Scaramouche (8 page)

She held out her hand to him. He took it and bent to kiss it. Almost, he says—which is fantastic—he was conscious of a response in it to the pressure of his lips.

"Madame," he murmured, "you leave me conscious of an obligation."

"Repay me by your friendship, monsieur. Think kindly of Anne de Balbi, if only because she thinks kindly of you."

She rustled out, flashed him a last smile as he held the door, and was gone, leaving him deeply perturbed and thoughtful.

Her judgment of him had been quite accurate, he knew. Masterful in all else, he had no masterfulness in love. And this because in love he saw no place for mastery. Love was not a thing to be snatched, constrained, compelled. To be worth possessing it must be freely given.

Intensely practical in all else, in love he was entirely idealistic. How could he assume the master's tone, the overseer's whip, and command where he desired to worship? He could pray and plead. But if Aline should desire to go to Turin—and he could well understand her wish to see the world—upon what grounds was he to plead with her against it? What grounds existed? Had he so little faith in her that he must suppose her unable to withstand temptation? And what, after all, was the temptation? He smiled at the mental picture of the Comte de Provence as a wooer. To Aline in such a guise the Prince could only be ridiculous.

In his utter trust in Aline, André-Louis would have found peace, but for another thought that assailed him. However Mine might be proof against temptation, he could not endure the thought of her being subjected to the pain and annoyance of an amorous persecution. Because of this possibility he must oppose her journey to Turin. Since he could not hope to succeed by prayers and pleas which would appear to be merely selfish and unreasonable he would have recourse to Scaramouche's weapons of intrigue.

He sought his godfather, and stood by the bedside. "You are desperately ill, sir," he informed him.

The great night-capped head was agitated on its pillows; alarm dawned n the eyes. "What do you tell me André?"

"What we must both tell Aline. I have just learnt that it is Madame's intention to bear her off in her train to Turin I know of no other way to oppose her going saw by arousing her concern for you. Therefore be good enough to become very ill indeed."

The greying eyebrows came together. "To Turin Ah! And you do not wish her to go?"

"Do you, monsieur?"

Monsieur de Kercadiou hesitated. The notion of parting with Aline was a little desolating. It would leave him very lonely in this exile amid his makeshift surroundings. But Monsieur de Kercadiou's life had been spent in preferring the wishes of others to his own.

"It it should be her desire...life here would be so dull tor the child...

"But infinitely healthier, monsieur." André-Louis spoke of the perilous frivolity of court-life. If Madame de Plougastel had also been in Madame's train, things would have been different. Rut in the circumstances Aline would be utterly alone Her very inexperience would render her vulnerable to the vexations that lie in wait for a young lady of her attractions. And it was possible that however eager she might now be at the prospect, once she found herself away from them in distant Savoy, she might be unhappy and they would not be at hand to avail her.

Monsieur de Kercadiou sat up in bed, and gave him reason. Thus it fell out that when Aline arrived a little later she found two conspirators awaiting her.

André-Louis received her in the living-room. It was their first meeting since that sub-acid parting at Schönbornlust.

"I am so glad you have come, Aline. Monsieur de Kercadiou is not well at all. His condition gives me anxiety. It is fortunate that you are about to be relieved of your duties with Madame, for your uncle requires more attention than can be expected from strangers or than a clumsy fellow like myself is able to supply."

He saw the dismay that overspread her face, and guessed that it sprang from more than concern for her uncle, however deep this might be in her tender heart. Her resolve to continue on her dignity with André-Louis was blotted out.

"I was to have accompanied Madame to Turin," she said, in tones of deepest disappointment.

His heart leapt at the tense she already used.

"It's an ill wind that blows no good at all," said he gently. "You will be saved the discomforts of a tedious journey."

"Tedious! Oh, André!"

He feigned astonishment. "You do not think it would be tedious? Oh, but I assure you that it would be. And then the court of Turin! It is notoriously drab and dull. My dear, you have had a near escape. You are fortunate to be provided with so sound a reason for begging Madame to excuse you. Come and see Monsieur de Kercadiou, and tell me if you think a doctor should be summoned."

