Front matter (continued 11)

Her voice broke, and the bright tears brimmed over her pure underlids. At the sight a wave of tenderness surged up in him, pure of all sensuous passion, knowing only the overwhelming desire to serve, and comfort, and protect.... He bent his head, and kissed the little hand, before he turned and went from her. When he glanced back, midway clown the wide dusty street of the hamlet of scattered cottages, Juliette was standing in the sunshine, looking earnestly after him.

LI

She could think clearly and remember again. The confusion in her overwrought brain gradually subsided. She went back to the fatal days when the news of the defeats of Wörth and Spicheren rushed shrieking through France and Belgium, and the 16th of August brought word of Bazaine's intercepted retreat from Metz. That day a young girl, sitting under the grisly wing of Madame Tessier at the table d'hôte of the Hôtel de Flandre, in Brussels, had risen up as pale as death and hurried from the room.

The picture was clear-cut, definite as a photograph. She saw the tables in confusion.... French guests uprising, the men exclaiming, and the ladies in tears,—Belgians sympathizing—Teutons exchanging congratulatory eye-glances, and smiles not at all concealed. As the white girl passed the chair from which a German cavalry officer had risen, he whipped the obstacle out of her way with an ogle and a bow. And Juliette, covering her eyes as though the sight of him scorched them, had fled past him.... As she quitted the salle à manger, the voice of Madame Tessier had reached her, saying grimly to the dandy:

"A civility from one of your nation at such a moment is an insult, Monsieur."

And Madame, with bristling mustaches, had also risen, and gone in search of her daughter-in-law elect, to be arrested at the foot of the grand staircase by a waiter with the intelligence that Mademoiselle had gone to her room to lie down, and begged not to be disturbed.... To which apartment, it being on the third floor, Madame Tessier—having wound up the twelve-o'clock déjeuner of hot meats and vegetables and salad with coffee and pastry,—did not follow her. Had she braved the ascent, this story would have ended in quite a different way.

Upon this day, that saw the battle of Mars la Tour, Juliette would not have met the elegant, self-possessed, ingratiating lady who had spoken to her so amiably on the previous afternoon. When—Madame Tessier being engaged in changing a French billet de banque into Belgian money—Juliette had inquired for letters at the bureau.

"'Mademoiselle de Bayard.' ... Unhappily there is not a single letter for Mademoiselle de Bayard..." had said the curled and whiskered functionary, taking an envelope from compartment "B" of the green baize-covered letter-rack, and handing it to this lady, who stood immediately behind.

Juliette had found it impossible not to see the address upon this letter:

"To MADAME DE BATE, "HÔTEL DE FLANDRE, "BRUSSELS,"

written in rather a vulgar scrawl. It carried extra stamps, and looked bulky. And the elegantly-gloved hand that was extended to take it, recoiled from the contact as though the envelope had concealed a scorpion.

The owner of the hand had regarded Mademoiselle de Bayard with a piercing and exhaustive scrutiny, even as she slipped the letter into a gold-mounted reticule, and snapped the spring tight. She had observed in soft and well-bred accents:

"Letters from one we love are enhanced in value, when the writer must lay down the sword to use the pen...."

Through a black lace veil so thickly flowered as to suggest a mask, a pair of brilliant eyes glittered at Juliette. What dazzling teeth were revealed by the crimson lips that smiled.... The well-bred voice added, with an entrancing touch of melancholy:

"Under other circumstances, to address Mademoiselle would be held a liberty—the speaker being a stranger. Yet as the wife of a French officer of the Imperial Guard,—I may be pardoned for presuming in my young country-woman an anxiety similar to my own?..."

"Ah, Madame," Juliette had said impulsively, "who is there would not pardon you?"

And she had looked with a young girl's honest admiration at the sumptuous form in the perfectly-appointed dress. When the lady had said, with brilliant eyes fixed on her:

"Were this letter not from my husband, I could wish it had been for you," she continued: "Does Mademoiselle know M. de Baye's regiment? The 777th Mounted Chasseurs...?"

"My father commands it, Madame," Juliette had proudly answered. And an animated conversation would have sprung from this answer, but Madame Tessier turned round rather sharply, and the lady, with a slight, graceful inclination, had glided rather rapidly away.

Later, Juliette had encountered Madame de Baye upon the staircase, and had received another of her brilliant glances, and another of her entrancing smiles. And, being lonely in this strange land, and athirst for interest and companionship, the young girl had woven a little romance out of this passing acquaintanceship.

Now as she reached her room, trembling and ready to sink with excitement and agitation, a woman stopped her in the corridor, who looked like a lady's maid of the better class. Well mannered, smart and discreet, she dropped Mademoiselle de Bayard an ingratiating curtsey, handing her at the same time a little three-cornered note.

As the messenger plainly waited for an answer, Juliette unfolded the delicately perfumed cocked-hat. This is what she read in a finely-pointed feminine caligraphy, with lasso-loops to all the "g's," "y's," and "h's," and "s's" of the prolonged, old-fashioned kind.

The maid had penned it at the dictation of her mistress, who for an unexplained reason preferred another hand to bait her hook. This is what Juliette read between her heart-beats, striving to check her flowing tears, and the sobs that rose in her throat:

"To you, Mademoiselle, so spirituelle, gentille and amiable, I am fated, alas! to cause the greatest grief. I have received the most terrible news of my husband's regiment. The reports of the Emperor's resignation are false from the beginning. The Army of Metz, Mademoiselle, has encountered Prussian forces.... Where I know not, but with terrible loss! My Victor has been dangerously wounded and conveyed to hospital at Metz. I fly thither on the wings of anxiety and tenderness to receive too possibly! his final kiss. Also I learn that M. le Colonel de Bayard has been taken prisoner.... My pen trembles as I write the words.

"Since I may not tender them personally, receive, Mademoiselle, my condolences and farewells. May Heaven protect you!

"Distractedly and devotedly, "A. DE BATE."

Madame was packing, said the maid upon whom Juliette turned with a breathless inquiry. Without doubt Madame would receive Mademoiselle.... And, having previously been primed with instructions, Mariette, whom not so long ago we encountered in Berlin, conducted Mademoiselle to a door upon the lower landing, and having knocked discreetly ushered the young lady in.

It was a bedroom crowded with trunks and imperials, none of which seemed to have been unpacked. The lovely lady of the veil was standing near the toilette-table in a thoughtful pose which did justice to her figure and the beauty of her profile. She had removed her veil and held it in her hand, as she changed the position of a jeweled comb in her hair.... She looked round as the door opened. Her brilliant eyes, ruddy-brown as Persian sard or Brazilian tourmaline, encountered the tearful eyes of Juliette. She advanced to meet the girl with effusive tenderness, crying:

"Alas, poor little one! From my heart I pity you!..."

She was not so beautiful, unveiled, as she had appeared behind her mask of black lace flowers. The handsome eyes were bloodshot and too prominent. There were faint dusky-red streaks showing through the purchased roses and lilies of her complexion; horizontal marks, resembling the congenital disfigurement known as "port-wine stain." And withal she was an attractive woman of fascinating manners. And her sympathy seemed genuine, and yet—for some incomprehensible reason, Juliette trembled at and shrank from her touch....

"You are too good to receive me—you who are also suffering!..." She tried to collect herself, and not cause distress. "How I pity you I cannot tell you! but at least you have the knowledge that you are returning to your husband's bedside. You will have the sad consolation of seeing him, while I..."

She broke down and sobbed, and the sympathetic Adelaide administered red lavender on sugar, while her maid kept guard on the landing to intercept Madame Tessier should she appear. The cock-and-bull story told the girl would hardly have borne the test of recital before a third person. But Juliette was young, and innocent and unsuspecting, and Adelaide was experienced in the ways of the world, and very old in guile....

"Courage, my child, and above all, have faith in Heaven!" It did not at all suit her voluptuous type, the heroic-pious tone.... "Naturally you will, knowing M. le Colonel a prisoner, leave nothing undone to assuage the miseries of his situation!... Have I guessed right? I venture to think I have!" She patted Juliette's hand and smiled in the drowned blue eyes, from which she gently drew the little soaked handkerchief. "Accompanied by your venerable protectress, you will instantly return to France. You will leave no stone unturned to obtain an interview with the Emperor—you will implore him on your knees to obtain M. le Colonel's exchange.... Presto! the Emperor will set the machinery in motion. He will give back three Officers to the King of Prussia—and Mademoiselle will have her father again! Is it not so, tell me, my little one?"

She held the girl's small hands in hers, and as she marked off each item of her program, she gently clapped the hands together, as in approval or consent. It was a characteristic trick with Adelaide when she meant to be playfully coaxing, and there was imprudence in employing it now. But with the first inchoate stirring of memory in Juliette, caution reawakened in Madame de Bayard. She released the hands, and said in a graver tone:

"Your gouvernante will not object to return?"

Juliette responded:

"Dear Madame, that lady is not my instructress. She is the excellent Madame Tessier, my grandmother's oldest friend."

Adelaide's lip wore the expression of one who sniffs at physic. Had she not been deafened with the recounted virtues of this very Madame Tessier! As she racked her memory for the date of a possible meeting, Juliette continued:

"She is very kind to me. But I fear she will not consent to return to France immediately. She is now upon her way to Mons-sur-Trouille to attend the wedding of her only son. All has been arranged. It is to take place upon the 22d."

A sigh heaved her breast, and her eyelids sank under the burning gaze of Adelaide. But Adelaide was still engaged with Madame Tessier:

"If she has seen me once—and it may well be once!—she certainly has forgotten me!" she commented mentally. Aloud she said:

"But you, Mademoiselle—you are free to return to our beloved country. Under my own guardianship if you will. Do not refuse!... Grant me the privilege!"

Juliette panted:

"Oh, if I might accept!... But this marriage is the obstacle! Because M. Tessier could not return to France for it, my father commanded that I should go. All the more urgently that War had been declared with Prussia, and the regiment had been ordered to join the Imperial Army at Metz."

Madame Adelaide repeated scoffingly:

"This marriage ... this marriage.... Is your presence necessary to legalize the ceremony?"

Juliette cried, opening wide her eyes:

"Alas! yes, Madame!—for I am to be the bride!..."

