LXIV
We know that Bazeilles had been on the thirty-first of August a town of 2,000 inhabitants, mostly weavers, gathered about the ancient château that sheltered the boyhood of the great Turenne. Bazeilles had not observed the Law of the Neutrality of the non-combatant. The village had formed the extreme right of the French position on the day of the Battle of Sedan. Lebrun's Corps had occupied it, and its inhabitants had been seized with the fighting fever, and had helped to hold back a Bavarian Division for nearly six hours. Elderly civilians armed with antiquated rifles had displayed desperate bravery. One old woman, possessed of an ancient horse pistol, is said to have shot down three of the enemy. The men, their women and children, were now cinders mixed with heaps of calcined brickbats. The grim lesson had been taught very thoroughly. Bazeilles served as an object-lesson on Prussian methods throughout the remainder of the War.
"I will remember Bazeilles!" had flashed through the young head that was swaddled in white woolen. "My friend shall not forget to tell me what was done there!"
But the imperious hand of the Minister was upon the door of the billiard room. She saw it summarily thrown open. He went in, followed by Hatzfeldt, Bismarck-Böhlen at their heels.
"Capital!" he said to them. "We will have this arranged as a Bureau for the Councilors, the dispatch secretaries, and the cipherers. What is this?" He went to the glass door that led into the winter garden, looked through, and commented: "One could smoke a cigar here after dinner in wet weather; very well, it seems to me!"
The owner of the quick ears sheltered by the shawl of white woolen understood but little German, as she had previously said to her absent comrade. But what slight lore she had in the abhorred tongue had been gained in conversation with a Prussian mistress. She found that, thanks to the enemy's clear, melodious diction, she had no great difficulty in comprehending the substance of what he said.
His long heavy strides carried him next into the drawing-room, that apartment destined to become famous in history as the seat of the various negotiations which led to the treaties with the States of South Germany, the proclamation of the King of Prussia as German Emperor, and later, to the surrender of the City of Paris, and the settlement of the Conditions of Peace. The simply furnished, medium-sized room boasted a few mediocre oil paintings, a cottage piano, a sofa, some easy-chairs, and wall mirrors framed in handsomely wrought ormolu. Upon a little table against the wall stood an old-world timepiece, surmounted by a bronze figure with fiendish attributes, which engaged his attention curiously. His great laugh burst out, as he contemplated the grotesque.
"Now," he said, his voice still shaken by amusement, "if that malignant little demon be a model of the guardian spirit of the Famille Tessier, the Socialists and Ultramontane will be of opinion that I have come to the right shop!"
The young men laughed at the jest uproariously. He joined them, crushing down their lighter merriment with a mirthful giant's thunderous "Ha, ha!..." Then the double doors of the drawing-room opened. He came out with his followers into the hall place, demanding of little Madame Potier in fluent French whether gas was laid on in the rooms above:
"I think it probable, for you are a luxurious people in your habits, even down to the bourgeoisie and peasantry of France. At home, I am accustomed to go to bed with a candle, and blow it out when I get between the sheets. But here in Gallia I shall do as the Gauls!"
"There is gas in the bedrooms, Monseigneur!" shrilled White Shawl.
"So!" He looked down from his great height upon the speaker. She caught up a box of matches from the hall table and thrust it into Madame Potier's shaking hand....
"Go up quickly. Light the gas in the bedrooms. Monseigneur wishes to examine them all!" She added in her shrill voice: "They are in use at the moment, but can be vacated and got ready for the occupation of Monseigneur in something less than half an hour!" She broke off to shriek to the ascending Madame Potier.... "Quicker, Jeannette! Thou art always as slow as a tortoise!... But I come myself!..." And with a halting, shuffling gait which made Count Bismarck-Böhlen grin, and even the polished Hatzfeldt put up his eyeglass, she jerked across the beeswaxed parquet of the hall, and mounted the gray-and-red drugget-covered stairs.
What virtue lies in contrasts! When Juliette de Bayard walked, you learned what poetry could be in simple motion. Her skirts had a rhythmic swing and flow. Those little feet of hers made twenty steps to the stride of an ordinary English girl. At Mass, when folded in her white School veil, she advanced to the Communion rail to receive the Blessed Sacrament, she swam, she rocked as though upborne on waves of buoyant ether. Watching her, you would have said that thus Our Lady must have glided onward, bearing the gracious burden of her Divine Child.
