THE INTERVIEW
On reaching the appointed place, the Duchess fell upon a garden seat, seemingly very tired. Taking a lace handkerchief from the reticule which hung at her wrist, she wiped the perspiration from her forehead. She consulted the watch at her belt and found it lacked ten minutes of the time set. She sighed, resigning herself to wait.
At last she heard the approach of footsteps; some moments later a man with uncovered head stood before her. Marie Thérèse de Bourbon uttered no cry. She was stricken dumb. After so many years, she beheld standing before her against the crimson background of the sky, which looked like a nimbus of blood, the Past, the terrible, tragic Past. It surged again to overwhelm her, that Past, the sorrows of which seemed to have been calmed by time; the terrors of the prison; the flaring up of frail hopes destined to be dashed to earth; the incertitude of the fate of loved ones; ardent prayers to heaven to work miracles; entreaties; outrages; infinite despair: all these rose again out of that terrible Past and stood before her.
She could not speak; she could scarcely see; but she felt hot tears through her silk skirt and trembling arms clasp her knees while a heart-rending voice cried:
"Marie Thérèse! Marie Thérèse!"
"Rise," she said at last, almost inaudibly. "Be seated."
He staggered to the stone bench beside her. She averted her head in order to avoid seeing his grief-stricken face. A silence followed which the lady at last broke:
"You perceive, Sir, that I have complied with your request. What do you wish?"
"To remind you that I am your brother, the brother whom your mother bore."
"My brother—died," she faltered.
"He lives and speaks to you. Dare you look upon me and deny it? I carry on my face the marks of royal baptism and of prison torture."
"My God!" she groaned.
"Why do you not acknowledge me?" he cried with waxing indignation. "I believed that on receiving me you would take me to your heart. I thought you felt the great thirst that devours me. I thought that you and I should mourn our mother in each other's arms. Why did you receive me, if you had already decided to treat me as an impostor? Are you about to turn me out of your palace gates along with the dogs and beggars? After all that I have suffered?"
Making a terrible effort, she said:
"You have spoken of proofs, irrefutable proofs."
"Miserable woman, until today I thought that the wall which separates us should be demolished on our meeting. But I see it is of iron. Listen, then. You ask me for the documents. Well, those documents shall be presented at a French tribunal, and you with the others shall be brushed off the usurped throne. You refuse to acknowledge me; well, when the world salutes me King, you will admit I am your brother. Europe will proclaim what no court can deny. Until then, farewell."
She trembled and softly spoke his name:
"Charles Louis!"
Her voice seemed to come from an immense distance. He cried out almost in delirium:
"Thérèse, Thérèse, my adored sister!"
He caught the Duchess in his arms almost strangling her. He wept and laughed together for at last his overmastering desire was filled. He felt a wild longing to dance. Scarcely realizing the craftiness of her thoughts, she assured herself with feminine complacency that she should now do with him as she chose.
"You know me at last,—do you, Thérèse? You no longer repulse me? O how happy I am! Only thro you do I believe in myself, for tho I told you with so much assurance just now that I was your brother, I doubted my own words. Are you surprised that much suffering seems to have clouded my brain? On leaving prison, you found friends and shelter and affection and at last a throne; you returned to our father's palace amid acclamations and festivities. How can you divine my suffering? See, I have written them that you may read."
He took from his pocket an oblong case of yellow calf.
"I intended that the Marquis de Brezé, whom I regard as my son should bring you this. But perhaps 'tis better that you receive it from me. When you read my via crucis, you will not marvel that my past life seems to me a dream, a forgery of a madman's delirium. Only you can relieve me of this intolerable fear and restore me to faith in myself. You have called me Charles Louis, my name in infancy and early childhood. Those who now call me Louis do not know this. Ah, Thérèse, God bless you!"
Again he embraced her and together they recalled incidents of the past.
"Do you remember," he asked, "how in prison a wall separated us and we were never permitted to speak together? Well, I used to place my ear to the wall and listen for your footsteps."
