M. de Gondriac was sitting over his breakfast next morning when an estafette rode up to his old hôtel, bearing a large official envelope stamped with the imperial arms and the talismanic words, “Maison de l’Empereur.” M. le Marquis broke the seal and ran his eye down the large sheet, and then tossed it from him with an exclamation of anger and contempt.
“Enter his service! Play lackey at the court of an upstart who is drenching my country in blood from sheer vanity and ambition—a usurper who is keeping my liege sovereign in exile, and the best part of my kindred in idleness, or else in a servitude more humiliating than the dreariest inactivity! A De Gondriac tricked out in the livery of a mountebank king like him! Ha! ha! M. de Bonaparte, when you give that spectacle to the gods, ... je vous en fais mon compliment!”
M. le Marquis laughed a low, musical laugh as he muttered these reflections to himself. But presently he ceased laughing and his face took a dark and troubled look. The emperor made his acceptance of this offer the price of Marcel Caboff’s exemption. If he rejected it, the lad must join. “Would gratitude carry you the length of a sacrifice?” When the question had been put to him, it seemed to M. de Gondriac that he had forestalled it; but the emperor evidently did not think so, and now he was putting him to the test. It was the severest he could have chosen. When Hermann de Gondriac took service under Bonaparte, the old nobleman considered his son was making a fine sacrifice of personal pride to patriotism; but the service here, at least, was a noble one, and rendered to France rather than to the upstart who had captured her. But this other was of a totally different order. Even in the bygone days, when France had a legitimate king and real court, the De Gondriacs had been shy of taking office in the royal household, preferring the service of the camp, diplomacy abroad, or statesmanship at home; to stoop now to be a courtier to Bonaparte was a degradation not to be calmly contemplated. If the tyrant had asked any sacrifice but this, M. le Marquis said to himself, he would have made it gladly; but this was impossible. It meant the surrender of his self-respect, of those principles whose integrity he had hitherto proudly maintained at no small personal risk and cost. Before he had finished his coffee, the question was settled, and he rose to write his answer.
Trifles sometimes affect us with the force of great repellant causes. The act of taking the pen in his hand brought before him vividly the last time he had held it: it was in his library at Gondriac; the widow sat watching him with a swelling heart, made glad by his promise solemnly given: “I pledge you my word that your son shall not be taken from you.” M. le Marquis laid down his pen and fell to thinking. “No, I can’t do it,” he said after a long pause. “I can’t belie the traditions of my race; I can’t stain the old name and turn saltimbanque in my old age.” He took up the pen and wrote to the emperor, declining his offer.
The next day the town of X—— was full of excitement. The new recruits were pouring in, sometimes in boisterous crowds, singing and hurrahing, sometimes in sober knots of twos and threes, sometimes singly, accompanied by weeping relatives, mostly women. There had been an official attempt to get up a show of warlike enthusiasm, but it had failed; people were growing sick of the glories of war, sick of sending sons and brothers and husbands to be massacred for Bonaparte’s good pleasure. The recruits were called out by name, and answered sullenly as they passed through the Mairie out to the market-place, where the sergeant was waiting to give them their first lesson in drill, showing them how to stand straight and get into position.
“Marcel Caboff!” called out the recruiting agent.
“Remplacé!”
“By whom?”
“Rudolf, Marquis de Gondriac!”
TO BE CONTINUED.