Part 39

"Both may be agreeable," said the old war-eagle, "in different fashion; as the partition of a conquered province, and the dismemberment of a truffled capon might afford pleasure of two kinds to Your Excellency."

Said Bismarck, as his cousin reined back and joined the modest personal staff of Moltke, following at some distance in the rear of the Commander-in-Chief:

"I prefer the first, if the second appeals to my empty stomach. Though we must not sell the bear's skin before we have killed the bear!"

He went on, patting the sweating neck of the brown mare, who had winced and started as yet another dead-cart shot out its dreadful load to windward....

"The King has been in favor of keeping the country up to the Marne. I have yet another idea, which may be too Utopian to realize. A kind of German colony--a neutral State of eight or ten million inhabitants, free from the conscription, and whose taxes should flow to Berlin. France would thus lose a district from whence she draws her best soldiers--one would cut her claws thus!"

Said Moltke, his clear eyes narrowing in merry wrinkles:

"And draw her teeth as well!"

The Chancellor went on:

"That the annexation of the piece of territory will give jaundice to the French is a matter of no consequence. Revenge should be made impossible. Even without annexation we must render them permanently harmless before we risk their bite. The surrender of the eastern fortresses of France can alone serve our purpose. We have bought them with the best of our German blood!"

Agreed the Warlock: "Many noble Prussian families will be plunged in mourning. Wesdehlen and Reuss, Wedell and Finkenstein have been killed--Rahden is most grievously wounded, and a whole crowd of officers commanding regiments or battalions are either badly hurt or dead. I can but thank Divine Providence that I have suffered no personal bereavement."

"I echo your thanksgiving," responded the Minister, "though some pints of my own blood have vicariously been shed."

"I had heard--I had heard somewhat, but feared to touch upon the matter," said the Warlock. "With the younger olive-branch they tell me all is well!"

The Chancellor answered, stammering slightly and looking straight in the other's eyes:

"Bill rode off the field in safety, carrying two unhorsed comrades out of the leaden hailstorm, one in each stirrup, Cossack-fashion, and accommodating a th--a third on the crupper of his horse!"

"_Ei--ei_! I had not heard these interesting particulars," exclaimed Moltke, raising his hairless brows in apparent astonishment. "I did not know the brave young man had distinguished himself so much! The Countess will overflow with pride and gratitude.... She writes regularly, I think Your Excellency told me? Naturally she would be solicitous for your health."

"I had a letter from her yesterday," returned Bismarck, "in which she mingles, in equal doses, stern admonition and affectionate advice. Thus, I am to avoid the French wines, which are known to be gout-provoking, and be sure to return in time for the celebration of our wedding-day.... While, remembering, however strongly Paris may be fortified, that the walls of Jericho fell down when the trumpets of Joshua were sounded--I am to give Your Excellency no peace, 'until the modern Babylon is utterly destroyed.'"

"Ha, ha, ha!" The Warlock laughed with boyish merriment, until the water stood in his clear, keen eyes. "Her Excellency, as I have often told thee, Otto, possesses a personality of the antique order. She is of the breed of Judith and Zenobia.... I would also say Boadicea, but for the Countess's known antipathy to the British race. So we are to destroy Paris, and what of the Bonapartes and Bourbons and Orleans?... Have we, then, no cut-and-dried instructions as to what is to be done with these?"

The Chancellor returned, with immovable gravity of tone and feature, belied by the amusement dancing in his eyes:

"We are to purge France of the whole lot of them. Though--supposing the Prince Imperial were to complete his education at a German University, and thus attain to manhood surrounded by German influences--Monseigneur Lulu might one day become a subaltern in our Prussian Army--subsequently to completion of the customary period of service in the ranks!"

"Capital. Her Excellency is indeed a woman in a thousand." And Moltke fairly rocked in his saddle with laughter, finally having recourse to the frayed cuff of his old uniform field-frock for the mopping of his overflowing eyes. "Thou must paint for the King," he gasped, "that picture of Lulu as a Prussian private soldier. Do not fail to tell him--it will be sure to make him laugh."

Said the Chancellor, shrugging his great shoulders:

"He has ridden with Von Roon and the Tinsel Rabble in the direction of Flavigny, where the French bombardment so greatly endangered him yesterday. Von Roon will be pouring into the royal ear dismal details of our losses, which are to be estimated for the Berlin newspapers at something under twenty thousand, including officers."

