The Bronze Eagle Part 36

But this the crowd of to-day has already forgotten with the completeness peculiar to crowds: men, women, and children too, they are no longer mute, they talk and they chatter; they scream with astonishment and delight whenever now from more and more carriages, more and more gorgeously dressed folk descend. The ladies are beginning to arrive: the wives of the great Court dignitaries, the ladies of the Court and household of the still-absent Empress: they do not attempt to hide their brilliant toilettes, their bare shoulders and arms gleam through the fastenings of their cloaks, and diamonds sparkle in their hair.

The crowd has recognised some of the great marshals, the men who in the Emperor's wake led the French troops to victory in Italy, in Prussia, in Austria: Maret Duc de Ba.s.sano is there and the crowd cheers him, the Duc de Rovigo, Marshal Davout, Prince d'Eckmuhl, General Excelmans, one of Napoleon's oldest companions at arms, the Duke of Gaeta, the Duke of Padua, a crowd of generals and superior officers. It seems like the world of the Sleeping Beauty and of the Enchanted Castle--which a kiss has awakened from its eleven months' sleep. The Empire had only been asleep, it had dreamed a bad dream, wherein its hero was a prisoner and an exile: now it is slowly wakening back to life and to reality.

The night wears on: darkness and fog envelop Paris more and more.

Excitement becomes akin to anxiety. If the Emperor did leave Fontainebleau when the last courier said that he did, he should certainly be here by now. There are strange whispers, strange waves of evil reports that spread through the waiting crowd: "A royalist fanatic had shot at the Emperor! the Emperor was wounded! he was dead!"

Oh! the excitement of that interminable wait!

At last, just as from every church tower the bells strike the hour of nine, there comes the m.u.f.fled sound of a distant cavalcade: the sound of horses galloping and only half drowning that of the rumbling of coach wheels.

It comes from the direction of the embankment, and from far away now is heard the first cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" The noise gets louder and more clear, the cries are repeated again and again till they merge into one great, uproarious clamour. Like the ocean when lashed by the wind, the crowd surges, moves, rises on tiptoe, subsides, falls back to crush forward again and once more to retreat as a heavy coach, surrounded by a thousand or so of mounted men, dashes over the cobbles of the Place du Carrousel, whilst the clamour of the crowd becomes positively deafening.

"Vive l'Empereur!"

The officers in the courtyard of the palace rush to the coach as it draws up at the Pavillon de Flore: one of them succeeds in opening the carriage door. The Emperor is literally torn out of the carriage, carried to the vestibule, where more officers seize him, raise him from the crowd, bear him along, hoisted upon their shoulders, up the monumental staircase.

Their enthusiasm is akin to delirium: they nearly tear their hero to pieces in their wild, mad, frantic welcome.

"In Heaven's name, protect his person," exclaims the Duc de Vicence anxiously; and he and Lavalette manage to get hold of the banisters and by dint of fighting and pus.h.i.+ng succeed in walking backwards step by step in front of the Emperor, thus making a way for him.

Lavalette can hardly believe his eyes, and the Duc de Vicence keeps murmuring: "It is the Emperor! It is the Emperor!"

And he--the little stout man in green cloth coat and white breeches--walks up the steps of his reconquered palace like a man in a dream: his eyes are fixed apparently on nothing, he makes no movement to keep his too enthusiastic friends away: the smile upon his lips is meaningless and fixed.

"Vive l'Empereur!" vociferates the crowd.

Vive l'Empereur for one hundred days: a few weeks of joy, a few weeks of anxiety, a few weeks of indecision, of wavering and of doubt. Then defeat more irrevocable than before! exile more distant! despair more complete.

Vive l'Empereur while we shout with excitement, while we remember the disappointments of the past year, while we hope for better things from a hand that has lost its cunning, a mind that has lost its power.

Vive l'Empereur! Let him live for an hundred days, while we forget our enthusiasm and Europe prepares its final crus.h.i.+ng blow. Let him live until we remember once again the horrors of war, the misery, the famine, the devastated homes! until once more we see the maimed and crippled crawling back wearily from the fields of glory, until our ears ring with the wails of widows and the cries of the fatherless.

Then let him no longer live, for he it is who has brought this misery on us through his will and through his ambition, and France has suffered so much from the aftermath of glory, that all she wants now is rest.

