A prey to hideous uncertainties, for the new Commander-in-Chief had suddenly applied to be superseded, the luckless Emperor spent the night at the camp at Longeville, waking upon a foggy morning—if he could be said to sleep, who never slept—to a brisk salute of Prussian guns. For a patrol of Uhlans with a half battery had made, during the night, a bold attempt to seize upon the Imperial person, and being foiled within an ace of success, had retreated, plumping a shell or so into the lines from the German side of the river. And while these hornets were being repulsed with heavy metal, the muddy, travel-stained Army of the Red Prince crossed the river lower down; the little episode described having diverted attention from their transit; effected, even as in a jam of batteries, battalions, squadrons, baggage and ammunition-trains, the French retreat was being made.
So choked were the roads that the Emperor and his suite with the Imperial Guard Escort only managed to struggle as far as Gravelotte, a village some eight miles from Metz, where Bazaine had his headquarters:
"Gentlemen, we will remain here, but keep the baggage packed!" had been the Emperor's instructions to his following upon alighting at the inn, where two miserable bedrooms were with difficulty obtained for himself and his son. Prince Napoleon and the other personages of the suite found harborage at various cottages; the lackeys slept in the baggage-fourgons, it may be hazarded. For in the morning these vehicles and their attendants were found to have disappeared. They had departed for Verdun, whither their master was now to follow them. Bazaine, who could not shuffle off his now detested responsibilities, was summoned, to find the Imperial carriage standing in readiness before the tavern door.
XL
One can see the splendid bays, clamping their bits of solid silver, their sleek skins and their costly harness glittering in the sunshine that had driven the early morning fogs away, the postilions and outriders in their green and gold liveries sitting in the saddle, the landaus of the suite drawn up at the distance prescribed by etiquette.
Everybody was breakfastless, save the Emperor, his son, and cousin, and their immediate following. The regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique, the gorgeous Cent Gardes in gold-crested, crimson-tufted, silver helmets with flowing white horsetails and caped cloaks of azure, were empty of all but air, like their own famous kettledrums. Their horses had cropped a little grass in the fields during the night's bivouac, and were better off than their riders, by one meal.
The young Prince Imperial looked sulky and discontented, but neat and soldierlike in his new uniform of a subaltern of infantry. Prince Jerome Napoleon, the portly M. Plon-Plon of the Crimean War caricatures, wore a cocked hat pulled down hard over his eyes, and was buttoned up in a military cloak.
The Emperor had suffered in the night, for a traveler who had slept in an attic above his bedroom had heard him pacing to and fro and groaning. He wore a black-caped, red-lined waterproof cloak over the uniform of a General of Division; a glimpse of the Star of the Legion of Honor fastened on his breast showed as he raised his hand to throw away the butt of the inseparable cigarette, and set his neat little polished gold-spurred boot on the carriage-step, and beckoned with a small white-kid-gloved hand.
Obeying this signal, a green-and-gold equerry and a demure elderly valet hoisted him respectfully on one side, while a keen-eyed, lean-jawed young man, accurately attired in deep black, propped him scientifically upon the other. We know this deft and silent personage to have been a brilliant young Paris surgeon, retained about the person of the Emperor; a specialist whose ministrations, in dulling unbearable pain with subcutaneous injections of morphia, and combating the progress of disease by skilled surgical treatment, became more necessary every day.