"That degrading possibility, and graver dangers still, will be
averted by the fact that their Imperial schoolfellow will not
be--ah!--bodily present in their midst, my Prince. Perhaps your
Imperial Highness would like to see the Professor now?"
And so the Professor came, and from him the boy eagerly gleaned
information about his little schoolfellows of the Seventh Form. He
had friends of his own who came to him after High Mass on Sundays and
on all holidays. But except Espinasse, they had been chosen for him.
The joy of selection and choice he was not to know.
Thus, many men of mark from different Lycées succeeded one another in
the work-room at the Château and successively occupied the arm-chair
at the end of the leather-covered table in one of the three windows
of his corner study on the third story of the Pavilion de Flore at
the Tuileries--and when he had been attentive and pleased his
Professor,--his reward would be to hear about the boys.... Some were
noble, splendid fellows, full of cleverness, energy and spirits;
others were funny by reason of sheer stupidity, or some quaint
characteristic or absurd failing which had gained them nicknames
among the rest. A few were spoken of almost with reverence, as being
dowered with the magical gift of genius: poets, dramatists,
novelists, scientists in embryo, budding naval or military
commanders, explorers who were to plant the Flag of France in virgin
corners of the earth and proudly add them to the Empire that would
one day be his own....
He met his longed-for boys at last. One likes to picture him--having
once taken a First Place in the Arithmetic Class--as being permitted
to join in the St. Charlemagne fête of the Lycée Bonaparte. He sat
in the center of one of the long tables, with long vistas of boys,
boys, boys opening out before him whichever way he turned his head.
And he was happy, but for this thing; that though most of the boys in
whom he had been particularly interested were presented to him, he
did not find--as secretly he hoped to find--the friend of whom he
dreamed....
He tried to be _bon camarade_; to combine--and he had a special gift
in this--easy good-fellowship with graciousness. But the boys did
not respond as he would have liked. They stood to attention, and
looked him in the face, and answered, "Yes, Monseigneur! No,
Monseigneur!" boldly, or they shuffled and blinked, and answered,
"No, Monseigneur! Yes, Monseigneur!" mumblingly, and that was all.
He wished, secretly yet ardently, for brave, proud eyes to meet his
own, and strike out the sacred spark of chaste and mutual fire that
kindles the pure, undying flame of Friendship's altar. He longed for
a grave, melodious voice to match the noble, youthful face and the
fine form of his chosen friend. He sought a nature to lean upon,
which should be stronger, greater, than his own.... Superior
talents, greater capacities, ambitions to share, successes to
emulate. And he found none. Not a boy here was a patch upon the
shoe of gay, gallant, lovable, merry Espinasse, who had never come up
to his Prince's notion of a bosom-friend. Could it be that the other
self did not exist anywhere? We turned from that thought, we who
were lonely when we were young. It made the world feel so big and
cold.
The Fête of St. Charlemagne having passed off without any untoward
incident or disagreeable demonstration, an unhappy inspiration on the
part of M. Victor Duruy prompted the suggestion that the Emperor's
heir should preside at the distribution of prizes for the Concours
Général, and thus be for the second time brought into sympathetic
touch with the intellectual youth of France.
You are to imagine the picture of the stately entry into the great
Hall upon the first-floor of the Sorbonne upon an evening in
mid-August; the reception by the Minister of Public Instruction,
gowned and capped and hooded, and the Representatives of the
Faculties; the ominously restricted and frigid applause of professors
and students, greeting references made in the Rector's Latin speech
to the presence of an Imperial Prince in the classic groves of
Akademos.
Hostility, hidden behind a mask of frigid indifference, was to dash
down the brittle sham, and show the fierce eyes of scorn and the
livid hue of hatred, and the writhed lips dumb with reproaches
unutterable. Contempt and mockery were to be conveyed in the small
sibilant _s'ss_! that rippled from parterre to gallery, and by the
intolerable jeering titter that replied.
Yet all might have passed off tolerably but for the beldam Fate, who
had arranged that the second prize for Greek translation, a trio of
calf-bound, gilt-backed volumes containing the Works of Thucydides,
had--together with a laurel crown--fallen to Louis-Eugène Cavaignac.
