Part 56

"A pleasant day! I am quite at your service now, if you will come up to me.... You know the way, I think?..."

And the great figure vanished, and the heavy footsteps thundered up the drugget-covered stairs.

Did the sorrowful visitor know the way to the torture-chamber? Surely malice must have prompted the query addressed to the unfortunate plenipotentiary of France.

The room he had so loathed had one window looking out on the Rue de Provence, and another at the south side of the house, where stood the pine-tree and the turtle-backed green glass conservatory with the wrought-iron bridge above it. It had a figured gray carpet, a green hearthrug with red edges, dark green stuff curtains, and various oil-paintings and steel engravings hung upon the walls, which were painted coffee-tinted cream. It was furnished with a writing-table, on which were a terrestrial globe, a celestial one, and a tellurion, a large gray marble-topped chiffonier, a sofa covered with chintz, pattern red-and-gray birds-of-paradise on a background with palm-leaves; two cane chairs and a round center-table, upon which lay a platter of wood containing the colored glass marbles with which one plays the game of solitaire.

It was a game of solitaire which was played in that stiff, primly-furnished apartment, in one corner of which stood a mahogany bedstead of Empire pattern, with an obsolete drapery of green-figured brocade. Such a game as may be played by a grim, greedy, gray-mustached Grimalkin with a plump, bright-eyed, feebly-palpitating mouse.

M. Thiers had been gravely imperiled by the shell-fire of the French guns in the act of returning from Sèvres on the previous day, a mischance which had increased the palpitations which were caused by his heart disease, and wounded his feelings cruelly. Commented the Chancellor, to whom he unwisely related the episode:

"Fortunately the cab-horse was too ill-fed to bolt, but the window was broken, and you were mud-splashed all over.... Not exactly the first time that your countrymen have treated you in that way!..."

And this first scratch of the claw that never failed to draw blood was followed by the query whether M. Thiers were provided with full powers for carrying on the negotiations?

The Minister added, enjoying his victim's start and look of horrified astonishment:

"My people in Paris tell me that there has been practically a Revolution, and that a new Government is coming into power. On the Place before the Hôtel de Ville there were yesterday 15,000 persons assembled, most of them National Guards from the Faubourgs, disarmed and crying: '_Vive la Commune! ... Point d'Armistice!_'"

He went on, unheeding the writhing of the sufferer, whose dignity had been so cruelly wounded:

"It appears that the Mayors of Paris had been summoned by Arago, and were in one room conferring, while in the other was the Government. Mobiles guarded the doors, but were thrust back by the insurgents. General Trochu came out and confronted them. He could only mouth and gesticulate in a sort of dumb Crambo. Cries of '_A bas Trochu!_' drowned his voice. There was a rush.... One does not know how, but Trochu finally escaped out of their clutches--got out by a back door and cut his lucky to the Louvre.... Here is one of the slips of paper that were thrown from the windows of the Hôtel.... They have '_Commune décretée. Dorian Président!_' upon them. There was a scene of confusion peculiar to your nation, in the midst of which M. Félix Pyat and other virtuous citizens proclaimed the Commune, and constituted themselves into a Government embracing Blanqui, Ledru-Rollin, Délescluze, Louis Blanc, and Flourens.... Flourens got upon a table--made himself heard, it seems, finally calling upon the Members of the Government of National Defense to resign. M. Jules Favre refused ... was arrested with the old Government--the new Government reigned until two o'clock in the morning, when some battalions of Mobiles--the 106th and 90th, under Picard--closed in upon the Hôtel and ejected them. Trochu was there with his staff.... Since, a general sort of agreement appears to have been arrived at. A decree signed by Favre was placarded yesterday, announcing that on Thursday next a vote is to be taken whether there is to be a Commune or not.... What I relate happened the day before yesterday. Now, if Your Excellency saw M. Jules Favre at Sèvres yesterday afternoon, he must have told you of the turn things were taking. Oblige me with a plain answer to a plain question.... Did he tell you, or did he not?"

