A Sheaf of Bluebells

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

Bertrand de Maurel had left his boy an immense fortune; Gaston administered it by turning the celebrated iron foundries of La Frontenay into a gigantic factory for the manufacture of munitions of war. That was the time when the people of France were called to arms by the Revolutionary Government against the whole of Europe. France demanded of all her children that they should give the best of what they had in order to help her to fight all the foreign nations who had banded themselves in coalition against her. Gaston de Maurel was in the forefront of those who gave their all. An incurable affection of the heart prevented his taking up arms for the Republic which he had helped to create; but he had talent, brains, money, influence, a genius for organizing and an inexhaustible fund of patriotism and self-sacrifice. At once he marshalled up for the benefit of the State all the vast industrial forces over which his brother's will had given him absolute control, until the day when Ronnay chose to take up the reins of government himself.

He toiled side by side with the workmen in the factory. To each man he assigned his part, so that each man was able to do his best. He sorted, sifted, arrayed the manpower at his disposal, so that every individual in his turn was able to give of his best. And his own eye was everywhere. He methodized everything; he supervised everything.

And—almost despite himself—he accumulated immense wealth, not only for his nephew, but also for himself. He, too, had inherited quite a substantial fortune from his mother, who was the sister and co-heiress of the Marquis de Rouverdain. His capital he lent to the State at interest, and he kept up the fabric of his Château of La Vieuville; but beyond that he spent nothing on himself. He only looked upon himself as the administrator of his nephew's patrimony—as the chief overseer of the Maurel foundries. People called him a miser, and he was that in a sense, for money in his hands perpetually begat money.

The gossip of the village had it that Ronnay de Maurel hardly knew how to read and write. That, of course, was mischievous. The days of the Terror and the Revolution did not allow of grand tours abroad, of courses at the Sorbonne, or of dancing and deportment classes; but old Gaston taught Ronnay all that he knew himself, even though he brought him up as a peasant. The lad wore a peasant's blouse and sabots on his feet; he was ten years old before he tasted any meat, twelve before he opened a book. But when, at fifteen years of age, he joined the army of the Republic, he fought like a hero until that Austrian bullet disabled him; then he retired—a Grand-Eagle of the Legion of Honour, one of the twenty men in the whole of France whom the newly-crowned Emperor thus honoured and trusted most.

It was at Austerlitz that Ronnay de Maurel got the wound which had lamed him for life. Napoleon sent him home to look after the de Maurel munitions factory, and, incidentally, to keep an eye on the hot-headed Royalists of Normandy, who were still brewing mischief against the new Empire and trafficking with the foreigners against their own country. Ronnay de Maurel returned to La Frontenay covered with honours, but eleven years' campaigning in Italy and on the Danube, under General Bonaparte, did not tend to the softening of manners or the acquisition of social graces. In the early days of the Republic and the Directorate—and even of the Consulate—campaigning meant fighting often on an empty stomach, nearly always with insufficient clothing; it meant tramping shoeless through the snows of the Alps or sleeping shelterless on the sodden bog-lands of Belgium. It meant living in comradeship with all the scum of humanity which the Republican Government had scraped together, in order to compose an army numerous enough to stand up against the overwhelmingly superior forces arraigned against France. It meant all that and more for many years; and when de Maurel obtained at twenty-six the grade of general of division—for promotion was over-quick then under the eye of the greatest war-lord the world has ever known—and donned the gorgeous uniform of an officer of high rank in the Imperial army, he knew neither how to enter a drawing-room, nor how to kiss a lady's hand. He knew less than did the sons of the more prominent overseers of his own factory; his manners were more uncouth—his speech more rude.

Having laid aside his fine uniform as general of division, he once more took up the peasant's blouse and the sabots which his Uncle Gaston—on his part—had never laid aside.

The days of democracy were at an end; the Imperial Court vied in brilliancy with the royal courts of long ago, but Ronnay de Maurel saw nothing of it. He had never been to Paris, and when he had stood face to face with his Emperor, both were covered with the grime and smoke of battle, both had their clothes half torn off their backs, both had muddy boots and unwashed hands.

"You fight our enemies with both hands, General," Napoleon had said to de Maurel on that occasion; "with one you wield a sword, with the other you make our cannon balls. In you France has two citizens—our beloved country two sons."

Yes! the days of democracy were at an end, nor had old Gaston de Maurel ever aught to do with the new days of splendour. He had continued to live in two rooms of his beautiful château, both on the ground-floor and away from the main façade; to these rooms one of the small back doors gave access; he lived like a workman, he fed and dressed and toiled like a workman.