The Bronze Eagle (31 page)

Among the crowd, too, Bobby Clyffurde moved and
[Pg 243]
stood. He was one of
those who watched this enthusiasm with a heart filled with forebodings.
He knew well how short this enthusiasm would be: he knew that within a
few weeks—days perhaps—the bold and reckless adventurer who had so
easily reconquered France would realise that the Imperial crown would
never be allowed to sit firmly upon his head. None in this crowd knew
better that the present pageant and glory would be short-lived, than did
this tall, quiet Englishman who listened with half an ear and a smile of
good-natured contempt to the loud cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" which rose
spontaneously whenever the sound of horses' hoofs or rattles of wheels
from the direction of Fontainebleau suggested the approach of the hero
of the day. None knew better than he that already in far-off England
another great hero, named Wellington, was organising the forces which
presently would crush—for ever this time—the might and ambitions of
the man whom England had never acknowledged as anything but a usurper
and a foe.

And closely buttoned inside his coat Clyffurde had a letter which he had
received at his lodgings in the Alma quarter only a few moments before
he sallied forth into the streets. That letter was an answer to a
confidential enquiry of his own sent to the Chief of the British Secret
Intelligence Department resident in Paris, desiring to know if the
Department had any knowledge of a vast sum of money having come
unexpectedly into the hands of His Majesty the King of France, before
his flight from the capital.

The answer was an emphatic "No!" The Intelligence Department knew of no
such windfall. But its secret agents reported that Victor de Marmont,
captain of the usurper's body-guard, had waylaid M. le Marquis de St.
Genis on the high road not far from Lyons. The escort which had
accompanied Victor de Marmont on that occasion had been dismissed by him
at Villefranche, and the information which
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the British Secret
Intelligence Department had obtained came through the indiscretion of
the sergeant in charge of the escort, who had boasted in a tavern at
Lyons that he had actually searched M. de St. Genis and found a large
sum of money upon him, of which M. de Marmont promptly took possession.

When Bobby Clyffurde received this letter and first mastered its
contents, the language which he used would have done honour to a Toulon
coal-heaver. He cursed St. Genis' stupidity in allowing himself to be
caught; but above all he cursed himself for his soft-heartedness which
had prompted him to part with the money.

The letter which brought him the bad news seemed to scorch his hand, and
brand it with the mark of folly. He had thought to serve the woman he
loved, first, by taking the money from her, since he knew that Victor de
Marmont with an escort of cavalry was after it, and, secondly, by
allowing the man whom she loved to have the honour and glory of laying
the money at his sovereign's feet. The whole had ended in a miserable
fiasco, and Clyffurde felt sore and wrathful against himself.

And also among the crowd—among those who came, heartsick, hopeless,
forlorn, to watch the triumph of the enemy as they had watched the
humiliation of their feeble King—was M. le Comte de Cambray with his
daughter Crystal on his arm.

They had come, as so many royalists had done, with a vague hope that in
the attitude of the crowd they would discern indifference rather than
exultation, and that the active agents of their party, as well as those
of England and of Prussia, would succeed presently in stirring up a
counter demonstration, that a few cries of "Vive le roi!" would prove to
the army at least and to the people of Paris that acclamations for the
usurper were at any rate not unanimous.

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But the crowd was not indifferent—it was excited: when first the Comte
de Cambray and Crystal arrived on the Place du Carrousel, a number of
white cockades could be picked out in the throng, either worn on a hat
or fixed to a buttonhole, but as the afternoon wore on there were fewer
and fewer of these small white stars to be seen: the temper of the crowd
did not brook this mute reproach upon its enthusiasm. One or two
cockades had been roughly torn and thrown into the mud, and the wearer
unpleasantly ill-used if he persisted in any royalistic demonstration.
Crystal, when she saw these incidents, was not the least frightened. She
wore her white cockade openly pinned to her cloak; she was far too
loyal, far too enthusiastic and fearless, far too much a woman to yield
her convictions to the popular feeling of the moment; and she looked so
young and so pretty, clinging to the arm of her father, who looked a
picturesque and harmless representative of the fallen regime, that with
the exception of a few rough words, a threat here and there, they had so
far escaped active molestation.

