Château de Nesville," said Lorraine, sipping her small glass of
Moselle; "papa hates him."
"Many Royalists do."
"It is not that only; there is something else--something that I
don't know about. It concerns my brother who died many years ago,
before I was born. Have I never spoken of my brother? Has papa
never said anything?"
"No," said Jack, gently.
"Well, when my brother was alive, our family lived in Paris. That
is all I know, except that my brother died shortly before the empire
was proclaimed, and papa and mamma came to our country-place here,
where I was born. René's--my brother's--death had something to do
with my father's hatred of the empire, I know that. But papa will
never speak of it to me, except to tell me that I must always
remember that the Emperor has been the curse of the De Nesvilles.
Hark! Hear the troops passing. Why do they never cheer their
Emperor?"
"They cheered him at Saarbrück--I heard them. You are not eating;
are you tired?"
"A little. I shall go with Marianne, I think; I am sleepy. Are
you going to sit up? Do you think we can sleep with the noise of
the horses passing? I should like to see the Emperor at table."
"Wait," said Jack; "I'll go down and find out whether we can't
slip into the ballroom."
"Then I'll go too," said Lorraine, rising. "Marianne, stay here;
I will return in a moment;" and she slipped after Jack, down the
broad staircase and out to the terrace, where a huge cuirassier
officer stood in the moonlight, his straight sabre shimmering,
his white mantle open over the silver breastplate.
The ballroom was brilliantly lighted, the gilded canapés and
chairs were covered with officers in every conceivable uniform,
lounging, sprawling, chatting, and gesticulating, or pulling
papers and maps over the floor. A general traced routes across
the map at his feet with the point of a naked sword; an officer
of dragoons, squatting on his haunches, followed the movement of
the sword-point and chewed an unlighted cigarette. Officers were
coming and going constantly, entering by the hallway and leaving
through the door-like windows that swung open to the floor. The
sinister face of a police-spy peered into the conservatory at
intervals, where a slender, pale-faced boy sat, clothed in a
colonel's uniform, writing on a carved table. It was the Prince
Imperial, back from Saarbrück and his "baptism of fire," back
also from the Spicheren and the disaster of Wörth. He was writing
to his mother, that unhappy, anxious woman who looked every day
from the Tuileries into the streets of a city already clamorous,
already sullenly suspicious of its Emperor and Empress.
The boy's face was beautiful. He raised his head and sat silently
biting his pen, eyes wandering. Perhaps he was listening to the
retreat of Frossard's Corps through the fair province of
Lorraine--a province that he should never live to see again. A
few months more, a few battles, a few villages in flames, a few
cities ravaged, a few thousand corpses piled from the frontier to
the Loire--and then, what? Why, an emperor the less and an
emperor the more, and a new name for a province--that is all.
His delicate, high-bred face fell; he shaded his sad eyes with
one thin hand and wrote again--all that a good son writes to a
mother, all that a good soldier writes to a sovereign, all that a
good prince writes to an empress.
"Oh, what sad eyes!" whispered Lorraine; "he is too young to see
such things."
"He may see worse," said Jack. "Come, shall we walk around the
lawn to the dining-room?"
They descended the dark steps, her arm resting lightly on his,
and he guided her through a throng of gossiping cavalrymen and
hurrying but polite officers towards the western wing of the
Château, the trample of the passing army always in their ears.
As he was about to cross the drive, a figure stepped from the
shadow of the porte-cochère--a man in a rough tweed suit, who
lifted his wide-awake politely and asked Jack if he was not
English.
"American," said Jack, guardedly.
The man was apparently much relieved. He made a frank, manly
apology for his intrusion, looked appealingly at Lorraine, and
said, with a laugh: "The fact is, I'm astray in the wrong camp. I
rode out from the Spicheren and got mixed in the roads, and first
I knew I fell in with Frossard's Corps, and I can't get away. I
thought you were an Englishman; you're American, it seems, and
really I may venture to feel that there is hope for me--may I
not?"
"Why, yes," said Jack; "whatever I can do, I'll do gladly."
"Then let me observe without hesitation," continued the man,
smiling under his crisp mustache, "that I'm in search of a modest
dinner and a shelter of even more modest dimensions. I'm a war
correspondent, unattached just at present, but following the
German army. My name is Archibald Grahame."
At the name of the great war correspondent Jack stared, then
impulsively held out his hand.
"Aha!" said Grahame, "you must be a correspondent, too. Ha! I
thought I was not wrong."
