Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

'It will arrive to-morrow morning early. Will it be able to cross the bar?'

'No; not till noon.'

'I thought so. I expect a person by it--a man.'

Madame Bernier appeared unable to continue, as if her voice had given way.

'Well, well?' said her companion.

'He's the person'--she stopped again.

'The person who--?'

'The person whom I wish to get rid of.'

For some moments nothing was said. The boatman was the first to speak again.

'Have you formed a plan?'

Hortense nodded.

'Let's hear it.'

'The person in question,' said Madame Bernier, 'will be impatient to land before noon. The house to which he returns will be in view of the vessel if, as you say, she lies at anchor. If he can get a boat, he will be sure to come ashore. _Eh bien_!--but you understand me.'

'Aha! you mean my boat--_this_ boat?'

'O God!'

Madame Bernier sprang up in her seat, threw out her arms, and sank down again, burying her face in her knees. Her companion hastily shipped his oars, and laid his hands on her shoulders.

'_Allons donc_, in the devil's name, don't break down,' said he; 'we'll come to an understanding.'

Kneeling in the bottom of the boat, and supporting her by his grasp, he succeeded in making her raise herself, though her head still drooped.

'You want me to finish him in the boat?'

No answer.

'Is he an old man?'

Hortense shook her head faintly.

'My age?'

She nodded.

'_Sapristi_! it isn't so easy.'

'He can't swim,' said Hortense, without looking up; 'he--he is lame.'

'_Nom de Dieu_!' The boatman dropped his hands. Hortense looked up quickly. Do you read the pantomime?

'Never mind,' added the man at last, 'it will serve as a sign.'

'_Mais oui_. And besides that, he will ask to be taken to the Maison Bernier, the house with its back to the water, on the extension of the great quay. _Tenez_, you can almost see it from here.'

'I know the place,' said the boatman, and was silent, as if asking and answering himself a question.

Hortense was about to interrupt the train of thought which she apprehended he was following, when he forestalled her.

'How am I to be sure of my affair?' asked he.

'Of your reward? I've thought of that. This watch is a pledge of what I shall be able and glad to give you afterward. There are two thousand francs' worth of pearls in the case.'

'_Il faut fixer la somme_,' said the man, leaving the watch untouched.

'That lies with you.'

'Good. You know that I have the right to ask a high price.'

'Certainly. Name it.'

'It's only on the supposition of a large sum that I will so much as consider your proposal. _Songez donc_, that it's a MURDER you ask of me.'

'The price--the price?'

'_Tenez_,' continued the man, 'poached game is always high. The pearls in that watch are costly because it's worth a man's life to get at them. You want me to be your pearl diver. Be it so. You must guarantee me a safe descent,--it's a descent, you know--ha!--you must furnish me the armor of safety; a little gap to breathe through while I'm at my work--the thought of a capful of Napoleons!'

'My good man, I don't wish to talk to you or to listen to your sallies. I wish simply to know your price. I'm not bargaining for a pair of chickens. Propose a sum.'

The boatman had by this time resumed his seat and his oars. He stretched out for a long, slow pull, which brought him closely face to face with his temptress. This position, his body bent forward, his eyes fixed on Madame Bernier's face, he kept for some seconds. It was perhaps fortunate for Hortense's purpose at that moment--it had often aided her purposes before--that she was a pretty woman.[C] A plain face might have emphasized the utterly repulsive nature of the negotiation. Suddenly, with a quick, convulsive movement, the man completed the stroke.

'_Pas si hête_! propose one yourself.'

'Very well,' said Hortense, 'if you wish it, _Voyons_: I'll give you what I can. I have fifteen thousand francs' worth of jewels. I'll give you them, or, if they will get you into trouble, their value. At home, in a box I have a thousand francs in gold. You shall have those. I'll pay your passage and outfit to America, I have friends in New York. I'll write to them to get you work.'

