You wonder why the world should be so fair to me today—to me, Pierre
of the People, the poor oppressed people, whose heart’s blood has been
crushed out until it rushed forth in floods that cover the streets of
Paris with a crimson stain?
Even for me the sun shines today and the flowers bloom with a fragrance
they never breathed before—the red stains that clot the dust in the
street are great crimson roses blossoming with a glory never before worn
by flowers.
“Pierre,” said Monsieur le Géneral, “you are not a traitor to France, are
you?”
“No, Monsieur,” I said sturdily, setting my teeth and giving him as
steady a look as he was bending upon me.
I told the truth. We who would free France from the rule of the
aristocrats are not traitors. Rather are they traitors who would make of
our nation a stagnant pool of slavery and corruption.
Monsieur le Géneral looked at me again, keenly.
“We may not agree upon definitions.”
“My definitions are from the book of real life, Monsieur le Géneral. They
are always in agreement with the truth. Monsieur knows, though, that he
may trust me for himself, however my definitions may differ from his
own. He has not forgotten that I saved his life once from an English
sword. I know the memory is graven upon the mind of Monsieur le Géneral
as deeply as the scar is cut in my arm.”
“I think you love me, Pierre,” he replied.
I laid my hand on my heart, bowing till my head almost touched one of the
crimson roses in the velvet of Monsieur’s carpet.
“More than my life, Monsieur.”
What could I say fairer than that, for was not life the dearest thing to
me then?
So matters stood with my lord and me on that morning when he sent me with
a missive to Mademoiselle Denise. To her or to another, what mattered
it to me? They were all young demoiselles and, as such, of far less
consequence than the silver mounting of my lord’s pistols or the flash of
his gold-sheathed sword.
As I crossed the courtyard a dark-eyed page, idling by the fountain that
sparkled in the sun, was singing:
“By the garden-wall the rose blooms red,
And lifts to the sun its royal head;
There’s never a flower of such sweet grace
As the blossoming rose on my lady’s face—
Rose-red, flower grace,
Never a rose like my lady’s face.”
With that refrain ringing in my ears, “Never a rose like my lady’s face,”
I went from the shining flood of sunshine into a hall that seemed like
dusky twilight after the outside brilliance. But in the centre was a
space where the sunlight drifted down through an open window into a
circle of radiance and in the middle of it stood Mademoiselle, a shining
figure that dimmed all other light. She was clad in white and gold, and
the long folds of her robe lay in shimmering snow along the marble floor.
Her amber hair was like a river that the morning sun-rays cross. Her eyes
shone like great sapphires set under long lashes of gold and arched over
by golden brows. It was as if the light of a thousand suns had centered
in one fair woman.
The scar, once a proud and happy place upon my arm, burned as if a coal
of fire had been dropped upon it and for one wild moment I could have
cut from me the arm that had interposed to save the life of my master.
Then I knelt before her, when she had waved her hand for my approach, and
presented the letter. She looked at it carelessly and turned her eyes
from it to me where I knelt and beckoned me to rise.
“Tell me of yourself,” she said in a voice that was like the softest
strain of a lute. “Who are you?”
Who was I? Yesterday I would have said a man. Had I not done a man’s part
in battle? Was it not a man’s right arm that had stretched itself forth
to save a great life? Now I was—nothing. There was not a grain of dust in
the streets of Paris smaller than I.
“Nothing, my lady,” I said, not daring to lift my eyes to her face, nor
scarcely to look at her hand lying like a white lily on the snow of her
gown.
“That proves you very much,” she said, “for a man never thinks himself
nothing till he has a standard of merit with which to compare himself and
the possession of such a standard is a proof of worth.”
“I am only Pierre—the servant of Monsieur le Géneral.”
With what pride I should yesterday have avowed myself the servant of so
brave a soldier and so grand a gentleman. With what hatred of him and
what contempt for myself did I make that statement today. Did not the
great gulf between the gold and white Queen of the World deepen and widen
infinitely with the significance of my words?
“Monsieur le Géneral is fortunate.”
She wrote a line on a leaf from a gold and white tablet and gave it to
me, sealed with a golden seal.
I bowed low and went out from her presence with my face toward her. At
the entrance I lifted my eyes and looked dazzled at the spot of light
in the centre of the great hall. Thus I passed out into the courtyard
flooded with sunlight which seemed dim in comparison with that supernal
radiance.
The dark-eyed page had seated himself on the rim of the basin into which
the fountain fell with a tinkling music that kept rhythm with the song he
was still singing. With the refrain yet ringing in my ears, “Never a rose
like my lady’s face,” I went back to Monsieur le Géneral with the missive
she had given me.
A little later the blood of the Paris streets spattered to the gold robes
of the court. I saw the head of Monsieur le Géneral carried by me on a
spike and the dark-faced, ragged man who bore it sang a ribald song as he
looked mockingly up into the face, one word of which would have been his
death-warrant had it been uttered when that head yet sat upon the stately
shoulders. For a moment a sorrowful thought of the days when I loved him
lay like a cloud upon my mind, but what time was there then for thinking
of love—at least of that love.
I left the crowd of raging demons and ran across the courtyard where
the fountain yet tinkled merrily down into the basin. No dark-eyed page
loitered there and sang of the red rose and his lady’s face to the music
of the falling water. I dashed past the fountain and ran into the great
hall. It was empty and there was the print of muddy feet trampled over
the marble floor. I went to the Leader of the People.
“Where is Mademoiselle Denise?”
His wicked eyes flashed vindictively.
“Ah, Pierre, if you owe a grudge to the aristocracy of France you can
feed to it now the most luxurious viands of earth. Even she is offered to
the vengeance of justice and her head will grace a pike as none other has
ever done.”