And the crowd presently had so much to see that it ceased to look out
for white cockades, or to bait the sad-eyed royalists. A procession of
carriages, sparse at first and simple in appearance, had begun to make
its way from different parts of the town across the Place du Carrousel
toward the Tuileries. They arrived very quietly at first, with as little
clatter as possible, and drew up before the gates of the Pavillon de
Flore with as little show as may be: the carriage doors were opened
unostentatiously, and dark, furtive figures stepped out from them and
almost ran to the door of the palace, so eager were they to escape
observation, their big cloaks wrapped closely round them to hide the
court dress or uniform below.

Ministers, dignitaries of the Court, Councillors of State; majordomos,
stewards, butlers, body-servants; they all came
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one by one or in groups
of twos or threes. As the afternoon wore on these arrivals grew less and
less furtive; the carriages arrived with greater clatter and to-do, with
finer liveries and more gorgeous harness. Those who stepped out of the
carriage doors were no longer quick and stealthy in their movements:
they lingered near the step to give an order or to chat to a friend; the
big cloak no longer concealed the gorgeous uniform below, it was allowed
to fall away from the shoulder, so as to display the row of medals and
stars, the gold embroidery, the magnificence of the Court attire.

The Emperor had left Fontainebleau! Within an hour he would be in Paris!
Everyone knew it, and the excitement in the crowd that watched grew more
and more intense. Last night these same men and women had looked with
mute if superficial sympathy on the departure of Louis XVIII. through
these same palace gates: many eyes then became moist at the sight, as
memory flew back twenty years to the murdered king—his flight to
Varennes, his ignominious return, his weary Calvary from prison to court
house and thence to the scaffold. And here was his brother—come back
after twenty-three years of exile, acclaimed by the populace, cheered by
foreign soldiers—Russians, Austrians, English—anything but French—and
driven forth once more to exile after the brief glory that lasted not
quite a year.

But this the crowd of to-day has already forgotten with the completeness
peculiar to crowds: men, women, and children too, they are no longer
mute, they talk and they chatter; they scream with astonishment and
delight whenever now from more and more carriages, more and more
gorgeously dressed folk descend. The ladies are beginning to arrive: the
wives of the great Court dignitaries, the ladies of the Court and
household of the still-absent Empress: they do not attempt to hide their
brilliant toilettes, their bare
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shoulders and arms gleam through the
fastenings of their cloaks, and diamonds sparkle in their hair.

The crowd has recognised some of the great marshals, the men who in the
Emperor's wake led the French troops to victory in Italy, in Prussia, in
Austria: Maret Duc de Bassano is there and the crowd cheers him, the Duc
de Rovigo, Marshal Davout, Prince d'Eckmühl, General Excelmans, one of
Napoleon's oldest companions at arms, the Duke of Gaeta, the Duke of
Padua, a crowd of generals and superior officers. It seems like the
world of the Sleeping Beauty and of the Enchanted Castle—which a kiss
has awakened from its eleven months' sleep. The Empire had only been
asleep, it had dreamed a bad dream, wherein its hero was a prisoner and
an exile: now it is slowly wakening back to life and to reality.

The night wears on: darkness and fog envelop Paris more and more.
Excitement becomes akin to anxiety. If the Emperor did leave
Fontainebleau when the last courier said that he did, he should
certainly be here by now. There are strange whispers, strange waves of
evil reports that spread through the waiting crowd: "A royalist fanatic
had shot at the Emperor! the Emperor was wounded! he was dead!"

Oh! the excitement of that interminable wait!

At last, just as from every church tower the bells strike the hour of
nine, there comes the muffled sound of a distant cavalcade: the sound of
horses galloping and only half drowning that of the rumbling of coach
wheels.