'And you'll give your washing to my mother and sister, _hein_? Ha! ha! Jewels, fifteen thousand francs; one thousand more makes sixteen; passage to America--first class--five hundred francs; outfit--what does Madame understand by that?'

'Everything needful for your success _là-bas_.'

'A written denial that I am an assassin? _Ma foi_, it were better not to remove the impression. It's served me a good turn, on this side of the water at least. Call it twenty-five thousand francs.'

'Very well; but not a sous more.'

'Shall I trust you?'

'Am I not trusting you? It is well for you that I do not allow myself to think of the venture I am making.'

'Perhaps we're even there. We neither of us can afford to make account of certain possibilities. Still, I'll trust you, too.... _Tiens_!' added the boatman, 'here we are near the quay.' Then with a mock-solemn touch of his cap, 'Will Madame still visit the cemetery?'

'Come, quick, let me land,' said Madame Bernier, impatiently.

'We _have_ been among the dead, after a fashion,' persisted the boatman, as he gave her his hand.

III.

It was more than eight o'clock when Madame Bernier reached her own house.

'Has M. de Meyrau been here?' she asked of Josephine.

'Yes, ma'am; and on learning that Madame was out, he left a note, _chez monsieur_.'

Hortense found a sealed letter on the table in her husband's old study. It ran as follows:

'I was desolated at finding you out. I had a word to tell you. I
have accepted an invitation to sup and pass the night at C----,
thinking it would look well. For the same reason I have resolved to
take the bull by the horns, and go aboard the steamer on my return,
to welcome M. Bernier home--the privilege of an old friend. I am
told the _Armorique_ will anchor off the bar by daybreak. What do
you think? But it's too late to let me know. Applaud my _savoir
faire_--you will, at all events, in the end. You will see how it
will smoothe matters.'

'Baffled! baffled!' hissed Madame, when she had read the note; 'God deliver me from my friends!' She paced up and down the room several times, and at last began to mutter to herself, as people often do in moments of strong emotion: 'Bah! but he'll never get up by daybreak. He'll oversleep himself, especially after to-night's supper. The other will be before him..... Oh, my poor head, you've suffered too much to fail in the end!'

Josephine reappeared to offer to remove her mistress's things. The latter, in her desire to reassure herself, asked the first question that occurred to her.

'Was M. le Vicomte alone?'

'No, madame; another gentleman was with him--M. de Saulges, I think. They came in a hack, with two portmanteaus.'

Though I have judged best, hitherto, often from an exaggerated fear of trenching on the ground of fiction, to tell you what this poor lady did and said, rather than what she thought, I may disclose what passed in her mind now:

'Is he a coward? is he going to leave me? or is he simply going to pass these last hours in play and drink? He might have stayed with me. Ah! my friend, you do little for me, who do so much for you; who commit murder, and--Heaven help me!--suicide for you!.... But I suppose he knows best. At all events, he will make a night of it.'

When the cook came in late that evening, Josephine, who had sat up for her, said:

'You've no idea how Madame is looking. She's ten years older since this morning. Holy mother! what a day this has been for her!'

'Wait till to-morrow,' said the oracular Valentine.

Later, when the women went up to bed in the attic, they saw a light under Hortense's door, and during the night Josephine, whose chamber was above Madame's, and who couldn't sleep (for sympathy, let us say), heard movements beneath her, which told that her mistress was even more wakeful than she.

IV.

There was considerable bustle around the _Armorique_ as she anchored outside the harbor of H----, in the early dawn of the following day. A gentleman, with an overcoat, walking stick, and small valise, came alongside in a little fishing boat, and got leave to go aboard.

'Is M. Bernier here?' he asked of one of the officers, the first man he met.

'I fancy he's gone ashore, sir. There was a boatman inquiring for him a few minutes ago, and I think he carried him off.

M. de Meyrau reflected a moment. Then he crossed over to the other side of the vessel, looking landward. Leaning over the bulwarks he saw an empty boat moored to the ladder which ran up the vessel's side.

