Somehow I never had felt more sad and depressed; and the events of the day, so far from making me participate in the general joy, had left me gloomy and desponding. My spirit was little in harmony with the gay and merry groups that passed along the streets, chanting their campaigning songs, and usually having some old soldier of the “Guard” amongst them; for they felt it as a fête, and were hurrying to the cabarets to celebrate the day of Austerlitz.
CHAPTER XIII. THE CHEVALIER.
When men of high courage and proud hearts meet with reverses in life, our anxiety is rather to learn what new channel their thoughts and exertions will take in future, than to hear how they have borne up under misfortune. I knew Duchesne too well to suppose that any turn of fate would find him wholly unprepared; but still, a public reprimand, and from the lips of the Emperor, too, was of a nature to wound him to the quick, and I could not guess, nor picture to myself in what way he would bear it. The loss of grade itself was a thing of consequence, as the service of the élite was reckoned a certain promotion; not to speak of—what to him was far more important—the banishment from Paris and its salons to some gloomy and distant encampment. In speculations like these I returned to my quarters, where I was surprised to discover that the chevalier had not been since morning. I learned from his servant that he had dismissed him, with his horses, soon after leaving the Tuileries, and had not returned home from that time.
I dined alone that day, and sat moodily by myself, thinking over the events of the morning, and wondering what had become of my friend, and watching every sound that might tell of his coming. It is true there were many things I liked not in Duchesne: his cold, sardonic spirit, his moqueur temperament, chilled and repelled me; but I recognized, even through his own efforts at concealment, a manly tone of independence, a vigorous reliance on self, that raised him in my esteem, and made me regard him with a certain species of admiration. With his unsettled or unstable political opinions, I greatly dreaded the excess to which a spirit of revenge might carry him.
I knew that the Jacobin party, and the Bourbons themselves, lay in wait for every erring member of the Imperial side; and I felt no little anxiety at the temptations they might hold out to him, at a moment when his excitement might have the mastery over his cooler judgment.
Late in the evening a Government messenger arrived with a large letter addressed to him from the Minister of War; and even this caused me fresh uneasiness, since I connected the despatch in my mind with some detail of duty which his absence might leave unperformed.
It was long past midnight, as I sat, vainly endeavoring to occupy myself with a book, which each moment I laid down to listen, when suddenly I heard the roll of a fiacre in the court beneath, the great doors banged and closed, and the next moment the chevalier entered the room.
He was dressed in plain clothes, and looked somewhat paler than usual, but though evidently laboring under excitement, affected his wonted ease and carelessness of manner, as, taking a chair in front of me, he sat down.
“What a day of worry and trouble this has been, my dear friend!” he began. “From the moment I last saw you to the present one, I have not rested, and with four invitations to dinner, I have not dined anywhere.”