Part 14

You can conceive the picture, set in the beautiful scenery of the Champs Élysées, to the roll of carriages in the great avenues, the glint of wintry sunshine on still or leaping water, the nip of keen sweet air, perfumed with the scent of damp grass and dead leaves and wood-smoke. Delicate tracery of branches as yet bare, interspersed with the hardy green of pines, laurels, and larches against a sky pale blue as harebell, streaked with broad floating scarves of gray-white vapor, made a background for the green-jacketed, red-breeched Chasseurs on their bony, brown horses,--for the knots of strollers, curious or contemptuous,--for the broken masses of the crowd of would-be demonstrators, arrested in their progress by the blocking of the way. In the right foreground suppose the slim young Napoleon sitting easily on the fidgety, fretful chestnut,--the Military General balanced on his big champing charger,--the blue-and-gold aide and the green-and-silver equerry, the grooms and the escort of Cent Gardes looking decorously between the ears of their well-trained, shining beasts. To the left place the debilitated _fiacre_ with its weary Rosinante and red-nosed sulky Jehu, and leaning from the open window of the vehicle--Juliette.

Perhaps you can see her, a little toque of Persian lambskin, with a blue wing in it, on her high-piled hair,--with a coquettish jacket of corduroy-velvet of the shade known in the spring of that year as Bismarck gray,--trimmed with the lambskin, fitting close to her slender shape. She wore a plain black silk skirt looped high over a vivid red cloth petticoat--it was a fashionable style of costume that year--and very much worn. A bright rose bloomed in each cheek, pale as she was ordinarily; and her black brows were spread and lifted joyously, and her eyes shone blue as sapphires in contrast with a little knot of violets at her breast and the big bunch held in her little gray-gloved hand. And with a very fair aim she threw the latter so that the bundle of wet fragrance lightly hit the saddleflap close to the knee of the Imperial stripling, and behind the shoulder of the swerving chestnut, as she cried again:

"_Vive le Prince Impérial!_"

The boy bowed to her, blushing at her beauty and her loyal enthusiasm,--the equerry, slimmest of the officers in attendance, dismounted and picked up the flowers. A trumpet sounded, a short, sharp order was given, there was a trampling of hoofs and a clinking of bridles as the files wheeled right and left, leaving a broad road open between a double rank of saluting troopers, and the Prince with his Governor and following rode down this open vista and cantered away by route of the Avenue de l'Impératrice, in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne.

The boy held in his whip-hand the bunch of violets handed him by the equerry. Only a little grayish sand clung to some of the dark, shining leaves. He sniffed their fragrance and glanced back as the trumpet rang out behind them, and the Avenue was once more blocked with mounted Chasseurs.

XIX

He was fourteen, delicate and rather backward for his age, owing to the inevitable drawbacks of his environment. Since the salvo of a hundred-and-one guns announcing the birth of a Prince Imperial had crashed from the battery of the Esplanade of the Invalides, to be echoed from every fortress throughout the Empire; and bells had pealed from every steeple, flags had broached from every staff-head, and dusk-fall had seen every city, town, or village, ablaze with illumination,--had he not been environed with precautions, lapped in luxury? Where another baby would have slumbered in a wicker bassinette, the child of France cried in a cradle of artistic goldsmithery. And the three great official bodies of the State, the Delegates from all the constituted Authorities paid homage. And they enrolled him in the First Regiment of Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard on the day of his birth, and pinned the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor on his bib when he was forty-eight hours old.

To gratify the paternal ambition of a father who had dreaded the stigma of childlessness, this graft of his race was to be forced into precocious maturity. You might have seen the little creature at six months of age strapped in a cane chair-saddle upon the back of a Shetland pony. At five he could ride a military charger. Dressed in the white-faced blue uniform of the First Grenadiers of the Guard, his tiny face hidden in a huge fur shako with a white plume and _galons_ and a huge brass-eagled fore-plate, you saw him with the Emperor at Imperial Reviews.

It is uncertain whether he was ever soothed to sleep with the French equivalent of the rhyme of Baby Bunting, whether he ever learned of the Archer who shot at a frog, or was thrilled by the adventures of Jack the Giant Killer. We know that the Napoleonic tradition was his ABC, the Third Empire his primer. At the time of the war with Italy, he being then some three years of age, his utterances on the subject were quoted in the daily papers as miracles of wisdom--marvels of acumen. His seventh birthday had been celebrated by the production of a Military Spectacle, in the course of which real cannon were fired and real military evolutions performed upon the stage. His great-uncle on a white horse, in the little cocked hat and gray capote of History, was the hero, you may be sure; and three hundred soldiers' sons of his own age filled the dress circle, stalls and upper tiers. One likes the pretty story of the fair-haired child going down among these little comrades to distribute smiles and bonbons. One can understand the father's pride in the laborious pot-hooks and hangers that compliment him upon the taking of Mexico--word of ill omen in Imperialist ears!--and the scrawled postscript that tells how his horse kicked at exercise that morning, but that he sat tight and did not fall. It was not for a long, long time to dawn upon the expanding mind behind the beautiful, bright blue eyes, that the Throne Imperial of France was a saddle insecurely girthed upon a kicking charger, and that the paternal horsemanship had been, and frequently was severely taxed in the effort to stick on.