IV

Gradually--but it took some hours--the tumult and excitement in and round the Tuileries subsided. The Emperor managed to shut himself up in his study and to eat some supper in peace, while gradually outside his windows the crowd--who had nothing more to see and was getting tired of staring up at glittering panes of gla.s.s--went back more or less quietly to their homes.

Only in the courtyard of the Tuileries, the troopers of the cavalry which had formed the Emperor's escort from Fontainebleau tethered their horses to the railings, rolled themselves in their mantles and slept on the pavements, giving to this portion of the palace the appearance of a bivouac in a place which has been taken by storm.

One of the last to leave the Place du Carrousel was Bobby Clyffurde. The crowd was thin by this time, but it was the tired and the indifferent--the merely curious--who had been the first to go. Those who remained to the last were either the very enthusiastic who wanted to set up a final shout of "Vive l'Empereur!" after their idol had entirely disappeared from their view, or the malcontents who would not lose a moment to discuss their grievances, to murmur covert threats, or suggest revolt in some shape or form or kind.

Bobby slipped quickly past several of these isolated groups, indifferent to the dark and glowering looks of suspicion that were cast at his tall, muscular figure with the firm step and the defiant walk that was vaguely reminiscent of the British troops that had been in Paris last year at the time of the foreign occupation. He had skirted the Tuileries gardens and was walking along the embankment which now was dark and solitary save for some rowdy enthusiasts on ahead who, arm in arm in two long rows that reached from the garden railings to the parapet, were obstructing the roadway and shouting themselves hoa.r.s.e with "Vive l'Empereur!"

Clyffurde, who was walking faster than they did, was just deliberating in his mind whether he would turn back and go home some other way or charge this unpleasant obstruction from the rear and risk the consequences, when he noticed two figures still further on ahead walking in the same direction as he himself and the rowdy crowd.

One of these two figures--thus viewed in the distance, through the mist and from the back--looked nevertheless like that of a woman, which fact at once decided Bobby as to what he would do next. He sprinted toward the crowd as fast as he could, but unfortunately he did not come up with them in time to prevent the two unfortunate pedestrians being surrounded by the turbulent throng which, still arm in arm and to the accompaniment of wild shouts, had formed a ring around them and were now vociferating at the top of raucous voices:

"a bas la cocarde blanche! a bas! Vive l'Empereur!"

A flickering street lamp feebly lit up this unpleasant scene. Bobby saw the vague outline of a man and of a woman, standing boldly in the midst of the hostile crowd while two white c.o.c.kades gleamed defiantly against the dark background of their cloaks. To an Englishman, who was a pastmaster in the n.o.ble art of using fists and knees to advantage, the situation was neither uncommon nor very perilous. The crowd was noisy it is true, and was no doubt ready enough for mischief, but Clyffurde's swift and scientific onslaught from the rear staggered and disconcerted the most bold. There was a good deal more shouting, plenty of cursing; the Englishman's arms and legs seemed to be flying in every direction like the arms of a windmill; a good many thuds and b.u.mps, a few groans, a renewal of the attack, more thuds and groans, and the discomfited group of roisterers fled in every direction.

Bobby with a smile turned to the two motionless figures whom he had so opportunely rescued from an unpleasant plight.

"Just a few turbulent blackguards," he said lightly, as he made a quick attempt at readjusting the set of his coat and the position of his satin stock. "There was not much fight in them really, and . . ."

He had, of course, lost his hat in the brief if somewhat stormy encounter and now--as he turned--the thin streak of light from the street-lamp fell full upon his face with its twinkling, deep-set eyes, and the half-humorous, self-deprecatory curl of the firm mouth.

A simultaneous exclamation came from his two proteges and stopped the easy flow of his light-hearted words. He peered closely into the gloom and it was his turn now to exclaim, half doubting, wholly astonished:

"Mademoiselle Crystal . . . M. le Comte. . . ."

"Indeed, Sir," broke in the Comte slowly, and with a voice that seemed to be trembling with emotion, "it is to my daughter and to myself that you have just rendered a signal and generous service. For this I tender you my thanks, yet believe me, I pray you when I say that both she and I would rather have suffered any humiliation or ill-usage from that rough crowd than owe our safety and comfort to you."

