Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

“ Genis left him he had watched the long straight road with dull, unseeing eyes—he had seen the first convoy, overfilled with wounded men lying huddled on heaped-up straw, and had thanked God that he was lying on this exquisitely soft carpet made of thousands of tiny green plants—moss, grass, weeds, young tendrils and growing buds and opening leaves that were delicious to the touch. He had quite forgotten that he was wounded—neither his head nor his leg nor his arm seemed to hurt him now: and he was able to think in peace of Crystal and of her happiness. ”

“ With a smothered cry of angry contempt Clyffurde seized on the papers that lay scattered on the table and crushed them up in his hand with a gesture of passionate wrath.
Then he strode up to the window, threw open the rickety casement and let the pure cold air of night pour into the room and dissipate the atmosphere of cowardice, of falsehood and of unworthy love that still seemed to hang there where M. le Marquis de St. Genis had basely bargained for his own ends, and outraged the very name of Love by planning base deeds in its name. ”

“ Alone the Old Guard has remained unshaken. Whilst all around them what was once the Grand Army is shattered, destroyed, melted like ice before a devastating fire, they have continued to advance, sublime in their fortitude, in their endurance, their contempt for death. One by one their columns are shattered and there are none now to replace those that fall. And as the gloom of night settles on this vast hecatomb on the plateau of Mont Saint Jean the conquerors of Jena and Austerlitz and Friedland make their last stand round the bronze eagle—all that is left to them of the glories of the past. ”

“ Madame shrugged her shoulders and took up her knitting.
"These days, my dear," she said with unwonted placidity, "the world is so full of treachery that men and women absorb it by every pore."
"But I shall not leave it at that," rejoined Crystal resolutely. "I'll find a means of punishing that vile traitor . . . I'll make him feel the hatred which he has so richly deserved—I shall not rest till I have made him suffer as he makes me suffer now. . . ."
"My dear—my dear—" protested Mme. la Duchesse, not a little shocked at the girl's vehemence. ”

“ The sound of the opening and shutting of a door, the soft frou-frou of a woman's skirt roused him from his gloomy reverie, and caused him to jump to his feet.
Mlle. Crystal was coming across the long reception room, walking with a slow and weary step toward the hearth. She was obviously not yet aware of Clyffurde's presence, and he had full leisure to watch her as she approached, to note the pallor of her cheeks and lips and that pathetic look of childlike self-pity and almost of appeal which veiled the brilliance of her deep blue eyes. ”

“ Rebuild an Empire, ye gods!—an Empire!—when the flower of its manhood lies pale and stark like the windrows of corn after the harvester has done his work. Thoughts of a dreamer! Schemes of a visionary! How will the quaking lips which throughout the length and breadth of this vast hecatomb now cry, "Sauve qui peut!" how will they ever intone again the old "Vive l'Empereur!"
The conqueror of Wagram gave a bitter sigh and faithful Bertrand hung his head gloomily; but de Marmont had neither sighed nor doubted: but then de Marmont was young—he too was a dreamer, and an enthusiast and a visionary. ”

“ I found the money and I found the thief. No thief he, Crystal, but just a quixotic man, who desired to serve his country, our cause and you. That man was your friend Mr. Clyffurde. I don't think that I was ever jealous of him. I am not jealous of him now. Our love, Crystal, is too great and too strong to fear rivalry from anyone. He had taken the money from you because he knew that Victor de Marmont, with a strong body of men to help him, would have filched it from you for the benefit of the Corsican. ”

“ Clyffurde shrugged his shoulders.
"The army, yes," he said slowly, "but the people . . . what people?—the peasantry of Provence and the Dauphiné, perhaps—what about the town folk?—your mayors and préfets?—your tradespeople? your shopkeepers who have been ruined by the wars which your hero has made to further his own ambition. . . ."
"Don't say that, Clyffurde," once more broke in de Marmont, and this time more vehemently than before. "When you speak like that I could almost forget our friendship." ”

“ You must have known all along that I have never ceased to love you: you have always been the only possible woman for me—my ideal, in fact. Your father's injustice I am willing to forget. Your troth was plighted to me and I have done nothing to deserve all the insults which he thought fit to heap upon me. I wanted you to know, Crystal, that my love is still yours, and that the fortune and glory which I now go forth to win I will place with inexpressible joy at your feet. ”

“ He loved Crystal more absolutely now than he had ever done in the days when he was practically her accepted suitor: his unbridled and capricious nature clung desperately to that which he could not hold, and since he had felt—that evening at Brestalou—that his political convictions had placed an insuperable barrier between himself and Crystal de Cambray, he felt that no woman on earth could ever be quite so desirable. ”

“ Clyffurde?"
"Well! I didn't like to tell you, Sophie, immediately on your arrival yesterday," said the Comte, who was making visible efforts to mitigate the horror of what he was about to say: "but . . . as a matter of fact . . . this Mr. Clyffurde whom you met in my house last night . . . who sat next to you at my table . . . with whom you had that long and animated conversation afterwards . . . is nothing better than a shopkeeper!"
No doubt M. le Comte de Cambray expected that at this awful announcement, Mme. la Duchesse's indignation and anger would know no bounds. ”

