"I have learned much," he said to Calvert one evening when they were alone in the General's quarters, "and am beginning to have radically different opinions upon some subjects from those I entertained but a short while ago. Sometimes I ask myself if my call for the States-General did not open for France a Pandora's box of evils. What has become of all my efforts?" he said, pushing away a map of the Austrian Netherlands which they had been studying together and beginning to pace the room agitatedly. "Instead of the wise ministers prevailing at Paris, a horde of mad, insensate creatures are ruling the Assembly, the city, the whole country! If only there were some man courageous enough to defy the Jacobins and their power—to meet them on their own ground and conquer them! What can I do at this distance, overwhelmed with military duties, restricted by my official position? I have been thinking of addressing a letter to the Assembly," he went on, suddenly turning to Calvert, "a letter of warning against the Jacobin power, of reproach that they should be ruled by that ignoble faction, or remonstrance against their unwarrantable proceedings, and as soon as I can find the time to write such a letter, I shall do so, and despatch it to Paris by my secretary, let the consequences be what they may."
This design was not accomplished until the middle of June, for, at the beginning of the month, a number of skirmishes and night attacks took place between the Austrians, who had encamped near Maubeuge, and Lafayette's troops, and the General was too much occupied with the military situation to busy himself with affairs at Paris. These attacks culminated in a bloody and almost disastrous engagement for the patriot army on the 11th of June.
The Austrians, reinforced by the emigrant army which had been left at Brussels and in which Calvert knew d'Azay held a captain's commission, advanced during the early afternoon of June 11th and attacked the vanguard of Lafayette's army, encamped two miles from Maubeuge, farther up the Sambre, and commanded by Gouvion. Although the French occupied a formidable position, being securely intrenched on rising ground fortified by a dozen redoubts and batteries arranged in tiers, the enemy advanced with such fierceness and intrepidity that Gouvion had all he could do to keep his gunners from deserting their posts. The infantry, too, behaved ill, and when ordered to advance, wavered and were driven back at the very first charge from the Austrians. Their cavalry pursued the advantage thus gained and pressed forward, advancing in three lines and driving the disordered French troops before them up the hill. At this juncture, Lafayette, with six thousand men and two thousand horse, arrived, having been sent for in hot haste by Gouvion when the action first began, and, attacking the Austrian and émigrés from the flank, after a sharp and bloody struggle, succeeded by nightfall in putting them to flight. Although the forces engaged in this action were small, the slaughter was terrible and the little battle-field by the Sambre presented a ghastly sight in the moonlight of that June night. Gouvion himself was killed leading the last attack, and the Austrian and emigrant forces suffered severely. The regiment which Calvert commanded was in the thick of the engagement the whole time, once it arrived on the scene of action, and no officer of either side more exposed or distinguished himself than did the young American. Indeed, it was not from reckless bravery that he offered himself a target for the bullets of the enemy, but from a feeling that he would not be sorry to end there, to close forever the book of his life. And, as usual with those who seek, rather than avoid, death in battle, from this action, which was the only one he was destined to engage in, he came out unscathed, while many another poor fellow who longed to live, lay quiet and cold on the bloody ground.
So close was the fighting during the late afternoon that Calvert once thought he caught a glimpse of d'Azay and, with a strange presentiment of evil, he determined to look for him among the slain. Accompanied by an orderly bearing a lantern—though the moonlight was so bright that one could easily recognize the pallid, upturned faces—he began his search an hour after the firing had ceased, with many others engaged in the same ghastly work of finding dead comrades. He had looked but a short while, or so it seemed to him, when he came upon d'Azay lying prone upon a little hillock of Austrian slain. As Calvert looked down upon him, grief for this dead friend and an awful sense of the futility of the sacrifice which had been made for him, came upon him. He knelt beside him for a few minutes and looked into the quiet, dead face. He had never before thought that d'Azay resembled Adrienne, but now the resemblance of brother and sister was quite marked, and 'twas with the sharpest pang Calvert had ever known that he looked upon those pallid features. It might have been that other and dearer face, he thought to himself. At length he arose and, helping the orderly place the body upon a stretcher, they bore it back to the camp, where, next day, it was buried with what military honors Calvert could get accorded it. He sent a lock of d'Azay's hair, his seals and rings, back to Paris to Adrienne (he kept for his own her miniature, which he found in d'Azay's pocket and which he had first seen that night at Monticello), and the letter she wrote him thanking him for all he had done were the first written words of hers he had ever had. Though there was not a word of love in the note—not even of friendship—Calvert re-read it a score of times and treasured it, and at last put it with the miniature in the little chamois case that rested near his heart.
The check which Lafayette had put upon the Austrians on the 11th of June having produced a cessation of hostilities, he wrote and despatched to the Assembly the letter which he had had in contemplation for some time and of which he had spoken to Calvert. This courageous letter—the authenticity of which was fiercely denied in the Assembly—not only did not produce the effect Lafayette so hoped for, but was followed by the outrage of the 20th of June. Who does not know the shameful events of that day?—the invasion of the Tuileries by hordes of ruffians and the insults to helpless royalty?
When Lafayette heard of the uprising of the 20th he determined to go in person to Paris, affirm the authorship of his letter, and urge upon the Assembly the destruction of the Jacobin party. He sent Calvert to Luckner's head-quarters to ask of the Maréchal permission to go to Paris and, placing his troops in safety under the guns of Maubeuge, he departed for the capital, whither he arrived on the 28th. After two days spent in incessant and fruitless efforts with the Assembly and National Guard, in audiences with the King and consultations with friends, he sped back to the army, more thoroughly and bitterly convinced than ever that the revolution which he had led and believed in was now fast approaching anarchy; that the throne was lost and his own brilliant popularity vanished. He took with him to Calvert the news of the sudden death of the old Duchesse d'Azay—she had failed rapidly since hearing of the death of d'Azay, and had passed away painlessly on the morning of Lafayette's arrival in Paris—the escape of St. Aulaire to Canada, and a letter from Mr. Morris.
"He desired me to give you this," said Lafayette, gravely, handing the letter to Calvert. "The message is of the greatest importance. We had a long interview. I am at last come to the same opinion on certain subjects as himself," he said, with a gloomy smile, "and we want your co-operation. He will explain all when he sees you. As for myself, I must say no more," and he went away, leaving the young man to read his letter alone.
CHAPTER XXI
MR. CALVERT QUITS THE ARMY AND ENGAGES IN A HAZARDOUS ENTERPRISE
The letter which Calvert had received from Mr. Morris was short but very urgent. It begged him to resign his commission at once, which affair, the letter hinted, would be immediately arranged by Lafayette, and come to Paris, as Mr. Morris had business of the first importance on hand in which he wished Calvert's assistance. It went on to add that the exact nature of that business had best not be divulged until the young man should find himself at the American Legation, and ended by urging Mr. Calvert not to delay his departure from Maubeuge by a day, if possible.