To more than these he had been prodigal of promises, liberal of vows, forgetting that these are birds that sooner or later come back to roost. That oath of the Carbonari was presently to haunt his pillow, dog his steps with the assassin’s soundless footfall; explode bombs—in the hour of his triumph—that strewed his fated pathway with the dying and the dead.
He sat and smoked and ruminated, upon this April night of ’54, much as he had done upon that November night of ’51, when he had received news of the laying of the Channel Cable. There was one now that reached from Marseilles to Constantinople; he could dictate his will by the mouth of his Ambassador to the Sublime Porte without delay or hindrance; by tugging at the fiery rein of the live wire he would presently be able to make his Army curvet or demivolt without exposing himself to the discomforts of a campaign beyond seas. And the burden of his hidden thought was that his Star had again befriended him. For when the time came to broach the great secret, his followers would believe the master-plan was solely his. There was no one now to start up before him and claim the credit. Months back he had information.... Today decisive intelligence had confirmed the report. The officer who had devised the undertaking, the emissary who had been dispatched to carry out the indispensable survey and make the secret treaties, was dead.
Dead.... Thenceforth Dunoisse’s vast capacity for toil, his discretion and silence; his powers of concentration, his geographical, topographical, and scientific knowledge; his consummate powers of arrangement and organization, his command of tongues, were lost to his master at the Tuileries. He was—his great task complete—to have had high military rank and a great guerdon in money. He had been asked to name his price, and he had stipulated for One Million One Hundred and Twenty-Five Thousand Francs. Sire my Friend smiled, knowing this to be the exact amount of a fortune its owner had squandered—remembering who had helped Dunoisse to scatter the glittering treasure to the four winds of the world. He wondered whether Madame de Roux had heard of the death of her old lover? She came to Court but seldom now, and then only to those unimportant functions to which the stars of lesser social magnitude were invited. The violent colors and bizarre fashions of the Second Empire did not suit her style of beauty—only ugly women looked really well in them!—or she was getting a little passée—the poor Henriette! She had a new liaison—an intrigue with one of the Generals of the Army of Algeria, recently appointed to the command of the Fourth Division of his Eastern Forces. It was said that she was to accompany Grandguerrier on the campaign. Pleasant for de Roux, who was still at Algiers—very pleasant! The dull eyes of Sire my Friend almost twinkled as this occurred to him. He smiled, caressing the chin-tuft that had become an imperial.
Said de Morny, Duke and Peer of France, gracefully masking a yawn with three long, slim fingers:
“Sire, if Your Majesty has anything amusing to impart to us—and your smile conveys the idea that you have—we entreat you not to withhold it. We are all dull, drowsy, and damnably out of spirits!... These imported fogs of Britain have chilled us to the bone!”
His Imperial Majesty exhaled a cloud of smoke, leaning his long thick body back in the well-cushioned corner of an Oriental sofa. He wore, as customary upon gala occasions, the levee uniform of a General of Division, adorned with many blazing Orders and Stars. His short legs—clad in white kid knee-breeches fastened with diamond buckles, white silk stockings, and high-heeled pumps of white patent leather, also diamond-buckled—were crossed, and as he ruminated he stroked one well-turned ankle with his dainty womanish hand. He glanced at the hand appreciatively as he dropped his cigarette-ash on the costly carpet. Then, barely lifting those sick, faded eyes of his to the face of de Morny, he answered in his drawling, nasal tones:
“Since my smile must be translated into words, it had at that moment occurred to me how consummately foolish our British guests would look, did they know why they were embarking on this Eastern Expedition.” He caressed his high instep with musing approbation. De Morny said:
“Sapristi! I presume they are no more ignorant than ourselves that this is a war without an adequate reason. Monseigneur the Duke of Bambridge, if he be ever to succeed the Earl of Dalgan at the War Office, must see some Active Service—that is undeniable. M. de St. Arnaud requires a dress-rehearsal with volleys of real ball-cartridge, in his rôle of a Marshal of France. Also, your Army is plethoric—its health requires blood-letting. Beyond these reasons—none that I can see.... Unless you, Sire, by personally leading your hosts to battle, intend to follow the glorious example of the Emperor Napoleon the First?”
Sire my Friend detecting a supercilious smile upon the face of the speaker, bestowed on him between his narrow lids a glance of fraternal hate. De Morny—now President of the Legislative Council—carried the diplomatic swallow-tail of dark blue velvet, heavily encrusted with silver oak-branches and palm-leaves, upon his tall, well-bred figure, with the grace and ease that were distinctive of him. He wore the broad red ribbon of a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor beneath his single-breasted waistcoat of white cashmere. His white lawn cravat was a dream of perfection. His long, well-made legs, encased in silver-striped, faultlessly-cut trousers of white cashmere, and buckled pumps of black patent leather, nearly as small as those of Imperial Majesty, were fraught with offense to Sire my Friend, always sensitively conscious of the shortness of his own.
For this reason that stumpy Jove did not rise to hurl the thunderbolt. He leaned back, with an exaggerated affectation of indolence, and said deliberately: