“I came back to civilization to learn the truth of you. I was not the keeper of your secret, the agent of your power, set to pit craft against craft and insure victory by wise precaution!—I was your dupe, your accomplice, and your tool. Judas! Oh, Judas!” said Dunoisse, in a dry, fierce rustling whisper that was like the sirocco passing through a field of withered maize-stalks. “How is it that I believed you—knowing you besmeared with blood, and rotten to the soul with deceits and falsehoods? How should I not be among the number of those you have flattered and swindled and betrayed?”
The silence of sickening consternation was on each of those who heard him. Their crests of false curls drooped; the paint faded from their faces under the lashing hail of his words. They were crimson or leaden or sea-green according to their various temperaments—the complexion of Sire my Friend having undergone this last and most unbecoming change. And Dunoisse went on speaking, almost without a gesture, as a man whose bodily weakness compelled economy of breath and action.
“I was to have had a great reward of you for my services. One million one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, to be definite! Keep your stolen money! Could I buy back self-respect with the price of blood? As for you, you have won your Empire—have brought about the War you schemed and plotted for; you will take the field with Turkey and your Ally of England, shoulder to shoulder—side by side!... Ah!—you read Machiavelli at the Fortress of Ham to good purpose!... You grew more than violets upon the ramparts, Monseigneur! You matured plans for revenge.... And you will have your honeyed vengeance,” said Dunoisse, in that distinct, rasping whisper. “And gall will mingle with the sweetness as you suck it. For those old associates of yours—those men of the Reform and Carlton Clubs of London—will say of you: ‘By God!—this Emperor of France is a damned scoundrel!’ And, by God!—they will be right!”
The sentence, spoken in English, cut like a tandem-whip. As it hissed through the stagnant, perfumed, tobacco-laden atmosphere of the room, the speaker drew his sword. Sire my Friend recoiled and cried out at the sharp hiss of the steel, and de Fleury, brave as a bulldog, sprang before his master instantly. But Dunoisse only balanced the weapon a moment with the deftness of a master of fence, ere, with an effort that taxed his feebleness to the utmost, he snapped the tarnished steel across his thin knee, and said, as he threw the pieces down clattering at the dainty buckled feet of Imperial Majesty:
“My military oath of allegiance was to the President, not to the Emperor. I will serve you no longer, be that understood! And—though the work I have done has been fatally well done!—in so far as it be possible, I will unmesh the net I have woven.... Therefore be warned, Monseigneur!”
With this, as a man might shake off from his hand some venomous insect, he dropped the loosely-fitting signet ring upon the carpet, ground it with a sudden, savage impulse underneath his heel, and went out, leaving them staring and short of breath.
A moment later, Sire my Friend, whose complexion of sea-green had suffered change to a congested purple, staggered and clutched at nothing, and fell down frothing in an epileptic fit.
By the advice of Persigny—who had seen him before in that pitiable condition—they moved the furniture away from his vicinity, and left his devil to use him at its will. And presently he came to, staring and shuddering, with a bitten glove between his teeth; and was very feeble and exhausted, and full of fears lest the Empress had seen him thus afflicted. But by-and-by, when reassured, and restored, and renovated, he was able to interview the Chief of his Secret Police, and give orders for an arrest....
He was peculiarly benevolent, urbane and smiling, an hour later, when, to the united strains of “God Save the Queen” and “Partant Pour La Syrie,” he entered the fairyland of blue-and-white striped awnings, blue carpets, gold-tasseled hangings of pink satin, and elfin grottos of green gauze, full of palms and hot-house roses, illuminated with pink, blue and yellow Chinese lights. Leading the beautiful Empress—who rested her gloved hand on the happy arm of the Duke of Bambridge—followed by the French and British Commanders-in-Chief, with their Staffs, his brothers and his uncle, he looked—or might have with the addition of a few more inches—every inch an Emperor.
And not only an Emperor, said the Imperial Press Organs—a philanthropic lover of mankind, who—supported by Great Britain, the nursing-mother of infant nations—was about to carry out a war in the cause of Freedom, Justice, and the Rights of Man against Irresponsible Despotism.