Versailles, always a town of martial music. Royal or Imperial
fanfares of brass, and welcoming salutes of deep-voiced cannon, had
been--since a day early in October, when the girdle of iron and steel
had closed about Paris--resonant with Prussian bugle calls and
throbbing with Prussian drums.
From dusk to dawn the electric search ray now mounted on the summit
of the Arc de Triomphe, as the broad wheeling beams from Vanves,
Issy, Mont Valérien, and the whole ring of forts that guarded the
great, magnificent, menaced capital, whitened earth and sky in token
of the unsleeping vigilance of the Parisians, and their ceaseless
expectation of a German night attack, even as the long indicatory
fingers of brilliant blue-white light, stretching from the ridge of
St. Cloud and from the heights of Clamart, from Marly, Vanesse,
Epinal, Noiseau, Choisy, and Bourget--no less than the formidable
battery of big guns on the Place d'Armes, with their muzzles placed
so as to sweep the avenues radiating from the Château--betokened the
invaders' anticipations of yet another sortie.
Ah, why had there been no sortie earlier than that abortive effort
toward Chevilly on the thirtieth of September? There were, at the
beginning of the Investment, no more than 180,000 German troops of
the Crown Prince's Army encircling Paris. Up to the tenth of October
what a triumphant turning of the tables might have been effected by a
vigorous sally, effectively carried out!
Huge German forces were engaged in the sieges of Metz and Strasburg,
Belfort and Soissons, Schelsstadt and Verdun. General von der Tann
was engaged with the Army of the Loire near Artenay. The stubborn
resistance of Orleans kept an Army Corps of the Red Prince extremely
busy. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, with the right wing of the
Prussians' covering army south of Paris, was actively engaged with
the French at Dreux and Le Mans.
And there were 55,000 troops of the Line within the walls of Paris;
there were 105,000 Mobiles--not fighters to be sneezed at. There
were 30,000 National Guards--perhaps too soft in muscle and
well-developed in the region of the corporation to be very
effective--pitted against such seasoned warriors as Schmidt, Klaus,
Kraus, and Klein. But add to these, 25,000 Marines, Douaniers,
Gardes-Champêtres and Forestiers, and there you had a force of
485,000 trained Frenchmen, asking nothing better than to sally out by
St. Denis, Villejuif, and Charenton, cut the line of investment
north, clear the blocked road south, effect a junction with the Army
of the Loire, destroy the Warlock's subtlest combinations, promptly
raise the Siege of Paris, and deliver France from the invader.
What was Trochu, Military Governor of Paris, thinking about? What
were MM. Ducrot and Vinoy doing, to delay until the garrison and
fortress of Strasburg were surrendered, until the Capitulation of
Metz on the twenty-seventh of October, and the fall of Verdun on the
seventh of November, had released the main Army of the Red Prince for
the strengthening of that steel and iron girdle that lay outside the
defiant ring of forts? The tentative sally of the twenty-ninth of
November was foredoomed to failure from the outset. No wonder Trochu
and his plans furnished hungry Parisians with abundant food for
mockery, when the Specter of Famine brooded over the City on the
Seine. Narrow-eyed and tight-lipped, cold, sinister, and mysterious,
the man was a mere bag of wind, when all was said and done.
Meanwhile, the great bronze muzzle-loaders of the Forts of Mont
Valérien, Issy, Montrouge, Vanves, and Charenton, St. Denis and its
twin sisters, roared at intervals throughout each day, raining common
shell, chain shot, solid ball, and shrapnel into the lines of the
investing host. But the trenching and battery-making went on
steadily; the high-walled farmyards and gardens of country houses in
the environs were being converted into emplacements for artillery of
the largest caliber. Already several of Krupp's stupendous
siege-howitzers, with muzzles cocked at angles of forty-five,
demonstrated the possibilities of the bombardment for which the
German Press daily shrieked.
"_Not for the reduction of the military defenses, but to produce by
the exercise of sheer terror, bodily suffering, and destruction of
private property, such an effect upon the unarmed
multitudes--subjected to a hail of incendiary shells within their
encircling ring of walls and fortresses--as to compel the chiefs of
the Government and garrison to come to terms at command of the
popular voice._"
Thus the leader-writers of the _Berliner Zeitung_ and other
journals--peaceful-looking, stout men, with full beards and
short-sighted eyes behind spectacles--wrote, as though they longed to
dip their quills in newly shed French blood.
