Майн Рид
The Child Wife
Chapter Thirty.
Inside the Tuileries
There is a day in the annals of Paris, that to the limits of all time will be remembered with shame, sorrow, and indignation.
And not only by the people of Paris, but of France – who on that day ceased to be free.
To the Parisians, more especially, was it a day of lamentation; and its anniversary can never pass over the French capital without tears in every house, and trembling in every heart.
It was the Second of December, 1851.
On the morning of that day five men were met within a chamber of the Tuileries. It was the same chamber in which we have described a conspiracy as having been hatched some months before.
The present meeting was for a similar purpose; but, notwithstanding a coincidence in the number of the conspirators, only one of them was the same. This was the president of the former conclave – the President of France!
And there was another coincidence equally strange – in their titles; for there was a count, a field-marshal, a diplomatist, and a duke, the only difference being that they were now all of one nation – all Frenchmen.
They were the Count de M., the Marshal Saint A., the Diplomatist La G., and the Duke of C.
Although, as said, their purpose was very similar, there was a great difference in the men and their mode of discussing it. The former five have been assimilated to a gang of burglars who had settled the preliminaries for “cracking a crib.” Better might this description apply to the conspirators now in session; and at a still later period, when the housebreakers are about entering on the “job.”
Those had conspired with a more comprehensive design – the destruction of Liberty throughout all Europe. These were assembled with similar aim, though it was confined to the liberties of France.
In the former case, the development seemed distant, and would be brought about by brave soldiers fighting on the battle-field. In the latter the action was near, and was entrusted to cowardly assassins in the streets, already prepared for the purpose.
The mode by which this had been done will be made manifest, by giving an account of the scenes that were passing in the chambers occupied by the conspirators.
There was no persiflage of speech, or exchange of light drolleries, as in that conclave enlivened by the conversation of the English viscount. The time was too serious for joking; the occasion for the contemplated murder too near.
Nor was there the same tranquillity in the chamber. Men came and went; officers armed and in full uniform. Generals, colonels, and captains were admitted into the room, as if by some sign of freemasonry, but only to make reports or receive orders, and then out again.
And he who gave these orders was not the President of France, commander-in-chief of its armies, but another man of the five in that room, and for the time greater than he!
It was the Count de M.
But for him, perhaps, that conspiracy might never have been carried to a success, and France might still have been free!
It was a strange, terrible crisis, and the “man of a mission,” standing back to the fire, with split coat tails, was partially appalled by it. Despite repeated drinks, and the constant smoking of a cigar, he could not conceal the tremor that was upon him.
De M – saw it, and so did the murderer of Algerine Arabs, once strolling-player, now field-marshal of France.
“Come!” cried the sinful but courageous Count, “there must be no half measures – no weak backslidings! We’ve resolved upon this thing, and we must go through with it! Which of you is afraid?”
“Not I,” answered Saint A.
“Nor I,” said La G – , ci-devant billiard-sharper of Leicester Square, London.
“I’m not afraid,” said the Duke. “But do you think it is right?”
His grace was the only man of the five who had a spark of humanity in his heart. A poor weak man, he was only allied with the others in the intimacy of a fast friendship.
“Right?” echoed La G – . “What’s wrong in it? Would it be right to let this canaille of demagogues rule Paris – France? That’s what it’ll come to if we don’t act. Now, or never, say I!”
“And I!”
“And all of us?”
“We must do more than say,” said De M – , glancing toward the tamer of the Boulogne eagle, who still stood against the fire-place, looking scared and irresolute. “We must swear it!”
“Come, Louis!” he continued, familiarly addressing himself to the Prince-President. “We’re all in the same boat here. It’s a case of life or death, and we must stand true to one another. I propose that we swear it!”
“I have no objection,” said the nephew of Napoleon, led on by a man whom his great uncle would have commanded. “I’ll make any oath you like.”
“Enough!” cried De M – , taking a brace of duelling pistols from the mantelshelf and placing them crosswise on the table, one on top of the other. “There, gentlemen! There’s the true Christian symbol, and over it let us make oath, that in this day’s work we live or die together?”
“We swear it on the Cross!”
“On the Cross, and by the Virgin!”
“On the Cross, and by the Virgin!”
The oath had scarce died on their lips when the door was once more opened, introducing one of those uniformed couriers who were constantly coming and going.
They were all officers of high rank, and all men with fearless but sinister faces.
“Well, Colonel Gardotte!” asked De M – , without waiting for the President to speak; “how are things going on in the Boulevard de Bastille?”
