Chapter VII: Book II: Wandering (3)

"No De Ferrier ever took a base advantage of royal favor. Don't you think this is a strange conversation in a drawing-room of the Empire? I hated myself for being here--until you came in."

"Eagle, have you forgotten our supper on the island?"

"Yes, sire." She scarcely breathed the word.

"My unanointed title is Lazarre. And I suppose you have forgotten the fog and the mountain, too?"

"Yes."

"Lazarre!"

"Yes, Lazarre."

"You love me! You shall love me!"

"As a De Ferrier should; no farther!"

Her lifted chin expressed a strength I could not combat. The slight, dark-haired girl, younger than myself, mastered and drew me as if my spirit was a stream, and she the ocean into which it must flow. Darkness like that of Ste. Pelagie dropped over the brilliant room. I was nothing after all but a palpitating boy, venturing because he must venture. Light seemed to strike through her blood, however, endowing her with a splendid pallor.

"I am going," I determined that moment, "to Mittau."

The adorable curve of her eyelids, unlike any other eyelids I ever saw, was lost to me, for her eyes flew wide open.

"To ----"

She looked around and hesitated to pronounce the name of the Count of Provence.

"Yes. I am going to find some one who belongs to me."

"You have the marquis for a friend."

"And I have also Skenedonk, and our tribe, for my friends. But there is no one who understands that a man must have some love."

"Consult Marquis du Plessy about going to Mittau. It may not be wise. And war is threatened on the frontier."

"I will consult him, of course. But I am going."

"Lazarre, there were ladies on the ship who cursed and swore, and men who were drunk the greater part of the voyage. I was brought up in the old-fashioned way by the Saint-Michels, so I know nothing of present customs. But it seems to me our times are rude and wicked. And you, just awake to the world, have yet the innocence of that little boy who sank into the strange and long stupor. If you changed I think I could not bear it!"

"I will not change."

A stir which must have been widening through the house as a ripple widens on a lake, struck us, and turned our faces with all others to a man who stood in front of the chimney. He was not large in person, but as an individual his presence was massive--was penetrating. I could have topped him by head and shoulders; yet without mastery. He took snuff as he slightly bowed in every direction, shut the lid with a snap, and fidgeted as if impatient to be gone. He had a mouth of wonderful beauty and expression, and his eyes were more alive than the eyes of any other man in the assembly. I felt his gigantic force as his head dipped forward and he glanced about under his brows.

"There is the emperor," De Chaumont told Eagle; and I thought he made indecent haste to return and hale her away before Napoleon.

The greatest soldier in Europe passed from one person to another with the air of doing his duty and getting rid of it. Presently he raised his voice, speaking to Madame de Ferrier so that, all in the room might hear.

"Madame, I am pleased to see that you wear leno. I do not like those English muslins, sold at the price of their weight in gold, and which do not look half as well as beautiful white leno. Wear leno, cambric, or silk, ladies, and then my manufactures will flourish."

I wondered if he would remember the face of the man pushed against his wheel and called an assassin, when the Marquis du Plessy named me to him as the citizen Lazarre.

"You are a lucky man, Citizen Lazarre, to gain the marquis for your friend. I have been trying a number of years to make him mine."

"All Frenchmen are the friends of Napoleon," the marquis said to me.

I spoke directly to the sovereign, thereby violating etiquette, my friend told me afterwards, laughing; and Bonaparte was a stickler for precedent.

"But all Frenchmen," I could not help reminding the man in power, "are not faithful friends."

He gave me a sharp look as he passed on, and repeated what I afterward learned was one of his favorite maxims:

"A faithful friend is the true image."

VIII

"Must you go to Mittau?" the Marquis du Plessy said when I told him what I intended to do. "It is a long, expensive post journey; and part of the way you may not be able to post. Riga, on the gulf beyond Mittau, is a fine old town of pointed gables and high stone houses. But when I was in Mittau I found it a mere winter camp of Russian nobles. The houses are low, one-story structures. There is but one castle, and in that his Royal Highness the Count of Provence holds mimic court."

We were riding to Versailles, and our horses almost touched sides as my friend put his hand on my shoulder.

"Don't go, Lazarre. You will not be welcome there."

"I must go, whether I am welcome or not."

"But I may not last until you come back."

"You will last two months. Can't I post to Mittau and back in two months?"

"God knows."

I looked at him drooping forward in the saddle, and said:

"If you need me I will stay, and think no more about seeing those of my own blood."

"I do need you; but you shall not stay. You shall go to Mittau in my own post-carriage. It will bring you back sooner."

But his post-carriage I could not accept. The venture to Mittau, its wear and tear and waste, were my own; and I promised to return with all speed. I could have undertaken the road afoot, driven by the necessity I felt.

"The Duchess of Angouleme is a good girl," said the marquis, following the line of my thoughts. "She has devoted herself to her uncle and her husband. When the late czar withdrew his pension, and turned the whole mimic court out of Mittau, she went with her uncle, and even waded the snow with him when they fell into straits. Diamonds given to her by her grandmother, the Empress Maria Theresa, she sold for his support. But the new czar reinstated them; and though they live less pretentiously at Mittau in these days, they still have their priest and almoner, the Duke of Guiche, and other courtiers hanging upon them. My boy, can you make a court bow and walk backwards? You must practice before going into Russia."

"Wouldn't it be better," I said, "for those who know how, to practice the accomplishment before me?"

"Imagine the Count of Provence stepping down from playing royalty to do that!" my friend laughed.

"I don't know why he shouldn't, since he knows I am alive. He has sent money every year for my support."

"An established custom, Lazarre, gains strength every day it is continued. You see how hard it is to overturn an existing system, because men have to undo the work they have been doing perhaps for a thousand years. Time gives enormous stability. Monsieur the Count of Provence has been practicing royalty since word went out that his nephew had died in the Temple. It will be no easy matter to convince him you are fit to play king in his stead."

This did not disturb me, however. I thought more of my sister. And I thought of vast stretches across the center of Europe. The Indian stirred in me, as it always did stir, when the woman I wanted was withdrawn from me.

I could not tell my friend, or any man, about Madame de Ferrier. This story of my life is not to be printed until I am gone from the world. Otherwise the things set down so freely would remain buried in myself.

Some beggars started from hovels, running like dogs, holding diseased and crooked-eyed children up for alms, and pleading for God's sake that we would have pity on them. When they disappeared with their coin I asked the marquis if there had always been wretchedness in France.

"There is always wretchedness everywhere," he answered. "Napoleon can turn the world upside down, but he cannot cure the disease of hereditary poverty. I never rode to Versailles without encountering these people."

When we entered the Place d'Armes fronting the palace, desolation worse than that of the beggars faced us. That vast noble pile, untenanted and sacked, symbolized the vanished monarchy of France. Doors stood wide. The court was strewn with litter and filth; and grass started rank betwixt the stones where the proudest courtiers in the world had trod. I tried to enter the queen's rooms, but sat on the steps leading to them, holding my head in my hands. It was as impossible as it had been to enter the Temple.

The fountains which once made a concert of mist around their lake basin, satisfying like music, the marquis said, were dried, and the figures broken. Millions had been spent upon this domain of kings, and nothing but the summer's natural verdure was left to unmown stretches. The foot shrank from sending echoes through empty palace apartments, and from treading the weedy margins of canal and lake.

"I should not have brought you here, Lazarre," said my friend.

"I had to come, monsieur."

We walked through meadow and park to the little palaces called Grand and Petit Trianon, where the intimate life of the last royal family had been lived. I looked well at their outer guise, but could not explore them.

The groom held our horses in the street that leads up to the Place d'Armes, and as we sauntered back, I kicked old leaves which had fallen autumn after autumn and banked the path.

It rushed over me again!

I felt my arms go above my head as they did when I sank into the depths of recollection.

"Lazarre! Are you in a fit?" The Marquis du Plessy seized me.

"I remember! I remember! I was kicking the leaves--I was walking with my father and mother--somewhere--somewhere--and something threatened us!"

"It was in the garden of the Tuileries," said the Marquis du Plessy sternly. "The mob threatened you, and you were going before the National Assembly! I walked behind. I was there to help defend the king."

We stood still until the paroxysmal rending in my head ceased. Then I sat on the grassy roadside trying to smile at the marquis, and shrugging an apology for my weakness. The beauty of the arched trees disappeared, and when next I recognized the world we were moving slowly toward Paris in a heavy carriage, and I was smitten with the conviction that my friend had not eaten the dinner he ordered in the town of Versailles.

I felt ashamed of the weakness which came like an eclipse, and withdrew leaving me in my strength. It ceased to visit me within that year, and has never troubled me at all in later days. Yet, inconsistently, I look back as to the glamour of youth; and though it worked me hurt and shame, I half regret that it is gone.

The more I saw of the Marquis du Plessy the more my slow tenacious heart took hold on him. We went about everywhere together. I think it was his hope to wed me to his company and to Paris, and shove the Mittau venture into an indefinite future; yet he spared no pains in obtaining for me my passports to Courland.

At this time, with cautious, half reluctant hand, he raised the veil from a phase of life which astonished and revolted me. I loved a woman. The painted semblances of women who inhabited a world of sensation had no effect upon me.

"You are wonderfully fresh, Lazarre," the marquis said. "If you were not so big and male I would call you mademoiselle! Did they never sin in the American backwoods?"

Then he took me in his arms like a mother, and kissed me, saying, "Dear son and sire, I am worse than your great-grandfather!"

Yet my zest for the gaiety of the old city grew as much as he desired. The golden dome of the Invalides became my bubble of Paris, floating under a sunny sky.

Whenever I went to the hotel which De Chaumont had hired near the Tuileries, Madame de Ferrier received me kindly; having always with her Mademoiselle de Chaumont or Miss Chantry, so that we never had a word in private. I thought she might have shown a little feeling in her rebuff, and pondered on her point of view regarding my secret rank. De Chaumont, on the other hand, was beneath her in everything but wealth. How might she regard stooping to him?

Miss Chantry was divided between enforced deference and a Saxon necessity to tell me I would not last. I saw she considered me one of the upstarts of the Empire, singularly favored above her brother, but under my finery the same French savage she had known in America.

Eagle brought Paul to me, and he toddled across the floor, looked at me wisely, and then climbed my knee.

