One can see the splendid bays, clamping their bits of solid silver,
their sleek skins and their costly harness glittering in the sunshine
that had driven the early morning fogs away, the postilions and
outriders in their green and gold liveries sitting in the saddle, the
landaus of the suite drawn up at the distance prescribed by etiquette.
Everybody was breakfastless, save the Emperor, his son, and cousin,
and their immediate following. The regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique,
the gorgeous Cent Gardes in gold-crested, crimson-tufted, silver
helmets with flowing white horsetails and caped cloaks of azure, were
empty of all but air, like their own famous kettledrums. Their
horses had cropped a little grass in the fields during the night's
bivouac, and were better off than their riders, by one meal.
The young Prince Imperial looked sulky and discontented, but neat and
soldierlike in his new uniform of a subaltern of infantry. Prince
Jerome Napoleon, the portly M. Plon-Plon of the Crimean War
caricatures, wore a cocked hat pulled down hard over his eyes, and
was buttoned up in a military cloak.
The Emperor had suffered in the night, for a traveler who had slept
in an attic above his bedroom had heard him pacing to and fro and
groaning. He wore a black-caped, red-lined waterproof cloak over the
uniform of a General of Division; a glimpse of the Star of the Legion
of Honor fastened on his breast showed as he raised his hand to throw
away the butt of the inseparable cigarette, and set his neat little
polished gold-spurred boot on the carriage-step, and beckoned with a
small white-kid-gloved hand.
Obeying this signal, a green-and-gold equerry and a demure elderly
valet hoisted him respectfully on one side, while a keen-eyed,
lean-jawed young man, accurately attired in deep black, propped him
scientifically upon the other. We know this deft and silent
personage to have been a brilliant young Paris surgeon, retained
about the person of the Emperor; a specialist whose ministrations, in
dulling unbearable pain with subcutaneous injections of morphia, and
combating the progress of disease by skilled surgical treatment,
became more necessary every day.
They got him in. The sweat was starting through the rouge upon his
livid face as he sank heavily upon the seat of the carriage. His son
and cousin followed. Bazaine,--who was accompanied by Canrobert and
Bourbaki, and did not dismount, rode up to receive his master's
farewells.
He did not entreat again to be relieved of the supreme
responsibility. Perhaps the Emperor imagined that he might. For he
put out his hand in haste and shook the Marshal's, reiterating:
"All will go well! Excellently, I have no doubt of it! You
understand, you have broken the spell."
Of ill-luck, did he mean, clinging to the fatalist whose Star was on
the point of setting. He added:
"I go to Verdun and Châlons. Put yourself upon the road for Châlons
as soon as possible.... May you be fortunate! _Au revoir! En
avant!_"
The brigadier-general in charge of the escort gave the word. The
Advance was sounded, the Chasseurs on their gray Arabs dashed onward,
riding in fours, keeping a sharp lookout for Uhlans. A half-troop of
Cent Gardes preceded the Emperor's carriage, his equerries and aides
and those of the Prince's household followed on their empty, chafing
beasts. Another _peloton_ of Cent Gardes were succeeded by three
Imperial carriages containing the surgeon, secretaries and valets;
grooms followed with led horses; and the Empress's regiment of
Dragoons, brass-helmeted, black-plumed warriors, in green with white
plastrons, brought up the rear.
It was four o'clock in the morning when they started. Deep defiles
rather than roads, with wooded, precipitous banks, stretch between
Metz and Gravelotte. By the time the Imperial _cortège_ had
extricated itself from the stray columns and batteries choking these,
and the cliffy banks had lowered to hedgerows, it was six o'clock and
a gloriously sunny morning.
One may imagine, as the landscape broadened and smoothed like a human
face relieved from carking anxiety, the young Prince Imperial turning
in his seat, and looking back upon the scene he was unwillingly
quitting, with a scowl of resentment and dissatisfaction that changed
and aged his boyish face.
He saw the white tents of the huge camps of the Imperial Divisions
snowing over a vast area of country on the French side of the river,
and the clotting of cavalry and infantry in swarms upon the roads,
where vast aggregations of baggage and provisions and ambulance
wagons impeded their passage. He saw the Imperial Standard break out
above the Tricolor on the flagstaff of the Fort of Plappeville,
signifying that Bazaine had entered. He could see the
artillery-batteries on the high ground at Rezerieulles, and he knew
that others were posted behind the woods of Genivaux, and yet others
near the quarries of Amanvilliers. The glitter of steel and the
flutter of red and white lance-pennons told of the Light Cavalry
outposts at St. Ruffine. And sinister moving specks upon the
hill-crests beyond the river above St. Barbe--and others moving in
the villages, with darker, bigger patches toward Sarrebourg,
testified, like the gray-white drifts of powder-smoke that came down
upon the northeast breeze, with the reduplicated rattle of musketry,
the detonation of field-guns and the yapping of mitrailleuses--to the
near, active presence of the ancient, racial foe.
_He_ was drawing nearer, always nearer, to the coveted key-city of
the Two Rivers, seated within her ancient fortifications, guarding
the northeast frontiers of France. _He_ wanted Metz, with her vast
modern arsenal, her huge hospitals and military colleges, her fifteen
bridges--(the railway-bridge had been blown up by Bazaine's engineers
on the night before last, when the squadron of Uhlans, greatly
daring, had made their way into the French lines, with the project of
seizing upon the person of papa)--and her glorious Cathedral, whose
vast gray bulk was now bathed in the misty golden sunshine of a
perfect autumn day.
