Ah! that glorious summer! Etiolles was a fire of roses, and the deep,

dark heart of the forest a furnace of life. The bees in the limes and

the wind in the beech-trees, the chirrup and buzz of a million happy

insects, filled the air with a ferment of sound, whilst in the open

spaces the pools lay blue as turquoises under the vast blue dome of

summer.

I spent most of my time with Franzius and Eloise. We would take our food

with us, and spend long days exploring the forest, which, like some

mysterious house, had ever some new room to be discovered, some passage

which was not there yesterday, some window opened by fairies during the

night, and giving upon a new and magic prospect.

They knew nothing of my impending encounter, nothing of the mystery that

surrounded me. Happy in their love, they did not guess my sadness, and

I, though their happiness filled me with pleasure, could not in the

least grasp it. Never having loved, I could not see the paradise which

surrounded them.

The blindest people on earth are the people who have never loved, the

people who have not yet lived.

But I could not see the paradise that surrounded them; and so the summer

passed on, and June drew near July.

Every few days I would go to Paris, moved by an unrest for which I

could not account.

One day--it was the 26th of June--I had just reached the Place Vendôme,

when Beril informed me that my guardian wished to see me.

I found the old gentleman in his dressing-gown, sorting and arranging

papers.

"I am leaving Paris," said M. le Vicomte, "for my estates in Auvergne,

where I have to put some things in order. From there I am starting on a

visit to England."

"To England! Why?"

"My doctor has ordered me rosbif," replied the old gentleman. Then,

rising, he opened the door of the room suddenly, and looked out.

"Beril has the habit of applying his ear to keyholes," he explained.

"No, my dear Patrique; it is not the state of my health that is moving

me to this journey, but the state of France. You know the story of the

rats and the sinking ship?"

"Yes."

"Well, call me a rat."

He went on sorting his papers.

"Now," he continued, "here is a list of the shares in which I have

invested your money. All good, solid English securities. Take it. Our

lawyer has all the bonds and scrip. I am taking them with me to England.

My address will be Long's Hotel, in Bond Street, London. What do you

propose to do? Follow me there, or remain in France?"

"First of all," I replied, "why are you going like this? Nothing is

threatening France----"

"Oho!" said my guardian. "And where have you been studying politics?

Down amongst the rabbits at Saluce?"

"I read the papers."

"Just so, and I read the times. I have been reading them for fifty-seven

years. But that is not all. Patrique, do you know that we have a

mysterious friend, who interests himself in our affairs?"

"I was unaware of the fact."

"Well, the fact remains. Now, what I am going to tell you is very

secret. I cannot even give you the name of our informant, as I am

pledged to an oath of secrecy. But the news has come to me through the

German Foreign Office. News has come to me that France is in vital

danger." He rose, trembling with excitement. "News has come to me that a

thunderbolt is going to fall on France, not from heaven, but from

there--from there! from there!" He almost shouted the words, pointing

with a shaking finger in a direction which I took to indicate Germany.

I have never seen anything more dramatic than the Vicomte's gesture--the

shaking hand, the intense expression, the fire in his old eyes, as he

stood with one hand grasping the dressing-gown about him, as a Roman

might have grasped his toga, the other pointing to the visionary enemy.

Then he sank back in his chair.

"Well," I said, "if danger is threatening France, I remain."

"That is as you please," replied he. "I go."

"But why go so soon? Surely you might wait till events are more

assured?"

"Yes," replied he, "and then they would say I had run away. As it is, I

do not run away. I simply depart before the event."

"But morally----"

"There are no morals in politics."

The terrible old man was certainly right in that.

I now see what he foresaw. Not only was France not fit for war, but

Paris was not fit to meet defeat. He foresaw it all, the Commune, houses

torn to pieces, the Column Vendôme lying on the ground, the muffled

drums, the firing-parties, the trenches filled with dead. He foresaw it

all, yet made one great mistake. He imagined the whole of France to be

as rotten as Paris. But then he was a boulevardier, and for him Paris

was France.

"Well," I said, "I am not a politician, so the morals of politics do not

affect me. France has been my mother: if she is threatened by calamity,

I will remain with her. I have eaten her bread; my father and my

grandfather fought in her wars; every penny I possess comes to me from

her; and were I to leave her now I would feel dishonoured. Besides, I

have business to attend to. You remember the appointment I have to meet

on the 5th of July."

I really believe the old gentleman had quite forgotten about the duel.

"Ah!" said he. "Lichtenberg." And he struck his knee with his fist. Then

he got up and paced the room in deep thought. Then, turning to me, he

smiled.

"Yes," he said, "I had forgotten. This affair will keep you in Paris;

but when it is over, please to remember my advice and my address in

England."

"When it is over," replied I, "I may be dead."

"Oh, no," said the Vicomte; "you will not be dead. At least"--and here

he smiled again--"not in my opinion."

CHAPTER XXXV

A LESSON WITH THE FOILS

He departed for Auvergne next day, he and Beril, and a pile of luggage.

A number of people saw him off from the station, including myself.

They did not see a rat leaving a sinking ship: they saw a jovial old

gentleman, with a cigar in his mouth, entering a first-class carriage, a

nobleman departing to visit his estates. He was to be back in a month,

so he said; and the last I saw of him was a jovial red face, and a hand

waving a copy of the "Charivari" to the little crowd of friends he had

left on the platform.

There was a touch of humour in that; and I could not help laughing, as I

turned home, at this man, so great in some ways, so little in others, so

kind, so heartless, so bad, so good; and such a perfect "shuffler." He

was by nature, above all things, an escaper from difficulties. I could

not help remembering how he had shuffled out of the painful duty of

breaking the news of my father's death to me; how he had shuffled out of

the responsibility of my education and bringing up; a hundred other

instances occurred to me, leading up to this last business of shuffling

out of France at the first scent of disaster. I am nearly sure that had

he been with the army he would have found some means of shuffling it

out of the trap at Sedan; at all events, I am perfectly certain he would

have escaped himself.

What perplexed me was the problem as to how he had obtained his news

from the German Foreign Office. Little as I knew of the methods of the

Chancelleries of Europe, a fool would understand that such vital, such

awful information could not escape from the innermost sanctum of the

Berlin Chancellerie--that is to say, if it were real. I was thrown back

on the hypothesis that it was false--a canard let escape purposefully,

one of Bismarck's wild ducks that were always stringing in flight across

Europe, set free by that marvellous man, the only man of his age, or any

other, perhaps, who could bring his country in touch with war for some

political reason, and then fend her off unhurt.

I returned to the Place Vendôme, where I found Joubert in a despondent

mood. The departure of Beril had taken from him one of his interests in

life. He had come to look upon his daily fight with Beril as an

accompaniment to the digestion of his daily bread. The two old fellows

had grown almost like man and wife, as far as nagging goes; they had

hurled boots at each other, squabbled perpetually, vilified each other,

and once had come to blows. Now that the separation had occurred, the

great blank caused by it appeared in Joubert's face.

Joubert had many good qualities; among others, he was a born and perfect

swordsman. When quite young, and stationed in Paris, he had put in a

good deal of his spare time at Carduso's School of Arms, then situated

near the Chinese Baths. He made a little money this way, instructing

young bloods in the art of self-defence; and he had learnt many tricks

from Carduso, that magician of whom it has been said that he was born

with a rapier in his hand. I owed a good deal of my own proficiency with

the sword to Joubert, who, even when I was a child, had shown me the

difference of carte and tierce with my little cane.

To-day an idea struck me.

"Joubert," said I.

"Monsieur!" replied Joubert.

"Attention."

"Ah, oui, attention," grumbled Joubert, going on with his business,

which happened to be the brushing of a coat. "I'm attending to the moths

that have got in your overcoat."

"Leave them alone, and see here." I took a pair of foils from the wall,

and presented one of them by the hilt.

"Catch hold. I want a lesson."

"There you go, there you go!" said Joubert, putting the foil under his

arm, and finishing the coat. "Always when I am busy, and monsieur's

clothes----"

"Never mind monsieur's clothes," I replied. "I want a lesson. See here:

do you remember telling me a trick of Carduso's----"

"A hundred. Which one?"

"A trick of pinking a man in a certain place in the arm, where the big

nerve runs, so that his arm is paralysed, and he can't go on fighting."

"Mais oui," said the old fellow, bending the rapier with the button on

the tip of his boot.

"Well, show me it."

"Aha!" said Joubert, his eyes lighting up, "la monsieur going to fight?"

"Yes; it has come to that, Joubert. It seems that a man cannot live

quietly in this Paris of yours without fighting for his life like some

beast in an African forest. But I don't want to kill my man--only to put

him out of action."

"And why not kill him?" asked Joubert. "Mordieu, what is the use of

fighting, else? Why take a sword in your hand if you only want to pay

him compliments?"

"Never mind. I don't want to kill him."

"And who is the gentleman whom you desire to scratch?"

"I will tell you that the morning of the affair, the 5th of July. We

meet in the Bois de Boulogne. I will let you drive me, and you will see

the business."

"Good!" said Joubert. "If one cannot watch lions fighting, let us then

watch cats. Attention!"

