Chapter I: A Trip to Paris in 1803

"YOU don't mean to say it, my dear sir? You're absolutely jesting. I'm compelled to believe that you are pleased to talk nonsense. To take the boy! Impossible!"

"I never was more sober in my life, I do assure you, ma'am."

"The thing is incredible. No, sir, I cannot believe it. 'Tis bad enough that you should be going abroad at all, at this time—you and your wife. But to place an innocent babe of nine years in the power of that wicked Corsican! Twelve years old, say you! Nay, the twins' birthday is not till June. Roy is but eleven yet, and none would guess him to be over nine. Well, well, 'tis much the same. My dear sir, war is a certainty. We shall be embroiled with France before six weeks are ended."

"That is as may be. We intend to be at home again long before six weeks are gone by. A fortnight in Paris—nothing more. The opportunity is not to be lost; and as you know, all the world is going to Paris. So pray be easy in your mind."

Colonel Baron adjusted his rigid stock, and held his square chin aloft, looking over it with a benevolent though combative air towards the lady opposite. Mrs. Bryce was a family friend of long standing, and she might say what she chose. But nothing was further from his intentions than to alter his plans, merely because Mrs. Bryce or Mrs. Anybody Else chose to volunteer unasked advice. There was a spice of obstinacy in the gallant Colonel's composition.

Despite civilian dress—swallow-tailed coat, brass buttons, long flapped waistcoat, white frilled shirt-front, and velvet knee-breeches, with silk stockings—the Colonel was a thorough soldier in appearance. He had not yet left middle age behind, and he was still spare in figure, and upright as a dart.

Mrs. Bryce, a lively woman, in age perhaps somewhere about thirty-five, had bright twinkling eyes. She was dressed much à la mode, in the then fashionable figured muslin, made long and clinging, her white stockings and velvet shoes showing through it in front. The bonnet was of bright blue; and a silk spencer, of the same colour, was cut low, a large handkerchief covering her shoulders. A short veil descended below her eyes. She used her hands a good deal, flirting them about as she talked.

Upon an old-fashioned sofa, with prim high back and arms, and a long 'sofa-table' in front, sat the Colonel's wife, Mrs. Baron, a very graceful figure, young still, and in manner slightly languishing. Though it was early in the afternoon, she wore a low-necked frock, with a scarf over it; and her fair hands toyed with a handsome fan. A white crape turban was wound about her head. Beside her was Mr. Bryce, a short man, clothed in blue swallow-tailed coat and brass buttons—frock-coats being then unknown. His face was deeply scored and corrugated with smallpox.

The wide low room, with its large centre-table and ponderous furniture, had one other inmate, and this was a lovely young girl, in a short-waisted and short-sleeved frock of white muslin. A pink scarf was round her neck; dainty pink sandalled shoes were on her small high-instepped feet; long kid gloves covered the slender round arms; a fur-trimmed pink pelisse lay on a chair near; and from the huge pink bonnet on her head tall white ostrich feathers pointed skyward. Polly Keene was on a visit to the Barons, and she had just come in from a stroll with Mr. and Mrs. Bryce. Young ladies, ninety or a hundred years ago, did not commonly venture alone beyond the garden, but waited for proper protection. Polly had the softest brown velvet eyes imaginable, a delicate blush-rose complexion, and a pretty, arch manner.

Upon a side-table stood cake and wine, together with a piled up pyramid of fruit, for the benefit of callers. Afternoon tea was an unknown institution; and the fashionable dinner-hour varied between four and half-past five o'clock.

"A fortnight in Paris! And what of Nap meanwhile?" vivaciously demanded Mrs. Bryce. "What of old Boney? That is the question, my dear sir. What may not that wicked tyrant be after next?"

"Buonaparte has a good deal to answer for, ma'am, but I do not imagine that he will have the responsibility of hindering this little scheme of ours."

Mrs. Bryce turned herself briskly towards the sofa.

"If I were you, Harriette, I'd refuse to go. Then at least you will not have it on your conscience, if everything gets askew."

Mrs. Baron's large grey eyes gazed dreamily towards the speaker.

"My dear Harriette, wake up, I entreat of you. Pray listen to me. Doubtless all the world is off to France. Nothing more likely, since half the world consists of idiots, and another half of madmen. That is small reason why you two need to comport yourselves like either."

"Do you truly suppose there will be war again so soon?" asked Mrs. Baron incredulously.

"Do I suppose? Why, everybody knows it. Colonel Baron knows it. There can't be any reasonable doubt about the matter. The Treaty of Amiens is practically at an end already. Nap has broken his pledges again and again. And this last demand of his—why, nothing could be more iniquitous."

"Dear me, has he made any fresh demand?" Mrs. Baron's eyes went in appeal to her husband, for she had no great faith in Mrs. Bryce's judgment. The Colonel had no chance of responding.

"Even you can't sure have forgot that, my dear Harriette! He desires that we should give over to his tender mercies the unfortunate Bourbon Princes who have fled to us for refuge. And no doubt in the end he would demand all the refugees of the Revolution. He might as well demand England herself! And he will demand that too, in no long time. 'Tis an open secret that he is already making preparations for the invasion of our country."

"Boney does not believe that England, single-handed, will dare to oppose him," remarked Mr. Bryce. "He considers that a nation of seventeen million inhabitants is certain to go down before a nation of forty millions."

"Let him but come, and he'll learn his mistake," declared the valiant lady. "But you, Harriette—with public affairs in this state—you positively intend to let your crazy husband drag you across the Channel!"