Thus he swept her away, the matter settled without discussion. Monsieur de Kercadiou, a bad actor and a little shamefaced, played his part none too well. He feared unnecessarily to alarm his niece, and she would have departed entirely reassured but for André-Louis.

"It is necessary," he said, when they were outside the invalid's door, "to persuade him that he is none so ill. He must not be alarmed. I have done my best, as you see. But I certainly think that we must have a doctor to him, and I shall be glad when you are here, Aline. So will he, I know, although he would be the last to let you suspect it."

And so there was no further mention of Turin. In her anxiety on Monsieur de Kercadiou's behalf, Aline did not even await Madame's departure to come and install herself at the Three Crowns. If Madame did not dissemble her vexation, at least she could not withhold the leave which was sought upon such dutiful grounds.

André-Louis congratulated himself upon a victory cheaply bought. Neither he nor Madame de Balbi who had inspired it was to guess how the battle of Valmy and its sequel were to falsify their every calculation.

CHAPTER VIII

VALMY

The army of twenty-five thousand émigrés grew impatient with the dwindling of restricted resources, the greater part of which had been laid out on handsome uniforms, fine horses and other equipment to render them dazzling on parade. The Princes had taken their place at the head of these glittering troops, a matter of considerable distress to Monsieur, who, of sedentary habits, detested all form of physical exertion. Destiny, however, had cast him for a definite part, and that part he must play, however much Nature, indifferent to Destiny's requirements, might have denied him the necessary endowments.

In the rear of this fine host came the long train of lumbering army wagons and among these two great wooden structures on wheels which contained the Princes' mint; the printing press for the manufacture of the false assignats which already were flooding and distressing Europe. Monsieur solemnly promised that the King of France would honour this paper currency. He had also promised that it should not be put into circulation until France was reached. But this promise had not been kept; and by his foreign hosts and allies Monsieur was at last to be constrained to abandon this facile method of supplementing the dwindling millions he had borrowed.

Side by side with the émigrés marched the Prussian and Austrian armies. The émigrés fondly believed that these legions marched solely to liberate the King, to purge France of anarchy and restore her to her rightful owners; marched, in fact—in that phrase which had been coined in Coblentz—to the deliverance of Throne and Altar. Fatuous assumptions, these, of men who believed themselves to be the elect of Europe, in whose service humanity was ready altruistically to immolate her children. They had not heard the Austrian Emperor's epigram when invoked to rescue Marie Antoinette: "It is true that I have a sister in France; but France is not my sister." Austria had produced too many archduchesses to be deeply perturbed about the fate of one of them, even although this one should have become Queen of France. What really interested Austria was that Lorraine had once belonged to her princes and might now be re-possessed, just as Prussia was intent upon the annexation of Franche-Comté. Here was an excellent opportunity for both to readjust the accounts which had been disturbed by that megalomaniac Louis XIV when he ravaged the Palatinate.

Of this, however, nothing was yet said, and there was as yet no suspicion in émigré breasts that the aims of their allies were not identical with their own. But there were signs. The King of Prussia doomed the Princes to nullity in the command. They and their followers were to be observers rather than auxiliaries. One of the things they observed was that in a measure as the armies advanced, the Austrians planted their black-and-yellow frontier posts surmounted by the double-headed Austrian eagle.

Longwy was taken, and the Prussians thrust upon Verdun, devouring the contents of every village on their way and then setting them on fire, in fulfilment of the threat in the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto against all those who ventured to resist the invasion.

The Princes had assured their allies that once they were upon French soil, the French masses, emancipated by their presence from the fear of the revolutionaries, would make haste to range themselves on the side of Throne and Altar.

If the inclination existed at all the conduct of the Prussians did not foster it.

On the 30th August they were before Verdun, which they occupied after a short bombardment and the road to Paris lay now open before them.

News of this reaching Paris two days later produced the September massacres.

