An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery)

He took a pen and himself wrote a private and confidential letter to the Emperor, and another of ten lines to Marechal Duroc. Then he rang the bell, asked his secretary for a diplomatic passport, and said tranquilly to the old lawyer, “What is your honest opinion of that trial?”

“Do you know, monseigneur, who was at the bottom of this cruel wrong?”

“I presume I do; but I have reasons to wish for certainty,” replied Talleyrand. “Return to Troyes; bring me the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, here, to-morrow at the same hour, but secretly; ask to be ushered into Madame de Talleyrand’s salon; I will tell her you are coming. If Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, who shall be placed where she can see a man who will be standing before me, recognizes that man as an individual who came to her house during the conspiracy of de Polignac and Riviere, tell her to remember that, no matter what I say or what he answers me, she must not utter a word nor make a gesture. One thing more, think only of saving the de Simeuse brothers; don’t embarrass yourself with that scoundrel of a bailiff – ”

“A sublime man, monseigneur!” exclaimed Bordin.

“Enthusiasm! in you, Bordin! The man must be remarkable. Our sovereign has an immense self-love, Monsieur le marquis,” he said, changing the conversation. “He is about to dismiss me that he may commit follies without warning. The Emperor is a great soldier who can change the laws of time and distance, but he cannot change men; yet he persists in trying to run them in his own mould! Now, remember this; the young men’s pardon can be obtained by one person only – Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne.”

The marquis went alone to Troyes and told the whole matter to Laurence. She obtained permission from the authorities to see Michu, and the marquis accompanied her to the gates of the prison, where he waited for her. When she came out her face was bathed in tears.

“Poor man!” she said; “he tried to kneel to me, praying that I would not think of him, and forgetting the shackles that were on his feet! Ah, marquis, I will plead his cause. Yes, I’ll kiss the boot of their Emperor. If I fail – well, the memory of that man shall live eternally honored in our family. Present his petition for mercy so as to gain time; meantime I am resolved to have his portrait. Come, let us go.”

The next day, when Talleyrand was informed by a sign agreed upon that Laurence was at her post, he rang the bell; his orderly came to him, and received orders to admit Monsieur Corentin.

“My friend, you are a very clever fellow,” said Talleyrand, “and I wish to employ you.”

“Monsiegneur – ”

“Listen. In serving Fouche you will get money, but never honor nor any position you can acknowledge. But in serving me, as you have lately done at Berlin, you can win credit and repute.”

“Monseigneur is very good.”

“You displayed genius in that late affair at Gondreville.”

“To what does Monseigneur allude?” said Corentin, with a manner that was neither too reserved nor too surprised.

“Ah, Monsieur!” observed the minister, dryly, “you will never make a successful man; you fear – ”

“What, monseigneur?”

“Death!” replied Talleyrand, in his fine, deep voice. “Adieu, my good friend.”

“That is the man,” said the Marquis de Chargeboeuf entering the room after Corentin was dismissed; “but we have nearly killed the countess.”

“He is the only man I know capable of playing such a trick,” replied the minister. “Monsieur le marquis, you are in danger of not succeeding in your mission. Start ostensibly for Strasburg; I’ll send you double passports in blank to be filled out. Provide yourself with substitutes; change your route and above all your carriage; let your substitutes go on to Strasburg, and do you reach Prussia through Switzerland and Bavaria. Not a word – prudence! The police are against you; and you do not know what the police are – ”

Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne offered the then celebrated Robert Lefebvre a sufficient sum to induce him to go to Troyes and take Michu’s portrait. Monsieur de Grandville promised to afford the painter every possible facility. Monsieur de Chargeboeuf then started in the old berlingot, with Laurence and a servant who spoke German. Not far from Nancy they overtook Mademoiselle Goujet and Gothard, who had preceded them in an excellent carriage, which the marquis took, giving them in exchange the berlingot.

Talleyrand was right. At Strasburg the commissary-general of police refused to countersign the passport of the travellers, and gave them positive orders to return. By that time the marquis and Laurence were leaving France by way of Besancon with the diplomatic passport.

Laurence crossed Switzerland in the first days of October, without paying the slightest attention to that glorious land. She lay back in the carriage in the torpor which overtakes a criminal on the eve of his execution. To her eyes all nature was shrouded in a seething vapor; even common things assumed fantastic shapes. The one thought, “If I do not succeed they will kill themselves,” fell upon her soul with reiterated blows, as the bar of the executioner fell upon the victim’s members when tortured on the wheel. She felt herself breaking; she lost her energy in this terrible waiting for the cruel moment, short and decisive, when she should find herself face to face with that man on whom the fate of the condemned depended. She chose to yield to her depression rather than waste her strength uselessly. The marquis, who was incapable of understanding this resolve of firm minds, which often assumes quite diverse aspects (for in such moments of tension certain superior minds give way to surprising gaiety), began to fear that he might never bring Laurence alive to the momentous interview, solemn to them only, and yet beyond the ordinary limits of private life. To Laurence, the necessity of humiliating herself before that man, the object of her hatred and contempt, meant the sacrifice of all her noblest feelings.

“After this,” she said, “the Laurence who survives will bear no likeness to her who is now to perish.”