This peacock-voiced creature who hid under a white shawl what the men who sneered at her dimly felt must be a countenance ugly to repulsiveness, had one shoulder thrust upward and forward, reaching nearly to the ear on that side.... A palpable curvature of the spine caused the curious gait, and possibly to this deformity might be attributed the voice that was so harsh, raucous, and torturing to the ear.
"Do not laugh.... It is pitiable rather than ridiculous," she heard her enemy say, in his own tongue.
Hot wrath, fulminating indignation, mingled in Juliette with the pride of the comedian who has made an effective exit.... To be pitied by him, and for a second time! That liquid flame that circulated through her veins, illuminated her brain in its every cell and convolution. By its lurid light she saw her own intention in all its ugliness. Was she to blame, who had fled from this her destiny? Had she sought for her vengeance? Of his own will had he not come, this world-shaking Colossus, to find his Fate waiting for him?
And Breagh. What of her promise to her comrade? The thought was a knife-keen stab compelling a shriek. She stifled it in the folds of the shawl, bent down her head, and with an exaggeration of the grotesque gait, scuttled upstairs with the agility of an escaping spider, provoking a guffaw from the Twopenny Roué, a laugh from the well-bred Hatzfeldt, even a deep chuckle from the Enemy. Let him laugh! As she fled from room to room, and the gas-jets leaped up flaring and shrieking under her small, fierce hand, like little Furies and Vengeances, and tell-tale articles of feminine attire and use were caught up and thrust into a small portmanteau, she bade him laugh as much as he would. As she opened a cupboard by the chimney-piece where Madame Tessier had kept medicine and cosmetics, and took from the shelf a flat-topped, wide-mouthed chemist's vial, and thrust it within her dress, deep into her bosom, she told herself that France should laugh before long!
Meanwhile, her enemy and France's waited, chatting in the hall at the foot of the stair. When she descended, he went up with Hatzfeldt and Bismarck-Böhlen, and made a brief inspection of the rooms. His own choice was made with the least delay possible. Opening from the square, skylighted landing at the head of the main staircase, was a room, some ten paces long and seven broad, lighted by one window on the right side of the main front, looking toward the stables, and commanding a view of the pleasance and shrubbery from two more windows in the eastward wall. This apartment, which was partly above the dining room, and had been occupied by Madame Charles Tessier, the Minister appropriated to his own use. A second room, communicating with this, and looking on the pleasance, and boasting also a glass window door leading out upon the iron bridge topping the conservatory on the south side, he set apart for Bismarck-Böhlen.
A somewhat better-furnished room looking upon the Rue de Provence would serve, as would the drawing-room upon the ground floor, for the reception of strangers and guests. Privy Councilor Abeken would occupy the bedroom next to this, also with an outlook upon the Rue de Provence. A tiny cell near the back stairs, only big enough to hold a bed, chest of drawers, and washstand, was set apart for Secretary Bolsing. Upon the second floor Dr. Busch or Privy Councilor Bucher would occupy the best bedroom, the two Prussian body servants from the Wilhelm-Strasse sleeping in the attic overhead. The two remaining chambers on the second floor—small, angular, ill-ventilated places—the women of the house were free to move into, and retain, if they desired. "Only in that case," said the masterful voice, "they must contribute their services toward keeping the house in order. Where I live, there must be no idlers. That is understood!"
Below in the hall, White Shawl and Madame Potier heard his strong laugh echoing amid the empty chambers and his heavy stride shaking the rafters above their heads.
"I am pleased with my room, though it has a window opening toward the stables, where the detachment of troops supplying the sentries will be quartered for the present, with my orderly and coachman and the two grooms. But common sights do not annoy me, any more than common noises, and there are two other windows overlooking the park. The trees in their autumn coloring will remind me of my own woodlands at home. Altogether the place has been chosen intelligently. A more roomy and better-furnished house might afford spiteful people an excuse to accuse the Chancellor of the Confederated States of luxury—the love of which has never been a besetting sin of mine. True, I must have a table supplied well, punctually, and generously.... That is always an understood thing. A sine qua non, in fact.... The King is quite aware of this.... I told him again yesterday, ... 'Sire, I must be fed properly if I am to make proper terms of peace!'"