"Seventy thousand would be nearer the mark," said the Warlock placidly. "Nor do I regard it as a heavy price for such a victory as we have won. Roon, however, is not to be envied an unpleasant duty, which, for my own part, I prefer, when possible, to leave to other mouths than mine."

And leaving the battle-field they struck into a road in a cutting leading east toward Flavigny, and bordered with cottages shattered and scorched by shell-fire, most of them standing in gardens gay with dahlias, sunflowers, snapdragons, marigolds, lavender, and phlox. Every house that boasted a roof was full of wounded French and German soldiers, most of them lying on bare boards or earthen floors. Oaths and cries of anguish came from kitchens that in virtue of their solid tables had been converted into operating theaters; ambulance-assistants emptied buckets of ensanguined water over the gaily-colored flower-beds, while bare-armed surgeons, in blood-stained aprons, came to the doors every other moment to cool themselves, or fill their lungs with draughts of cleaner air.

"It is sad to see all this suffering," remarked the Chancellor, "or would be, did one not know it unavoidable!"

Said the Warlock, smiling cheerfully:

"Blood and wounds, dying men and dead men, are the inseparable concomitants of War. One takes them then as natural, and pays no heed to them. Did armies fight with truncheons of sausages, and dumplings stuffed with plums instead of iron shells full of shrapnel, there would still be deaths in plenty."

The Chancellor said, laughing heartily:

"And the Field equipment of our Army surgeons would consist of calomel and rhubarb-pills. Here now are a collection of soaked macaws and paroquets. The fine feathers of the Napoleon's Guard Imperial have suffered badly from last night's rain."

In two fields right and left of the road they followed were crowded nearly four thousand French prisoners, under a heavy guard of Mecklenburg infantry. The Mecklenburgers were drinking their morning coffee and munching Army bread and raw ham rations. The emerald, pale blue, and scarlet Imperial Dragoons and Cuirassiers, the white-mantled, red-fezzed Chasseurs d'Afrique, the green-coated Chasseurs à cheval, the gorgeous Guides and Lancers, the Voltigeurs, and the red-breeched, blue-coated grenadiers belonging to individual regiments, standing as if in the ranks, or lying down in groups upon the muddy ground where they had spent the last night, looked with hollow eyes of famine, upon their munching jailers, but disdained to ask for food.

"They are wet," said Moltke, "for few of them have got their greatcoats. It is the love of display that leads the French soldier to throw away what extra weight of covering he carries when he is in the thick of a _mêlée_, or suddenly called upon to charge. While our stout fellows will come out of an assault with what they carried into it."

"Or perhaps a little more!" hinted the Chancellor.

"It may be--it may be!" admitted the Field Marshal. "The French love for gold-carrying is the cause of that enrichment. Hence most of their Guard Cavalry officers carry beneath their tunics or in the pockets of their tight pantaloons netted purses given them by their women, that stick out in a tempting style. A prod of our German lance, or a rip from the bayonet, and out pops the purse into the soldier's fist. You would not call him a thief for taking what he finds in this manner?"

"I cannot answer for myself," said the Chancellor, turning a laughing look upon the speaker, "but I can safely predict that my wife would exonerate him upon Scriptural authority. By the way, I see that your brigadiers have not thought it worth while to place the French wounded under surveillance." He pointed to a halting procession of roughly bandaged casualties in torn and muddy uniforms. "I have already passed at least a thousand of these limping fellows in red breeches, and of course there must be thousands more."

"How could they escape?" asked the Warlock, turning his ascetic, hairless face upon the speaker. "And did they succeed in doing so, of what use would they be as combatants? All these you see, have they not been wounded by shell-splinters in the head or arms, or hit in the legs and feet by our rifle bullets? Why should we burden ourselves with the maintenance of men who cannot fight against us? and must be helpless burdens upon their country even were they within the French lines?"

"I admit the clearness of your Excellency's judgment," said the Minister, "even while I doubt whether, if some of these red-breeched rascals happen to be in possession of concealed weapons--there would not be an excellent opportunity, at this moment, for ridding France of Bismarck or Moltke."

