Chapter Twenty Three.
The Programme of the Great Powers.
In a chamber of the Tuileries five men were seated around a table.
Before them were decanters and glasses, wine bottles of varied shapes, an épergne filled with choice flowers, silver trays loaded with luscious fruits, nuts, olives—in short, all the materials of a magnificent dessert.
A certain odour of roast meats, passing off under the bouquet of the freshly-decanted wines, told of a dinner just eaten, the dishes having been carried away.
The gentlemen had taken to cigars, and the perfume of finest Havana tobacco was mingling with the aroma of the fruit and flowers. Smoking, sipping, and chatting with light nonchalance, at times even flippantly, one could ill have guessed the subject of their conversation.
And yet it was of so grave and secret a nature, that the butler and waiters had been ordered not to re-enter the room—the double door having been close-shut on their dismissal—while in the corridor outside a guard was kept by two soldiers in grenadier uniform.
The five men, thus cautious against being overheard, were the representatives of the Five Great Powers of Europe—England, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France.
They were not the ordinary ambassadors who meet to arrange some trivial diplomatic dispute, but plenipotentiaries with full power to shape the destinies of a continent.
And it was this that had brought together that five-cornered conclave, consisting of an English Lord, an Austrian Field-Marshal, a Russian Grand Duke, a distinguished Prussian diplomatist, and the President of France—host of the other four.
They were sitting in conspiracy against the peoples of Europe, set free by the late revolutions—with the design to plot their re-enslavement.
Their scheme of infamy had been maturely considered, and perfected before adjourning to the dinner-table.
There had been scarce any discussion; since, upon its main points, there was mutual accord.
Their after-dinner conversation was but a résumé of what had been resolved upon—hence, perhaps, the absence of that gravity befitting such weighty matter, and which had characterised their conference at an earlier hour.
They were now resting over their cigars and wines, jocularly agreeable, as a band of burglars, who have arranged all the preliminaries for the “cracking of a crib.”
The English lord seemed especially in good humour with himself and all the others. Distinguished throughout his life for what some called an amiable levity, but others thought to be an unamiable heartlessness, he was in the element to delight him. Of origin not very noble, he had attained to the plenitude of power, and now saw himself one of five men entrusted with the affairs of the Great European Aristocracy, against the European people. He had been one of the principal plotters—suggesting many points of the plan that had been agreed upon; and from this, as also the greatness of the nation he represented, was acknowledged as having a sort of tacit chairmanship over his fellow-conspirators.
The real presidency, however, was in the Prince-President—partly out of regard to his high position, and partly that he was the host.
After an hour or so passed in desultory conversation, the “man of a mission,” standing with his back to the fire, with hands parting his coat tails—the habitual attitude of the Third Napoleon—took the cigar from between his teeth, and made résumé as follows:—
“Understood, then, that you, Prussia, send a force into Baden, sufficient to crush those pot-valiant German collegians, mad, no doubt, from drinking your villainous Rhine wine!”
“Mercy on Metternich, cher Président. Think of Johanisberger!”
It was the facetious Englishman who was answerable for this.
“Ya, mein Prinz, ya,” was the more serious response of the Prussian diplomatist. “Give ’em grape, instead of grapes,” put in the punster. “And you, Highness, bind Russia to do the same for these hog-drovers of the Hungarian Puszta?”
“Two hundred thousand men are ready to march down upon them,” responded the Grand Duke.
“Take care you don’t catch a Tartar, mon cher altesse!” cautioned the punning plenipotentiary.
“You’re quite sure of Geörgei, Marshal?” went on the President, addressing himself to the Austrian.
“Quite. He hates this Kossuth as the devil himself; and perhaps a little worse. He’d see him and his Honveds at the bottom of the Danube; and I’ve no doubt will hand them over, neck and crop, as soon as our Russian allies show themselves over the frontier.”
“And a crop of necks you intend gathering, I presume?” said the heartless wit.
“Très bien!” continued the President, without noticing the sallies of his old friend, the lord. “I, on my part, will take care of Italy. I think I can trust superstition to assist me in restoring poor old Pio Nono.”
“Your own piety will be sufficient excuse for that, mon Prince. ’Tis a holy crusade, and who more fitted than you to undertake it? With Garibaldi for your Saladin, you will be called Louis of the Lion-heart!”
The gay viscount laughed at his own conceit; the others joining him in the cachinnation.
“Come, my lord!” jokingly rejoined the Prince-President, “it’s not meet for you to be merry. John Bull has an easy part to play in this grand game!”
“Easy, you call it? He’s got to provide the stakes—the monisch. And, after all, what does he gain by it?”
“What does he gain by it? Pardieu! You talk that way in memory of your late scare by the Chartists? Foi d’honnête homme! if I hadn’t played special constable for him, you, cher vicomte, instead of being here as a plenipotentiary, might have been this day enjoying my hospitality as an exile!”
