A GARRET IN PRAGUE
The great parties at Chambord followed and lasted all through June.
They were like the one in December, but they were not illuminated by
the wit, the beauty, the ineffable charm of Francezka. It may be
imagined how little I enjoyed them. My heart was like lead in my
bosom. Every waking hour, and often in my dreams, I saw Francezka's
face as I had last seen it, pale and despairing.
There was something else besides pleasuring at Chambord; the fetes
were meant to disguise more serious events. On an August morning at
daylight Count Saxe changed his ball costume for his riding dress and
set forth to take command of the van of Marshal Belle-Isle's army,
which was to cross the Rhine at Fort Louis, thirty miles below
Strasburg. Gaston Cheverny was not to be with us. He was to go with
the army of Marshal Maillebois, which was to cross the Rhine near
Duesseldorf.
Count Saxe had been in a quandary about inviting Gaston Cheverny to
resume his old place as aide-de-camp. There could be no doubt that
Gaston merited much from Count Saxe, as it was owing to Count Saxe's
own imprudence in remaining unguarded at Hueningen that Gaston
Cheverny had been lost to life and love for seven years. Yet my master
felt toward him the same coldness of heart that I did. It is true that
Gaston's alleged inability to use his right arm properly would be a
drawback, but one likely to be passed over by any commander who really
wished his services, and especially by Count Saxe, taking the past
into consideration. In truth there was every reason why Count Saxe
should again offer a place in his military family to Gaston Cheverny.
But he felt a singular indisposition to do it.
Gaston, ever quick of wit, relieved Count Saxe of his awkward
predicament. He wrote, saying that Marshal Maillebois had made him an
admirable offer, and while he recognized Count Saxe's right to his
services, he scarcely thought anything so promising could be given him
in the army of Marshal Belle-Isle. My master jumped at this easy way
out of his difficulty and wrote, desiring Gaston Cheverny to suit
himself. At the same time he inclosed a letter highly recommending
Gaston to Marshal Maillebois. Every word in that letter, which I wrote
myself, was true, because it referred to the Gaston Cheverny we had
known before 1740.
Gaston replied most handsomely, and so the matter was settled to
everybody's satisfaction. But it gave me a feeling of stupefaction
that the person we were trying to part from decently, and to avoid
with the greatest seeming tenderness, was the Gaston Cheverny whom I
had loved the instant my eyes had rested on him, whom my master had
bade me capture for Courland, who had served us as loyally as man
could serve in all those adventurous days, who had been Count Saxe's
right-hand man, and whose readiness and devotion to Count Saxe had
cost such a price as Gaston had paid. It was staggering.
On that rosy August dawn Count Saxe, with a small escort, started for
the Rhine by way of Chalons. This did not take us near Brabant, and
there seemed no chance of my seeing Francezka. This gave me great
uneasiness of mind. I was haunted by a whole troop of malignant fears,
of dreadful apprehensions about that being, so ineffably dear to me.
And these hideous shapes marched with me, and kept watch over me, and
visited me nightly in my dreams. And to no one, not even to Count
Saxe, could I speak of them! I could only go on steadfastly doing my
duty.
We reached Fort Louis, and Count Saxe being put in command of the
vanguard, consisting of about fifteen thousand men, of Marshal
Belle-Isle's army, we began the crossing of the river. We knew we were
playing a game of war with loaded dice, but soldiers must not inquire
too curiously into their orders. Marshal Belle-Isle had gone to
Germany the year before with a basket of eggs, which he reckoned as
full-grown chickens, but the eggs mostly addled and would not hatch,
so the game with the loaded dice was substituted.
We were on the march early in September, through the blue Bavarian
mountains, where the air, though sharp, was like good wine, and then
into the wild Bohemian country, full of rocks and bogs and black
chasms, and shaggy mountains, ever colder and bleaker, ever farther
and farther away from our base. Marshal Saxe was troubled with the
company of the King of Saxony, whom Marshal Belle-Isle made King of
Moravia; as Count Saxe said: "He is King of Moravia very much as I am
Duke of Courland."
At last, in the midst of the storms, the snows, the fierce winds of
November in that wild Bohemian country, we found ourselves set down
before Prague. And Prague we must take or starve--starve all of
us--men and horses together.
