“Pardon me, sire”--I began, when a clap of thunder rattled the glass.
His Majesty ran at me whimpering--
“You think to leave me? No, no, madam. I am but half recovered yet. I
must be watched, or I shall die. For yourself, you are as safe as in a
convent.”
He drew himself up, and endeavoured to thrust his hand into the breast
of his waistcoat; but not finding any, caught at his braces instead.
“Though all else be lost to Ferdinand, honour remains.”
XXVIII.
I RETURN TO NAPLES
What a business I had with that father of babies--himself the
greatest baby of all! He would not let me leave him, but took my wits
to physic his irresolution as my duck-stone his nerves. As the night
sped darker and wilder, bringing distracted generals and ministers,
who, desperate to gather some clew out of chaos, would not be denied,
he clung ever closer to my presence beside him, goggling at me mutely
when faced by a poser, and laughing and applauding hysterically when I
supplied an answer to it.
At last a cry rose in the palace that the French were got between Rome
and Naples, with only General Mack at Capua a little north of us to
oppose them.
“He is not to be trusted,” cried poor Ferdinand, wringing his hands.
“He will sit down there and do nothing! Besides, I am not at war with
France!”
“_He_ is not everything,” I answered, ignoring the other fatuous
pretence. “Quick, now, and light a fire between!”
“A fire!” said he, aghast.
“To be sure,” said I--“the fire of a crusade. Call upon the whole
population north of us to fly to arms and exterminate the impious
invaders. Declare you are coming to their help, and bid them strive
their utmost in the meantime. It may be, in such a war of bigotry,
your peasants will do your chief work for you, leaving you no task but
to come presently and kill the wounded.”
“But,” cried the king disconsolately, “they must know too well already
that I have run a--that I have thought it best to retire!”
“Date your manifesto from Rome, sire, and it will give the lie
to--ahem! the truth. Quick! we will compose it together; and within an
hour you can have it flying north, east, and west.”
He liked the idea. That thought of being reserved to give the
unhazardous _coup de grâce_ tickled him sensibly. But, though we
acted upon it with all despatch, it was helpless to still the rumour
of coming disaster. The report of the king’s flight and of the army’s
demoralisation were too well confirmed. Hordes of robbers and
cut-throats rose, it is true, at the word; swarms that committed
woeful deeds of plunder and outrage and massacre, making the smiling
campagna a hell. But these were without concentration or discipline,
and as ready, when the lust had bitten in, to torture Italians as
French.
And, in the meanwhile, courier after courier, racing to the palace
with distorted legends, finished the last self-control of the king,
and drove him near morning to order out his carriage for Naples.
Even then, as he went thundering by the dark fields and long
glimmerings of the dawn, I was beside him. He would not part with
me--with “his councillor, his dear little nurse”--but lavished upon me
the wildest eulogies, the most reckless promises, while entreating me
all the time to sit tight against him, for his better sense of
security in the event of his dosing. And when he _did_ dose, and fell
upon me--good Lord! it was a nightmare, like having a mattress for a
quilt, and with a voice! If his nod had failed to shake Olympus, his
snore might have uprooted it.
Long before we reached the capital, the signs of a coming anarchy were
increasing about us most wild and threatening. Swarms of excited
countryfolk; strings of hard-driven carts loaded with household
furniture, shedding a tithe of their contents, to be crashed over or
spun aside by other pursuing wheels; haggard soldiers sobbing
children; cries, threats, _vivas_, furious banter--all went sweeping
in one flurry of uproar and motion towards the gates. Sometimes, when
we were recognised, it would be to a shout of jubilation: “_Ohi! O me
beato!_ It is our king, our father, come to tell us the devils are
singed and scattered!” Sometimes it was to a vision of black menace,
that surged up, and showed a moment at the windows, and dropped behind
in a wake of curses; more often it was to evoke a scattering volley of
laughter, that broke into a regular sing-song refrain: “_Venne, vide e
fuggì, venne, vide e fuggì!_ He came, he saw, he fled! Way for
Cæsar, way for Cæsar, who marches for Rome hind-first!” The
frightened, sweating postilions scourged their sweating cattle,
struggling to escape these gadflies, who nevertheless only clung and
stung and sung the thicker. But at last we won through, and were in
the city, and whipping for the royal palace through denser agitated
crowds, which still, through a prescriptive respect, offered no
effective bar to our progress.
