The warning announcement of some great effort on the part of the
besieged, which Alain had given to Lemercier, was soon to be fulfilled.
For some days the principal thoroughfares were ominously lined with
military convois. The loungers on the Boulevards stopped to gaze on
the long defiles of troops and cannons, commissariat conveyances, and,
saddening accompaniments! the vehicles of various ambulances for the
removal of the wounded. With what glee the loungers said to each other
“Enfin!” Among all the troops that Paris sent forth, none were so
popular as those which Paris had not nurtured--the sailors. From the
moment they arrived, the sailors had been the pets of the capital. They
soon proved themselves the most notable contrast to that force which
Paris herself had produced--the National Guard. Their frames were hardy,
their habits active, their discipline perfect, their manners mild
and polite. “Oh, if all our troops were like these!” was the common
exclamation of the Parisians.
At last burst forth upon Paris the proclamations of General Trochu and
General Ducrot; the first brief, calm, and Breton-like, ending with
“Putting our trust in God. March on for our country:” the second more
detailed, more candidly stating obstacles and difficulties, but fiery
with eloquent enthusiasm, not unsupported by military statistics, in
the 400 cannon, two-thirds of which were of the largest calibre, that
no material object could resist; more than 150,000 soldiers, all well
armed, well equipped, abundantly provided with munitions, and all (j’en
a l’espoir) animated by an irresistible ardour. “For me,” concludes the
General, “I am resolved. I swear before you, before the whole nation,
that I will not re-enter Paris except as dead or victorious.”
At these proclamations, who then at Paris does not recall the burst of
enthusiasm that stirred the surface? Trochu became once more popular;
even the Communistic or atheistic journals refrained from complaining
that he attended mass, and invited his countrymen to trust in God.
Ducrot was more than popular--he was adored.
The several companies in which De Mauleon and Enguerrand served departed
towards their post early on the same morning, that of the 28th. All the
previous night, while Enguerrand was buried in profound slumber, Raoul
remained in his brother’s room; sometimes on his knees before the
ivory crucifix which had been their mother’s last birthday gift to her
youngest son--sometimes seated beside the bed in profound and devout
meditation. At daybreak, Madame de Vandemar stole into the chamber.
Unconscious of his brother’s watch, he had asked her to wake him in good
time, for the young man was a sound sleeper. Shading the candle she bore
with one hand, with the other she drew aside the curtain, and looked at
Enguerrand’s calm fair face, its lips parted in the happy smile which
seemed to carry joy with it wherever its sunshine played. Her tears fell
noiselessly on her darling’s cheek; she then knelt down and prayed for
strength. As she rose she felt Raoul’s arm around her; they looked at
each other in silence; then she bowed her head and wakened Enguerrand
with her lips. “Pas de querelle, mes amis,” he murmured, opening his
sweet blue eyes drowsily. “Ah, it was a dream! I thought Jules and Emile
[two young friends of his] were worrying each other; and you know, dear
Raoul, that I am the most officious of peacemakers. Time to rise, is it?
No peacemaking to-day. Kiss me again, mother, and say ‘Bless thee.’”
“Bless thee, bless thee, my child,” cried the mother, wrapping her arms
passionately round him, and in tones choked with sobs.
“Now leave me, maman,” said Enguerrand, resorting to the infantine
ordinary name, which he had not used for years. “Raoul, stay and help
me to dress. I must be tres beau to-day. I shall join thee at breakfast,
maman. Early for such repast, but l’appetit vient en mangeant. Mind the
coffee is hot.”
Enguerrand, always careful of each detail of dress, was especially so
that morning, and especially gay, humming the old air, “Partant pour la
Syrie.” But his gaiety was checked when Raoul, taking from his breast a
holy talisman, which he habitually wore there, suspended it with loving
hands round his brother’s neck. It was a small crystal set in Byzantine
filigree; imbedded in it was a small splinter of wood, said by pious
tradition to be a relic of the Divine Cross. It had been for centuries
in the family of the Contessa di Rimini, and was given by her to Raoul,
the only gift she had ever made him, as an emblem of the sinless
purity of the affection that united those two souls in the bonds of the
beautiful belief.
“She bade me transfer it to thee to-day, my brother,” said Raoul,
simply; “and now without a pang I can gird on thee thy soldier’s sword.”