'That's a town boat, isn't it?' he said to one of the hands standing by.

'Yes, sir.'

'Where's the master?'

'I suppose he'll be here in a moment. I saw him speaking to one of the officers just now.'

De Meyrau descended the ladder, and seated himself at the stern of the boat. As the sailor he had just addressed was handing down his bag, a face with a red cap looked over the bulwarks.

'Hullo, my man!' cried De Meyrau, 'is this your boat?'

'Yes, sir, at your service,' answered the red cap, coming to the top of the ladder, and looking hard at the gentleman's stick and portmanteau.

'Can you take me to town, to Madame Bernier's, at the end of the new quay?'

'Certainly, sir,' said the boatman, scuttling down the ladder, 'you're just the gentleman I want.'

* * * * *

An hour later Hortense Bernier came out of the house, and began to walk slowly through the garden toward the terrace which overlooked the water. The servants, when they came down at an early hour, had found her up and dressed, or rather, apparently, not undressed, for she wore the same clothes as the evening before.

'_Tiens!_' exclaimed Josephine, after seeing her, 'Madame gained ten years yesterday; she has gained ten more during the night.'

When Madame Bernier reached the middle of the garden she halted, and stood for a moment motionless, listening. The next, she uttered a great cry. For she saw a figure emerge from below the terrace, and come limping toward her with outstretched arms.

'NOS AMIS LES COSAQUES!'

[In accordance with the policy embraced by THE
CONTINENTAL, of giving views of important subjects from
various stand-points, we lay before our readers the following
article. It is from the pen which contributed to the 'New American
Cyclopædia' the articles 'Czartoryski,' 'Francis Joseph,' 'G[=o]rgey,'
'Hebrews,' 'Hungary,' 'Kossuth,' 'Poland,' etc., etc. We doubt not
the author gives utterance in the present contribution to the
feelings which agitated the hearts of thousands of our naturalized
citizens during the Russian excitement in New York. Heartily
grateful as we may be to Russia for her timely sympathy, our
country is pledged to Eternal Justice, and ought never to forget
that she is the hope of mankind, and should be its model.]

On the evening of the thirtieth of November last, the large hall of the Cooper Institute--that forum of public opinion in the city of New York, which has so often been the theatre of interesting manifestations--witnessed a scene almost entirely novel. Flags, decorated with emblems unknown, were unfolded over the platform; young girls, daughters of a distant land, or at least of exiles from it, appeared in their national costume, and sang melodious strains in a foreign tongue, which charmed tears into the eyes of those who understood them; a straightened scythe, fixed to the end of a pole, was exhibited, not as a specimen of the agricultural implements of the country from which those homeless men and children had sprung, but as a weapon with which its people, in absence of more efficient arms, was wont to fight for liberty and independence; the bust of the father of the American republic was placed prominently in face of the large gathering, and at its side that of a man bearing the features of a different race, and apparently not less revered.

If I say that this man was Kosciuszko, I have explained all. Every reader not entirely ignorant of history will know which was the land, the people, what the meaning of the weapon, of the song. Who has never yet wept over the narrative of the fall of that unhappy country east and west of the Vistula, so shamelessly torn, quartered, and preyed upon by ravenous neighboring empires? Whose heart has never yet throbbed with admiration for the sons of that land who to this day protest with their blood, poured in streams, against that greatest of all crimes recorded in history, the partition of their country, and that blasphemous lie written upon one of its bloodiest pages: _Finis Poloniæ_? who, abandoned by the world, betrayed by their neighbors, trampled upon as no nation ever was before, again and again rise, and in 1794, under the lead of Kosciuszko, eclipse the deeds of those who, in 1768, flocked to the banners of Pulaski; in 1830-'31, on the battle fields of Grochow and Ostrolenka, show themselves more powerful than under the dictatorship of the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader, without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their former insurrections? Who has never heard of Russian batteries assaulted and carried by Polish scythes? Whose bosom is so devoid of the divine cords of justice and sympathy as never yet to have revibrated the strain of the Polish exiles: POLAND IS NOT YET LOST?