A shock visibly passed through the nerves of the woman who heard her. She started in her chair and grew livid underneath her powder and rouge. And the dusky marks on her fair skin started into sinister prominence. She was suddenly terrible, and haggard and old....

"So, that was de Bayard's plot.... To marry her!" Adelaide heard an inward voice saying. "Why did you not foresee that, knowing her of age? Nineteen—though she looks like a child, almost.... Her grandmother possessed that physique of an infant, in combination with an iron determination, and a regard of truth that robbed Life of every alleviation, deprived conversation of grace and versatility—reduced the very language of Love to the level of a notary's précis...."

All this passed through her brain in an instant. She controlled herself, rose, took the girl's hands again, and kissed her on the brow, saying with sorrowful melodiousness:

"My child, I comprehend! But while I rejoice at the happiness that awaits the daughter, I weep—forgive me that I weep!—for the father in his prison-cell. He is handsome, thy betrothed—and brave—and not a soldier? In a day like this when our France cries out for men?"

Juliette clenched her little hands as the languid irony stabbed her. She cried out, almost beside herself:

"Oh, that is what I feel, and for that I cannot pardon him! Why is he not a soldier? One could esteem him if he were! But oh! Madame,—I despise him, and that makes it the more terrible.... This marriage with a husband whom I have never even seen!"

"Ah, ha!..." she heard a strange voice scream through peals of laughter. "Ah, la, la!—what a clumsy game to play!... Fi donc, M. le Colonel!... So we were to be married in the style of the Old Commander.... 'Pas files a droite!... To the church, quick march!' Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! how droll!..."

She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, and said, controlling her frantic merriment:

"Sweet child, forgive me, I am a little hysterical.... The shock of Victor's wound ... my sympathy with your cruel situation.... How could M. le Colonel subject you to a trial so severe?" Feeling herself upon unsafe ground, she dried her eyes again and amended. "That, I comprehend, is a question between yourselves.... When this wedding was arranged M. le Colonel had no comprehension of what would befall him. Yet, for his sake, would it not be wise to delay? Engage the interest of the Emperor before it is too late to reach the beloved captive. Should he be interned in some fortress of East Prussia, how will even a daughter's tenderness reach him amidst those desolate plains—in those caverns of freezing stone!..."

She used her fine voice like a consummate artist of the theater.... Juliette had a vision of her father dying, fettered, ghastly and gaunt with famine, as an engraving of Count Ugolino in his dungeon she remembered to have somewhere seen.... And her secret horror of Charles Tessier, wedded with the feverish longing to return to France and work for the release of her dear prisoner, prompted her to decision now....

"I will go with you, since you are good enough to propose it. But Madame Tessier will never give her consent. Therefore, we must leave here without consulting her, and secretly.... I will write a letter explaining all. Money I have for the railway charges, not much, but I think sufficient!"

Said Adelaide, barely able to hide her triumph:

"Leave the purchase of the tickets to me, ma mignonne! I have a pretty little score to settle with M. le Colonel. We will settle our accounts presently, I promise you! What is the matter now?"

Juliette gasped:

"Alas!—I have no passport! At least, Madame Tessier has both ours...."

"Ah, bah!" said Adelaide. "We will borrow Mariette's.... She can remain here at pasture, and amuse herself with the waiters!..." She burst out laughing at Juliette's look of astonishment, and tapped her under the chin, telling her to go to her room, pack a small hand-bag with necessary articles, change into a dark, plain walking-dress, and rejoin her as soon as might be. She showed a small watch, its back thickly crusted with emeralds, saying:

"Hurry!... You have barely a quarter of an hour."

Then she opened the door, sped her capture with a beaming smile, beckoned Mariette, and this strange colloquy took place between Circe and her tirewoman:

"Did the old woman come nosing upstairs after the little Mademoiselle joined me?"

Mariette replied:

"She did, Madame, but I had locked both Mademoiselle's doors—that leading into the old lady's room, and the one that opens on the corridor,—and put the keys in my pocket. Here they are!"

She held them up, her sallow features expressive with the expectation of a reward earned by intelligence. Said Adelaide, impatiently tapping her handsome foot:

"And then?... And then?..."

"Then I accidentally encountered Madame on the threshold of Mademoiselle's apartment. Seeing her about to knock, I told her that I had seen the young lady descend the stairs, carrying a letter, which I supposed Mademoiselle intended to post at the pillar in the vestibule.... Hearing this the old lady thanked me, and bundled downstairs. She is asthmatic, judging by her wheezing.... She will wait a bit before she climbs up all these flights again."

Adelaide thought a moment, and then gave orders.

"Run you down, hunt up the old woman—help her to search everywhere for the little thing—you understand!... Half an hour will be sufficient to detain her below stairs. In less time Mademoiselle will be safe with me in my apartment.... Then you will give Madame these keys and a little note written by Mademoiselle.... Or—do you know of a waiter who would undertake to do this and hold his tongue?"

Mariette's expression became sentimental. She said, with her head tilted on one side:

"There is one, a Swiss youth, handsome and with the form of an athlete, upon whose fidelity and silence Madame can implicitly rely...."

"For how much?" Adelaide demanded, having no illusions as to the permanence of an unpurchased silence.

Mariette answered:

"I will guarantee Adolphe Madame's for the sum of twenty francs!"

Adelaide gave her a bank-note, and the faithful creature tripped away to split it. Despite youth, beauty and muscles, her Adolphe only got ten francs. But he carried out his instructions and handed Madame Tessier the keys, with a little envelope, containing a hasty line in the handwriting of Juliette:

"Dearest Madame," it said. "This moment I have received grave news of my father, compelling me to leave your side. This marriage must be deferred. Entreat M. Charles to excuse me! I embrace and pray you to pardon.

"J. M. De B."

The little note was penned on the corner of Adelaide's toilette-table. While Madame read it and fainted,—was revived by Mariette and the athletic Adolphe,—scolded herself into hysterics, came out of them and dispatched telegrams; tore the telegrams up and wrote letters,—Juliette was safely hidden in Madame Adelaide's room.

Later on, when Madame Tessier had left the hotel, with her luggage and the trunks and bandboxes of the vanished bride-elect—this time containing the marriage robe, crown and so on,—Madame de Baye sent for her bill and paid it—ordered a fiacre and drove to the station, accompanied by her maid, and her maid's sister, a demure little person in black merino, cut convent-style, whose head was draped, after the fashion of some lay novices, with a black silk veil.

The abduction was effected in the simplest fashion.... Not a soul turned to look at the dowdy little figure carrying the hand-bag, its slight proportions half hidden in the sweeping folds of Adelaide's silken train.

The station was crowded with newly-arrived French officers, men of MacMahon's defeated army, who wore their swords, having given their parole to their captors not to serve again in the War. Belgian officers fraternized with them,—Belgian ladies of the Red Cross were busily engaged in making much of those who were wounded.... Juliette's heart swelled at the sight of the bandages and crutches, and when the laden stretchers were carried past, the hot tears streamed down her white cheeks behind her screening veil.

The train carried a great many French passengers, as well as an English Red Cross column and a Belgian one. When the engine shrieked, Juliette started as guiltily as though it had been the voice of Madame Tessier, shrilly lamenting an absconding daughter-in-law.

They were off—launched upon the iron road that led back to France and freedom. The excellent Mariette remained behind. She would sleep at some hotel, procure a passport, and join her mistress later. Madame de Baye took the trouble to explain.

From the shrinking little figure in the corner of the carriage came a muffled sound in answer.

"Let her mope," Adelaide said to herself. "Thought is necessary to carry out my plan!"

You are to see her as Juliette saw her, leaning her fair round elbow on the padded window-ledge, and thinking, as the rolling plains in the vicinity of Brussels gradually gave place to valley and hill. All of fierce and sensual and treacherous that mingled in her complex nature with how many nobler qualities,—showed now in the beautiful mask of Adelaide, even as she sat brooding there.

She had knotty problems to decide, it must be admitted.... How best to play this marvelous trump, her daughter thrown in her way by chance, was one of these. That plot of Straz, for bringing the girl into contact with the Heir Imperial, might be combined with Adelaide's own original notion of employing the girl's influence to bring about a reconciliation with M. de Bayard.

The indifference of M. de Bismarck had quashed her tentative approaches on the one subject. The silent contempt of de Bayard had thrown the other affair out of gear. To score off both would be magnificent.... As for Straz ... she lost grip of herself when she thought of the Roumanian, murmuring:

"For revenge on him, who has robbed me of my beauty, how cheerfully I would give my soul!"

Juliette, from her corner, saw the change and shuddered. Adelaide turned sharply, to read terror in the girl's face.

"What is it, my chicken? Has anything frightened you?" ...

The terrifying Medusa turned to a maternally-smiling Cybele. She leaned across the intervening space of cushion, to playfully pat the knee of her charge. But the answering smile was as faint as the scent of frozen violets.... The spell of her beauty had been broken when her demon had looked out of her eyes.

"My nerves are not as strong as they were before—what happened in July," she told herself. "And that is another debt I owe to Nicolas. He would be wiser to let me forget him—if oblivion be possible."

Her looking-glass bore out each day what the Roumanian had said to her. "Never will you be able to look in your mirror without remembering me!"

And to keep her smart alive, the Slav had adopted a method of his own invention. Peculiarly ingenious and characteristic of Straz.

At intervals Adelaide received anonymous letters, containing inclosures, wherever she went and by whatever alias she passed. Envelopes directed in varying hands would contain doll's mirrors costing but a sou or two. Pinchbeck-framed ovals or circles of tin or glass, always reflecting the same thing.

A livid face of hate, streaked with those faint brownish red marks left by the tightened folds of the silk scarf that had so nearly strangled her. She had tried to laugh at this childish form assumed by the malice of the Roumanian. But the deadly cleverness of the thing lay in the fact—that it did what it was meant to do. The medieval torture of the falling drops of water was equaled by this Ordeal of the Penny Looking-Glass.