He bowed again to Lorraine, who returned his manly salute very
sweetly. "If," she thought, "Jack is inclined to be nice to this
sturdy young man in tweeds, I also will be as nice as I can."
"My name is Marche--Jack Marche," said Jack, in some trepidation.
"I am not a correspondent--that is, not an active one."
"You were at Sadowa, and you've been in Oran with Chanzy," said
Grahame, quickly.
Jack flushed with pleasure to find that the great Archibald
Grahame had heard of him.
"We must take Mr. Grahame up-stairs at once--must we not?--if he
is hungry," suggested Lorraine, whose tender heart was touched at
the thought of a hungry human being.
They all laughed, and Grahame thanked her with that whimsical but
charming courtesy that endeared him to all who knew him.
"It is awkward, now, isn't it, Mr. Marche? Here I am in France
with the army I tried to keep away from, roofless, supperless,
and rather expecting some of these sentinels or police agents may
begin to inquire into my affairs. If they do they'll take me for
a spy. I was threatened by the villagers in a little hamlet west
of Saint-Avold--and how I'm going to get back to my Hohenzollerns
I haven't the faintest notion."
"There'll surely be some way. My uncle will vouch for you and get
you a safe-conduct," said Jack. "Perhaps, Mr. Grahame, you had
better come and dine in our salon up-stairs. Will you? The
Emperor occupies the large dining-room, and General Frossard and
his staff have the breakfast-room."
Amused by the young fellow's doubt that a simple salon on the
first floor might not be commensurate with the hospitality of
Morteyn, Archibald Grahame stepped pleasantly to the other side
of the road; and so, with Lorraine between them, they climbed the
terrace and scaled the stairs to the little gilt salon where
Lorraine's maid Marianne and the old house-keeper sat awaiting
her return.
Lorraine was very wide-awake now--she was excited by the stir and
the brilliant uniforms. She unconsciously took command, too,
feeling that she should act the hostess in the absence of Madame
de Morteyn. The old house-keeper, who adored her, supported her
loyally; so, between Marianne and herself, a very delightful
dinner was served to the hungry but patient Grahame when he
returned with Jack from the latter's chamber, where he had left
most of the dust and travel stains of a long tramp across
country.
And how the great war correspondent did eat and drink! It made
Jack hungry again to watch him, so with a laughing apology to
Lorraine he joined in with a will, enthusiastically applauded and
encouraged by Grahame.
"I could tell you were a correspondent by your appetite," said
Grahame. "Dear me! it takes a campaign to make life worth
living!"
"Life is not worth living, then, without an appetite?" inquired
Lorraine, mischievously.
"No," said Grahame, seriously; "and you also will be of that
opinion some day, mademoiselle."
His kindly, humourous eyes turned inquiringly from Jack to
Lorraine and from Lorraine to Jack. He was puzzled, perhaps, but
did not betray it.
They were not married, because Lorraine was Mademoiselle de
Nesville and Jack was Monsieur Marche. Cousins? Probably.
Engaged? Probably. So Grahame smiled benignly and emptied another
bottle of Moselle with a frank abandon that fascinated the old
house-keeper.
"And you don't mean to say that you are going to put me up for
the night, too?" he asked Jack. "You place me under eternal
obligation, and I accept with that understanding. If you run into
my Hohenzollerns, they'll receive you as a brother."
"I don't think he will visit the Hohenzollern Regiment," observed
Lorraine, demurely.
"No--er--the fact is, I'm not doing much newspaper work now,"
said Jack.
Grahame was puzzled but bland.
"Tell us, Monsieur Grahame, of what you saw in the Spicheren,"
said Lorraine. "Is it a very bad defeat? I am sure it cannot be.
Of course, France will win, sooner or later; nobody doubts that."
Before Grahame could manufacture a suitable reply--and his wit
was as quick as his courtesy--a door opened and Madame de Morteyn
entered, sad-eyed but smiling.
Jack jumped up and asked leave to present Mr. Grahame, and the
old lady received him very sweetly, insisting that he should
make the Château his home as long as he stayed in the vicinity.
A few moments later she went away with Lorraine and her maid, and
Jack and Archibald Grahame were left together to sip their
Moselle and smoke some very excellent cigars that Jack found in
the library.
"Mr. Grahame," said Jack, diffidently, "if it would not be an
impertinent question, who is going to run away in this campaign?"