Doctor Chantry had been living in Paris a life above his dreams of luxury. When occasionally I met my secretary he was about to drive out; or he was returning from De Chaumont's hotel. And there I caught my poor master reciting poems to Annabel, who laughed and yawned, and made faces behind her fan. I am afraid he drew on the marquis' oldest wines, finding indulgence in the house; and he sent extravagant bills to me for gloves and lawn cravats. It was fortunate that De Chaumont took him during my absence. He moved his belongings with positive rapture. The marquis and I both thought it prudent not to publish my journey.

Doctor Chantry went simpering, and abasing himself before the French noble with the complete subservience of a Saxon when a Saxon does become subservient.

"The fool is laughable," said the Marquis du Plessy. "Get rid of him, Lazarre. He is fit for nothing but hanging upon some one who will feed him."

"He is my master," I answered. "I am a fool myself."

"You will come back from Mittau convinced of that, my boy. The wise course is to join yourself to events, and let them draw your chariot. My dislikers say I have temporized with fate. It is true I am not so righteous as to smell to heaven. But two or three facts have been deeply impressed on me. There is nothing more aggressive than the virtue of an ugly, untempted woman; or the determination of a young man to set every wrong thing in the world right. He cannot wait, and take mellow interest in what goes on around him, but must leap into the ring. You could live here with me indefinitely, while the nation has Bonaparte, like the measles. When the disease has run its course--we may be able to bring evidence which will make it unnecessary for the Count of Provence to hasten here that France may have a king."

"I want to see my sister, monsieur."

"And lose her and your own cause forever."

But he helped me to hire a strong traveling chaise, and stock it with such comforts as it would bear. He also turned my property over to me, recommending that I should not take it into Russia. Half the jewels, at least, I considered the property of the princess in Mittau; but his precaution influenced me to leave three bags of coin in Doctor Chantry's care; for Doctor Chantry was the soul of thrift with his own; and to send Skenedonk with the jewel-case to the marquis' bank. The cautious Oneida took counsel of himself and hid it in the chaise. He told me when we were three days out.

It is as true that you are driven to do some things as that you can never entirely free yourself from any life you have lived. That sunny existence in the Faubourg St. Germain, the morning and evening talks with a man who bound me to him as no other man has since bound me, were too dear to leave even briefly without wrenching pain. I dreamed nightly of robbers and disaster, of being ignominiously thrust out of Mittau, of seeing a woman whose face was a blur and who moved backward from me when I called her my sister; of troops marching across and trampling me into the earth as straw. I groaned in spirit. Yet to Mittau I was spurred by the kind of force that seems to press from unseen distances, and is as fatal as temperament.

When I paid my last visit at De Chaumont's hotel, and said I was going into the country, Eagle looked concerned, as a De Ferrier should; but she did not turn her head to follow my departure. The game of man and woman was in its most blindfold state between us.

There was one, however, who watched me out of sight. The marquis was more agitated than I liked to see him. He took snuff with a constant click of the lid.

The hills of Champagne, green with vines, and white as with an underlay of chalk, rose behind us. We crossed the frontier, and German hills took their places, with a castle topping each. I was at the time of life when interest stretches eagerly toward every object; and though this journey cannot be set down in a story as long as mine, the novelty--even the risks, mischances and wearinesses of continual post travel, come back like an invigorating breath of salt water.

The usual route carried us eastward to Cracow, the old capital of Poland, scattered in ruined grandeur within its brick walls. Beyond it I remember a stronghold of the Middle Ages called the fortress of Landskron.

The peasants of this country, men in shirts and drawers of coarse linen, and women with braided hair hanging down under linen veils, stopped their carts as soon as a post-carriage rushed into sight, and bent almost to the earth. At post-houses the servants abased themselves to take me by the heel. In no other country was the spirit of man so broken. Poles of high birth are called the Frenchmen of the north, and we saw fair men and women in sumptuous polonaises and long robes who appeared luxurious in their traveling carriages. But stillness and solitude brooded on the land. From Cracow to Warsaw wide reaches of forest darkened the level. Any open circle was belted around the horizon with woods, pines, firs, beech, birch, and small oaks. Few cattle fed on the pastures, and stunted crops of grain ripened in the melancholy light.

From Cracow to Warsaw is a distance of one hundred and thirty leagues, if the postilion lied not, yet on that road we met but two carriages and not more than a dozen carts. Scattering wooden villages, each a line of hovels, appeared at long intervals.

Post-houses were kept by Jews, who fed us in the rooms where their families lived. Milk and eggs they had none to offer us; and their beds were piles of straw on the ground, seldom clean, never untenanted by fleas.

Beggars ran beside us on the wretched roads as neglected as themselves. Where our horses did not labor through sand, the marshy ground was paved with sticks and boughs, or the surface was built up with trunks of trees laid crosswise.

In spacious, ill-paved Warsaw, through which the great Vistula flows, we rested two days. I knelt with confused thoughts, trying to pray in the Gothic cathedral. We walked past it into the old town, of high houses and narrow streets, like a part of Paris.

In Lithuania the roads were paths winding through forests full of stumps and roots. The carriage hardly squeezed along, and eight little horses attached to it in the Polish way had much ado to draw us. The postilions were young boys in coarse linen, hardy as cattle, who rode bare-back league upon league.