"Look, see, and think of me!" sometimes ran the doggerel rhyme scrawled on the paper wrapping of the doll's mirror. At other times:

"Charms that are spoiled hold no men entoiled!" would be the motto, or something equally stupid, dull and banal. The stupidity was becoming unbearable by its very repetition; by the certainty and regularity with which the laden envelopes arrived. Sometimes Adelaide felt entangled in a cunningly woven network ... surrounded by spies, sleepless and unseen.... Yet in the maid Mariette the Slav had found an accomplice clever enough to carry out his purposes single-handed. The cream of the thing was—Adelaide never suspected Mariette.

Treacherous herself, she believed in the devotion of this woman, who watched her anguish grimly, planting fresh thorns in her mistress's shuddering flesh. And every day or so brought another doll's looking-glass. The jeer that accompanied the last had been a vilely parodied verse of the child's dancing-song:

One may imagine the curl of Adelaide's lip on reading rubbish like this. But she read it more than once, and when she finally burned it, the accursed jingle, burr-like, stuck in her memory: for she it was who had been beautiful in the time that had passed for evermore—the gossip at the first sight of whose damaged, unveiled charms Love sighed and gave up the ghost.

LII

Meanwhile Juliette, nestled in her corner, stared from the window as Belgium hurried by. Bouillon, at whose station they left the train, showed a platform crowded with swaggering Prussian officers of the Crown Prince's army—some of them wounded, all upon parole. French ladies, entering and leaving the carriages, looked daggers at their enemies. Poisoned daggers at Adelaide, who, to her secret annoyance, was recognized and familiarly greeted by two of these Teutonic warriors, one a tall and red-whiskered Bavarian Light Dragoon, the other a brown-coated Hussar of von Barnekow's Brigade.

In vain Adelaide ignored the pair and redoubled the directions she was giving to a porter. The Bavarian coolly thrust the man aside, opened the carriage-door and jumped upon the steps.

"Meine gnädigste ... loveliest Countess, you won't give the go-by to your old comrade Otto? Here also is von Wissman, who claims a greeting from you!"

There was no gainsaying the boisterous good-fellowship of the officers. They superintended the removal of the luggage from the van, engaged a pair-horsed fiacre, and advised as to its loading. When Adelaide and her charge entered they followed uninvited, and deposited themselves on the front seat, incommoding the ladies with their long spurred boots and filling the vehicle with the odor of cigars and wine. Both talked much; the Hussar chattered incessantly; giving details of the various actions he had been engaged in, the chance by which he had been taken prisoner, the irksomeness of being interned in Belgium until the ending of hostilities:

"Not that it will be long before the War is over. We now hold Alsace Lorraine and the country north and east of Metz. The Crown Prince is making for Châlons; that will give the French Emperor an attack of hysterics. He has handed over the supreme command to Bazaine, and yesterday left Gravelotte for Verdun. That means Châlons, and after Châlons will be Paris. Badinguet has had enough of campaigning to last him the rest of his reign."

Adelaide asked:

"And the Prince?"

The brown Hussar puffed out his cheeks and squinted like a pantomime-mask. The Bavarian replied:

"Lulu went with papa, though we heard they had trouble to make him. He wanted to stop and kill Prussians—they're such horrible beasts, you know!"

"You droll beggar, Strelitz, shut up with your mummery," said the Hussar, leaning across him to pitch his cigar-butt away.

"Madame is fire-proof, why waste the stump of a three-mark Havana?" chuckled Strelitz, keeping his own weed alight. He went on, drolling for the benefit of his companion:

"This meeting, loveliest Countess, makes me feel a youth again—garlanding the grim temples of Bellona with the roses of the goddess of Love. You remember the classical lessons you used to give me only last winter, in your charming flat near the Linden Strasse?"

He ogled Adelaide with comic sentimentality:

"And the jovial supper-party at which I was present, when von Kessel, of the Guards Infantry, had the presumption to bring an uninvited guest!"

"Why apologize!" laughed the Hussar. "The pleasantest acquaintanceships are made by chance!"

"Ah, but this was not chance!" said the Bavarian, with mock solemnity. "It was one of those accidents that only happen by design. Von Schön-Valverden bored von Kessel frightfully to take him—left the fat fellow no peace until he gave in. The Count is reported to have paid the penalty."

"Aha! I can imagine what happened to the youngster!" giggled the Hussar.

Replied the comedian:

"He had three losses that evening. Each one more serious than the last!"

Adelaide shrugged, but she did not look angry; indeed, through her veil her disdainful beauty assumed a smiling cast.

"Three losses," the comedian repeated, "exactly as in my own case. For he first lost his money—so did I!—we were playing baccarat that evening—then he lost his head, and finally his heart!"

"Otto, thou wert always a tease!" protested Madame, but her ill-humor had softened into conscious coquetry, and her eyes beamed radiantly through the flowers of her masking veil.

"Or he would have!" continued Otto: "had not his mother, the Countess, come flying to the rescue and carried him off, nobody knows where!..."

Adelaide's eyes blazed. She said in a tone of haughty nonchalance:

"Count Valverden is now with the first Army, advancing toward Metz.... He says he hopes to win the silver sword-knot before the close of the campaign."

"You correspond?" the Hussar asked, grinning, as the driver signified impatience by kicking the back of the box-seat. Both officers got out of the carriage as Adelaide answered coldly:

"He often writes to me."

The driver, ignored, opened a little padded trap-hole in the front part of the vehicle. He clapped his mouth to it and shouted in the Flemish tongue:

"Geef my U address!"

Adelaide gave the name of the Hôtel des Postes. The officers kissed her hand and said they would call there on the morrow. They waved as the fiacre rumbled out of the station. Adelaide waved back, and issued quite another direction through the driver's trap-hole. And the fiacre went jingling through the old-world streets of the castled town that sits on the broad flowing river whose bridge was crowded with French and Belgian officers, chatting, smoking and discussing the news of the War.

Presently they were free of the streets, roaring with the tongues of many nations, choked with trains of French wounded, Red Cross columns, Sisters, surgeons, bearers, carriages full of visitors, and more processions of officers on parole. The fiacre lumbered at a good pace behind its pair of heavy-hocked Flemish horses along a wide, straight road, with plains on either side. And presently tall black wooden observation-towers marked the frontier where Belgian videttes and outposts amicably fraternized with French.

Kilometer posts of wood instead of stone.... The dear French language in the mouths of people. Breasting hills covered with woods, instead of fallow plains, intersected with level roads bordered with eternal poplar-trees.

With the joy and relief of the return, Juliette's heavy heart grew lighter. Her muscles relaxed. She could unclench her hands again. For the horror she had felt at the contiguity of the German officers and the loathing their familiar address had inspired in her had been well-nigh unbearable, though she understood their language but imperfectly. And this strange woman, her self-chosen protectress, who greedily fed on an admiration so coarse, Who was she? What was she? The poor girl shuddered as she wondered. Of women like Adelaide she had no experience, and yet she could not silence the voice of her doubt.

When Madame good-humoredly bade her unlock traveling bags, unstrap baskets and serve both with the food and drink she had lavishly provided, Juliette, declining all offers of refreshment, waited upon her, in silence so frozen that the patience of her protectress was severely taxed.

Unaided, Madame emptied a pint bottle of champagne, a fluid which temporarily elevates the spirits, and consumed the greater part of a cold pâté, with pastry and fruit, winding up the repast with a Turkish cigarette and a thimbleful of cognac from the silver flask in her traveling-bag.

"How dull you are—how cold, you tiny creature!" she grumbled. "Is it blood that runs in your veins, or melted snow? From whom do you inherit this torpid nature—without vivacity, warmth, or gaiety? Your father was not lacking in fire and passion.... Your mother——" Her long eyes laughed wickedly. "A feminine volcano, shall we say?"

A shock went through the girl. She visibly quailed and shuddered. Through the rumbling of the fiacre, she heard herself speaking in a voice she hardly recognized:

"My mother.... Did you know my mother? And—knowing her—dare you speak of her to me?..."

"Dare!..." Adelaide threw back her handsome head in a gale of laughter, curling back her crimson lips, lavishly displaying her splendid teeth. "I dare do many things," she said, still laughing. "Conventionality ... timidity ... these are not characteristics distinctive of me! Nor were they ever, to do myself justice.... Why are we stopping at this miserable place?"

Juliette, rendered dumb by growing fear of her companion, did not answer. The carriage drew up at a crossroads where a bridge arched the Givonne. They were upon the fringes of the village, near a country inn and posting-house. The driver had an ancient understanding with the proprietor of this hostelry that his beasts should break down here.

He now got down from his perch. Adelaide lowered the window. The man explained by the aid of signs that the horses were quite exhausted and they were yet three miles from Sedan. The proprietor of the inn assisted at the colloquy, extending the distance by another mile—hinting at possible dangers after nightfall. He could supply an excellent supper, a comfortable double bedroom—coffee at the peep of day, a vehicle and horses to take Madame and Mademoiselle to Sedan, or wherever they chose....

Finally the driver was paid enough to satisfy even his cupidity. Madame's luggage was taken upstairs, the ladies mounted to their room.

It was a low-ceiled, dampish apartment containing two bedsteads of uncomfortable aspect, with flock beds and dusty chintz draperies. Candles were lighted, put on the chimney-piece.... A fire of damp billets was set smoking by the efforts of the chambermaid, who was not disinclined to talk. French troops were encamped near. Let the ladies look from the window. Those lines of red and yellow lights glaring through a rising fog marked the sites of the soldiers' watch-fires. There were officers down below drinking wine and playing cards in the salle à manger. Also soldiers were drinking cider in the yard. It made one feel more safe, the presence of so many warriors. Indeed, Sedan was full of them, and all the country round about.... At Metz also, even more, with guns enough to kill all the Prussians in existence. The chambermaid felt confident that they would soon be driven out of France.

Still talking, she supplied hot water, and laid a little supper-table, the ladies preferring not to descend. A smoked omelette with herbs, some stewed pears, and a seed-cake furnished the supper, with a decanter of thin red wine.