La Fayette was gone. He perceived that constitutionalism was ended that an attainder of treason awaited him, and that nothing remained for him but to depart. He crossed the frontier, intending by way of Holland to reach the United States. But he fell into enemy hands, and against all the usages of nations was to suffer years of miserable imprisonment.

Dumouriez was sent to replace him, and to oppose to the steady, magnificent troops of Austria and Prussia, to the fine flower of French chivalry and three hundred guns, a ragged host barely twenty-five thousand strong, ill-armed, untrained and undisciplined, supported by forty pieces of ordnance.

That futile inter-cannonade ensued which is magniloquently known as the Battle of Valmy, in which there were three hundred French, and less than two hundred allied casualties. A mysterious affair which profoundly puzzled Bonaparte later. Incomprehensibly it marked the end of the invasion. The Prussians who had depended upon living on the country were almost entirely without food, they were knee-deep in mud, and ravaged by dysentery attributed to the chalky water. The rain continued to distress them. The horizon was black.

Brunswick advised retreat. The King of Prussia as web as the émigrés, who were now desperate, opposed him. They wanted to risk a battle with the object of seizing Chalons. But Brunswick objected that they would be setting too much upon the board in such a gamble. He argued that a defeat would mean the loss of the entire army, and that upon he, army depended the fate of the Prussian monarchy.

His Majesty was persuaded, and on the thirtieth of September began the dreadful retreat of that great host, attended by rain mud famine and dysentery.

To the émigrés, as you may read in the memoirs which some of them have left, this abrupt eclipse of their confident hopes, almost without a real battle having been fought represented the end of the world and was a thing inexplicable. Unanimously, almost in these mémoirs they declare themselves bought and sold betrayed by their allies or else that Brunswick was a Freemason and the march on Paris had been forbidden him by the lodges The first part of the accusation may be true. For it is a fact that on his return to Germany the debt-ridden Duke of Brunswick paid out eight millions to his creditors. If Bonaparte had known this the victory of Valmy might have been less of a mystery to him.

The exhausted army struggled back through lands that avenged the ravages they had suffered. They could offer now no sustenance to the starving ravagers. Men and horses dropped exhausted in their tracks and lay to die where they fell or to be massacred by the peasants who constantly harassed them, thirsting to repay the destroyers of their homesteads. And for the émigrés, as they toiled fainting through the white glutinous mud of Champagne, the peasants were not the only enemies to be feared. The very Prussians, starving like themselves turned upon them to pillage their baggage, destroying, as is the way of pillagers, what they could not carry off. And there were women and children with the émigrés, families which had followed the army in carriages, so confident that they were going home. Now these delicate ladies cumbered the retreat of that routed host, shared the hardships and suffered indignities unspeakable which did not end even at the Rhine. For having crossed it, they now found themselves contemptuously in prey to the rapacity of the Germans, who took every advantage of their misfortune to strip them by fraud if not by violence of what little they might yet possess.

The dreadful news was borne by the first stragglers to Coblentz at about the same time as the news that in Paris the King had been deposed, the monarchy abolished and the Republic proclaimed by the National Convention at the first of its deliberations.

Louis XVI had been removed to the Temple a prisoner; and then were even rumours that he was to be brought to trial, attainted of treason in that he had invited foreigners in arms to invade France.

This news brought dismay to a little house on the Grünplatz, which Madame de Plougastel had rented upon the departure of the Princes, and where her cousin Kercadiou, his niece and André-Louis were lodged with her. It put an end to the term of happiness which had reigned there for the last five weeks. The Princes, they presently heard were at Namur and the Comte de Plougastel was with them.

For Madame de Plougastel, the immediate outlook w& not too disconcerting. She was supplied if not with money at least with the valuable jewels she had brought away with her, and these should provide for many a day. But the Lord of Gavrillac was at the end of his resources, and compelled at last, for the first time in his life to bend his mind to the sordid details of provision for his existence.

It was for André-Louis to come to the rescue. In the prosperous days of his fencing academy in Paris, seeking an investment for his considerable savings, he had purchased a farm in Saxony. This land he now proposed to re-convert into gold so as to provide for their needs.