The humiliated gentleman bowed his head assentingly. The hot sweat of a mortal agony stood upon his broad forehead, and flushed and working features. His glasses were dimmed with the reek of his torment and his shame. The Enemy knew all. There was no concealing anything from one so well served by spies and informers. Probably the cruel interview with his fellow-Minister had been listened to, from its beginning to its end.

Thiers and Favre had sat on two iron chairs at a gayly painted little iron table, before one of the wrecked _cafés_ that boasted the sign of _La Belle Bouquetière_. No one had been near except a haggard, absinthe-sodden wretch, who lay in a drunken stupor upon the pavement, close under the broken window of the deserted restaurant. Perhaps that drunken man had been his spy.... What was he saying in the harsh, bullying tones that grated so?...

"The mob who rode roughshod over General Trochu, and his Council of lawyers and orators, appear to be actuated by the desire of fighting things out with us. They burn for a chance, it appears, to pit their undisciplined courage against the Army of United Germany. They are hardly to be blamed for accepting literally the theatrical bombast with which they have been fed by Favre!"

He laughed, and said, with a galling imitation of the rhetorical manner of the Democratic barrister of Lyons:

"'Not a stone of our fortresses'--do you remember? 'Not an inch of our territory!'--have you forgotten?... When it was in the power of the person to whom he boasted to have said to him: _Every inch. Every stone!_..."

He rose up, towering over the unhappy personage who sat opposite to him, in a little wicker easy-chair that would have suited a child. His greedy vitality physically sucked energy from his victim. The stare of his great eyes oppressed, the roughness of his speech had a wounding brutality.

"Which Party governs France? The Blue Republicans or the Reds, answer me? Can one treat with a State that has no responsible heads?"

"Monsieur le Comte!" screamed the personage thus cruelly prodded. "Do you not know that you are insulting me?"

He had grown deadly pale, and now flushed red, making a passionate gesture as though to strike himself on the forehead, as the other asked him with bitter irony:

"Is the truth so offensive to you as all that?... If you did not wish to hear it, you have come to the wrong shop. The day for compliments and flatteries has passed with the tinsel Empire of your Napoleon, unless you compel us to bring him back and set him up again at the Tuileries. Believe me, he has contemplated this eventuality!--has his carpet-bags ready packed, and his eagle in a traveling-cage.... And certainly we could discuss the military questions at issue better with him than with you civilian gentlemen, who do not understand the language of War."

It was not possible to get a word in edgeways.... The rasping voice tore the nerve-fibers as with a saw-edge, the towering figure overwhelmed, the powerful stare fascinated and terrified as the pitiless gaze of the snake when fixed upon a frog or a bird.

And Bismarck went on, deliberately lashing himself into a passion:

"Are you and your colleagues aware that I suffer in my reputation for these procrastinations? It is said at home in Germany that I am over-lenient toward the French, our treacherous enemies ... that I delay to reap for United Germany the glory and profit for which she has paid so terrible a price in blood. Yourself with MM. Ducrot and Favre have considered my terms for an armistice inadmissible.... In return I tell you you have forfeited the right to criticize any terms that I may propose.... You would hold the elections--even in those provinces of France which we hold as conquerors! You would reprovision Paris and her fortresses! We should be hellish unpractical if we listened to you!... What the big devil!... Are we to permit the levies, and the recruiting by which the French Republic may hurl against us a new army to shoot down? _Himmelkreuzbombenelement!_... Do you take us for sheep's heads?"

The unhappy Minister protested in a faint voice:

"Monsieur le Comte, I do not even comprehend the meaning of the term!"

"Ah, by God!" thundered the terrible voice, "you are ignorant indeed of German words and German meanings, and the word that you understand least of all when applied to yourselves is WAR! Silk gloves are not our wear in War, and therefore the iron gloves with which we have handled you have pinched your soft flesh and made you squeal. We might complain of your _Francs-tireurs_, who hide in woods and houses, and shoot our soldiers unawares; and of the inhumanity of your mitrailleuses which cut red lanes through whole regiments. But no! You are the sufferers--you are to be pitied--even for the injuries you wreak upon yourselves...."

He struck with his clenched fist the top of the chiffonier near which he stood, and the dull shock of the contact of that sledge-hammer of muscle and bone with the solid marble, made the pictures shake upon the wall, the windows rattle in their frames, and the bewildered listener leap as if he had been shot.

"I rode over to St. Cloud yesterday," he went on, "to look at the palace you have set on fire with your shells from Mont Valérien. It is burning still, as I don't doubt you know. A well-dressed French gentleman stood looking at the smoldering ashes of the conflagration. Near him was a French workman in a dirty blue blouse--'_C'est l'œuvre de Bismarck!_' said the gentleman to the plebeian, little dreaming who was near.... But the cad in the blouse only said to him: 'Why, our ---- gunners did that themselves!' That workman had more sense in his pumpkin than the whole lot of you!"

M. Thiers revived under the fresh insult sufficiently to plant a sting:

"It is said, Monsieur, and on excellent authority, that the Imperial Palace was sacked by German troops before it was set on fire."

The Chancellor lowered his heavy brows and demanded almost menacingly:

"Do you assert that His Majesty the King or the Crown Prince of Prussia were parties to a crime of this kind?"

"No, Monsieur, not for an instant!"

The Chancellor said with a short laugh that had no mirth in it:

"That is fortunate, otherwise I should have been compelled to break off, and finally, our negotiations with regard to this question of an Armistice, and deal only with the question of the territory to be added--in addition to the fortresses on the right bank of the Rhine--and those six thousand millions of francs that we shall certainly take from you!"

The thrust caused M. Thiers to leap to his feet, galvanized into a feverish energy. He screamed, raising his clenched hands and sweeping them downward and outward:

"It cannot be, Monsieur!--it is outrage--robbery--ruin! Europe will intervene if you persist in such a demand!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" The great jovial giant's laugh set the crystal drops upon the mantelshelf-vases and the wall-mirror girandoles tinkling, and reached the hearing of Hatzfeldt and von Keudell in the drawing-room, and the decipherers in the Bureau below. It vibrated through the joists and planks and spaces above the plastered ceiling, and made Madame Charles start where she lay upon the floor of her bedroom listening, with her ear pressed to the uncarpeted boards.

"My good sir, you are making game of me.... You have visited the Courts of the Powers--we know to what profit.... You have solicited intervention--to be told what both of us knew very well before! ... The British Lion may lash and roar, but will not do more, that is certain. England has not sufficiently recovered from the war of the Crimea--from the further drain of men and gold caused by the Indian Mutiny.... Austria, in spite of creeds and bias--with her German-speaking population and her Germanized institutions--may be regarded as a powerful German State. Italy lies under the heel of Austria. If the Russian Bear elect to hug, the hugging will be done upon our side. For it is inconceivable that Germany should ever be at war with Russia. Our interests are and have always been one...." He laughed again, and said, laughing:

"And, knowing this, you threaten me with the intervention of European Powers.... You will hear nothing with respect to forfeiture of territory!... You refuse to contemplate the question of the Gold Indemnity!... Wait!" he said--"wait until the bombardment is a month old and the bread-basket is empty.... Then we shall hear you sing to a different tune!"

"Monsieur le Comte!..."

The old man tottered to his feet. He was ashen in hue, and trembling. His blue lips hung breathlessly apart, his eyes had a lack-luster stare behind their gold-rimmed glasses; he pressed a hand over his left breast as though to repress a pang of pain.

"M. le Comte ... I have suffered too much.... I find myself unable to continue our interview.... With your permission ... to-morrow?..." He bowed and took his hat and cane, and repeated weakly: "To-morrow?"

"With pleasure!" said the Man of Iron, escorting him to the door.

And the old, humiliated, fallen King-maker, the great literary genius, the polished orator--tottered away out of the presence of the conqueror.

He was to return upon the morrow, and for many days thenceafter, to be played with and tortured, to be tantalized and mocked.

He was to return flushed with futile hope, only to be crushed and retire discomfited. He was to furnish an inexhaustible source of amusement for the delectation of his implacable enemy.