Soon, soon, those indomitable dark blue soldiers would be at grips
with Frenchmen for the possession of Metz. Oh! not to be able to
fire a shot, or strike a blow with her defenders, because of one's
pitiable weakness and youth! Oh! to be perpetually guarded and
protected and plucked from the very possibility of danger, because
one happened to be Heir to the Imperial Throne.
Why had the Emperor resigned the supreme command of the Army? There
had been reverses--does a Commander-in-Chief give up for that? True,
he was not well, but the First Napoleon had fought battles and won
them, in spite of cramps and colic. _He_ would never have driven
away under the noses of King Wilhelm and Count Bismarck and the
Prince Commanders. He would have called the nephew who could commit
such an _impair_ as that a _godichon_. He would have said: "To the
devil with you, who boast yourself of my blood! A Napoleon--and not
a general! You might have proved yourself a fighter, at least!"
The soldiers regarded the Emperor's resignation as the Great Napoleon
would have done. They had not cried "_Vive l'Empereur!_" when papa
had driven out of Metz. Upon the contrary, they had maintained
silence, scowling or sneering covertly. To-day, the meanest
piou-piou had presumed to wink or grin. More, voices from the depths
of company-columns had called out horrible insults; things that had
made the son's teeth set and his fists clench with the passionate
desire to thrash the offenders, yet had not twitched one muscle in
the father's impassive face....
"Why do you look back so often, Louis? What are you thinking about?"
The Emperor's question brought the young head round. He muttered,
twisting the gold knot of his little sword:
"I am looking at the Army, and at Metz--and at those Uhlan outposts.
And I want to know why we are going away--just because the Prussians
are coming? Why cannot we stay--and fight?"
The diplomatic, evasive answer came:
"Because for the present it is more prudent that we should withdraw
ourselves."
The boy shrugged, almost imperceptibly, and his young face took on an
expression of heavy obstinacy, bringing out, quite startlingly, a
resemblance to the sire. He muttered:
"All very well.... But it isn't nice to--absquatulate!"
The slang term _filer_ might be rendered as above. The Emperor's
gray face with the patches of rouge on the flaccid cheeks moved not a
muscle. Turning his hunched shoulders upon the scene of his horrible
humiliations, he stared with fixed eyes along the road to Verdun,
stretching away to the west between its bordering poplars, whose long
blue shadows--the day being yet young--barred the white dust rather
suggestively.
At Etain, where the _cortège_ halted for breakfast, the Prince had a
much nearer view of those ubiquitous horsemen in the dark blue
uniforms. Indeed, the Emperor and his suite barely escaped a
surprise, and the escort of Cent Gardes, who were here replaced by
some of MacMahon's Chasseurs d'Afrique, were hotly chased and sniped
at on the way back to camp.
Through the journey of that night, performed in the cushionless plank
seats of a third-class carriage, his suite being accommodated in a
string of cattle-trucks, of what did the sleepless Emperor think?
What questions occupied that sick and sluggish brain?
The question of returning to Paris, the refuge he longed for and yet
dreaded inexpressibly. The question as to whether the Empress Regent
would welcome the Emperor who could no longer rule the State, and
what kind of ovation the people would extend to the General who had
deserted the Army of Metz before the advancing hordes of United
Germany.
Would not Rebellion, Anarchy and Revolution rear up their hydra-heads
to greet the Third Napoleon, reëntering his capital? Would his reign
end in the explosion of a bomb, and a shower of torn flesh and
scattered blood upon the paving-stones? Would his son ever wear the
Imperial crown, won by bribery, bloodshed, fraud and trickery? Would
the Church forgive the rape of temporal power? Would Heaven succor
one who had defrauded Her? Was this the beginning of the end?
Lugubrious doubts like these and many others haunted his sleepless
pillow in the Imperial pavilion of the camp on the dusty plains of
Champagne. Dismantled at the close of the October maneuvers, and now
hastily prepared for the Emperor's reception, the place was damp,
dismal, and cheerless, as such places usually are.
The newly levied troops were showing signs of insubordination; the
Gardes Mobiles from Paris were in open mutiny against their generals.
The great camp was a wasp's nest, which the presence of the Emperor
stirred to frenzy; the lewd songs in which he figured, the yells of
savage laughter greeting obscene jests leveled at him and his,
reached him, pacing the mildewed carpets underneath the damp-stained
draperies festooned from the claws of Imperial eagles, whose gilding
was tarnished and discolored, like the Imperial central crown.
All night he paced, on thorns. With the dawn of day he had the
answer to his questions. From the Empress, who wished him to
abdicate that she might reign for her son; from the new War Minister,
a creature of his own aggrandizing, who by influencing the Empress,
who detested him, dreamed of becoming another Richelieu; from the
Prefect of Police--who indeed brought the warning in person--came a
triple sentence of exile for the sick, dejected man.
Spewed forth again upon the road toward the northern frontier, he was
a clog upon the feet of the army that might, by a movement in which
boldness combined with rapidity, have relieved Bazaine at the
critical moment and changed the fate of France. Thenceforth he was
to be a passive witness, rather than a participator, in scene after
scene of horrible disaster; disgraces, disillusions, defeats,
crowding one upon the other, to be crowned by the unspeakable
catastrophe of Sedan.