Alfred stepped back at the words. The order to arrest and make him prisoner was almost on his lips. He turned towards his men, who instinctively had resumed their formation; his head was maddened by the conflict within it; his eyes turned again towards Napoleon—the struggle was over-he knelt and presented his sword.
“Take mine in exchange, General de Vitry,” said the Emperor; “I know you will wear it with honour.”
And thus, in a moment, was all forgotten—plighted love and sworn faith—for who could resist the Emperor?
The story is now soon told. Waterloo came, and once more the day of defeat descended, never to dawn upon another victory. Alfred, rejected and scorned, lived years in poverty and obscurity. When the fortunes of the Revolution brought up once more the old soldiers of the Empire, he fought at the Quai Voltaire and was wounded severely. The Three Days over, he was appointed to a sous-lieutenancy in the dragoons. He is now chef-d’escadron, the last of his race, weary of a world whose vicissitudes have crushed his hopes and made him broken-hearted.
The relator of this tale was Alfred de Vitry himself, who, under the name of his maternal grandfather, St. Amand, served in the second regiment of Carabiniers.
CHAPTER V.
12 o’clock, Tuesday night, May 31st, 184-.
“Que bella cosa” to be a king! Here am I now, returned from Neuilly, whither I dreaded so much to venture, actually enchanted with the admirable manner of his Majesty Louis Philippe, adding one more to the long list of those who, beginning with Madame de Genlis and Johnson, have delighted to extol the qualities whose pleasing properties have been expended on themselves.
There is, however, something wonderfully interesting in the picture of a royal family living en bourgeois—a King sitting with his spectacles on his forehead and his newspaper on his knee, playfully alluding to observations whose fallacy he alone can demonstrate; a Queen busily engaged amid the toils of the work-table, around which Princesses of every European royalty are seated, gaily chatting over their embroidery, or listening while an amusing book is read out by a husband or a brother: even an American would be struck by such a view of monarchy.