“Chivalry would be wasted upon ladies who demean themselves so far as to beg the gentlemen of the Emperor of Russia’s suite to take them up on their horses, only that they may catch a glimpse of him!”
Here Clémence interposed. “The ladies of Paris may not be very dignified,” she said, “but at least they have not, like the mob, incurred the reproach of inconstancy. Perhaps we women are not always wise in our choice of an idol, or self-respecting in the incense we burn before it; but at least we seldom choose as the object of our idolatry a man capable of leaving those who fought and bled for him to perish unpitied in the snow, while he warmed himself at his fire in the Tuileries, saying, in the satisfaction of his heart, ‘This is better than Moscow.’”
Such an outburst from Clémence was rare indeed. It would not have been possible, had not the newly-found balm of hope taken the sting out of the old wound, and brought the Moscow retreat within the category of things that could be spoken about.
“These are not the grounds upon which ladies form their estimates of character,” Emile returned, a little superciliously. “Oh no! When Napoleon wished to see a lady, he simply ordered her to come to him. This Russian autocrat, in the like case, sends his aide-de-camp to inquire whether madame proposes remaining at home this afternoon, as, if so, he hopes to have the pleasure of waiting upon her. After that, what fair lady could suspend her judgment for a moment? Trust the dear creatures, one and all, to prefer the finely-polished pebble to the diamond in the rough.”
“Does the polish prove the pebble, or the roughness the diamond?” asked Clémence demurely.
“The polish, at all events, takes with the multitude,” resumed the indignant Emile. “High and low alike have gone out of their senses about this Alexander. The canaille of St. Antoine are as bad as the habitués of St. Germain. Every word he utters flies from lip to lip, as if it were inspired. ‘Ah, sire, why did you not come to us before?’ ask the deputies of the municipality. ‘It was the valour of your armies that detained me,’ says Alexander; and all Paris is delighted. I am bound to own he has kind words for all, and kind deeds as well—so far.”
“There is but one question of absorbing interest for us, and for France,” said Madame de Talmont. “Does he—do the Allies intend to use their influence for the restoration of our rightful king?”
“That I scarcely know,” said Emile. “I do know, however, that the streets are full of white cockades; every hour one sees more of them. And I hear that the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia have been deep in consultation with that old schemer Talleyrand, who, of course, is turning his coat again. So, my dear grandmother, and you too, my cousins, I think you may indulge a hope that the reign of the antediluvians is about to recommence, and that Moses and Abraham and all the rest of them may be shortly expected in Paris.”
Evidently Scripture history was not taught carefully at the Ecole Polytechnique; still there was a strain of reason in the boy’s random talk. It was as true of the men before the Revolution as of those before the Flood, that “they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded,” heedless of the rising tide of divine and human wrath, until the torrent overflowed its bounds and swept them all away. Would their successors do the same?
“As for me, I am not one of your slight, inconstant time-servers, ever ready to swim with the current and to turn towards the rising sun,” Emile pursued, with a tragic air and a sublime confusion of metaphors. “I can tell you, very little more would make me go to Fontainebleau and lay my sword and my life at the feet of the Emperor, the great Napoleon, never more truly great than now, in the hour of his overthrow!”