Find me a rusted nib, worn and corroded with long use in the office of a knavish attorney, where perjurers daily kiss the Book for hire, and the life-blood of pale men and haggard women is sucked away by the fierce, insatiable horse-leech of Costs. In what medium shall it be dipped to pen the cognomen and style of the man I have it in my mind to write of?
All the blood shed in that accursed December of the Coup d’Etat of 1851 flowed quickly away down the Paris gutters; it has vanished from the pavements of the Rue Montmartre, and from the flagstones of the courtyard of the Prefecture; was drunk by the thirsty gravel of the Champ de Mars, where battues of human beings were carried out, but it has left its indelible stain behind....
Scrape me a pinch of dust from those dark, accusing, ominous patches; and pound therewith a fragment of the moldering skull of a British soldier (of all those hundreds that lie buried in the pest-pits of Varna, and in those deep trenches beside the lake of Devna, one can well be spared). Compound from the soil of Crim Tartary (enriched so well with French and English blood) a jet-black pigment. Dilute with water from the River Alma. And then, with ink so made, write down the name of Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the Prince of Pretenders, who became by fraud and craft and treachery and murder, Emperor of France.
XXX
Dunoisse had anticipated as the result of that fatal volley a Court-Martial inquiry under auspices Monarchical or Republican—and in the absence of indisputable evidence that the word of command to fire had not been given by the officer accused, a sentence of dismissal of that unlucky functionary from the Army.
The sword did not fall. The Assistant-Adjutant remained suspended from his duties, and in confinement at his quarters in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, exactly five days; during which Paris seethed like a boiling pot, and the events this halting pen has striven to set forth, sprang from the dragon’s teeth sown in the fruitful soil of France by incapable, unjust, or treacherous hands. Various documents, clumsily printed in smeary ink upon paper of official buff, reached Dunoisse during this period of detention; and whereas Number One was headed by the arms of the Reigning House of Bourbon, Number Two displayed a significant blotch of sable printing-ink in lieu of that ornate device; with “REPUBLIC OF FRANCE” stamped in bold Roman capitals across the upper margin.
Monsieur the Marshal, despite his increasing infirmities, enlivened his son’s captivity with occasional visits. The smell of blood and gunpowder, the thunder of cannon and the summons of the trumpet, had made the old war-horse prick up his ears, neigh and prance about in his cosy paddock. He pooh-poohed the notion of a Court-Martial. Absorbing immense pinches of snuff, he argued—and not without point—that a Republican Government could hardly visit with the scourges of condign displeasure an act that had materially hastened the downfall of the Monarchy.
“You will see!... It is as I say!... This arrest is a mere piece of official humbug. No doubt it was better for your own sake that you should not be seen in the streets for a day or so, one can conceive that!—these ultra-Reds have good memories and long knives, sacred name of a pig!”
The old man trumpeted in his yellow silk handkerchief, hobbling about the room in tremendous excitement, swinging the ample skirts and heavy tassels of his Indian silk dressing-gown, twirling his gold-headed Malacca cane to the detriment of the inlaid furniture and the cabinets loaded with the chinaware and porcelain that had belonged to the lost Marie-Bathilde....
“You gave the word to fire—why trouble to deny it? Upon my part, I defend the act!—I applaud it!—I admire! It was the idea of an Imperialist,—a move of strategical genius—fraught at a moment like this with profound political significance. Sapristi!—we shall have an Emperor crowned and reigning at the Tuileries, and you, with the Cross and a Staff appointment—you will learn what it means to have served a Bonaparte. Ha! hah, ha!”