He was to return after a prolonged absence within the walls of the beleaguered capital, he and others, faint with famine, broken by anxiety, shattered by suspense and sleeplessness, forced by sheer hunger to sit and partake at the groaning board of their merciless foe, compelled by his arrogance to listen to his jestings, moistening the food they placed between their livid lips, with the stinging salt of tears.

LXIX

The center of a small but lively group, composed of admirers and listeners, Prussian officers known in Berlin, their Bavarian and Hessian friends and acquaintances, American and English Press Correspondents, and a traveling Oriental or two--you might have observed Madame de Straz--a full-blown Comtesse now, in virtue of the patent of nobility asserted by her husband--in the restaurant of the Hôtel des Réservoirs--not always accompanied by her Assyrian-featured lord.

Adelaide had not grown younger since the adventure of the Silk Scarf. Her bold and striking beauty had suffered gravely, though her figure, set off by its fashionable and well-chosen dress, was as supple and graceful as of yore. She looked like some gorgeous fruit that the wasps had ravaged, and to conceal this she made up heavily and wore thicker veils. What she now lacked in loveliness she endeavored to make up in _espièglerie_ and easy-going good-fellowship. Not a few officers responded with enthusiasm to her pressing invitations to breakfast or lunch at the little country villa she and M. de Straz had rented, at Maisons Lafitte beyond St. Germain.

One need hardly say that there was play on these occasions, besides excellently prepared dishes and a liberal flow of the champagne, besides the cognac and liqueurs of which Madame drank a good deal.

To quiet her nerves, raveled by the unhappy situation of her beloved country, she declared, for it suited her to be a Frenchwoman now.

She would have dearly liked to inveigle a Duke, Grand or Hereditary, or even a Prince Regnant, to her roof-tree and her baccarat-board, but these personages, bestarred and beribboned, furred, jack-booted, buck-skinned and long-spurred, were as shy as the hares and partridges in the forest, that were incessantly cracked at by hungry pot-hunters. Wherefore the sumptuous Adelaide must perforce be contented with Counts and Barons, whose purses were less lengthy than their pedigrees, as a rule.

"A solitary nest and too remote, it may be.... But for a bride and bridegroom, solitude and remoteness have their advantages!" had proclaimed M. de Straz, with a shrug of infinite meaning, and suggestive glances of his black Oriental eyes. Certainly the guests of Madame and Monsieur, even when conveyed to the destination in hired broughams and victorias, were wont to find the road, running through abandoned villages and by deserted châteaux, unexpectedly barricaded with felled timber and scarred with unfinished trenches, more than a trifle long.

The nest of these love-birds, half a mile from the sacked railway station and the broken bridge of Maisons Lafitte, was enclosed in private grounds. The villa Laon--how or from whom acquired, nobody ever thought of questioning--was a cottage with Swiss gables and East Indian verandas standing in gardens adorned with glass arcades and Italian pergolas, their vines and roses stripped and shuddering in the bitter wintry winds. There were also Chinese bridges crossing pieces of ornamental water, aviaries of finches and canaries, and wired enclosures once well stocked with silver pheasants, now, thanks to the nocturnal ravages of mysterious marauders, depopulated in a manner painful to behold.

"You pretend," said Valverden teasingly to Adelaide, "that the neighbors creep out at night and annex the pheasants, or that our cavalry pickets take them for the mess-pot, or that they are stolen by _Francs-tireurs_. _Francs-tireurs_ there are in plenty in the neighborhood--every hour some honest German soldier gets his death at the hands of one of these scoundrels!--but as far as concerns the vanished inmates of the pens and cages, I believe you and M. de Straz have eaten them yourselves."

He stretched his long spurred legs out over the brocade of an Empire sofa gracing Madame's boudoir, and leaning back his handsome head, looked up at her teasingly.

"With my assistance, for that _salmis_ we had for breakfast was of home production I am certain. Come, own that I have guessed as well as Mariette can cook at a pinch."

