“It's all over, then?” said I.
“Yes, all over,” said he while, pressing his horse to speed, he dashed on in front of me; nor was I sorry that even so much of space separated us at that moment.
Through that long, bright, starry night we rode at the top speed of our horses, and, as day was breaking, entered Rostadt, where we ate a hasty breakfast, and again set out. Ysaffich reported himself at each military station as the bearer of despatches, till, on the second morning, we arrived at Hellsheim, on the Bergstrasse, where we left our horses, and proceeded on foot to the Rhine by a little pathway across the fields. We crossed the river, and, hiring a wagon, drove on to Erz, a hamlet on the Moselle, at which place we found horses again ready for us. I was terribly fatigued by this time, but Ysaffich seemed fresh as when we started. Seeing, however, my exhaustion, he proposed to halt for a couple of hours,—a favor I gladly accepted. The interval over, we remounted, and so on to Namur, where we arrived on the sixth day, having scarcely interchanged as many words with each other from the moment of our setting out.
CHAPTER XLVII. TOWARDS HOME
Ysaffich's retreat was a small cottage about two miles from Dinant, and on the verge of the Ardennes forest. He had purchased it from a retired “Garde Chasse” some years before, “seeing,” as he said, “it was exactly the kind of place a man may lie concealed in, whenever the time comes, as it invariably does come, that one wants to escape from recognition.”
I have already said that he was not very communicative as we went along; but as we drew nigh to Dinant he told me in a few words the chief events of his career since we had parted.
“I have made innumerable mistakes in life, Gervois, but my last was the worst of all. I married! Yes, I persuaded your old acquaintance Madame von Geysiger to accept me at last. She yielded, placed her millions and tens of millions at my disposal, and three months after we were beggared. Davoust found, or said he found, that I was a Russian spy; swore that I was carrying on a secret correspondence with Sweden; confiscated every sou we had in the world, and threw me into jail at Lubeck, from which I managed to escape, and made my way to Paris. There I preferred my claim against the marshal: at first before the cour militaire, then to the minister, then to the Emperor. They all agreed that Davoust was grossly unjust; that my case was one of the greatest hardship, and so on; that the money was gone, and there was no help for it. In fact, I was pitied by some, and laughed at by others; and out of sheer disgust at the deplorable spectacle I presented, a daily supplicant at some official antechamber, I agreed to take my indemnity in the only way that offered,—a commission in the newly raised Polish Legion, where I served for two years, and quitted three days ago in the manner you witnessed.”
His narrative scarcely occupied more words than I have given it. He told me the story as we led our horses up a narrow bridle-path that ascended from the river's side to a little elevated terrace where a cottage stood.
“There,” said he, pointing with his whip, “there is my pied à terre, all that I possess in the world, after twenty years of more persevering pursuit of wealth than any man in Europe. Ay, Gervois, for us who are not born to the high places in this world, there is but one road open to power, and that is money! It matters not whether the influence be exerted by a life of splendor or an existence of miserable privation,—money is power, and the only power that every faction acknowledges and bows down to. He who lends is the master, and he who borrows is the slave. That is a doctrine that monarchs and democrats all agree in. The best proof I can afford you that my opinion is sincere lies in the simple fact that he who utters the sentiment lives here;” and with these words he tapped with the head of his riding-whip at the door of the cottage.