"Or both," the Warlock amended, "with the aid of a double-barreled pistol. Look here! Was ever a more startling likeness between a dead man and a living, than is presented at this moment before Your Excellency and myself?"

And returning the salute of a young soldier in the white-faced blue uniform of the Guards Infantry, who in the act of galloping past upon a powerful if wearied beast, had checked his stride so as not to splash mud upon the Chancellor and the great Field-Marshal, Moltke signed to him to halt.

"That he is a relative of Max Valverden's," said Bismarck, "I would have wagered you a dozen of Moselle, of Comet vintage, if Your Excellency were not already inclined to bet on the relationship."

"I never bet," chirped Moltke, "except in boxes of chocolate and gloves with my nieces, and then it is a matter of certainty beforehand that the little girls are going to win!" And he turned his narrow, glittering gaze upon the object of his curiosity, who was now fixed in the front attitude of attention, immovable as an equestrian statue of painted stone.

"I will not detain you upon what is no doubt a pressing errand," said the Chief of the Great Staff, smiling amiably in the Guardsman's rigid countenance. "I merely wished to ask your name, and why it is that a private soldier of Guard Infantry happens to be riding an officer's horse?"

"Pardon, General Field-Marshal!" The statue blushed becomingly. "My name is Carl Bernhard von Schön Valverden, at the service of Your Excellency. Of my rank in the Army I am hardly at this moment certain, as I was promoted Corporal and Sergeant yesterday, during the action of the Guard at St. Privat and Amanvilliers, and am now acting temporarily as junior Captain of my company, nearly all our officers having been killed."

"I congratulate you, Sergeant!" rejoined the Field-Marshal cordially, "and am glad that you, as successor to the family honors of an officer who served the Prussian Army with distinction, seem likely to follow in the steps of your relative. Prut!--that was a close thing!"

"Hellishly so!" agreed Bismarck.

For the flushed and laughing face of Valverden had suddenly hardened and sharpened. With lightning quickness he had drawn a revolver from a pouch strapped to his belt and fired across the withers of the big brown mare bestridden by the Iron Chancellor. As the single shot rang out, another followed almost instantly, and the midmost of a knot of three dismounted Lancers, their heads, legs, and arms swathed in clumsy, blood-stained bandages, who had halted to rest by the side of the muddy road, yelled shrilly and pitched heavily backward, dropping, with the broken pair of clothes-props that had served him as crutches, a cavalry holster-pistol that had exploded as it fell.

Said Valverden, stiffening his features in the endeavor to disguise his almost passionate elation: "Your Excellencies will pardon me, but I saw the fellow was dangerous...."

"He might with reason," the Chancellor answered, "have entertained a similar idea of you!" He turned to Moltke, saying:

"Will not Your Excellency give orders that the companions of these would-be assassins--all upon the road who have witnessed the attempted outrage--shall be shot without delay? It strikes me also that more stringent precautions must be taken with regard to disarming wounded prisoners. The man had a pistol--that goes for much!"

"Certainly--certainly!" agreed Moltke, beckoning to an aide of his small Staff, who followed at some distance. He issued some brief directions, speaking in an undertone, then said, smiling and turning to Valverden:

"The late Count Max was an excellent marksman with the pistol. You seem to have inherited this talent of his!"

The Chancellor added, looking at the still smoking revolver: "You have there a pretty little weapon, apparently of American make!"

"It is one of Colt's six-shooters," said Valverden, smiling. "I bought it from a non-commissioned officer quite recently, and have practised with it in the trenches at the animate mark. But of the ammunition I got with it all has been expended save six cartridges, one of which I have had the honor to dedicate to the service of Your Excellencies."

Both the Excellencies laughed, Moltke saying:

"It would be a pity to spoil your shooting, Sergeant Count von Schön Valverden, for want of a few cartridges. Give me the caliber of your weapon and I will engage to supply you with a few hundred. And, as to your promptitude may be owed the priceless life of Count Bismarck, the silver-sword-knot must be the reward."

"Thanks, thanks! Your Excellency!" stammered Valverden, grasping the offered hand of the old warrior.

"And the King shall hear how important a service his newly promoted officer has rendered him," appended the Chancellor, "in preserving to the Throne and nation of Prussia the greatest of living strategists!"