Adelaide nibbled and sipped discontentedly. Juliette, being famished, made a meal. The billets refusing warmth Madame unrobed her sumptuous person, arrayed herself in lace and lawn, enlisting the services of her charge as lady's maid, and gracefully betook herself to bed. There she leaned on her white elbow, chatting while Juliette made her own preparations for the down-lying.... Her tigerish mood was past. She was amiable—almost affectionate.... She even praised the girlish charms reluctantly unveiled in the process of undressing; remarking:

"After all, you only want style and more tournure to do execution among the men. Some of them actually prefer coldness. They say it gives the illusion of innocence. Have you locked the door? Yes! Then double-lock and drag a trunk before it, and shut the window and slide the bolt.... Pull down the blind and draw the curtain.... One cannot be too careful in places like these!..."

"But we shall be suffocated!" Juliette cried in consternation, forgetting her deadly fear of Adelaide in her craving for fresh air. And then in the ghastly face the other turned upon her, she saw the unmistakable stamp of Fear.

"What have I said?... What has frightened you? Are you ill? Pray tell me!" she begged.

But Adelaide waved her off, biting her pale lips to bring the blood back to them, saying harshly: "It is nothing! A spasm. I have suffered from them of late.... Do not stare at me as though I were hideous. Give me my reticule.... There! on the toilette-table. How clumsy you tiny things can be!..."

Trembling, Juliette handed her the gold-mounted bauble. She took a little phial from it and a measuring-glass.

"Now place one of those candles on the night-stand, beside me. One will not do—give me both!..."

There was laudanum in the little crystal phial. When Adelaide had measured and swallowed her dose she breathed more easily, stared less fixedly, and those disfiguring reddish-purple streaks of Straz's handiwork showed less vividly against the creamy skin. Her suffused eyes regained clearness. She lay back among her pillows and declared herself better ... laughed at the terror still visible in Juliette's face....

"Now give me the little pistol and the pearl-handled dagger out of the inner compartment in my traveling-bag.... The large, deep pocket that fastens with a snap. What! you would rather not!... You do not like to handle them.... Fi donc, Mademoiselle! A soldier's daughter—and guilty of such cowardice!..."

Juliette winced at the thrust. It was her turn to bite her lips. She steadied them and mastered her voice sufficiently to say:

"I dislike to touch such weapons, because I have never learned to use them. And I will ask you, Madame, not to speak jestingly of my father to me!"

"Give me the pistol and stiletto, then!" stipulated her tormentress.

In silence Juliette took one of the candles, and set it near the traveling-bag upon the table near the supper-tray which the chambermaid had neglected to remove. She dived into the deep pocket as directed, and drew out a double-barreled pistol, mounted in ebony and silver, and the dagger, a costly toy of Indian workmanship. Something else fell upon the floor with a faint tinkle. It was a miniature set with pearls, that had rolled under the table. She laid the pistol and dagger there, took the candlestick and stooped to pick the miniature up. The portrait within the oval of pearls and gold was that of a girl-child of some five years. In the pictured face that smiled up at her with eyes as deeply blue as the spring skies of Italy, Juliette with a thrill and shock indescribable, recognized herself....

"It was the August of 1856. Thou hadst five years, and thy curls were as soft and yellow as chicken-down.... Thy mother used to say: 'Juliette will never be black like me!'"

The beloved voice was in her ears, with the very throb of his aching heart in it. De Bayard's daughter knelt so long upon the floor, motionless, staring at the horror, that Adelaide accused her jestingly of having fallen asleep.

"Get up! Wake! Give me my pistol and the dagger. I call them my babies—they sleep under my pillow ever since—never mind!... Ah! You have blown out the candle.... Light it at this one!—or perhaps you will have light enough without it?... Ugh! how cold your hand is, you chilly little frog!"

Juliette had blown out the candle so that she might unseen return the portrait to the dressing-bag. Had Straz's Sultana not been heavy with laudanum, she would have perceived this.

Now she yawned, stretched, smiled, declared herself actually sleepy, in spite of a mattress apparently stuffed with potatoes and stones....

Juliette was kneeling by the other bedside, a slender, rigid little figure in a white night-robe, striving to collect her whirling thoughts sufficiently to say her prayers. When she rose up, Adelaide asked her drowsily:

"Do you pray always?... And what do you pray for? And for whom, tell me, you secret little thing!"

The low answer came:

"I pray for the living, Madame, and for the departed.... For my father and—others who are dear to me; for myself and for my grandmother's soul!"

"For your mother?" Adelaide queried curiously.

"I pray that my mother may repent and be forgiven!"

"Ah-h!" Adelaide's inflection was sleepily scornful. "So you think her a terrible sinner, eh, Mademoiselle?"

The white-robed figure palpably shuddered, yet the answer came unfalteringly:

"It is not for me to judge—you, Madame!"

The clean riposte pierced the consciousness that had been dulled by the opiate. There was a dreadful silence, during which the girl could hear her own heart drumming, and through the noise it made, the hiss of her mother's sharply intaken and expelled breath. Then Adelaide shrugged, saying in a tone of drowsy irony:

"That is the most sensible utterance I have yet heard from you, ma mignonne. Well—the discovery was inevitable! Now, with your leave, I am going to sleep!..."

And she did, while the girl sat huddled among her scanty bedclothes, clasping her knees and praying for day. Torn between unconquerable aversion toward this bold, audacious, worldly woman, and the old yearning toward the beautiful lost mother, enshrined as a demi-goddess in a young child's recollection, you may imagine Juliette's mental and physical plight.

That one should shudder at the touch of her who stood in so sacred a relation was inconceivable.... That one should welcome it was inconceivable also. Dim conjectures as to her mother's past, as to her present mode of life, were evolved from the depths of the daughter's Convent-bred ignorance.... Would those German officers have looked so boldly, conversed so coarsely and familiarly, if they had not had reason to believe such approaches welcome, even agreeable?... The lives of Phryne, Thaïs and Aspasia were missing from the pages of Juliette's School Dictionary of Classical Biography. Yet when Cora Pearl had flashed past her in the Bois, or upon the Champs Élysées, driving four mouse-colored ponies in silver harness—wielding a jeweled parasol driving-whip—she had instinctively averted her gaze from the face of the courtesan.

Was Juliette's mother a woman like that woman? And why, within a few hours from their chance, accidental meeting, had she inveigled her daughter into a snare?... For that some sinister purpose had prompted the proceeding began to be clear to the poor young girl.

Love.... Oh, Heaven! was the look in those hard eyes born of the divine tenderness that a mother feels for her child? Was it not hatred that glittered from them? Was it not revenge that had concocted the plot?

The marriage with M. Charles Tessier, so keenly desired by the Colonel, had been quashed by his wife's kite-like swoop upon the bride. Was that story of de Bayard's having been made prisoner by Prussians true or invented? If false, whither were they now bound?... "Oh, help, Mother of Mercy, Mary most pitiful! Pray for me that light may be given me!—teach me what I ought to do!..."

Growing calmer the reflection occurred to Juliette that this mother so strangely encountered could not be all untender toward her daughter, or the pearl-set miniature would not have been kept.... This brought tears to her aching eyes, and some relief to her apprehensions. She determined, remembering that token of lingering kindness, that she would yield duty and obedience to her mother now. Until she found her all untrustworthy, she would trust her.... She had invented freely, in setting her springes—and yet not altogether lied....

Sleep did not come to Mademoiselle de Bayard that night, or for many nights after. She lay staring at the curtains that met across the blinded window, until the dawn edged them with a line of glimmering gray. As the streak encroached, she rose noiselessly, and silently as the dawn itself approached her mother's bed.

Adelaide lay upon her back with her head thrown back amid its wealth of rich black tresses, her arms tossed out and upward, the hands clenched, one knee a little raised. The unfastened robe of lawn disclosed the creamy beauty of her throat and the swelling contours of her magnificent bosom. The sight sent an exquisite pang to the heart of her sorrowful child. Oh, God! if beauty so divine had been but chaste, what pride, what happiness to call this woman mother! To lay one's head upon that breast and weep all griefs out there!...

The sleeper stirred beneath the wistful gaze of her daughter. Violet shadows were round her sealed eyelids and about her nostrils and mouth. She moaned a little and murmured brokenly:

"Nicolas ... Monseigneur ... insult ... never pardon!... 'Only a woman of fashion would be capable of such infamy....' Ah, mon Dieu!..."

She cried out, and her eyes opened, staring about wildly. She asked suspiciously as they fell on Juliette:

"Have I been talking?... What was I saying?"

Juliette answered simply and literally:

"That only a woman of fashion would be capable of such infamy."

LIII

They broke their fast on rolls and coffee, dressed and demanded, with the bill, the promised carriage. This was not so quickly forthcoming as the landlord of the Coup d'Épée had prophesied. Indeed, the debilitated conveyance of the wagonette type, drawn by one promoted cart-horse, could only be had by grace of the traveler by whom it had been previously engaged. He proved, when Adelaide swept her charge downstairs, to be a Monsieur Anglais, traveling for pleasure. A middle-sized, clean-shaven, inconspicuous, elderly man, in an ill-fitting suit of drab-color. He sported a sealskin vest in spite of the oppressive heat of the weather, and spoke the French of the conversation-manual with the accent it inculcates. His baldish grizzled head was covered with a straw hat bound with a preposterous light-blue ribbon. His luggage consisted of a brown calfskin bag, a portable easel, sketching-block and color-box, and a violin-case, of which articles he took the most excessive care. Nothing could well be more respectable, or appear more harmless. Juliette breathed more freely at the sight of the elderly drab-clothed man.

He professed himself happy to accommodate the ladies with a share in the wagonette as far as Bazeilles, where he meant to take train for Verdun. Interpreting for Adelaide, who possessed no English, Juliette learned that their own destination was not Metz, but Châlons.

That drive to Bazeilles in the freshness of the morning would have been delightful under other circumstances. The night-mists yet hung white as milk over the valleys, while the breasting rises crowned with woodlands were golden in the sun. Tents of French brigades snowed over the countryside. Bugles and trumpets sometimes drowned the rushing of the Givonne, beside whose stream their road conducted them. The stubbles were full of grain-devouring wood-pigeons, too heavy even to rise and take wing when peasant-lads threw stones. The drab Englishman praised the view in the set terms of the manual, until discovering that Mademoiselle had command of the tongue of Albion, he reverted to that language with evident relief.

"For I won't deny it comes easier, though I manage to get on with the other when necessary. And since I left England—seven months ago—my poor health requiring a holiday from business—it has been necessary most of the time."