Old bridges cracked and sagged when we crossed them. And here the forests rose scorched and black in spots, because the peasants, bound to pay their lords turpentine, fired pines and caught the heated ooze.

Within the proper boundary of Russia our way was no better. There we saw queer projections of boards around trees to keep bears from climbing after the hunters.

The Lithuanian peasants had few wants. Their carts were put together without nails. Their bridles and traces were made of bark. They had no tools but hatchets. A sheepskin coat and round felt cap kept a man warm in cold weather. His shoes were made of bark, and his home of logs with penthouse roof.

In houses where travelers slept the candles were laths of deal, about five feet long, stuck into crevices of the wall or hung over tables. Our hosts carried them about, dropping unheeded sparks upon the straw beds.

In Grodno, a town of falling houses and ruined palaces, we rested again before turning directly north.

There my heart began to sink. We had spent four weeks on a comfortless road, working always toward the goal. It was nearly won. A speech of my friend the marquis struck itself out sharply in the northern light.

"You are not the only Pretender, my dear boy. Don't go to Mittau expecting to be hailed as a novelty. At least two peasants have started up claiming to be the prince who did not die in the Temple, and have been cast down again, complaining of the treatment of their dear sister! The Count d'Artois says he would rather saw wood for a living than be king after the English fashion. I would rather be the worthless old fellow I am than be king after the Mittau fashion; especially when his Majesty, Louis XVIII, sees you coming!"

IX

Purposely we entered Mittau about sunset, which was nearer ten o'clock than nine in that northern land; coming through wheat lands to where a network of streams forms the river Aa. In this broad lap of the province of Courland sat Mittau. Yelgava it was called by the people among whom we last posted, and they pronounced the word as if naming something as great as Paris.

It was already July, St. John's day being two weeks gone; yet the echoes of its markets and feastings lingered. The word "Johanni" smote even an ear deaf to the language. It was like a dissolving fair.

"You are too late for Johanni," said the German who kept the house for travelers, speaking the kind of French we heard in Poland. "Perhap it is just as well for you. This Johanni has nearly ruined me!"

Yet he showed a disposition to hire my singular servant from me at a good wage, walking around and around Skenedonk, who bore the scrutiny like a pine tree.

The Oneida enjoyed his travels. It was easy for him to conform to the thoughts and habits of Europe. We had not talked about the venture into Russia. He simply followed me where I went without asking questions, proving himself faithful friend and liberal minded gentleman.

We supped privately, and I dressed with care. Horses were put in for our last short post of a few streets. We had suffered such wretched quarters on the way that the German guest-house spread itself commodiously. Yet its walls were the flimsiest slabs. I heard some animal scratching and whining in the next chamber. On the post-road, however, we had not always a wall betwixt ourselves and the dogs.

The palace in Mittau stood conspicuous upon an island in the river. As we approached, it looked not unlike a copy of Versailles. The pile was by no means brilliant with lights, as the court of a king might glitter, finding reflection upon the stream. We drove with a clatter upon the paving, and a sentinel challenged us.

I had thought of how I should obtain access to this secluded royal family, and Skenedonk was ready with the queen's jewel-case in his hands. Not on any account was he to let it go out of them until I took it and applied the key; but gaining audience with Madame d'Angouleme, he was to tell her that the bearer of that casket had traveled far to see her, and waited outside.

Under guard the Oneida had the great doors shut behind him. The wisdom of my plan looked less conspicuous as time went by. The palace loomed silent, without any cheer of courtiers. The horses shook their straps, and the postilion hung lazily by one leg, his figure distinct against the low horizon still lighted by after-glow. Some Mittau noises came across the Aa, the rumble of wheels, and a barking of dogs.

When apprehension began to pinch my heart of losing my servant and my whole fortune in the abode of honest royal people, and I felt myself but a poor outcast come to seek a princess for my sister, a guard stood by the carriage, touching his cap, and asked me to follow him.

We ascended the broad steps. He gave the password to a sentinel there, and held wide one leaf of the door. He took a candle; and otherwise dark corridors and ante-chambers, somber with heavy Russian furnishings, rugs hung against the walls, barbaric brazen vessels and curious vases, passed like a half-seen vision.

Then the guard delivered me to a gentleman in a blue coat, with a red collar, who belonged to the period of the Marquis du Plessy without being adorned by his whiteness and lace. The gentleman staring at me, strangely polite and full of suspicion, conducted me into a well-lighted room where Skenedonk waited by the farther door, holding the jewel-case as tenaciously as he would a scalp.

I entered the farther door. It closed behind me.

A girl stood in the center of this inner room, looking at me. I remember none of its fittings, except that there was abundant light, showing her clear blue eyes and fair hair, the transparency of her skin, and her high expression. She was all in black, except a floating muslin cape or fichu, making a beholder despise the finery of the Empire.

We must have examined each other even sternly, though I felt a sudden giving way and heaving in my breast. She was so high, so sincere! If I had been unfit to meet the eyes of that princess I must have shriveled before her.

From side to side her figure swayed, and another young girl, the only attendant in the room, stretched out both arms to catch her.

We put her on a couch, and she sat gasping, supported by the lady in waiting. Then the tears ran down her face, and I kissed the transparent hands, my own flesh and blood, I believed that hour as I believe to this.

"O Louis--Louis!"

