THE OLD BONAPARTIST'S STORY.
'When I was young like you,' began the captain, 'I had my illusions. I
came of a royalist family which had suffered much by the Revolution, and
had stood up for the cause of the king as long as La Vendée was able to
keep a square league of ground to itself or a square inch of its flag
flying. But we had to give way; we could not conquer impossibilities:
Fortune always sides with the big battalions, as the Man used to say.
The domain passed from the hands of the Chauvins, and I, the heir of the
house, was obliged to take service with those who had helped to uproot
the family tree. I had no other alternative; my parents were dead; I,
the only scion of the ancient stock left, owed my life to the care of my
nurse, a brave peasant woman, who was married to a burly grenadier of
the Republic. They were kind in their way to the young aristocrat, and
they loved France. Poor Céline, to-day I could drop a tear over your
quiet grass-covered grave down in Burgundy: and Tricot, too, he was a
thorough soldier. He died on the retreat from Moscow the same day that
Schramm--you know Schramm, who is president of an army commission here
now--was made brigadier-general.
'Did you ever hear the story of his promotion?
'He was a colonel when we made that fatal invasion, and in one of the
bloody fights on our retrograde march, fell, pierced by a bullet. The
blood bubbled in hot gouts from his wound, but the tears came faster
from his eyes. The Man saw him.
'"What, weeping!" he said. "Why do you cry?"
'"Because I'm going to die only a colonel," said Schramm.
'"We'll settle that," said Napoleon, and made him a brigadier-general on
the spot. Schramm has not died since.
'But to return to myself. I showed a mathematical taste, and early was
sent, at the expense of the commune in which Céline lived, to the
Polytechnic School. They did not keep us long over our course in those
times, and I was shortly appointed to a corps on active service. It was
there I learned to love the Man who was then leading France to a higher
eminence on the path of glory than she had ever reached. He was the idol
of the army. I had my ambition, and I often recollected with a thrill
of pride and hope that he, too, was a mathematician, and commenced his
career as a subaltern of artillery. But, as I told you, I was only
sub-lieutenant at Mont St. Jean, and that day finished the soldier's
chances for that era in France--put a quencher on his aspirations. To
one passion succeeds another. Our life is a series of agitations, coming
changeful in aspect but regular in period as the tides of the
sea--sometimes smooth and glistening under a bright sun, sometimes
restless, sullen, heaving under the strong breath of the storm. To
glory, in my breast, followed love. I had met the daughter of another
Vendéan family in Paris, where she supported herself by giving lessons
in music. Her mother received me (she had known my mother), and
encouraged my little attentions to Caroline with her smiles. Alas; had I
been rich, at that time, what happiness might not have been mine, what
sorrows might not have been spared to her and me!'
Here the aged officer stopped and busied himself with his handkerchief
about the region of the eyes.
'But, sir, an officer with us who has to live on his pay cannot afford
himself the luxury of a wife. Caroline had no dowry, and I had no
position. If we had espoused each other she would have had to do without
a _trousseau_, and I certainly would not have been able to present her
with a _corbeille_. We loved each other, and we parted--not without
some sighing, and many wishes for our meeting again under happier
circumstances. I was very fond of my cigar, and Caroline's mother
detested smoking. It was a mania with her. She had an unaccountable,
almost diseased, aversion to the habit. One evening, Caroline, out of
play, induced me to light a cigar in the chamber while she was looking
out of the window. I can never forget the fierce, pallid face with which
her mother turned on me and ordered me to leave the room on the instant.
It was only by a plentiful sprinkling of tears from Caroline that her
heart was softened to accept my excuses.
'"It is his first fault, and I tempted him," said Caroline; "will you
not give him absolution, mamma?"