“Charmingly,” replied the Colonel. “Another round of champagne, and my fellows will be in the right spirit – ready for anything!”
“Give it them! Twice if it be needed. Here’s the equivalent for the keepers of the cabarets. If there’s not enough, take their trash on a promise to pay. Say that it’s on account of – Ha! Lorrillard!”
Colonel Gardotte, in brilliant Zouave uniform, was forgotten, or at all events set aside, for a big, bearded man in dirty blouse, at that moment admitted into the room.
“What is it, mon brave?”
“I come to know at what hour we are to commence firing from the barricade? It’s built now, and we’re waiting for the signal?”
Lorrillard spoke half aside, and in a hoarse, hurried whisper.
“Be patient, good Lorrillard?” was the reply. “Give your fellows another glass, and wait till you hear a cannon fired in front of the Madeleine. Take care you don’t get so drunk as to be incapable of hearing it. Also, take care you don’t shoot any of the soldiers who are to attack you, or let them shoot you!”
“I’ll take special care about the last, your countship. A cannon, you say, will be fired by the Madeleine?”
“Yes; discharged twice to make sure – but you needn’t wait for the second report. At the first, blaze away with your blank cartridges, and don’t hurt our dear Zouaves. Here’s something for yourself, Lorrillard! Only an earnest of what you may expect when this little skirmish is over.”
The sham-barricader accepted the gold coins passed into his palm; and with a salute such as might have been given by the boatswain of a buccaneer, he slouched back through the half-opened doorway, and disappeared.
Other couriers continued to come and go, most in military costumes, delivering their divers reports – some of them in open speech, others in mysterious undertone – not a few of them under the influence of drink!
On that day the army of Paris was in a state of intoxication – ready not alone for the suppression of a riot they had been told to prepare for; but for anything – even to the slaughter of the whole Parisian people!
At 3 p.m. they were quite prepared for this. The champagne and sausages were all consumed. They were again hungry and thirsty, but it was the hunger of the hell-hound, and the thirst of the bloodhound.
“The time has come!” said De M – to his fellow-conspirators. “We may now release them from their leash! Let the gun be fired?”
Chapter Thirty One.
In the Hotel de Louvre
“Come, girls! It’s time for you to be dressing. The gentlemen are due in half an hour.”
The speech was made in a handsome apartment of the Hotel de Louvre, and addressed to two young ladies, in elegant dishabille, one of them seated in an easy chair, the other lying full length upon a sofa.
A negress, with chequered toque, was standing near the door, summoned in to assist the young ladies in their toilet.
The reader may recognise Mrs Girdwood, daughter, niece, and servant.
It is months since we have met them. They have done the European tour up the Rhine, over the Alps, into Italy. They are returning by way of Paris, into which capital they have but lately entered; and are still engaged in its exploration.
“See Paris last,” was the advice given them by a Parisian gentleman, whose acquaintance they had made; and when Mrs Girdwood, who smattered a little French, asked, Pourquoi? she was told that by seeing it first she would care for nothing beyond.
She had taken the Frenchman’s hint, and was now completing the programme.
Though she had met German barons and Italian counts by the score, her girls were still unengaged. Nothing suitable had offered itself in the shape of a title. It remained to be seen what Paris would produce.
The gentlemen “due in half an hour” were old acquaintances; two of them her countrymen, who, making the same tour, had turned up repeatedly on the route, sometimes travelling in her company. They were Messrs Lucas and Spiller.
She thought nothing of these. But there was a third expected, and looked for with more interest; one who had only called upon them the day before, and whom they had not seen since the occasion of his having dined with them in their Fifth Avenue house in New York.
It was the lost lord.
On his visit of yesterday everything had been explained; how he had been detained in the States on diplomatic business; how he had arrived in London after their departure for the Continent, with apologies for not writing to them – ignorant of their whereabouts.
On Mr Swinton’s part this last was a lie, as well as the first. In the chronicles of the time he had full knowledge of where they might have been found. He had studiously consulted the American newspaper published in London, which registered the arrivals and departures of transatlantic tourists, and knew to an hour when Mrs Girdwood and her girls left Cologne, crossed the Alps, stood upon the Bridge of Sighs, or climbed to the burning crater of Vesuvius.
And he had sighed and burned to be along with them, but could not. There was something needed for the accomplishment of his wishes – cash.