The wonder of her knowledge and acceptance of me, without a claim being put forward, was around me like a cloud.

"You were so like my father as you stood there--I could see him again as he parted from us! What miracle has restored you? How did you find your way here? You are surely Louis?"

I sat down beside her, keeping one hand between mine.

"Madame, I believe as you believe, that I am Louis Charles, the dauphin of France. And I have come to you first, as my own flesh and blood, who must have more knowledge and recollection of things past than I myself can have. I have not long been waked out of the tranced life I formerly lived."

"I have wept more tears for the little brother--broken in intellect and exiled farther than we--than for my father and mother. They were at peace. But you, poor child, what hope was there for you? Was the person who had you in his charge kind to you? He must have been. You have grown to be such a man as I would have you!"

"Everybody has been kind to me, my sister."

"Could they look in that face and be unkind? All the thousand questions I have to ask must be deferred until the king sees you. I cannot wait for him to see you! Mademoiselle de Choisy, send a message at once to the king!"

The lady in waiting withdrew to the door, and the royal duchess quivered with eager anticipation.

"We have had pretended dauphins, to add insult to exile. You may not take the king unaware as you took me! He will have proofs as plain as his Latin verse. But you will find his Majesty all that a father could be to us, Louis! I think there never was a man so unselfish!--except, indeed, my husband, whom you cannot see until he returns."

Again I kissed my sister's hand. We gazed at each other, our different breeding still making strangeness between us, across which I yearned; and she examined me.

Many a time since I have reproached myself for not improving those moments with the most candid and right-minded princess in Europe, by forestalling my enemies. I should have told her of my weakness instead of sunning my strength in the love of her. I should have made her see my actual position, and the natural antagonism of the king, who would not so readily see a strong personal resemblance when that was not emphasized by some mental stress, as she and three very different men had seen it.

Instead of making cause with her, however, I said over and over--"Marie-Therese! Marie-Therese!"--like a homesick boy come again to some familiar presence. "You are the only one of my family I have seen since waking; except Louis Philippe."

"Don't speak of that man, Louis! I detest the house of Orleans as a Christian should detest only sin! His father doomed ours to death!"

"But he is not to blame for what his father did."

"What do you mean by waking?"

"Coming to my senses."

"All that we shall hear about when the king sees you."

"I knew your picture on the snuffbox."

"What snuffbox?"

"The one in the queen's jewel-case."

"Where did you find that jewel-case?"

"Do you remember the Marquis du Plessy?"

"Yes. A lukewarm loyalist, if loyalist at all in these times."

"My best friend."

"I will say for him that he was not among the first emigres. If the first emigres had stayed at home and helped their king, they might have prevented the Terror."

"The Marquis du Plessy stayed after the Tuileries was sacked. He found the queen's jewel-case, and saved it from confiscation to the state."

"Where did he find it? Did you recognize the faces?"

"Oh, instantly!"

The door opened, deferring any story, for that noble usher who had brought me to the presence of Marie-Therese stood there, ready to conduct us to the king.

My sister rose and I led her by the hand, she going confidently to return the dauphin to his family, and the dauphin going like a fool. Seeing Skenedonk standing by the door, I must stop and fit the key to the lock of the queen's casket, and throw the lid back to show her proofs given me by one who believed in me in spite of himself. The snuffbox and two bags of coin were gone, I saw with consternation, but the princess recognized so many things that she missed nothing, controlling herself as her touch moved from trinket to trinket that her mother had worn.

"Bring this before the king," she said. And we took it with us, the noble in blue coat and red collar carrying it.

"His Majesty," Marie-Therese told me as we passed along a corridor, "tries to preserve the etiquette of a court in our exile. But we are paupers, Louis. And mocking our poverty, Bonaparte makes overtures to him to sell the right of the Bourbons to the throne of France!"

She had not yet adjusted her mind to the fact that Louis XVIII was no longer the one to be treated with by Bonaparte or any other potentate, and the pretender leading her smiled like the boy of twenty that he was.

"Napoleon can have no peace while a Bourbon in the line of succession lives."

"Oh, remember the Duke d'Enghien!" she whispered.

Then the door of a lofty but narrow cabinet, lighted with many candles, was opened, and I saw at the farther end a portly gentleman seated in an arm-chair.

A few gentlemen and two ladies in waiting, besides Mademoiselle de Choisy, attended.

Louis XVIII rose from his seat as my sister made a deep obeisance to him, and took her hand and kissed it. At once, moved by some singular maternal impulse, perhaps, for she was half a dozen years my senior, as a mother would whimsically decorate her child, Marie-Therese took the half circlet of gems from the casket, reached up, and set it on my head.

For an instant I was crowned in Mittau, with my mother's tiara.

I saw the king's features turn to granite, and a dark red stain show on his jaws like coloring on stone. The most benevolent men, and by all his traits he was one of the most benevolent, have their pitiless moments. He must have been prepared to combat a pretender before I entered the room. But outraged majesty would now take its full vengeance on me for the unconsidered act of the child he loved.

"First two peasants, Hervagault and Bruneau, neither of whom had the audacity to steal into the confidence of the tenderest princess in Europe with the tokens she must recognize, or to penetrate into the presence," spoke the king: "and now an escaped convict from Ste. Pelagie, a dandy from the Empire!"

I was only twenty, and he stung me.