There was so much contempt, hatred even, in the tone of voice of this old man whose manner habitually was a pattern of moderation and of dignity that for the moment Clyffurde was completely taken aback.

Puzzlement fought with resentment and with the maddening sense that he was anyhow impotent to avenge even so bitter an insult as had just been hurled upon him--against a man of the Comte's years and status.

"M. le Comte," he said at last, "will you let me remind you that the other day when you turned me out of your house like a dishonest servant, you would not allow me to say a single word in my own justification? The man on whose word you condemned me then without a hearing, is a scatter-brained braggart who you yourself must know is not a man to be trusted and . . ."

"Pardon me, Monsieur," broke in the Comte with perfect sangfroid, "even if I acted on that evening with undue haste and ill-considered judgment, many things have happened since which you yourself surely would not wish to discuss with me, just when you have rendered me a signal service."

"Your pardon, M. le Comte," retorted Clyffurde with equal coolness, "I know of nothing which could possibly justify the charges which, not later than last Sunday, you laid at my door."

"The charge which I laid at your door then, Mr. Clyffurde, has not been lifted from its threshold yet. I charged you with deliberately conspiring against my King and my country all the while that you were eating bread and salt at my table. I charged you with striving to render a.s.sistance to that Corsican usurper whom may the great G.o.d punish, and you yourself practically owned to this before you left my house."

"This I did not, M. le Comte," broke in Clyffurde hotly. "As a man of honour I give you my word, that except for my being in de Marmont's company on the day that he posted up the Emperor's proclamation in Gren.o.ble, I had no hand in any political scheme."

"And you would have me believe you," exclaimed the Comte, with ever-growing vehemence, "when you talk of that Corsican brigand as 'the Emperor.' Those words, Sir, are an insult, and had you not saved my daughter and me just now from violence I would--old as I am--strike you in the face for them."

With an impatient sigh at the old man's hot-headed obstinacy, Clyffurde turned with a look of appeal to Crystal, who up to now had taken no part in the discussion: "Mademoiselle," he said gently, "will you not at least do me justice? Cannot you see that I am clumsy at defending mine own honour, seeing that I have never had to do it before?"

"I only see, Monsieur," she retorted coldly, "that you are making vain and pitiable efforts to regain my father's regard--no doubt for purposes of your own. But why should you trouble? You have nothing more to gain from us. Your clever comedy of a highwayman on the road has succeeded beyond your expectations. The Corsican who now sits in the armchair lately vacated by an infirm monarch whom you and yours helped to dethrone, will no doubt reward you for your pains. As for me I can only echo my father's feelings: I would ten thousand times sooner have been torn to pieces by a rough crowd of ignorant folk than owe my safety to your interference."

She took her father's arm and made a movement to go: instinctively Clyffurde tried to stop her: at her words he had flushed with anger to the very roots of his hair. The injustice of her accusation maddened him, but the bitter resentment in the tone of her voice, the look of pa.s.sionate hatred with which she regarded him as she spoke, positively appalled him.

"M. le Comte," he said firmly, "I cannot let you go like this, whilst such horrible thoughts of me exist in your mind. England gave you shelter for three and twenty years; in the name of my country's kindness and hospitality toward you, I--as one of her sons--demand that you tell me frankly and clearly exactly what I am supposed to have done to justify this extraordinary hatred and contempt which you and Mademoiselle Crystal seem now to have for me."

"One of England's sons, Monsieur!" retorted the Comte equally firmly.

"Nay! you are not even that. England stands for right and for justice, for our legitimate King and the punishment of the usurper."

"Great G.o.d!" he exclaimed, more and more bewildered now, "are you accusing me of treachery against mine own country? This will I allow no man to do, not even . . ."

"Then, Sir, I pray you," rejoined Crystal proudly, "go and seek a quarrel with the man who has unmasked you; who caught you red-handed with the money in your possession which you had stolen from us, who forced you to give up what you had stolen, and whom then you and your friend Victor de Marmont waylaid and robbed once more. Go then, Mr.

Clyffurde, and seek a quarrel with the Marquis de St. Genis, who has already struck you in the face once and no doubt will be ready to do so again."

And what of Clyffurde's thoughts while the woman whom he loved with all the strength of his lonely heart poured forth these hideous insults upon him? Amazement, then wrath, bewilderment, then final hopelessness, all these sensations ran riot through his brain.