my heels like a rising tide.
Our Iroquois had their cottages in St. Regis and their hunting cabins on
Lake George. They went to church when not drunk and quarrelsome, paid
the priest his dues, labored easily, and cared nothing for hoarding. But
every step of my new life called for coin.
As I look back on that hour the dominating thought rises clearly.
To see men admitting that you are what you believe yourself to be, is
one of the triumphs of existence. The jewel-case stamped identification
upon me. I felt like one who had communicated with the past and received
a benediction. There was special provision in the way it came to me;
for man loves to believe that God watches over and mothers him.
Forgetting--if I had ever heard--how the ancients dreaded the powers
above when they had been too fortunate, I went with the marquis in high
spirits to the Rue Ste. Croix. There were pots of incense sending little
wavers of smoke through the rooms, and the people might have peopled a
dream. The men were indeed all smooth and trim; but the women had given
rein to their fancies.
Our hostess was a fair and gracious woman, of Greek ancestry, as
Bonaparte himself was, and her daughter had been married to his favorite
general, the marquis told me.
I notice only the unusual in clothing; the scantiness of ladies' apparel
that clung like the skin, and lay upon the oak floor in ridges, among
which a man must shove his way, was unusual to me.
I saw, in space kept cleared around her chair, one beauty with nothing
but sandals on her feet, though these were white as milk, silky skinned
like a hand, and ringed with jewels around the toes.
Bonaparte's youngest sister stood receiving court. She was attired like
a Bacchante, with bands of fur in her hair, topped by bunches of gold
grapes. Her robe and tunic of muslin fine as air, woven in India, had
bands of gold, clasped with cameos, under the bosom and on the arms.
Each woman seemed to have planned outdoing the others in conceits which
marked her own fairness.
I looked anxiously down the spacious room without seeing Madame de
Ferrier. The simplicity, which made for beauty of houses in France,
struck me, in the white and gold paneling, and the chimney, which lifted
its mass of design to the ceiling. I must have been staring at this and
thinking of Madame de Ferrier when my name was called in a lilting and
excited fashion:
"Lazarre!"
There was Mademoiselle de Chaumont in the midst of gallants, and better
prepared to dance a gavotte than any other charmer in the room. For her
gauze dress, fastened on the shoulders so that it fell not quite off her
bosom, reached only to the middle of the calf. This may have been for
the protection of rosebuds with which ribbons drawn lengthwise through
the skirt, were fringed; but it also showed her child-like feet and
ankles, and made her appear tiptoe like a fairy, and more remarkable
than any other figure except the barefooted dame. She held a crook
massed with ribbons and rosebuds in her hand, rallying the men to her
standard by the lively chatter which they like better than wisdom.
Mademoiselle Annabel gave me her hand to kiss, and made room for the
Marquis du Plessy and me in her circle. I felt abashed by the looks
these courtiers gave me, but the marquis put them readily in the
background, and delighted in the poppet, taking her quite to himself.
"We hear such wonderful stories about you, Lazarre! Besides, Doctor
Chantry came to see us and told us all he knew. Remember, Lazarre
belonged to us before you discovered him, monsieur the Marquis du
Plessy! He and I are Americans!"
Some women near us commented, as seemed to be the fashion in that
society, with a frankness which Indians would have restrained.
"See that girl! The emperor may now imagine what his brother Jerome has
done! Her father has brought her over from America to marry her, and it
will need all his money to accomplish that!"
Annabel shook the rain of misty hair at the sides of her rose pink face,
and laughed a joyful retort.
"No wonder poor Prince Jerome had to go to America for a wife! Did you
ever see such hairy faced frights as these Parisians of the Empire!
Lazarre fell ill looking at them. He pretends he doesn't see women,
monsieur, and goes about with his coat skirts loaded with books. I used
to be almost as much afraid of him as I am of you!"
"Ah, mademoiselle, I dread to enter paradise."
"Why, monsieur?"
"The angels are afraid of me!"
"Not when you smile."
"Teach me that adorable smile of yours!"
"Oh, how improving you will be to Lazarre, monsieur! He never paid me a
compliment in his life. He never said anything but the truth."
"The lucky dog! What pretty things he had to say!"
Annabel laughed and shook her mist in great enjoyment. I liked to watch
her, yet I wondered where Madame de Ferrier was, and could not bring
myself to inquire.