"It is sad, very sad," said the Warlock, vexed for once, "that the
siege trains conveying more than 100,000 hundred-weights of
ammunition cannot be brought over a single line of rails with
sufficient quickness to gratify these excellent gentlemen.... Yet
for the present we can do no more than invest the place and wait for
the means of attacking it. The process of starving out is, as the
mighty fortress of Metz has shown, a very slow one. But as the loud
voices of one hundred and one guns have already proclaimed to our
Berliners--the empty stomach triumphs over the most obstinate
resistance. We now require an army to guard 300,000 prisoners of
War! Since the Babylonian Captivity the world has not heard the
like! And yet the chamber prattlers and the journalists accuse us of
tardiness. Already from several anonymous quarters have reproachful
or ridiculing letters reached me. One even contains a villainous
comic verse, which I am told is sung in the music halls in Berlin."
And the great tactician read, with the expression of one who savors
the bouquet of sulphureted hydrogen or asafetida:
"_Guter Moltke, gehst so stumm?
Immer um das Ding herum:
Bester Moltke, sei nicht dumm,
Mach' doch endlich: Bumm, bumm, bumm!_"
And he tore up the rude verses in indignation and threw them into the
waste-paper basket of the Prussian Great Headquarters at the Palais
de Justice, on the right of the Prefecture, and strode downstairs,
too much out of tune to hum.
To have been called slow and stupid, and affectionately urged to
hurry up and make an end of things with bang, bang, banging!... He
was almost glad that his departed Mary was not alive to know of the
humiliation inflicted by these scurrilous rhymesters on her beloved
old man.
It was an unfortunate moment chosen by a new junior assistant
_aide-de-camp_ upon the Chieftain's personal staff, for tendering a
request for leave of absence until the following day.
"What, what?... You have barely entered upon your new and important
duties, the wine in which your comrades of the Guard pledged you is
still bubbling in your veins.... Is it another congratulatory
banquet, or a supper _tête-à-tête_ ... Am I right?" The Warlock's
keen glance glittered between his lashless eyelids at the tall,
fair-headed young officer standing rigidly before him. "_Prut!_ that
reminds me!..." he added. "In whose company did I see you lunching
only yesterday at one of the little round tables in the ante-chamber
of the dining salle at the Hôtel des Réservoirs?"
Said Valverden, his blue eyes meeting the sharp gray glance with a
charming candor:
"Excellency, the lady is the recently married wife of a Roumanian
noble. Her name, if Your Excellency desires to know it, is Madame de
Straz."
Said the Field Marshal with an acute look and a dry intonation:
"In Berlin, not so long ago, she called herself something else!"
Valverden answered, with a conscious side glance at the twist of
silver braid that marked his rank of Captain:
"Her first husband was killed in action with his regiment at
Gravelotte. She is now legally married to M. de Straz."
Moltke took snuff and said laconically:
"She has not taken long in changing her state."
Valverden began, rather lamely:
"Madame had virtually been separated from M. de Bayard----"
Like a bayonet thrust came the retort:
"Since your Cousin Max ran away with her from Paris, fourteen years
ago! The woman is an adventuress, whom you will be wise to avoid."
Valverden answered, with his disarming look of frankness:
"Your Excellency, I was applied to by the person you mention for
advice in a matter of serious urgency. Madame de Straz has unhappily
lost all trace of the whereabouts of her daughter, Mademoiselle de
Bayard.... She has entreated me to solicit for her an audience with
Your Excellency, in the hope that you might aid her to recover the
young girl."
The War Eagle croaked, ruffling his feathers with indignation:
"Does the woman suppose that I have got the unfortunate young
creature in my pocket? Or does she suspect you of knowing where she
is to be found?"
Valverden said, hastily and flushing:
"Your Excellency, upon my honor, I have never seen the girl!"
The Warlock tucked away his snuff box and pointed the terrible
withered finger at the left side of the young man's bosom, where hung
upon a broad black, white-bordered ribbon a cross of dark metal,
edged with a narrow line of silver, and bearing a crown and the
letter "W." A terrible grating voice said, and with all his cool
effrontery Valverden quailed at the words and the stern look that
accompanied them:
"To you, young man, upon whom the Second Class of the Iron Cross has
been conferred by the hand of your Crown Prince, for daring and
gallantry upon the war field--no more I say than this: Do nothing to
disgrace the wearer of that decoration--which should be sacred in
your eyes...." He added: "The leave you ask is granted. Until
twelve noon to-morrow, Captain von Herding will take your place."
And His Excellency the Field Marshal returned his aide-de-camp's
salute and wheeled sharply, and had taken a couple of strides across
the vestibule, when he halted to ask:
"This girl you speak of--how came she lost?..."
Said Valverden, hesitating slightly:
"According to Madame her mother, the ladies were on a visit to Rethel
during the time when the Prince Imperial of the French was staying at
the Prefecture. They had obtained an audience of the Prince....
