Ever since he had been so near having the famous conversation with him at Baybel his mind had been full of Napoleon III.; he was not satisfied until he had induced the two soldiers to accompany him. The Place de la Sous-Prefecture was comparatively empty; a few men were standing about in groups, engaged in whispered conversation, while occasionally an officer hurried by, haggard and careworn. The bright hues of the foliage were beginning to fade and grow dim in the melancholy, thick-gathering shades of night; the hoarse murmur of the Meuse was heard as its current poured onward beneath the houses to the right. Among the whisperers it was related how the Emperor—who with the greatest difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o’clock—when entreated to push on to Mézières had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a man whose startling resemblance to his imperial master had often puzzled the army. Others again declared, and called upon their honor to substantiate their story, that they had seen the army wagons containing the imperial treasure, one hundred millions, all in brand-new twenty-franc pieces, drive into the courtyard of the Prefecture. This convoy was, in fact, neither more nor less than the vehicles for the personal use of the Emperor and his suite, the char à banc, the two caleches, the twelve baggage and supply wagons, which had almost excited a riot in the villages through which they had passed—Courcelles, le Chêne, Raucourt; assuming in men’s imagination the dimensions of a huge train that had blocked the road and arrested the march of armies, and which now, shorn of their glory, execrated by all, had come in shame and disgrace to hide themselves among the sous-prefect’s lilac bushes.
While Delaherche was raising himself on tiptoe and trying to peer through the windows of the rez-de-chaussée, an old woman at his side, some poor day-worker of the neighborhood, with shapeless form and hands calloused and distorted by many years of toil, was mumbling between her teeth:
“An emperor—I should like to see one once—just once—so I could say I had seen him.”
Suddenly Delaherche exclaimed, seizing Maurice by the arm:
“See, there he is! at the window, to the left. I had a good view of him yesterday; I can’t be mistaken. There, he has just raised the curtain; see, that pale face, close to the glass.”
The old woman had overheard him and stood staring with wide-open mouth and eyes, for there, full in the window, was an apparition that resembled a corpse more than a living being; its eyes were lifeless, its features distorted; even the mustache had assumed a ghastly whiteness in that final agony. The old woman was dumfounded; forthwith she turned her back and marched off with a look of supreme contempt.
“That thing an emperor! a likely story.”
A zouave was standing near, one of those fugitive soldiers who were in no haste to rejoin their commands. Brandishing his chassepot and expectorating threats and maledictions, he said to his companion:
“Wait! see me put a bullet in his head!”
Delaherche remonstrated angrily, but by that time the Emperor had disappeared. The hoarse murmur of the Meuse continued uninterruptedly; a wailing lament, inexpressibly mournful, seemed to pass above them through the air, where the darkness was gathering intensity. Other sounds rose in the distance, like the hollow muttering of the rising storm; were they the “March! march!” that terrible order from Paris that had driven that ill-starred man onward day by day, dragging behind him along the roads of his defeat the irony of his imperial escort, until now he was brought face to face with the ruin he had foreseen and come forth to meet? What multitudes of brave men were to lay down their lives for his mistakes, and how complete the wreck, in all his being, of that sick man, that sentimental dreamer, awaiting in gloomy silence the fulfillment of his destiny!