"These horrible incense pots choke me," said Annabel.
"I like them," said the marquis.
"Do you? So do I," she instantly agreed with him.
"Though we get enough incense in church."
"I should think so! Do you like mass?"
"I was brought up on my knees. But I never acquired the real devotee's
back."
"Sit on your heels," imparted Annabel in strict confidence. "Try it."
"I will. Ah, mademoiselle, any one who could bring such comfort into
religion might make even wedlock endurable!"
Madame de Ferrier appeared between the curtains of a deep window. She
was talking with Count de Chaumont and an officer in uniform. Her face
pulsed a rosiness like that quiver in winter skies which we call
northern lights. The clothes she wore, being always subdued by her head
and shoulders, were not noticeable like other women's clothes. But I
knew as soon as her eyes rested on me that she found me changed.
De Chaumont came a step to meet me, and I felt miraculously equal to
him, with some power which was not in me before.
"You scoundrel, you have fallen into luck!" he said heartily.
"One of our proverbs is, 'A blind pig will find an acorn once in a
while.'"
"There isn't a better acorn in the woods, or one harder to shake down.
How did you do it?"
I gave him a wise smile and held my tongue; knowing well that if I had
remained in Ste. Pélagie and the fact ever came to De Chaumont's ears,
like other human beings he would have reprehended my plunging into the
world.
"We are getting on tremendously, Lazarre! When your inheritance falls
in, come back with me to Castorland. We will found a wilderness empire!"
I did not inquire what he meant by my inheritance falling in. The
marquis pressed behind me, and when I had spoken to Madame de Ferrier I
knew it was his right to take the hand of the woman who had been his
little neighbor.
"You don't remember me, madame?"
"Oh, yes, I do, Monsieur du Plessy; and your wall fruit, too!"
"The rogue! Permit me to tell you those pears are hastening to be ready
for you once more."
"And Bichette, monsieur--is dear old Bichette alive?"
"She is alive, and draws the chair as well as ever. I hear you have a
little son. He may love the old pony and chair as you used to love
them."
"Seeing you, monsieur, is like coming again to my home!"
"I trust you may come soon."
They spoke of fruit and cattle. Neither dared mention the name of any
human companion associated with the past.
I took opportunity to ask Count de Chaumont if her lands were recovered.
A baffled look troubled his face.
"The emperor will see her to-night," he answered. "It is impossible to
say what can be done until the emperor sees her."
"Is there any truth in the story that he will marry her to the officer
who holds her estate?"
The count frowned.
"No--no! That's impossible."
"Will the officer sell his rights if Madame de Ferrier's are not
acknowledged?"
"I have thought of that. And I want to consult the marquis."
When he had a chance to draw the marquis aside, I could speak to Madame
de Ferrier without being overheard; though my time might be short. She
stood between the curtains, and the man in uniform had left his place to
me.
"Well, I am here," I said.
"And I am glad," she answered.
"I am here because I love you."
She held a fold of the curtain in her hand and looked down at it; then
up at me.
"You must not say that again."
"Why?"
"You know why."
"I do not."
"Remember who you are."
"I am your lover."
She looked quickly around the buzzing drawing-room, and leaned
cautiously nearer.
"You are my sovereign."
"I believe that, Eagle. But it does not follow that I shall ever reign."
"Are you safe here? Napoleon Bonaparte has spies."
"But he has regard also for old aristocrats like the Marquis du Plessy."
"Yet remember what he did to the Duke d'Enghien. A Bourbon prince is not
allowed in France."
"How many people consider me a Bourbon prince? I told you why I am here.
Fortune has wonderfully helped me since I came to France. Lazarre, the
dauphin from the Indian camps, brazenly asks you to marry him, Eagle!"
Her face blanched white, but she laughed.
"No De Ferrier ever took a base advantage of royal favor. Don't you
think this is a strange conversation in a drawing-room of the Empire? I
hated myself for being here--until you came in."
"Eagle, have you forgotten our supper on the island?"
"Yes, sire." She scarcely breathed the word.
"My unanointed title is Lazarre. And I suppose you have forgotten the
fog and the mountain, too?"
"Yes."
"Lazarre!"
"Yes, Lazarre."
"You love me! You shall love me!"
"As a De Ferrier should; no farther!"