Joubert was a bit over seventy, but he had the dexterity and almost the

quickness of a young man. The spot to be reached is just over the bone

half way down the arm. A nerve--I think they call it the musculo

spiral--winds round the bone here. If you can pierce it, you entirely

demoralise your opponent. Just as a bullet-wound in the hand reduces a

strong man into the condition of a hysterical woman, so does a touch

here.

The button of Joubert's foil sent a tingle down my arm, proclaiming that

the spot had been reached.

Then I returned the compliment.

We practised for half an hour, and again on the next day.

And day followed day, till the 4th of July broke over Paris, cloudless

and perfect.

I was up early, and at ten o'clock I called upon De Brissac at his

rooms, the Rue Helder.

"Ah!" said he, "I'm glad to see you."

"How so?" replied I, for his manner indicated something more than an

ordinary greeting.

"Well, as a matter of fact," replied he, "I heard last night--in fact,

it was generally spoken of on the Boulevards--that you had arranged the

matter amicably with the Baron von Lichtenberg."

"That I had arranged the matter?"

"People say you have apologised to him."

"I apologise? Why, my dear sir, it was he who insulted me! He struck me

on the shoulder with his glove. How, then, could I apologise?"

"Not for that, but for the occurrence at the Mirlitons. So it is a

canard?"

"The wildest."

"Ah, I thought so. And I think I know who set it flying--De Coigny."

"I would not be surprised; he is an old enemy of mine."

"I am certain of it," said De Brissac, "For M. de Champfleury, who is

acting with me also as your second, told me that the report came to a

friend of his from the mouth of M. de Coigny."

"De Brissac," I said, "bring with you another friend--someone not

indisposed to De Coigny--to-morrow."

"Why?"

"M. de Coigny----" Then I stopped, for the determination I had come to

was of such a nature that I thought it best to leave the declaration of

it till we were on the ground.

"Why?" asked again De Brissac.

"Oh, just as a spectator. It will be worth his while, for, if I mistake

not, there will be something worth seeing to-morrow morning at seven

o'clock in the Avenue of the Minimes, just by the pond, for that is, I

believe, our place of meeting."

De Brissac bowed.

"I will bring a friend," said he.

Little did I think of the surprising thing that friend would see; and

little did De Brissac dream that the duel in which he was to take part

would be noticeable above all other duels in the history of duelling

even unto this day.

"Till to-morrow, at seven, then," said I.

"Till to-morrow," replied De Brissac.

Then I took my departure.

The Vicomte, before starting on his visit to Auvergne, had cleared his

money and his property out of Paris as far as possible, but he had left

the hotel in the Place Vendôme "all standing," as the sailors say. To

have removed his furniture, his horses, and his equipages would have

been to declare his hand; and if by any chance the storm had not burst

and France had emerged from her difficulties, the man who had taken

shelter, or, in plainer words, taken flight, would have found a very

curious welcome on his return to the beloved Boulevards. He had foresees

everything, even the chance of success, and he had prepared for

everything, always with his mind's eye on failure.

So I had a stable full of horses at my disposal, and a house full of

servants; all the bills were paid; there was unlimited credit, and I had

ten thousand francs in my pocketbook, which he had left with me in case

of eventualities.

I returned from De Brissac's to the Place Vendôme, ordered out a britzka

and a pair of swift horses, and told the coachman to take me to

Etiolles.

I wished to shake hands with Franzius and kiss Eloise again. I had also

determined to tell them of what was to happen on the morrow.

We passed through Bercy, and retook the same road I had taken that

morning in May when I had gone down to make arrangements for Eloise's

reception at the Pavilion. It was the same road, but dressed now in the

glory of summer.

Heavens! when I think of that road, so peaceful, the houses wearing such

a contented look, the flowers in the garden, the little children playing

on the doorsteps; that road so soon to resound to the tramp of the

German hordes, and the drums of war, the rolling of artillery and

baggage-wagons--when I think of that scene of peace and what followed!

And now it is all so far away, so many summers have re-dressed that road

again; and what of it all remains? Only an old story with which Father

Maboeuf bores the drinkers at the Grape Inn, of Champrosay; a tale

which old men in Germany tell the grandchildren; a song or two. Scarcely

that.

When I reached the Pavilion, Franzius and Eloise were not there. Madame

Ancelot said they had taken money and food with them, and "gone off."

They often did this, sometimes for a couple of days: the gipsy that was

in Franzius' feet required a change. This strange pair, who were now

more than ever like lovers, would "go off," spend days in the open, and

stop at village inns at night. Franzius had infected his companion with

the love of freedom. He was now famous. Another man in his position

would have been at Biarritz or Trouville, basking in the social sun, but

the only sun desired by Franzius was the sun of heaven. He refused to be

lionised. A Bohemian to the ends of his fingers, a gipsy to the soles of

his boots, brown as a berry with the sun and open air, carrying his

violin under his arm: had you met him on a country road, you would never

have suspected him to be Franzius, the composer of "Undine," who, had he

chosen, could, with a few sweeps of his bow on a concert platform, have

gained two thousand francs on a summer's afternoon.

"They did not say when they would be back?"

"No," replied Madame Ancelot; "but they won't be back to-day, or maybe

to-morrow: they took a ham with them."

"Ah!"

"And a chicken. It was in a basket that madame carried. They went a way

through the woods, but that leads everywhere; and one can't say whether

they passed last night at Champrosay or at some cottage. For myself, I

believe they sometimes sleep in the woods, and don't trouble about

houses at all."

To sleep in God's open air seemed the last act of madness to Madame

Ancelot, who, a peasant born and bred, was accustomed, by experience and

from tradition, to sleep in a bedroom almost hermetically sealed.

I had myself suspected the Franzius' of sleeping on occasion in barns

and hayricks, but I said nothing.

I was depressed at not finding the two people I loved most on earth, for

it was now quite beyond chance that I would meet them before to-morrow

morning; and after to-morrow morning---- Ah, well--after to-morrow

morning----

I left the Pavilion and walked into the château gardens. These gardens,

beloved by Eloise, kept our house in the Place Vendôme supplied with

flowers. They were very old. M. de Sartines and M. de Maupeon had walked

here amidst the roses, discussing State intrigues; the full skirts of

the Duchesse de Gramont had swept that lawn; and on that stone seat,

under the great fig-trees' cave-like shelter, the Princesse de Guemenée

had sat amidst brocaded cushions, and there had received the news of the

Duc de Choiseul's disgrace; and far beyond that went the history of

these walks, these lawns, these fountains playing in the sun; these old,

old walls, warmed by the suns of two hundred summers; rich red walls,

moss-lined, to which the peach-trees still clung as they had clung when

La Vallière was still a girl, when La Fontaine was still a man, and

Monsieur Fouquet held his court at Vaux.

No poet has written such lovely things as Time had written here in

those three lovely books--the rose garden, the sunk garden, and the

Dutch garden of Saluce; books whose leaves in summer were ever being

turned over by the idle fingers of the wind. Years of desolation had

completed their charm, just as years of death the charm of some vanished

poet's works.

Peopled with ghosts and flowers, voices of fountains and voices of

birds, walking there alone on a summer's day one would scarcely have

dared to call out, lest some silvery voice made answer, or some white

hand from amidst the rose-bushes, some hand once whiter than the white

rose, some voice once sweeter than the voices of the birds.

"And Marianne de l'Orme, how is she--the Austrian, and she whom they

call the Flower of Light? Diane de Christeuil, Colombe de

Gaillefontaine, Aloise de Gondalaurier, sweet-named ghosts: where are

ye?"

"Who knows?" would reply the breeze in the rose-bushes. "They are here,

they are here," the birds in the trees.

Here had walked, in times long past, the ladies of the house of Saluce.

This family, from which I drew half my being, had for me a charm and

mystery beyond expression. I was a Mahon, all my traditions were Irish;

yet I was linked with this family, of whom all were dead, this family

whose stately history went back into the remote past.

I had never seen my mother; I had never seen a living Saluce; they were

all vanished. Nothing remained but their pictures and their names, yet

I had come from them in part. They were my ancestors, and my likeness

had walked the earth, in the form of Philippe de Saluce, over two

hundred years before I was born; and my likeness in the form of Philippe

de Saluce had---- We know what he had done.

The doors of the château were open, and some workmen were busy in the

hall, repairing the oakwork. They were talking and laughing, and their

voices had set the echo chattering in the gallery above.

Marianne seemed mocking them; and as I gave them good-day and examined

their work her voice seemed mocking mine.

Then I left the men, and came upstairs to look at the place once again.

I passed from corridor to corridor, and at last found the turret-room

whither I had come that day with Eloise.

It was just the same, everything in exactly the same place, even to the

books on the table. I examined them: some were quite modern, drawings by

Gavarni and De Musset's poems; some were more antique.

Amongst them was a work in gilded boards, the history of the Saluce

family, written by one Armand de Saluce, in the year 1820, and dedicated

rather fulsomely to the then head of the house.

He was some poor relation evidently, Armand, and his language was very

flowery; and from his little book one might have imagined the Saluces a

family of saints and lambs.

I turned the pages this way and that, till I found what he had to say

about Philippe.

Philippe de Saluce, according to Armand, had died in consequence of an

unfortunate love-affair.

It did not say he had drowned his fiancée--that he was a murderer.

With the book in my hand I fell asleep, lulled by the drowsy warmth of

the room, and the softness of the cushions of the window-seat.

When I awoke the light had changed, and, looking at my watch, I found it

to be nearly six o'clock.

I rose, put the book on the table, and came downstairs.

The workmen had gone, and they had locked the door!

Not for a few moments did my position realise itself to me.

Every door I knew to be barred and locked; every window was also barred

on the ground floor, except those that were too narrow for a man's entry

or exit. No one would come till the morning. Madame Ancelot would think

I had returned to Paris by train, and send the carriage back. I was

trapped in the château of Saluce; and at seven o'clock to-morrow I had

to meet Von Lichtenberg, or be dishonoured for life!

A nice situation, truly!

I laughed out loud from pure rage and vexation, and the echo above

returned my laughter mockingly.

In my despair I tried all the doors, uselessly; they were solid as the

doors of the Bastille.

Then I remembered a window that was not barred--the stained-glass window

of the banqueting-room. It was fifteen feet from the ground, but had it

been more I would have risked it.

I went to the banqueting-room, and stood before the window, my only way

to freedom and honour. It was a lovely creation of stained glass. The

arms of the Saluces and the arms of the noble families with whom they

were connected stood there, the Lichtenbergs amidst the rest. The

evening light, shining through the stained glass, repeated the colours

vaguely upon the polished parquet of the floor. The light, shining

through the tender colours of the glass, brought with it an indefinable

sadness. To break this thing would be like striking the dead,

dishonouring the past. An act of vandalism beyond name.

This window was more than a window: it was a barrier between me and my

fate. The arms of the Lichtenbergs, the Saluces, the Montmorencies, had

drawn themselves up before me; it was as if they would stand between me

and the encounter of the morrow, but only as a menace. They could offer

no real opposition to my physical acts; they could only say, "Take

warning!"

Then, with the brutality of your kind-hearted man, who, condemned to

kill an animal, and loathing the business, strikes fiercely and blindly,

causing more destruction than necessary, I seized a heavy bronze bar

from the fireplace and attacked the window. The blows echoed from the

roof--smash! smash!--and the chattering of falling glass came from the

garden-walk outside; the leadwork which had held the glass fragments

together bulged out, and had to be broken out by incessant blows, which

brought down shower after shower of glass fragments from that part of

the window which lay above the line of my attack; and lo! when I had

once entered on the business, all remorse fled, and a fury for

destruction rose in my heart that I had never felt before, nor had I

even suspected my own capacity for the feeling. So, perhaps, Philippe de

Saluce felt when he destroyed his lover in a sudden accession of fury. I

do not know, but I know that from behind some veil in my mind a new man

stepped out, as Monsieur Hyde stepped from the soul of Monsieur Jekyll,

and that I smashed and smashed for the pure pleasure, and from the

vicious lust of destruction.

Condemned to act by Fate, I revenged myself after the fashion of a

tiger. Then, tearing a brocaded curtain down from its attachments, I

spread it over the glass-splintered edge of the sill, crawled over it,

lowered myself, dropped, and was free.

As I stood on the garden-path, looking up at the ruin I had

accomplished, I heard footsteps.

The workmen were returning.

"Ah, mon Dieu, monsieur!" cried the chief ouvrier, "we had forgotten

you. Not till five minutes ago did Jacques remember that monsieur had

not left the house when we bolted the door and came away; so we

returned, running all the way from Etiolles."

So my destruction of the window had been in vain, it would seem! Not so;

for, just as at a first debauch the demon of drunkenness enters a man's

heart, so at this orgie of destruction did the demon of destruction

enter mine.

"Joubert," said I that night, as I went to bed, "you have everything

ready for to-morrow?"

"All is ready," replied Joubert.

"You will call me at half-past five."

"Yes, monsieur. And your promise?"

"My promise?"

"To tell me with whom you are going to fight?"

"Ah, yes! Well, I have two affairs on to-morrow morning. I am going to

scratch Baron Carl von Lichtenberg on the arm, and I am going to drive

my sword through M. de Coigny's heart."

"Von Lichtenberg!" cried Joubert. "You are going to fight with a

Lichtenberg, one of that accursed lot!"

"I am going to fight with M. de Coigny. We have been enemies for years;

he has mixed himself in this affair; he has offered himself up as a

sacrifice----"

"Mon Dieu!" cried the old fellow, drawing back, "is it you that are

speaking, or the devil?"

I was sitting up in bed; and in a mirror across the room I saw the wan

reflection of my own face, and started at the expression of wrath and

black hatred portrayed there.

I had hated De Coigny for years, but not till now did I know my own

capacity for hate. Thus we go through life for years not knowing, till

some day some hand draws the curtain back, holds up the mirror, reveals

the other man, the Monsieur Hyde who has hidden himself at birth in the

heart of Monsieur Jekyll.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE DUEL

"Half-past five!"

Joubert was standing by the window, my bath-towels over his arm. He had

drawn up the blind, and the light of early morning filled the room. I

could have cursed Joubert, for he had awakened me from a most lovely

dream.

In a full blaze of sunlight I had been walking in the gardens of

Lichtenberg with Eloise; we were children again, and little Carl was

marching before us, beating his drum. Past the fountains, past the

Running Man carved in stone, we went, then into the shade of the forest,

led by little Carl towards some great but indefinable happiness.

"Where are they?" I murmured, half unconscious that I was speaking, and

rubbing my eyes as if to bring back the happy vision.

"Who?" asked Joubert.

I did not answer him. Who, indeed? Those children for ever vanished.

I dressed rapidly, and breakfasted. I felt both nervous and excited,

exactly as I had felt on the night of the production of "Undine."

Then I sat down to write a line to Franzius and Eloise.

I had divided my property, in case of my death, leaving half to my

guardian and half to Eloise. The will was with our lawyer, and I said so

in a postscript to my note. When I had finished, Joubert appeared.

"The carriage is at the door."

I sealed the letter, and handed it to him.

"In case of accidents," said I, "post this."

Joubert saluted, and put it in his pocket without glancing at the

superscription.

Joubert was grave. He had never saluted me before, except in a spirit of

half mockery--the way one would salute a child.

I had been a child in his eyes until now, but now I was evidently a man,

his master; and nothing seemed, up to this, to have divided me so

sharply from my childhood and my past as this suddenly begotten change

in Joubert's manner; and as I stepped from the hall-door on to the

pavement I felt that I was stepping for the first time into the world of

manhood; that all had been play with me till now, and that now, this

morning, the grim business of life had begun.

Joubert got on the box beside the coachman, and we started.

The early sun was bright on the trees and houses of the Champs Elysées;

the trees of the Bois de Boulogne were waving in the early morning

breeze; all was bright and all was fair; and it seemed a pity--a

thousand pities--to have to die a morning like this, to shut one's eyes

for ever, and never more see the sun.

As we drew near our destination, I felt exactly as I often had felt in

childhood when at the door of the dentist's: a strong desire to return

home, coupled with a strong repugnance to face what had to be done.

The avenue of the Minimes has vanished. It was a lovely place,

tree-sheltered and leading by a pond where the green rushes whispered

beneath silvery willows, making a picture after the heart of Puvis de

Chavannes. It opened out of a broad drive, and was a favourite spot for

the settlement of affairs of honour.

"We are first," cried Joubert, turning his head.

I stood up. Yes; there was no other carriage; in fact, we were ten

minutes before our time--a great mistake, for a ten minutes' wait in an

affair of this description is one of the most unsettling things possible

for the nerves of a man. We drew up near the entrance to the Avenue des

Minimes, and, getting out, I paced up and down, for the early morning

was chilly, though it gave promise of a glorious day.

Ah! here they came--at least, some of them. A carriage rapidly driven

was coming along the drive. There were three gentlemen in it, my

seconds, De Brissac and M. de Champfleury, and a tall personage who

turned out to be Colonel Savernac, the extra friend whom I had asked De

Brissac to bring.

We had scarcely exchanged greetings when another carriage arrived,

containing De Coigny and Baron Struve--who were the seconds of the Baron

Carl von Lichtenberg--and Dr. Pons, the surgeon.

The seconds of either party bowed one to the other.

De Brissac took out his watch.

"What time do you make it, M. de Coigny?"

"Five minutes to the hour," replied De Coigny.

"Ah! I make it the hour. My watch is set by the Observatory clock.

Still, perhaps it may have gone wrong. Make it, then, five minutes to

the hour. And hi! there! Move on those carriages. We are as noticeable

as the front of the Opera House; and should a mounted gendarme come this

way there will be trouble."

"Monsieur," said Joubert, jumping down as the carriages moved off, "you

promised."

"Yes," said I, half to Joubert, half to De Brissac. "I promised. You may

remain as a spectator--at a distance."

"A servant!" said De Coigny.

"No, Monsieur de Coigny," I replied; "a faithful friend, and a soldier

of Napoleon."

De Coigny turned on his heel, and began talking to Dr. Pons, who stood

with a mahogany case under his arm.

"Notice," I said to De Brissac. "De Coigny has turned his back upon me;

but within an hour's time, if I do not fall by the sword of Von

Lichtenberg, I will require him to turn his face to me."

"You are going to----"

"Kill him," I replied.

De Brissac shrugged his shoulders, and looked again at his watch.

"I make it five minutes past the hour, M. de Coigny."

De Coigny looked at his watch and nodded.

"By the way," I heard Champfleury say to one of my adversary's seconds,

"has anyone seen anything of M. le Baron Carl von Lichtenberg during the

last three months?"

"I have not," replied the gentleman addressed, "nor have I met anyone

who has. The Prussian Embassy people do not know anything of his

whereabouts: he has had leave of absence."

"Rest assured," said De Coigny, "he will arrive. He is not a coward."

"All the same, he is late," said De Brissac.

I looked at my watch. It was now ten minutes past seven, an inexcusable

delay on Von Lichtenberg's part, unless, indeed, some accident had

occurred.

Five more minutes slowly passed; the sun had now completely freed

himself from the mists of the Bois; the light struck down the path; it

struck the mahogany instrument-case under the arm of Dr. Pons, and the

hilts of the rapiers which De Brissac was carrying concealed in the

folds of a long, fawn-coloured overcoat.

"At twenty minutes past," said De Brissac, "I shall declare the duel

postponed. I shall take my principal home and I shall demand an

explanation, M. de Coigny."

Scarcely had he spoken than Dr. Pons, who had been looking along the

drive in the direction of the Champs Elysées, cried: "Here he comes."

A closed carriage, drawn by two magnificent Orloff horses, had entered

the broad drive and was advancing at full speed. I do not know how the

weird impression came to me, but the closed carriage drawn by the black

Russian horses suggested to me a funeral-carriage; and before it, as it

came, the sunlight seemed to wither from the drive.

A few paces from us the coachman literally brought the horses on their

haunches, the door of the carriage opened, and a lady stepped out.

A girl of about eighteen, an apparition so exquisite, so full of grace,

so bright, so unexpected, that the men around me, used to beauty,

world-worn and cynical as they were, said no word, and remained

motionless as statues, whilst I clung to the arm of De Brissac.

For the girl was Margaret von Lichtenberg--Margaret von Lichtenberg,

little Carl, Baron Carl, all these apotheosised! And as I looked, a

voice--Eloise's childish voice, heard long years ago--again murmured in

my ear:

"Little Carl is a girl."

Then I knew that it was she--the woman so mysteriously bound up in my

life; and as a man drowning remembers his whole past, in a flash of

thought I remembered all: Von Lichtenberg's mad attempt to assassinate

me, his dying words; the apparition of little Carl that had lured me

into the gravelpit and lamed me for life; Baron Carl von Lichtenberg and

his pursuit of me; my fight against Fate; my own words: "I will not--I

will not! I am a living man with a will of my own; no dead Fate shall

lead me or drive me." But I had never thought of this. I had played

against Fate, and now I felt dimly that I had lost. I had not suspected

this card which the dealer had slipped up his sleeve, and which now

appeared to confound me, this lovely being, whose voice I now heard

addressing De Coigny:

"I have come on behalf of Baron Carl von Lichtenberg. There is no longer

a Baron Carl von Lichtenberg. He is dead."

"Listen," whispered De Brissac, clutching my arm. "This is very strange!

I would swear it was the Baron Carl himself speaking. And she is like

him. It must, then, be his sister."

"On his behalf," she went on, "I apologise to M. Patrick Mahon; and I am

commissioned by him, M. de Coigny, in return for all the lies and evil

words you have spoken about M. Mahon, to give you this." And she struck

De Coigny on the face lightly with her gloved hand.

Then I woke up, and I felt the blood surge to my face as I stepped

forward. She turned to me, with her lips half parted in a glad smile;

our eyes met. God! in that moment how my whole being leapt alive!

Bursting and rending its husk, my imprisoned spirit broke free, as a

dragon-fly breaks free touched by the sun's magic wand. I heard myself

speak; I was speaking coldly and distinctly, addressing De Coigny, and

yet all my soul was addressing her in delirious unspoken words.

"M. de Coigny," said the voice which came from my lips, "we are, I

believe, old enemies. I have forgotten all that, but the Baron Carl von

Lichtenberg's quarrels are now mine; and if your craven heart will allow

you to hold a sword, I beg to take his place."

What then followed is like a dream in my mind. I heard the seconds

consulting. I heard Dr. Pons' voice speaking in a tone of relief: "So

then we are to have some music after all!" I held two warm hands in

mine, and I heard myself saying: "Yes, yes, you will stay here. I shall

not be long. Oh, no; I shall not be killed! I will return. To be killed

would be too absurd _now_. Wait for me."

Then, leaning on De Brissac's arm, I was walking down the Avenue des

Minimes, and now, sword in hand, I was fronting De Coigny.

* * * * *

He was backgrounded by the willows, all silvering to the breeze, and his

hateful face filled me with a fury that rose in my throat and which I

had to gulp down. He was the only thing that stood between me and the

heaven that had just been revealed to me; he was there with a sword in

his hand, as if to bar me out and cut me off for ever from it. He was

everything I hated, and the power of hate had suddenly risen gigantic in

my breast, shouting for his blood.

Then we fought, and I found myself commanding myself, just as a drunken

man commands himself to stand straight and be cool. Sometimes I saw his

face, and sometimes I saw it not, yet ever I knew that I held him with

my eye as a fowler holds a bird in his hand.

Had anyone been wandering by the pool of the Minimes, he might have

fancied that he heard the cry of a seagull--a single, melancholy cry;

for it is crying thus that a man's soul escapes when he is stricken

through the heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII

MARGARET

"He is dead," said Dr. Pons.

I looked at the rapier in my hand. There were a few contracting spots on

it.

Then De Brissac held my coat for me.

"His foot slipped, or you would not have got him like that," I heard him

say.

"Oh, it is unpleasant enough, but the thing is perfectly in order. You

need have no fear. Yes, yes; I will lead you to her. You will be at the

Place Vendôme, I suppose? There will be an inquiry, and all that."

And then I found myself holding again the two warm hands. I was not

thinking of De Coigny. I was in a dream. I stepped into a carriage that

was before me. I heard De Brissac close the door, and say to the

coachman "Paris." Then I felt a girl's arm round my neck.

"Toto," said a voice, "do you remember the white rabbit with the green

eyes?"

The killing of De Coigny had blinded me, maddened me, and drawn from

some distant past into full birth all sorts of strange and hitherto

unknown attributes of myself.

It was as though Philippe de Saluce, slowly struggling into new birth

during the last forty-eight hours, had, with the slaying of my

adversary, suddenly become full born.

It was necessary for me to kill, it seems, before he could find speech

and thought, and stand fully reincarnated.

"Oh, far beyond that--far beyond that!" I murmured, not knowing fully

what I said or what I meant, knowing only that mysterious doors had been

flung open, and that through them a spirit had rushed, filling me and

embracing through me the woman at my side.

"I know," she said. And for a moment spoke no more.

In those two words she told all. It was as though she had said: "I know

all. You are Philippe and I am Margaret. All is forgiven between us. Let

us forget. What matters that old crime of long ago? We are reborn, we

are young again, and the world is fair."

"Let us forget," I murmured, as if in answer to these words which,

though unspoken by her lips, were heard by my spirit.

"I have forgotten," she replied. "I never remembered--or only in part.

Let us talk of that time----"

"When we were children?"

"Yes. Do you remember----"

"Do I remember! Where is Gretel?"

"She is dead. I must tell you all; but we are nearing Paris. Cannot we

go anywhere--some place where we can talk and be alone?"

"Yes." I remembered that Franzius and Eloise were away, and that we

could go to the Pavilion. I drew the check-string, and told the driver

to take the road to Etiolles.

As I drew back into the carriage her hand slipped over my shoulder, and

her arm round my neck again.

* * * * *

"You know," she said, "that time when you left I nearly forgot you. I

would have forgotten you entirely but for Gretel, who always kept making

me remember, telling me to beware of you, till you became my nightmare.

After the death of my father, Gretel took entire charge of me. I did not

know that I was a girl: I never thought of the thing. I was dressed as a

boy, I had tutors, the jägers took me hunting. Yes; you were my

nightmare. I used to dream that you were running after me through the

woods to kill me. All that was at night; but once--one afternoon, I fell

asleep, and you nearly did kill me. It was only a dream, you know."

"Tell me about it."

"I was walking through a wood, and you were following to kill me, and I

hid behind some bushes. But you saw me, and came after me, and I heard

you falling into a pit. I looked into the pit, and you were lying there.

Then I awoke."

"Go on--go on! Tell me about yourself. Don't say any more about that."

"Ah, yes, myself! Well, I grew up. Gretel died three years ago; and when

she was dying she told me I was a girl. She told me all, and gave me the

choice of going through life as what I am now, or as a man."

"And you?"

"Chose to be a man." She laughed deliciously, and under her breath.

"These things"--and she plucked at her dress--"feel strange on me even

now. Oh, yes, I chose to be a man. Who would not, if the choice were

given them? And no one knew. The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg was quite a

great person. He was admired by all the ladies. He was so ornamental

that he was sent as attaché to the Embassy at Paris. Yes; and he went to

the ball at the Marquis d'Harmonville's----"

"Ah, that night!" I muttered. "It was the beginning----"

"Of your tribulations," she laughed softly, and went on: "When I saw you

I was nearly as startled as you were yourself. I had all my life

determined that I would avoid you; but that night--ah! that night----"

"Well?"

"I don't know. I could not sleep. I cursed my man's clothes; and I would

have given all I possessed to speak to you dressed as I am now. Then I

sought you, and you avoided me. You insulted me, monsieur, at the

Mirlitons."

"Ah! why--why did you not declare yourself then?" I muttered, speaking

into the warmth of her delicious neck. "Think what we have lost--a whole

year nearly of life and love!"

"Why, indeed! Just, I suppose, because I was a woman, filled with a

woman's caprice; and the masquerade amused me, and I had my duties to

perform--and how you evaded me! I was invited to meet you at

dinner----"

"And I dined at the Café de Paris with a fool."

"Just so. And you ran away to Nice. Then the idea came to me--ah, yes,

it was a fine idea!--I will _make_ him meet me. And I slapped you on the

shoulder with a glove."

"Yes; when I was seated in the box at the opera with a lady."

"Yes. Who was the lady? I was too excited to see anyone but you."

"She was----" Then I paused. And then I said--why, I can never

tell--"She was a friend of my guardian."

"Next morning I received your challenge. How I laughed to myself!"

"But tell me one thing. Why did you stipulate for a delay of three

months before the duel?"

She laughed again.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes."

"Because I wanted time--to--to----"

"Yes?"

"To let my hair grow. Do you like it?" She drew a long pin from her hat,

removed her hat, and showed her perfect head and the coils of

night-black hair.

"Oh! Do I like it?"

"Well--kiss it."

* * * * *

"We must never part again."

"We need never," said she. "I am yours. I am not existent in the world.

The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg is dead: he died when I put on these

things. There is no one to trouble us!"

"Look!" I said. "This is Etiolles."

* * * * *

I had as completely forgotten Franzius and Eloise as though they had

never existed. Madame Ancelot seemed strange; and the Pavilion a place

which I recognised, but which had no part in my new life.

Sitting opposite to my companion at table--for we had a déjeûner under

the big chestnut-tree--I could contemplate her at my leisure. Surely God

had never created a more lovely and perfect woman. Eyelashes long and

black, up curved, and tipped with brown; violet-grey eyes. Ah, yes; I do

not care to think of them now. I only care to remember that voice and

smile, that ineffable expression, all that told of the existence of the

beautiful spirit that Time might never touch nor Death destroy.

From the forest came the wood-doves' song to the immortal and

ever-weeping Susie. We could hear the birds in the château gardens, and

a bell from some village church ringing the Angelus--faint, far away,

robbed of its harshness by the vast and sunlit silence. She seemed the

soul of all that music, all that silence, all that sweetness; and she

was mine, entirely and for ever. We were beyond convention and law, as

were Adam and Eve.

"And you know," said she, as if reading my thoughts, "I am nobody--I

have not even a name. Yesterday I was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, with

great estates. Now, who am I? And my great estates----" She opened a

purse, in which lay a few louis. "Here they are."

I laughed, and put the little purse into my pocket.

"Tell me," I said; "where were you when you were coming out of your

chrysalis? When you were changing--all these three months?"

"I--I was at Tours. The Baron von Lichtenberg received three months'

foreign leave, and went to Tours. Oh, the complications! And the

dressmakers! I did not even know at first how to wear these things. Do

they fit me?"

"Do they fit you!"

I rose, and we crossed the drawbridge. As she passed over it, she paused

and gazed at the water.

"How cool it looks! How dark and deep! Do you remember the pool at

Lichtenberg?"

"And how I pushed you in. Do you remember the little drum?"

"And the child with the golden hair--Eloise. She called you Toto. I have

always called you Toto since, M. Patrick Mahon."

"Call me it still," I said. "I love anything that reminds me of my

past--of our past. Come, let us go into the woods, as we went that day."

She laughed at the recollection of the little Pomeranian grenadier.

"We were children then," said she.

I looked at her. In the shadow of the trees, in the broad drive where we

stood, she might have been a ghost from that time when La Vallière was

a girl, when La Fontaine was a man, and Monsieur Fouquet held his court

at Vaux.

Though of the fashion of the day, her dress had that grace which the

wearer alone can give; and, as I looked at her, the forest sighed deeply

from its cool, green heart, the boughs tossed, showering lights upon us,

and the laughter of the birds followed the wind.

"We were children then," said I, "but we are not children now." I took

both her hands, and held her soul to mine for a moment in a kiss that

has not ended yet.

* * * * *

Where the beech-glades give place to the tall pines--the fragrant pines,

whose song sounds for ever like the sea on a distant strand--we sat down

on a bank, which in spring would be mist-blue with violets.

"I have never kissed anyone before. Have you?" she asked.

"No one."

"Never loved anyone?" She rested her hands on my shoulders, and looked

into my eyes.

"Never."

"For," said she, "if you had----"

"Yes?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I do not know my own thoughts. Sometimes I act

and do things that seem strange to me afterwards. I made you meet me

this morning out of caprice. I teased you, following you as I did to

Nice, dressed as I was, from caprice. That is not me. There is something

wicked and wayward in me that I cannot understand. Had it not been for

me you would not have killed that man this morning."

I had not thought of De Coigny till now; and the remembrance of him

lying there dead in the arms of Dr. Pons came like a gloomy stain across

my mind. But it soon passed.

"We would have fought in any case," said I, "inevitably."

She sighed, as if relieved.

"He was a bad man," she said. "He deserved to die for the things he said

about you to me. It was partly on that account that I arranged all that

this morning, so that I might insult him before those men; but I never

thought it would end as it did."

"Do you know," said I, "when I killed him it was as if the blood which I

shed had baptised me into a new life! My full love for you only awoke

then. It was as if some spirit out of the past that had loved you for

ages had suddenly been born completely."

"Don't!" she said. "I hate to think of that. Let the past be gone for

ever. You are yourself, alive and warm. You are my sun, my life, the air

I breathe. You have been kept for me untouched. Oh, how I love you!

"Listen!" she said, freeing her lips from mine, and casting her

beautiful eyes upwards. "No; it is not the wind. Ah! listen! listen!"

From the trees came a sound that was not the voice of the birds. Far

away it seemed now, and now near. It was the spinning-song of Oberthal,

that tune, thin as a thread of flax, rising, falling, poignant as Fate,

and filled with the story of man--his swaddling-clothes, his

marriage-bed, and his shroud.

There, amidst the trees, coming from nowhere, diffused by the echoes of

the wood--for a wood is a living echo--heard just then, the song of

Oberthal seemed the voice of Fate herself.

I knew quite well what had happened. Franzius had returned. Madame

Ancelot had told him that I was in the wood. Wishing, no doubt, to find

me, he had sent the tune to look for me--the old tune that he knew I

liked so well.

It was then only that my past relationship with Eloise rose before me.

I had said nothing about it; I had even refrained from mentioning her

name. I had done this from no ulterior motive. I was not ashamed that

the woman I loved should know about Eloise. Had I not brought her to the

Pavilion when it was quite possible that Eloise might have returned? Up

to this my mind had been so filled with new things, so filled with

happiness and extraordinary love, that all things earthly were for me

not.

"It is a friend of mine, I think," said I. "A violinist. He stays at the

Pavilion. And now I want to tell you something."

"Yes?"

It had seemed so easy, yet now it seemed very difficult.

"I told you I had never cared for another woman."

"Yes."

"Listen! The tune has ceased. Well, there has been only one woman in my

life till I met you. You remember little Eloise at Lichtenberg, she who

called me Toto?"

"Yes." She had placed her hand to her heart, as though she felt a pain

there.

"Well, I met her again in Paris. She had grown up. She was very poor,

and I gave her the Pavilion to live in. She is living there now."

"Now!"

"Yes," said I, laughing. "And, see, there she is. Wait for me."

Franzius and Eloise had just appeared from the wood away down the drive.

It was fortunate that Franzius was with her, for now I could bring them

both up and introduce them. Their love for one another and their

happiness was so evident that it would be an explanation in itself.

I ran towards them.

Eloise was radiant; Franzius as brown as a berry.

"Eloise!" I cried, as I kissed her and wrung both her hands, "do you

remember little Carl? Do you remember saying to me: 'Toto, little Carl

is a girl'? She is here; she is waiting to meet you. Come."

"Where?" asked Eloise.

I turned, laughing, to point out the figure of my companion. The drive

was empty. The songs of the birds, the shadows of the trees, the golden

swathes of light, were there, but of Margaret von Lichtenberg there was

no trace.

"She has hidden herself amidst the trees," I cried. "Come."

But there was no trace of her amidst the trees.

"Margaret!"

I was frightened at my own voice, at its ghostliness, and the echo of

the sweet name that came back from the wood.

A wreath of morning mist could not have vanished more completely.

I am sure that just then the Franzius' must have thought me mad.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE DRUMS OF WAR

Oh, caprice of a woman! To leave me like that in a moment of anger and

jealousy, never to wait an explanation; to let fall what might be the

curtain of eternal separation with a touch of her hand; to step away

from me and vanish into that vast, vague, cruel land we call the world!

And I had held her so close to me! She was so entirely mine, the

happiest dream that ever mortal dreamt, the most mysterious and

beautiful.

She had taken the carriage which we left at the inn at Etiolles, and

returned to Paris. That we discovered; but beyond that there was no word

or sign to lead me.

I only knew that she was in Paris. Even of that I was not quite sure,

for she may have used Paris only as a stage on her journey into the

unknown.

But to Paris I came. I could not stay at Etiolles, even on the chance of

her returning. I must go where she had gone. And I swore in my madness

to find her, even though I searched Paris from the heights of Montmartre

to the depths of the Seine.

And then, when I got to Paris, I found my hands idle and useless. I did

not know, even, what name she had gone under during her metamorphosis.

She who had no name--this ghost from the past!

At times I found myself wondering whether it was all a dream, an

illusion of the brain. Whether I was mad. But actuality brought me to

reason on this point. I had to answer the inquiries following the death

of De Coigny. I had to appear before an examining magistrate, I and my

seconds.

Felix Rebouton was the magistrate in question, the same who, if my

memory serves me, conducted the inquiry on the death of Victor Noir.

He was a thin, tall man, in spectacles, a lawyer, not a man; a

procès-verbal in a tightly buttoned frock-coat.

And I had to face this individual, who seemed less an individual than a

roll of parchment, and, with my heart breaking and my thoughts

elsewhere, answer questions relative to my relations with De Coigny.

"We have always hated each other, since boyhood. He lied about me, and I

killed him," was my answer.

"This lady who arrived on the scene of the duel, and with whom you

departed; where is she?"

"Ah, if you could tell me that," I replied, "I would give you every

penny of my fortune."

"Her name?"

"She has no name."

"No name!"

"She is a ghost."

The man of parchment scratched his head and made a note, looked sideways

through his spectacles at his clerk and at De Brissac and the other

seconds who were in the room.

He thought I was mad. And he was not far wrong.

The inquiry was suspended for three weeks, and I was free to return to

my misery and the streets of Paris.

I lived now in the streets. They were my only hope. From early morning

till night I haunted the boulevards. Franzius had orders to telegraph to

my club and to the Place Vendôme should any news reach the Pavilion, and

the club porter grew weary of the inquiry: "Any telegram for me?"

Men began to avoid me as they do the stricken, the leprous, and the mad.

I must have seemed mad, indeed, for ever wandering hither and thither,

searching the crowded streets with eager eyes, scarcely answering if

spoken to, careless and untidy in my dress, a phantom of myself. Like

Poe's man of the crowd, I drifted about Paris, ever in the thick of the

throng, seeking the most populous streets.

Impossible to tell in what quarter of the city caprice might have cast

her, I sought her in all. Montmartre and La Villette, the Quartier Latin

and the great boulevards: I dreaded only one thing--night.

Night, when my search must cease; night and the pitiless gas-lamps, the

terrible gas-lamps. Then it was that light, the angel that all day had

helped my search, became a devil, contracting itself, and spreading into

a million heartless points to show me the darkness. Then it was that the

stars burning in the clear sky above the city became part of my sorrow.

All things bright and all things fair were leagued against me, in that

they fed the flame of my suffering; and the happiness and gaiety of

others became the last insult of the world.

Then it was that Joubert showed himself in his true form. Not one word

did he ever say to me, though my conduct, my manners, my disordered

dress, must have given him food for the deepest speculation and

disquiet. He would put out my clothes and attend to my wants, speak to

me about ordinary topics, never heed my silence or my harsh replies. You

see, he was an old soldier; he had seen men stricken so often that he

knew the language and the signs of real grief and real suffering.

I lost count of the days, and from opium alone could I get any sleep.

Absorbed in my grief, I took no heed of the events around me. I remember

distinctly in cafés and at my club hearing men talking of the

Hohenzollerns and the succession to the Spanish throne. Men talking

vehemently about a subject which was to me as uninteresting and as

unintelligible as algebra to a child. But I could feel the ferment and

unrest around me.

On the 15th of July, at ten o'clock in the morning, I was passing across

the Place de la Concorde, when a roar like the sound of a great and

distant sea broke on the summer air. It came from the direction of the

Rue St. Honoré. People were running across the Place de la Concorde, and

pouring from the Rue de Rivoli and from the bridges. The Champs Elysées

behind me had become alive with people; cabmen were standing up on the

driving-seats of their carriages, waving their hats and shouting;

windows of houses were alive and white with fluttering handkerchiefs;

and now, again and again, came the storm of sound, unlike anything I had

ever heard before, unlike anything I will ever hear again; wave after

wave, storm after storm, and through it all the drums of a marching

regiment.

The Ninety-first Regiment of the Line were marching down the Rue St.

Honoré, bayonets fixed, haversacks filled, drums beating, and colours

fluttering. Paris was marching with them. And then through the storm

came the cry uttered by a thousand throats: "À Berlin! À Berlin!"

"What is it?" I asked of a passer-by.

"War has been declared with Prussia!"

"With Prussia?"

"Bismarck----" I did not hear what else he had to say, deafened and

dazed by the roar that now surrounded me.

"À Berlin! À Berlin!"

War had been declared with Prussia. Oh, fatality!

Bismarck! At the name the gardens of Lichtenberg unrolled before me. I

saw them stretching to the edges of the pine forests. I heard the rattle

of little Carl's drum as he marched before us, the sound that had echoed

through the years, to be amplified and converted into this.

War! Red war! And then, curiously, as I stood gazing and listening to

the storm that was gathering to wreck the last of my hope, I saw

something which I had forgotten for years, and which now came before me

as a vivid picture: a great hand with a seal ring on the little finger,

holding and half caressing the tiny hand of a child. The hand of

Bismarck holding the hand of Eloise, as I saw it that day long ago in

the hall of Schloss Lichtenberg. The iron hand which was to crush the

armies of France and fling Napoleon from his throne.

I elbowed my way through the crush towards the Place Vendôme. My own

affairs were dwarfed, for the moment, by the magnitude of the event and

the furnace roar of the rejoicing city. Jubilant and ferocious, lustful

and bloodthirsty, triumphant as the blare of a trumpet, terrible as the

voice of a tiger, the gusts of sound swept the heavens. It was the voice

of the Second Empire, not the voice of a people; it was cruelty, lust,

and organised vice crying aloud to God for blood.

God heard it, and made swift answer.

I arrived at the Place Vendôme to find a surprise awaiting me.

Franzius and Eloise were there. They had brought luggage with them,

which was in the hall. The servant who opened the door for me told me

they were in the library, and I ran there to meet them.

"Toto," cried Eloise; then, holding me at a little distance and staring

at me as though I were a ghost: "What has happened to you?"

I caught a reflection of myself in the mirror above the fireplace, and

for the first time I recognised the change in myself. Haggard, white,

and drawn, my face was no longer the face of a young man.

"Never mind me," I replied. "Why have you left Etiolles? Have you any

news?"

"My friend," said Franzius, answering for her, "there is no news--only

news of war."

"Ah, yes," I said. "War. But tell me why you have left Etiolles?"

"I am a Prussian," replied Franzius; "and we are returning."

"Returning?"

"To my own country."

"You are leaving me?"

There was silence for a moment, and Eloise began to weep.

"Toto, can't you see?"

"Ah, yes," I said; "I can see--everything is going from me. Don't cry,

Eloise; I can see. Franzius, forgive me. I forgot. I did not know what

war meant till now."

Up to this I had seen war through the stories told in books. I had seen

war on the canvases in the Luxembourg and the Louvre. But up till now,

standing there in the library before Franzius, with his overcoat on his

arm, and Eloise weeping, I had not seen war.

Oh, yes; it is very grand: the long lines of infantry going into action,

the clouds of cavalry, the roar of the cannon, and the drums beating the

charge!

But that is not war. War is voiceless.

Yesterday we were at peace. To-day we are at war. Something has entered

into every heart and into every home; a million tiny fingers are busy

snapping a million bonds of union. Blow trumpets and beat drums how you

please, you cannot chase away the silence which has entered into the

hearts of men, or the foreboding that tells us the great curse has come

again.

"It is not even that we must go," said Franzius, "but that we must go at

once. We are not going; we are driven forth. My friend, we will meet

again, when it is over."

"When it is over," I said mechanically.

They had received their passports, and they told me of their plans.

Franzius was beyond the age of military service. They would go to

Frankfort, where he had some relations. He had plenty of money with

which to live quietly till "it was over" and the world could hear music

again.

I ordered a carriage to the door, and accompanied them to the station,

through streets packed and crowded as if by some fête.

The station was thronged, and the train for the frontier was on the

point of starting when we arrived. I have never seen such a crowd

before. Families and their belongings, small tradesmen, Germans who had

been prospering yesterday and who to-day, ruined and hopeless, were

being driven forth back to their own country to starve. The buffet had

been stripped of food; and when I thought of the long journey before my

friends and the chances of the road, my heart misgave me, till Eloise

showed me a basket that had been packed for them by Madame Ancelot.

Just as the train was starting, I jostled against a vendor of oranges

who still had a few unsold. I bought them and gave them to Eloise.

I could not help remembering the day we had gone down first to Evry, she

and I, and the oranges I had bought for her in the Boulevard St. Michel.

That day, in spring!

"Good-bye! Good-bye!"

Eloise had squeezed herself through the window beside Franzius; the

train moved away; the people who were leaving said a last good-bye to

the people they had left, to friends who had cared for them till war

came as a separation, to brother Germans who were bound to depart by the

next train. I never heard so mournful a sound as that when the great

train drew away for its journey into for ever, leaving me alone on the

platform.

I came back on foot. It was a long way; and as I passed the crowded

cafés, the crowds of excited and fever-stricken people, it seemed to me

that I was in a city whose inhabitants had at one stroke gone mad.

I found myself, for the first time in many days, able to note the things

around me, and to take some interest in them. The great upheaval had

shaken me in part away from my own especial preoccupation, the grief of

the parting with Eloise and Franzius had obscured in part that other

grief which had pursued me.

The great city had been stirred to its uttermost depths, as the great

sea is sometimes stirred by a submarine explosion. Dregs came to the

surface and floated as scum; and I saw people that day in the streets

that I had never seen before: terrible people, cast up from the purlieus

and the slums, dog-men and beast-women, such as insulted the light of

heaven during the Terror; faces that might have served Retzsch for his

picture of the fiend, or Calot for his fantastic devil-drawings.

Collette la Charonne, Mathurine Giroron, Elizabeth Trouvain, the capon

and the franc-mitou from the past, elbowed the bully of the barrier and

the fishwife from the Halles of the present.

At the word "War" Mathias Hungadi Spiculi rose from his long sleep, just

as he had risen at the word "Revolution." All the elements of the

Commune were there that day, shouting France to war, and ready to dance

on her ruins.

Even the bourgeoisie, the placid people, the café loungers, were

changed. The tiger-cat which lies at the heart of the Latin races, the

animal that spits, and snarls, and howls, was unchained at last; and the

joyful ferocity of the women was a thing to see and to remember. It was

the uprising of the pampered beast, the beast that had sunned itself for

years in prosperity. Long ages of insult might have condoned what I saw

that day, but the circumstances never.

Bands of women arm-in-arm, students, waving the tricolour, cabs and

carriages crowded with people driving nowhere, anywhere, so that they

could find a new place to shout in, girls with men's hats on their

heads, men with women's bonnets--it was Mabille, into which the beasts

of the Jardin des Plantes had broken; La Closerie des Lilas on an

infinite scale, roofed with sky.

And, beyond the Vosges, at his desk, quite unmoved, with a cigar in his

mouth and a folio in his hand, was sitting Bismarck, secure in

everything, possessed of everything, from the Erbswurst for the Prussian

cooking-pot to the guns that were to batter down Paris.

I have said little about my social life in Paris, but I have indicated,

I think, that my guardian and I were friends of the Emperor's; and I

mention it as a strange fact, and a fact that casts volumes of light on

his character, that now, in my desolation, deserted by my guardian,

deserted by Franzius and Eloise, deserted by everyone I loved, the image

of Napoleon arose before me as a person I would like to speak to. You

know just what I mean. There is generally amongst one's friends some

person, some homely individual, some good man or good woman, to whom we

go when in affliction for a word of consolation, or even just to feel

their presence. We look in and see them, even though we may say nothing

of our troubles. Moved by this instinct, I resolved to look in and see

the Emperor. To get near the Tuileries was a difficult business, and

even to pass the Cent Gardes at the gate, but once inside, things were

easier.

The Emperor had come to Paris from the Council at Saint Cloud, held the

night before. I do not know whether the Empress accompanied him or not,

but he was in the palace, and the great hall was thronged.

The excitement of the streets was here, too, though in a more subdued

form. Men were talking and laughing; everyone felt, or seemed to feel,

that some great good fortune was impending. As a matter of fact, the

war seemed to promise a "move up" all round. Honour to France, showers

of gold and decorations from those painted skies which Hope rears so

pleasantly above fools, and, above all, change.

Most of these men were money-changers at heart; corrupt, vicious, ready

to devour, true children of the Second Empire, descendants of the clique

of rogues which manipulated the coup d'état, sent Hugo to exile, and

flung France into the net spread by parasites, financiers, and corrupt

politicians. France with her foot on the neck of Germany seemed to

promise fabulous things to these. They had much, and they wanted more.

They craved for change--and they got it.

Amidst the crowd, which included some of the greatest names in France,

it seemed hopeless for me to seek an audience. But I knew the place. I

saw the Palace Prefect, Baron Vareigne. He had just shaken himself free

from half a dozen men, and was making off down a corridor when I tacked

myself on to him.

"See him? Impossible! For a moment?--just to pay your respects? Oh,

well, only for a moment, then. You will be a change from the others. He

just said to me: 'For Heaven's sake, let in no more generals!'"

And, with a click of a door-handle, there he was before me, seated in

full uniform, which did not seem to fit him, the eternal cigarette

smouldering between his lips, just the same old gentleman who had

received my guardian and me so courteously that day; just the same

useless, shuffling manner, the nasal voice, the half-closed eyes,

crafty yet kindly--rising to meet me with a little, subdued laugh, half

cynical, as though thanking God I were not another general. He bade me

be seated, and told me he was not in a hurry, but being hurried, and

looked over some papers that Vareigne handed him, and said: "Yes, yes,"

and flicked some cigarette-ash off his trousers. He talked to me for a

few minutes, asking after the Vicomte de Chatellan, and then dismissed

me, pushing me out of the cabinet with a kindly hand on my shoulder, and

a kindly wish to see me again--après.

This was the true Napoleon, the man kind to all, the injudicious man who

made those unfortunate children half drunk at the children's party at

Biarritz, the man who loved his little son so well, the man who would

put a fistful of gold in a poor man's pocket, just because it was a poor

man's pocket: I say, this was the true Napoleon. For what shall you

measure a man by, when all is said and done, if not by his heart? Ah!

how I would have loved that man if he had been my father!

When I left the Tuileries I remembered the fact that I had not eaten

since morning. I went to a café and dined after a fashion. I returned

home late; and as I entered the hall the servant who took my hat, said:

"A lady called an hour ago to see monsieur."

"A lady to see me?"

"Yes, monsieur. I told her that you had gone to Etiolles, to the

Pavilion of Saluce, and she ordered her coachman to drive there."

I remember, now, that when I started to see Franzius and Eloise off at

the station I had said to the servant that I might go to Saluce, and if

I did not return I would be there.

"What was she like?"

"Madame was quite young, tall, dark, and--very beautiful."

"Good God!" I said. "_Why_ did I not return an hour sooner! Quick! Send

me Joubert!"

CHAPTER XXXIX

NIGHT

Joubert found me in the dining-room.

"Joubert," I shouted, "the swiftest horses--quick!--and a carriage to

take me to Etiolles! You will drive me."

Joubert glanced at me and left the room like a flash.

I walked up and down. She had been here an hour ago--here an hour

ago--and I had been walking the streets unconscious of the fact! The war

which had threatened to destroy my last hope had brought her, perhaps,

to my door, and I had been dining at a café! I had come slowly home

through the streets, and she was here waiting for me! Was she leaving

France? Was Etiolles but a stage on the journey? And if she found that I

was not there, what would she do? Would she return, or--go on?

I sprang to the bell and rang it violently.

"The horses! The horses!" I cried. "God in heaven! are they never

coming?"

"The horses are at the door, monsieur."

I rushed out, seized my hat, which the man handed me; he opened the

door, and there stood a closed carriage; two powerful greys were

harnessed to it, and Joubert was on the box.

"Joubert," I said, "drive as you never have driven before. My life is in

your hands!" Then we started.

And now, as if called up by nightmare, the crowd in the streets, which

I had forgotten, impeded our progress. The Rue St. Honoré was like a

fair. As, sitting in the carriage, that was compelled to go at a walking

pace, I looked out of the window at the senseless illuminations, the

brutal or foolish faces, I could have welcomed at once a German army

that would have swept a clear path for me.

We passed the gates of Paris without hindrance, and then down a long

street lined with houses. It was after ten o'clock now, but these

houses, in which dwelt poor folk, were ablaze from basement to garret.

The good news of the war had spread itself here; the great national

rejoicing had found an echo even in this street, where men slept sound

as a rule, as men sleep who have passed the day labouring in a factory.

The horses had now settled into a swinging trot. Half a dozen times I

lowered the window to urge Joubert, but I refrained. There was still

twenty miles before us. If one of our horses broke down, it was highly

improbable that we could get another.

The houses broke up, and became replaced by trees; market-gardens lay on

either side of the way. Looking back, I could see Paris. Not the city,

but the furnace glare that its gas-lit streets and cafés cast on the

sky. We passed forts, huge black shadows marked in the darkness by the

glitter of a sentry's bayonet or the swinging lantern of a patrol. We

passed down the long street of Charenton, and then the wheels of the

carriage rumbled on the bridge that crosses the river, and we were in

the true country, with great spaces of gloom marking the fields, and

marked here and there with the dim, patient light of a farmhouse window

or the firefly dance of a shepherd's lantern.