His great laugh sounded again as he came trampling downstairs, bringing with him a masculine perfume of Russian leather and cigars of super-excellent quality. And Hatzfeldt was saying in his languid, well-bred accents:
"With Your Excellency's permission, I will now take leave of you—I must go and see the place where I am quartered. It is at No. 25, Avenue St. Cloud."
"So, then.... A pretty good distance from the Chancellor of the Confederation, should he require at some unusual hour the services of his First Secretary.... You will have to find the Count more convenient lodgings." The Minister turned to the Intendant General, who barked:
"At Your Excellency's honorable orders, the change shall be immediately made!"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, not to-night!" expostulated Hatzfeldt, with graceful peevishness. "I am horribly done up with the heat and the dust we had on our way here. Why should the King have dragged us to Choissy-le-Roi, in order to see the troops? Cannot he see troops every hour of his existence? Ah, by the way! Did Your Excellency notice that at Villeneuve St. George the bridge of boats had been blown up?"
The Minister shrugged:
"Who can understand this destructive mania? It is a national disease peculiar to the French. Since the beginning of the war, they have destroyed bridges and railways to the tune of millions—for the sheer pleasure, one would suppose, of building them up again. Well, good night!" He held out his hand pleasantly to Hatzfeldt. "Good night to you, Herr Intendant General!"
The Intendant saluted stiffly and barked in his peculiar style:
"I wish a very good night to Your Excellency!" Then he clanked down the steps after Hatzfeldt and over the gravel walk to the front gate.
"I know what Count Paul has it in his mind to do," chuckled Bismarck-Böhlen, looking after them. "He will take a bath and dine at the Hôtel des Réservoirs."
"It would not be a bad plan to follow his example," said the Minister, "since some of the Foreign Office fourgons may be late in getting here. Unless Madame Tessier is prepared to supply us with a dinner upon the spur of the call?"
He added:
"Come, shut the hall door. I see they have already placed sentries. The grooms and Niederstedt will bring in the luggage by the back door and up the servants' staircase." He continued as Bismarck-Böhlen obeyed: "They are particular about such matters in French houses, where there is so much wax polishing of the floors and woodwork. Where are the women? ... There were two. A bonne and her mistress, the proprietress...." His powerful glance fell upon them standing near the doorway of the dining-room. He motioned them to enter, and followed them in.
"Madame Tessier!" he began, taking as by right the chair at the head of the long shining dinner table, upon which the tapestry cloth had not yet been replaced. He looked at White Shawl. The shrill voice cackled:
"Madame Tessier is in Belgium.... I am Madame Charles Tessier, the wife of Monsieur, her son!"
He said in his excellent French, laying on the table the flat white Cuirassier cap he had removed on entering:
"I congratulate M. Tessier! Can your servant cook, Madame?"
The shrill voice responded:
"Monseigneur must be judge of that when he has tried her dishes. She does her best—the excellent Jeannette! But if Monseigneur is to be served as befits his state and consequence ... I should prefer to cook for him myself!"
"So!" He leaned one elbow on the table, meditatively regarding the speaker, and the lambent blue flame of humor danced and flickered in his eyes: "Since we do not require you and your domestic to leave the house—only to confine yourselves to the two smaller bedrooms on the second floor—it may be as well that you should assist to a degree in the kitchen.... But for all that does not require women we have our servants—you understand? And the chef attached to the service of the Prussian Chancellery is extremely competent. He is—rather a personage in his way!"
Bismarck-Böhlen sniggered in his characteristic fashion.
White Shawl shrilled, gesticulating with a hand that resembled a claw:
"If your Prussian cooks better than I do—or even the chef of our gredin of an Emperor, he may call me a Bonapartist and I will not slap his face!"
The Minister drew his well-shaped sunbrowned hand over his mustache, perhaps to hide a smile at the epithet. He asked with his powerful glance intent upon Madame Charles Tessier:
"So, then, you are not a lover of the Bonapartes? What is your party? Are you Republican or Monarchist?"
She shrieked with raucous energy:
"I am a patriot, and a citizeness of the French Republic! All my life I have execrated the Bonapartes. See you well—I do not love Prussians!... But you have humiliated and dethroned this sacred pig of a Napoleon.... And for that I could kiss the hand that received his sword!"