"But I do not think my husband crazy, and I wish very much to go," she said, slightly pouting. "I have never been out of England. The wars have always hindered me, when I could have gone."

"And you absolutely mean to take the young ones, too!"

"We intend to take Roy," said the Colonel, as his wife's eyes once more appealed to him.

"I never heard such a scheme in my life! To take the boy away from his schooling—"

"No; his school has just been broken up for some weeks. Several cases of smallpox; so it is considered best."

"And Molly! Not Molly too?"

"No, not Molly. One will be enough." Colonel Baron did not wish to betray that he had strenuously opposed the plan, and had given in with reluctance to his wife's entreaties.

"I thought the two never had been parted."

"It is time such fantasies should be broken through. Roy must go to a boarding-school in the autumn, and this will pave the way."

Mrs. Baron lifted a lace pocket-handkerchief to her eyes.

"My dear heart—a school five miles off! You will think nothing of it when the time arrives," urged the Colonel. He had won his wife's consent to the boarding-school in the autumn only that morning, by yielding to her wish that Roy should go to Paris. The Colonel's graceful wife was something of a spoilt child in her ways, and he seldom had the will to oppose her seriously.

"Indeed, I should say so too," struck in Mrs. Bryce. "You don't desire to turn him into a nincompoop; and between you and Molly, my dear Harriette, he hasn't a chance, And what's to become of Molly?"

Mrs. Baron was still gently dabbing her eyes with the square of lace; and the Colonel answered—"My wife's stepmother wishes to have Molly in Bath for a visit. She will travel thither with Polly early next week."

"Too much gadding about! Not the sort of way I was brought up, nor you either. But everything is turned upside down in these days. And you've persuaded Captain Ivor to go too!"

"Undoubtedly Den will accompany us."

"And you're content to put yourselves into the clutches of that miserable Boney!"

"My dear madam, the First Consul does not wage war on unoffending travellers."

"Boney doesn't care what he does, so long as he can get his own way."

"He will at least act in accordance with the laws of civilised nations."

"Not he! Boney makes his own laws to suit himself."

"Well, well, my dear madam, we view these things differently. I have made up my mind. My wife has never been into France, and we may not have another opportunity for many years to come."

"Likely enough—while the Corsican lives!" muttered Mrs. Bryce.

The end window opened upon a verandah, and just outside this window, which had been thrown wide open, for it was an unusually hot spring day, a boy lay flat upon the ground, shaping a small wooden boat with his penknife. At the first mention of his name, a fair curly head popped up and popped down again. A recurrence of the word "Roy" brought up the head a second time, and two wide grey eyes stared eagerly over the low sill into the room. He might have been seen easily enough, but people were too busy to look that way. Then again the head vanished, and its owner lay motionless, apparently listening. After which he rolled away, jumped up, and scampered to the schoolroom at the back of the house.

It was a good-sized house, with a nice garden, in the outskirts of London; a much more limited London than the great metropolis of our day, though even then Englishmen were wont to describe it as "vast." Trafalgar Square and Regent Street were unbuilt; Pimlico consisted of bare rough ground, and Moorfields of genuine swampy fields; and the City was still a fashionable place of residence.

Roy Baron was a handsome lad, well set-up, straight and spirited, though small for his age, and, as Mrs. Bryce had intimated, childish in appearance. He had on a blue cloth jacket, with trousers and waistcoat of the same material. Knickerbockers were unknown. Children and older boys wore loose trousers, while tights and uncovered stockings were reserved for grown-up gentlemen. In a few weeks Roy would exchange his cloth waistcoat and trousers for linen ditto, either white or striped. Boys' hair was not cropped so closely in the year 1803 as in the Nineties; and a mass of tight curls clustered over Roy's head.

The year 1803! Think what that means.

Napoleon Buonaparte was alive—not only alive, but in full vigour; he had entered on his career of conquest, and the world was in terror of his name. Nelson was alive; five years earlier he had won the great Battle of the Nile, two years earlier the great Battle of Copenhagen, though he had not yet won his crowning victory of Trafalgar which established British supremacy over the ocean. Wellington was alive; but his then name of Sir Arthur Wellesley had not become widely famous, and no one could guess that one day he would be the Iron Duke of world-wide celebrity. Sir John Moore, the future Hero of Coruña, was alive, and though not knighted was already the foremost British soldier of his age.

Napoleon was not yet Emperor of the French. He was climbing towards that goal, but thus far he had not advanced beyond being First Consul in the Republic.

The peace between England and France, lasting somewhat over twelve months, had been hardly more than an armed and uncertain truce, a mere slight break in long years of intermittent warfare. As the old king, George III., remarked at the time, it was 'an experimental peace,' and few had hopes of its long continuance. For the Firebrand was still in Europe, and barrels of gunpowder lay on all sides. Both before the peace began, and also while it continued, Napoleon indulged in many speculative threats of a future invasion of England, and preparations were said to be at this date actually begun.

England alone of all the nations stood erect, and fearlessly looked the tyrant in the face. And Great Britain, with all her pluck, had then but a tiny army, and few fortifications; while her chief defence, the fleet, though splendidly manned, was weak indeed compared with the mighty armament which she now possesses.

Whether the peace would last, or whether it would speedily end, depended mainly on the will of one man, an ambitious and reckless despot, who cared not a jot what rivers of French and English blood he might cause to flow, nor how many thousands of French and English widows' hearts might be broken, so long as he could indulge to the full his lust of conquest, and could obtain plenty of what he called "glory." Another and truer name might easily have been found.