It was only when he saw recorded the Girdwood arrival in Paris, that he was at length enabled to scrape together sufficient for the expenses of a passage to, and short sojourn in, the French capital; and this only after a propitious adventure in which he had been assisted by the smiles of the goddess Fortune, and the beauty of his beloved Fan. Fan had been left behind in the London lodging. And by her own consent. She was satisfied to stay, even with the slender stipend her husband could afford to leave for her maintenance. In London the pretty horse-breaker would be at home.
“You have only half an hour, my dears!” counselled Mrs Girdwood, to stimulate the girls towards getting ready.
Cornelia, who occupied the chair, rose to her feet, laying aside the crochet on which she had been engaged, and going off to be dressed by Keziah.
Julia, on the sofa, simply yawned.
Only at a third admonition from her mother, she flung the French novel she had been reading upon the floor, and sat up.
“Bother the gentlemen?” she exclaimed, repeating the yawn with arms upraised. “I wish, ma, you hadn’t asked them to come. I’d rather have stayed in all day, and finished that beautiful story I’ve got into. Heaven bless that dear Georges Sand! Woman that she is, she should have been a man. She knows them as if she were one; their pretensions and treachery. Oh, mother! when you were determined on having a child, why did you make it a daughter? I’d give the world to have been your son!”
“Fie, fie, Jule! Don’t let any one hear you talk in that silly way!”
“I don’t care whether they do or not. I don’t care if all Paris, all France, all the world knows it. I want to be a man, and to have a man’s power.”
“Pff, child! A man’s power! There’s no such thing in existence, only in outward show. It has never been exerted, without a woman’s will at the back of it. That is the source of all power.”
The storekeeper’s relict was reasoning from experience. She knew whose will had made her the mistress of a house in the Fifth Avenue; and given her scores, hundreds, of other advantages, she had never credited to the sagacity of her husband.
“To be a woman,” she continued, “one who knows man and how to manage him, that is enough for me. Ah! Jule, if I’d only had your opportunities, I might this day have been anything.”
“Opportunities! What are they?”
“Your beauty for one.”
“Oh, ma! you had that. You still show it.”
To Mrs Girdwood the reply was not unpleasant. She had not lost conceit in that personal appearance that had subdued the heart of the rich retailer; and, but for a disinheriting clause in his will, might have thought of submitting her charms to a second market. But although this restrained her from speculating on matrimony, she was still good for flattery and flirtation.
“Well,” she said, “if I had good looks, what mattered they without money? You have both, my child.”
“And both don’t appear to help me to a husband – such as you want me to have, mamma.”
“It will be your own fault if they don’t. His lordship would never have renewed his acquaintance with us if he didn’t mean something. From what he hinted to me yesterday, I’m sure he has come to Paris on our account. He almost said as much. It is you, Julia, it is you.”
Julia came very near expressing a wish that his lordship was at the bottom of the sea; but knowing how it would annoy her mother, she kept the sentiment to herself. She had just time to get enrobed for the street; as the gentleman was announced. He was still plain Mr Swinton, still travelling incognito, on “seqwet diplomatic business for the Bwitish Government.” So had he stated in confidence to Mrs Girdwood.
Shortly after, Messrs Lucas and Spiller made their appearance, and the party was complete.
It was only to be a promenade on the Boulevards, to end in a little dinner in the Café Riche, Royale, or the Maison Doré.
And with this simple programme, the six sallied forth from the Hotel de Louvre.
Chapter Thirty Two.
On the Boulevards
On the afternoon of that same Second of December, a man, sauntering along the Boulevards, said to himself:
“There’s trouble hanging over this gay city of Paris. I can smell mischief in its atmosphere.”
The man who made this remark was Captain Maynard. He was walking out alone, having arrived in Paris only the day before.
His presence in the French metropolis may be explained by stating, that he had read in an English newspaper a paragraph announcing the arrival of Sir George Vernon at Paris. The paragraph further said, that Sir George had returned thither after visiting the various courts of Europe on some secret and confidential mission to the different British ambassadors.
Something of this Maynard knew already. He had not slighted the invitation given him by the English baronet on the landing-wharf at Liverpool. Returning from his Hungarian expedition, he had gone down to Sevenoaks, Kent. Too late, and again to suffer disappointment. Sir George had just started for a tour of travel on the Continent, taking his daughter along with him. He might be gone for a year, or maybe more. This was all his steward could or would tell.
Not much more of the missing baronet could Maynard learn in London. Only the on dit in political circles that he had been entrusted with some sort of secret circular mission to the European courts, or those of them known as the Great Powers.
Its secrecy must have been deemed important for Sir George to travel incognito. And so must he have travelled; else Maynard, diligently consulting the chronicles of the times, should have discovered his whereabouts.