Her lifted chin expressed a strength I could not combat. The slight,
dark-haired girl, younger than myself, mastered and drew me as if my
spirit was a stream, and she the ocean into which it must flow. Darkness
like that of Ste. Pélagie dropped over the brilliant room. I was nothing
after all but a palpitating boy, venturing because he must venture.
Light seemed to strike through her blood, however, endowing her with a
splendid pallor.
"I am going," I determined that moment, "to Mittau."
The adorable curve of her eyelids, unlike any other eyelids I ever saw,
was lost to me, for her eyes flew wide open.
"To ----"
She looked around and hesitated to pronounce the name of the Count of
Provence.
"Yes. I am going to find some one who belongs to me."
"You have the marquis for a friend."
"And I have also Skenedonk, and our tribe, for my friends. But there is
no one who understands that a man must have some love."
"Consult Marquis du Plessy about going to Mittau. It may not be wise.
And war is threatened on the frontier."
"I will consult him, of course. But I am going."
"Lazarre, there were ladies on the ship who cursed and swore, and men
who were drunk the greater part of the voyage. I was brought up in the
old-fashioned way by the Saint-Michels, so I know nothing of present
customs. But it seems to me our times are rude and wicked. And you, just
awake to the world, have yet the innocence of that little boy who sank
into the strange and long stupor. If you changed I think I could not
bear it!"
"I will not change."
A stir which must have been widening through the house as a ripple
widens on a lake, struck us, and turned our faces with all others to a
man who stood in front of the chimney. He was not large in person, but
as an individual his presence was massive--was penetrating. I could have
topped him by head and shoulders; yet without mastery. He took snuff as
he slightly bowed in every direction, shut the lid with a snap, and
fidgeted as if impatient to be gone. He had a mouth of wonderful beauty
and expression, and his eyes were more alive than the eyes of any other
man in the assembly. I felt his gigantic force as his head dipped
forward and he glanced about under his brows.
"There is the emperor," De Chaumont told Eagle; and I thought he made
indecent haste to return and hale her away before Napoleon.
The greatest soldier in Europe passed from one person to another with
the air of doing his duty and getting rid of it. Presently he raised his
voice, speaking to Madame de Ferrier so that, all in the room might
hear.
"Madame, I am pleased to see that you wear leno. I do not like those
English muslins, sold at the price of their weight in gold, and which do
not look half as well as beautiful white leno. Wear leno, cambric, or
silk, ladies, and then my manufactures will flourish."
I wondered if he would remember the face of the man pushed against his
wheel and called an assassin, when the Marquis du Plessy named me to him
as the citizen Lazarre.
"You are a lucky man, Citizen Lazarre, to gain the marquis for your
friend. I have been trying a number of years to make him mine."
"All Frenchmen are the friends of Napoleon," the marquis said to me.
I spoke directly to the sovereign, thereby violating etiquette, my
friend told me afterwards, laughing; and Bonaparte was a stickler for
precedent.
"But all Frenchmen," I could not help reminding the man in power, "are
not faithful friends."
He gave me a sharp look as he passed on, and repeated what I afterward
learned was one of his favorite maxims:
"A faithful friend is the true image."
VIII
"Must you go to Mittau?" the Marquis du Plessy said when I told him what
I intended to do. "It is a long, expensive post journey; and part of the
way you may not be able to post. Riga, on the gulf beyond Mittau, is a
fine old town of pointed gables and high stone houses. But when I was in
Mittau I found it a mere winter camp of Russian nobles. The houses are
low, one-story structures. There is but one castle, and in that his
Royal Highness the Count of Provence holds mimic court."
We were riding to Versailles, and our horses almost touched sides as my
friend put his hand on my shoulder.
"Don't go, Lazarre. You will not be welcome there."
"I must go, whether I am welcome or not."
"But I may not last until you come back."
"You will last two months. Can't I post to Mittau and back in two
months?"
"God knows."
I looked at him drooping forward in the saddle, and said:
"If you need me I will stay, and think no more about seeing those of my
own blood."
"I do need you; but you shall not stay. You shall go to Mittau in my
own post-carriage. It will bring you back sooner."
But his post-carriage I could not accept. The venture to Mittau, its
wear and tear and waste, were my own; and I promised to return with all
speed. I could have undertaken the road afoot, driven by the necessity I
felt.