The travellers could not fail to be aware of the vast movement of men and material which surrounded them the moment they entered Prussia. The campaign of Jena had just begun. Laurence and the marquis beheld the magnificent divisions of the French army deploying and parading as if at the Tuileries. In this display of military power, which can be adequately described only with the words and images of the Bible, the proportions of the Man whose spirit moved these masses grew gigantic to Laurence’s imagination. Soon, the cry of victory resounded in her ears. The Imperial arms had just obtained two signal advantages. The Prince of Prussia had been killed the evening before the day on which the travellers arrived at Saalfeld on their endeavor to overtake Napoleon, who was marching with the rapidity of lightning.

At last, on the 13th of October (date of ill-omen) Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne was skirting a river in the midst of the Grand Army, seeing nought but confusion, sent hither and thither from one village to another, from division to division, frightened at finding herself alone with one old man tossed about in an ocean of a hundred and fifty thousand armed men facing a hundred and fifty thousand more. Weary of watching the river through the hedges of the muddy road which she was following along a hillside, she asked its name of a passing soldier.

“That’s the Saale,” he said, showing her the Prussian army, grouped in great masses on the other side of the stream.

Night came on. Laurence beheld the camp-fires lighted and the glitter of stacked arms. The old marquis, whose courage was chivalric, drove the horses himself (two strong beasts bought the evening before), his servant sitting beside him. He knew very well he should find neither horses nor postilions within the lines of the army. Suddenly the bold equipage, an object of great astonishment to the soldiers, was stopped by a gendarme of the military gendarmerie, who galloped up to the carriage, calling out to the marquis: “Who are you? where are you going? what do you want?”

“The Emperor,” replied the Marquis de Chargeboeuf; “I have an important dispatch for the Grand-marechal Duroc.”

“Well, you can’t stay here,” said the gendarme.

Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne and the marquis were, however, compelled to remain where they were on account of the darkness.

“Where are we?” she asked, stopping two officers whom she saw passing, whose uniforms were concealed by cloth overcoats.

“You are among the advanced guard of the French army,” answered one of the officers. “You cannot stay here, for if the enemy makes a movement and the artillery opens you will be between two fires.”

“Ah!” she said, with an indifferent air.

Hearing that “Ah!” the other officer turned and said: “How did that woman come here?”

“We are waiting,” said Laurence, “for a gendarme who has gone to find General Duroc, a protector who will enable us to speak to the Emperor.”

“Speak to the Emperor!” exclaimed the first officer; “how can you think of such a thing – on the eve of a decisive battle?”

“True,” she said; “I ought to speak to him on the morrow – victory would make him kind.”

The two officers stationed themselves at a little distance and sat motionless on their horses. The carriage was now surrounded by a mass of generals, marshals, and other officers, all extremely brilliant in appearance, who appeared to pay deference to the carriage merely because it was there.

“Good God!” said the marquis to Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne; “I am afraid you spoke to the Emperor.”

“The Emperor?” said a colonel, beside them, “why there he is!” pointing to the officer who had said, “How did that woman get here?” He was mounted on a white horse, richly caparisoned, and wore the celebrated gray top-coat over his green uniform. He was scanning with a field-glass the Prussian army massed beyond the Saale. Laurence understood then why the carriage remained there, and why the Emperor’s escort respected it. She was seized with a convulsive tremor – the hour had come! She heard the heavy sound of the tramp of men and the clang of their arms as they arrived at a quick step on the plateau. The batteries had a language, the caissons thundered, the brass glittered.

“Marechal Lannes will take position with his whole corps in the advance; Marechal Lefebvre and the Guard will occupy this hill,” said the other officer, who was Major-general Berthier.

The Emperor dismounted. At his first motion Roustan, his famous mameluke, hastened to hold his horse. Laurence was stupefied with amazement; she had never dreamed of such simplicity.

“I shall pass the night on the plateau,” said the Emperor.

Just then the Grand-marechal Duroc, whom the gendarme had finally found, came up to the Marquis de Chargeboeuf and asked the reason of his coming. The marquis replied that a letter from the Prince de Talleyrand, of which he was the bearer, would explain to the marshal how urgent it was that Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne and himself should obtain an audience of the Emperor.

“His Majesty will no doubt dine at his bivouac,” said Duroc, taking the letter, “and when I find out what your object is, I will let you know if you can see him. Corporal,” he said to the gendarme, “accompany this carriage, and take it close to that hut at the rear.”

Monsieur de Chargeboeuf followed the gendarme and stopped his horses behind a miserable cabin, built of mud and branches, surrounded by a few fruit-trees, and guarded by pickets of infantry and cavalry.

It may be said that the majesty of war appeared here in all its grandeur. From this height the lines of the two armies were visible in the moonlight. After an hour’s waiting, the time being occupied by the incessant coming and going of the aides-de-camp, Duroc himself came for Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne and the marquis, and made them enter the hut, the floor of which was of battened earth like that of a stable.

Before a table with the remains of dinner, and before a fire made of green wood which smoked, Napoleon was seated in a clumsy chair. His muddy boots gave evidence of a long tramp across country. He had taken off the famous top-coat; and his equally famous green uniform, crossed by the red cordon of the Legion of honor and heightened by the white of his kerseymere breeches and of his waistcoat, brought out vividly his pale and terrible Caesarian face. One hand was on a map which lay unfolded on his knees. Berthier stood near him in the brilliant uniform of the vice-constable of the Empire. Constant, the valet, was offering the Emperor his coffee from a tray.

“What do you want?” said Napoleon, with a show of roughness, darting his eye like a flash through Laurence’s head. “You are no longer afraid to speak to me before the battle? What is it about?”

“Sire,” she said, looking at him with as firm an eye, “I am Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne.”