The Duc de Broglie was startled and shocked beyond concealment.
“It cannot be done!” he ejaculated.
“There are my orders,” answered the Maréchal bitterly. “How many men does the Cardinal think I shall get to Eger? My God, it will be a disaster to make Europe stare—and the end of the war.”
As he thought of the proud ambitions with which he had first meddled in the affairs of Austria, the difficulty he had had in wringing authority from Versailles for this alliance with Frederick of Prussia, the trouble to persuade that crafty King himself to accept the dangerous protection of France—as he thought of the splendid army he had poured into Bohemia, and saw now the end of that army and of the war in a catastrophe that would make France groan—and through no fault of his own, but because of the ignorant blunder of a foolish old priest in Paris—two haughty tears forced from his eyes and rolled down his thin cheeks.
M. de Broglie was breathless as a tired runner; he put out his hand mechanically and grasped an enamelled snuff-box that lay among the frivolous trifles on the gilt desk.
“M. de Fleury does not know,” he whispered, “either a Bohemian winter or the route from here to Eger.”
The Maréchal fixed him with fierce wet eyes.
“You are answerable for this, M. le Duc—you and you alone—and I must pay for your careless folly.”
“Monsieur,” answered the other General, “I made Prague a shelter. I did not imagine that any sane man would order a retreat from it—in midwinter.”
From the table near his couch M. de Belleisle took a map rudely drawn and coloured; he stared at the cross he had himself drawn which denoted Eger, the quarters of M. de Maillelois.