Grahame's face fell; his sombre glance swept the beautiful room
and rested on a picture--the "Battle of Waterloo."
"It will be worse than that," he said, abruptly. "May I take one
of these cigars? Oh, thank you."
Jack's heart sank, but he smiled and passed a lighted cigar-lamp
to the other.
"My judgment has been otherwise," he said, "and what you say
troubles me."
"It troubles me, too," said Grahame, looking out of the dark
window at the watery clouds, ragged, uncanny, whirling one by one
like tattered witches across the disk of a misshapen moon.
After a silence Jack relighted his half-burned cigar.
"Then it is invasion?" he asked.
"Yes--invasion."
"When?"
"Now."
"Good heavens! the very stones in the fields will rise up!"
"If the people did so too it might be to better purpose,"
observed Grahame, dryly. Then he emptied his glass, flicked the
ashes from his cigar, and, sitting erect in his chair, said,
"See here, Marche, you and I are accustomed to this sort of
thing, we've seen campaigns and we have learned to judge
dispassionately and, I think, fairly accurately; but, on my
honour, I never before have seen the beginning of such a
tempest--never! You say the very stones will rise up in the
fields of France. You are right. For the fields will be ploughed
with solid shot, and the shells will sow the earth with iron from
the Rhine to the Loire. Good Lord, do these people know what is
coming over the frontier?"
"Prussians," said Jack.
"Yes, Prussians and a few others--Würtembergers, Saxons,
Bavarians, men from Baden, from Hesse, from the Schwarzwald--from
Hamburg to the Tyrol they are coming in three armies. I saw the
Spicheren, I saw Wissembourg--I have seen and I know."
Presently he opened a fresh bottle, and, with that whimsical
smile and frank simplicity that won whom he chose to win, leaned
towards Jack and began speaking as though the younger man were
his peer in experience and age:
"Shall I tell you what I saw across the Rhine? I saw the machinery
at work--the little wheels and cogs turning and grinding and
setting in motion that stupendous machine that Gneisenau patented
and Von Moltke improved--the great Mobilization Machine! How this
machine does its work it is not easy to realize unless one has
actually watched its operation. I saw it--and what I saw left me
divided between admiration and--well, damn it all!--sadness.
"You know, Marche, that there are three strata of fighting men in
Germany--the regular army, the 'reserve,' and the Landwehr. It
is a mistake into which many fall to believe that the reserve is
the rear of the regular army. The war strength of a regiment is
just double its peace strength, and the increment is the reserve.
The blending of the two in time of war is complete; the medalled
men of 1866 and of the Holstein campaign, called up from the
reserve, are welded into the same ranks with the young soldiers
who are serving their first period of three years. It is an utter
mistake to think of the Prussian army or the Prussian reserves as
a militia like yours or ours. The Prussian reserve man has three
years active service with his colours to point back to. Have ours?
The mobilization machine grinds its grinding in this wise. The whole
country is divided into districts, in the central city of each of
which are the headquarters of the army corps recruited from that
district. Thence is sent forth the edict for mobilization to the
towns, the villages, and the quiet country parishes. From the forge,
from the harvest, from the store, from the school-room, blacksmiths,
farmers, clerks, school-masters drop everything at an hour's notice.
"The contingent of a village is sent to headquarters. On the
route it meets other contingents until the rendezvous is reached.
And then--the transformation! A yokel enters--a soldier leaves.
The slouch has gone from his shoulders, his chest is thrown
forward, his legs straightened, his chin 'well off the stock,'
his step brisk, his carriage military. They are tough as
whip-cord, sober, docile, and terribly in earnest. They are
orderly, decent, and reputable. They need no sentries, and none
are placed; they never get drunk, they are not riotous, and the
barrack gates are never infested by those hordes of soldiers'
women."
He paused and puffed at his cigar thoughtfully.
"They are such soldiers as the world has not yet seen. Marching?
I saw them striding steadily forward with the thermometer at
eighty-five in the shade, with needle-gun, heavy knapsack, eighty
rounds of ammunition, huge great-coat, camp-kettle, sword, spade,
water-bottle, haversack, and lots of odds and ends dangling about
them, with perhaps a loaf or two under one arm. Sunstroke? No.
Why? Sobriety. No absinthe there, Mr. Marche."
"We beat those men at Saarbrück," said Jack.
Grahame laughed good-humouredly.
"At Saarbrück, when war was declared, the total German garrison
consisted of a battalion of infantry and a regiment of Uhlans.