The person to whom the shrill tirade was addressed listened with imperturbability, although Bismarck-Böhlen, standing on the other side of the table, between the windows, involuntarily clapped his hands to his sorely sacrificed ears.
Now the Minister said in his suavest French accents:
"The hand was not mine, Madame, I beg to assure you, but that of the King of Prussia, who is hardly likely to pay us a visit here.... Should His Majesty elect to do so, your ambition may be partially gratified. You will see the monarch who has paid your Imperial bugbear so thoroughly well in his own coin."
Here Bismarck-Böhlen broke in.... "Excellency! ... talking of coin ... you told me to remind you of what happened the other day...."
"Ah, so I did!" said he. "It is a mere coincidence, but worth remembering.... Upon leaving the weaver's hovel, near the village of Donchery, outside which you and Leverstrom waited while I discussed the terms of the capitulation with Napoleon in a garret containing a table, a bed, and two rush-bottomed chairs, the French Emperor presented five pieces of gold to the weaver, which Leverstrom afterward told me he vainly endeavored to buy of the man. His stupidity or the weaver's, we will not say now which was the greater!... But the coins displayed in unbroken sequence—the portraits of five rulers of France. There was Napoleon I., imperially wreathed, on a fine fat piece of 1820; a Louis XVIII., inane and aristocratic; a Charles X., with the knob in his nose; a Louis Philippe, looking like a bourgeois, and Napoleon III., Emperor of Ready-Made Plebiscites...." He broke off to say: "And now, Madame, what news of this dinner? Can you supply it, or must we go elsewhere? Decide. I am always an economist of time!"
And the penetrating glance shaded by the shaggy eyebrows of the Minister questioned the meager peaked countenance of which merely a wedge showed between the curtaining folds of the white shawl.... Lover of good cheer as he was, he was perhaps asking himself whether a creature so mean and pinched-looking could set before him the nourishing, well-flavored, well-cooked dishes, calculated to restore energy to his giant's frame. She was studying the face revealed in the circle of light cast downward by the shaded lamps of the gasalier above the dinner table, half loathing, half fascinated by the tremendous personality now revealed.
How much the published portraits of the man lacked, she realized now, clearly. What mental and physical power, and force, and energy were indicated in the lines of the great domed skull and the astonishing frontal development. What audacious courage and ironic humor were in the regard of the full blue eyes that rested lightly upon her own insignificance.... What deeply cut, pugnacious nostrils he had; what a long stern upper lip the full gray mustache curtained! He had a cleft in his chin that reminded her of a friend she loved....
This last and the other characteristics of the visage that confronted her were fuel to her roaring furnace of hate. A baleful light blazed in the eyes she curtained from him. Her heart seemed a goblet brimmed with intoxicating, poisoned wine. And then a little thing tamed the snake in her. It drew in its quivering, forked tongue, covered the fangs that oozed with venom, lowered its hooded head, and sank down, palpitating among its cold and scaly coils.
With all its power, the profound weariness of his face had suddenly come home to and arrested her. He looked, as was indeed the fact, like a man who had not known a good night's rest for weeks. There were sagging pouches of exhaustion under the masterful eyes, and the lines about the forehead and mouth and jaws were deeply trenched with fatigue and anxiety. With pain, too, for he was suffering from facial neuralgia brought on by nervous strain and overexposure, and divers galls and blisters, the result of days spent in the saddle by an elderly heavy-weight. Now he yawned and leaned back in his creaking chair, and suddenly was no despot helmed with terrors, armed with power, mantled with ruthlessness, but a man fagged out, and tired and hungry, athirst for rest and the comforts of home.
He had a wife living, she knew, and sons serving in the Prussian Army. Perhaps he had a daughter who loved him, too.... Perhaps she was thinking of him ... praying for his return in safety.... Oh, God!... The dreadful thought was not to be tolerated.... It must be driven away ... banished from the mind, if one was to carry out the plan....
All these thoughts volted through the brain under the white shawl in the passing of an instant. The next, she heard the shrill voice say:
"It is for Monseigneur to decide!... There is no difficulty about dinner—that is, provided Monseigneur can eat a good soup of artichokes made with cream!..."
