"Sad, sad! I had not heard. How did it happen?" asked Moltke,
elevating his hairless brows inquiringly.
"Briefly, the affair, as its details have reached me, sums up in this
way: Straz, the Roumanian agent of the Emperor Napoleon, having
performed his mission to Prince Antony of Hohenzollern, met Madame de
Bayard at a Sigmaringen hotel.... She is as clever and
light-fingered as she is, or was, beautiful----'
"I know, I know!" said Moltke. "She sucked Straz dry of his store of
Imperial secrets, but how, I did not hear from Your Excellency."
Returned the Chancellor:
"By drugging him--or so he vows!--she obtained those copies of his
instructions from the Emperor (with copies of his copies of the
telegrams sent by Prince Antony)--which I was privileged to show you
later on. Subsequently, and in floods of artificial tears, she
awakened her victim, declaring she must return that instant to
Berlin. Which she did--a special engine having been kept under steam
at the Sigmaringen railway station--in time to place the papers in
the hands for which they were destined. The exquisite point of the
jest is that Straz accompanied her--subsequently discovering how
roundly he had been befooled! But upon this point I am not
certain.... I only argue from the premises that when Delilah was
subsequently found gagged, half-strangled, and robbed in her bedroom
at the hotel where she and her Roumanian had put up--Straz--who had
vanished--was the perpetrator of what Madame has since termed 'a
mysterious outrage.'"
"He took the money?" Moltke queried.
"Undoubtedly he took the money, which Bucher had paid her a few hours
previously. Twenty thousand marks in honest Prussian bank-notes.
Some of them Straz changed before he left Berlin. He is now here in
France, and that is all I care to know of him at present. But in the
eyes of every man she now encounters, Madame will read something that
will keep her animosity alive."
"So changed, is she?" asked Moltke, with interest.
"So changed is she, in spite of the aid of cosmetics, that as I
looked at her I was minded to exclaim with the Prophet Ezekiel:
_Devourer of men ... thou shalt devour men no more!_"
The speaker added:
"Unless vicariously, for the De Bayard has a daughter--not destitute
of charms, if there be truth in the description given me by her
mother, when the woman offered, for a consideration, to sell the girl
to me!"
"Prut!" said Moltke, reddening angrily and frowning. "Decency
demands that such vileness be kept hid!"
Said the Chancellor, shrugging indifferently:
"Decency and such women as Max Valverden's ex-mistress have long
ceased to be on nodding terms. To do Madame justice, she flew at
higher game than a mere Prussian Minister. Her idea was to influence
a future Emperor, in the person of Badinguet's heir."
Moltke wrinkled up his transparent, arched nostrils, as though an
unpleasant odor had afflicted them:
"_Pfui!_--what beastliness! what abomination! And the boy but
fifteen, and childish for his age!"
"And cleanly of habit and thought," added Bismarck, "considering his
paternity, and the sort of people who habitually surround him." He
turned slightly in his saddle as carbine-shots rang out, followed by
oaths, shouts, and in the distance behind them muscular blows: "The
gendarmery of the Württembergers are carrying out your orders in a
general _battue_. It should be enforced as an iron rule never to be
infringed or departed from, that not only those soldiers, reduced to
the level of non-combatants--who attempt to revenge the misfortunes
of their Army by acts of violence--but those who witness such acts
are to be instantly shot. More, the rule should extend to private
persons: I would without mercy shoot or hang all those who do not
treat as sacredly inviolate the persons of their conquerors!"
His deep-cut nostrils expanded, his blood-tinged blue eyes blazed
under the heavy eyebrows, the corners of his mouth clamped downward,
giving to the thick mustache a certain appearance of solidity,
typical of the man, and suggesting a human mask carved in granite, or
cast in bronze and colored with the hues of life. His resonant voice
had the clang and timbre of a war-gong, forged of metal tempered by
Pagan priests in blood of human victims. And he went on, his
clenched right hand beating the measure of his words upon his solid
thigh:
"I speak from the inner depths, at the promptings of a profound
conviction. Strictness--unmerciful strictness--should be wielded, to
bring home to the innocent and the guilty, the feeble as well as the
powerful, the horror and hideousness of War. And yet"--his voice
assumed a milder tone, the somber frown relaxed, and the tense
corners of the deep-cut mouth twitched a little: "And yet wilt thou
credit that during the frightful carnage of the last two days--there
have been moments when my bowels melted to water--when Pity and
Compunction have gripped me by the throat?"
