"I saw him, I am convinced, when we left Saint-Cloud, outside the
station near the Gate of Orleans. He stood apart from the soldiers
and the people.... He was all in black, and had grown older and
taller. He looked at me earnestly, and slightly raised his hat as
the carriage drove up. I saluted in answer, and the Empress asked
me: '_Who is that grave young man? Do you know him?_' I said: '_My
mother, I have never spoken to him in my life!_' ... You would have
thought the Empress very brave, if you had seen her, Mademoiselle.
Nobody could have guessed she had been weeping. Though the night
before we left for Metz ... when she came to me in my bed..."
His lips twitched, and one big tear brimmed over and splashed on the
sleeve of his piou-piou's uniform. He flushed bright red, and
whisked it off as though it were a wasp that would have stung.
"She brought me a new medal to hang on the collar I wear always." He
slid a finger inside the edge of his stiff military stock, and hooked
up an inch of gold chain. "It has on one side a figure of Our
Blessed Lady crushing the head of the serpent, and on the other there
is the Cross with two hearts. The Holy Father has blessed it; it was
sent to Rome purposely.... Mothers are anxious when their sons are
called upon Active Service.... It is natural, is it not?"
Juliette's eyes were wet with pity for the Empress. She bent her
head in assent. The boy went on, shrugging his slender shoulders:
"For me--I like better to have soldiers about me than a lot of people
in embroidered tail-coats. If I had been twenty, I should have been
at Wörth with the Duke of Magenta.... I would have died at the head
of my troops rather than have consented to that shameful retreat....
'_Over my body!_' ... that is what I would have said to them....
'_Do you wish me to dishonor the blood of Napoleon the Great?_'"
He crossed to the fireplace and stood upon the Turkey hearthrug, a
boyish figure reflected in the great Venetian mirror that hung above
the carved stone mantelpiece. The outpouring had relieved the
nervous tension; the red flush had died out of his fair temples, the
smooth forehead was no longer disfigured with a scowl.
"If I might only have remained with the Army at Metz, I would have
asked nothing better. But instead of staying to fight the Prussians,
we drove away when they came in sight. It was ignominious.... It
made me feel horribly!... And the Emperor would not show it, but I
know he suffered, too. Then the camp was beastly.... There was no
pretense of discipline. Their officers could hardly restrain the
mobilists. There was even mutiny among those who had returned from
Alsace-Lorraine--the Algerian troops of the Army of MacMahon!"
His agitation made him stutter as the words came pouring from him.
"They wanted to be led once more against the Germans!--to be avenged
for all their losses and misfortunes!... I understood why they were
difficult.... They did not understand why we did not march at once
to the northeast frontier. No more did I.... I was unreasonable,
like them! But now we are advancing--soon, soon, you will hear
something!... We will effect a junction of our Army with M. de
Bazaine's, and sweep the Prussians out of France!"
He was walking up and down, swinging his arms, gesticulating,
grinding his heels into the arabesques of the Aubusson carpet at
every turn.
"Then there will be great popular rejoicings--the Emperor will
receive his due--there will be no more misunderstandings. For the
Emperor is terribly misunderstood, Mademoiselle, and he is no longer
young or strong.... He has so many bitter enemies.... I have heard
him say so, weeping--the Emperor, Mademoiselle!..."
"Oh, hush, Monseigneur!"
But he did not heed Juliette's entreaty.
"I have heard him crying out to God in his room at midnight, when he
thought everyone was asleep, and he was quite alone: '_My God! is
this the beginning of the punishment? Must the price of my success
be ruin, defeat, disgrace!_'... Then I stole away and made a prayer
for him and for myself, Mademoiselle.... I say it regularly every
night since then."
His boyish pompousness, pride, and vanity had fallen from him like a
tinsel diadem. Chivalry and loyalty, unselfishness and devotion
shone from and irradiated the child.
"'_My God, if Thou dost save up happiness for me, I pray Thee to take
it away, and give it to my father, who needs it so badly.... And, my
God, if Thou indeed art angry with him, I beseech Thee to grant him
Thy pardon, and punish me, instead. All I ask Thee for myself is
that I may know Thy Will, and obey It, that I may do my duty bravely,
and die when the end of my life comes without dishonor and without
fear!_' Is that a good prayer, do you think, Mademoiselle?"
Before she could command herself sufficiently to answer, there was a
knock at the door, and the equerry came in. He looked eager and
vexed, excited and disappointed. Varying emotions seemed to clash in
him. But he said, smiling and saluting as the Prince turned toward
him:
"The ten minutes are over, Monseigneur!"
"Ten minutes ago, Monsieur, to speak correctly," said Monseigneur,
with a mischievous look. Then his face changed. "News!" he called
out eagerly. "You have dispatches from the Emperor!... Don't play a
farce with me, Count, I beg of you! when there is the telegram
sticking out of your cuff!"
And with the nimbleness of a gamin and the audacity of a spoiled
princeling, he threw himself upon the equerry and captured the prize.
"From the Emperor at Rheims--no! don't retire, Mademoiselle! You are
discreet--not like women who talk! ... You shall share my good news
with me.... He says: '_There has been furious fighting at Mars la
Tour. Battles are raging at Flauville, Flavigny, and Vionville. The
Prince will remain for the present at Bethel, where the Emperor will
rejoin him on the 27th. As it is not considered advisable to effect
a junction with Bazaine, the march of the Army of Châlons is directed
upon Sedan._'"
The mischief died out of the dancing eyes, the mobile face whitened
with disappointment. He repeated, staring blankly at the paper:
"For what did we leave Châlons, if not to assist Bazaine?... _Mon
Dieu!_... What infamy!... Why am I not a man?"
He grew crimson and burst into a tempest of sobbing. He tore the
pale green paper into fragments and trampled them beneath his feet.
His eyes blazed through the tears that streamed from them as he
stammered between his gasps and chokings:
"Cowards!... Traitors!... Disgraced forever!... Is there no honor
left in France?"
"Come, Mademoiselle, in pity!" entreated the equerry, as deadly pale
as Monseigneur was red. He held open the door with a shaking hand,
and Juliette hurriedly quitted the drawing-room. The door shut upon
the sobs and outcries. The Count said, with a sigh of relief, wiping
the perspiration from his face:
"You will not speak of this? His Imperial Highness is overwrought
and excited. It will pass presently. Let me conduct you downstairs!"
The hall of the Prefecture reached, a servant in the livery of the
establishment approached the equerry. It appeared that the lady who
had accompanied Mademoiselle had recovered from her indisposition,
and departed, leaving no message for her young friend.
"Madame will have returned to her hotel," said the equerry. He
added: "By chance, Mademoiselle, the dispatches we have just received
contain proof that your friend has been misled by false intelligence.
Colonel le Bayard has not been taken prisoner. He is now in command
of his regiment with the First Brigade of Cavalry of General
Clérambault's Division, now engaged with the Third Corps in the
neighborhood of Metz."
Then as Juliette turned red and pale, and looked at him in breathless
questioning, he added, pulling a vestibule-chair from its place near
the wainscot and making her sit down:
"Rest there one moment.... I will speak to Colonel Watrin. He is
now at mess with his officers in the Prefect's billiard-room."
Watrin of the Bodyguard, Chief of the Prince Imperial's escort, came
clanking and jingling from his dinner to confirm the fact as stated
by the equerry. The 777th Chasseurs, belonging to de Clérambault's
Division of the Third Corps of the Army of Bazaine, were certainly
now engaged in the neighborhood of Gravelotte. But as certainly they
had not come into contact with the enemy previously to the fifteenth
of the month.
The fifteenth!--the very day on which Adelaide had baited her trap
with an imprisoned father.... Joy at the discovery, indignation at
having been so easily cajoled into captivity, brought back the red to
Juliette's pale cheeks and the light to her sad eyes.
This strange, wayward, mysterious mother might exercise over her
daughter a certain degree of maternal authority. The supreme
obedience, the first duty was to the father, that was clear. Now she
was going straight to him, wherever he might be. She was strong
enough, for his dear sake, to take whatever risks were involved.
Suppose Adelaide insisted on accompanying her? It was unthinkable
that even so hardy an offender should venture into the presence of
one so wronged.... Meet his look!... Read in his face his scorn of
perfidy! Juliette put away the possibility from her with both hands.
We know that Madame Adelaide had contemplated this very move upon
occasion. But she had not met Mademoiselle de Bayard then. Since
the encounter had taken place she had realized that the establishment
of maternal influence, strong enough to make of her daughter a
confederate and ally, was a task beyond her powers.
Her grace, her charm, were lost upon this pale, frigid, obstinate
little being, in whom she saw her mother-in-law over again. For than
this girl, sprung of her own flesh, whose veins were filled with her
blood, nothing could be more unlike Adelaide, that magnificent
creature of impulses and desires and appetites....
Dominion over de Bayard could never be regained and established while
his daughter sat by his hearth a virgin unwed. Why had Adelaide
hindered her marriage to M. Tessier? Pacing the Turkey carpet of the
Prefect's library, Madame admitted that she had acted inadvisedly.
That the plan of bringing Juliette into contact with the Prince
Imperial would be discounted by the innocence of the girl and the
inexperience of the boy.
She could imagine the dialogue they were holding at that moment, all,
"_Oh, Mademoiselle!_" and "_Ah, Monseigneur!_"... The girl should
have been permitted to celebrate her nuptials with this dull young
husband of her father's choosing.... Then a few years later would
have come the opportunity. She ground her teeth, thinking how her
precipitation had spoiled everything ... thrust her.... Ah, Heaven!
how one shuddered at the recollection, almost into the clutches of
the Wielder of the Bowstring, the ingenious inventor of the Ordeal of
the Looking-Glass....
Straz.... At the sight of him her heart had stopped beating. In
imagination those strangling silken folds had closed, shutting out
light and breath....
How he had leered, rolling those fierce black eyes of his. "_So,_"
his jeering smile had said, "_my Sultana and her slave have met
again. Did I not prophesy truly, sweet one, tell me? when I said you
would never again look in your toilette-mirror without remembering
me!_"
Her nerves were raveled to threads--her will was weakening....
Despite her hatred and her overwhelming fear of the man, she knew
that he was her master. That if he fixed those eyes upon her and
beckoned _Come!_ she would have to obey....
Was he still here? The book-lined walls seemed closing in on her.
The atmosphere was suffocating ... she must escape from this place
or go mad.
The Prefect's wife had been called away, after kindly ministrations
with smelling-salts and red lavender. Adelaide opened the library
door a little way, and looked forth cautiously. Except the two Cent
Gardes on duty at the foot of the principal staircase, there was
nobody stirring in the hall or vestibule.
As she told herself so, a red baize-covered door at a flagged rear
passage-end was opened. The Prince's equerry came out with the Chief
of the Bodyguard, an oblong pale green paper was in the equerry's
hand. Both officers' faces were pale. Colonel Watrin's was livid
and distorted with emotion. He said to his companion in a low voice,
and with a despairing gesture:
"It needed but this to hasten the catastrophe!... All is over!...
The Empire is lost!"
Then he went back. The red baize door shut upon him. The equerry
came through the passage, entered the hall, and went quickly up the
stairs. He was going to break to the Emperor's son the news of some
terrible disaster ... to say to him, as Watrin had said: "_All is
over!... The Empire is lost!_"
With all a woman's intuition, Adelaide leaped at the truth and
comprehended the situation. What did she in the galley of a ruined,
sinking Empire? What advantage was to be gained by reconciliation
with Henri de Bayard now? And with Straz in the neighborhood, what
madness to remain here....
As for the girl, she was possessed of money. Let her go to her
father, or to her friends, or elsewhere....
So Adelaide went out into the hall, still haunted by horrible
memories of the Roumanian. She found the porter. He hailed her
_fiacre_ from its waiting-place. Madame stepped in gracefully, and
was jingled away, straight into the jaws of Straz!
"Mademoiselle is courageous," commented the Chief of the Escort when
Juliette's determination to seek the shelter of her Colonel shaped
itself in a request for a military pass, a thing without which nobody
could penetrate the immediate area where the dreadful thing called
War was actually going on. The speaker resumed:
"The Cavalry Camp of the Third Corps is at present at Châtel St.
Germain.... Provided Mademoiselle gets there without accident, and
can endure the noise of the bombardments--Mademoiselle may be quite
as safe"--he shrugged and twirled his imperial--"there as anywhere
else!..."
A little vague, more than a little doubtful, considering the huge
conflict then waging, that was to wage until nightfall of the morrow,
between the Imperial Army of Metz and the First and Second Armies of
Germany. But the permit was written and signed with a flourish, and
gracefully handed over to the keeping of Mademoiselle. Then she
thanked Colonel Watrin and went away, declining the attendance of the
servant whom the officer would have sent with her, and descended the
steps of the Prefecture under the raking eyes of the crowd....
For, owing to a mysterious leakage in Imperial dispatches, something
approaching to a panic was brewing.... The Place of the Prefecture
was packed with people ... the news of the frightful struggle near
Metz was buzzing from mouth to mouth. It was whispered that defeat
was certain, that M. de Bismarck had a secret understanding with M.
de Bazaine.... Later on, when peasants who had hurried in from
villages on the outskirts, stragglers who had quitted the Army at the
commencement of its misfortunes, soldiers who had deserted from the
Colors in action, came flocking into the town; despite the presence
of the Bodyguard and the gendarmerie, and the local Fire-Brigade, an
attack upon the Imperial party at the Prefecture was anticipated; so
threatening became the attitude of the people, egged on by those
among them who were agents and spies of the enemy.
Perhaps the arrival of the Emperor would throw oil upon the troubled
waters. Perhaps it would be wiser to warn him not to come. Well
might the officers who guarded the person of the Heir of a crumbling
Empire groan under the burden of their responsibilities. Well might
the Prefect perspire, to the ruin of his collars and cravats.
It may be imagined that the lack of Adelaide's company did not
greatly depress Mademoiselle de Bayard, as, cheered by her interview
and armed with her permit, she tripped through the crowded streets to
the Hotel of the Crown, where they had spent the previous night.
"Madame had already returned," said the respectable Frenchwoman in
charge of the bureau. "She gave notice of departure, and asked for
the account. Then the gentleman arrived--a handsome man with
splendid eyes, brilliant as carbuncles, and hair and beard--my faith!
what hair and what a beard! Madame cried out with ravishment upon
his entrance, for he would not be announced--he went up at once.
Possibly it was Madame's husband, or some near relative?"
Juliette made some ambiguous reply to the question. She was intent
upon the problem of rescuing her traveling-bag. Without money one
could not reach Châtel St. Germain, and in the bag was her little
store of cash. Trembling, she crept upstairs to the room she had
slept in, a dressing or maid's apartment, opening out of Madame's.
The discovery that the door was locked and the key in Adelaide's
possession was appalling. She was delivered from the dilemma by a
chambermaid with a master-key. As she stole in and seized her bag
she heard voices in the next room. Certainly one was Adelaide's and
the other male. A thickish voice, speaking with a drawl and a
muffled softness that somehow recalled the Assyrian hawk-features and
fierce black eyes of Straz.
"_When the little Queen of Diamonds comes,_" the voice said, "_you
shall present me!_" And a chuckle followed on the words that made
her cold. Fortunately, some noise in the corridor covered her
retreat with her rescued property, and facilitated her departure
unobserved from the Hotel of the Crown....
The station was near enough to be reached in a few minutes. She
learned there that a train would leave in ten minutes for Verdun. At
Verdun she would have to change, provided the branch-line trains were
running, or proceed to Châtel St. Germain by road.
Those ten minutes expanded into hours as the girl sat in the dirty
station, waiting. She was escaping from even greater perils than she
had feared, and yet when she found herself actually in the train, and
the train moving out of Bethel, she knew a moment of passionate
regret.
She had been so happy there.... She would never forget, even though
she lived to be an old, old woman, that half-hour spent in easy,
confidential talk with her Imperial Prince.
The littered third-class carriage expanded, became the formal
drawing-room of the Prefecture.... Lingeringly Mademoiselle went
over the interview, and the parting--ah, me! there had been no
farewell!... And yet, upon the step of departure, standing upon the
muddy curbstone of the Place, full of soldiers and scowling people,
she had looked wistfully up at the row of four big round-topped
shining windows on the balconied first floor of the Prefecture and
seen...
Only a boy's face, blurred and stained with crying. Only a boy's
hand, waved behind the pane. As she whispered "_Adieu!_" looking up
at him with passionate love and loyalty, she wondered if ever they
two would meet on earth again.
It was to be never again for the boy and girl whose chivalrous and
noble natures had struck out, at first meeting, the white spark that
kindles to Friendship's sacred flame.
What misfortunes were coming, thick and fast, upon the luckless child
of the Empire!... What a cup of dreadful judgment was to be offered
to those guiltless lips!...
So young, so noble, so unfortunate! The pity of it!... He who might
have breathed new life into the dry bones of the Napoleonic Legend,
and given France an Emperor without fear and without reproach.
What a string of waking nightmares, the days that were to follow!...
That journey by road to Mézières ... that brief sojourn at Sedan.
The sudden flight to Avesnes, where the guns could be heard
thundering, betokening the defeat of a demoralized, dejected army,
conquered almost before the shock of battle, paralyzed by the
premonition of inevitable disaster, as much as by the perfect
preparedness, the masterly strategy, and the overwhelming numbers of
the enemy....
From Landrécies to Maubeuge follow the boy sorrowfully....
What an hour was that when his protectors stripped him of his darling
uniform, dressed him in civilian garments, took him out by the hotel
back-door, and smuggled him into the omnibus that was to convey him
to Belgian ground.
His father a prisoner, his mother a fugitive, crowds hustling him in
their curiosity to see the son of the toppled Napoleon, what wonder
that the memory of that journey haunted him his brief life long.
He was to attain manhood in exile. Transplanted to the soil of a
foreign country, he was to develop into the _beau-ideal_ of a
youthful King among men. High-minded, pure-hearted, excelling in
manly sports and martial exercises, the soul of honor, the fine
flower of French chivalry. And in the spring of his manhood he was
to die by the assegais of savage warriors, leaving nothing behind him
but the broken heart of a mother, some fragrant memories, and the
undying story of that lion's life-and-death fight among the trodden
grasses on the banks of the Imbazani.