Alice was a devoted Royalist: all that she had suffered for the cause had endeared it to her; and she could forgive, but not forget, that her future husband had shed his blood for the Usurper.
Alfred was what every one, and with reason, called a most fortunate fellow: a colonel at twenty-eight—a promotion that, under the Empire, nothing but the most distinguished services could have gained—and yet he was far from happy. He remembered with higher enthusiasm his first grade of “corporal,” won at Aspern, and his epaulettes that he gained at Wilna. His soldiering had been learned in another school than in the parade-ground at Versailles, or the avenue of the Champs Elysées.
“Come, mon ami!” said Alice, gaily, to him one morning, about ten days before the time appointed for their marriage; “thou art about to have some occasion for thy long-rusting sword: the Usurper has landed at Cannes.”
“The Emperor at Cannes!”
“The Emperor, if thou wilt—but without an Empire.”
“No matter. Is he without an army?” said Alfred.
“Alone—with some half-dozen followers, at most. Ney has received orders to march against him, and thou art to command a brigade.”
“This is good news!” said Alfred; for the very name of war had set his heart a-throbbing; and as he issued forth into the streets, the stirring sounds of excitement and rapid motion of troops increased his ardour.
Wondering groups were gathered in every street, some, discussing the intelligence, others, reading the great placards, which, in letters of portentous size, announced that “the Monster” had once more polluted by his presence the soil of France.
Whatever the enthusiasm of the old Royalists to the Bourbon cause, there seemed an activity and determination on the part of the Buonapartists who had taken service with the King to exhibit their loyalty to the new sovereign; and Ney rode from one quarter of Paris to the other, with a cockade of most conspicuous size, followed by a staff equally remarkable.