You may imagine the query, Why?--forming in the mind of seven years. Perhaps you see him in his lace-collared, belted blouse and wide Breton breeches of black velvet, scarlet silk stockings and buckled shoes, curled up upon the blue-and-golden cushion of the gilded chair of State upon the three-step daïs in the Throne Boom of the Tuileries, where, while their Imperial Majesties dined, he loved to play hide-and-seek with his tutor and an _aide-de-camp_ or so; and wearied with play, conceive him dreaming under the gorgeous crimson velvet canopy powdered with golden N's and symbolical bees, edged with laurel leaves of beaten gold, and surmounted by a great golden eagle, perched with outstretched wings upon a laurel Crown.

Under the brooding wings of the Eagle on the Crown this child of the Empire wondered about many things.... Did any discovery connected with the peculiar duties devolving upon the Cent Gardes and the Tuileries Police ever make the bright young head toss restlessly on its pillow of down? For he must one day have learned that noiseless footsteps patroled the corridors, that observant eyes twinkled at every keyhole--that sharp ears were listening at every chink for suspicious sounds not only by night, for the terror that walketh in the noonday is the peculiar bugbear of Emperors and Kings and Presidents.

One may be very sure that long ere another seven years had browned the fair hair, he was familiar with the fact that the guardian angels of M. Hyrvoix and M. Legrange kept unsleeping watch over the personal safety of his father, his mother, and himself. That officials, functionaries, ladies of the Court, and lackeys, male and female, were maintained under constant and vigilant surveillance. That there were even Police to watch the Police who kept the Police under observation. That precautions of a peculiarly special and delicate nature were observed with regard to the food prepared in the Imperial Kitchens and the wine that came from the Imperial Cellars, lest deadly poison should be mingled therein by those who did not love the name of Bonaparte.

He learned, next,--perhaps the knowledge floated in the air he breathed like some strange pollen, or was realized from certain experiences garnered during Imperial Progresses, Distributions of Awards, Opening Ceremonies, and other public Functions,--that there were many of these naughty people, who, while the soldiers and certain of the townsfolk in the streets cried "_Vive l'Empereur!_" "_Vive l'Impératrice!_" and "_Vive le Prince Impérial!_" remained silent even though they uncovered, and a vast number who not only did not cheer, but kept their hats on, and sometimes hissed. Following, came the shocking discovery that there existed a party of extremists who were not content with being rude and making ugly noises, but had even tried--and tried more than once--to kill the Emperor....

"_To kill papa, who is so good to me! ..._"

In a glass case in the Empress's cabinet were preserved the crush-hat and the cloak worn by the Emperor on the night of Orsini's attempt outside the Opera, and damaged by a splinter from one of the exploding bombs. Perhaps that glass case now yielded up its sinister secret to the curious questionings of a child.

The discovery that this father, so indulgent, so tender, and so much beloved, should be the object of such destroying hate as was cherished by these nameless men was terrible. You may go farther into the thing, and suppose its breaking in upon him presently that many thousands of his father's subjects, not criminals or murderers, but rather estimable persons than otherwise, thrilled with something else than tenderness at the mention of the paternal name, and that the Empire, which had hitherto signified for him the adamantine hub on which rests the pivot of this spinning world of ours--was not as solidly founded as his pedagogues had taught him. That the Army, the Peasantry, certain of the Nobility--not of the Ancient Régime--and a section of the Bourgeoisie supported it; but that by the educated middle-class, and by the intellectual, professional and working-classes it was held in abomination--execrated and detested; hated with a bitterness that intensified from day to day.

The cat came out of the bag a full-grown tiger. Revelations, discoveries, succeeded one another. Disillusions came crowding thick and fast. When it was discovered that he was backward for his age, and the question of a new private tutor was being discussed, he had asked his Governor:

"Could I not go to a day-school like Corvisart and Fleury and the Labédoyère boys?"

"Impossible, Monseigneur!" was the answer.

He urged:

"But, _mon cher Général_, you answer that to so many questions. Pray, this time explain why?"

Horribly nonplussed, the military governor stammered:

"The heir to an Imperial Throne could not be sent twice daily to a day-school. Not to be dreamed of! Such an innovation would be the signal for fresh insults, provocation of new perils.... Never could it be allowed!"