It comes from the direction of the embankment, and from far away now is
heard the first cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" The noise gets louder and more
clear, the cries are repeated again and again till they merge into one
great, uproarious clamour. Like the ocean when lashed by the wind, the
crowd surges, moves, rises on tiptoe, subsides, falls back to crush
forward again and once more to retreat as a
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heavy coach, surrounded by
a thousand or so of mounted men, dashes over the cobbles of the Place du
Carrousel, whilst the clamour of the crowd becomes positively deafening.

"Vive l'Empereur!"

The officers in the courtyard of the palace rush to the coach as it
draws up at the Pavillon de Flore: one of them succeeds in opening the
carriage door. The Emperor is literally torn out of the carriage,
carried to the vestibule, where more officers seize him, raise him from
the crowd, bear him along, hoisted upon their shoulders, up the
monumental staircase.

Their enthusiasm is akin to delirium: they nearly tear their hero to
pieces in their wild, mad, frantic welcome.

"In Heaven's name, protect his person," exclaims the Duc de Vicence
anxiously; and he and Lavalette manage to get hold of the banisters and
by dint of fighting and pushing succeed in walking backwards step by
step in front of the Emperor, thus making a way for him.

Lavalette can hardly believe his eyes, and the Duc de Vicence keeps
murmuring: "It is the Emperor! It is the Emperor!"

And he—the little stout man in green cloth coat and white
breeches—walks up the steps of his reconquered palace like a man in a
dream: his eyes are fixed apparently on nothing, he makes no movement to
keep his too enthusiastic friends away: the smile upon his lips is
meaningless and fixed.

"Vive l'Empereur!" vociferates the crowd.

Vive l'Empereur for one hundred days: a few weeks of joy, a few weeks of
anxiety, a few weeks of indecision, of wavering and of doubt. Then
defeat more irrevocable than before! exile more distant! despair more
complete.

Vive l'Empereur while we shout with excitement, while we remember the
disappointments of the past year, while
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we hope for better things from
a hand that has lost its cunning, a mind that has lost its power.

Vive l'Empereur! Let him live for an hundred days, while we forget our
enthusiasm and Europe prepares its final crushing blow. Let him live
until we remember once again the horrors of war, the misery, the famine,
the devastated homes! until once more we see the maimed and crippled
crawling back wearily from the fields of glory, until our ears ring with
the wails of widows and the cries of the fatherless.

Then let him no longer live, for he it is who has brought this misery on
us through his will and through his ambition, and France has suffered so
much from the aftermath of glory, that all she wants now is rest.

Gradually—but it took some hours—the tumult and excitement in and
round the Tuileries subsided. The Emperor managed to shut himself up in
his study and to eat some supper in peace, while gradually outside his
windows the crowd—who had nothing more to see and was getting tired of
staring up at glittering panes of glass—went back more or less quietly
to their homes.

Only in the courtyard of the Tuileries, the troopers of the cavalry
which had formed the Emperor's escort from Fontainebleau tethered their
horses to the railings, rolled themselves in their mantles and slept on
the pavements, giving to this portion of the palace the appearance of a
bivouac in a place which has been taken by storm.

One of the last to leave the Place du Carrousel was Bobby Clyffurde. The
crowd was thin by this time, but it was the tired and the
indifferent—the merely curious—who had been the first to go. Those who
remained to the last were either the very enthusiastic who wanted to set
up a final shout of "Vive l'Empereur!" after their idol had entirely
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disappeared from their view, or the malcontents who would not lose a
moment to discuss their grievances, to murmur covert threats, or suggest
revolt in some shape or form or kind.

Bobby slipped quickly past several of these isolated groups, indifferent
to the dark and glowering looks of suspicion that were cast at his tall,
muscular figure with the firm step and the defiant walk that was vaguely
reminiscent of the British troops that had been in Paris last year at
the time of the foreign occupation. He had skirted the Tuileries gardens
and was walking along the embankment which now was dark and solitary
save for some rowdy enthusiasts on ahead who, arm in arm in two long
rows that reached from the garden railings to the parapet, were
obstructing the roadway and shouting themselves hoarse with "Vive
l'Empereur!"