Watrin of the Bodyguard, Chief of the Prince Imperial's escort, came clanking and jingling from his dinner to confirm the fact as stated by the equerry. The 777th Chasseurs, belonging to de Clérambault's Division of the Third Corps of the Army of Bazaine, were certainly now engaged in the neighborhood of Gravelotte. But as certainly they had not come into contact with the enemy previously to the fifteenth of the month.
The fifteenth!—the very day on which Adelaide had baited her trap with an imprisoned father.... Joy at the discovery, indignation at having been so easily cajoled into captivity, brought back the red to Juliette's pale cheeks and the light to her sad eyes.
This strange, wayward, mysterious mother might exercise over her daughter a certain degree of maternal authority. The supreme obedience, the first duty was to the father, that was clear. Now she was going straight to him, wherever he might be. She was strong enough, for his dear sake, to take whatever risks were involved.
Suppose Adelaide insisted on accompanying her? It was unthinkable that even so hardy an offender should venture into the presence of one so wronged.... Meet his look!... Read in his face his scorn of perfidy! Juliette put away the possibility from her with both hands.
We know that Madame Adelaide had contemplated this very move upon occasion. But she had not met Mademoiselle de Bayard then. Since the encounter had taken place she had realized that the establishment of maternal influence, strong enough to make of her daughter a confederate and ally, was a task beyond her powers.
Her grace, her charm, were lost upon this pale, frigid, obstinate little being, in whom she saw her mother-in-law over again. For than this girl, sprung of her own flesh, whose veins were filled with her blood, nothing could be more unlike Adelaide, that magnificent creature of impulses and desires and appetites....
Dominion over de Bayard could never be regained and established while his daughter sat by his hearth a virgin unwed. Why had Adelaide hindered her marriage to M. Tessier? Pacing the Turkey carpet of the Prefect's library, Madame admitted that she had acted inadvisedly. That the plan of bringing Juliette into contact with the Prince Imperial would be discounted by the innocence of the girl and the inexperience of the boy.
She could imagine the dialogue they were holding at that moment, all, "Oh, Mademoiselle!" and "Ah, Monseigneur!"... The girl should have been permitted to celebrate her nuptials with this dull young husband of her father's choosing.... Then a few years later would have come the opportunity. She ground her teeth, thinking how her precipitation had spoiled everything ... thrust her.... Ah, Heaven! how one shuddered at the recollection, almost into the clutches of the Wielder of the Bowstring, the ingenious inventor of the Ordeal of the Looking-Glass....
Straz.... At the sight of him her heart had stopped beating. In imagination those strangling silken folds had closed, shutting out light and breath....
How he had leered, rolling those fierce black eyes of his. "So," his jeering smile had said, "my Sultana and her slave have met again. Did I not prophesy truly, sweet one, tell me? when I said you would never again look in your toilette-mirror without remembering me!"