"Under Divine Providence," said Moltke, devoutly raising his forage-cap.

"Under Divine Providence," repeated the Chancellor, touching the peak of his own.

He added, as Valverden, dismissed by a wave of the Chief's finger, his blue eyes blazing, his blond face aglow with triumph, set his borrowed spurs to the flanks of his late Captain's charger, and with a showy bound and demi-volte, galloped furiously away:

"He is as vain as Count Max, but seems to possess more character. I prophesy he will go far!"

Moltke agreed, slightly glancing after the flying horseman:

"Far--if Heaven preserve him from the clutches of such women as Adelaide de Bayard. Wouldst thou believe, Otto, the she-fiend spread her nets to catch that youngster, who out of dare-devilry prevailed on an officer of her acquaintance to take him to her house?"

"So!" Bismarck turned his large eyes on the withered eagle-face. "Did the meeting ripen into intimacy?"

Moltke replied:

"Sufficiently so to cause Valverden's family acute apprehension. One would suppose that she first revolted, then attracted, then charmed.... The Countess in the anguish of maternal solicitude wrote a letter to the Colonel of Valverden's regiment.... Fortunately the call to Active Service diverted the young man's thoughts elsewhere."

Bismarck said, smiling and smoothing his heavy gray mustache with his ungloved right hand:

"And, happily for her intended victim, an accident befell the sorceress, which blunted some of the arrows in her quiver of irresistible charms!"

XLVIII

"Sad, sad! I had not heard. How did it happen?" asked Moltke, elevating his hairless brows inquiringly.

"Briefly, the affair, as its details have reached me, sums up in this way: Straz, the Roumanian agent of the Emperor Napoleon, having performed his mission to Prince Antony of Hohenzollern, met Madame de Bayard at a Sigmaringen hotel.... She is as clever and light-fingered as she is, or was, beautiful----'

"I know, I know!" said Moltke. "She sucked Straz dry of his store of Imperial secrets, but how, I did not hear from Your Excellency."

Returned the Chancellor:

"By drugging him--or so he vows!--she obtained those copies of his instructions from the Emperor (with copies of his copies of the telegrams sent by Prince Antony)--which I was privileged to show you later on. Subsequently, and in floods of artificial tears, she awakened her victim, declaring she must return that instant to Berlin. Which she did--a special engine having been kept under steam at the Sigmaringen railway station--in time to place the papers in the hands for which they were destined. The exquisite point of the jest is that Straz accompanied her--subsequently discovering how roundly he had been befooled! But upon this point I am not certain.... I only argue from the premises that when Delilah was subsequently found gagged, half-strangled, and robbed in her bedroom at the hotel where she and her Roumanian had put up--Straz--who had vanished--was the perpetrator of what Madame has since termed 'a mysterious outrage.'"

"He took the money?" Moltke queried.

"Undoubtedly he took the money, which Bucher had paid her a few hours previously. Twenty thousand marks in honest Prussian bank-notes. Some of them Straz changed before he left Berlin. He is now here in France, and that is all I care to know of him at present. But in the eyes of every man she now encounters, Madame will read something that will keep her animosity alive."

"So changed, is she?" asked Moltke, with interest.

"So changed is she, in spite of the aid of cosmetics, that as I looked at her I was minded to exclaim with the Prophet Ezekiel: _Devourer of men ... thou shalt devour men no more!_"

The speaker added:

"Unless vicariously, for the De Bayard has a daughter--not destitute of charms, if there be truth in the description given me by her mother, when the woman offered, for a consideration, to sell the girl to me!"

"Prut!" said Moltke, reddening angrily and frowning. "Decency demands that such vileness be kept hid!"

Said the Chancellor, shrugging indifferently:

"Decency and such women as Max Valverden's ex-mistress have long ceased to be on nodding terms. To do Madame justice, she flew at higher game than a mere Prussian Minister. Her idea was to influence a future Emperor, in the person of Badinguet's heir."

Moltke wrinkled up his transparent, arched nostrils, as though an unpleasant odor had afflicted them:

"_Pfui!_--what beastliness! what abomination! And the boy but fifteen, and childish for his age!"