After a while the mother relented, but said she would not admit me to
the same position in her esteem again, unless I consented to accept the
penance she would impose on me. The penance was never to smoke again. I
promised. This was when the wreck of our army was being re-formed at
Paris, under Louis XVIII., and the allies who had violated our capital
were beginning to get confident on the news which each ship conveyed
from St. Helena of the hastening end of the Man whom Sir Lowe was doing
to death. There was no chance of promotion for us if he did not come
back; for the soldiers who loved Him, his death would indeed be the
setting of the sun of Austerlitz. I had long given up the expectation of
that marshal's bâton which every conscript fancies he carries in his
knapsack; but still I had the conviction that some chance of distinction
would present itself, even under the pacific Restoration, that might
lead me to a rank sufficient to maintain my beloved Caroline in comfort
as my wife. My regiment was ordered to Metz. The night I parted from her
I confided to her ear the idea that was before my mind, and she looked
such a cheerful, hope-inspiring look from her large liquid eyes into
mine as would have put fire into a breast of stone. It was the pure
lustre of a fresh innocent love, and as earnest that I accepted it as
sacred, I gave her my first and last kiss of holy affection. Her mother
reminded me at the door of the promise I had made about smoking, and
gave me a letter of introduction to a cousin of hers who was an officer
in the garrison to which we were ordered. This cousin, as I learned from
a comrade who knew him, was of a haughty, overbearing temper, and I was
in no hurry to hand him my credentials. About a week after my arrival I
was strolling about the fortification in the cool breezy twilight of a
sultry day, thinking of my future and of my Caroline, and looking up to
the stars in the mood of the poet, to whom the lover is so like. I tried
to shape out, in the light clouds that were flitting across the heavens
in white flakes, some clue to my fortune. There that pale star, which is
so small and distant to-night, but will go on steadily increasing in
brightness and size until it attains its zenith, is the star of my
destiny. At the instant I gazed on it a wanton scud shut it out from
view; I tried to laugh, but I couldn't help feeling as if it were a
presentiment of coming gloom. Then I turned towards a bank of cloud
rising fantastically on the edge of the far blue horizon, and in fancy
pictured to myself that a pair of jagged peaks projecting from its
surface were the epaulettes of a general which awaited me; and, still
looking, until my eyes had almost got as visionary as my mind, I framed
out of a loose irregular mass of fleecy vapour the beamy figure of a
woman, whom I had persuaded my senses into identifying as the genius of
glory.
'"It is our Napoleon who comes back to France," said I; "the soldier
will have his meat to carve again."
'At the moment a tall figure passed, and recalled me from my dreaming. I
walked on, but somehow I was melancholic. I couldn't shake off the
impression which that star, blotted out of sight as I looked, had made
on my mind. I put my hand in the pocket of my uniform and involuntarily
took something out of it. It was my cigar-case. Involuntarily still, I
opened it--there was one cigar left. I was depressed in spirits,
thinking sadly--and smoking, you know, kills thought.
'The bribe was strong. I forgot my promise to Caroline's mother, or
encouraged myself to look upon it as a mere puerile engagement to humour
a woman's whim, and lit the cigar. Scarcely did the red fire take at its
end, and the first puff of smoke escape from my lips, when it was pulled
out of my mouth and cast on the ground, and a tall man stood frowning
before me, as well as I could distinguish in the dim light. My hand
immediately flew to my sword-hilt, and I put myself in an attitude of
defence.
'"How dare you smoke here? don't you know the magazine is beside you?"
said the stranger, in a harsh voice.
'"I did not know it," I answered; "nor will I allow any fellow to make
the fact known to me in that brutal manner."
'"Fellow!" and the stranger laughed; "_ma foi_, that's amusing; and the
cockchafer has his hand on his butter-blade. Is your honour wounded, my
gallant sir?"
'"Your body will be wounded shortly if you don't endeavour to civilize
your tongue," I answered, enraged.
'"I positively think," said he, coolly twirling his moustaches, "that
the Gascon would fight. Does your fancy run on being impaled like a
frog? If so, follow me, Sir Braggart," and he moved off.
'I followed, wrath boiling in every vein. He stopped when he came to an
angle in the works, totally secure from observation from any side. The
moon burst out in full splendour; he cast a look upward, made a jesting
remark on the politeness of the higher powers in lighting folk to
kingdom come; and, throwing off his cloak, I discovered him to be a
staff-officer of rank by the uniform underneath.
'"Has your courage failed yet?" he tauntingly asked, as he dexterously
detached his sword from the scabbard.
'I was too vexed to speak. I said nothing, but fixed myself in the best
position I knew to receive his expected attack.
'"Ha! Is that it?" he exclaimed, "think of your _maître d'armes_, and
recommend your soul to God, if you believe in Him."
'At the last word he sprang forward, made a feint at my left leg, but
carried his weapon round in a circle in the one swing, and was bringing
it down on my sword-arm. But I knew the trick of old, and instead of
attempting to parry the feint, I turned my body aside to the left, and
held my weapon extended with a quick lunge to the front. He ran in
straight upon it with a force that made it shiver. His sword fell from
his grasp; his hands were thrown up over his head; he fell back, gave
one convulsive shake of the limbs, and his life's blood gushed over the
lips on which the taunts that brought him to his fate were yet
trembling.
'I do not know how I found my way to my quarters on that dreadful night.
The next thing I recollect was rising in the morning exhausted as if
after the delirium of a fever, and descending feebly to my breakfast at
the café opposite. A knot of officers were eagerly conversing outside
the door.
'"Chauvin," said a comrade of mine from amongst them, "have you
presented that letter yet?"
'I shook my head.
'"You may spare yourself the trouble; your friend was found at daybreak
in a corner of the ramparts, dead as a burst shell, run through the
right lung."