“Ha—ha—ha! Ha—ha—ha!”
Grave Sclave, and graver Teuton—Russia, Prussia, and Austria—took part in the laugh; all three delighted with this joke at the Englishman’s expense.
But their débonnaire fellow-conspirator felt no spite at his discomfiture; else he might have retorted by saying:
“But for John Bull, my dear Louis Napoleon, and that service you pretend to make light of, even the purple cloak of your great uncle, descending as if from the skies, and flouted in the eyes of France, might not have lifted you into the proud position you now hold—the chair of a President, perhaps to be yet transformed into the throne of an Emperor!”
But the Englishman said naught of this. He was too much interested in the hoped-for transformation to make light of it just then; and instead of giving rejoinder, he laughed loud as any of them.
A few more glasses of Moët and Madeira, with a “tip” of Tokay to accommodate the Austrian Field-Marshal, another regalia smoked amidst more of the same kind of persiflage, and the party separated.
Two only remained—Napoleon and his English guest.
It is possible—and rather more than probable—that two greater chicanes never sat together in the same room!
I anticipate the start which this statement will call forth—am prepared for the supercilious sneer. It needs experience, such as revolutionary leaders sometimes obtain, to credit the scoundrelism of conspiring crowns; though ten minutes spent in listening to the conversation that followed would make converts of the most incredulous.
There was no lack of confidence between the two men. On the contrary, theirs was the thickness of thieves; and much in this light did they look upon one another.
But they were thieves on a grand scale, who had stolen from France one-half of its liberty, and were now plotting to deprive it of the other.
Touching glasses, they resumed discourse, the Prince speaking first:
“About this purple robe? What step should be taken? Until I’ve got that on my shoulders, I feel weak as a cat. The Assembly must be consulted about everything. Even this paltry affair of restoring the Pope will cost me a herculean effort.”
The English plenipotentiary did not make immediate reply. Tearing a kid glove between his fingers, he sat reflecting—his very common face contorted with an expression that told of his being engaged in some perplexing calculation.
“You must make the Assembly more tractable,” he at length replied, in a tone that showed the joking humour had gone out of him.
“True. But how is that to be done?”
“By weeding it.”
“Weeding it?”
“Yes. You must get rid of the Blancs, Rollins, Barbes, and all that canaille.”
“Eh bien! But how?”
“By disfranchising their sans culottes constituency—the blouses.”
“Mon cher vicomte! You are surely jesting?”
“No, mon cher prince. I’m in earnest.”
“Sacré! Such a bill brought before the Assembly would cause the members to be dragged from their seats. Disfranchise the blouse voters! Why, there are two millions of them?”
“All the more reason for your getting rid of them. And it can be done. You think there’s a majority of the deputies who would be in favour of it?”
“I’m sure there is. As you know, we’ve got the Assembly packed with the representatives of the old régime. The fear would be from the outside rabble. A crowd would be certain to gather, if such an act was in contemplation, and you know what a Parisian crowd is, when the question is political?”
“But I’ve thought of a way of scattering your crowd, or rather hindering it from coming together.”
“What way, mon cher!”
“We must get up the comb of the Gallic cock—set his feathers on end.”
“I don’t comprehend you.”
“It’s very simple. On our side we’ll insult your ambassador, De Morny—some trifling affront that can be afterward explained and apologised for. I’ll manage that. You then recall him in great anger, and let the two nations be roused to an attitude of hostility. An exchange of diplomatic notes, with sufficient and spiteful wording, some sharp articles in the columns of your Paris press—I’ll see to the same on our side—the marching hither and thither of a half-dozen regiments, a little extra activity in the dockyards and arsenals, and the thing’s done. While the Gallic cock is crowing on one side of the Channel, and the British bull-dog barking on the other, your Assembly may pass the disfranchising act without fear of being disturbed by the blouses. Take my word it can be done.”
“My lord! you’re a genius!”
“There’s not much genius in it. It’s simple as a game of dominoes.”
“It shall be done. You promise to kick De Morny out of your court. Knowing the reason, no man will like it better than he!”
“I promise it.”
The promise was kept. De Morny was “kicked out” with a silken slipper, and the rest of the programme was carried through—even to the disfranchising of the blouses.
It was just as the English diplomat had predicted. The French people, indignant at the supposed slight to their ambassador, in their mad hostility to England, lost tight of themselves; and while in this rabid condition, another grand slice was quietly cut from their fast attenuating freedom.
And the programme of that more extensive, and still more sanguinary, conspiracy was also carried out to the letter.
Before the year had ended, the perjured King of Prussia had marched his myrmidons into South Germany, trampling out the revived flame of Badish and Bavarian revolution; the ruffian soldiers of the Third Napoleon had forced back upon the Roman people their detested hierarch; while a grand Cossack army of two hundred thousand men was advancing iron-heeled over the plain of the Puszta to tread out the last spark of liberty in the East.
This is not romance: it is history!