Alas, the chronological dates just touched upon embrace a century! For a hundred years Poland writhes in heroic despair under the heels of Muscovite despotism, dazzles mankind by sublime efforts to recover her right to national life, liberty, and happiness, and _not a hand has been stretched out to help her break her chains_! All her martyrdom wrests from the better nature of mankind is a tear of mourning, when, after a superhuman struggle, she again sinks exhausted, and is believed to sink into the grave. And has Poland well deserved this heartless indifference, this pitilessness of the nations? Has she delivered none? aided none? served none? defended none? Answer, Vienna, rescued from the Turkish yoke by John Sobieski! Answer, thou monument at West Point, thou fort at the mouth of the Savannah, ye towns and counties named Kosciuszko and Pulaski! Answer, Elba and St. Helena! Answer, Hungarian companion-in-arms of Bern, Dembinski, and Wysocki! Answer, Germany, Europe, Christendom, for centuries shielded by Polish valor against Tartar barbarism and Moslem fanaticism!

Alas, Poland must beg even for sympathy! That gathering, which commemorated, on its thirty-third anniversary, the outbreak of the rising of 1830, was destined to resuscitate the feeling of the American people for the Polish cause. For the Poles sojourning in this country had reasons to believe that even that passive sentiment was on the wane, that interests, not less illusory than selfish, were working to destroy even the impressions which sacred national remembrances, by twining together the memories of Washington and Kosciuszko, had created in the American heart. Strange to say, amid the roar of cannon thundering freedom to slaves, amid streams of blood shed in the name of nationality, on this side of the Atlantic, amid daily echoes reverberating the groans of butchered martyrs, of mothers and sisters scourged, hanged, or dragged into captivity, on the other side--New York had gone mad with enthusiasm for the Muscovites! The metropolis of the freest people on the globe had prostrated herself before the shrine of semi-Asiatic despotism, had kissed the hands of the knoutbearers of the czar, had desecrated the holy memory of Washington, by coupling his name, his bust, with those of an Alexander, nay, of a Nicholas! The woes of Poland were forgotten, her cause was wantonly assailed, her fair name defamed by the very same organs of public opinion which for months and months made people shudder with daily recitals of nameless atrocities committed by the Russian hangmen, by the Muravieffs and Aunekoffs, on the defenders of their country and liberty. Unthinking scribblers and lecturers called Russia and America twin sister empires of the future, agitated for an alliance defensive and offensive between them; Poland and her defenders were calumniated. _Væ victis!_

There is an excuse for every folly New York commits and the country imitates, for she is blessed with papers and politicians more than others practised to flatter vanity and mislead ignorance. When New York strews palm leaves before the feet of the Prince of Wales, it is done to cement the bond of love that links the New World to its venerable mother; when she runs after the Japanese, it is in search of a trans-oceanic brother, just discovered, and soon lovingly to be embraced (witness our doings in the Japanese waters); when she kisses the knout and collects Russian relics, it is done to inaugurate a sistership of the future, already dawning upon her in Muscovite smiles of friendship, in diplomatic hints of the czar, and in the hurrahs for the Union of Lissoffski's crews! In this case she only pays with American sympathy for Russian sympathy, and at the same time frowns a rebuke upon England and France for their un-Russian-like behavior, and insinuates a threat which may save this country from the perils of European intervention.

But Russian imperial sympathy, with its diplomatic smiles and compulsory hurrahs, is nothing but a bait; he must be blind who does not see it. What is the natural tendency that would lead the czar, the upholder of despotism in the East, to sympathize with the model republic of the West? the empire which is again and again covered with the blood of Poland, divided by it and its accomplices, to have, amid its troubles, so much tender feeling for the indivisibility of this country? Is Alexander's friendship kindled by our acts of emancipation? It is true he has freed more than twenty millions of serfs in his empire, and, though following the dictates of political necessity, he may have acted with no more real anti-slavery sentiment than that which makes many avowed pro-slavery men emancipationists among ourselves, yet he certainly has achieved a noble glory, which even his monstrous reign in Poland may not entirely blot out from the pages of history. The same friendly disposition toward the United States was, however, ostentatiously evinced by Nicholas, who lived and died the true representative and guardian of unmitigated tyranny; it was as ostentatiously shown by Alexander at the time when Fremont's proclamation was repudiated as it is now, after the first of January, 1863; and it is he of all the monarchs of Europe who, as early as July, 1861, diplomatically advised this country to save the Union by compromise, as neither of the contending parties could be finally crushed down; that is to say, flagrantly to sacrifice _liberty_ in order to save _power_. The Russian nobility will naturally sympathize with the slaveholders of the South, and the lower classes of the Russian people are too ignorant to think about transatlantic affairs. Russian imperial and diplomatic sympathy will cordially be bestowed upon any nation and cause which promises to become hostile to England (or, on a given time, to France), on Nena Sahib no less than on Abraham Lincoln. The never-discarded aim of Russia to plant its double cross on the banks of the Byzantine Bosporus, and its batteries on those of the Hellespont, and thus to transfer its centre of gravity from the secluded shores of the Baltic to the gates of the Mediterranean; the never-slumbering dread of this expansion, which has made the integrity of Turkey an inviolable principle with the British statesmen of every sect; and the growing inevitability of a bloody collision on the fields of central Asia of the two powers, one of which is master of the north, and the other of the south of that continent, have rendered Russia and Great Britain inveterate foes. To strengthen itself against its deadliest opponent, one courts the alliance of France, the other that of the American Union, both not from sympathy, but in spite of inveterate or natural antipathy. Against a common enemy we have seen the pope allying himself with the sultan. Russia always hates England, and from time to time fears France; both these powers continue to offend the United States, and at least one of them now threatens a Polish campaign: why should not the czar lavish his flattering marks of friendship on a great power which he hopes to entice into an unnatural alliance? It is not American freedom which the czars are fond of; they court American power as naturally antagonistic to that of England, at least on the seas. Wielded entire by a Jeff. Davis, with all the Southern spirit of aggression, it would be to them a more desirable object of an _entente cordiale_.

But why should we not accept the proffered aid, though the offer be prompted by selfish motives? Threatened by a wicked interference in our affairs, which might prove dangerous to our national existence, why refuse additional means to guard it, though these be derived from an impure source? Will an innocent man, attacked by assassins, repulse the aid of one hastening to save him, on the ground that he, too, is a murderer? Certainly not. History, too, proves it by noble examples. Pelopidas, the Theban hero, invokes the aid of the Persian king, the natural enemy of the Greeks; Cato, who prefers a free death by his own hand to life under a Cæsar, fights side by side with Juba, a king of barbarians; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism in Germany, acts in concert with Richelieu, the reducer of La Rochelle, its last stronghold in France; Pulaski, who fights for freedom in Poland and dies for it in America, accepts the aid of the sultan; Franklin calls upon the master of the Bastille to defend the Declaration of Independence; Ypsilanti raises the standard of Neo-Grecian liberty in hope of aid from Czar Alexander I, and happier Hellenes obtain it from Czar Nicholas, and conquer; the heroic defender of Rome in 1849, Garibaldi, fights in 1859, so to say, under the lead of Louis Napoleon, the destroyer of that republic.