"Your royal highness," I said, speaking as I believed within my rights, "my sister tries to put a good front on my intrusion into Mittau."

I took the coronet from my head and gave it again to the hand which had crowned me. Marie-Therese let it fall, and it rocked near the feet of the king.

"Your sister, monsieur! What right have you to call Madame d'Angouleme your sister!"

"The same right, monsieur, that you have to call her your niece."

The features of the princess became pinched and sharpened under the softness of her fair hair.

"Sire, if this is not my brother, who is he?"

Louis XVIII may have been tender to her every other moment of his life, but he was hard then, and looked beyond her toward the door, making a sign with his hand.

That strange sympathy which works in me for my opponent, put his outraged dignity before me rather than my own wrong. Deeper, more sickening than death, the first faintness of self-distrust came over me. What if my half-memories were unfounded hallucinations? What if my friend Louis Philippe had made a tool of me, to annoy this older Bourbon branch that detested him? What if Bellenger's recognition, and the Marquis du Plessy's, and Marie-Therese's, went for nothing? What if some other, and not this angry man, had sent the money to America--

The door opened again. We turned our heads, and I grew hot at the cruelty which put that idiot before my sister's eyes. He ran on all fours, his gaunt wrists exposed, until Bellenger, advancing behind, took him by the arm and made him stand erect. It was this poor creature I had heard scratching on the other side of the inn wall.

How long Bellenger had been beforehand with me in Mittau I could not guess. But when I saw the scoundrel who had laid me in Ste. Pelagie, and doubtless dropped me in the Seine, ready to do me more mischief, smug and smooth shaven, and fine in the red-collared blue coat which seemed to be the prescribed uniform of that court, all my confidence returned. I was Louis of France. I could laugh at anything he had to say.

Behind him entered a priest, who advanced up the room, and made obeisance to the king, as Bellenger did.

Madame d'Angouleme looked once at the idiot, and hid her eyes: the king protecting her. I said to myself,

"It will soon be against my breast, not yours, that she hides her face, my excellent uncle of Provence!"

Yet he was as sincere a man as ever said to witnesses,

"We shall now hear the truth."

The few courtiers, enduring with hardiness a sight which they perhaps had seen before though Madame d'Angouleme had not, made a rustle among themselves as if echoing,

"Yes, now we shall hear the truth!"

The king again kissed my sister's hand, and placed her in a seat beside his arm-chair, which he resumed.

"Monsieur the Abbe Edgeworth," he said, "having stood on the scaffold with our martyred sovereign, as priest and comforter, is eminently the one to conduct an examination like this, which touches matters of conscience. We leave it in his hands."

Abbe Edgeworth, fine and sweet of presence, stood by the king, facing Bellenger and the idiot. That poor creature, astonished by his environment, gazed at the high room corners, or smiled experimentally at the courtiers, stretching his cracked lips over darkened fangs.

"You are admitted here, Bellenger," said the priest, "to answer his Majesty's questions in the presence of witnesses."

"I thank his Majesty," said Bellenger.

The abbe began as if the idiot attracted his notice for the first time.

"Who is the unfortunate child you hold with your right hand?"

"The dauphin of France, monsieur the abbe," spoke out Bellenger, his left hand on his hip.

"What! Take care what you say! How do you know that the dauphin of France is yet among the living?"

Bellenger's countenance changed, and he took his hand off his hip and let it hang down.

"I received the prince, monsieur, from those who took him out of the Temple prison."

"And you never exchanged him for another person, or allowed him to be separated from you?"

Bellenger swore with ghastly lips--"Never, on my hopes of salvation, monsieur the abbe!"

"Admitting that somebody gave you this child to keep--by the way, how old is he?"

"About twenty years, monsieur."

"What right had you to assume he was the dauphin?"

"I had received a yearly pension, monsieur, from his Majesty himself, for the maintenance of the prince."

"You received the yearly pension through my hand, acting as his Majesty's almoner, His Majesty was ever too bountiful to the unfortunate. He has many dependents. Where have you lived with your charge?"

"We lived in America, sometimes in the woods; and sometimes in towns."

"Has he ever shown hopeful signs of recovering his reason?"

"Never, monsieur the abbe."

Having touched thus lightly on the case of the idiot, Abbe Edgeworth turned to me.

The king's face retained its granite hardness. But Bellenger's passed from shade to shade of baffled confidence; recovering only when the priest said,

"Now look at this young man. Have you ever seen him before?"

"Yes, monsieur, I have; both in the American woods, and in Paris."

"What was he doing in the American woods?"

"Living on the bounty of one Count de Chaumont, a friend of Bonaparte's."

"Who is he?"

"A French half-breed, brought up among the Indians."

"What name does he bear?"

"He is called Lazarre."

"But why is a French half-breed named Lazarre attempting to force himself on the exiled court here in Mittau?"

"People have told him that he resembles the Bourbons, monsieur."

"Was he encouraged in this idea by the friend of Bonaparte whom you mentioned?"

"I think not, monsieur the abbe. But I heard a Frenchman tell him he was like the martyred king, and since that hour he has presumed to consider himself the dauphin."

"Who was this Frenchman?"

"The Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe de Bourbon, monsieur the abbe."

There was an expressive movement among the courtiers.