With twenty louis borrowed from Madame de Plougastel, the half of the sum she pressed upon him, he set out for Dresden to negotiate the sale. All that we know of his activities there during the next four months is contained in two letters that survive out of several which appear to have passed between him and those he had left behind in Coblentz. The first of these is written from Dresden at the end of December.

Monsieur my Godfather,

An offer at last for these lands of mine at Heimthal has been made of six thousand crowns, which is to say thirty thousand limes. I paid, as I think you know, over two thousand louis for them two years ago, and the purchase was represented to me as a bargain at the time, and rightly so, as far as I am able to judge from an inspection of the property. The offer comes from the present Saxon tenant, who is imbued with the rascally acquisitive instincts commonly, but not on that account correctly, attributed to Hebrews. I say this the more feelingly since my mentor in these matters is a Jew named Ephraim, but for whose honesty I should long since have found myself in difficulties. Acting as my banker here, he has regularly collected rents and paid dues, and in consequence I find some six hundred crowns at my disposal no inconsiderable sum in such times as these. It enables me, my dear godfather, to send you a draft on Stoffel of Coblentz for two hundred crowns, which will provide for your immediate necessities and those of my dear Aline.

My good Ephraim points out to me that my tenant, actuated by the universal spirit in Germany at present towards French Emigres, hopes to trade upon my necessity and obtain the farm; or one half of its value. He advises that sooner than submit to be robbed I should rid myself of this tenant, and until some honest Purchaser presents himself, I should farm the land myself. There is certainly a living in it, if a modest one. But my inclinations are hardly agrarian. Considering that the state of things in France becomes steadily worse and encourages little hope of an early return to Gavrillac, which by now, moreover, will have suffered confiscation, it is necessary to do something to keep ourselves afloat. I revert to my erstwhile notion of turning to account my knowledge of the sword. I have talked of it with Ephraim and on the security of the Heimthal property he will advance me the funds necessary to open and equip here in Dresden an academy of arms, which I do not doubt my capacity of rendering as prosperous as my old school in the Rue du Hasard.

This is a pleasant town, with an agreeable society, in which once it were perceived that you are independent, you would find a cordial reception. I beg you, my dear godfather, to give it thought and write to me. If you decide to join me I shall at once set about carrying my project into effect, and at the same time discover a suitable lodging for us all. It is not Peru that I offer you; but at least it is modest comfort and tranquillity. I add a little letter for Aline.

He also adds inquiries on their health and recommends himself to the remembrance of Madame de Plougastel.

The other surviving letter, from which we are similarly enabled to gather the march of events, is from the Lord of Gavrillac. It is dated from Hamm in Westphalia, on the fourth of the following February.

My dear Godson,

I write within a few hours of our arrival here to let you know that we are now at Hamm, where Monseigneur the Comte de Provence and Monseigneur the Comte d'Artois, by the hospitality of the King of Prussia, have established themselves. Monsieur de Plougastel is in their very restricted train, and has desired Madame de Plougastel to join him here. Monsieur, learning that Madame de Plougastel and I were together at Coblentz, was very graciously moved, no doubt from his affection for my late brother, since I have done nothing to deserve it for myself, to offer me also the hospitality of his very diminutive court. And so we have all come here together, and we are lodged at the Bear, a house kept by kindly folk, and not expensive. The plight of the Princes is pitiful in the extreme, and their quarters in Hamm are utterly unworthy of persons of their exalted rank.

The hospitality of his Majesty the King of Prussia scarcely goes beyond permission to reside here. Hope of redemption seems to diminish daily. Yet the courage and fortitude of these Princes in adversity is beyond belief, as it is beyond praise even in this black hour when news comes from Paris of the horrible, incredible, sacrilegious crime of the canaille in putting the King to death. Monsieur has issued a declaration in which he assumes the regency, proclaims the Dauphin King of France, and nobly announces his sole ambition to be to avenge the blood of his brother, to break he chains which trammel his family to place the Dauphin on the throne, and to restore to France her ancient constitution.