Adelaide frowned and bit her lip. But she let her gaze dwell lingeringly on the upturned face of the handsome Guardsman, and said, seeming to search for her own sulky, splendid image in the blue eyes with which Adonis made play:

"If you were less like Max I believe I should detest you!..." She added, after an instant: "And if you resembled him more than you do, you would find no welcome here."

"Beyond _salmis_ of pet pheasants, and stewed carp out of your landlord's fish-ponds." His red lips rolled back in a grin that showed the strong white teeth, the fuzzy ends of his fair mustache sparkled as though the hair had been sprinkled with gold-dust. "Who is your landlord? I am dying to know. Do you rent the place of the gardener, or that pompous-looking butler who has not got the key of the cellars, but nevertheless can produce champagne of Comet brand and excellent Roussillon. Or is it a speculative partnership? Some of us have dropped a good deal of money here in play lately.... They are beginning to grumble noisily--particularly that little black-haired _aide-de-camp_ of the Duke of Coburg, and von Kissling of the squadron of Blue Dragoons quartered here at Maisons Lafitte.... What's in the wind I don't pretend to know, but they might get you turned out of here--they might even obtain an order from Headquarters for the return of their lost cash!..."

"Bernhard!" Her ringed white hands tenderly caressed his forehead. "You will protect me from them!--you will stand my friend! Oh! how horrible it is to want money--always money!"

Valverden said, neatly biting off the end of a cigar and spitting the nipped-off end through the open glass-doors leading out upon the veranda:

"Has not M. de Straz got any money? And did not my Cousin Max give you enough?... You used to seem uncommonly flush of the ready when one saw you queening it among the gay _cocottes_ of Berlin."

His tone cut like a whip. But Adelaide was growing used to take insults with outward meekness. She swallowed her wrath and even tried to smile.

It was horribly true that she had need of money. Even before she had fallen into her present state of servitude, she had known that a day was coming when she would be penniless.

Like all other women of her sensuous tastes and clamorous predilections, Adelaide devoured money as a pussycat crunches up small birds. Her dead lover had spent upon her lavishly, had provided that an income should be paid her out of his private estate. But it was not sufficient for a woman so extravagant, and Adelaide had supplemented it in various ways. Firstly, by obtaining information for the Prussian Secret Intelligence Bureau. Secondly, by tapping the bank-balances of admirers of the wealthier order. Thirdly, by signing Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes for cash at ruinous rates of interest. When she had conceived the idea of obtaining a reconciliation with Henri de Bayard, the prospect of incarceration in a debtor's prison had loomed very near.

The cunning fable of her riches that had been devised to tempt him to his ruin, had failed through the very whiteness of the man's integrity. Ah, Adelaide! The way to have triumphed over the Colonel would have been to have crept in tatters as a beggar to his door.

But she had never understood the man. Let us hope that generous soul of his was spared knowledge of the degradation of the woman he had worshiped, as Valverden went on, barely deigning to hide his contempt of her, or to modify even slightly the insolence of his tone:

"You have asked me to protect you. I have no objection to doing so. My sympathy is not at all with the losers who squeal. Even when I was as poor as a church-mouse I had the gift of being plucked without wincing. Besides, I won money that night when Von Kissling dropped such a lot.... And of course my testimony would be worth--something...."

His tone of bargaining was unmistakable. Adelaide flushed a dusky-red, through which the fading streaks of Straz's love-gift showed plainly, and her dark eyes gleamed covetously as she bent over the young man. She whispered with her hot lips almost touching the diagonal white band of forehead above his soldierly sunburn:

"What, Bernhard? Tell me what it would be worth to you...."

His long blue eyes laughed up into hers, lazily. He said, feeling for the silver case in which he carried his fusees:

"Shall we say ... a little information regarding the whereabouts of Mademoiselle Titania.... M. de Straz has piqued my curiosity, you will observe."

"So!..."

She reared above him like a furious Hamadryad, whispering thickly, for rage dried up her tongue:

"So it is of my daughter you and Nicolas have been talking apart together, both here and at the Hôtel des Réservoirs. Are you both mad? For a pale, plain, dull school-girl ... a peaky, undeveloped, mincing doll!"

He raised himself to a sitting posture, and answered her coarsely: