She passed out of the room. Von Keudell held open the door for her.
As he did so, he glanced toward his Chief for instructions. The
Minister said, answering the interrogation in the look:
"No. I prefer to extend to Mademoiselle the semi-liberty of the
_parole_." He added: "Exceptional cases must be treated
exceptionally. Upon a different kind of young woman I should
promptly turn the key. Tell Grams and Engelberg that they are
released from duty outside there. And Niederstedt...."
He whistled, and the great red face and huge unwieldy figure of the
East Prussian ex-door porter filled up nearly the whole width of one
of the long windows. The red face disappeared as the steam of its
owner's breath dimmed the glass, and the effect was so quaint that
the Minister laughed irresistibly as he opened the window and
relieved the impeccable guard, saying:
"Why, my good Niederstedt, you are frozen--you smoke like a volcano.
Go down to the house-steward--tell him to give you some old
corn-brandy, hot, with sugar and pepper. That will thaw you inside
as well as out!..."
He shut the window, and came back to the fireplace, pushed forward
the great green brocade armchair, and threw himself into it, saying
as he stretched his long legs out to the glowing billets:
"You may go, Mr. Breagh; there is no cause for detaining you. But
while you remain here, revert to your own dress, and leave it to more
experienced hands to polish the floor and balusters, to which I
adhere like a fly who has walked upon treacle, half-a-dozen times in
a day. Remember--I see no reason for denying you reasonable access
to the society of Mademoiselle de Bayard--unless she objects to your
visits, in which case she will probably notify me!----" He added
more genially: "Sit down. Take that chair opposite me.... You need
no longer stand in the attitude of a suspected criminal. Indeed, I
rather think you have repaid a small service I was enabled to render
you in pulling you out of a Berlin crowd, last July. Ah, that
reminds me. I must ask you for the return of that paper...." He
watched with a slight expression of amusement as P. C. Breagh
produced the shabby note-case from a pocket inside his livery
waistcoat, commenting:
"Had you been searched, those papers would have betrayed you
instantly. One more skilled in the art of disguise would have
carried nothing that could afford information. That is a very
elementary rule."
P. C. Breagh said, meeting the powerful eyes fully:
"I have already had the honor to explain to Your Excellency that my
disguise was not assumed for any purpose but that of remaining near
Mademoiselle de Bayard."
He rose and offered the folded half-sheet of Chancellery note to the
Minister, who took it, unfolded and glanced at the black upright
characters above the signature, then tore the paper to pieces, and,
leaning forward, dropped it into the heart of the fire. Then he
kicked back a charring log with the toe of his great riding-boot, and
said, leaning back in the green armchair:
"Credited--as to your statement about the reason of your
impersonation. You should see to it that Mademoiselle rewards such
chivalry. As regards the pass I have just cremated--did you find it
useful or--otherwise?"
P. C. Breagh said:
"The one and only time I did use it, it proved of service to me. But
later----"
"Speak frankly," said the Chancellor. "I have no disrelish for
candor, you are aware."
P. C. Breagh said, flushing to the temples:
"Later, the accidental discovery that I possessed it, exposed me to
the accusation of being a spy."
"So you chose to do without it?"
"I thought," said P. C. Breagh, "that I would try to do without it.
And upon the whole I managed--better than I expected to...."
"To put it baldly," commented the resonant voice of the Minister,
"you preferred to travel in blinkers and with hobbles on--for the
sake of a scruple of the genteel kind. That is your Celtic blood....
You remind me of the story--I think it hails from Dublin, of the
little old spinster lady of high family, who was reduced for a living
to hawking pickled pig's-trotters in the streets. She accepted the
money to buy the license, with the basket and the first installment
of trotters, and went forth into the streets to sell them--but beyond
this, as a gentlewoman--her feelings did not permit her to go. So
she cried, in a whisper: 'Trotters! who'll buy my trotters! Only a
penny! Pickled trotters! Please God, nobody hears me!' ... and
nobody did hear her, so that was the end of her...."
