CHAPTER XXXV
IN PARIS.—ALAIN PLAYS HIS LAST CARD
On the 10th of March at sunset the Shawmut passed the Pointe de Grave fort and entered the mouth of the Gironde, and at eleven o’clock next morning dropped anchor a little below Blaye, under the guns of the Regulus, 74. We were just in time, a British fleet being daily expected there to co-operate with the Duc d’Angoulème and Count Lynch, who was then preparing to pull the tricolour from his shoulder and betray Bordeaux to Beresford, or, if you prefer it, to the Bourbon. News of his purpose had already travelled down to Blaye, and therefore no sooner were my feet once more on the soil of my beloved France, than I turned them towards Libourne, or rather Fronsac, and the morning after my arrival there, started for the capital.
But so desperately were the joints of travel dislocated (the war having deplenished the country alike of cattle and able-bodied drivers), and so frequent were the breakdowns by the way, that I might as expeditiously have trudged it. It cost me fifteen good days to reach Orleans, and at Étampes (which I reached on the morning of the 30th) the driver of the tottering diligence flatly declined to proceed. The Cossacks and Prussians were at the gates of Paris. “Last night we could see the fires of their bivouacs. If Monsieur listens he can hear the firing.” The Empress had fled from the Tuileries. “Whither?” The driver, the aubergiste, the disinterested crowd, shrugged their shoulders. “To Rambouillet, probably. God knew what was happening or what would happen.” The Emperor was at Troyes, or at Sens, or else as near as Fontainebleau; nobody knew for certain which. But the fugitives from Paris had been pouring in for days, and not a cart or four-footed beast was to be hired for love or money, though I hunted Étampes for hours.
At length, and at nightfall, I ran against a bow-kneed grey mare, and a cabriolet de place, which, by its label, belonged to Paris; the pair wandering the street under what it would be flattery to call the guidance of an eminently drunken driver. I boarded him; he dissolved at once into maudlin tears and prolixity. It appeared that on the 29th he had brought over a bourgeois family from the capital, and had spent the last three days in perambulating Étampes, and the past three nights in crapulous slumber within his vehicle. Here was my chance, and I demanded to know if for a price he would drive me back with him to Paris. He declared, still weeping, that he was fit for anything. “For my part, I am ready to die, and Monsieur knows that we shall never reach.”
“Still, anything is better than Étampes.”
For some inscrutable reason this struck him as excessively comic. He assured me that I was a brave fellow, and bade me jump up at once. Within five minutes we were jolting towards Paris. Our progress was all but inappreciable, for the grey mare had come to the end of her powers, and her master’s monologue kept pace with her. His anecdotes were all of the past three days. The iron of Étampes apparently had entered his soul and effaced all memory of his antecedent career. Of the war, of any recent public events, he could tell me nothing.
I had half expected—supposing the Emperor to be near Fontainebleau—to happen on his vedettes, but we had the road to ourselves, and reached Longjumeau a little before daybreak without having encountered a living creature. Here we knocked up the proprietor of a cabaret, who assured us between yawns that we were going to our doom, and after baiting the grey and dosing ourselves with execrable brandy, pushed forward again. As the sky grew pale about us, I had my ears alert for the sound of artillery. But Paris kept silence. We passed Sceaux, and arrived at length at Montrouge and the barrier. It was open—abandoned—not a sentry, not a douanier visible.
“Where will Monsieur be pleased to descend?” my driver inquired, and added, with an effort of memory, that he had a wife and two adorable children on a top floor in the Rue du Mont Parnasse, and stabled his mare handy by. I paid and watched him from the deserted pavement as he drove away. A small child came running from a doorway behind me, and blundered against my legs. I caught him by the collar and demanded what had happened to Paris. “That I do not know,” said the child, “but mamma is dressing herself to take me to the review. Tenez!” he pointed, and at the head of the long street I saw advancing the front rank of a blue-coated regiment of Prussians, marching across Paris to take up position on the Orleans road.
That was my answer. Paris had surrendered! And I had entered it from the south just in time, if I wished, to witness the entry of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander from the north. Soon I found myself one of a crowd converging towards the bridges, to scatter northward along the line of His Majesty’s progress, from the Barrière de Pantin to the Champs Élysées, where the grand review was to be held. I chose this for my objective, and, making my way along the Quays, found myself shortly before ten o’clock in the Place de la Concorde, where a singular little scene brought me to a halt.