not only france, but all europe, had at this time to reckon with one who, if, as his enemies said, was no bonaparte, was a very plausible imitation of one.
in 1849 france, indeed, was kind enough to give the world a breathing space. she had herself just come through one of those seething years from which she alone seems to have the power of complete recovery. paris had been in a state of siege for four months; not threatened by a foreign foe, but torn to pieces by internal dissension. sixteen thousand had been killed and wounded in the streets. a ministry had fallen. a ministry always does fall in france. bad weather may bring about such a descent at any moment. a monarchy had been thrown down—a king had fled. another king; and one who should have known better than to put his trust in a people.
half a dozen generals had attempted to restore order in paris and confidence in france. then, at the very end of 1848, the fickle people elected this napoleon, who was no bonaparte, president of the new republic, and europe was accorded a breathing space. at the beginning of 1849 arrangements were made for it—military arrangements—and the year was almost quiet.
it was in the summer of the next year, 1850, that the marquis de gemosac journeyed to england. it was not his first visit to the country. sixty years earlier he had been hurried thither by a frenzied mother, a little pale-faced boy, not bright or clever, but destined to pass through days of trial and years of sorrow which the bright and clever would scarcely have survived. for brightness must always mean friction, while cleverness will continue to butt its head against human limitations so long as men shall walk this earth.
he had been induced to make this journey thus, in the evening of his days, by the hope, hitherto vain enough, which many frenchmen had pursued for half a century. for he was one of those who refused to believe that louis xvii. had died in the prison of the temple.
not once, but many times, dormer colville laughingly denied any responsibility in the matter.
“i will not even tell the story as it was told to me,” he said to the marquis de gemosac, to the abbe touvent and to the comtesse de chantonnay, whom he met frequently enough at the house of his cousin, mrs. st. pierre lawrence, in that which is now the province of the charente inferieure. “i will not even tell you the story as it was told to me, until one of you has seen the man. and then, if you ask me, i will tell you. it is nothing to me, you understand. i am no dreamer, but a very material person, who lives in france because he loves the sunshine, and the cuisine, and the good, kind hearts, which no government or want of government can deteriorate.”
and madame de chantonnay, who liked dormer colville—with whom she admitted she always felt herself in sympathy—smiled graciously in response to his gallant bow. for she, too, was a materialist who loved the sunshine and the cuisine; more especially the cuisine.
moreover, colville never persuaded the marquis de gemosac to come to england. he went so far as to represent, in a realistic light, the discomforts of the journey, and only at the earnest desire of many persons concerned did he at length enter into the matter and good-naturedly undertake to accompany the aged traveller.
so far as his story was concerned, he kept his word, entertaining the marquis on the journey and during their two days' sojourn at the humble inn at farlingford with that flow of sympathetic and easy conversation which always made madame de chantonnay protest that he was no englishman at all, but all that there was of the most french. has it not been seen that colville refused to translate the dark sayings of river andrew by the side of the grass-grown grave, which seemed to have been brought to the notice of the travellers by the merest accident?
“i promised you that i should tell you nothing until you had seen him,” he repeated, as the marquis followed with his eyes the movements of the group of which the man they called loo barebone formed the centre.
no one took much notice of the two strangers. it is not considered good manners in a seafaring community to appear to notice a new-comer. captain clubbe was naturally the object of universal attention. was he not bringing foreign money into farlingford, where the local purses needed replenishing now that trade had fallen away and agriculture was so sorely hampered by the lack of roads across the marsh?
clubbe pushed his way through the crowd to shake hands with the rev. septimus marvin, who seemed to emerge from a visionary world of his own in order to perform that ceremony and to return thither on its completion.
then the majority of the onlookers straggled homeward, leaving a few wives and sweethearts waiting by the steps, with patient eyes fixed on the spidery figures in the rigging of “the last hope.” dormer colville and the marquis de gemosac were left alone, while the rector stood a few yards away, glaring abstractedly at them through his gold-rimmed spectacles as if they had been some strange flotsam cast up by the high tide.
“i remember,” said colville to his companion, “that i have an introduction to the pastor of the village, who, if i am not mistaken, is even now contemplating opening a conversation. it was given to me by my banker in paris, who is a suffolk man. you remember, marquis, john turner, of the rue lafayette?”
“yes—yes,” answered the marquis, absently. he was still watching the retreating villagers, with eyes old and veiled by the trouble that they had seen.
“i will take this opportunity of presenting myself,” said colville, who was watching the little group from the rectory without appearing to do so. he rose as he spoke and went toward the clergyman, who was probably much younger than he looked. for he was ill-dressed and ill-shorn, with straggling grey hair hanging to his collar. he had a musty look, such as a book may have that is laid on a shelf in a deserted room and never opened or read. septimus marvin, the world would say, had been laid upon a shelf when he was inducted to the spiritual cure of farlingford. but no man is ever laid on a shelf by fate. he climbs up there of his own will, and lies down beneath the dust of forgetfulness because he lacks the heart to arise and face the business of life.
seeing that dormer colville was approaching him, he came forward with a certain scholarly ease of manner as if he had once mixed with the best on an intellectual equality.
colville's manners were considered perfect, especially by those who were unable to detect a fine line said to exist between ease and too much ease. mr. marvin recollected john turner well. ten years earlier he had, indeed, corresponded at some length with the paris banker respecting a valuable engraving. was mr. colville interested in engravings? colville confessed to a deep and abiding pleasure in this branch of art, tempered, he admitted with a laugh, by a colossal ignorance. he then proceeded to give the lie to his own modesty by talking easily and well of mezzotints and etchings.
“but,” he said, interrupting himself with evident reluctance, “i am forgetting my obligations. let me present to you my companion, an old friend, the marquis de gemosac.”
the two gentlemen bowed, and mr. marvin, knowing no french, proceeded to address the stranger in good british latin, after the manner of the courtly divines of his day. which latin, from its mode of pronunciation, was entirely unintelligible to its hearer.
in return, the rector introduced the two strangers to his niece, miriam liston.
“the mainstay of my quiet house,” he added, with his vague and dreamy smile.
“i have already heard of you,” said dormer colville at once, with his modest deference, “from my cousin, mrs. st. pierre lawrence.”
he seemed, as sailors say, never to be at a loose end; but to go through life with a facile readiness, having, as it were, his hands full of threads among which to select, with a careless affability, one that must draw him nearer to high and low, men and women, alike.
they talked together for some minutes, and, soon after the discovery that miriam liston was as good a french scholar as himself, and therefore able to converse with the marquis de gemosac, colville regretted that it was time for them to return to their simple evening meal at “the black sailor.”
“well,” said colville to monsieur de gemosac, as they walked slowly across the green toward the inn, embowered in its simple cottage-garden, all ablaze now with hollyhocks and poppies—“well, after your glimpse at this man, marquis, are you desirous to see more of him?”
“my friend,” answered the frenchman, with a quick gesture, descriptive of a sudden emotion not yet stilled, “he took my breath away. i can think of nothing else. my poor brain is buzzing still, and i know not what answers i made to that pretty english girl. ah! you smile at my enthusiasm; you do not know what it is to have a great hope dangling before the eyes all one's life. and that face—that face!”
in which judgment the marquis was no doubt right. for dormer colville was too universal a man to be capable of concentrated zeal upon any one object. he laughed at the accusation.
“after dinner,” he answered, “i will tell you the little story as it was told to me. we can sit on this seat, outside the inn, in the scent of the flowers and smoke our cigarette.”
to which proposal monsieur de gemosac assented readily enough. for he was an old man, and to such the importance of small things, such as dinner or a passing personal comfort, are apt to be paramount. moreover, he was a remnant of that class to which france owed her downfall among the nations; a class represented faithfully enough by its king, louis xvi., who procrastinated even on the steps of the guillotine.
the wind went down with the sun, as had been foretold by river andrew, and the quiet of twilight lay on the level landscape like sleep when the two travellers returned to the seat at the inn door. a distant curlew was whistling cautiously to its benighted mate, but all other sounds were still. the day was over.
“you remember,” said colville to his companion, “that six months after the execution of the king, a report ran through paris and all france that the dillons had succeeded in rescuing the dauphin from the temple.”
“that was in july, 1793—just fifty-seven years ago—the news reached me in austria,” answered the marquis.
colville glanced sideways at his companion, whose face was set with a stubbornness almost worthy of the tenacious bourbons themselves.
“the queen was alive then,” went on the englishman, half diffidently, as if prepared for amendment or correction. “she had nearly three months to live. the separation from her children had only just been carried out. she was not broken by it yet. she was in full possession of her health and energy. she was one of the cleverest women of that time. she was surrounded by men, some of whom were frankly half-witted, others who were drunk with excess of a sudden power for which they had had no preparation. others, again, were timorous or cunning. all were ignorant, and many had received no education at all. for there are many ignorant people who have been highly educated, marquis.”
he gave a short laugh and lighted a cigarette.
“mind,” he continued, after a pause devoted to reflection which appeared to be neither deep nor painful, for he smiled as he gazed across the hazy marshes, “mind, i am no enthusiast, as you yourself have observed. i plead no cause. she was not my queen, marquis, and france is not my country. i endeavour to look at the matter with the eye of common-sense and wisdom. and i cannot forget that marie antoinette was at bay: all her senses, all her wit alert. she can only have thought of her children. human nature would dictate such thoughts. one cannot forget that she had devoted friends, and that these friends possessed unlimited money. do you think, marquis, that any one man of that rabble was above the reach—of money?”
and mr. dormer colville's reflective smile, as he gazed at the distant sea, would seem to indicate that, after a considerable experience of men and women, he had reluctantly arrived at a certain conclusion respecting them.
“no man born of woman, marquis, is proof against bribery or flattery—or both.”
“one can believe anything that is bad of such dregs of human-kind, my friend,” said monsieur de gemosac, contemptuously.
“i speak to one,” continued colville, “who has given the attention of a lifetime to the subject. if i am wrong, correct me. what i have been told is that a man was found who was ready, in return for a certain sum paid down, to substitute his own son for the little dauphin—to allow his son to take the chance of coming alive out of that predicament. one can imagine that such a man could be found in france at that period.”
monsieur de gemosac turned, and looked at his companion with a sort of surprise.
“you speak as if in doubt, monsieur colville,” he said, with a sudden assumption of that grand manner with which his father had faced the people on the place de la revolution—had taken a pinch of snuff in the shadow of the guillotine one sunny july day. “you speak as if in doubt. such a man was found. i have spoken with him: i, who speak to you.”