"And cleanly of habit and thought," added Bismarck, "considering his paternity, and the sort of people who habitually surround him." He turned slightly in his saddle as carbine-shots rang out, followed by oaths, shouts, and in the distance behind them muscular blows: "The gendarmery of the Württembergers are carrying out your orders in a general _battue_. It should be enforced as an iron rule never to be infringed or departed from, that not only those soldiers, reduced to the level of non-combatants--who attempt to revenge the misfortunes of their Army by acts of violence--but those who witness such acts are to be instantly shot. More, the rule should extend to private persons: I would without mercy shoot or hang all those who do not treat as sacredly inviolate the persons of their conquerors!"

His deep-cut nostrils expanded, his blood-tinged blue eyes blazed under the heavy eyebrows, the corners of his mouth clamped downward, giving to the thick mustache a certain appearance of solidity, typical of the man, and suggesting a human mask carved in granite, or cast in bronze and colored with the hues of life. His resonant voice had the clang and timbre of a war-gong, forged of metal tempered by Pagan priests in blood of human victims. And he went on, his clenched right hand beating the measure of his words upon his solid thigh:

"I speak from the inner depths, at the promptings of a profound conviction. Strictness--unmerciful strictness--should be wielded, to bring home to the innocent and the guilty, the feeble as well as the powerful, the horror and hideousness of War. And yet"--his voice assumed a milder tone, the somber frown relaxed, and the tense corners of the deep-cut mouth twitched a little: "And yet wilt thou credit that during the frightful carnage of the last two days--there have been moments when my bowels melted to water--when Pity and Compunction have gripped me by the throat?"

"_Ach-ach!_" ejaculated Moltke, turning his clear red-rimmed eyes wonderingly upon the heavy features whose ruddy color had faded to grayish: "Thou wast unfed, or hadst made some rough soldier's meal that disagreed with thee. Man's stomach will upon such occasions chide with the very voice of conscience. Unavoidable horrors need not cause twinges. Besides, pity and compunction are felt by my niece Gusta when she has trodden upon her lapdog's tail.... I am myself agitated by these sentiments when Gusta exhibits to me her chilblains.... In War--especially a recklessly provoked war of attack, such as this--neither pity nor compunction can be tolerated. Grief of heart, I have been hitherto spared by Heaven's gracious preservation of those dear to me. Thou art nearly as favored, for the wound of Herbert is comparatively slight, and Bill--the hero of the astonishing episode thou hast related--has come off the field not only with four--I think Your Excellency mentioned four--rescued comrades, but without a scratch upon his skin?"

The simple, serious, almost childish tone of his harangue brought back the thunderclouds to the forehead of the Man of Iron. His grim mouth set, his bulldog jaw thrust forward, a dull cloud of red swept upward to his temples, chasing the sickly grayish hue. He said, stammering in his characteristic manner:

"Your Ex--Your Excellency and myself have, as you say, been spared the bereavement which will presently plunge the noblest Prussian families into mourning. But Heaven--looking down upon the Gorze Road, now white with the bodies of Von Bredow's Cuirassiers--or contemplating the field of Mars la Tour, heaped with the corpses of our Guard-Dragoons and Uhlans--might be inclined to disclaim arch-responsibility for the orders that in one instance hurled suss--six Prussian squadrons upon a French Infantry Division and the combined strength of Frossard's batteries, and in the other, pitted against eight regiments of French Imperial Guard Cavalry Von Barby's Heavy Brigade."

"_Ei!_" said Moltke, placidly ignoring the irony, but with a rosy heightening of the color in his wrinkled cheeks: "And Heaven would be in the right of it. Von Alvensleben in the first case, General Voights-Rhetz in the second, had been told in such and such an emergency to do thus--and thus. In the Wars of Joshua and David, as recorded in Holy Scripture, Heaven assumed the chief generalship. In the War of Germany with France, in this year of 1870, Heaven is pleased to let Moltke have his own way."

Verbal thrusts and riposte had the grind of edged steel on steel.

The Chancellor returned with elaborate suavity:

"And yet--I quote Your Excellency's own utterance, such use of cavalry as I have quoted has been condemned by Moltke as unjustifiable."

"And Moltke was right," trumpeted the indomitable veteran, "only you have not quoted me right. Such use of cavalry by a general is unjustifiable. Unjustifiable--absolutely--unless he wins!" He added, rather nettled by the Chancellor's criticism: