Chapter XIV
A Little Cloud
"Rien ne nous rend si grand qu'une grande douleur."
Alphonse Giraud and I--between whom had sprung up that friendship ofcontrasts which Madame de Clericy had foreseen--were in constantcommunication. My summons brought him to the Hotel Clericy at once,where he found the ladies already apprised of their bereavement. Heand I set off again for Passy, by train this time, as our need wasmore urgent. I despatched instructions to the Vicomte's lawyer tofollow by the next train--bringing the undertaker with him. There wasno heir to my patron's titles, but it seemed necessary to observeevery formality at this the dramatic extinction of a long and nobleline.
As we drove through the streets, the newsboys were shrieking sometidings which we had neither time nor inclination to inquire into atthat moment. It was a hot July day, and Paris should have been halfempty, but the pavements were crowded.
"What is the matter?" I said to Alphonse Giraud, who was too busy withhis horse to look about. "See the faces of the men at the cafes--theyare wild with excitement and some look scared. There is news afoot."
"My good friend," returned Giraud, "I was in bed when your notereached me. Besides, I only read the sporting columns of the papers."
So we took train to Passy, without learning what it was that seemed tobe stirring Paris as a squall stirs the sea.
At Passy there was indeed grim work awaiting us. The Prefet himselfwas kind enough to busy himself in a matter which was scarcely withinhis province. He had instructed the police to conduct us to his house,where he received us most hospitably.
"Neither of you is related to the Vicomte?" he said, interrogatively;and we stated our case at once.
"It is well that you did not bring Madame with you," he said. "Youforbade her to come?"
And he looked at me with a keenness which, I trust, impressed thepolice official for whose benefit it was assumed.
"I begged her to remain in Paris."
"Ah!" and he gave a significant laugh. "However--so long as she is nothere."
He was a white-faced man, who looked as if he had been dried up bysome blanching process. One could imagine that the heart inside himwas white also. In his own eyes it was evident that he was a vastlyclever man. I thought him rather an ass.
"You know, gentlemen," he said, as he prepared his papers, "therecognition of the body is a mere formality."
"Then let us omit it, Monsieur le Prefet," exclaimed Alphonse, withcharacteristic cheerfulness; but the remark was treated with contempt.
"In July, gentlemen," went on the Prefet, "the Seine is warm--thereare eels--a hundred animalculae--a score of decomposing elements.However, there are the clothes--the contents of Monsieur le Vicomte'spockets--a signet ring. Shall we go? But first take another glass ofwine. If the nerves are sensitive--a few drops of Benedictine?"
"If I may have it in a claret glass," said Alphonse, and he launchedinto a voluble explanation, to which the Prefet listened with a thin,transparent smile. I thought that he would have been better pleasedhad some of the Vicomte's titled friends come to observe thisformality. But one's grand friends are better kept for fine weatheronly, and the official had to content himself with the company of aprivate secretary and the son of a ruined financier.
Alphonse and I had no difficulty in recognizing the small belongingswhich had been extracted from my old patron's sodden clothing. In theletter case was a letter from myself on some small matter of business.I pointed this out, and signed my name a second time on the yellow andcrinkled paper for the further satisfaction of the lawyer. Then wepassed into an inner room and stood in the presence of the dead man.The recognition was, as the Prefet had said, a painful formality.Alphonse Giraud and I swore to the clothing--indeed, the linen wasmarked plainly enough--and we left the undertaker to his work.
Giraud looked at me with a dry smile when we stood in the fresh airagain.
"You and I, Howard," he said, "seem to have got on the seamy side oflife lately."
And during the journey I saw him shiver once or twice at therecollection of what we had seen. His carriage was awaiting us at therailway station. Alphonse had been brought up in a school where horsesand servants are treated as machines. The man who stood at the horse'shead was, however, anything but mechanical, for he ran up to us assoon as we emerged from the crowded exit.
"A BERLIN--A BERLIN."]
"Monseiur le Baron!" he cried excitedly, with a dull light in his eyesthat made a man of him, and no servant. "Has Monsieur le Baronheard the news--the great tidings?"
"No--we have heard nothing. What is your news?"
"The King of Prussia has insulted the French Ambassador at Ems. Hestruck him on the face, as it is said. And war has been declared bythe Emperor. They are going to march to Berlin, Monsieur!"
As he spoke two groups of men swaggered arm in arm along the street.They were singing "Partant pour la Syrie," very much out of tune.Others were crying "A Berlin--a Berlin!"
Alphonse Giraud turned and looked at me with a sudden rush of colourin his cheeks.
"And I, who thought life a matter of coats and neckties," he said,with that quick recognition of his own error that first endeared himto me and made him the better man of the two.
We stood for a few minutes watching the excited groups of men on theBoulevard. At the cafes the street boys were selling newspapers at aprodigious rate, and wherever a soldier could be seen there were manypressing him to drink.
"In Berlin," they shouted, "you will get sour beer, so you must drinkgood red wine when it is to be had." And the diminutive bulwarks ofFrance were ready enough, we may be sure, to swallow Dutch courage.
"In Berlin!" echoed Giraud, at my side. "Will it end there?"
"There or in Paris," answered I, and lay no claim to astuteness, forthe words were carelessly uttered.
We drove through the noisy streets, and Frenchmen never before orsince showed themselves to such small advantage--so puerile, so petty,so vain. It was "Berlin" here and "Berlin" there, and "Down withPrussia" on every side. A hundred catchwords, a thousand raisedvoices, and not one cool head to realize that war is not a game. Thevery sellers of toys in the gutter had already nicknamed their wares,and offered the passer a black doll under the name of Bismarck, or amonkey on a stick called the King of Prussia.
It was with difficulty that I brought Alphonse Giraud to a gravediscussion of the pressing matter we had in hand, for his superficialnature was open to every wind that blew, and now swayed to the tempestof martial ardour that swept across the streets of Paris.
"I think," he said, "I will buy myself a commission. I should like togo to Berlin. Yes--Howard, _mon brave_, I will buy myself acommission."
"With what?"
"Ah--mon Dieu!--that is true. I have no money. I am ruined. I forgotthat."
And he waved a gay salutation of the whip to a passing friend.
"And then, also," he added, with a face suddenly lugubrious, "we havethe terrible business of the Vicomte. Howard--listen to me--at allcosts the ladies must never see _that_--must never know. Dieu! it washorrible. I feel all twisted here--as when I smoked my first cigar."
He touched himself on the chest, and with one of his inimitablegestures described in the air a great upheaval.
"I will try to prevent it," I answered.
"Then you will succeed, for your way of suggesting might easily becalled by another name. And it is not only the women who obey you. Itold Lucille the other day that she was afraid of you, and she blazedup in such a fury of denial that I felt smaller than nature has mademe. Her anger made her more beautiful than ever, and I was stupidenough to tell her so. She hates a compliment, you know."
"Indeed, I have never tried her with one."
Alphonse looked at me with grave surprise.
"It is a good thing," he said, "that you do not love her. Name of God!where should I be?"
"But it is with Madame and not Mademoiselle Lucille that we shall haveto do this afternoon," I said hastily.
Although he was more or less acknowledged as an aspirant to Lucille'shand, Giraud refused to come within the door when we reached the HotelClericy.
"No," he answered; "they will not want to see me at such a time. It isonly when people want to laugh that I am required."
I found Madame quite calm, and all her thoughts were for Lucille. Themore a man is brought into contact with maternal love, even if it bearin no way upon his own life, the better he will be for it--for this issurely the loftiest of human feelings.
My own mother having died when I was but an infant, it had never beenmy lot to live in intimacy with women, until fate guided me to theHotel Clericy.
At no time had I felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame deClericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast its sable veilover her.
"Lucille," she said at once, "must not be allowed to grieve for me.She has her own sorrow to bear, for she loved her father dearly. Donot let her have any thought for me."
And later, when the gods gave me five minutes alone with Lucilleherself--
"You must not," she said, her face drawn and white, her lipsquivering, "you must not let mother think that this is more than I canbear. It falls heavier upon her."
I blundered on somehow during those two days, making, no doubt, ahundred mistakes; for what comfort could I offer? What pretence couldI make to understand the feelings of these ladies? My task was not sodifficult as I had anticipated in regard to the grim coffin lying atPassy. To spare the other, both ladies agreed with me separately thatthe Vicomte should be buried from Passy as quietly as possible, andLucille overlooked the fact that the suggestion came from such anunwelcome source as myself.
So, amid the wild excitement of July, 1870, we laid Charles AlbertMalaunay, Vicomte de Clericy, to rest among his ancestors in thelittle church of Senneville, near Nevers. The war fever was at itsheight, and all France convulsed with passionate hatred for thePrussian.
It is not for one who has found his truest friends--ay, and hiskeenest enemies--in France to say aught against so great and gifted apeople. But it seems, as I look back now, that the French were ripe in1870 for one of those strokes by which High Heaven teaches nationsfrom time to time through the world's history that human greatness isa small affair.
There are no people so tolerant of folly as the Parisians. It walksabroad in the streets of the great city with such unblushingself-satisfaction--such a brazen sense of its own superiority--thatany Englishman must long to import a hundred London street boys, withtheir sense of ridicule and fearless tongue. At all times the worldhas possessed an army of geniuses whose greatness consists of faithand not of works--of faith in themselves which takes the outward formof weird clothing, long hair, and a literary or artistic pose. Parisstreets were so full of such in 1870 that all thoughtful men couldscarce fail to recognise a nation in its decadence.
"The asses preponderate in the streets," said John Turner to me. "Youmay hear their bray in every cafe, and France is going to the devil."
And indeed the voices raised in the drinking dens were those of thefool and the knave.
I busied myself with looking into the money affairs of my poor patron,and found them in great disorder. All the ready cash had fallen intothe hands of Miste. Some of the estates, as, indeed, I already knew,yielded little or nothing. The commerce of France was naturallyparalysed by the declaration of war, and no one wanted a vast oldhouse in the Faubourg St. Germain--a hotbed of Legitimism where nogood Buonapartist cared to own a friend or show his face.
I disguised nothing from Madame de Clericy, whom indeed it was hard todeceive.
"Then," she said, "there is no money."
We were in my study, where I was seated at the table, while Madamemoved from table to mantelpiece with a woman's keen sight for theblemishes to be found in a bachelor's apartment.
"For the moment you are in need of ready money--that is all. If thewar is brought to a speedy termination, all will be set right."
"And if the war is not brought to a speedy termination--you are asecond-rate optimist, _mon ami_--what then?"
"Then I shall have to find some expedient."
She looked at me probingly. The windows were open, and we heard thecries of the newsboys in the streets.
"Hear!" she said; "they are shouting of victories."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"You mean," said the Vicomtesse slowly, "that they will shout ofvictories until the Prussians are in sight of Paris."
"The Parisians will pay two sous for good news, and nothing at all forevil tidings," I answered.
Thus we lived for some weeks, through the heat of July--and I couldneither leave Paris nor give thought to Charles Miste. That scoundrelwas, however, singularly quiet. No cheque had been cashed, and weknew, at all events, that he had realised none of his stolen wealth.On the tenth of July the Ollivier Ministry fell. Things were goingfrom bad to worse. At the end of the month the Emperor quitted St.Cloud to take command of the army. He never came to France again.