Lorraine

"He is—and so are you!" said Jack, kissing her faded cheek. "Are you going to retire now?"

"Yes; your uncle needs me. The lights are out everywhere. Lorraine, dear child, is asleep in the next room to mine. Is Mr. Grahame comfortable? I am glad. The Prince Imperial is sleeping too, poor child—sleeping like a worn-out baby."

Jack conducted his aunt to her chamber, and bade her good-night. Then he went softly back through the darkened house, and across the hall to the dining-room. The door was open, letting out a flood of lamp-light, and the generals and staff-officers were taking leave of the Emperor and filing out one by one, Frossard leading, his head bent on his breast. Some went away to rooms assigned them, guided by a flunky, some passed across the terrace with swords trailing and spurs ringing, and disappeared in the darkness. They had not all left the Emperor, when, suddenly, Jack heard behind him the voice of the Marquis de Nesville, cold, sneering, ironical.

"Oh," he said, seeing Jack standing by the door, "can you tell me where I may find the Emperor of the French? I am sent for." Turning on the aide-de-camp at his side: "This gentleman courteously notified me that the Emperor desired my presence. I am here, but I do not choose to go alone, and I shall demand, Monsieur Marche, that you accompany me and remain during the interview."

The aide-de-camp looked at him darkly, but the marquis sneered in his face.

"I want a witness," he said, insolently; "you can tell that to your Emperor."

The aide-de-camp, helmet under his arm, from which streamed a horse-hair plume, entered the dining-room as the last officer left it.

Jack looked uneasily at the marquis, and was about to speak when the aid returned and requested the marquis to enter.

"Monsieur Marche, remain here, I beg you," said the marquis, coolly; "I shall call you presently. It is a service I ask of you. Will you oblige me?"

"Yes," said Jack.

The door opened for a second.

Napoleon III. sat at the long table, his head drooping on his breast; he was picking absently at threads in the texture of the table-cloth. That was all Jack saw—a glimpse of a table covered with half-empty glasses and fruit, an old man picking at the cloth in the lamplight; then the door shut, and he was alone in the dark hall. Out on the terrace he heard the tramp of the cuirassier sentinels, and beyond that the uproar of artillery, passing, always passing. He stared about in the darkness, he peered up the staircase into the gloom. A bat was flying somewhere near—he felt the wind from its mousy wings.

Suddenly the door was flung open beside him, and the marquis called to him in a voice vibrating with passion. As he entered and bowed low to the Emperor, he saw the marquis, tall, white with anger, his blue eyes glittering, standing in the centre of the room. He paid no attention to Jack, but the Emperor raised his impassible face, haggard and gray, and acknowledged the young man's respectful salutation.

"You have asked me a question," said the marquis, harshly, "and I demanded to answer it in the presence of a witness. Is your majesty willing that this gentleman shall hear my reply?"

The Emperor looked at him with half-closed, inscrutable eyes, then, turning his heavy face to Jack's, smiled wearily and inclined his head.

"Good," said the marquis, apparently labouring under tremendous excitement. "You ask me to give you, or sell you, or loan you my secret for military balloons. My answer is, 'No!'"

The Emperor's face did not change as he said, "I ask it for your country, not for myself, monsieur."

"And I will give it to my country, not to you!" said the marquis, violently.

Jack looked at the Emperor. He noticed his unkempt hair brushed forward, his short thumbs pinching the table-cloth, his closed eyes.

The Marquis de Nesville took a step towards him.

"Does your majesty remember the night that Morny lay dying in the shadows? And that horrible croak from the darkness when he raised himself on one elbow and gasped, 'Sire, prenez garde à la Prusse!' Then he died. That was all—a warning, a groan, the death-rattle in the shadows by the bed. Then he died."

The Emperor never moved.

"'Look out for Prussia!' That was Morny's last gasp. And now? Prussia is there, you are here! And you need aid, and you send for me, and I tell you that my secrets are for my country, not for you! No, not for you—you who said, 'It is easy to govern the French, they only need a war every four years!' Now—here is your war! Govern!"

The Emperor's slow eyes rested a moment on the man before him. But the man, trembling, pallid with passion, clenched his hands and hurled an insult at the Emperor through his set teeth: "Napoleon the Little! Listen! When you have gone down in the crash of a rotten throne and a blood-bought palace, then, when the country has shaken this—this thing—from her bent back, then I will give to my country all I have! But never to you, to save your name and your race and your throne—never!"

He fairly frothed at the lips as he spoke; his eyes blazed.

"Your coup-d'état made me childless! I had a son, fairer than yours, who lies asleep in there—brave, gentle, loving—a son of mine, a De Nesville! Your bribed troops killed him—shot him to death on the boulevards—him among the others—so that you could sit safely in the Tuileries! I saw them—those piled corpses! I saw little children stabbed to death with bayonets, I saw the heaped slain lying before Tortoni's, where the whole street was flooded crimson and the gutters rippled blood! And you? I saw you ride with your lancers into the Rue Saint-Honoré, and when you met the barricade you turned pale and rode back again! I saw you; I was sitting with my dead boy on my knees—I saw you—"

With a furious cry the marquis tore a revolver from his pocket and sprang on the Emperor, and at the same instant Jack seized the crazy man by the shoulders and hurled him violently to the floor.

Stunned, limp as a rag, the marquis lay at the Emperor's feet, his clenched hands slowly relaxing.

The Emperor had not moved.

Scarcely knowing what he did, Jack stooped, drew the revolver from the extended fingers, and laid it on the table. Then, with a fearful glance at the Emperor, he dragged the marquis to the door, opened it with a shove of his foot, and half closed it again.

The aide-de-camp stood there, staring at the prostrate man.

"Here, help me with him to his carriage; he is ill," panted Jack—"lift him!"

Together they carried him out to the terrace, and down the steps to a coupé that stood waiting.

"The marquis is ill," said Jack again; "put him to bed at once. Drive fast."

Before the sound of the wheels died away Jack hastened back to the dining-room. Through the half-opened door he peered, hesitated, turned away, and mounted the stairs slowly to his own chamber.

In the dining-room the lamp still burned dimly. Beside it sat the Emperor, head bent, picking absently at the table-cloth with short, shrunken thumbs.

CHAPTER XV

THE INVASION OF LORRAINE

It was not yet dawn. Jack, sleeping with his head on his elbow, shivered in his sleep, gasped, woke, and sat up in bed. There was a quiet footfall by his bed, the scrape of a spur, then silence.

"Is that you, Mr. Grahame?" he asked.

"Yes; I didn't mean to wake you. I'm off. I was going to leave a letter to thank you and Madame de Morteyn—"

"Are you dressed? What time is it?"

"Four o'clock—twenty minutes after. It's a shame to rouse you, my dear fellow."

"Oh, that's all right," said Jack. "Will you strike a light—there are candles on my dresser. Ah, that's better."

He sat blinking at Grahame, who, booted and spurred and buttoned to the chin, looked at him quizzically.

"You were not going off without your coffee, were you?" asked Jack. "Nonsense!—wait." He pulled a bell-rope dangling over his head. "Now that means coffee and hot rolls in twenty minutes."

When Jack had bathed and shaved, operations he executed with great rapidity, the coffee was brought, and he and Grahame fell to by candle-light.

"I thought you were afoot?" said Jack, glancing at the older man's spurs.

"I'm going to hunt up a horse; I'm tired of this eternal tramping," replied Grahame. "Hello, is this package for me?"

"Yes, there's a cold chicken and some things, and a flask to keep you until you find your Hohenzollern Regiment again."