Up till now I had watched intently the passing objects: the houses,

stray people, and lights; but now there was nothing to watch but dim

shapes and vague shadows. Up to this I had controlled thought, forcing

myself to wait without thinking for the event, but now, alone in the

midst of night, with nothing to tell of the surrounding world but the

rumble of the carriage wheels and the beat of the horse-hoofs on the

road, thought assumed dominance, and would not be driven away. Nay, it

returned with a suggestion that froze my heart.

"If she has gone to the Pavilion, she will leave her carriage in the

Avenue and go there on foot--she will cross the drawbridge. Ah, yes; the

drawbridge! Well, suppose that the drawbridge is up! God in heaven! will

she see it?"

It froze my heart.

What time would Madame Ancelot retire, and would she raise the

drawbridge?

I knew very well that the drawbridge was always raised, last thing at

night: the tramp-infested forest made this necessary. And I knew very

well that Madame Ancelot was in the habit of retiring at nine o'clock.

Still, to-night was a night in a thousand. Old Fauchard had, without

doubt, dropped into the Pavilion to talk about the great news of the

war.

I put my head out of the window.

"Quicker, Joubert!"

"Oui, oui," came his voice, followed by the sound of the whip. The night

air struck me in the face like a cold hand; and, looking back, I could

still see the light of Paris reflected from the sky, paler now and more

contracted in the vast and gloomy circle of night.

It was cloudy over Paris, but the clouds were breaking, and the piercing

light of a star, here and there, shone through the rents. The moon was

rising, too, and her light touched the clouds.

Ah! this must be Villeneuve St. Georges, this long street to which the

trees and hedgerows have given place.

I know the road to Etiolles well, but to-night it all seemed changed.

We passed hamlets and villages, and now at last we were nearing

Etiolles. I could tell it by the big houses on either side of the road,

houses with walled-in gardens and grass lawns, where young ladies played

croquet in the long summer afternoons, so that a person on the road

could hear the click of the balls and the laughter of the players. The

moon had fully risen now, casting her light on the houses, the walls,

the vineyards rolling towards the river, the trees and shrubs.

Suddenly, as though an adamantine door had been flung across the road

barring our way the carriage stopped; one of the horses had fallen as if

felled by an axe. The pole was broken. Joubert was on his knees by the

head of the fallen horse, dark blood was streaming from its nostrils in

the vague moonlight that was now touching the white road.

Inexorable Fate.

We were two miles from the château gates, but across the fields and

through the forest of Senart there away straight as the crow dies to the

Pavilion.

I do not remember leaving Joubert; suddenly the fields were around me

and I was running. My mind driven to madness had matched itself against

fate. "I will conquer you," it cried. "No dead fate shall oppose my

living will. Let the past be gone. I have sinned, but I have suffered.

If she is dead I will fling myself after her and seize her soul in my

arms forever."

"You are mine--living or dead, you are mine."

I must have shouted the words as I ran for I heard the words ringing in

my ears. Then fell on me as I ran Delirium, or was it the past.

I was in the forest now, the vague light was filled with shapes. A form

sprang at me, it was Von Lichtenberg. I struck at it and passed on.

The iron man of the bell tower struck at me with his hammer, I seized

him and he turned to mist.

And now a form was running beside me trying to hold me back, it was

Gretel, she tripped me up with her foot. I fell, she vanished and her

foot turned to the root of a tree. And the tree turned to Vogel.

He passed me as I ran outstripping him, and from the darkness before me

now broke a form, it was little Carl.

We were in the forest of Lichtenberg, the lake before us. I cried to him

to stop. For only answer came the splash of the water, the cry of a

child--the gasping of a person drowning in the dark.

Death lay in the water. I plunged to meet him and seized a struggling

form.

But the form was not the form of Death, but the form of a woman living

and sweet.

A moment later and I would have missed by all eternity the love that had

been waiting for me since the beginning of Time.

Fate is strong, but the will of man is stronger.

CHAPTER XL

THE SPIRIT OF EARTH

All that winter from the passing of the investing army to the time when

the siege guns began to shake earth and sky with their ceaseless roar

and from then to the spring, we remained at the Pavilion, Joubert and I,

unhindered, almost unvisited by the enemy. The Château drew them off. We

had left the doors open to prevent them from being broken in; perhaps it

was for this reason that so little mischief was done by the troops that

quartered themselves there.

The coincidence of Winter and War, the leafless trees, the eternal

roaring of Paris like a tiger at bay, the darkness and death in my

heart, all these are in my life away back there, forming a picture or

rather a dark mirror, reflecting the forms of Despair, Apathy and Ruin,

just as the dark water of the moat reflects the fern fronds of the bank

and the dark green plumage of those pine-trees.

Nothing could ever come right in the world again. The gloomy skies,

shaken winter long by the cannon said that, and the woods, leafless and

sad and sombre, where the squirrels and the hundred other wood creatures

seemed banished for ever with the birds. So the winter passed, till one

day--I had not been in the woods for a week--one day, following a path

near the round pond I came across a troop of ghosts; violets growing

right before me on the path side; and to the left amidst the trees,

gem-like blue, and dim amidst the brown last autumn leaves--violets. Led

by a few days' warmth a million violets had invaded the old forest,

grouped themselves amidst the trees and along the paths, heedless of

Death or the Prussians.

Even as I looked a breath of wind bent the tree branches like a warm

hand, showing a patch of blue sky above and casting a ray of sunshine on

the blue flowers below. The Drums of War, the trampling of armies at

grip with one another, proclamations, treaties, the pageantry of

victory, the sorrows of defeat, all in a moment were banished before

that touch of spring and the vision of these lovely and immortal

flowers.

Since then I have seen them growing amidst the ruins of Mycenae, in

Vallombrosa, at the tomb of Virgil; poets, lovers, warriors, and kings,

wherever sun may light or spring may touch their tombs, call to us again

through the blue violets of spring, but never have these flowers of God

brought the past to man so freshly, so strangely or with such poignancy

as they brought it to me there, growing absolutely in the footsteps of

Ruin, yet unruined and with not a dewdrop brushed from their leaves.

Ah, yes, there are times when the commonest man becomes a poet, as on

that day when dreaming of the death of a woman and the dragon of war, I

found spring hiding in the forest of Sénart just like some enchanting

ghost of long ago, half-child, half-woman, and answering to my unspoken

question, "War, Death, I have not seen them--I do not know whom you

mean; they passed, mayhap, when I was asleep. Monsieur, do you not

admire my violets?"

The sublime and heavenly cynicism of that artless question, the question

itself, these combined to form the germs of a philosophy which has clung

to me since then, a philosophy which, combined with love, has slain in

me the remains of what was once Philippe de Saluce.

Then day by day and week by week the forest, the fields, the hills,

became slowly overspread with the quiet, assured and triumphant beauty

of spring. Just as long ago, I fancied that I could hear the forest

awakening from sleep, so now I fancied I could hear the world awakening

from war and night. Communards might fight in Paris, kings and captains

assemble at Versailles, Alsace might go or Alsace might remain, what was

all that toy and trumpery business to the great business of Life, to the

preparation of the blossom, the building of the butterflies in the

aerial shipyards, the letting slip of the dragon-fly on his dazzling

voyage? What a hubbub they were making in the Courts of Europe as Von

der Tann's army, the King of Saxony's army, all those other triumphant

armies turned from Paris with bugles blowing, drums beating, and colours

flying, laden with tumbrils of gold and the spoils of war!

"France will never arise again!" said the drums and the bugles, "never

again," echoed Europe. "Ah, wait," said spring.

Behind the veils of sunshine and April rain, heedless of Von der Tann's

drums or the Saxon bugles, or the vanquished men or the vanquished

treasure; viewless and unvanquished, the Spirit of Earth was preparing

the future for a new and more beautiful France. Each bee passing from

blossom to blossom that spring was labouring for the greater France of

the future, each acorn forming in its cup, each wheat grain sprouting in

the dark, each grape globing in the vineyards of the Côte d'Or; each and

all were labouring for the motherland, to fill again her granaries and

her treasure house. Folly had brought her under the knee of Force;

drained of blood, half dying, wholly vanquished; in tears, in madness,

in despair, she lay forsaken by all the Olympians but Demeter.

Had I but known, those first violets in the forest of Sénart held in

their beauty all the future splendour and beauty of the New France.

In my life I have seen many a wonderful thing, but my memory carries

with it nothing more miraculous than those flowers of promise seen as I

saw them in the forest of Despair.

ENVOI

I am writing these lines in the rose garden of Saluce, ghostly, even on

this warm June day, with the memories and the pictures and the perfumes

of the past. How good summer is to the old! And how much kinder even

than summer is love.

Down the garden path towards me is coming the form of a woman. Once long

ago with the romantic extravagance of youth I pictured this garden,

haunted by the forms of lovely women long dead; but not one of those

forms was as romantic as this living woman, coming towards me between

the bushes of the amber and crimson roses.

How slowly she walks, and, see, she stops now and hesitates--ah, now,

she has seen me, and she smiles. Age has not touched her sight, yet she

is blind--for she is the only person in the world who cannot see that my

hands are tremulous and that my hair is grey.

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|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |

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