“ All we can do is to get along faster than the evil news can travel. If half my small army were captive at Antibes, I would still move on. If every man were a prisoner in the citadel, I would march on alone.' That's the man, my friends," cried Emery with ever-growing enthusiasm, "that's our Emperor!"
And he cast a defiant look on Clyffurde, as much as to say: "Bring on your Wellington and your armies now! the Emperor has come back! the whole of France will know how to guard him!" Then he turned to de Marmont.
"And now tell me about Grenoble," he said. ”

“ Here indeed was a battle far more strenuous and difficult of issue than that of a man's will against his passions: here was a problem far more difficult to solve than any that had assailed Bobby Clyffurde throughout his life.
His heart cried out "She must know the truth: she must. To-day! this minute, while there was yet time! Anon she will be pledged irrevocably to a man who has lied to her, whom she will curse as a renegade, a traitor, false to his country, false to his king!"
And the words hovered on his lips: "Mademoiselle Crystal! do not plight your troth to de Marmont! ”

“ He had seen her and she had gone. All of a sudden she had vanished, and darkness was closing in around him: the scent of roses faded into the air, which was now filled again with horrid sounds—the deafening roar of cannon, the sharp and incessant retort of rifle-fire, the awesome mêlée of cries and groans and bugle-calls and sighs of agony, and one deafening cry—so like the last wail of departing souls—which came from somewhere—not very far away: "Vive l'Empereur!"
Bobby raised himself to a sitting posture. ”

“ But, though he hated the Comte he knew him to be absolutely incapable of telling a deliberate lie, and absolutely incapable of bartering his word of honour for the sake of his own safety.
Crystal's words brought this knowledge back to his mind; and now the desire seized him to prove himself as chivalrous as he was powerful. He was one of those men who are so absolutely ignorant of a woman's nature that they believe that a woman's love can be won by deeds as apart from personality, and that a woman's dislike and contempt can be changed into love. ”

“ De Marmont had the supreme faith of an ambitious man in the power of wealth and of court favour. He knew that Napoleon was not a man who ever forgot a service efficiently rendered, and would repay this one—rendered at the supreme hour of disaster—with a surfeit of gratitude and of gifts which must perforce dazzle any woman's eyes and conquer her imagination.
Besides his schemes, his ambitions, the future which awaited him, what had an impecunious wastrel like St. Genis to offer to a woman like Crystal de Cambray? ”

“ 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! ”

“ His voice has lost nothing yet of its charm, his personality nothing of its magic. Ambitious, ruthless, selfish he may be, but to the army, a friend, a comrade as well as a god.
Suddenly the silence is broken. Shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" rend the air, they echo down the narrow valley, re-echo from hill to hill and reverberate upon the pine-clad heights of Taillefer. Broken are the ranks, white cockades fly in every direction, tricolours appear in their hundreds everywhere. Shakos are waved on the points of the bayonets, and always, always that cry: "Vive l'Empereur!" ”

“ Bobby remembered them so well, for one of these two officers was Maurice de St. Genis.
Oh! how Crystal would love to see him now—even though her dear heart would be torn with anxiety for him—for he was fighting bravely, bravely and desperately as every one had fought to-day, as these chasseurs of the Old Guard—just the few of them that remained—were fighting still even at this hour round that tattered flag and that bronze eagle, and with the cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" dying upon their lips. ”

“ I tell you that he is not crushed—that he is not even defeated. Within a month the allies will be on their knees begging for peace. The era of your Bourbon kings is more absolutely dead to-day than it has ever been. And after to-day there will be nothing for a royalist like your father or like Maurice de St. Genis but exile and humiliation more dire than before. Your father's fate rests entirely in your hands. I can direct his destiny, his life or his death, just as I please. When you are my wife, I will forgive him the insults which he heaped on me at Brestalou . ”

“ Genis ever since that awful humiliation which he had suffered at Brestalou, now blinded him to everything save to the fact that here was a rival who was gloating over his helplessness—a man who twice already had humiliated him before Crystal de Cambray—a man who had every advantage of caste and of community of sympathy! a man therefore who must be in his turn irretrievably crushed in the sight of the woman whom he still hoped to win! ”

“ For the first time since that awful moment when stumbling and falling against a pile of dead, with Death behind and all around him, he had heard the welcome call: "Can you pull yourself up?" and felt the steadying grip upon his elbow—Maurice de St. Genis looked upon the man to whom he owed his life.
With that stained bandage round his head, dulled and bloodshot eyes, face blackened with powder and smoke and features drawn and haggard, Bobby Clyffurde was indeed almost unrecognisable. But Maurice knew him on the instant. ”