Madame de Straz was prevented by illness from accompanying her
daughter.... The young lady--Mademoiselle Juliette de Bayard--has
never been seen since."
The lean neck and spare features of the greatest of strategists
became suffused with indignant scarlet. He said:
"The mother is a trollop of the very first water. She took the girl
to the Prefecture--why did she contrive an interview? She sends her
up alone--she declares that she has never since seen her....
_Pfui!..._ The affair, in my nostrils, fairly stinks of vulgar
intrigue. Have no more to do with it--though the unlucky girl is no
doubt to be pitied.... I will speak to His Excellency, Count
Bismarck, who has agents in Rethel."
And he steamed across the marble vestibule of the great hall of the
Palais de Justice, crossed the Place des Tribunaux, and vanished into
the Prefecture, over whose entrance hung the Hohenzollern banner and
the Prussian standard, that was very soon to show a stripe of red
beside the black and white....
For the hitherto recalcitrant States of Baden and Hesse had joined
the Bund. The King of Saxony had signed,--Würtemburg would sign the
treaty of Federation shortly. There were prospects of a definite
settlement with the King of Bavaria. The ambition of the Man of Iron
was shortly to be realized.... Bismarck was to rule a German Emperor!
You might have seen him, upon this bland November morning that had
succeeded a night of shrieking northerly gusts and driving pelts of
sleety rain, walking with the Count Hatzfeldt in the garden of the
Tessier mansion in the Rue de Provence. The house immediately
opposite had now been converted into a guard post. Sentries in the
uniforms of the Green Jaegers were on duty at the gates. Over the
principal entrance hung the black and white Prussian standard.
The sky was deep blue, with argosies of white clouds sailing toward
the northeast. The leaves that yet remained upon the elms and
poplars shone in the sunshine like newly minted gold. Those that the
gale had stripped lay in wet drifts upon the grass and gravel, though
the three oak trees on the pleasance yet retained their suits of
crisping russet brown.
To the right, at the rear of the house, a young man servant was
sweeping away the leaves that adhered to the narrow terrace of steps
running round three sides of the building. The swish of his birch
broom punctuated the sentences of the newspaper article being read by
Hatzfeldt to his Chief.
It was the continuation of the article in the _Berliner Zeitung_ that
had roused the ire of the Warlock a little while before.
"Unanimously," it concluded, "and in the interests of Humanity, we
demand that this measure be taken at once. We reprehend in the
sternest terms, not only those military commanders who are in favor
of procrastination. We cry in the ears of the
Chancellor-and-Minister-President, Count Bismarck himself, who is
credited with being the main factor in this policy of delay: _Mene,
mene, tekel upharsin!_--'Thou art weighed in the balance, and found
to want!'"
Said the Man of Iron to Hatzfeldt:
"Did I not know that my wife regards women who enter the lists of
journalism as unsexed, and outcasts beyond the hope of redemption, I
should be inclined to believe she had written this." He added: "I
have often been accused of inhumanity, but to be reproached for an
excess of tenderness is something quite new to me. How shall we
reassure these excitable gentlemen? Buschlein"--he referred to his
Press article-writer, the rotund author of the famous
"Recollections"--"Buschlein shall write that he has authority from
Count Bismarck to state that his universally credited predilections
for slaughter have not been blunted by recent experiences, and that
he much approves of the bombardment idea, but that he has no control
over those high military functionaries who command His Majesty's
investing forces, and is not accustomed to be consulted by them."
He spat and resumed:
"Private correspondents worry me to know whether I am really averse
to the bombardment, and why I won't allow firing into the town? What
pernicious rubbish! They will be blaming me next for all losses
during the investment. Which are not small; for in little
skirmishes, and during the short time occupied by those abortive
sorties, we have lost more troops than we should have done had we
regularly stormed the place."
He added, looking humorously at Hatzfeldt, whose handsome,
_débonnaire_ countenance invariably fell at any reference to a
bombardment:
"By the way, another balloon has been taken with letters from Paris,
some of which I have already read, and a Figaro of yesterday's date.
It has been decreed by the French Government that all wine and
provisions are to be taken away from private people, as the poorer
classes have already begun to fricassee their dogs and pussy cats.
So your American father-in-law will have to look out for his
cellar--an excellently stocked one, as I have heard from you. And
your wife's famous mouse-gray ponies will probably be made into
cutlets--a pretty piece of intelligence for your next letter to
Madame!"
"Ah!... for Heaven's sake, Your Excellency!" cried Hatzfeldt, with
ruefully elevated eyebrows, "I implore you not to conjure up the
image of my wife's indignation and despair. Every letter I receive
from her begins and ends with her precious ponies."
The Minister appended:
"Her mother, father, and her brother, Henry, who is living at their
estate of Petit Val, near Marly--I think you told me--being
sandwiched in between the little beasts."
They were pacing the garden paths. The Chancellor had recently
risen, and seemed inclined to be in a jesting mood. He continued,
throwing away the butt of a finished cigar:
"I must be careful, or the Countess will send me no more _pâté_ of
pheasants, or sausages. Pray tell her, with my compliments, that
both were excellently fresh and good.... Did you notice written on
my table card that the Mayor of Versailles is to have a ten-minute
interview before M. Thiers arrives at half-past twelve? If I have
not polished off the Republican official before Thiers toddles up the
doorsteps with his portfolio under his short arm, and his gold
spectacles twinkling, engage him in conversation below here for an
instant--do not send him up straightway to the torture cell." Thus
the Minister had christened the small room adjoining his private
apartment. He went on: "I do not want him to go down to Sèvres with
his white flag and his escort, and meet Jules Favre with a string of
tales about our orgies and revelings, of the enormous expense of
which the Mayor is coming to complain."
"What insolence!" commented Hatzfeldt.
"It seems," continued the Minister, "that we all cost the town too
much to keep, the chief offenders being the grand ducal and princely
personages at the Hôtel des Réservoirs. Of course, one knows that
the Tinsel Rabble eat and drink a great deal more than they require,
and waste much more than they consume. But to a Frenchman, one
cannot admit as much. So I shall tell the Mayor that he must apply
to the French Government at Tours for permission to raise a
substantial money loan, and as M. Thiers has only just come from
there, he would naturally buttonhole the old gentleman if he
encountered him. Which--as our plump, neatly shaved old Professor is
as timid as a hare and as soft as a baby--would discompose him very
horribly...." He continued: "He is dying to make peace with us,
because there will soon be famine in Paris. Imagine how I caught him
out when I told him yesterday: '_Monsieur, you have only visited the
city for a few hours. We know better about the contents of its
magazines than you do. They have ample provisions to last until the
end of January...._' What a look of incredulity! I had only been
feeling his pulse, as it were.... His amazement told me what I most
wanted to know. What a man to make a bargain about an armistice, an
invalidy civilian, who cannot conceal his feelings! Who lets himself
be put out of countenance and pumped!--actually pumped!"
He turned aside to cough and hawk and expectorate copiously....
"There!" he said, wiping his mustache vigorously with a large white
cambric handkerchief. "You see what it is to have a stomach as
sensitive as mine is.... That injustice done me in the _Berliner
Zeitung_ with reference to the bombardment has caused an overflow of
bile, by which I was already incommoded. Thiers will be certain to
remain closeted with me for two hours. He is nothing if not
expansive and flowery, and redundant. I shall not be able to get on
horseback before three o'clock, and we dine at six." He went on,
punctuating the sentence with more coughs and hawkings: "And as our
table is to be graced--_tchah!_--by a huge trout pasty, a love gift
to the Chancellor of the--_hah!_--Confederation, from a Berlin
restaurant keeper who throws into the bargain--_ahah!_--a cask of
Vienna March beer and his photograph, taken with his wife
and--_brr'r_!"
He turned aside and spat vigorously, before ending, resuming, as he
used the big white handkerchief:
"One would desire to do justice to a gift so welcome.... More
bile!... I spat like this half the night through.... Decidedly I am
not as well as when we galloped along the highroads with the Great
Headquarters Staff.... I have wondered: Do I eat too much? Does
this sedentary life conduce to indigestion?" He spat again, and
answered himself: "How can it be so, when I breakfast on a couple of
eggs with dry toast, and a cup of tea without milk? I don't
lunch--lunch is a mockery of a meal--but in the evening I make a
hearty dinner. With beer and champagne in plenty, and wash all down
with half a dozen cups of tea. Then I go to bed--as you know, never
before midnight. There's a doze--and I waken up with my brain as
bright as daylight--all sorts of things running through it, and my
mouth full of this bitter--_faugh!_"
"Your Excellency will need a fresh handkerchief," said Hatzfeldt,
slightly shuddering, as the Chancellor vigorously crumpled the soiled
cambric into a ball. "Shall I send Your Excellency's servant to
fetch another?"
"No, no! As it happens, I have sent Grams out. And Engelberg is
busy. There is Madame Charles's factotum!" He called in French:
"_Hola_, Jean Jacques! Approach, my brave young man!"