Frossard and his whole corps were looking across at Saarbrück
over the ridges of the Spicheren, and nobody had the means of
knowing what everybody knows now, the reason, so discreditable to
French organization, which prevented him from blowing out of his
path the few pickets and patrols, and invading the territory
which had its frontier only nominally guarded. I was in Saarbrück
at the time, and I had the pleasure of dodging shells there, too.
Why, we were all asking each other if it were possible that the
Frenchmen did not know the weakness of the land. Our Uhlans and
infantry were manipulated dexterously to make a battalion look
like a brigade; but we had an army corps in front of us. We held
the place by sheer impudence."
"I know it," said Jack; "it makes me ill to think of it."
"It ought to make Frossard ill! Had a French army of invasion
pushed on through Saint-Johann on the 2d of August and marched
rapidly into the interior, the Germans could not possibly have
concentrated their scattered regiments, and it is my firm
conviction that Napoleon would have seen the Rhine without having
had to fight a pitched battle. Well, Marche, I drink to neither
one side nor the other, but--here's to the men with backbones.
Prosit!"
They laughed and clinked glasses. Grahame finished his bottle,
rose, politely stifled a yawn, and looked humourously at Jack.
"There are two beds in my room; will you take one?" said the
young fellow.
"Thank you, I will," said Grahame, "and as soon as you please, my
dear fellow."
So Jack led the way and ushered the other into a huge room with
two beds, seemingly lost in distant diagonal corners. Grahame
promptly kicked off his boots, and sat down on his bed.
"I saw a funny thing in Saarbrück," he said. "It was right in the
midst of a cannonade--the shells were smashing the chimneys on
the Hotel Hagen and raising hell generally. And right in the
midst of the whole blessed mess, cool as a cucumber, came
sauntering a real live British swell with a coat adorned with
field-glasses and girdle and a dozen pockets, an eye-glass, a dog
that seemed dearer to him than life, and a drawl that had not
been perceptibly quickened by the French cannon. He-aw-had been
going eastward somewhere to-aw-Constantinople, or Saint-Petersburg,
or-aw-somewhere, when he-aw-heard that it might be amusing at
Saarbrück. A shell knocked a cart-load of tiles around his head,
and he looked at it through his eye-glass. Marche, I never laughed
so in my life. He's a good fellow, though--he's trotting about with
the Hohenzollern Regiment now, and, really, I miss him. His name is
Hesketh--"
"Not Sir Thorald?" cried Jack.
"Eh?--yes, that's the man. Know him?"
"A little," said Jack, laughing, and went out, bidding Graham
good-night, and promising to have him roused at dawn.
"Aren't you going to turn in?" called Grahame, fearful of having
inconvenienced Jack in his own quarters.
"Yes," said the young fellow. "I won't wake you--I'll be back in
an hour." And he closed the door, and went down-stairs.
For a few moments he stood on the cool terrace, listening to the
movement of the host below; and always the tramp of feet, the
snort of horses, and the metallic jingle of passing cannon filled
his ears.
The big cuirassier sentinel had been joined by two more, all of
the Hundred-Guards. Jack noticed their carbines, wondering a
little to see cuirassiers so armed, and marvelling at the long,
slender, lance-like bayonets that were attached to the muzzles.
Presently he went into the house, and, entering the smoking-room,
met his aunt coming out.
"Jack," she said, "I am a little nervous--the Emperor is still in
the dining-room with a crowd of officers, and he has just sent an
aide-de-camp to the Château de Nesville to summon the marquis. It
will be most awkward; your uncle and he are not friendly, and the
Marquis de Nesville hates the Emperor."
"Why did the Emperor send for him?" asked Jack, wondering.
"I don't know--he wishes for a private interview with the
marquis. He may refuse to come--he is a very strange man, you
know."
"Then, if he is, he may come; that would be stranger still," said
Jack.
"Your uncle is not well, Jack," continued Madame de Morteyn; "he
is quite upset by being obliged to entertain the Emperor. You
know how all the Royalists feel. But, Jack, dear, if you could
have seen your uncle it would have been a lesson in chivalry to
you which any young man could ill afford to miss--he was so
perfectly simple, so proudly courteous--ah, Jack, your uncle is
one in a nation!"
"He is--and so are you!" said Jack, kissing her faded cheek. "Are
you going to retire now?"
"Yes; your uncle needs me. The lights are out everywhere.
Lorraine, dear child, is asleep in the next room to mine. Is Mr.
