“That being the case,” said Madame de Salgues, “and after the opinion your mother has just expressed, it only remains for us to arrange details.”
The next morning Clémence and Ivan were married quietly in the parish church of Versailles. It is possible that the young Russian gave a passing sigh of regret to the touching and beautiful ceremonies of his own ritual, which he was obliged to forego. Gladly would “Ivan the servant of God” have been “crowned with Clémence the handmaid of God,” as it is the use and wont to do with brides and bridegrooms in the Greco-Russian Church. But what did it signify? He was more than content—he was unspeakably thankful for all that was given him by God and by man.
There was a simple déjeûner, the only guests outside the family circle being M. de Sartines and Stéphanie, who was greatly consoled by her dignity of bridesmaid. There were brave, loving farewells; and then Ivan rode away to rejoin his comrades and to do his duty in the conflicts that might yet lie before him and them.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HIS KING SPEAKS TO THE CZAR.
“Yea, thou wilt answer for me, righteous Lord!
Thine all the sorrow, mine the great reward:
Thine the sharp thorns, and mine the golden crown;
Mine the life won, and thine the life laid down.”
It is amongst the minor yet very real troubles of life that promptitude, courage, and self-denial so often appear to be wasted. The call to action reaches our ear: we spring up responsive, buckle on our armour, and hasten to the front,—only to hear the bugles sounding the retreat, and to find that the conflict has been adjourned sine die. So it happened to Ivan. He was stopped on his way to Vienna by tidings that the Chevalier Guard was now in Poland with the main body of the Russian army. To Poland accordingly he went; but only to linger in enforced idleness day after day, even week after week, first at Wiasma, and then at Prague. He could not dismiss the thought,—Might he not just as well have spent all this time with his bride at Versailles? He certainly might, except for the important consideration that it can never be just as well for a man to neglect his duty as to do it.
Meanwhile the accounts from France added to his perplexity and uneasiness. Napoleon, received everywhere with open arms by the military, swept through the land like an unresisted torrent, and on the 19th of March entered the capital once more. Louis XVIII. abandoned it at his approach without striking a blow—a pusillanimity which made old Royalists like De Sartines and De Cranfort hang their heads with shame. It was natural that Ivan should feel the deepest anxiety about the household at Versailles, and for the sake of those so dear to him he could not be otherwise than thankful that a battle had been avoided, although on more public grounds it grieved him to the heart that Napoleon had succeeded so easily in establishing himself once more in Paris.