One of the black-garbed Chancery attendants opened the yellow-painted
hall-door. Madame tendered him a card, and said in her most musical
tones, plying the archery of her fine eyes:
"Madame de Straz, formerly de Bayard. By appointment to see His
Excellency the Chancellor."
Von Keudell looked out of the drawing-room and signaled. The
Chancery attendant caught his eye. Madame, borne upon a gale of
costly perfume, swept her velvets and Russian sables over the Foreign
Office threshold, and amidst the tinkling of lockets, and charms, and
bracelets innumerable, was ushered into the drawing-room.
As the door shut, and the Chancery attendant resumed his bench and
his German newspaper, Jean Jacques Potier, who had been polishing the
hall parquet with a flannel clout on one foot and a brush strapped on
the other, resumed his labors with a very red face. Madame Charles
Tessier, who had been watering the ferns and pot-plants on the
console-tables, wrapped in the woolen shawl that seemed parcel of her
individuality, might have struck the young man, when he furtively
glanced at her, as being whiter than her shawl.
But the deadly whiteness passed, and the rigor of terror could add
little stiffness to the gait that was a compound of a limp and a
shuffle, as the Twopenny Roué's bugbear climbed the back-stairs to
her second-floor room.
Madame Potier slept in the next. One could hear her making beds on
the first-floor beneath one. Judging by the sounds, she was sweeping
the Chancellor's sleeping-room. _Knock-knock!_ went her busy broom
every instant, against the furniture or the wainscot. _Flip-flap!_
That was the duster, being shaken out of the window. When the
Minister was unwell, and kept his room, Madame did not sweep, but
merely dusted and made the bed. And he lay on the sofa, pulled near
the fire and lengthened with a settee, or worked with his back to the
window, at a table in the middle of the room. There were two great
black leather dispatch-boxes on the table, and a great many maps of
France, covered with marginal annotations; and the brass-handled
mahogany bureau near the washstand-alcove was piled high with boxes
of long, strong Bremen cigars. And by the bed was the night-table,
with the framed photographs of his daughter and Countess Bismarck,
his traveling candlestick, a supply of hard wax candles in a box,
matches; a volume of Treitschke's "Heidelberg Lectures," with several
little good books, in cloth bindings, "Daily Readings for Members of
the Society of Moravian Brethren," and "Pearls from the Deep of
Scripture," as well as a bottle of patent medicine and a box of
pills, both of which nostrums were renewed constantly, and neither of
which seemed to do him any good.
For he coughed and hawked and spat bile continually. Rarely was he
silent before two o 'clock in the morning, and then it might be that
one ceased to hear him, because one had succeeded in wooing sleep for
oneself. Something ailed him. Those who knew him best gave no name
to his ailment. Others whispered of catarrh of the stomach. Yet
others were oracular upon the subject of dyspepsia of the acute kind.
Whatever the indisposition, it was fostered by the indiscriminate
generosity of his admirers, who continually forwarded from all parts
of the German Fatherland huge consignments of delicacies solid and
fluid for the delectation of their Chancellor.
Choice wines, rare cigars and fine tobacco, liqueurs and old
corn-brandies, cold punch in barrels, beer of Berlin and Leipzig, and
the brunette drink beloved of Bavarians. Smoked Pomeranian
goose-breasts, cakes, sausages of every variety, fresh salmon and
sturgeon, pickled tunny, herrings and caviar, game of all kinds,
smoked hams of bear, deer, mutton, and pig. Magdeburg sauerkraut and
Leipzig pastry, preserves and fruit, fresh and candied, gorged the
capacious storerooms and cellars of the Tessier mansion, which would
have been found inadequate to accommodate all these mountains of good
things, had not each Privy Councilor, Secretary and decipherer of the
Chancellor's perambulating Foreign Office possessed a capacity for
gorging only inferior to the Chief's.
In truth, this great Minister, so pitiless in his mockery of the
idiosyncrasies and weaknesses of others, habitually overate himself;
showing as little mercy toward his stomach as the staff of the Berlin
Chancellery displayed toward the gorged and replete leather
dispatch-bags that came to him by every post. He was horribly
greedy, and drank a great deal, and his stomach-aches, like himself,
were on the colossal scale. More than once Madame Charles had
ministered to their assuagement with infusions of carbonate of soda
and peppermint.
"One should check the appetite when one suffers thus from
overindulgence," she had once said to him, stirring her dreadful
infusion with an ivory measuring-spoon.
"The French climate does not suit me...." he had answered her. "In
Germany I can eat a great deal more than I do here. Not that I eat
much really, because my dinner is my only meal."
"But, just Heaven! Monseigneur! what a meal!" she had screamed at
him in horror. And the room had resounded to his giant's Ha, ha, ha!
"Without a head and stomach of iron," he told her, "such as we
Bismarcks inherit from our ancestors, and Göttingen has helped to
render more tough, it would have been impossible in my young days to
get on in the Diplomatic Service. We drank the weaker men under the
table, then lifted them up, propped them between chairs, and made
them sign their names to all sorts of concessions which they would
not have dreamed of making otherwise.... To this day I can toss down
the strongest wines of the Palatinate like water with my dinner.