He had told his absurd tale with one of those comic changes of face
and voice characteristic of him. Now he reverted to gravity, and
said, as P. C. Breagh rose to withdraw:
"Go! but remain here as my guest for the present. You are not under
_surveillance_. But there is one question I must again put to you.
What of this mysterious personage who represented himself to you as
M. Charles Tessier? You must now be convinced that Mademoiselle
knows nothing of him? Well, then, I will repeat the simple questions
which you refused to answer just now. Where did you first see him?
how long ago? and how many times have you encountered him?"
P. C. Breagh had been first addressed by the stranger when returning
from an errand in the character of Jean Jacques. Putting it roughly,
about a fortnight back. Since then, he had been twice spoken to by
the same man. Interrogated as to the appearance of the stranger, he
ruminated a moment, then answered: "The man was of middle height, but
broad and tremendously muscular. He was remarkable to look at, very
dark; with great black eyebrows, and a profile like that of an
Egyptian hawk-god. No! ... He was more like those curly-bearded
man-bird-bulls Layard dug up in the mounds of Babylonia and Assyria."
Said the Minister:
"You have answered all my questions in that simile.... The man is
Straz the Roumanian, who is supposed to have married Madame de
Bayard. What was it she said to you this morning when I had the
ill-manners to break upon the lady's confidences?"
Said Breagh, with a pucker between the broad eyebrows that would be
red when he had washed off the soot:
"Whatever she is, she is Mademoiselle de Bayard's mother, and I would
ask Your Excellency to remember it too."
"_Quatsch!_" said His Excellency roughly. "Mademoiselle de
Bayard--for whom I have a sneaking sort of kindness, in spite of her
avowedly bloodthirsty intentions toward myself!--has no worse enemy
than that adventuress-mother of hers, and you should be aware of it
by this time. In plain words, she visited me in the Wilhelm Strasse
upon an occasion you will remember, to offer to sell me Mademoiselle
as bait for the better catching of an Imperial fish. I did not take
the high horse with her, but refused her simply as declining an
unsuitable business proposal." He laughed and added: "These good
ladies have conveniently short memories. Imagine her coming to
appeal to me to-day, in the character of a bereaved mother with a
yearning heart!... Well, now she has asked you to go to see her?
Have I not hit it?"
Answered Breagh:
"She told me that I was English, and that she remembered having seen
me at Your Excellency's. She asked me where her daughter was, and
then--when I pretended stupidity--she laughed, and insisted that I
must visit her to-night or to-morrow night. How late did not matter.
She seemed certain that I would come."
"Well, you will go to her," said the Minister, "but not to-night, I
think! To-morrow night would be preferable!... If you appeared
to-night, she would think that you are to be easily got over, and she
would not show her hand to you. Go to her late. Twelve o'clock will
not be too late for her. Women of her type are usually
night-birds--and, besides, most people sit up on Christmas Eve.
Report direct to me at whatever hour you may get back. I myself am
not likely to turn in before daylight, because the Crown Prince and
the three Bavarian Envoys dine here." He added, looking quizzically
at the young man: "Now you are saying to yourself, 'That has
something to do with the scheme for the accession of the South German
States to the North German Confederation.... An agreement has been
definitely arrived at. That is why Bismarck let that fat plum drop
about the New German Empire just now.'"
He laughed outright as P. C. Breagh reddened, but made no effort to
deny the charge, and went on:
"Baden and Würtemburg have come to terms. You cannot use the
intelligence before it will be known by everyone in London, so I risk
nothing by telling you. Our chief stumbling-block has been the King
of Bavaria, who suffers from gumboils, and considers that in turning
the Palace of Versailles into a military hospital, we have outraged
the shades of Louis XIV., Madame de Montespan, Louis XV., Madame de
Pompadour, and Queen Marie Antoinette." He added curtly: "There! be
off, and tell Grams to send word to the stable that I am ready for
the horses. I ride with Count Hatzfeldt another hour to-day. And
change those clothes, if you would have me cease to address you as a
footboy.... Clothes cannot make a man, but the lack of them can mar
him--if they make him appear a clod."