"Was Louis Philippe instrumental in sending him to France?"

"He was. He procured shipping for the pretender."

"When the pretender reached Paris, what did he do?"

"He attempted robbery, and was taken in the act and thrown into Ste. Pelagie. I saw him arrested."

"What were you doing in Paris?"

"I was following and watching this dangerous pretender, monsieur the abbe."

"Did you leave America when he did?"

"The evening before, monsieur. And we outsailed him."

"Did you leave Paris when he did?"

"Three days later, monsieur. But we passed him while he rested."

"Why do you call such an insignificant person a dangerous pretender?"

"He is not insignificant, monsieur: as you will say, when you hear what he did in Paris."

"He was thrown into the prison of Ste. Pelagie, you told me."

"But he escaped, by choking a sacristan so that the poor man will long bear the marks on his throat. And the first thing I knew he was high in favor with the Marquis du Plessy, and Bonaparte spoke to him; and the police laughed at complaints lodged against him."

"Who lodged complaints against him?"

"I did, monsieur."

"But he was too powerful for you to touch?"

"He was well protected, monsieur the abbe. He flaunted. While the poor prince and myself suffered inconvenience and fared hard--"

"The poor prince, you say?"

"We never had a fitting allowance, monsieur," Bellenger declared aggressively. "Yet with little or no means I tried to bring this pretender to justice and defend his Majesty's throne."

"Pensioners are not often so outspoken in their dissatisfaction," remarked the priest.

I laughed as I thought of the shifts to which Bellenger must have been put. Abbe Edgeworth with merciless dryness inquired,

"How were you able to post to Mittau?"

"I borrowed money of a friend in Paris, monsieur, trusting that his Majesty will requite me for my services."

"But why was it necessary for you to post to Mittau, where this pretender would certainly meet exposure?"

"Because I discovered that he carried with him a casket of the martyred queen's jewels, stolen from the Marquis du Plessy."

"How did the Marquis du Plessy obtain possession of the queen's jewels?"

"That I do not know."

"But the jewels are the lawful property of Madame d'Angouleme. He must have known they would be seized."

"I thought it necessary to bring my evidence against him, monsieur."

"There was little danger of his imposing himself upon the court. Yet you are rather to be commended than censured, Bellenger. Did this pretender know you were in Paris?"

"He saw me there."

"Many times?"

"At least twice, monsieur the abbe."

"Did he avoid you?"

"I avoided him. I took pains to keep him from knowing how I watched him."

"You say he flaunted. When he left Paris for Mittau was the fact generally reported?"

"No, monsieur."

"You learned it yourself?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"But he must have known you would pursue him."

"He left with great secrecy, monsieur the abbe." It was given out that he was merely going to the country."

"What made you suspect he was coming to Mittau?"

"He hired a strong post-chaise and made many preparations."

"But didn't his friend the Marquis du Plessy discover the robbery? Why didn't he follow and take the thief?"

"Dead men don't follow, monsieur the abbe. The Marquis du Plessy had a duel on his hands, and was killed the day after this Lazarre left Paris."

Of all Bellenger's absurd fabrications this story was the most ridiculous. I laughed again. Madame d'Angouleme took her hands from her face and our eyes met one instant, but the idiot whined like a dog. She shuddered, and covered her sight.

The priest turned from Bellenger to me with a fair-minded expression, and inquired,

"What have you to say?"

I had a great deal to say, though the only hearer I expected to convince was my sister. If she believed in me I did not care whether the others believed or not. I was going to begin with Lake George, the mountain, and the fog, and Bellenger's fear of me, and his rage when Louis Philippe told him the larger portion of the money sent from Europe was given to me.

Facing Marie-Therese, therefore, instead of the Abbe Edgeworth, I spoke her name. She looked up once more. And instead of being in Mittau, I was suddenly on a balcony at Versailles!

The night landscape, chill and dim, stretched beyond a multitude of roaring mouths, coarse lips, flaming eyes, illuminated by torches, the heads ornamented with a three-colored thing stuck into the caps. My hand stretched out for support, and met the tight clip of my mother's fingers. I knew that she was towering between Marie-Therese and me a fearless palpitating statue. The devilish roaring mob shot above itself a forced, admiring, piercing cry--"Long live the queen!" Then all became the humming of bees--the vibration of a string--nothing!

X

Blackness surrounded the post-carriage in which I woke, and it seemed to stand in a tunnel that was afire at one end. Two huge trees, branches and all, were burning on a big hearth, stones glowing under them; and figures with long beards, in black robes, passed betwixt me and the fire, stirring a cauldron. If ever witches' brewing was seen, it looked like that.

The last eclipse of mind had come upon me without any rending and tearing in the head, and facts returned clearly and directly. I saw the black robed figures were Jews cooking supper at a large fireplace, and we had driven upon the brick floor of a post-house which had a door nearly the size of a gable. At that end spread a ghostly film of open land, forest and sky. I lay stretched upon cushions as well as the vehicle would permit, and was aware by a shadow which came between me and the Jews that Skenedonk stood at the step.

"What are you about?" I spoke with a rush of chagrin, sitting up. "Are we on the road to Paris?"

"Yes," he answered.

"You have made a mistake, Skenedonk!"

"No mistake," he maintained. "Wait until I bring you some supper. After supper we can talk."

