The Man of Iron

by Richard Dehan

It was tragic. In her dreams Juliette Bayard had aided to put on the casque, and buckle the cuirass of a stately warrior. Now she must perforce mend the gray goose-quill of a knight of the counting-house. You might have seen how her slender throat swelled against the encircling band of velvet. Tears sprang to her eyes. To keep them back she bit her lip, straightened her back, and shrugged,—one barely perceptible shrug. The Colonel said,—was his kind glance a little troubled as it turned on her?—

"The letter of Madame Tessier has made it clear to thee, that although thou wilt see thy future husband soon, the meeting will not take place upon the present occasion. Since October M. Charles Tessier"—the Colonel twisted his mustache—"has been detained by affairs at Mons-sur-Trouille in Belgium. I understand that at this country hamlet—near the town of Mons—is situated the manufactory of his partner, M.—the name for the moment escapes me. He is a wealthy gentleman of excellent Flemish family. The daughter, I remember, was called Clémence or Clémentine."

The Colonel cleared his throat. Juliette expressed a preference for the name of Clémentine. The Colonel begged her pardon. After all, it was Clémence. That did not matter. Mademoiselle liked the name of Clémence nearly as well as Clémentine. The Colonel tugged at the other side of the fiercely-waxed mustache, and changed the subject.

"The pavement rings beneath the heel; I prophesy frost to-night. Thou art cold, my child, I saw thee shiver. Shall we walk more quickly? It will be better so."

She quickened her steps at the suggestion. There had already been frost, and the air was keen and sparkling as champagne. The young blood in her veins answered to the pleasant stimulus of exercise. Her cheeks were rose-tinted porcelain, her eyes blue stars, despite her wretchedness, by the time they reached Madame Tessier's door.

The house of the Widow Tessier was in the Rue de Provence, which runs north from the Avenue de Saint Cloud, not far from above its junction with the Carrefour de Montreuil, and ends at the corner of the Boulevard de la Reine.

A quiet, retiring street, its houses separated by ample gardens, hidden by high walls of brick faced with fine gray Caen stone, generally festooned with pretty creepers and overtopped by stately trees. A noble pine shaded the green glass conservatory, large enough to be termed a winter-garden, which projected on the south side, from what was a solidly built villa plastered yellow, with a raised ground-floor, second story and attic story with Mansard windows; the short sloping roof, and these—indeed, the whole of the attic story to the floor-line, where a fine-worked cornice of stone ran round the building—being covered with grayish-blue slates.

You rang at a gate of open ironwork, white-painted, in which was a smaller gate to admit pedestrians, and while you were waiting for someone to answer the bell, you had leisure to admire the heavy porte cochère upon your left, of solid oak timbers, studded with iron bolts, surmounted with a fine arch of stone, centered with a blank lozenge; and the neat balcony railing topping the wall to your right, in which was a modest little iron-studded door leading to the kitchen and servants' offices, always secured by a huge lock, and opened with much groaning of inward bolts.

You are to understand that the roof of the kitchen formed a leaden terrace upon which the bay of the drawing-room and other ground-floor windows opened; these, like the windows on the basement and upper stories, being furnished with outside shutters, the slatted wooden pattern with which Continental travelers are familiar, yellow-painted to match the plaster of the walls. The terrace could be gained by a short flight of stone steps rising upon your right as you entered. But upon a visit of ceremony you went on to the main entrance, which was reached by a handsome ascent of five broad, shallow steps of the Caen stone, continued along the north and east sides of the house, so that from any of the ground-floor windows, which were all of antique French door-pattern, you could descend into the garden at will. The hall-door commanded a view of the stables and the cottage attached to them, whose tenant combined the office of coachman with the duties of a gardener. You could not call those buildings unpicturesque, covered as they were with the now leafless branches of a great vine and a magnificent wistaria. Beyond there stretched a kitchen-garden, with beds of flowers and vegetables, under glass and in the open; and splendid espaliers, whence many a basket of luscious cherries, huge blue plums, brown Bon Chrétien pears, and melting nectarines, were gathered for the table in the season of such luscious fruits. And behind and to the north side of the villa was the pleasance, which must have formed part of a nobleman's park at one time. For winding walks bordered with ground-ivy led you in and out and among clumps of oak and chestnut, and stately limes and acacias stood upon the sunlit spaces of its velvet-lawns; while near its bounds shrubberies and thickets of Portugal laurel and lilac, bird-cherry and hawthorn, syringa and arbutus harbored thrush and blackbird, and in spring rejoiced the lover of beauty and perfume; and one great tulip tree opened its crimson-purple chalices beneath the rains and suns of early June. From the eastern boundary-wall jutted a stone pipe, ending in a mask, from the mouth of which fell a jet of clear water, forming a tiny pond, and a brook that ran away between stones covered with moss and overgrown with ferns and water-plants. But just now the pond was frozen, and a great icicle hung from the jaws of the grinning Satyr, and the blackened leaves of the water-loving plants and club-mosses were hidden under a thin covering of recently-fallen snow. What strange uses this place was to serve before the terrible year of 1870 was ended! How many letters signed "Charles" were to be drawn by the tiny hand of P. C. Breagh's Infanta from that grinning satyr-mouth.

Entering the house—for you are to see it plainly, serving as it did for a theater upon whose table the life-blood of France was to flow; and her body, beneath the steady, skillful hands of a man well fitted to perform such operations, was fated to undergo a terrible mutilation—entering the house by the double glass-doors, you found yourself in a parqueted hall, furnished with Empire consoles and large mirrors in frames of tarnished gilding. The chief staircase, covered with striped drugget in gray-and-red, you found immediately upon your right. Under this was the opening to a servants' stairway leading down to the kitchen beneath the terrace. Upon your left was a small door masking another servants' stairway leading to the attics; and beyond this two large folding-doors, covered with green baize, led into a medium-sized but lofty apartment, used as the dining-room, looking out on the garden, and hung with a crimson flock paper patterned with gilt palm-leaves, against which hung some large landscapes and antique hunting-scenes in oils. There was a handsome white marble fireplace, with a high mantel-slab supported by terminal figures, one a nymph, wanton-lipped and languid-eyed, her full voluptuous bosom partly veiled by a leopard skin, her disheveled hair crowned with ivy, like that of her companion; a faun, and young, judging by his budding horns.