The horses came, and he rode out with Hatzfeldt. There was a
piercing northeast wind and a spatter of freezing sleet, much
resented by the Diplomatic Secretary and his thin-skinned
thoroughbred, and even displeasing to the Chancellor's great brown
mare.
The iron lions of Mont Valérien were growling and spitting shell down
into the surrounding valleys, thickly wooded with trees, now
stripped--all save the firs and pines--of leaves, and
glittering-white with frost. The lakes in the parks were frozen.
Hundreds of thrushes drifted like leaves before the icy gale, toward
the low-growing coverts of ivy and brushwood. A balloon rose within
the Bois de Boulogne, soared, and traveled south-west.
Reaching the Aqueduct of Marly, they dismounted, for the purpose of
taking what the Minister termed "a peep at Paris from the platform,"
and, leaving their horses to the care of the grooms, transferred
themselves there.
Behind the Forest of Marly the red sun of December was sinking over
the frosty landscape. The Minister glanced casually through his
glasses at the ruined houses of Louvéciennes in the foreground,
sheltered amidst their clumps of whitened trees; and sweeping over
the villages of La Celle and Bougival, looked long toward Fort Mont
Valérien, where the great stronghold sat perched on its height with
its many windows glowing like furnaces in that fierce reflection from
the crimson west.
The line of the Rennes and Brest railway running from Courbevoie
through the Park of St. Cloud and Versailles showed strongly held by
Prussian outposts. Beyond, between banks dotted with damaged
hamlets, and bordered on the north side with fanged ice sheets, the
silver-gray Seine wound, flowing sluggishly about her islands,
wrinkling her lips in disgust at the jagged buttresses of the bridges
that had been blown up. Farther south, over the lopped trees of the
Bois de Boulogne, rose the great shining dome of the Invalides,
bathed in that ominous ruddiness, looking like a great cabochon ruby
studding a shield of silvery-green bronze. For Paris from this point
of view is shield-shaped, crossed with the bar-sinister of her
historic river; backed with her fortifications as by the
enamel-and-silver work of a cunning jeweler; set with points of
diamond where the bayonets of a column of marching infantry moved out
from the ramparts along the road toward Fort Vanves.
It was frightfully cold. Said Hatzfeldt, stamping to recover the
circulation in his numbed feet, and beating his gloved hands
vigorously upon his sides:
"How cold!... I can smell more snow. Heaps of it, coming!"
The Chief turned an eye toward the speaker without lowering the
glasses through which he was looking. He completed his survey before
he said, restoring the binoculars to their case, and speaking with a
jarring note of anger in his voice that made the Secretary arch his
eyebrows:
"I do not smell what I should like best to smell, and that is, the
smoke of a German bombardment!" He added: "We have to thank women
and priests, and Jews and Freemasons, if our operations are not
conducted as energetically as they should be. To begin with,
Monsignor Dupanloup has Augusta by the apron string--the Crown
Prince, cajoled by his wife and bullied by Victoria, his
mother-in-law--is ready to give up the command if I insist that we
begin.... Do you know how many weeks it has taken me to get our Most
Gracious to consent that the siege train should be moved from Villa
Coublay and placed in position? And then Moltke and the generals
asserted that we had not ammunition enough.... Given three hundred
powerful siege guns--ninety of them howitzers--with fifty or sixty
mortars, and five hundred rounds of ammunition for each--could not we
pour sufficient shell into the city to bring her to reason? Give me
the post of Commander-in-Chief for twenty-four hours--and I will take
it upon myself!..."
Hatzfeldt said mentally:
"Ah, the devil! wouldn't you--and with a vengeance!"
The Chancellor went on, deep lines of anger and vexation digging
themselves into his gloomy face:
"Never were two men more reluctant to reap the fruits of a great
victory than our Most Gracious and his Heir Apparent--who in this
matter, as in some others, needs a candle to light up his head!..."
His face took on a sullen cast. He stamped his foot upon the ground,
and bayed out like some deep-mouthed bloodhound:
"If they have no ambition of their own--these Hohenzollerns--do not
they owe something to mine?"
He ended, breaking into his great laugh, evoked by something in the
expression of his Secretary:
"Here am I--applying to you for sympathy, who are just as
petticoat-ridden by your Countess as the King and Prince Fritz by
their respective better halves. Have you not your mother-in-law and
your millionaire papa-in-law shut up there in the Rue de Helder--to
say nothing of your wife's pet pair of pony cobs?"
Hatzfeldt returned, shrugging ruefully:
"I had another letter from my wife about the cobs this morning.
Heaven knows whether they are still alive!"
The Minister said with a touch of malice:
"It is quite certain that there has been no fresh meat in Paris now
for some time. Except ass and mule flesh at fifteen francs a pound.
Dogs and cats are getting scarce, consequently _ragoût de lièvre_ has
become the staple dish at all the restaurants...."
Hatzfeldt rejoined with a sigh:
"I am not quite sure that a little starvation would not be good for
myself personally, and one or two others of the Prussian Foreign
Office staff. For there is no denying we eat a great deal too much.
Your Excellency knows there are few nights when we spend at the
dinner table less than two hours and a half."
The answer came:
"You should eat little for breakfast, and nothing in the middle of
the day; then your stomachs would neigh and prance at the dinner call
as mine never fails to do. Sometimes you see me dine twice without
ill results--as when I am going to the King, who keeps a bad
table--and find it necessary to fortify myself beforehand...."
He broke off speaking to cough and expectorate, and Hatzfeldt, noting
the deep yellow hue of his jaws and temples and forehead, and the
sagging pouches under the great eyes, and the caves that his
anxieties and labors had recently dug about them, said to himself
that the Chief's health was not what it had been; that any fool could
see with half an eye he was terribly liverish; that he slept little
and spat bile continually, and that his superhuman capacity for work,
in combination with his superhuman powers of eating and drinking,
were maintained at high pressure by a remorseless vanity that proved
him no stronger or wiser than other men.
What was he saying in tones tinged with mockery, for he had probably
taken that reference to the excess of luxury at the Foreign Office in
the Rue de Provence as a thrust directed at himself:
"If you would really like to try high living after the latest
Parisian style, I have at home among some letters taken from a
balloon captured yesterday the menu of a dinner given at Voisin's on
the twenty-first by some rich Americans: _Potage St. Germain....
Côtelettes de loup chasseur.... Chat garni des rats rôtis, sauce
poivrade. Rosbif de Chameau.... Salade de légumes. Cèpes à la
Bordelaise. Dessert, none at all_.... I gathered from the same
source that the Government are going to take over all private stores
of provisions, and that the edible animals confined in the Jardin des
Plantes are to be shot and cut up for sale."
"Good-bye to poor Touti's ponies, then," said the Secretary, with
resignation, "and possibly farewell also to my hopes of a sturdy son
and heir."
"Ah! if things are as serious as that," said the Minister, "you had
better telegraph to the Countess. Prince Wittgenstein, Clarmont, and
little Desjardin, Secretary of the Belgian Legation in Paris, left
there yesterday morning by special permit from General Trochu. All
three packed into a _coupé_ belonging to Prince Croy--these equine
treasures of your wife's were harnessed to the vehicle. They were to
spend the night at Villeneuve St. Georges--and you will probably find
them in Versailles when we get back."
He added as the Secretary thanked him with effusiveness:
"As regards the family in the Rue de Helder and your bootmaker--the
only man in the world who can turn you out properly!--you may tell
them, if you are in communication with them, that until the
twenty-seventh of December they may sleep in peace.... As to-morrow
is Christmas Eve, that means four unbroken nights of slumber. After
that--the Deluge; not of water, but of fire and steel and lead." He
added, ignoring the Secretary's start and half-suppressed
exclamation: "Call to Reichardt to bring up the horses. I find it
chilly--let us be getting back!"