'I shuddered and felt as if my spine were turned to ice. Feigning urgent
private business, I sought leave of absence, and flew to Paris to
acquaint the mother of her whom I looked upon as my _fiancée_ with the
dreadful secret. She heard me, never changed colour, said she believed
me; his conduct was in keeping with his character, which was
head-strong; she did not blame me for killing him--it was done in
self-defence; but, added she in the end, this would not have happened if
you had kept your promise not to smoke. "The man who cannot keep his
word shall be no suitor for my daughter's hand--never again approach me
or mine----"
'"But Caroline whom I love," I cried.
'"Whom _you_ love," she said, in a cutting voice--"there, there, take
your mistress to your breast," and she cast an old cigar-case at my feet
as she shut the door in my face.
'I never saw Caroline again. I returned to my regiment, said nothing
about the fatal duel--nay, even wore mourning for my adversary, who was
not very much regretted. He left after him one pretty boy, a love-child;
I was not able to adopt him myself, but I watched over him and got him
admitted into the regiment as _enfant de troupe_--a brave, truthful, but
hot-headed, passionate boy. He died a soldier's death at the taking of
the Smala of Abd-el-Kader, under Lamoricière. His daughter has his
candour and generosity, without his ebullitions of temper. She's
somewhat giddy, perhaps, but very good-natured. Don't you think so?'
'How should I know, captain?' said O'Hara, who had been a patient
listener to this moving story.
'Ah, me! How an old man's brain wanders! Do you know,' he continued,
after a little hesitation, 'I feel the better for having opened my bosom
to you, my young friend, and I don't care for making half-confidences. I
may trust your discretion, I think,' and he smiled amiably. 'Berthe, my
Song-bird, the sunbeam in my house, is the daughter of the boy, the
grand-daughter of him I had the misfortune to slay at Metz. No, not to
slay,' he added quickly, correcting himself, 'I did not slay him; he
rushed on his own death.'
'Did Caroline's mother ever divulge the secret of your confession?'
inquired O'Hara.
'Never, oh no! She was one of the old nobility, the mirror of honour.
She would not look upon any casualty in an affair of the kind other than
as a matter of ordinary course, even of professional necessity, in the
life of a soldier.'
'And you never saw Caroline? Did she learn anything about it, do you
think?'
Captain Chauvin sighed.
'Sometimes I think she did, but I am sure she forgave me if she heard
all as it happened. She was too good in herself to think evil of anyone.
Ah! my dear sir, she was a woman. The sex, the sex! we, soldiers and men
of feeling, ought to have no commerce with it, but be let walk our ways
straightly.'
O'Hara was fiddling with a certain parcel which he had stolen from his
bosom.
'She married a rich politician, one of the damn---- pardon me, my dear
sir, one of the bourgeoisie class, and as Louis Philippe was king, the
bourgeoisie was everything, and Caroline's husband was a favourite and a
great man. I think she married him out of duty to her mother, to save
her declining days from poverty. When Louis Philippe was sent to the
right-about, the mean bourgeois politician went to the right-about too,
and his fortune with him. Poor Caroline had died in giving birth to
daughters, twins. Luckily, their nurse, one of the people, had a heart;
she kept a wine-shop at Choisy-le-Roi, and she took care of the two poor
orphans: yes, they were orphans, for that shabby Orleans rascal, who
skirted, was never a real living man, nor his master either. Damn----
pardon me, sir, but Louis Philippe was no king--he was a grocer, sir, a
grocer.'
'At best he was a usurper, but a singularly mild one,' remarked O'Hara.
'We shall not talk of him, sir,' said the captain; 'but now let me
complete an old man's confidences. I adopted one of those twins, she was
so like her mother in manner; she is my housekeeper. If Berthe is my
Song-bird, it is Caroline who keeps the nest tidy.'
'That superb brunette!'
'Ah! you think her superb,' cried the aged officer, pleased.
'Superb--that's right; she is the born image of her mother.'
'And the other,' pursued O'Hara eagerly, a dark suspicion taking hold of
his imagination.
A shade passed over the old man's face. 'Ah! I know nothing of her. She
was her father's daughter, not her mother's. She preferred the noisy
wine-shop to my quiet home, and three years ago she disappeared from
our sight altogether. But the night waxes late. I must be going. So you
haven't seen your friend since?'
'No, and I have anxiously desired to see him, to clear off some
obligations I am under to him.'
'Well, again good-night. I pray you don't be such a stranger as he; but
sometimes call up to Victor Chauvin's humble quarters. It gladdens his
spirit to converse with youth.'
O'Hara gave assurance that he would esteem it a happiness and an honour
to visit one with whom he had so many kindred sympathies.
'It grows late' said the officer, 'and my pair of pretty birds will be
anxiously looking out for me if I delay. Good-night, my child,
good-night.'
And as O'Hara escorted Captain Chauvin to the door, Pat accompanied
them, but only with a valedictory bark. The truth is he was too well
fed, and he was not used to it. With dogs, as with men, high feeding
begets indolence, and the indolent are not over-polite.