But what has all this to do with the question before us? Has it come to this? Is the cause of this great republic reduced to such extremities? Is this nation of twenty millions of freemen, so richly endowed with all the faculties, resources, and artificial means which constitute power, unable to preserve its national existence, independence, and liberty, without help from the contaminating hand of tyranny, without sacrificing its honor by basely singing hosannas to the imperial butcher of Poland, at the very moment when the blood of the people of Kosciuszko and Pulaski cries to Heaven and mankind for vengeance? Is the peril so great? so imminent? Is Hannibal _ante portas_? Has the French fleet dispersed Secretary Welles's five hundred and eighty-eight vessels of war, broken the Southern blockade, and appeared before our Northern harbors? Are all Jeff. Davis's bitter complaints against the English cabinet but a sham, covering a deep-laid conspiracy with treacherous Albion? Is Emperor Maximilian quietly seated on the throne of Montezuma, and already marching his armies upon the Rio Grande? The talk of foreign intervention has been going on for years, and not a threatening cloud is yet to be seen on our horizon. Both England and France deprecate the idea of hostile interference in American affairs. It is _Russia_ that is _menaced_, an alliance with her can serve only herself, and her artifices have caused all the foolish clamor that threatens to disgrace this country.

And then, accepting aid is not forming an alliance, still less an alliance _defensive_ and _offensive_. Not to speak of examples too remote, every one familiar with the historical characters of the men, will know that neither Pulaski, Franklin, Ypsilanti, or Garibaldi would ever have so degraded his cause--the cause of liberty--as to promise to the despot, whose aid he desired, a compensatory assistance in trampling down a people rising for freedom. No _innocent_ man attacked by assassins will promise, with honest intent, to one who offers to save him, his assistance in continuing a work of murder and resisting the arm of justice.

For it must be supposed that nobody is foolish enough to believe that Russia would offer us her aid--say, against France--without requiring from us a mutual service; that merely in order to inflict a punishment on Louis Napoleon for the recognition of the South, or the establishment of monarchy in Mexico, she would, still bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the Polish insurrection, madly launch her armies upon the Rhine, or start her hiding fleet from behind the fortified shelters of Cronstadt and Helsingfors, make it pass the Sound and Skager Rack, unmindful of the frowning batteries of Landscrona and Marstrand, pass the Strait of Dover, and the English Channel, and enter the Atlantic, quietly leaving behind Calais, Boulogne, Cherbourg, and Brest, and all this with the certainty of raising a storm which might carry the armies of France and her allies into the heart of Poland, and ultimately, by restoring that country, press czardom back, where it ought to be, behind the Dnieper. Such assistance she would and could not honestly promise were we even to vouch a similar boon to her in case Napoleon should really enter upon a campaign for the deliverance of Poland. For neither promise could be executed with the slightest chance of real success, and without exposing the naval and land forces despatched across the seas to almost certain total destruction. The only practical military result of a Russo-American alliance could be an attack by the forces of the United States on the French in Mexico, serving as a powerful diversion for the benefit of Russia assailed by France in Europe. This is what Russia knows and our eager demonstrationists are unable to perceive. The sword of France hangs over Russia, just engaged in finishing the slaughter of Poland. The menace of a Russo-American alliance may induce Napoleon, who is entangled in Mexico, to put that sword back into the scabbard. He is too proud and too little magnanimous to give up, yielding to our menace, his Mexican work--a work so long begun, and so costly in blood and treasure--and turn all his attention, all his forces toward Poland and Russia. He may give up Poland, for which he has not yet sacrificed anything, and turn all his attention toward Mexico and the United States. Thus our philo-Russian enthusiasm can bear no good fruits for ourselves; it can serve Russia, prevent the deliverance of Poland, and dishonor the fair name of the American republic.

Yes, dishonor it. Already, speaking of the demonstrations in favor of the Russians, that patriot soldier, Sigel, exclaims: 'They make me almost doubt the common sense of the American people.' And it is not Sigel that speaks thus: it is the voice of enlightened Germany, of the freedom-loving men of Europe.

May the people of America heed this warning before it is too late!

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

_PART THE LAST._

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone _lives_ it--to
not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is
interesting'--GOETHE.

'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished
or intended.'--WEBSTER'S _Dictionary_.