Killing is thirsty work. Wine flowed down the soldiers’ throats in rivers, as the blood of their victims rolled down the Paris gutters. And as the slayers flagged they were stimulated to fresh exertions. Food, drink, and cigars were lavished upon them. Rolls of gold were broken and shared among them like sticks of chocolate. Women were promised them by-and-by. Long after the soldiers were too drunk to stand upright they went on killing—an instance of devotion which brought tears of sensibility to the eyes of Monseigneur.
It was late, and raining heavily, when the Folkestone train clanked into Waterloo Station. The yellow gaslights were reflected in the numerous puddles on the slippery wooden platform; in the shiny peaks of porters’ caps, and in the dripping oilskins of cabmen. A red-nosed Jehu, suffering from almost total extinction of the voice, undertook to convey Dunoisse to Belgrave Square, the haggard beast attached to the leaky vehicle accomplishing the journey in a series of stumbles, slides, and collapses.
“Vy does the ’orse fall down?” indignantly repeated the husky driver, to whom Dunoisse, on alighting for the second time to assist the prostrate steed to rise, had addressed this question. “Vy, becos’ he can’t stand hup, nor no more could you, my topping codger, after twenty hours on the job.”
He drove his fare to the address given without further casualty, pocketed Dunoisse’s liberal fare without any perceptible emotion, and, warning an advancing hall-porter to be careful, for he had brought him “something wallyble,” jerked and prodded his drooping beast into some faint show of vitality, and rattled and jingled away.
The windows of the Embassy blazed with lights, music thrilled and throbbed upon the ear, a double line of waiting carriages extended along the railings of the Square garden,—late arrivals were even now being set down in the shelter of the awning that protected the crimson-carpeted doorsteps from the sooty downpour; police were on duty in unusual force, and the six tall cuirassiers of the Embassy were dwarfed into insignificance by a British guard of honor, betokening the presence of Royalty; stately, splendid Household Cavalrymen, whose gold-laced scarlet blue velvet facings, gleaming steel cuirasses, and silver, white-plumed helmets lined the flower-decked vestibule, and struck savage splendid chords of color amidst the decorations of the marble staircase, where Gloire de Dijon roses and yellow chrysanthemums were massed and mingled with the trailing foliage of smilax, and the tall green plumes of ferns.
The Tricolor was barely in evidence. The Imperial colors of green and gold, displayed in the floral decorations, predominated in the draperies that hung below the carved and gilded cornices, and beneath the pillared archways that led to the dining and reception rooms. The full-length portrait of the Prince-President that hung over the sculptured marble fireplace had a canopy of emerald velvet spangled with fleurons, and upheld by eagles perched on laurel-wreathed spears. And above the head of the portrait, slender gilded tubes formed the letter N, and above the initial, concealed by a garland of trailing rose-boughs, lurked another more significant device....
Thus much evidence of preparation at the Embassy for some event of profound importance was evident to the bearer of the letter from the Élysée, before the steward of the chambers, a stately gold-chained personage in discreet black, accosted the stranger, and at the sight of a signet bearing a familiar coat-of-arms, conducted him in haste to an apartment on the rear of the ground-floor, reserved for similar arrivals; set sandwiches, cold game, and champagne-cup before him; indicated a dressing-room adjoining where the stains of travel might be removed; and disappeared, to return before the rage of hunger had been half-appeased, ushering in a handsome personage in a brilliant Hussar uniform, who greeted Dunoisse as an acquaintance, and shook him warmly by the hand.
“There has been a great dinner this evening,” explained this personage, who held the post of First Military Attaché to France’s Embassy. “The entire Corps Diplomatique accredited to the Court of St. James’s, to meet the Duke of Bambridge and Lord Walmerston. His Royal Highness will be leaving directly; those Life Guards in the square and in the vestibule are his escort of honor. Magnificent men, are they not? But less active dismounted than our own Heavy Cavalry. Are you sufficiently refreshed? You will take nothing more? You are positive? Then be good enough to come with me.”
And they returned to the hall, to commence the ascent of the great staircase, as a steady, continuous stream of well-bred, well-dressed people began to flow downwards in the direction of the refreshment-buffets. The slender, supple figure of the stranger, attired in plain, close-fitting mufti black, relieved only by the red rosette at the left lapel, closely following its brilliant guide, attracted many curious glances as it passed.