"_Ach-ach!_" ejaculated Moltke, turning his clear red-rimmed eyes
wonderingly upon the heavy features whose ruddy color had faded to
grayish: "Thou wast unfed, or hadst made some rough soldier's meal
that disagreed with thee. Man's stomach will upon such occasions
chide with the very voice of conscience. Unavoidable horrors need
not cause twinges. Besides, pity and compunction are felt by my
niece Gusta when she has trodden upon her lapdog's tail.... I am
myself agitated by these sentiments when Gusta exhibits to me her
chilblains.... In War--especially a recklessly provoked war of
attack, such as this--neither pity nor compunction can be tolerated.
Grief of heart, I have been hitherto spared by Heaven's gracious
preservation of those dear to me. Thou art nearly as favored, for
the wound of Herbert is comparatively slight, and Bill--the hero of
the astonishing episode thou hast related--has come off the field not
only with four--I think Your Excellency mentioned four--rescued
comrades, but without a scratch upon his skin?"
The simple, serious, almost childish tone of his harangue brought
back the thunderclouds to the forehead of the Man of Iron. His grim
mouth set, his bulldog jaw thrust forward, a dull cloud of red swept
upward to his temples, chasing the sickly grayish hue. He said,
stammering in his characteristic manner:
"Your Ex--Your Excellency and myself have, as you say, been spared
the bereavement which will presently plunge the noblest Prussian
families into mourning. But Heaven--looking down upon the Gorze
Road, now white with the bodies of Von Bredow's Cuirassiers--or
contemplating the field of Mars la Tour, heaped with the corpses of
our Guard-Dragoons and Uhlans--might be inclined to disclaim
arch-responsibility for the orders that in one instance hurled
suss--six Prussian squadrons upon a French Infantry Division and the
combined strength of Frossard's batteries, and in the other, pitted
against eight regiments of French Imperial Guard Cavalry Von Barby's
Heavy Brigade."
"_Ei!_" said Moltke, placidly ignoring the irony, but with a rosy
heightening of the color in his wrinkled cheeks: "And Heaven would be
in the right of it. Von Alvensleben in the first case, General
Voights-Rhetz in the second, had been told in such and such an
emergency to do thus--and thus. In the Wars of Joshua and David, as
recorded in Holy Scripture, Heaven assumed the chief generalship. In
the War of Germany with France, in this year of 1870, Heaven is
pleased to let Moltke have his own way."
Verbal thrusts and riposte had the grind of edged steel on steel.
The Chancellor returned with elaborate suavity:
"And yet--I quote Your Excellency's own utterance, such use of
cavalry as I have quoted has been condemned by Moltke as
unjustifiable."
"And Moltke was right," trumpeted the indomitable veteran, "only you
have not quoted me right. Such use of cavalry by a general is
unjustifiable. Unjustifiable--absolutely--unless he wins!" He
added, rather nettled by the Chancellor's criticism:
"Here we part, as I ride toward Gorze to visit the scene of Von
Bredow's brilliant exploit, in the course of which, though Your
Excellency has omitted to mention it, the French battery was cut to
pieces, and an infantry column ridden down. Thus the loss of life in
a military sense weighs nothing against the advantage!"
And stiffly returning the Minister's salute, the Warlock galloped
away.