"Charles Louis," she said with a great effort, "if love of your sister has caused you to seek me, prove that love by granting a request."
"Ask my life if you will."
"What I ask may be more difficult to give. I am going to beg you,—listen!—to renounce what you have so long desired. Be very calm. The Revolution submerged the throne, the altar and whatever our family represented and supported. Providence has replaced us on the throne; the great days of the monarchy have returned; the churches have been re-opened; our country has been reconciled to its monarchs and its God,—the God who has placed the crown upon our uncle's head rather than upon yours. God has perhaps selected you as the victim, innocent tho you be. He has required your sacrifice and he continues to require it. To what do you aspire today? Are you thinking of placing arms in the hands of our father's executioners? Have you come, Charles Louis, to win the applause of hell?"
He could not answer for gazing upon her.
"Your duty is to retire to peace and quietude. Whatever be your rights, your duty is to stifle your pretensions. I assure you this is true."
"And my children, Thérèse? My sons? I have the sons which have been denied to both you and Ferdinand. No one but me can present an heir. My seed has fallen upon blessed ground in being mingled with the people."
The Duchess experienced great anger, as she always did at any allusion to her sterility, and she retorted harshly:
"The heir whom you present is from a woman of low extraction, the fruit of a union unsanctioned by the Catholic Church. And you dare aspire to the throne? Remember the Corsican! He also sought to improvise a dynasty. All that survives of that farce is the daughter of a real emperor and the son of the adventurer, sheltered by that emperor's throne. If you believed yourself a king, why did you marry a plebeian? Why did you not restrain your passions? And you complain of your fate? As for your heart, you have followed its impulses. I married my cousin because the state required the union—Ferdinand separated from his loved Amy Brown and abandoned his children, one of them a son, in order to marry Caroline. Are you willing to do likewise? I know well you are not. Believe me, believe me, Charles Louis, life is not what we would wish but as God ordains it to be. Your fate has been to live far from the throne—Resign yourself to the decree. Do not violate the most holy PRINCIPLE, the PRINCIPLE for which our father died. He adjures you from the tomb to accept your lot."
Her eloquence subjugated him, for she spoke from her heart's conviction.
"God was God, yet he lived and died a man," she continued. "Live then and die a man, my brother. Will you?—a man of the people."
In a transport of abnegation, he kissed her cheeks and said:
"I will."
In confirmation of his promise, he drew the casket of documents from his breast and held them toward her.
"Here they are," he said. "Here are the papers which sustain my claims. They are of such a nature, especially the testimony of the unhappy Pichegru, Charette, Hoche and Josephine that I could demand the throne by presenting them in a court. I despoil myself of my personality, of my strength. I become again Naundorff, the obscure mechanic, the impostor, the convict, the outlaw! Take the papers, Marie Thérèse, I give them to you. The sacrifice is accomplished. Have you more to ask of me? And now, sister, holy love of my life, all that remains to me of my mother,—call me once more Charles Louis—let me rest my forehead on your breast."
She was scarcely able to control herself. He attracted and repelled her by turns. She was about to extend her hand for the papers when, by the light of the setting sun, intense and red, he so greatly resembled her father that she dared not accomplish her purpose. With involuntary reverence, she said:
"No, Charles Louis, the papers are yours. Keep them. Promise me, only, that you will not misuse them. I shall be satisfied with your word. I ask this of you because I must. Accept your fate, as I accept mine. Accept it as you would a cross. O Charles Louis, the Past is irrevocable, your Past and mine, and who knows which of us has suffered the more greatly? Farewell, farewell, my brother. Do not forget your oath."
"I shall remember it, my sister. God bless you! I have received all that I expected from you. I count this day happy. I shall remove with my family to Holland. May my children never suffer the pangs of poverty! I trust that no further assaults will be made upon my life. And now, for one moment—"
He laid his head upon the lady's shoulder and wept.