"Bring the supper at once then, for I am going to talk now."

"Are you quite awake?"

"Quite awake. How long did it last this time?"

"Two days."

"We are not two days' journey out of Mittau?"

"Yes."

"Well, when you have horses put in to-morrow morning, turn them back to Mittau."

Skenedonk went to the gigantic hearth, and one of the Jews ladled him out a bowlful of the cauldron stew, which he brought to me.

The stuff was not offensive and I was hungry. He brought another bowlful for himself, and we ate as we had often done in the woods. The fire shone on his bald pate and gave out the liquid lights of his fawn eyes.

"I have made a fool of myself in Mittau, Skenedonk."

"Why do you want to go back?"

"Because I am not going to be thrown out of the palace without a hearing."

"What is the use?" said Skenedonk. "The old fat chief will not let you stay. He doesn't want to hear you talk. He wants to be king himself."

"Did you see me sprawling on the floor like the idiot?"

"Not like the idiot. Your face was down."

"Did you see the duchess?"

"Yes."

"What did she do?"

"Nothing. She leaned on the women and they took her away."

"Tell me all you saw."

"When you went in to hold council, I watched, and saw a priest and Bellenger and the boy that God had touched, all go in after you. So I knew the council would be bad for you, Lazarre, and I stood by the door with my knife in my hand. When the talk had gone on awhile I heard something like the dropping of a buck on the ground, and sprang in, and the men drew their swords and the women screamed. The priest pointed at you and said, 'God has smitten the pretender!' Then they all went out of the room except the priest, and we opened your collar. I told him you had fallen like that before, and the stroke passed off in sleep. He said your carriage waited, and if I valued your safety I would put you in it and take you out of Russia. He called servants to help me carry you. I thought about your jewels; but some drums began to beat, and I thought about your life!"

"But, Skenedonk, didn't my sister--the lady I led by the hand, you remember--speak to me again, or look at me, or try to revive me?"

"No. She went away with the women carrying her."

"She believed in me--at first! Before I said a word she knew me! She wouldn't leave me merely because her uncle and a priest thought me an impostor! She is the tenderest creature on earth, Skenedonk--she is more like a saint than a woman!"

"Some saints on the altar are blind and deaf," observed the Oneida. "I think she was sick."

"I have nearly killed her! And I have been tumbled out of Mittau as a pretender!"

"You are here. Get some men to fight, and we will go back."

"What a stroke--to lose my senses at the moment I needed them most!"

"You kept your scalp."

"And not much else. No! If you refuse to follow me, and wait here at this post-house, I am going back to Mittau!"

"I go where you go," said Skenedonk. "But best go to sleep now."

This I was not able to do until long tossing on the thorns of chagrin wore me out. I was ashamed like a prodigal, baffled, and hurt to the bruising of my soul. A young man's chastened confidence in himself is hard to bear, but the loss of what was given as a heritage at birth is an injustice not to be endured.

The throne of France was never my goal, to be reached through blood and revolution. Perhaps the democratic notions in my father's breast have found wider scope in mine. I wanted to influence men, and felt even at that time that I could do it; but being king was less to my mind than being acknowledged dauphin, and brother, and named with my real name.

I took my fists in my hands and swore to force recognition, if I battered a lifetime on Mittau.

At daylight our post-horses were put to the chaise and I gave the postilion orders myself. The little fellow bowed himself nearly double, and said that troops were moving behind us to join the allied forces against Napoleon.

At once the prospect of being snared among armies and cut off from all return to Paris, appalled me as a greater present calamity than being cast out of Mittau. Mittau could wait for another expedition.

"Very well," I said. "Take the road to France."

We met August rains. We were bogged. A bridge broke under us. We dodged Austrian troops. It seemed even then a fated thing that a Frenchman should retreat ignominiously from Russia.

There is a devilish antagonism of inanimate and senseless things, begun by discord in ourselves, which works unreasonable torture. Our return was an abominable journal which I will not recount, and going with it was a mortifying facility for drawing opposing forces.

However, I knew my friend the marquis expected me to return defeated. He gave me my opportunity as a child is indulged with a dangerous plaything, to teach it caution.

He would be in his chateau of Plessy, cutting off two days' posting to Paris. And after the first sharp pangs of chagrin and shame at losing the fortune he had placed in my hands, I looked forward with impatience to our meeting.

"We have nothing, Skenedonk!" I exclaimed the first time there was occasion for money on the road. "How have you been able to post? The money and the jewel-case are gone."

"We have two bags of money and the snuffbox," said the Oneida. "I hid them in the post-carriage."

"But I had the key of the jewel-case."

"You are a good sleeper," responded Skenedonk.

I blessed him heartily for his forethought, and he said if he had known I was a fool he would not have told me we carried the jewel-case into Russia.

I dared not let myself think of Madame de Ferrier. The plan of buying back her estates, which I had nurtured in the bottom of my heart, was now more remote than America.

One bag of coin was spent in Paris, but three remained there with Doctor Chantry. We had money, though the more valuable treasure stayed in Mittau.

In the sloping hills and green vines of Champagne we were no longer harassed dodging troops, and slept the last night of our posting at Epernay. Taking the road early next morning, I began to watch for Plessy too soon, without forecasting that I was not to set foot within its walls.