"I have trodden on Moltke's corns," said Bismarck, laughing, as his
cousin Bismarck-Böhlen rode up to join him. "He grew testy on being
twitted with our losses in cavalry." He added, as the low hedges
bounding the road vanished, and the arena of the previous afternoon's
conflict opened before them: "There is the King, whose face Roon has
lengthened with tremendous lists of losses on our side. It will now
be my business to shorten the royal countenance again. Roon and I
resemble Ixel and Axel in the child's story-book, only that we manage
better on the whole!" He explained as his cousin professed ignorance
of the legend: "Ixel and Axel were possessed of a magical birth-gift,
which worked in the same way, but differently.... Thus, Axel had a
little finger that stirred sweet, while Ixel's stirred sour, only
neither could remember to use his gift properly. Thus, Ixel would
sour the coffee in the pot, spoil the beer, and turn the jelly in the
house-mother's pipkins, while Axel would stir the sauer-kraut sweet
and make sweet calf's head with cabbages!" He added, laughing: "If a
dish thus flavored were now set before me, I should certainly make
short work of it. Save for a bowl of the soldier's pea-soup given me
by General von Goeben this morning--my stomach would now be as empty
as the inside of Louis Napoleon's head!"
The scene of the Homeric battle of the previous afternoon, watched by
the King, Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke from the ridge south of
Flavigny, was indescribable. Blue Prussian infantry, mingled with
Uhlan lancers, Dragoons, and mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard,
covered the wide stretch of level common-ground between the Bois de
Vionville and the Bois de Gaumont. So high were piled the bodies of
dead men and dead horses, mingled with that sorrowful _débris_ of
shattered arms, scattered accouterments and ownerless headgear, that
live men walked through narrow lanes and crevasses opening here and
there among them, and failed to reach the surface at the full stretch
of the arm.
Bearer-sections of the German Ambulance were looking for survivors,
burial-parties were collecting the German dead. Here and there the
narrow lanes that ended nowhere had become crooked thoroughfares,
owing to these efforts and the labor of bands of volunteers and
peasants working under the Red Cross.
P. C. Breagh was one of these toilers. On the previous day he had
helped the peasants clear the Red Ravine under the direction of the
Gorze Sisters of Mercy, and darkness falling before the gruesome task
was ended, he had kept on by torch and lantern-light until brain and
muscles gave in. Then, staggering with weariness, he had gone back
with the Sisters to their convent--had been dried and warmed, fed
with soup and bread, stewed fruit and coffee, and had slept
dreamlessly in the clean spare bed at their gardener's cottage--to
wake, refreshed, in the light of a new day.
Morning had found every house in Gorze crammed with French and German
wounded, and every able-bodied resident, willingly or otherwise,
impressed into the service of the Red Cross. One single lady of the
Sister's acquaintance, whose villa had been forcibly turned into a
hospital, had retired to sleep off a nervous headache, setting her
maid to guard her bedroom door. Which door, after an interval of
trampling and violent argument, had been kicked open, revealing the
kicker in the person of a Prussian General, muddy to the whiskers,
hoarse from exposure and shouting, and red-eyed from the lack of
sleep, who there and then forcibly ejected the hapless spinster from
her bed, and telling her go and nurse the wounded, pulled off his
spurred boots, and promptly installed himself in her place.
This was mild treatment, even tender, to the usage received by many
other harmless non-combatants. P. C. Breagh had seen an elderly
priest savagely hit in the face by a dismounted Uhlan, whom he had
unintentionally jostled in helping to lift a disabled French soldier
into a cart.
And he had been witness of other outrages. He had seen a wayside
cabaret gutted, and the casks hauled up from the cellar, set up on
end, unheaded, and emptied by a party of blue infantry-men. When
they had dipped in and filled their water-bottles, they had drunk out
of their helmets, and when they could drink no more, they had emptied
out the wine upon the ground before the bush-decorated doorway, and
with brutal jests and laughter watched the red stuff trickle away.
To this senseless waste the host had offered no objection. A blow
from a gun-butt had previously knocked him senseless, and his wife,
with her black hair hanging wildly over her shoulders, and her face
blurred with tears and pale with terror, was trying to bring him
round again.