"Ask the hideous animal in the ugly clothes whether he has seen a newspaper this morning," instructed Madame. "And find out if he knows anything of the movements of the Emperor. Those miserables at the inn were absolutely ignorant, or else they would not tell!"

The drab English traveler had reason to know something of his Imperial Majesty, having recently encountered him with his suite at the village of Gravelotte, eight miles from Metz. He explained in a rambling manner, and with many divagations, that he himself had been surprised by the intrusion of War at the outset of a sketching-tour in the northwest of France, which was to have realized the ambition of his life.

"Painting from Nature and playing on the violin.... Those are what I may call my weaknesses," he told the ladies by-and-by.

He was moist-eyed and red-nosed and shaky-handed, which must have interfered with his brush-work and bowing. An odor of strong waters exhaled from his person and clothes. You, had you been there, could have imagined him making an inventory, serving a summons, or, mounted on a Holborn auctioneer's rostrum—knocking down second-hand works of inferior Art to imaginary bidders, and vaunting the qualities of sticky-toned violins. Save for his garrulity, he was inoffensive; though his open conviction that his fellow-travelers were mother and daughter caused Juliette infinite anguish and disquiet of mind.

"With regard to His Majesty the French Emperor, I was brought into contact with him unexpectedly," said the drab man. "You can picture me, young lady, in the enjoyment of my well-earned holiday, strolling, as one may say, from village to village, enjoying the fresh air and the scenery, such a change after five-and-twenty years of Camberwell, the Courts of Law, and Furnival's Inn."

Adelaide complained:

"He bores me horribly, this red-nosed imbecile! Cannot he answer the question? What is he saying now?"

The drab man prattled on:

"For from the cradle, as one might say, I have been the vassal and slave of Business, having been sent by my father to a Mercantile and Legal Training College at Bromersham when only seven years old. At fifteen I was office-boy and under-clerk in the old gentleman's office. Believed in beginning at the bottom of the ladder, you see! At eighteen, articled—again to the old gentleman! He being a solicitor and attorney with a good old-fashioned family practice, and naturally being desirous to see his son a full-blown partner in the Firm!..."

He sighed and shook his head sentimentally.

"No use to tell the old gentleman I had been born with other ambitions. That Art had a fascination, and the voice of Music called.... I used up reams of office wove-note in making pen-and-ink designs for illustrations to the books I'd read on the sly, and the plays I'd seen on the quiet.... I'd render popular airs on the mouth-organ to the admiration of all the other clerks. 'Now, Mr. William, let's have a Musical Selection!' they'd say whenever the old gentleman popped out.... I saved up my money to pay for a course of tuition in Drawing from the Round and Life Model at a Night School of Art in Soho. But I never got time. The old gentleman must have been more knowing than I suspected, for he always managed to keep my nose to the grindstone. Will you believe that I bought this box, and this easel, and the violin twenty years ago—and never got a chance to use 'em, until now? To such a degree was my liberty hectored over, and the talents that might have made me the center of a circle of admirers, blighted by the Senior Partner and Head of the Firm...."

Adelaide, growing more restive, interrupted:

"Does this fatuous person who talks so greatly afford any information, or does he not?"

"—Yet I could show you a sketch of the Roman Aqueduct at Ars that would surprise you," went on the drab man, addressing Juliette, "regarded as emanating from the pencil of a simple amatoor. Also I could touch off a French chansong on the violin in a style equally creditable and gratifying—and justifying my retirement from Business in the interests of Music and Art. But——"

He took out a plaid silk handkerchief and wiped his moist eyes with it, and wagged the grizzled head that wore the absurd blue-ribboned straw hat in a maudlin, despondent way.

"But just as I'd settled to the roving life, tramping from inn to inn and finding 'em comfortable, the country cooking tasty, and the country vintages nice—War breaks out and spoils everything! Another week, and I should have bought a Bit of Ground!"

He mopped his eyes and snuffled a little, and put away the handkerchief.

"It was going cheap—the Chatto and farm and wine-plant and vineyards. I had a good look at the title-deeds—everything was in order there, even to a professional eye.... All I had to do was to put down the money. I'd have painted and fiddled, made wine and drunk it—sold what I didn't drink, and branded the vintages: 'Château Musty, Dry, Sparkling ... Château Musty, Special Still.' ... Château Musty, sweet, preferred by ladies.... Stop, though! It wouldn't have been that name! My name is Furnival! Excuse me, Mam'selle, but I think your lady-mother is making some remark to you. At least she impresses me with that idea."

"Madame is greatly desirous of intelligence with respect to the Emperor," Juliette explained. The talkative traveler looked aggrieved:

"Pray tell the lady I am coming to him presently. After the War broke out—Lord! what a hurrying and scurrying of soldiers.... Bugles blowing your head off at four o'clock in the morning—all the wagons taken to carry baggage—all the farm-horses whipped off to drag cannon ... no more sensible business done anywhere!... And when the shooting began, it was a scandal! Positively perilous to visitors! Why, I've been absolutely in danger of my life!..."

Adelaide's foot tapped impatiently on the floor of the wagonette. Her fine eyes shot forth indignant sparks. She bit her crimson lips. The drab Englishman regarded her mildly, commenting:

"If I wasn't accustomed by this time to French ways and manners, I should take it that your mamma had a temper of her own. But it's the national method of over-working the features.... Not that your Emperor is given to too much expression. Heavy, he struck me as, and puffily low-spirited! And even a worse sleeper than myself, if you ask me! For I spent the night in a room over His Majesty's, the night he stopped in the inn at Gravelotte, and didn't shut my eyes for an instant with his groanings and his moanings and his tramp ings to and fro...."

He wagged his head, and pursued with solemnity:

"In the morning I peeped out of the window and saw him drive off. All sorts of French Nobs bowing and scraping.... Orders and Stars and shiny carriages, and silver-mounted harness on prancing bays.... Yet if he had asked me, I wouldn't have changed places. Thinks I, 'How much better to be Me, plain William Furnival, an honest English Commoner, than an Emperor whose crime-stained conscience keeps him broad awake o' nights!'"

Said Juliette, her eyes blue fire, two angry roses in her usually pale cheeks:

"But you, Monsieur—who also sleep badly—is that because you have crime upon your soul?"

"What have you said to this creature that has frightened him?" Adelaide demanded, as the drab traveler's jaw dropped, and his red nose glowed brilliantly in a visage of dingy-white.

Juliette translated. Said Madame, regarding the perturbed Mr. Furnival, with a glance of superb indifference:

"He is a runaway husband of some Englishwoman who keeps a pension. Or the absconding clerk of a London notary."

Whatever he may or may not have been, he fell silent after the little passage here recorded. At Bazeilles, where the driver was paid, and the wagonette dismissed, though he entered the same train of vilely dirty third-class carriages and goods-trucks, he traveled in a compartment remote from that selected by his companions of the drive.

At Verdun they learned that the railway bridge below Metz had been blown up by M. de Bazaine's Engineers, the line beyond being in Prussian hands.... And at this point the drab gentleman got out, hugging his violin-case, bag, and artist's fit-out. Juliette saw him swallowed up in a roaring crowd of mobilists from the Ardennes, who rushed upon and instantly crammed solid every corner of the train.

A good-looking officer, entering with the deluge, apologized to the ladies in a well-bred, easy way:

"It is inconvenient, Mesdames, but at the same time necessary.... I take these little ones to Châlons to be incorporated in the New Army of MacMahon.... They are rough, as you perceive, and very few are yet in uniform. But blue cloth and red cloth are less important than chassepots, and they have them and can use them—these little ones of mine! And when they receive orders to march north and give a helping hand to M. de Bazaine—I prophesy that, boots or no boots, they will keep up with the best!"

Adelaide smiled witchingly on the speaker, plied the archery of her fine eyes, evoking admiring glances from the officer and his uncouth, half-clad, half-trained mobilists. She said she had no doubt of the courage of these sons of Western France. She had heard, she added, that the Emperor was at Châlons, but that H.I.M. intended to resort to Paris, having surrendered to another the bâton of supreme command.

"'To Paris'!" The officer shrugged. "Alas! at such a crisis in the affairs of the nation, Paris would be the last shelter for the French Emperor. It is no longer a secret that the Emperor has already left Châlons with the Grand Headquarters Staff and the First Corps of the Army of MacMahon.... Rheims is the destination—that intelligence is also public property...."

"And the Prince?" Adelaide asked eagerly.

"Monseigneur the Prince Imperial left for Rheims with the Emperor, but will be sent on from there to Rethel, with his carriages, and an escort of Imperial Body Guards under Colonel Watrin. His three aides-de-camp, Colonel Lamey, Colonel Comte Clary, and Commandant Duperré of the battleship Le Taureau, attend him. Comte d'Aure is equerry now instead of old Bachon!... Pardon, Madame?... You descend here...? But I thought you were traveling to Châlons!... Permit me to open the carriage door!"

And the prattling officer, who had promised himself a charming vis-à-vis upon the journey, must needs leap out upon the platform, arrest the guard's arm in the act of signaling the start.... Adelaide was handed down.... Juliette followed with an avalanche of Madame's traveling bags and parcels ... a discontented porter was called upon to rescue her trunks and portmanteaux from the van....

The signal fell, the train steamed out of the station. Juliette, white and fagged, sitting on an up-piled luggage truck, was asked by Adelaide:

"Where do you think we are going now, Mademoiselle?"

Came the weary answer:

"I do not know, Madame.... First, it was to Metz, and then to Châlons. Now, it may be to Rheims, as the Emperor is there."

Adelaide returned tormentingly:

"But we are not going to Rheims."

A thrill passed through Juliette.

"My father is not a prisoner, then?"

"My faith!" said Adelaide, shrugging with ostentatious indifference. "He is as he was yesterday. But all the same, my little one, we do not go to Rheims, but to Rethel.... Tell me—you have brought with you a walking-costume that is tolerable? Something more becoming than this lugubrious garment you have on!"

Juliette replied in the negative. Adelaide's look was coldly scornful as she scrutinized the little figure before her. Could this really be her daughter, this pale, peaked, elfish thing?...