Enguerrand clasped his brother in his arms, and kissed him with
passionate fervour. “Oh, Raoul, how I love thee! how good thou hast ever
been to me! how many sins thou hast saved me from! how indulgent thou
hast been to those from which thou couldst not save! Think on that, my
brother, in case we do not meet again on earth.”
“Hush, hush, Enguerrand! No gloomy forebodings now! Come, come hither,
my half of life, my sunny half of life!” and uttering these words,
he led Enguerrand towards the crucifix, and there, in deeper and more
solemn voice, said, “Let us pray.” So the brothers knelt side by side,
and Raoul prayed aloud as only such souls can pray.
When they descended into the salon where breakfast was set out, they
found assembled several of their relations, and some of Enguerrand’s
young friends not engaged in the sortie. One or two of the latter,
indeed, were disabled from fighting by wounds in former fields; they
left their sick-beds to bid him good-bye. Unspeakable was the affection
this genial nature inspired in all who came into the circle of its
winning magic; and when, tearing himself from them, he descended the
stair, and passed with light step through the Porte cochere, there was
a crowd around the house--so widely had his popularity spread among even
the lower classes, from which the Mobiles in his regiment were chiefly
composed. He departed to the place of rendezvous amid a chorus of
exhilarating cheers.
Not thus lovingly tended on, not thus cordially greeted, was that equal
idol of a former generation, Victor de Mauleon. No pious friend prayed
beside his couch, no loving kiss waked him from his slumbers. At the
grey of the November dawn he rose from a sleep which had no smiling
dreams, with that mysterious instinct of punctual will which cannot even
go to sleep without fixing beforehand the exact moment in which sleep
shall end. He, too, like Enguerrand, dressed himself with care--unlike
Enguerrand, with care strictly soldier-like. Then, seeing he had some
little time yet before him, he rapidly revisited the pigeonholes and
drawers in which might be found by prying eyes anything he would deny
to them curiosity. All that he found of this sort were some letters in
female handwriting, tied together with faded ribbon, relics of earlier
days, and treasured throughout later vicissitudes; letters from the
English girl to whom he had briefly referred in his confession to
Louvier,--the only girl he had ever wooed as his wife. She was the only
daughter of highborn Roman Catholics, residing at the time of his youth
in Paris. Reluctantly they had assented to his proposals; joyfully they
had retracted their assent when his affairs had become so involved;
yet possibly the motive that led him to his most ruinous excesses--the
gambling of the turf--had been caused by the wild hope of a nature, then
fatally sanguine, to retrieve the fortune that might suffice to
satisfy the parents. But during his permitted courtship the lovers
had corresponded. Her letters were full of warm, if innocent,
tenderness--till came the last cold farewell. The family had long ago
returned to England; he concluded, of course, that she had married
another.
Near to these letters lay the papers which had served to vindicate his
honour in that old affair, in which the unsought love of another had
brought on him shame and affliction. As his eye fell on the last, he
muttered to him self, “I kept these, to clear my repute. Can I keep
those, when, if found, they might compromise the repute of her who
might have been my wife had I been worthy of her? She is doubtless now
another’s; or, if dead,--honour never dies.” He pressed his lips to the
letters with a passionate, lingering, mournful kiss; then, raking up the
ashes of yesterday’s fire, and rekindling them, he placed thereon those
leaves of a melancholy romance in his past, and watched them slowly,
reluctantly smoulder away into tinder. Then he opened a drawer in which
lay the only paper of a political character which he had preserved. All
that related to plots or conspiracies in which his agency had committed
others, it was his habit to destroy as soon as received. For the sole
document thus treasured he alone was responsible; it was an outline
of his ideal for the future constitution of France, accompanied with
elaborate arguments, the heads of which his conversation with the
Incognito made known to the reader. Of the soundness of this political
programme, whatever its merits or faults (a question on which I presume
no judgment), he had an intense conviction. He glanced rapidly over its
contents, did not alter a word, sealed it up in an envelope, inscribed,
“My Legacy to my Countrymen.” The papers refuting a calumny relating
solely to himself he carried into the battle-field, placed next to his
heart,--significant of a Frenchman’s love of honour in this world--as
the relic placed round the neck of Enguerrand by his pious brother was
emblematic of the Christian hope of mercy in the next.