The Child Wife

“Come!” cried the sinful but courageous Count, “there must be no half measures – no weak backslidings! We’ve resolved upon this thing, and we must go through with it! Which of you is afraid?”

“Not I,” answered Saint A.

“Nor I,” said La G – , ci-devant billiard-sharper of Leicester Square, London.

“I’m not afraid,” said the Duke. “But do you think it is right?”

His grace was the only man of the five who had a spark of humanity in his heart. A poor weak man, he was only allied with the others in the intimacy of a fast friendship.

“Right?” echoed La G – . “What’s wrong in it? Would it be right to let this canaille of demagogues rule Paris – France? That’s what it’ll come to if we don’t act. Now, or never, say I!”

“And I!”

“And all of us?”

“We must do more than say,” said De M – , glancing toward the tamer of the Boulogne eagle, who still stood against the fire-place, looking scared and irresolute. “We must swear it!”

“Come, Louis!” he continued, familiarly addressing himself to the Prince-President. “We’re all in the same boat here. It’s a case of life or death, and we must stand true to one another. I propose that we swear it!”

“I have no objection,” said the nephew of Napoleon, led on by a man whom his great uncle would have commanded. “I’ll make any oath you like.”

“Enough!” cried De M – , taking a brace of duelling pistols from the mantelshelf and placing them crosswise on the table, one on top of the other. “There, gentlemen! There’s the true Christian symbol, and over it let us make oath, that in this day’s work we live or die together?”

“We swear it on the Cross!”

“On the Cross, and by the Virgin!”

“On the Cross, and by the Virgin!”

The oath had scarce died on their lips when the door was once more opened, introducing one of those uniformed couriers who were constantly coming and going.

They were all officers of high rank, and all men with fearless but sinister faces.

“Well, Colonel Gardotte!” asked De M – , without waiting for the President to speak; “how are things going on in the Boulevard de Bastille?”

“Charmingly,” replied the Colonel. “Another round of champagne, and my fellows will be in the right spirit – ready for anything!”

“Give it them! Twice if it be needed. Here’s the equivalent for the keepers of the cabarets. If there’s not enough, take their trash on a promise to pay. Say that it’s on account of – Ha! Lorrillard!”

Colonel Gardotte, in brilliant Zouave uniform, was forgotten, or at all events set aside, for a big, bearded man in dirty blouse, at that moment admitted into the room.

“What is it, mon brave?”

“I come to know at what hour we are to commence firing from the barricade? It’s built now, and we’re waiting for the signal?”

Lorrillard spoke half aside, and in a hoarse, hurried whisper.

“Be patient, good Lorrillard?” was the reply. “Give your fellows another glass, and wait till you hear a cannon fired in front of the Madeleine. Take care you don’t get so drunk as to be incapable of hearing it. Also, take care you don’t shoot any of the soldiers who are to attack you, or let them shoot you!”

“I’ll take special care about the last, your countship. A cannon, you say, will be fired by the Madeleine?”

“Yes; discharged twice to make sure – but you needn’t wait for the second report. At the first, blaze away with your blank cartridges, and don’t hurt our dear Zouaves. Here’s something for yourself, Lorrillard! Only an earnest of what you may expect when this little skirmish is over.”

The sham-barricader accepted the gold coins passed into his palm; and with a salute such as might have been given by the boatswain of a buccaneer, he slouched back through the half-opened doorway, and disappeared.

Other couriers continued to come and go, most in military costumes, delivering their divers reports – some of them in open speech, others in mysterious undertone – not a few of them under the influence of drink!

On that day the army of Paris was in a state of intoxication – ready not alone for the suppression of a riot they had been told to prepare for; but for anything – even to the slaughter of the whole Parisian people!

At 3 p.m. they were quite prepared for this. The champagne and sausages were all consumed. They were again hungry and thirsty, but it was the hunger of the hell-hound, and the thirst of the bloodhound.

“The time has come!” said De M – to his fellow-conspirators. “We may now release them from their leash! Let the gun be fired?”

Chapter Thirty One.

In the Hotel de Louvre

“Come, girls! It’s time for you to be dressing. The gentlemen are due in half an hour.”

The speech was made in a handsome apartment of the Hotel de Louvre, and addressed to two young ladies, in elegant dishabille, one of them seated in an easy chair, the other lying full length upon a sofa.

A negress, with chequered toque, was standing near the door, summoned in to assist the young ladies in their toilet.

The reader may recognise Mrs Girdwood, daughter, niece, and servant.

It is months since we have met them. They have done the European tour up the Rhine, over the Alps, into Italy. They are returning by way of Paris, into which capital they have but lately entered; and are still engaged in its exploration.

“See Paris last,” was the advice given them by a Parisian gentleman, whose acquaintance they had made; and when Mrs Girdwood, who smattered a little French, asked, Pourquoi? she was told that by seeing it first she would care for nothing beyond.

She had taken the Frenchman’s hint, and was now completing the programme.

Though she had met German barons and Italian counts by the score, her girls were still unengaged. Nothing suitable had offered itself in the shape of a title. It remained to be seen what Paris would produce.

The gentlemen “due in half an hour” were old acquaintances; two of them her countrymen, who, making the same tour, had turned up repeatedly on the route, sometimes travelling in her company. They were Messrs Lucas and Spiller.

She thought nothing of these. But there was a third expected, and looked for with more interest; one who had only called upon them the day before, and whom they had not seen since the occasion of his having dined with them in their Fifth Avenue house in New York.

It was the lost lord.

On his visit of yesterday everything had been explained; how he had been detained in the States on diplomatic business; how he had arrived in London after their departure for the Continent, with apologies for not writing to them – ignorant of their whereabouts.

On Mr Swinton’s part this last was a lie, as well as the first. In the chronicles of the time he had full knowledge of where they might have been found. He had studiously consulted the American newspaper published in London, which registered the arrivals and departures of transatlantic tourists, and knew to an hour when Mrs Girdwood and her girls left Cologne, crossed the Alps, stood upon the Bridge of Sighs, or climbed to the burning crater of Vesuvius.

And he had sighed and burned to be along with them, but could not. There was something needed for the accomplishment of his wishes – cash.

It was only when he saw recorded the Girdwood arrival in Paris, that he was at length enabled to scrape together sufficient for the expenses of a passage to, and short sojourn in, the French capital; and this only after a propitious adventure in which he had been assisted by the smiles of the goddess Fortune, and the beauty of his beloved Fan. Fan had been left behind in the London lodging. And by her own consent. She was satisfied to stay, even with the slender stipend her husband could afford to leave for her maintenance. In London the pretty horse-breaker would be at home.

“You have only half an hour, my dears!” counselled Mrs Girdwood, to stimulate the girls towards getting ready.