What sloping shoulders, what tragic, haunted eyes, what a long upper lip, what lack of vivacity and elegance.... Her grandmother—that well-loathed woman, lived again in de Bayard's child.

Monseigneur the Prince Imperial must have curious taste in feminine beauty to have been smitten with this stiff little white-faced mannequin. Whom de Bayard worshiped ... whom even Straz had admired.... What were his words ... "A little Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud!" Grand Dieu!... how comical! "A rare jewel.... A chic type.... A pocket edition of Psyche, before that little affair with Cupid."

Well, Cupid waited at Rethel.... Her red lips writhed with the jeering laughter she stifled. Two devils of mockery looked through the windows of her eyes. And with the swift understanding of this stranger that came of their close, intimate relationship, Juliette encountering that look, said mentally:

"She hates me! My mother hates me! For that reason she sought me out and told me that false tale.... Because of that she lured me away with her from Brussels! Because of that she has planned to do something.... Oh, my father, if only you knew!..."

LIV

The Hope of a tottering and crumbling Empire was installed at the Prefecture of Rethel, a picturesque, old-world river-town of many bridges, and houses with quaint carved gables, slanting floors, and low ceilings crossed by heavy beams.

He had arrived late on the previous evening. There had been no flags, no bands, no popular ovation, no delirium of enthusiasm in greeting the Imperial heir. Press organs were now telling incredulous Parisians that in consideration of the Prince's weariness the people had foregone their privilege of welcome. In honest truth, the unlucky townsfolk were too sad and sick-hearted to cheer.

A great battle was impending in the neighborhood of Metz. The First and Second Armies of United Germany had crossed the Moselle, wheeled right-about-face, and were closing in on Bazaine, who had failed in his attempt to retire upon Châlons by the Verdun Road. The Prussian Crown Prince had come out of the Vosges, and was marching North instead of moving upon Châlons. If his vanguard clashed with MacMahon's patched-up Army there would be trouble.... Everyone expected trouble, the soil of France had been sown so thickly with the bad seed from which great national disasters spring, even before it had been plowed by German shells.... The coming tragedy chilled and numbed as the iceberg chills the senses of the passenger in the Atlantic liner's warm deck-cabin, long before the keel grates, and the white fog lifts, and shows the towering Death on which the doomed vessel is being hurled.

The deep dejection of the officers around the Heir Imperial could not be covered by any well-meant attempts at disguise. The rumors that came through the fog into which Bazaine had vanished were horribly disquieting. They waited upon thorns, for a telegram from the Emperor, conveying intelligence on which they might rely.

There was something in the situation of the lonely, proud young creature they surrounded that made the heart bleed as you looked at him. So helpless and yet so representative of unfettered Power, so ignorant in the ways of the world, and yet so conversant with its outward forms and ceremonies, so palpably the last frail link upon a chain that was being hacked through by the Prussian sword.

He had grown older and thinner since the days of July, and his fresh, fine color had faded to paleness. There was a frown upon the open forehead now, the gay, confident regard had changed to sullenness. The blue eyes were less lustrous. The silky chestnut hair was rumpled and duller. Care had overshadowed the boyish head with her heavy sable wing.

The arrival of the previous night had been sudden and unexpected, the startled authorities had been rarely put about to find fitting accommodation for their Emperor's son. This morning Monseigneur had been hurried out of his bed at the Prefecture to receive the apologies of the Prefect, an Imperialistic vine-grower, who had been absent in the interests of his affairs.

"Your Imperial Highness will be aware that this is a critical month with owners of vineyards. The vines have borne well and the grapes are ripening magnificently. Next month the champagne-making ought to be in full progress. But the lack of hands terribly hampers us.... Women cannot replace the men who are skilled in the various processes. And who knows——"

The Prefect broke off, for the Sub-Prefect had nudged him openly. Even if the tide of War should turn, and France be freed from her invaders, who knew whether any of those grape-pickers and sorters and pressers, Reservists and volunteers and conscripts who had been called out to carry the chassepot against the Prussians, would ever return to their countryside again? Who knew whether they would not be thrown as ripe grapes into Death's huge wine-press? Perhaps their red blood was foaming in the vat even now.

Who knew whether those rich, prosperous vineyards on the Aisne would not be trampled into sticky mashiness under the ruthless feet of Prussian Army Corps? If the rumors were correct, an advance upon Paris might take place at any moment. True, MacMahon's Army was said to be covering the road to the capital.

But MacMahon had been already beaten terribly.... Recollecting it, the Prefect shuddered in his well-polished shoes.

But he said his say and shook the young hand graciously offered him, and got out of his own wife's drawing-room as awkwardly as though he had been one of his own clerks. While the Sub-Prefect, a sharp-visaged little man, who combined the office of public notary with the trade of wool-stapler, trotted after him, very much at his ease.

"How you sweat! Wipe your head and your neck too," counseled the notary. "Otherwise your cravat will be a perfect wisp and Madame will certainly take you to task!"

"You have such sangfroid, my good M. Schlitte. I envy you; I do, positively!" stuttered the Prefect, puffing and blowing and mopping. "Royalty invariably dazzles me.... I tremble ... I blunder.... In a word, I make a fool of myself! At this moment I am tortured by the weight of my responsibilities.... True—His Highness is well guarded—true, the Army of Châlons is somewhere or other in the neighborhood!... But the daring of these Prussian horsemen ... the danger of a surprise!..."

"A surprise.... Nonsense, my dear sir. The thing is impossible!"

And M. Schlitte, who was said upon the strength of his queer French accent to be a native of Strasbourg, soothed the Prefect, and grinned like a rat-trap as he betook himself home. Inhabiting a riverside villa in the neighborhood, from which residence—we may suppose for the better conduct of his extensive business—a private telegraphic installation connected him with Rheims, Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg—and, when necessary, Berlin—it would have been possible to have made arrangements for that very contingency. His suggestions were not adopted at the Prussian Headquarters, but his zeal was approved in the right place. He became Prefect of Rethel a little later, when Berlin was settled at Versailles.

He stopped now, on his way back to his villa, to send the town-band round to the Place of the Prefecture and to bribe some loafers with small silver to mix with the crowd and cheer for the Emperor and the Prince. Consequently, a drum, trombone, cornet, and ophicleide shortly made their appearance before the Imperial lodgings.... La Reine Hortense and Partant Pour La Syrie entertained Monseigneur while he breakfasted. Since then he had thrice been summoned out upon the balcony to acknowledge the acclamations of the loyal populace of Rethel.

It was pouring rain, and the knots of spies, loafers, and genuine enthusiasts were sheltered by umbrellas. The very fowls that pecked between the cobbles had a listless and draggled air. The boy shivered as he turned from the dismal outdoor prospect to contemplate the Empire hangings, ormolu girandoles, and obsolete, scroll-backed chairs and claw-foot tables, gracing the Prefect's wife's reception-room. He told himself that it was horrible, even when one waited for the news of certain victory, to be shut up in a beastly hole like this.

He nearly jumped for joy when the name of M. de Straz was brought him by his equerry. He remembered the Roumanian agent, who had previously been presented to him.

"Pray bring him quickly, M. le Comte," he said eagerly to M. d'Aure, who had replaced old M. Bachon. "It is possible that he may bring a message from the Emperor."

He colored, and his eyes regained a little of their old brightness. The green-and-gold equerry, who loved him, as did every member of his household, was glad to see him, interested, for more reasons than one.

Straz, known to be a secret agent of the Emperor, and hailing from Rheims, where his employer was now—Straz might well amuse the Prince while his protectors waited for an Imperial telegram. Meanwhile, the bodyguard about the Prefecture was unostentatiously doubled, the carriages and the baggage were secretly held in readiness for a move.

You can imagine Straz, with his profile and beard of a courtier of old Nineveh, bowing over the boyish hand, and rolling his jet-black, glittering eyes. He had looked better in his Astrachan-trimmed traveling jacket than in the tight-waisted, closely buttoned, black frock-coat and pearl-gray trousers of ceremony, and the inky river of black silk cravat that flowed over the expanse of white shirt-front now covering his Herculean chest.

He wore white spats, which made his short legs appear shorter. A bouquet adorned his buttonhole—pink carnation and tuberose. Its cloying fragrance hung heavily on the damp air of the Prefecture reception-room, as the boy pleasantly said:

"Good-day, M. de Straz; do you come to us from the Emperor?"

"Yes, my Prince, and no!..." Straz had long ago got rid of his cold, yet a certain thickness characterized his consonants. He shrugged his great shoulders and smiled, showing his dazzling double curves of solid human ivory. "I come from Rheims, where His Imperial Majesty is making history.... I am not charged with any message from him!"

The boy's face fell. He said, with a brave effort to conquer his disappointment: "I am impatient, Monsieur, for news of another victory. It is so long since the engagement of Saarbrück, and that was only a little one. You are an officer in the Army of Roumania, you have told me. You are aware, even better than I, that military plans take time to develop .. and that Papa has every confidence in the generalship of M. de Bazaine.... If I were five or six years older, I should be admitted to the Councils of the Imperial État Major.... I should understand the reasons for these changes which puzzle me.... But one thing I should like to ask..." He flushed and glanced round nervously. "They do not believe in Paris or London that we are being ... beaten?... I beg of you to answer me candidly!"

Straz drew himself up dramatically, expanding his huge chest, and curling his parted mustache. His fierce black eyes, staring from their great curved arches, glittered like balls of polished jet....

"They do not, my Prince! They wait for the Star of the Bonapartes to rise resplendent from a sea of gore shed from Prussian veins.... They wait, as the world waits, for the Empire to emerge more glorious than ever from this conflict, which will restore to her forever her lost Provinces of the Rhine. It may be that the Coronation of Napoleon IV. will be solemnized in the Cathedral of Cologne.... Aha, my Prince, have I won a smile at last?"

He looked, despite the frock-coat, more than ever like some ancient warrior of Assyria, marching in a carved and painted procession along the walls of some unearthed palace of Nineveh or Babylon. And so admirable an actor was he that the sick heart of the boy now warmed at his simulated fire, and gladdened at his deceptive words of hope.

"I had pictured my Imperial Prince," he went on, "in brighter and less gloomy surroundings, with sympathetic and delightful companions to alleviate his exile from home."