Champagne I need, and the bigger glasses I get it in the more it
agrees with me.... Port, such as the English sip with dessert, I
prefer as a breakfast-wine. Corn-brandy, such as our Old Nordhausen,
is indispensable for the oiling of my machinery; and I derive benefit
from rum, taken after the Russian fashion, with my eight or nine cups
of after-dinner tea."
He added, sipping Madame Charles's fiercely-smelling nostrum:
"Not that anything I have drunk or eaten mars my capacity for cool
reflection and close argument.... When I and one or two others are
laid by, men will only peck and sip. There will only be chatter
about eating and drinking.... _Grosser Gott!_ What things I used to
do in that line when I was young!"
And he tossed off the contents of the tumbler, and mouthed at it, and
set it down upon the little tray she held and dismissed her with a
nod of thanks.
But Madame Charles carried away with her an idea of him as he had
been in those old days, huge, loud, voracious, powerful,
tempestuously jovial or ironically grim. She crowned the domed head
with thick waving locks of brown hair, lightened the shaggy brows,
and gave the blue eyes back their youthful fire; smoothed the deep
lines from the florid face, restored his long heavy limbs their
shapeliness, and reduced the girth of his waist. And it was
impossible to despise the finished picture, because the man was so
much a man.
Day by day, while the War went on, and Paris lay raging and spitting
fire within her impregnable, impassable girdle of human flesh and
steel and iron--to this house where he sat solid and square at his
table in his bedroom-study, reading over documents vomited by the
great dispatch-boxes, or letters and papers captured with
balloon-posts, or driving the pen with that tireless hand of his over
sheets to be conned by Monarchs and rulers of States--came the Crown
Prince of Prussia, handsome and débonnaire, or the dry, withered
gentleman who bore the great name of von Moltke, or the War Minister
von Roon, or M. Thiers, or the Saxon Minister von Friesen, or the
Grand Dukes of Weimar or Baden, or the Duke of Coburg, or the
Representatives of Austria-Hungary and Bavaria, or the English
Ambassador, who had recently come upon a Mission to Versailles.
Night after night, other and stranger footsteps crossed the
threshold. Sometimes blindfolded officers in stained and
weatherbeaten French uniforms had been led upstairs to that
mysterious room where he sat, weaving his huge web of diplomacy, or
manipulating with deft, capable touches the threads that moved both
men and Kings.
Everyone came to this house on the quiet by-street of Versailles,
that had become the throbbing center of the world.... From the
greatest to the smallest, from the worthiest to the vilest. Now,
last of all came--Adelaide de Bayard.
And with her came the question: How much he suspected. There had
been one or two moments when Juliette had been temporarily thrown off
her guard. Could one really deceive him, who was so subtle,
watchful, observant?... Past master in cunning, ripe in diplomacy....
She heard his heavy footstep on the staircase as she held her bosom
and listened. Madame Potier had finished his bedroom, and taken her
broom and dustpan to the next. Madame de Bayard had been shown into
the smaller interviewing-room, where the Brussels carpet had been
paced into threadbare alleys by the feet of men who were topped by
aching responsibilities--where the Crown Prince of Prussia smoked his
big painted pipe of Latakia as he chatted with the Chancellor--where
M. Thiers sat through long ordeals of torture in the little wicker
arm-chair.
Would the mother of Juliette de Bayard sit in that chair? Her
daughter knew how superbly she would rise and sweep her reverence to
the Minister. How smoothly she would pour forth some false and
specious tale....
The Minister strode in upon Madame, carrying his cap and riding-whip.
His heavy countenance had the healthier flush of exercise, his great
spurred boots were plastered with clayey mud. He had but just
returned from an early ride with Count Hatzfeldt, taken at this hour
"To escape," as he had explained to that elegant functionary, "the
detestable clattering and knocking of that female Kobold, whose day
it is to sweep my room."
"Why let her sweep?" Hatzfeldt had asked, and his principal had
answered:
"I approve domestic cleanliness. And a room that is used as bedroom
and study somehow harbors both spiders and dust. And I abhor
spiders--nearly as much as cockroaches. Those long-waisted insects
that swarm in the conservatory here give me almost a sensation of
sickness when they scuttle away from my boots. I find a physical
relief, actually, in crushing them."
He experienced something of that nausea and its resulting impulse
toward extermination, meeting the bold eyes and the false
ingratiating smile of the still beautiful Adelaide. He said,
standing huge and adamantine between the woman and the window:
"Be seated, Madame.... No ... not that chair! Possibly I grow old,
but I find that I can best deal with certain persons when the morning
light is on their faces."
"As you will, Monseigneur!"
Adelaide mentally execrated his coarse brutality as she bit her lip,
pulled down her flowered veil more closely, and prepared to sink into
the little wicker chair.
"No!" he said, stopping her, "not that chair!--take the other. To my
idea the seat you at first selected represents at present the Throne
of France, or at least the Presidential fauteuil. M. Thiers occupies
it when he comes to see me.... And he is a person whom I hold in
much respect."