Grahame comfortable? I am glad. The Prince Imperial is sleeping
too, poor child--sleeping like a worn-out baby."
Jack conducted his aunt to her chamber, and bade her good-night.
Then he went softly back through the darkened house, and across
the hall to the dining-room. The door was open, letting out a
flood of lamp-light, and the generals and staff-officers were
taking leave of the Emperor and filing out one by one, Frossard
leading, his head bent on his breast. Some went away to rooms
assigned them, guided by a flunky, some passed across the terrace
with swords trailing and spurs ringing, and disappeared in the
darkness. They had not all left the Emperor, when, suddenly,
Jack heard behind him the voice of the Marquis de Nesville,
cold, sneering, ironical.
"Oh," he said, seeing Jack standing by the door, "can you tell me
where I may find the Emperor of the French? I am sent for."
Turning on the aide-de-camp at his side: "This gentleman
courteously notified me that the Emperor desired my presence. I
am here, but I do not choose to go alone, and I shall demand,
Monsieur Marche, that you accompany me and remain during the
interview."
The aide-de-camp looked at him darkly, but the marquis sneered in
his face.
"I want a witness," he said, insolently; "you can tell that to
your Emperor."
The aide-de-camp, helmet under his arm, from which streamed a
horse-hair plume, entered the dining-room as the last officer
left it.
Jack looked uneasily at the marquis, and was about to speak when
the aid returned and requested the marquis to enter.
"Monsieur Marche, remain here, I beg you," said the marquis,
coolly; "I shall call you presently. It is a service I ask of
you. Will you oblige me?"
"Yes," said Jack.
The door opened for a second.
Napoleon III. sat at the long table, his head drooping on his
breast; he was picking absently at threads in the texture of the
table-cloth. That was all Jack saw--a glimpse of a table covered
with half-empty glasses and fruit, an old man picking at the
cloth in the lamplight; then the door shut, and he was alone in
the dark hall. Out on the terrace he heard the tramp of the
cuirassier sentinels, and beyond that the uproar of artillery,
passing, always passing. He stared about in the darkness, he
peered up the staircase into the gloom. A bat was flying
somewhere near--he felt the wind from its mousy wings.
Suddenly the door was flung open beside him, and the marquis
called to him in a voice vibrating with passion. As he entered
and bowed low to the Emperor, he saw the marquis, tall, white
with anger, his blue eyes glittering, standing in the centre of
the room. He paid no attention to Jack, but the Emperor raised
his impassible face, haggard and gray, and acknowledged the young
man's respectful salutation.
"You have asked me a question," said the marquis, harshly, "and I
demanded to answer it in the presence of a witness. Is your
majesty willing that this gentleman shall hear my reply?"
The Emperor looked at him with half-closed, inscrutable eyes,
then, turning his heavy face to Jack's, smiled wearily and
inclined his head.
"Good," said the marquis, apparently labouring under tremendous
excitement. "You ask me to give you, or sell you, or loan you my
secret for military balloons. My answer is, 'No!'"
The Emperor's face did not change as he said, "I ask it for your
country, not for myself, monsieur."
"And I will give it to my country, not to you!" said the marquis,
violently.
Jack looked at the Emperor. He noticed his unkempt hair brushed
forward, his short thumbs pinching the table-cloth, his closed
eyes.
The Marquis de Nesville took a step towards him.
"Does your majesty remember the night that Morny lay dying in the
shadows? And that horrible croak from the darkness when he
raised himself on one elbow and gasped, 'Sire, prenez garde à la
Prusse!' Then he died. That was all--a warning, a groan, the
death-rattle in the shadows by the bed. Then he died."
The Emperor never moved.
"'Look out for Prussia!' That was Morny's last gasp. And now?
Prussia is there, you are here! And you need aid, and you send
for me, and I tell you that my secrets are for my country, not
for you! No, not for you--you who said, 'It is easy to govern the
French, they only need a war every four years!' Now--here is your
war! Govern!"
The Emperor's slow eyes rested a moment on the man before him.
But the man, trembling, pallid with passion, clenched his hands
and hurled an insult at the Emperor through his set teeth:
"Napoleon the Little! Listen! When you have gone down in the
crash of a rotten throne and a blood-bought palace, then, when
the country has shaken this--this thing--from her bent back, then
I will give to my country all I have! But never to you, to save
your name and your race and your throne--never!"
He fairly frothed at the lips as he spoke; his eyes blazed.