“I am not fool enough to believe that our reign will last,” he said. “It may last a month, two months, perhaps three. Then we leaders will be at one another’s throats—and the game is up! It’s always so—mob rule can’t last—it never has lasted and never will. But the prudent man will make hay before the brief sunshine is ended; I expect to economize a little, and set aside enough—well, enough to make it pay, you see.”
He looked up at me quietly.
“I am perfectly willing to tell you this, even if you used your approaching liberty to alarm the entire country, from the Emperor to the most obscure scullion in the Tuileries. Nothing can stop us now, nothing in 117 the world can prevent our brief reign. Because these things are certain, the armies of France will be beaten—they are already beaten. Paris will hold out; Paris will fall; and with Paris down goes France! And as sure as the sun shall rise on a conquered people, so sure shall rise that red spectre we call the Internationale.”
The man astonished me. He put into words a prophecy which had haunted me from the day that war was declared—a prophetic fear which had haunted men higher up in the service of the Empire—thinking men who knew what war meant to a country whose government was as rotten as its army was unprepared, whose political chiefs were as vain, incompetent, ignorant, and weak as were the chiefs of its brave army—an army riddled with politics, weakened by intrigue and neglect—an army used ignobly, perverted, cheated, lied to, betrayed, abandoned.
That, for once, Buckhurst spoke the truth as he foresaw it, I did not question. That he was right in his infernal calculations, I was fearsomely persuaded. And now the game had advanced, and I must display what cards I had, or pretended to have.
“Are you trying to bribe me?” I blurted out, weakly.
“Bribe you,” he repeated, in contempt. “No. If the prospect does not please you, I have only to say a word to the provost marshal.”
“Wouldn’t that injure your prospects with the Countess?” I said, with fat-brained cunning. “You cannot betray me and hope for her friendship.”
He glanced up at me, measured my mental capacity, then nodded.
“I can’t force you that way,” he admitted.