The young voice had not faltered in reading the name upon the
illuminated scroll. What did its owner know of the Revolutionary
soldier, the dauntless foe of Abd-el-Kader? The Governor-General of
Algeria who had been recalled to Paris to assume the functions of
Minister at War to the Republican Government of 1848. The man who
had upheld the office of Dictator during the period of terror that
had followed the fatal days of June! The candidate for the
Presidency of the Republic who had scorned to bribe; who had calmly
accepted his defeat, and taken his place in the National Assembly,
when Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the good citizen, was elected
to the arm-chair upon the tribune, and took the oath of fidelity to
the Republic of France. Who had been imprisoned in the Fortress of
Ham, with other Representatives of the Left,--his gaoler a commandant
named Baudot, whom he himself had appointed in '48,--his guards the
40th Regiment of the Line, which had been subject to his orders so
short a time before.
Of his seven fellow-captives between those grim and oozing walls, one
was paralyzed upon release, others were victims to chronic
rheumatism. Cavaignac had lived in retirement until the elections of
June, 1857, when he was chosen as one of the Deputies for the Seine,
in opposition to an Imperialist candidate. A few weeks later he had
died suddenly, leaving a wife and a son three years old.
This son, who had half-risen from his place upon the bench at the
sound of the voice that called upon him in the name that had been his
father's, had all these memories in his flaming eyes. He did not
seem to hear the applause that greeted his triumph; he gazed steadily
into the face of the young Bonaparte, and then looked toward his
mother. And Madame Cavaignac, seated, beautiful and stern as a
matron of old Rome, relentless as Fate, in the front of the gallery
opposite, signed to him with an imperious gesture to sit down. He
obeyed her. And then round upon round of deafening plaudits made the
walls and rafters of the ancient building shake; and brought the gray
dust of six centuries drifting down upon the black or brown or golden
locks of the hopeful youth of France.
After that episode the heir of the Imperial dignities was not again
brought in contact with the students of the lyceums. He made no
reference to the prize-winner who had refused the prize tendered by
the son of his dead father's relentless enemy. But the insult had
gone to the quick. Recalling it, he would clench his hands until the
nails dug deep into the delicate flesh, crying inwardly:
"Oh! to be a man full-grown, and avenge that day with blood!"
At other times he would weep passionately in secret over the memory
of the outrage; for, being of a sensitive, affectionate and generous
nature, it sorely hurt to find himself the object of such hatred from
one in whom,--it seemed to him, and perhaps indeed it was so!--he
might have found the bosom-friend and _alter ego_, so keenly longed
for and so eagerly sought.
The bright dark eyes and clear-cut features, the well-set head and
athletic form, the dignified, yet modest bearing of this boy, so
superior to himself in everything but wealth and station, fitted the
niche previously prepared. And when he fell to dreaming, young
Cavaignac's resolute face and calm, contemptuous bearing were
invariably opposed to his own unslumbering resentment, and
finally-conquering generosity. For, varied as the plot might be, the
_dénouement_ of each little drama would always be the same.
They would meet, in manhood, upon some field of bloody battle, during
the great war beginning with the French invasion of the Grand Duchy
of Luxembourg, ending with the conquest of Germany and the annexation
of the left bank of the Rhine. A youth upon the verge of manhood,
the dreamer would have performed such prodigies of valor in command
of his regiment as to justify his appointment as Commander-in-Chief
of the Imperial Army of Invasion. He had not decided what would
happen. There would be a great charge of cavalry led against
overwhelming odds, under a deadly fire of infantry and artillery, by
himself. He would cut down or shoot a gigantic Prussian trooper, who
had wounded a French officer. He would lightly leap from his own
charger--the Arab "_Selim_" given him by Sultan Abdul Aziz--and aid
the prostrate man to rise and mount. Their looks would meet, the
blue-gray and the fiery black eyes would strike out a spark of mutual
recognition. Oh! the joy of heaping coals of fire upon that
beautiful, rebellious head!
Or Cavaignac would not then recognize his saviour, but long
afterward, the Prince having become Emperor, would head a conspiracy
to dethrone him. Moving, as would be the wont of the Fourth
Napoleon, in disguise through the public places of his capital,
mingling with every rank and class, a mystery to men, an enigma to
women, worshiped by all, known by none; he would have discovered the
plot and laid a counter-plot, which, of course, would be successful.
The mine would explode harmlessly--the conspirators would be seized.
Their leader,--lying under sentence of death in a military
fortress--probably Mont Valérien--bedded upon damp straw, loaded with
massive fetters, would be visited by a young officer. He would
recall the features of his deliverer of long ago, and fall upon his
neck, crying: "Alas! my noble friend, long sought, unfound till now,
thou comest late, but in time, for I am to die to-morrow!" "Die! Is
it possible! Of what art thou guilty, then?" Cavaignac would answer
coldly: "Of having conspired to dethrone the young Emperor!" "Dost
thou indeed hate him so?" "Ay! we have been enemies since boyhood's
days." Choking with emotion, dissembled under a pale and resolute
exterior, the visitor would return: "And he hates thee not! Were he
here he would say as much to thee!" "Can it be possible? How,
then----?" "I swear it upon the soul of my father! Thy Emperor is
thy truest friend! Here is my sword. Behold this undefended breast,
cage of a heart that has ever loved thee! Thrust, I command thee, if
thou hast the power!" "Sire, I am conquered; I have lived for a
Republic--I die the Emperor's most loyal subject!" "To my arms,
then, Cavaignac! Embrace me--thou art forgiven!"