He had touched the wrong chord. The slender, well-made figure was drawn up proudly. The delicate brows frowned, the lips quivered as the boy said:

"Monsieur, it is not 'exile' when an officer is ordered on Active Service.... And I am with the French Army, whose uniform I wear. For the moment the Emperor, my commanding officer, has ordered me to remain here.... I did wrong to grumble—I shall do so no more!"

Straz grinned and bowed to cover his momentary confusion. Why had he used the indigestible word? He touched his buttonhole bouquet and said with a treacly inflection:

"There are no violets—it is not the proper season.... Does Monseigneur remember when the purple blooms reached him regularly at intervals, one timid scrap of paper hiding among the slender stems? ... And would he, did he know how the sender languished for news of him—entrust me with one penciled message of kindness that might restore the rose to a fading cheek?"

The clear-eyed, fresh face of the boy he harangued underwent several changes during this windy apostrophe. For one brief instant it flushed and brightened eagerly, then it frowned with perplexity, then it twitched with the evident desire to laugh.

He said, controlling his amusement with his grace of good-breeding:

"Monsieur, if it was a lady who sent me those violets, pray tell her that she was very good to do so, and that I thank her very much. And since she asks for a message—perhaps this will do as well?"

He turned to the writing-table, where some sheets, covered with clever pen-and-ink caricatures, lay on the blotter, and took up a rough little outline drawing of a landscape, marked with lines of dots and written over with notes. He said ingenuously, offering this to the Roumanian:

"See, Monsieur, this is a mere sketch of the affair at Saarbrück. I did it to send my tutor at Paris, but M. Filon shall have another one.... If the lady has sons of my age, no doubt they will be able to draw far better. Nevertheless, here it is!"

Under the date of August 2nd, he had signed it, with a touch of boyish vanity:

"Under fire for the first time. "Your affectionate "Louis Napoleon."

"What genius!—what a gift! How gracious an act of kindness on the part of your Imperial Highness!"

Straz grabbed the little scrawl eagerly, pressed his moist scarlet lips to it with theatrical devotion—made a tremendous flourish of putting it away in a pocketbook, and bestowing this receptacle near the region of his heart.

"Though the lady has no sons—she is not even yet married," he hinted. "Dare I confide a secret to Monseigneur?—she is a young and beautiful girl!"

Monseigneur had been promising himself to caricature Straz at the next opportunity, not forgetting to make the most of his profile, hair, and beard. Young and beautiful girls were no novelties to Louis Napoleon, accustomed to do the honors of Versailles and Saint Cloud to the muslin-clad daughters of the sparkling coquettes who frequented the Imperial Circle. He began, struggling with the boredom that began to oppress him:

"If the young girl is your fiancée, Monsieur, or your daughter——"

The speaker broke off at the sound of hoofs and wheels on the cobblestones of the Place, the bump of a carriage-step let down, hitting the curb before the Prefecture.... Someone had arrived with a message from the Emperor; or perhaps it was only the Prefect's wife returning from an airing.... Straz would have been other than himself had he failed to seize the opportunity.

"Monseigneur, Mademoiselle de Bayard is not affianced. She has hitherto declined all alliances proposed as advantageous—it is said her affections are secretly engaged!..."

His smirk revolted even while it fascinated. He said, rolling his glistening black eyes about the apartment—shrugging his great shoulders, laying a thick white squat-nailed finger mysteriously against his carmine lips:

"Engaged since a little rencontre that took place in the month of January.... There were disturbances in Paris—which the troops had been called out to quell. Riding with M. de Frossard in the Avenues of the Champs Élysées, your Highness passed close by a young girl in a cab. She cried out, 'Vive le Prince Impérial!' ... She threw a knot of violets, which struck your horse on the shoulder.... You had the flowers in your hand, Monseigneur, when you rode away."

"Ah, now I remember!" The boy's blush became him. "Or I should say I have not forgotten. And where is she now, Monsieur?"

"Where is Mademoiselle de Bayard? Your Imperial Highness would like to know?"

Straz, who had thrilled with a sportsman's joy at the curtsey of the float betokening a nibble, would have given his soul to know himself.... Now, as he delayed, with the air of one who momentarily holds back something eagerly waited for, the equerry knocked and entered, approached and whispered to the Prince.

LV

"But surely, M. le Comte, it would please me to receive these two ladies. M. de Straz has just been speaking of Mademoiselle de Bayard."

And he dismissed Straz, who for once had been stricken speechless; giving his hand to him and saying: "I am very much obliged by your visit, Monsieur!"

The equerry retired, shepherding the unstrung Roumanian. The Prince waited, looking at the door.

He heard footsteps descending the stairs, a slight bustle in the hall, or so it seemed to him. Once a raised voice cried out something, drowned in the buzzing of the crowd that now gorged the Place of the Prefecture.

It still rained. The brass helmets of the Fire-Brigade and the black shakos of the local police strung out along the edge of the pavement, showed as fringing a solid mass of dripping umbrellas; there were clumps of more privileged umbrellas in the middle of the Place, where a hackney-carriage now stood, doubtless the vehicle that a moment previously had stopped before the door. The Cent Gardes had their undress cocked-hats on; their blue-caped mantles, pulled out in cavalry fashion over the hindquarters of their tall brown horses, shed off the merciless downpour like penthouse roofs....

Brr! It was chilly. Why did not Mademoiselle come? Such delay was rather a breach of etiquette.

Meanwhile, there upon the blotter lay a sheet of paper, with an unfinished caricature upon it—masterly, considering that a mere boy had drawn it—representing M. Thiers, bald, spectacled, oracularly smiling, in the guise of a gobbling turkey-cock.

M. Thiers would keep. The Prince chose another sheet, and began his portrait of the Roumanian, humming a song, popular with the African infantry-regiments, in capital tune and time. "Gentle Turco" had been half sung through when the door opened. The crisp grizzled curls, tanned soldierly face, waxed mustache, and green-and-silver uniform of the equerry reappeared upon the threshold, ushering in a small young lady.... D'Aure said, as the boy laid down his pen, rose and came toward them:

"Monseigneur, I bring the young lady of whom I spoke to you, daughter of Colonel de Bayard, 777th Chasseurs of the Emperor's Guard. She has convinced me of her identity by showing me a portrait, and a letter from her father.... She begs me to assure you that she will not detain you longer than ten minutes. For that space of time I will return to the lady downstairs." He added at the Prince's glance of inquiry: "The lady is the wife of a French officer, and accompanied Mademoiselle de Bayard. As I went downstairs just now with M. de Straz, we encountered both ladies in the vestibule. A giddiness seized the elder, she cried out, and swooned away."

The Prince said:

"Pray give orders that the sick lady is to have every attention!"

D'Aure answered that the wife of the Prefect was with Madame even then. He saluted, and repeated with an accent of finality:

"For the space of ten minutes, Monseigneur...."

Then he bowed to Mademoiselle de Bayard, and went quickly out of the room.

The Prince began, with a touch of boyish pompousness:

"We have met before, Mademoiselle. My thanks for the violets!"

For he knew this face with cheeks so fairly rose-tinted, with eyes that shone brilliant as blue jewels from their covert of black lashes, with the softly-smiling mouth. The dull moth shone out a butterfly in the radiance of the joy that overbrimmed her. She was near her Prince Imperial, Juliette de Bayard, who was not so much loyal as Loyalty incarnate, to whom the tawdry figure of the Emperor was invested with godlike splendor, in whose esteem the Empire was France—her France....

She was attired as she had been when she left Brussels with Adelaide. Only a fichu of black and white Malines lace that she had brought in the handbag containing linen and toilet requisites, had been pinned about her narrow, sloping shoulders, and a tiny bonnet matching this was perched upon her magnificent coils of cloudy-black hair. Her deft fingers had fashioned it in a few minutes out of the long ends of the over-ample fichu. A bunch of fragrant red roses had been pinned upon her bosom by Madame. She had purchased out of her own slender resources a fringed gray silk parasol and a pair of little gray kid gloves. And in this hastily arranged toilette she looked elegant, refined, exclusive as any slender aristocrat of the Faubourg St. Germain. You would never have suspected the tumult beneath her sedate composure. Yet she thrilled in every fiber as she swept her stateliest curtsey before the slender boy in the unassuming uniform of a subaltern of infantry.

"Monseigneur is too good to remember so infinitely trifling an occurrence ... more than gracious to consent to receive me now! But that my dear father is a prisoner in the hands of the Prussians, I would not dare to intrude upon the privacy of my Prince. Oh, Monseigneur! of your pity prevail upon the Emperor to obtain the exchange of my father for some German officer of equal rank in his Army! Think, oh, pray!—think how I..."

She stopped to control herself ... felt for her handkerchief to dry the tears that were blinding her ... dropped the scrap of cambric upon the Aubusson carpet gracing the drawing-room of the Prefecture. The Prince picked the handkerchief up as Mademoiselle hastily stooped to recover it ... their heads encountered in the act. The bump was a hard one—Juliette could have sunk into the earth with confusion.... But the Prince rubbed his forehead, grinned, and called out like any other schoolboy:

"My word! that was a stunner! I do hope you're not hurt? Are you, as it happens, Mademoiselle?"

"No, no, Monseigneur! But you?..."

"I am all right! Saw lots of stars, though!"

He burst out laughing. And so infectious was the peal of merriment that for one blissful moment of forgetfulness Juliette joined in.

"To laugh does the heart good," the boy assured her. He went on: "Do not be unhappy, for I will telegraph to the Emperor. He never denies me anything I ask him.... Depend upon it, he will do everything in his power for your father, Mademoiselle!"

She looked all thanks, saying in her voice of silver:

"I shall pray with redoubled fervor for His Imperial Majesty. And for you, Monseigneur—be well assured of it! Now, with all my gratitude, I will retire if your Highness permits?"

She swept her curtsey, and would have withdrawn then had not Monseigneur called out eagerly:

"No, no! We have still eight of our ten minutes! Don't go!... I do so like the way you talk.... Mon Dieu! What would the Empress say to me if she knew that I had left a lady standing! Pray sit down here, Mademoiselle!"

He turned round the writing-chair in which he had been sitting, made her take it—perched himself upon the corner of the writing-table, a schoolboy of fifteen in spite of his uniform, pouring out his heart to a girl older than he.

