“Very excellent company! I trust none of them have cheated you at écarte.”
“Pray, have done with jesting, and answer me. Who is your Abbé?”
“Ma foi, he is the Abbé, d'Ervan. What part of France he comes from, who are his family, friends, and resources,—are all questions I have never thought proper to ask him; possibly because I am not so scrupulous on the score of my acquaintances as you are. He is a very clever, amusing, witty person; knows almost every one; has the entrée into every house in the Faubourg St. Germain; can compose a couplet and sing it; make a mayonnaise or a madrigal better than any man I know; and, in fact, if he were one of these days to be a minister of France, I should not be so very much surprised as you appear this moment at my not knowing more about him. As to the other, the Russian secretary,—or spy, if you like the phrase better, he was unlucky enough to have one of his couriers robbed by a party of brigands, which scandal says were sent out for the purpose by Monsieur de Talleyrand. His secret despatches were opened and read; and as they were found to implicate the Russian Government in certain intrigues carrying on, the Czar had only one course open, which was to recall the secretary and disavow his whole proceedings. The better to evince his displeasure, I hear they have slit his nose, and sent him to pass the winter at Tobolsk. Lastly, the préfet. What shall I say of him, save that he was a préfet in the South, and wants to be one again? His greatest endeavors in any cause will be to pledge its success in Burgundy, or, if you wish, drink the downfall of its enemy; and as to his enthusiasm, he cares a devilish deal more for a change of weather than a change of dynasty, particularly in the truffle season, or when the vines are ripening. Such are the truly dangerous associates you have kept company with. It now only remains to speak of my humble self, whose history, I need scarcely say, is far more at your service than worth the hearing. Are you satisfied?”
“Quite so, as regards me; by no means so, however, as to your fate. Short as our intimacy has been, I have seen enough of you to know that qualities like yours should not be wasted in a mad or hopeless enterprise.”
“Who told you it was either?” interrupted he, impetuously. “Who dares to say that the rule of a Usurper is more firmly placed than the prestige of a Monarchy that goes back to Hugues Capet? Come, come! I will not discuss these questions with you, nor have I temper now left to do so. Give me the countersign to pass the sentry, and let us part.”
“Not in anger, though, De Beauvais.”
“Not in friendship, sir,” replied he, proudly, as he waved back, with his, my proffered hand. “Adieu!” said he, in a softened tone, as he moved from the room; and then, turning quickly round, he added, “We may meet again hereafter, and scarcely can do so on equal terms. If fortune stand by you I must be a beggar; should I win, yours is indeed a sorry lot. When that time comes, let him with whom the world goes best not forget the other. Good-by!” And with that he turned away, and left the house.
I watched him as he strode along the silent alleys, careless and free as though he had no cause for fear, till he disappeared in the dark wood: and then I sat down at the door to think over our interview. Never had my heart felt more depressed. My own weakness in having ever admitted the intimacy of men whose dangerous designs were apparent had totally undermined the strong principle of rectitude I should have relied upon in such a trial, and on which I could have thrown myself for support. What had I to guide me after all, save my devotion to the cause of Bonaparte himself? The prejudices of education, the leanings of family opinion, the inclinations of friends, exist not for the alien. He has to choose his allegiance; it is not born with him. His loyalty is not the growth of a hundred different sympathies, that have twined round his heart in childhood and grown with him to manhood; speaking of home and infancy, of his own native streams and mountains, of a land that was his father's. No! with him it is not a conviction,—it is but a feeling.
Such was the substance of my reverie; and as I arose and strolled out into the park, it was with a deeply-uttered vow to be true to him and his fortunes whose name first lit the spark of ambition in my heart, and through weal or woe to devote myself to him.