Impossible, beautiful dreams, grandiose and absurd, ridiculous and
touching....
He was mentally carrying on one of these endless duologues as he rode
through the wintry avenues of the Bois, and dismounted at my Lord
Hertford's exquisite villa of Bagatelle, set in beautiful, secluded
grounds adjoining the park.
Born of a whim of the Comte d'Artois, gay Monsieur, brother of the
Sixteenth Louis, built in fifty-four days by the architect Bellanger,
at a cost of six hundred thousand livres, Bagatelle had always served
as a shelter for gallant adventures, not all of them set in what
Republicans scornfully termed "the night of monarchy."
Mademoiselle de Charolais, beautiful and haughty; Mademoiselle de
Beauharnais, handsome, sensual, and unscrupulous; Madame Tallien,
constant, noble, and courageous; the Duchesse de Berri, and how many
other women, famous or infamous, had trodden its velvet lawns and
swept over its floors of rare marquetry or its pavements of mosaic?
The blood of the Beauharnais mingled in this boy's own veins, with
the Corsican and Spanish tides and the dash of canny Scots derived
from distant Kirkpatricks. That Celtic strain was responsible, it
may be, for his dreaminess and love of solitude.
He was dreaming as he rode through the forest; the spell of his dream
was still upon him as he turned his Arab in at the gilded gates of
Bagatelle, and dismounted before its portico, in the shadow of the
Gothic tower.
From childhood many of the happiest hours of this son of the Empire
had been spent at Bagatelle. In its labyrinths of myrtle and
oleander, laurel and syringa, he had hidden, bursting with childish
laughter, when his playmates were seeking him; he had galloped his
Shetland pony and raced with his dogs over its green lawns. Upon its
broad sheets of crystal water he had sailed his miniature
yacht-squadrons. At his entreaty, the Emperor, always an indulgent
father, had endeavored to buy the place from its English owner. In
vain! my lord of Hertford was not to be tempted by gold, possessing
so much of the stuff, or allured by rank, who was a premier English
Marquess, Knight of the Garter, and so forth. Yet he was a generous
nobleman, and made the Imperial urchin free of his coveted fairyland
whenever he, the owner of the place, should be from home.
To-day's dream, for a wonder, was not the usual duologue between the
friend and the unfriend. Albeit innocently, it was tinged by sex, it
assumed the shape of the triangle; and worked out, though, to the
satisfaction of the dreamer, the eternal Rule of Three. Louis and
his dear enemy, men grown, madly loved one woman; a bewitching
creature, with a sparkling rose-flushed face, eyes like blue jewels
under a pile of black hair, crowned with a little cap of velvet and
gray fur, with a blue wing set at the side. She adored the Prince
who had won her love in the disguise of a simple officer. Fortified
by this passion, she could hear Cavaignac plead unmoved. He, driven
to frenzy by jealousy, would conceal himself here, for the Imperial
lover would have settled Bagatelle with all its treasures upon his
lady-love!--and at midnight when a step echoed in the gallery of
arms, and the fair one, reclining upon this very fauteuil in the
window commanding the grass-plot centered by the Cellini
fountain,--sprang up with a cry of joy to welcome her lover,--the
rejected aspirant would leap from behind yonder trophy of
sixteenth-century pageant-shields, topped with the magnificent
embossed and damascened one bearing the monogram and insignia of
Diane de Poitiers; and, seizing yonder rapier from its stand, would
challenge his successful rival there and then, to a duel _à outrance_.
Need it be said that the Prince's well-known mastery of the sword
would enable him,--by a lightning _coup_, following a feint--to
disarm his antagonist; upon whom he would finally bestow not only the
lady, but the villa, with its treasures of paintings by ancient and
modern masters, its marvelous miniatures and enamels, its rooms of
porcelain, cabinets of priceless coins and gems, galleries of antique
sculpture, its costly furniture, its matchless grounds and gardens,
ending a great many nobly turned sentences with the dignified
peroration:
"Take her, Cavaignac, with all these riches! I ask nothing in
return, but your esteem!"