“Never mind, what else did she say?”
“She said, ‘Oh, I hate thee, my country!’ but she wasn’t in her mind, oh no, monsieur. Then she grew very still, and that frightened me more yet. Once I even thought she was dead, and I put my arm about her. But her heart was beating, and her eyes were open, wide open and dry. I could see, for we were passing between the Paseo lights. I laid her head on my breast, and after a while I heard her lips move. ‘God bless him! God–Oh, I hope there is a God, just for this, to bless him, and keep him!’”
“H’m’m,” said the marshal, and went back and forth again, more perplexed than ever.
Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline; that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon’s wish, however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great deal to catch the Sphinx’s whisper at all. Besides, he owed his elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal.
223“Berthe,” he said at last, “there’s just one man who can interfere where Mademoiselle d’Aumerle disposes, but he is rather far away. I mean the Emperor of France.”
The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. “My dear mistress!” she sobbed.
There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was brushed aside.
“Perhaps,” came a softly ironical voice, “a woman might so much as veto our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho.”
Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband’s secret was never one for her.
“Step into this little room,” she said to Berthe, opening a door. “It will not take long,” she added, an assured light in her dark Spanish eyes.