“ Enough of thy will and thy power and thy ambition!—Enough of this scourge of bloodshed and of misery which I have allowed thee to wield for so long!—Enough of devastated homes, of starvation and of poverty! enough of the fatherless and of the widow!"
And up above on the plateau the British troops hear the thunder of thousands of horses' hoofs, galloping—galloping to this last charge which must be irresistible. And sturdy, wearied hands, black with powder and stained with blood, grasp more firmly still the bayonet, the rifle or the carbine, and they wait—those exhausted, intrepid, valiant men! ”

“ Every instinct of chivalry towards the woman loudly demanded that he should warn her—now—at once—before it was too late—before she had actually pledged her life and future to a man whom her very soul—if she knew the truth—would proclaim a renegade and a traitor; and every instinct of loyalty to the man—that male solidarity of sex which will never permit one man—if he be a gentleman—to betray another—prompted him to hold his peace. ”

“ And upon this mass of desperate men, the small body of raw Dutch and Belgian and German troops now hurled themselves with wild huzzas and blind impetuousness. Against this mass of heroes and of conquerors in a dozen victorious campaigns—men who had no longer anything to lose but life, and to whom life meant less than nothing now—against them a handful of half-trained recruits, drunk with the cry of "Victory" which drowned the roar of the cannon and the clash of sabres, drunk with the vision of glory which awaited them if that defiant eagle were brought to earth by them! ”

“ The Emperor has come back! Bare-footed fisherfolk whisper it among themselves, the labourers in the valley call the news to those upon the hills.
Why! after another hour or so, there are those among the small knot who stand congregated on the highest point of the headland, who swear that they can see the Emperor—standing on the deck of the L'Inconstant.
He wears a black bicorne hat, and his grey redingote: he is pacing up and down the deck of the schooner, his hands held behind his back in the manner so familiar to the people of France. And on his hat is pinned the tricolour of France. ”

“ You know from experience that I could kill you or wring your neck as easily as you could kill a child; but Mlle. Crystal's love is like a protecting shield all round you, so I'll not touch you again. But don't ask me to measure my words, for that is beyond my power. Take the money, M. de St. Genis, and earn not only the King's gratitude but also Mlle. Crystal's, which is far better worth having. And now, I pray you, leave me to rest. You must be tired too. ”

“ But even if he did not, de Marmont meant to have a few words with Crystal. He was going to win a gigantic fortune for the Emperor—one wherewith that greatest of all adventurers could once again recreate the Empire of France: he himself—rich already—would become richer still and also—if his coup succeeded—one of the most trusted, most influential men in the recreated Empire. He felt that with the offer of his name he could pour out a veritable cornucopia of abundant glory, honours, wealth at a woman's feet. And his ambition had always been bound up in a great measure with Crystal de Cambray. ”

“ But once on horseback he could get along—over trampled corn and over the dead—on toward that hideous corner behind the farm of La Haye Sainte where desperate men were butchering others that were more desperate than they—in among that seething crowd of black coats and fur bonnets, of silver tassels and of brass eagles, into a whirlpool of swords and bayonets and gun-fire from the tirailleurs—for there he had seen the man whom Crystal loved—for whose sake she would eat out her heart with mourning and regret. ”

“ On the other, the advance of the Polish Lancers, of the carts and wagons wherein are crowded the soldiers of the Old Guard, and Napoleon himself, the great gambler, sitting in his coach gazing out through the open windows at the fair land of France, the peaceful valley on his left, the chain of ice-covered lakes and the turbulent Drac; on his right beyond the hills frowning Taillefer, snow-capped and pine-clad, and far ahead Grenoble still hidden from his view as the future too was still hidden—the mysterious gate beyond which lay glory and an Empire or the ignominy of irretrievable failure. ”

“ A gasp went round the room, a sigh, a cry. The women looked in mute horror from one man to the other, the men already had their right hand on their swords. But Clyffurde's eyes were fixed upon Crystal, who pale, silent, rigid as a marble statue, with lips parted and nostrils quivering, stood not five paces away from him, her dilated eyes wandering ceaselessly from the face of St. Genis to that of de Marmont and thence to that of her father. ”

“ At the bottom of every soldier's haversack there is an old and worn tricolour cockade, which is there ready to be fetched out at a moment's notice, and will be fetched out at the mere sound of the Corsican's voice. We are in the hands of the army, M. le Comte, and in the Dauphiné; alas! the army is only too ready to cry: 'Vive l'Empereur!'"
There was silence in the stately room now, silence only broken by the tap-tap of the ivory paper-knife with which M. le Comte was still nervously fidgeting. M. Fourier was wiping the perspiration from his overheated brow. ”

“ This will I allow no man to do, not even . . ."
"Then, Sir, I pray you," rejoined Crystal proudly, "go and seek a quarrel with the man who has unmasked you; who caught you red-handed with the money in your possession which you had stolen from us, who forced you to give up what you had stolen, and whom then you and your friend Victor de Marmont waylaid and robbed once more. Go then, Mr. Clyffurde, and seek a quarrel with the Marquis de St. Genis, who has already struck you in the face once and no doubt will be ready to do so again." ”