There was a multitude of counselors, each counseling some different
form of folly, and only my master, with one or two to support him
steadfastly proclaiming that we must take Prague or be lost. There
were innumerable objections made; it was a stupendous undertaking, for
we had nothing fit for besieging, only our good swords and Maurice of
Saxe to lead us. But at last, seeing ruin advancing upon us in the
shape of an Austrian army, while starvation stood sentry over us, the
King of Saxony and the rest of them were visited with a great light
and concluded to let my master have his way; and the night of the
twenty-seventh of November, 1741, was fixed upon to assault the town.
It was a cold, clear night, with a moon that made all things white and
light.
At midnight, when the town was sleeping, and only the sentries waked
and walked, a tremendous cannonade broke out all around the walls,
heaviest toward the south. This was but a sham attack, but the best
part of the garrison hastened there to repel it. And then Count Saxe,
advancing from the gardens and cottages on the Wischerad side, came to
the walls. The men rushed forward with the scaling ladders, but they
were full ten feet too short. Despair and blankness fell upon us,
until Count Saxe, seeing a great, weird Thing standing gaunt and black
in the white moonlight--this Thing, the gallows tree--cried out
cheerfully:
"See, my lads, yonder are likely to be some short ladders; these we
will splice with rope, and so make the scalade!"
And it was done, Count Saxe himself being the first man on the
rampart. He had for his body-guard, my Uhlans--men fit to be the
body-guard of Mars himself. But the gods of war are invisibly
protected. All the books upon war say that generals should take care
of their skins. I have often noticed, however, that generals who try
to take care of their skins usually get shot every time they go within
the enemy's range.
Count Saxe, however, without getting a single scratch, found himself
at the head of his men in the great open market-place, where the
French made their rendezvous, and there we soon found ten thousand of
our fifteen thousand brave fellows. Prague was ours, and almost
without the loss of a man, so masterly had been Count Saxe's
dispositions.
There is something appalling in the sight of a town taken in the
night. Although Prague was supposed to be taken by assault, it was
really carried by strategy, and there were none of the horrors of a
capture by storming. But the horrible fears of the inhabitants,
the terrors of the women and children, the dreadful midnight
awakening--all, all, have in them something calculated to affright
the soul.
These things passed through my mind, when, with my men posted
according to Count Saxe's orders, I listened to the cries, the screams
of frightened creatures, and imagined the shuddering terrors behind
the walls of those tall old houses, their peaks shining in the white
moonlight. And then, by an accident in handling a torch, one of those
tall old houses by the market-place caught fire. Instantly, it was
like Bedlam; at every one of the many windows appeared people
shrieking, praying, crying. And glancing into one of those windows,
where an old woman was screaming frantically, I saw a strange, a
mysterious sight: upon a wretched bed lay a sick man--lay Gaston
Cheverny!
I had not been brought up in the streets of Paris and forced to
soldier it since my fourteenth year without becoming tolerably free
from superstition. This sudden glimpse of Gaston Cheverny lying ill in
a miserable garret in Prague, when I supposed him on the personal
staff of Marshal Maillebois, did not prevent me from taking all
possible measures to save that quarter of the town from burning, and
striving to allay the panic. Both I found almost impossible. The old
house blazed like tinder, the flames reddening the moonlit sky. I gave
orders to blow up the houses on each side, in order to save the town.
The horrible explosions, the smoke and smell of powder, the shrieking,
terrified people, the soldiers battling with mob and fire--the mob
believing the soldiers to have started the fire--were hideous. I have
been in many a worse place than the market-place of Prague on that
bleak November night, but never one which had a greater outward aspect
of horror.
Toward daylight, ashes and ruins replaced the fire, trembling terror
and pale exhaustion, the frantic alarm of the people, and the quarter
was saved. Through it all, I had Gaston Cheverny in my mind. I could
not understand how he, an officer in Marshal Maillebois's army, could
be in Prague at all, but I had seen him in the glare of the blazing
building as plainly as if the sun had been at the noon mark.
In the gray of the dawn, I began to investigate concerning Gaston, but
he could not be found. I thought it not strange that in so much
danger, terror and confusion he had disappeared for a time, but I
confidently reckoned on his being found within a few days. Next day, I
put the official inquiry on foot, but there was no record of any such
person having been in Prague. It was difficult to account, under any
circumstances, for Gaston's being there. Yet, had not these eyes seen
him? It was one more mystery and misery about this man, once the
frankest, freest, most open-hearted of men. It did not lessen those
vague and terrible fears which had haunted me about Francezka.