She winced at the side-thrust.
"I regret, Monseigneur, to have forfeited your good opinion."
"I do not usually bestow my good opinion," he told her, "upon ladies
of your reputation, even though I may have reason to praise their
sharp wits. Now pray state your business here. My time is limited."
She half rose up with a pained stare of wounded feeling, thought
better of it, sank down again amidst her velvets and sables, and
recited her lesson as taught by Straz.
The Roumanian, by dint of diligent, patient inquiry, had collected
and pieced together with marvelous cleverness, the information
gathered, correlative to the movements of Juliette. Her departure
from the Prefecture at Bethel, her frustrated journey to the Camp at
Châtel St. Germain--her halt at the village of Petit Plappeville, her
search for the Colonel upon the battlefield, were all pieces in a
mosaic miraculously restored. M. de Straz knew that Count Bismarck
had seen and spoken to the young lady--had ordered separate burial
for the body of de Bayard. He could even name a soldier of the
German burial-party, who had helped to dig the grave. Subsequently
Mademoiselle had been seen in company with a young Englishman ... she
had returned with him to Petit Plappeville. The village had been
raided and sacked by Prussian cavalry. Since when, Mademoiselle,
with the young Englishman, had returned to Versailles.... She was
occupying the Tessier mansion up to the moment of the arrival of the
Chancellor with his Foreign Office Staff. And--by a most curious and
deplorable coincidence, from that psychological moment to the
present, all trace of Mademoiselle had been lost....
"Consequently," Adelaide wound up her well-conned lesson, "myself and
M. de Straz have no resource but to apply to Your Excellency.
Naturally M. de Straz desires that the daughter of M. de Bayard and
myself should be extricated from a compromising position and placed
under our joint guardianship. He takes--such chivalry is innate in
his nature--a parental interest in the poor young girl!"
Said the Minister, smiling with cynical amusement:
"Therefore in the interests of Chivalry and Morality--you call on
me--as proprietor of the seraglio in which you suppose Mademoiselle
to have been hidden away.... You demand"--he struck the riding-glove
he had removed upon the palm of the right hand it had covered--"and
the hint of such a demand is a menace--do you hear?--a menace--that I
should render the girl up to you, or pay through the nose for what I
once declined to buy. You think at this epoch in the history of
Germany--when the search-ray of international interest is turned upon
the doings of that fellow Bismarck at Versailles--that I should not
care to be classed with the Minotaurs who devoured youths and
virgins. Madame, they were French monarchs, I am only a Pomeranian
squire...."
He rose up, towering over the quaking woman, and strode across the
shaking floor and pulled the green silk bell-rope by the fireplace.
It came down in his hand, top ornament, wire and all, and he said as
he looked at it and tossed it from him:
"That is a suggestion on the part of your Fate which I shall not
adopt, though I could hang you and your paramour...."
He added, speaking loudly as Von Keudell opened the door, and the
wretched woman rose and tottered toward him:
"Did I hold the secret of your daughter's hiding-place, I would not
betray her to you.... _Adieu_, Madame de Bayard.... You observe
that I do not add, 'and _au revoir_!'"
The great resonant voice had sounded through the whole house like a
beaten war-gong. Lying upon the floor of her room, straining her
ears to catch some fragments of their colloquy, it broke over
Juliette in waves of thunderous sound.
Jean Jacques, below in the hall, was told by Von Keudell to "see the
lady to her carriage," which, in virtue of her appointment, had been
admitted through the Tessier _porte cochère_. The Swiss youth obeyed
with even a clumsier grace than usual, the polishing-brush being
still strapped about one instep, and the clout still swathed about
the other foot, as he hobbled down the shallow doorsteps to open the
brougham-door for Madame. As she stepped in and took the seat, her
strained eyes leaped at his face suddenly. As he leaned in arranging
the rug about her knees--what was it he heard her say:
"You are the English boy I saw in July at the house of M. de
Bismarck. Do not attempt to deny; I never forget a face! When can
you come and see me?... I must speak to you! I swear to you that I
mean no harm to Mademoiselle Juliette de Bayard!"
Her lips were ashen under their rose-salve. The ringed, bare hand
she laid on his rough paw burned like fire. He muttered in the weird
_patois_ that passed as Swiss with some German occupants of the
Tessier mansion:
"Madame will pardon.... One does not understand!"
She gave a disjointed, unmusical peal of laughter, that rattled the
brougham windows.
"Droll boy! But you will come, whether you understand or not. The
Villa Laon, Maisons Laffitte, near St. Germain.... Night-time will
be best--to-night or to-morrow night." She added, looking at him
over the lowered window as he shut the door upon her: "Ask for Madame
de Straz. I shall be waiting for you. Do not forget!..."
The carriage drove on. He stood upon the lowest doorstep staring
after it, for only privileged vehicles were admitted by the _porte
cochère_. A hand fell heavily on his shoulder, startling him
hideously. A terrible grating voice said in his ear, speaking in the
Minister's excellent English:
"So, Madame Delilah has been trying her sorceries, has she? Come
this way, my young English friend.... I want two words with you!"