P. C. Breagh and Juliette met upon the morrow in the same spot near
the rose tree that had borne pink blossoms undismayed through the
bitter wintry months.
"You have bestowed upon me no Christmas present, Monsieur," Juliette
said to him gravely. "Now I will have you gather one of those roses
and give it to me...."
He strode into the drift, mid-leg deep, and cut a bud that was upon
the sheltered side next the wall.
"Be careful of the thorns, lest they prick you!" Juliette cried to
him. "Do not cut your fingers! Do not get wet!"
"You shall not have this rose," he said, withholding the frozen
flower, "until you have given my Christmas gift to me!"
Her blue eyes rose, brimming, to meet his.
"Ah! what is there I can give you? Tell me, my friend!" she said
softly.
He got out, blushing, and swallowing a lump that rose in his throat:
"We have been through so much ... we have seen strange and terrible
things together!... We have shared dangers ... we have seen a great
nation in the death throes.... Nothing could ever make us strangers
whatever came to pass.... But now we are going back to England.
Before we leave this garden where we have been so happy----"
"It is true.... We have been happy here!" she answered.
Winged smiles were hovering about her mouth. Jeweled gleams played
between the black fringes of her eyelashes, as though fairy
kingfishers were diving for some new joy in those sapphire depths.
She asked demurely, as the clumsy male creature choked and boggled:
"What do you seek, Monsieur? Some souvenir.... Some token of
friendship?"
He said, in a low, dogged voice:
"I have never asked mere friendship from you. But if you--if
you----" He got it out with a desperate effort:
"Before we leave this ... if you would kiss me--once..."
She drew back. A terrible dignity vested her sloping shoulders.
Modesty veiled her eyes. He was going miserably away, when she
beckoned to him, with that splendid sweep of the arm that might have
belonged to Krimhilde-Brünhilde-Isolde-Britomart and the whole covey
of Romance Ideals.... He returned.... She spoke, and her eyes were
wavering under the eager fire of his:
"See you well, Monsieur, a young lady cannot bestow a gift of that
kind. It is for the gentleman, having obtained consent, to take..."
Breagh caught her to his broad breast and snatched the coveted
guerdon. He cried to her in wonder and triumph:
"You love me!... A fellow like me?... And you will be my wife? We
are not going to England to be parted! I am not a beggar any more!
I will try again for my practicing degree in Medicine, and get it! I
will write books and make a name for myself in Literature. But not
unless you'll marry me!... Oh, Juliette! say when you will marry me?"
She said, with downcast eyelids that veiled laughter, though the rose
flush had dyed her very temples, and the beating of her heart shook
her slight frame:
"Monsieur, my grandmother would have answered: '_Under the
circumstances, the marriage cannot take place too soon.... Once a
young girl has been kissed, she must be married._' And"--the smile
peeped out--"I was taught always to obey my grandmother...."
"Admirably spoken!" said the Chancellor.
He had come upon the lovers, of set purpose it may have been. Now he
stood surveying them in an ogreish, yet not unamiable fashion, as
they stood before him hand in hand.
He said, and the resonant tones were veiled by a painful hoarseness,
of which the reason was known to Mademoiselle alone:
"Mr. Breagh, Count Hatzfeldt has the necessary papers of which I
spoke to you. You will find him in the drawing-room waiting to
complete some slight formalities inseparable from the granting of
passports in time of War.... Good-bye to you, good luck and all
happiness. I am on the point of departure for the Prefecture, so I
shall not again see you. For a moment I detain Mademoiselle."
As Breagh bowed to Juliette and His Excellency and hastened toward
the house, the Chancellor said to Juliette:
"It is too cold to stand here ... it will be wiser to walk a little.
There is a path that leads us out near the wall at the bottom of the
shrubbery."
It was where the mask of the Satyr, now with long icicles hanging
from his eyebrows and goat-beard, jutted from the ivy of the boundary
wall.
The little spring had not frozen, the ferns and grasses round its
margin were still quite green. A few pinched violets peeped from
among their broad leaves. Juliette stooped and gathered one or two
of the faintly-fragrant blossoms and a leaf of fern and a sprig of
ivy. As she slipped them into the inner pocket of her jacket, the
Chancellor spoke:
"Mademoiselle, I have to thank you for my life..... Now, last
night----" He squarely confronted her, his powerful eyes looking
down upon the little figure so frail and slender. "Now, last night,"
he repeated, "had you really believed that my death meant the
salvation of your country.... Well!... Did you not hold me in the
hollow of your hand?"
She met his stern regard with a look that was clear as crystal. She
said in her silver tones:
"It is true, Monseigneur. Our Lord granted me my wish. You so
great, so strong, so powerful, were helpless as an infant.... I had
only not to put out my finger--and you were a dead man! The power of
Life and Death was mine, yet I could not let you perish, for Almighty
God would not permit it.... He willed that you should not die....
Crush France or spare her, you will not be carrying out the wishes of
Count Bismarck. You will do what God permits you to do--no more and
no less! But when you are most strong and most powerful ... when you
play with Kings and Emperors like pawns, then I ask you to remember
Juliette de Bayard!"
She quivered in every limb, but she went on resolutely:
"You are not a good man, Monseigneur!... Hard, subtle, arrogant,
cruel and unscrupulous, God made you to be the Fate of France. One
day she will lift up her face from the mire into which you have
trodden it, and the star will be burning unquenched upon her
forehead. We may both be dead before that day dawns. But rest
assured that when next your armies cross the Rhine they will not gain
an easy victory!... We shall be prepared and ready, Monseigneur,
when the Germans come again!"
He looked at her and listened to her in silence, perhaps in wonder.
She seemed the Spirit of France incarnate, a pale reed shaken by
prophetic winds from Heaven.
"It may be so," he said to her gravely. "And now, Mademoiselle de
Bayard, I shall ask you to give me your hand at parting!"
"Take it, Monseigneur," she bade him.
He held it in his an instant, saying in his clear-cut French:
"I desire no evil to France when I say that I wish that every
Frenchman had a daughter like you!..." He added: "Thanks for the
_beignets_.... I shall always remember you when I am served with
them.... And for last night again thank you!... Farewell and all
happiness attend you, Mademoiselle!"
His heavy footsteps crunched the snow. He was gone, and she had
almost called after him:
"Monseigneur, I do not hate you so much as I have said...."
On the morning of the 27th of January eighteen seventy-one French
guns on Fort Montrouge had been keeping up a brisk cannonade of the
German investing-works. Meeting no response their thunder ceased.
There, upon the east and north of beleaguered Paris--with a
simultaneous uprush of fierce white flame from the muzzles of seventy
giant howitzers, with the detonation of driving-charges, and the
piercing scream and deafening crash of the percussion of Krupp's huge
siege-projectiles, the bombardment of the doomed Queen City of Cities
had begun....
A few moments before, as Juliette de Bayard and her lover set foot
upon the steamer-pier at Dover, an aged French lady, who had stopped
Count Bismarck on the steps of the Prefecture, had imploringly said
to him:
"_O! Monseigneur, donnez nous la paix!_"
And the Iron Chancellor had replied to her almost smilingly:
"Dear lady, it is with a peace as with a marriage, there must be two
parties willing to conclude the contract.... I am ready to make
peace, but the other side is not!"