This he had daily done, making inquiries elsewhere, and without success; until, months after, his eye fell upon the paragraph in question.
Had he still faith in that presentiment, several times so confidently expressed?
If so, it did not hinder him from passing over to Paris, and taking steps to help in the desired destiny.
Certain it was still desired. The anxiety he had shown to get upon the track of Sir George’s travel, the haste made on discovering it, and the diligence he was now showing to find the English baronet’s address in the French capital, were proofs that he was not altogether a fatalist.
During the twenty-four hours since his arrival in Paris, he had made inquiries at every hotel where such a guest was likely to make stay. But no Sir George Vernon – no English baronet could be found.
He had at length determined to try at the English Embassy. But that was left for the next day; and, like all strangers, he went out to take a stroll along the Boulevards.
He had reached that of Montmartre as the thought, chronicled above, occurred to him.
It could scarce have been suggested by anything he there saw. Passing and meeting him were the Parisian people – citizens of a free republic, with a president of their own choice. The bluff bourgeois, with sa femme linked on his left arm, and sa fille, perhaps a pretty child, hand-led, on his right. Behind him it might be a brace of gaily-dressed grisettes, close followed by a couple of the young dorés, exchanging stealthy glance or bold repartee.
Here and there a party of students, released from the studies of the day, a group of promenaders of both sexes, ladies and gentlemen, who had sallied out to enjoy the fine weather, and the walk upon the broad, smooth banquette of the Boulevard, all chatting in tranquil strain, unsuspicious of danger, as if they had been sauntering along a rural road, or the strand of some quiet watering-place.
A sky over them serene as that which may have canopied the garden of Eden; an atmosphere around so mild that the doors of the cafés had been thrown open, and inside could be seen the true Parisian flaneur– artists or authors – seated by the marble-topped table, sipping his eau sucré, slipping the spare sugar lumps into his pocket for home use in his six francs-a-week garret, and dividing his admiration between the patent-leather shoes on his feet and the silken-dressed damsels who passed and repassed along the flagged pavement in front.
It was not from observation of these Parisian peculiarities that Maynard had been led to make the remark we have recorded, but from a scene to which he had been witness on the preceding night.
Straying through the Palais Royal, then called “National,” he had entered the Café de Mille Colonnes, the noted resort of the Algerine officers. With the recklessness of one who seeks adventure for its own sake, and who has been accustomed to having it without stint, he soon found himself amidst men unaccustomed to introductions. Paying freely for their drinks – to which, truth compels me to say, as far as in their purses they corresponded – he was soon clinking cups with them, and listening to their sentiments. He could not help remarking the recurrence of that toast which has since brought humiliation to France.
“Vive l’Empereur!”
At least a dozen times was it drunk during the evening – each time with an enthusiasm that sounded ominous in the ears of the republican soldier. There was a unanimity, too, that rendered it the more impressive. He knew that the French President was aiming at Empire; but up to that hour he could not believe in the possibility of his achieving it.
As he drank with the Chasseurs d’Afrique in the Café de Mille Colonnes, he saw it was not only possible but proximate; and that ere long Louis Napoleon would either wrap his shoulders in the Imperial purple or in a shroud.
The thought stung him to the quick. Even in that company he could not conceal his chagrin. He gave expression to it in a phrase, half in soliloquy, half meant for the ear of a man who appeared the most moderate among the enthusiasts around him.
“Pauvre France!” was the reflection.
“Pauvre France!” cried a fierce-looking but diminutive sous-lieutenant of Zouaves, catching up the phrase, and turning toward the man who had given utterance to it.
“Pauvre France! Pourquoi, monsieur?”
“I pity France,” said Maynard, “if you intend making an Empire of it.”
“What’s that to you?” angrily rejoined the Zouave lieutenant, whose beard and moustache, meeting over his mouth, gave a hissing utterance to his speech. “What does it concern you, monsieur?”
“Not so fast, Virocq!” interposed the officer to whom Maynard had more particularly addressed himself. “This gentleman is a soldier like ourselves. But he is an American, and of coarse believes in the republic. We have all our political inclinings. That’s no reason why we should not be friends socially – as we are here!”
Virocq, after making a survey of Maynard, who did not quail before his scrutiny, seemed contented with the explanation. At all events, he satisfied his wounded patriotism by once more turning to the clique of his comrades, tossing his glass on high, and once more vociferating “Vive l’Empereur!”
It was the remembrance of this scene of last night that led Maynard to reflect, when passing along the Boulevard, there was mischief in the atmosphere of Paris.
He became more convinced of it as he walked on toward the Boulevard de Bastille. There the stream of promenaders showed groups of a different aspect: for he had gone beyond the point where the genteel bourgeoisie takes its turn; where patent-leather boots and eau sucré give place to a coarser chassure and stronger beverage. Blouses were intermingled with the throng; while the casernes on both sides of the street were filled with soldiers, drinking without stint, and what seemed stranger still, with their officers along with them!
With all his republican experience – even in the campaign of Mexico even under the exigencies of the relaxed discipline brought about by the proximity of death upon the battle-field, the revolutionary leader could not help astonishment at this. He was still more surprised to see the French people along the street – even the blouses submitting to repeated insults put upon them by those things in uniform; the former stout, stalwart fellows; the latter, most of them, diminutive ruffians, despite their big breeches and swaggering gait, looking more like monkeys than men.
From such a scene, back toward Montmartre he turned with disgust.
While retracing his steps, he reflected:
“If the French people allow themselves to be bullied by such bavards as these, it’s no business of mine. They don’t deserve to be free.”
He was on the Boulevard des Italiens as he made this reflection, heading on for the widening way of the Rue de la Paix. He had already noticed a change in the aspect of the promenaders.
Troops were passing along the pavement; and taking station at the corners of the streets. Detachments occupied the casernes and cafés, not in serious, soldier-like sobriety, but calling imperiously for refreshments, and drinking without thought or pretence of payment. The bar-keeper refusing them was threatened with a blow, or the thrust of a sabre!
The promenaders on the pave were rudely accosted. Some of them pushed aside by half-intoxicated squads, that passed them on the double-quick, as if bent on some exigent duty.
Seeing this, some parties had taken to the side streets to regain their houses. Others, supposing it only a soldierly freak – the return from a Presidential review – were disposed to take it in good part; and thinking the thing would soon be over, still stayed upon the Boulevard.
Maynard was among those who remained.
Interrupted by the passing of a company of Zouaves, he had taken stand upon the steps of a house, near the embouchure of the Rue de Vivienne. With a soldier’s eye he was scrutinising these military vagabonds, supposed to be of Arab race, but whom he knew to be the scourings of the Parisian streets, disguised under the turbans of the Mohammed. He did not think in after years such types of military would be imitated in the land he had left behind, with such pride in its chivalry.
He saw that they were already half-intoxicated, staggering after their leader in careless file, little regarding the commands called back to them. Out of the ranks they were dropping off in twos and threes, entering the cafés, or accosting whatever citizen chanced to challenge their attention.
In the doorway where Maynard had drawn up, a young girl had also taken refuge. She was a pretty creature and somewhat elegantly dressed; withal of modest appearance. She may have been “grisette” or “cocotte.” It mattered not to Maynard, who had not been regarding her.
But her fair proportions had caught the eye of one of the passing Zouaves; who, parting from the ranks of his comrades, rushed up the steps and insisted upon kissing her!
The girl appealed to Maynard, who, without giving an instant to reflection, seized the Zouave by the collar, and with a kick sent him staggering from the steps.
A shout of “Secours!” traversed along the line, and the whole troop halted, as if surprised by a sudden assault of Arabs. The officer leading them came running back, and stood confronting the stranger.
“Sacré!” he cried. “It’s you, monsieur! you who go against the Empire!”
Maynard recognised the ruffian, who on the night before had disputed with him in the Café de Mille Colonnes.
“Bon!” cried Virocq, before Maynard could make either protest or reply. “Lay hold upon him, comrades! Take him back to the guard-house in the Champs Elysées. You’ll repent your interference, monsieur, in a country that calls for the Empire and order. Vive l’Empereur!”
Half a dozen crimson-breeched ruffians springing from the ranks threw themselves around Maynard, and commenced dragging him along the Boulevard.
It required this number to conquer and carry him away.
At the corner of the Rue de la Paix a strange tableau was presented to his eyes. Three ladies, accompanied by three gentlemen, were spectators of his humiliation. Promenading upon the pavement, they had drawn up on one side to give passage to the soldiers who had him in charge.
Notwithstanding the haste in which he was carried past them, he saw who they were: Mrs Girdwood and her girls – Richard Swinton, Louis Lucas, and his acolyte, attending upon them!
There was no time to think of them, or why they were there. Dragged along by the Zouaves, occasionally cursed and cuffed by them, absorbed in his own wild rage, Maynard only occupied himself with thoughts of vengeance. It was to him an hour of agony – the agony of an impotent anger!