His full blue eyes, their whites now red-veined and biliously
injected, had turned to where the strongly built young male servant
was still sweeping the steps of the rear of the house. Cropped to
the scalp, you saw the fellow attired in a well-worn morning jacket
of striped linen, a blue waistcoat and tight blue cloth trousers,
yellow piped at the side seams. Summoned by an imperative word and
gesture, he knocked the damp leaves off his broom, stood it up
against the side of the conservatory, and shambled to where the
Chancellor was standing, muttering with a downcast air and a furtive,
sulky look:
"_Ouiche, Monseigneur?..._ What is it Monseigneur desires?"
Said the Minister, with a smile that curved the great mustache and
showed the white, square teeth that a young man might have envied:
"Monseigneur desires that without delay the brave Jean Jacques would
betake him to the kitchen, and desire Madame Charles Tessier of her
goodness to favor Monseigneur with a clean handkerchief.... Perhaps
two would be better.... Ask for two, Jean Jacques, and compel thy
legs to rapid motion, for to _croquer le marmot_ is not a favorite
pastime with Monseigneur! Comprehend you?"
Jean Jacques replied in his extraordinary patois, with a bow of the
clumsiest:
"_Ouiche, Monseigneur!_"
"_De quel pays sont vous?_" asked Hatzfeldt curiously.
Jean Jacques responded with sulky unwillingness:
"_La Suisse, Monsieur!_"
Hatzfeldt said, as the young man returned to the scene of his
abandoned labors, picked up his broom, and went round the end of the
conservatory toward the kitchen quarters:
"There are Frenchmen who call themselves Belgians or Swiss because
they are too funky to fight!"
Said the Minister:
"Madame Charles Tessier, who knows all about this fellow, describes
him as a native of Neufchâtel. Here she comes herself, bringing my
handkerchiefs. Thank you a thousand times, Madame! But why
inconvenience yourself?"
Madame Charles, whose black hair, heavily streaked with white, was
crowned with a dreadful lace cap with lappets, parted in the middle,
and brushed down in two old-fashioned festoons on either side of her
haggard white wedge of a face, shrilled in her raucous voice that it
was no trouble whatever.... The laundress's basket with
Monseigneur's clean linen had but that moment come in.
Madame Charles wore a gray poplin gown of rich, stiff, antique
material, trimmed with black gimp upon the gores, round the bottom of
the expansive skirt, and upon the sleeves and waist. It had been
discovered in a wardrobe belonging to the mother of M. Charles
Tessier. She had on one of Madame's black silk aprons, a pair of her
black silk mittens, and the black chenille net adorned with steel
beads that confined her back hair had housed the iron gray curls of
her respected mother-in-law. Over her narrow shoulders hung the
inevitable white woolen shawl.
She curtsied deeply to the Chancellor and slightly to Count
Hatzfeldt, and went on into the garden, and disappeared round the
corner of the ivy-bordered path. Seen thus in the searching
daylight, the elevation and forward thrust of the left shoulder that
lent her gait its unpleasant peculiarity, and the curvature in the
lower part of the spine were even more painfully apparent. It
occurred to her as she moved away from the two men, whose eyes,
reluctantly or curiously, were following her, that to ape this
deformity so persistently might be to bring it in reality upon
herself.
She shivered a little, despite the bland warmth of the November
sunshine. Round the corner of the green glass conservatory, well out
of sight of those who walked in the garden, Jean Jacques Potier was
shivering, too.
When the Chancellor had coughed and spat and spat again, the knees of
Jean Jacques had shaken beneath him. His heart had sunk like a
leaden plummet, and the sweat of terror had started on his skin.
He was afraid--horribly afraid. Not for himself, but for another.
There was no knowing. The thing he feared might happen at any time.
"_Throw but a stone--the giant dies!..._"
He could hear now the very voice in which she had added: "See you
well, it is I who am going to throw that stone!"
He had expended all the eloquence he possessed with the object of
turning Juliette from her purpose. He did not know whether he had
succeeded. She would give him no promise. She was sphinxlike,
inscrutable.... You could never feel sure that in the middle of the
night there would not be a cry--and then a commotion of running feet
upon the stairs, and then--the arrest, and the accusation. He had
made up his mind to say, when that happened: "_It was my doing. She
knew nothing about it. It was I who put poison in the food of this
man!_"
Then he would be taken out and shot. It would be done instantly,
whether the owner of the life that had been attempted died or got
well. Perhaps the man would not die? He had an iron constitution
and the frame of a Titan. But sometimes he looked weary and haggard
and bilious. And when he spat as just now, and pulled wry mouths
over the bitter stuff he expectorated, the heart of P. C. Breagh
would sink to the pit of his stomach, and his legs would shake under
him, as they were shaking now.