"It was horrible here until you came!... I was so lonely! Everybody looks so strange, and no news comes through. It would have been better to have stayed at Metz, where there is fighting. But no! We were compelled to return to Châlons.... On our way we were nearly caught by the German cavalry. They are terribly daring ... they even ventured into our lines at Longeville.... But we got to Verdun and traveled to Châlons in a third-class carriage. Frightfully dirty, and full of things that bit.... And I washed my face in a thick glass tumbler, out of which I had drunk some wine they brought me.... Fact, I assure you!... But we soldiers don't mind hardships.... We get used to them, Mademoiselle!"

She looked up at the brightened face with the tenderness of an elder sister. He went on with increasing animation and growing confidence:

"Do you see that little black box standing there in the corner? That's my officer's kit—all the baggage we're allowed to have on Active Service. There are other boxes with other things..." He blushed. "The valets look after them.... But this I keep under my own eye. And here!... This I hold as a great treasure. Do you think I would show it to everyone?... Non, merci! ... Behold, Mademoiselle!"

He took from a pocket beneath his tunic and showed her a splinter of rusty iron wrapped in an envelope.

"Guess what this is! A bit of a real German bombshell.... It burst quite close to the Emperor and me.... I thought a lot of old iron was being shot out of a cart, there was such a racket.... This should be a keepsake for the friend one loves above all, should it not? Otherwise I would give it you, Mademoiselle!"

She said:

"Monseigneur is too generous.... I need no token by which to remember him!... Have I not the remembrance of the sympathy and condescension with which my Prince has listened to a daughter's prayer?... Now, indeed, I must take leave of Monseigneur!..."

He persisted with boyish eagerness:

"No, no! M. d'Aure will certainly return at the end of our ten minutes. And I do like you so much, Mademoiselle!... Will you write and tell me when the Emperor obtains the release of M. le Colonel? ... Will you let me hear how you liked the little sketch I gave M. de Straz for you?"

She was puzzled, and looked it:

"Monseigneur will pardon me, but the name of M. de Straz is that of a stranger.... Yet he has received from Monseigneur a message for me?..."

Louis Napoleon explained. She listened with a gravity that chilled his amusement over the message he had sent to the supposedly elderly sender of the violets.

She said, looking at him steadily with her sincere eyes:

"I sent Monseigneur no violets, with messages written or otherwise. To have done so would have been presumptuous, and lacking in delicacy.... If this M. de Straz were but here.... If Monseigneur could but describe him!..."

Monseigneur caught up the unfinished caricature:

"Look, Mademoiselle! This is he!"

It was he.... The Assyrian head, great torso, and short legs had been grotesquely exaggerated. But the ferocity, sentimentality, and sensuality mingling in the exotic temperament of the Roumanian, had been conveyed with a mastery of technique and a grasp of character astonishing, considering the artist's youth. And seeing, Juliette recognized the man they had encountered in the vestibule. Just as he had passed them, Adelaide had cried out, and sunk down helplessly in a genuine swoon.

"Ah, yes, Monseigneur, I have seen this gentleman, but a few moments ago. We encountered him at the instant of entering the house. But I do not know him—I have never before met him! Why, then, should M. de Straz speak familiarly of me?"

The boy said, with a tactfulness that was ingratiating:

"Never mind!... He was playing some stupid trick!... He shall be punished if he offends you. See! I am tearing up the ugly picture!"

"Oh, Monseigneur!"

She was too late to save the drawing. He went on, tossing away the bits:

"Meanwhile—since the sketch I meant for you has been given to this person, you shall have my shell-splinter, though at first I meant it for—Cavaignac."

He had never uttered this name, about which so many lonely day-dreams clung, in the hearing of any second person. He could hardly believe that he had done so now as he went on:

"Take my souvenir, and shut your hand over it, and promise me you will never part with it. If you will, I can tell you about Cavaignac—my friend, Mademoiselle!"

She complied with his wish, smiling at the tone of authority. She thought, looking in the beautiful frank blue eyes, that Cavaignac must be proud of his high place in this princely young heart.

"He is brave, Mademoiselle, and handsome and wonderfully clever. Once he gained the second prize for Greek translation at the Concours General. And Greek is horribly difficult. M. Edeline could never teach it me. I find the grammar so dreadfully dull! And yet Alexander the Great was a Greek general, and would have told me all about his campaigns in the Greek language.... I think I must find it hard to study because the figures of people mean more to me than letters and words!... I like better to draw caricatures of my masters than to listen to them!"

Juliette said, with something maternal in her accent:

"That is unwise, Monseigneur.... For the better we learn, the sooner we part with the teacher, do not we?"

He said, in a tone of wounded pride rather than vanity:

"I have always attended carefully to my Military Governor when he gave us lessons in scientific warfare. For a Napoleon must always be a soldier and a strategist.... Riding came easily—anybody can learn to ride well!... When I have pleased my tutors most, my reward has been—unless it was in July or August—a day with the stag-hounds at Fontainebleau, or St. Germain or Compiègne.... The Emperor has given me two magnificent Irish hunters...." He added with naïve boyish vanity: "And the uniform of our Imperial Hunt is splendid, you know.... Gold-laced cocked hat with white plumes, green coat with crimson velvet facings, white leathers and jack-boots. Last night I dreamed I was hunting with Cavaignac ... the brown forest flying by as we galloped through the frosty fern.... The sky was pale red, and a diamond star hung just under the tip of the new moon of November. We were foremost of all when the stag turned to bay at the Pools of Saint Pierre.... Then the horns sounded the hallali, the Chief Huntsman offered me the knife, and I said to him: 'M. Leemans, you will give it to my friend, M. Cavaignac!' ..."

"And then, Monseigneur?..."

He had told the dream with unexpected spirit and fire. That gallop through the wintry forest-rides had been stimulatingly real to Juliette. She had thrilled as the hard-pressed buck had leaped into the pool, and turned with antlers lowered against the ravening jaws of the pack. Now, though she shrank from the thought of the spilled blood—she wanted to hear the rest of it. She wished always to remember this story, told solely for her, by the son of her Emperor....

"Shall I tell you? The end is not as nice as the beginning or the middle...." He hesitated, frowning a little, then took up the broken thread: "I thought I took the knife and held it out to him, and he suddenly snatched it and I felt the blade pierce my heart right through.... He said, with his dark, bright eyes on mine: 'Son of my father's enemy, I slay despots, not animals!' ... And I felt the hot blood bubbling in my throat as I answered: 'You have killed a great faith and a great love!'"

It was rhetoric of a bombastic, youthful kind, but not without pathos. His lips quivered. He nipped them together, and blinked away the stinging salt moisture that had risen in his bright eyes. Juliette said, aching to console him:

"Dreams go by contraries, according to my schoolmates of the Convent. Your friendship with M. Cavaignac will not be severed by the blade of a hunting-knife."

He shook his head.

"Or rather it is by my hand that the stab will be given.... Yet how could that be, when I like him so very, very much? ... Is it not strange, I have never spoken to Cavaignac, and yet I would have chosen him for my companion above all others, before even Espinasse or Chino Murat!..."

"I think I understand..." Juliette said, feeling the tug of his craving for affection and sympathy, realizing the loneliness that had found relief in hero-worship, and heartily pitying her Emperor's son. "When the heart speaks, one cannot shut one's ears; one must listen always.... Among hundreds of faces there is one that paints itself upon the memory ... there is one voice that makes good music when others only tire the ear.... There is one nature that seems more open, fresh, and candid than others.... Without knowing that you do so, you continually compare it with them.... And when you are sad or lonely, you would wish that person to be near you.... You remember his gray eyes with specks of brown and golden in them, and the curly hair, and the pleasant lips. You regret that when you met him you were not more charming, more amiable.... You feel chagrin to remember that you were neither of these things.... You would like to hold out the hand as they do in England, and say, 'Pardon, pardon, that I misunderstood you, my friend!'"

The boy's blue eyes rounded. His fair brows puckered in perplexity. Too well-bred to interrupt, he listened with increasing surprise.

"Pardon that I regarded you as a brusque, untidy boy, when you had been robbed, and were homeless, and suffering from hunger. For Monica's sake, you hid it. And I applaud that noble silence! I admire you with all my heart!..."

The Prince broke in:

"But Cavaignac has not been robbed, and who ever said he was hungry? He lives with Madame, his mother ... they are not rich, certainly! As Madame is a widow and he an only son, he is exempt from military service. He is to embrace the profession of Literature—he will write great books or great plays, or edit a newspaper.... And I would like to help him to climb to the very top of the ladder.... Secretly—because he would never accept anything that came from me!... Am I stupid, Mademoiselle?"

She said with warmth that covered a slight confusion, caused by that slip of the tongue an instant before:

"Ah, no, indeed! but very kind and generous. Perhaps, if it were possible, M. Cavaignac would be proud and glad to know you were his friend. It may be that the affection he inspires in you, he returns, though he does not own it. There can be no harm in thinking this, at least!"

The Prince said, with animation:

LVI

"I saw him, I am convinced, when we left Saint-Cloud, outside the station near the Gate of Orleans. He stood apart from the soldiers and the people.... He was all in black, and had grown older and taller. He looked at me earnestly, and slightly raised his hat as the carriage drove up. I saluted in answer, and the Empress asked me: 'Who is that grave young man? Do you know him?' I said: 'My mother, I have never spoken to him in my life!' ... You would have thought the Empress very brave, if you had seen her, Mademoiselle. Nobody could have guessed she had been weeping. Though the night before we left for Metz ... when she came to me in my bed..."

His lips twitched, and one big tear brimmed over and splashed on the sleeve of his piou-piou's uniform. He flushed bright red, and whisked it off as though it were a wasp that would have stung.

"She brought me a new medal to hang on the collar I wear always." He slid a finger inside the edge of his stiff military stock, and hooked up an inch of gold chain. "It has on one side a figure of Our Blessed Lady crushing the head of the serpent, and on the other there is the Cross with two hearts. The Holy Father has blessed it; it was sent to Rome purposely.... Mothers are anxious when their sons are called upon Active Service.... It is natural, is it not?"