The boy's were rather dreamy eyes, under the silken plume of hair, chestnut-brown like his beautiful mother's. They were proud eyes, too, when they had flashed at the word "insult." And brave, for mention of "perils" only made them smile. He said thoughtfully that morning, leaning his elbow on an unfinished Latin exercise that lay on the table in the window of his study at the Château of St. Cloud:

"An 'innovation' means something that is new. But Primoli and Joachim Murat are being educated at a French College, and did not the late King send his sons to be boarders at the Lycée Henri IV.? Could not I be a boarder at the Lycée Napoléon, or the Lycée Bonaparte, M. le Général?"

With labored clearness and a great deal of circumlocution, M. le Général explained:

"The heir of a Democratic Empire, Monseigneur, and the sons of a bourgeois Royalty cannot be regarded upon the same level, or educated upon identical principles. But a plan has been devised for bringing your Imperial Highness into actual touch with the life of a public school...."

"How? Tell me quickly, M. le Général!"

The child's delicate face flushed bright red. His eyes shone. He sat upright in his chair as though a vivifying breath had passed through him, waiting the reply. It came....

"One of the Professors of the Elementary Class has been engaged to take your Imperial Highness through the course prescribed for the other pupils. He will attend daily here, or at the Tuileries."

The child said, with a catching of the breath that was almost a sob, and a look of bitter disappointment:

"The boys.... Then I shall not know the boys?"

"No, Monseigneur, except by hearsay. The Professor will tell you their names, ages, and--ah!--leading characteristics.... You will learn with them, and every week you will write a composition with them, recapitulating what you have learned. And that they will hear of you goes without saying. Frequently, Monseigneur, but frequently!"

His pupil interrupted:

"They will hear of me, but what is that? They will never see me--I shall never see them! Never join in their games--never be just another boy with them! Never be friends or foes with them--never beat them or be---- No! I should not like to be beaten at all!"

M. le Général rejoined solemnly:

"That degrading possibility, and graver dangers still, will be averted by the fact that their Imperial schoolfellow will not be--ah!--bodily present in their midst, my Prince. Perhaps your Imperial Highness would like to see the Professor now?"

And so the Professor came, and from him the boy eagerly gleaned information about his little schoolfellows of the Seventh Form. He had friends of his own who came to him after High Mass on Sundays and on all holidays. But except Espinasse, they had been chosen for him. The joy of selection and choice he was not to know.

Thus, many men of mark from different Lycées succeeded one another in the work-room at the Château and successively occupied the arm-chair at the end of the leather-covered table in one of the three windows of his corner study on the third story of the Pavilion de Flore at the Tuileries--and when he had been attentive and pleased his Professor,--his reward would be to hear about the boys.... Some were noble, splendid fellows, full of cleverness, energy and spirits; others were funny by reason of sheer stupidity, or some quaint characteristic or absurd failing which had gained them nicknames among the rest. A few were spoken of almost with reverence, as being dowered with the magical gift of genius: poets, dramatists, novelists, scientists in embryo, budding naval or military commanders, explorers who were to plant the Flag of France in virgin corners of the earth and proudly add them to the Empire that would one day be his own....

He met his longed-for boys at last. One likes to picture him--having once taken a First Place in the Arithmetic Class--as being permitted to join in the St. Charlemagne fête of the Lycée Bonaparte. He sat in the center of one of the long tables, with long vistas of boys, boys, boys opening out before him whichever way he turned his head. And he was happy, but for this thing; that though most of the boys in whom he had been particularly interested were presented to him, he did not find--as secretly he hoped to find--the friend of whom he dreamed....

He tried to be _bon camarade_; to combine--and he had a special gift in this--easy good-fellowship with graciousness. But the boys did not respond as he would have liked. They stood to attention, and looked him in the face, and answered, "Yes, Monseigneur! No, Monseigneur!" boldly, or they shuffled and blinked, and answered, "No, Monseigneur! Yes, Monseigneur!" mumblingly, and that was all.

He wished, secretly yet ardently, for brave, proud eyes to meet his own, and strike out the sacred spark of chaste and mutual fire that kindles the pure, undying flame of Friendship's altar. He longed for a grave, melodious voice to match the noble, youthful face and the fine form of his chosen friend. He sought a nature to lean upon, which should be stronger, greater, than his own.... Superior talents, greater capacities, ambitions to share, successes to emulate. And he found none. Not a boy here was a patch upon the shoe of gay, gallant, lovable, merry Espinasse, who had never come up to his Prince's notion of a bosom-friend. Could it be that the other self did not exist anywhere? We turned from that thought, we who were lonely when we were young. It made the world feel so big and cold.

The Fête of St. Charlemagne having passed off without any untoward incident or disagreeable demonstration, an unhappy inspiration on the part of M. Victor Duruy prompted the suggestion that the Emperor's heir should preside at the distribution of prizes for the Concours Général, and thus be for the second time brought into sympathetic touch with the intellectual youth of France.

You are to imagine the picture of the stately entry into the great Hall upon the first-floor of the Sorbonne upon an evening in mid-August; the reception by the Minister of Public Instruction, gowned and capped and hooded, and the Representatives of the Faculties; the ominously restricted and frigid applause of professors and students, greeting references made in the Rector's Latin speech to the presence of an Imperial Prince in the classic groves of Akademos.

Hostility, hidden behind a mask of frigid indifference, was to dash down the brittle sham, and show the fierce eyes of scorn and the livid hue of hatred, and the writhed lips dumb with reproaches unutterable. Contempt and mockery were to be conveyed in the small sibilant _s'ss_! that rippled from parterre to gallery, and by the intolerable jeering titter that replied.

Yet all might have passed off tolerably but for the beldam Fate, who had arranged that the second prize for Greek translation, a trio of calf-bound, gilt-backed volumes containing the Works of Thucydides, had--together with a laurel crown--fallen to Louis-Eugène Cavaignac.

The young voice had not faltered in reading the name upon the illuminated scroll. What did its owner know of the Revolutionary soldier, the dauntless foe of Abd-el-Kader? The Governor-General of Algeria who had been recalled to Paris to assume the functions of Minister at War to the Republican Government of 1848. The man who had upheld the office of Dictator during the period of terror that had followed the fatal days of June! The candidate for the Presidency of the Republic who had scorned to bribe; who had calmly accepted his defeat, and taken his place in the National Assembly, when Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the good citizen, was elected to the arm-chair upon the tribune, and took the oath of fidelity to the Republic of France. Who had been imprisoned in the Fortress of Ham, with other Representatives of the Left,--his gaoler a commandant named Baudot, whom he himself had appointed in '48,--his guards the 40th Regiment of the Line, which had been subject to his orders so short a time before.

Of his seven fellow-captives between those grim and oozing walls, one was paralyzed upon release, others were victims to chronic rheumatism. Cavaignac had lived in retirement until the elections of June, 1857, when he was chosen as one of the Deputies for the Seine, in opposition to an Imperialist candidate. A few weeks later he had died suddenly, leaving a wife and a son three years old.

This son, who had half-risen from his place upon the bench at the sound of the voice that called upon him in the name that had been his father's, had all these memories in his flaming eyes. He did not seem to hear the applause that greeted his triumph; he gazed steadily into the face of the young Bonaparte, and then looked toward his mother. And Madame Cavaignac, seated, beautiful and stern as a matron of old Rome, relentless as Fate, in the front of the gallery opposite, signed to him with an imperious gesture to sit down. He obeyed her. And then round upon round of deafening plaudits made the walls and rafters of the ancient building shake; and brought the gray dust of six centuries drifting down upon the black or brown or golden locks of the hopeful youth of France.

After that episode the heir of the Imperial dignities was not again brought in contact with the students of the lyceums. He made no reference to the prize-winner who had refused the prize tendered by the son of his dead father's relentless enemy. But the insult had gone to the quick. Recalling it, he would clench his hands until the nails dug deep into the delicate flesh, crying inwardly:

"Oh! to be a man full-grown, and avenge that day with blood!"

At other times he would weep passionately in secret over the memory of the outrage; for, being of a sensitive, affectionate and generous nature, it sorely hurt to find himself the object of such hatred from one in whom,--it seemed to him, and perhaps indeed it was so!--he might have found the bosom-friend and _alter ego_, so keenly longed for and so eagerly sought.

The bright dark eyes and clear-cut features, the well-set head and athletic form, the dignified, yet modest bearing of this boy, so superior to himself in everything but wealth and station, fitted the niche previously prepared. And when he fell to dreaming, young Cavaignac's resolute face and calm, contemptuous bearing were invariably opposed to his own unslumbering resentment, and finally-conquering generosity. For, varied as the plot might be, the _dénouement_ of each little drama would always be the same.

They would meet, in manhood, upon some field of bloody battle, during the great war beginning with the French invasion of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ending with the conquest of Germany and the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine. A youth upon the verge of manhood, the dreamer would have performed such prodigies of valor in command of his regiment as to justify his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army of Invasion. He had not decided what would happen. There would be a great charge of cavalry led against overwhelming odds, under a deadly fire of infantry and artillery, by himself. He would cut down or shoot a gigantic Prussian trooper, who had wounded a French officer. He would lightly leap from his own charger--the Arab "_Selim_" given him by Sultan Abdul Aziz--and aid the prostrate man to rise and mount. Their looks would meet, the blue-gray and the fiery black eyes would strike out a spark of mutual recognition. Oh! the joy of heaping coals of fire upon that beautiful, rebellious head!