The next few days were busy enough, and I scarce rested by night or
day. A week passed, and, hearing nothing of Gaston Cheverny, I tried
to persuade myself that my eyes had been deceived. Truly, although I
have been a thousand times in places of much greater danger, I do not
think I have ever known greater excitement, or conditions when a man
could be more readily deceived than that midnight in the market-place
of Prague. I said this to myself many times. It is strange how a man
will argue with himself to believe a thing which he can not believe,
and will silence, without convincing, himself.
I was revolving these things in my mind one night, about a week
afterward, on my way alone through the narrow, dark unlighted
streets, lying black in the shadows of the overhanging houses. And
then there passed across my path, a figure in a ragged black cloak--a
figure with the face of Gaston Cheverny. I followed him, but I seemed
to be following a ghost; for in the tangle of streets and lanes, he
was lost to me. I spent two full hours hunting this shade; but had it
been actually a ghost it could not have disappeared more completely.
I went to Count Saxe's quarters. It was then near midnight, and Count
Saxe had gone to bed; but on the table, wide open, with some other
letters for me to read, was a letter from Gaston Cheverny to Count
Saxe, dated the very day before the capture of Prague.
So I was deceived. He was not and never had been in Prague. I had been
deceived by some chance resemblance. It was upon events like these
that Madame Riano based her absurd belief in second sight.
But let it not appear that I am a man easily deluded when I declare
that from the hour I saw the man I took for Gaston Cheverny in the
burning house at Prague, I knew that Francezka was in sore distress,
and even in need of her poor Babache. Something within me was ever
calling--calling, in Francezka's name--"Come to me!"
There are degrees in these superstitions of the heart. Sometimes they
usurp the scepter of the brain. Then, indeed, are they dangerous and
foolish. Again, it is known to be only the cry of the heart; and the
poor, tormented heart waits patiently upon its master, the brain. So
it was with me. Deep as was my yearning to see Francezka, I said no
word of it to the most indulgent of masters, until the time was ripe
that I might go. Francezka herself was governed by the law of common
sense; she would not wish me to come to her when it was against my
duty. So I fulfilled all my duty, in spite of the burden of the
spirit--the strange, almost irresistible call for me to leave all and
go straight to Francezka, until I could, in honor, ask for leave.
We were settled then in winter quarters. We had heard twice in this
time from Gaston Cheverny. Being near home, in the borders of Hanover,
for the winter, he had got leave--so he wrote--and would spend six
weeks at the chateau of Capello, with Francezka. He wished that Count
Saxe and I might take advantage of the lull in hostilities and come to
Capello.
It was when I was in the act of reading this letter that my reserve
broke down, and I told Count Saxe all--all--and that I desired to go
to Francezka. And then, for the first time since I was a little,
smooth-cheeked boy, playing in the weedy gardens of the Marais with
Adrienne Lecouvreur, I wept like a woman. Count Saxe sat and looked at
me with more than a brother's tenderness. He knew I was not a coward,
for I had led his Uhlans, and what he said to me was this:
"Lose not a moment in going, Babache. It is because you love her so
much that you know she is in distress. I think you would know as much,
if it were I instead of Francezka."
Which was true. I can not believe that Count Saxe should need me, and
I not know it, were I at the other end of the world.
And Count Saxe helping and hastening me in every way, as became such
a soul as his, I set forth at once on my journey. It was the latter
part of December when I left Prague behind me.
The journey was a terrible one; the season harsh beyond comparison.
The ground was deeply covered with snow, which the wild winds piled in
great drifts, in which both men and beasts were sometimes lost. Rain
and sleet alternated with snow. The sun scarcely shone at all. The
sufferings of dumb creatures were dreadful; horses plunged amid the
snow, and died in it; the gaunt cattle froze in the fields; even the
birds dropped dead from the icy roofs and trees. I think I never saw
so much misery in any journey I ever made, as in that journey to
Capello. Even when I reached the flat country of the lower Rhine,
there was but little amelioration. I traveled as rapidly as I could,
both night and day, but my progress was slow. My eager heart
outstripped my laggard body, and it seemed to me that every hour the
urgency of Francezka's call for me grew greater. I could actually hear
that sweet, penetrating voice, now full of agony, crying to me,
"Babache! Babache! Come quickly--quickly, or you will be too late!"