His startlingly blue eyes laughed. He acquiesced, seeming to snuff the air with his deeply cut nostrils.
"There is nothing better than puree of artichokes—provided it serves as the prelude to a solid, sustaining, and well-cooked meal."
White Shawl shrilled:
"There might follow a six-pound trout, boiled, with sauce à la Tartare.... One came in this afternoon, fresh to a miracle, a fish from the Gauche near Montreuil."
He said to Bismarck-Böhlen:
"The trout of the Cauche are capital eating ... especially those caught in the upper part of the stream, a mile below Parenty. What else, Madame?"
She proclaimed in the raucous voice that made Bismarck-Böhlen grimace and shudder:
"A dish of cutlets and a ragoût of partridges with little cabbages. It is now upon the fire, simmering in the casserole—I meant it for next day!"
Like the trout, it had been designed for P. C. Breagh's delectation.
She added:
"And there are a cold ham, a peach tart, and a jelly of Maraschino, and I could toss up a savory omelette to follow the sweet dishes. As for dessert ... we have pears and plums from the garden.... But, Monseigneur..." It was greed that made the woman's strange eyes glitter so intolerably—"I shall be well paid for the excellent food and all my trouble, shall I not, Monseigneur? ... In good French money—not in Prussian notes?"
Under the heavy mustache he showed his sound, even teeth in a laugh of enjoyment.
"In good French money. You have my promise. So—you do not like our Prussian notes?"
White Shawl screamed:
"They are good where they come from, it may be, Monseigneur!... But here—the people would as soon take dead leaves for pay!..."
He thrust his hand in his breeches pocket, pulled out a gold Napoleon, and threw it ringing on the shining table. Her eyes snapped. The little clawlike hand darted from the folds of the enveloping white shawl and pounced on the gold piece. She curtsied like an elder-pith puppet to the great figure sitting at the table head, and with the extraordinary gait that combined a hitch, twist, and shuffle, hobbled out of the room, shrilling as the door closed behind her:
"Jeannette! Jeannette! Monseigneur will dine here! Make you up the kitchen fire! I will go myself to the cellar and get the fruit.... And the wine ... Monseigneur will certainly require some wine! Later on you must help me get ready the bedrooms. Put out sheets and pillow cases to air!"
Bismarck-Böhlen was saying, as he followed his great relative into the drawing-room, and extended himself upon the green plush sofa, as the Minister selected the largest armchair, and lighted one of his huge cigars:
"What a woman! What a voice!"
The other laughed through the fragrant smoke rings:
"You could say no more and no less of an operatic diva, had you recently fallen a victim to her charms. My landlady pleases me. My tastes, as you know, are somewhat peculiar.... But you need not feel anxious on the Countess's behalf. My sentiments in this instance are highly platonic." He added, smoking and speaking almost dreamily: "If in cookery Madame's performance equals her promise, what with trout, and partridges aux petit choux—cold ham to fall back on, and a savory omelette, we ought not to do badly at all!... With half a dozen bottles of that champagne we brought from Rheims, and a little of the Epernay..."
He added, yawning and stretching his great limbs: "I am not usually poetical, but I have a fancy with regard to the deep blue, green-fleshed grapes of the country, that their color affects the river into which the hillside vineyards drain. The Marne water is as brilliant and green as though it were made of melted emeralds. And the must from those grapes yields the best champagne of Rheims and Epernay...." He yawned again and went on: "There is something in surroundings! In this house I feel that I can work comfortably. The view of old trees, and bushes and flower beds from the room I have chosen as a bedroom and study will make one feel almost at home. Two of my servants shall sleep upstairs in the attics—of which there are several, and my coachman Niederstedt—who was my porter at the Wilhelm Strasse, shall have a shakedown somewhere belowstairs. He is as strong as Goliath and as sharp as a needle. An unusual combination of qualities, because giants are supposed by little people to be dull-witted and easily taken in!"
He sent out a long column of fragrant blue vapor, and added, looking at the antique bronze clock surmounted by its grotesque bat-winged shape: "A fallacy, since I myself belong to the family of the Anakim. Do you observe that my landlady's familiar spirit appears to be winking at what I have just said?... Kobold or gnome, there is a family resemblance between his countenance and Madame's. I must get her to sell him to me, to carry home to Berlin."