I will not say but that throughout this ordeal my blood did not come
and go the quicker. I will swear, at the same time, that I was always
more exhilarated than terrified. To be quit of my weary exile; to find
myself in the thick of events once more; best, to know that I had won
to active co-operation in my revenge the most powerful instrument of
all--these, at least, were a sufficient offset to the perils I must
encounter in my race to realise them. And it ended to our credit, when
all had been said and sung. We reached in safety the Palazzo Reale,
where were being enacted, in a more massed and vehement form, the
scenes of Caserta. The king, holding to my hand, drove a way for us,
with kicks and curses, through the throng.
“Her Majesty!” he yelled.
She was in her apartments, to which he hurried me, scattering maids of
honour like fowls. He shut the door upon her and me and himself alone.
“My love!” he said.
She was in like pass with himself. She was going up and down,
muttering entreaties to the saints, her stays stuck full of prayers
and pious ejaculations writ on scraps of paper. Every now and again
she would pluck out one of these in a spasm, dip it in a plate of
broth that stood on a table, and swallow it.
“My soul!” murmured the king.
She noticed us all in a moment, and stopped dead.
“Who are you?” she demanded witheringly.
“Angel of my heart, don’t you know your lord?”
She advanced quickly, and whipped him this way and that. He was still
in Ascoli’s clothes.
“Is this all they have left of you, you poor rag of royalty?”
He tried a little bluster.
“How now, madam! I adopted it for a disguise.”
“What!” she said, “by revealing yourself? I should have thought that
one exposure had been enough.”
“Hush!” he said, perspiring; “there is a witness.”
“One!” she cried; “the whole nation!” and she left him for me.
“What do _you_ do here?” she demanded.
The king put in a word.
“I bring you your physician, madam--our physician. If it had not been
for her, your Ferdinando would have lost his mind.”
“Better that than his kingdom,” she answered bitterly, and stood
scowling on me. “I understand, madam, I understand. I called you
Circe, and not, it seems, without excellent reason.”
“I was persuaded, madam,” I said, raising my head. “My honour is as
precious to me as your Majesty’s. If you have no further use for me, I
beg your permission to withdraw.”
At which, if you will believe me, this stormy queen ran to a chair,
and flinging herself down on it, began to weep violently.
“I am deserted of all,” she cried; “in the hour of my tribulation they
all forsake and disown me.”
The king skipped to her and fell on his knees before.
“My soul,” he wept, “all is not yet lost. General Mack”--
“General post,” she snapped. “What do you know of your own city, or of
the anarchy that reigns in it? It only needed this spark to the mine.
All _is_ lost, I tell you. They are clamouring for a republic. We
shall be sacrificed like the King of France and my sister to the fury
of the Jacobins--I feel the knife at my neck--O! O!”
She rose in a frenzy of horror, shuffling her billets like cards to
find a trump. “Gennaro, Valentino, Jeromio?” she whispered tearfully,
and ended by making a sippet of the hermit. He was old and a
misogynist. It was evident for some moments that he disagreed with
her.
“Nothing remains to us,” she said at last, with a wry gulp, “but
flight. We have foreseen it for days. For days, while you have been
playing with tin trumpets, we have been transferring our royal effects
to the ships: pictures, plate, jewels; the specie from the banks; the
last soldi from the treasury. We have seen to everything, I and my
sweet darling Emma, my only, truest, and best of friends. Nelson but
awaits our signal to take us on board. You must give it him, at once,
for this night, do you hear?”
“I will send a message by Ferreri,” said the king, rising, with a face
as scared now as her own. “I will send Ferreri at once,” and he
skipped to leave the room.
“Stay!” she cried, in agitation. “Be sure to bind him to the last
privacy.”
“O, poor me!” said the king, with a spasm of a smile. “Must I then
cheat my excise by smuggling my own orders through?”
“It is no time for fooling,” cried his angry spouse. “My God! do you
not understand? Whether our plan should be suspected by Lazzari or
Jacobins, the result would be the same. To the one it would mean
desertion; to the other escape. They would combine at least to
frustrate it.”
He stared, nodded sagely, and this time stole away on tiptoe, so that
the Lazzari in the square should not hear him, I suppose. I was
following, when the queen stopped me. Her expression in the act had
fallen a little piteous, like that of a smiling saint sitting on
spikes.
“Has Circe, then, no ministrations for the anguished of her own sex?”
she asked.