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THE NOVELS AND ROMANCES
OF
ALPHONSE DAUDET
i^antip HiBrarp <!EiJition
KINGS IN EXILE
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KI9ijGS ISK EXILE
BOSTON
Little Brown
C • Coinpany
mm
Copyright, 1899,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEHICA
TO
EDMOND DE GONCOURT
TO THE HISTORIAN OF QUEENS AND FAVOURITES
TO THE WRITER OF " GERMINIE LACERTEUX "
AND OF "FR^RES ZEMGANNO '*
I OFFER THIS ROMANCE OF MODERN HISTORY
WITH MY GREAT ADMIRATION
ALPHONSB DAUDRT
CONTENTS
Chapte« Paob
I. The First Day i
II. A Royalist . . . . c 30
III. The Court at Saint-Mand^ 62
IV. The King makes F£te 86
V. J. Tom Levis, Foreigners' Agent 122
VI. The Bohemia of Exile 152
VII. Popular Joys 180
VIII. The Grand Stroke 198
IX. At the Academy 228
X. Family Scene 254
XI. The Watchers 271
XII. The Night-Train 300
XIII. In the Chapel 328
XIV. A Solution 335
XV. The Little King 353
XVI. The Dark Room 364
XVII. Fides, Spes 379
XVIII. The End of a Race 39^
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
One is at a loss which to admire more, the
boldness of Daudet in selecting crowned heads as
the persons of a modern realistic novel, or the
masterly way in which he used his materials. I
doubt if any other of his romances strikes a finer
and more elevated tone at the outset and pre-
serves that tone better throughout, or if there be
one in which the literary artist is more evident
from beginning to end.
It is safe to guess that the experience of the
Empress Carlotta in Mexico had much to do with
the genesis of" Les Rois en Exil " ; indeed, he seems
to have given the clue in descriptions of the land
whence the Queen of lUyria fled, which tally with
the home of Carlotta on the Adriatic, and again
in the passages where Meraut refers to his pre-
vious engagement as tutor to an imperial prince,
when he promptly recognized that the situation was
an impossible one for a straightforward, earnest man,
owing to the cabals at the Court. Meraut does not
say that he crossed the Atlantic, but Daudet seems
to have had the Court of Maximilian in mind.
The description of the Queen of lUyria's previous
VI Introduction,
visit to Paris, during the reign of Napoleon III,
when she was a guest at the Tuileries, adds strength
to the conjecture.
But it must be said that in the Queen of lUyria the
author has drawn a woman very different from the
unhappy empress who still lives in her beautiful
palace of Miramar with darkened mind, and that
the king is an absolutely different person from
Maximilian the too ambitious. Only in the sub-
sidiary character of the debauched prince royal of
another line, the boon companion of that roi fai-
neant the King of Illyria, do we find a close re-
semblance to the scion of a royal house of the
Netherlands, whose escapades once filled Paris with
scandalous joy.
In M^raut, tutor to the hapless heir apparent of
the Illyrian house, Daudet has used some of his
own reminiscences, especially where the tutor re-
calls his early days in the home of that stanch
royalist, the weaver in the Southern town. There
we find Daudet's father again and see the way in
which the banished King of France tried to en-
courage his adherents with hopes of his restoration.
The little prince is one of those doomed children
who are described in characters like **Jack,"
doomed, not through the brainless selfishness of an
Ida de Barancey, but rather through the inevitable
march of events political and the sickly constitu-
tion inherited from corrupt ancestors.
The Queen is the opposite of Jack's mother and
the tutor is the opposite of Jack's tutor and step-
Introduction, vii
father. Yet the results are the same. The little
prince and Jack are pots of clay broken by the
pots of iron as they float down the river of life.
There is a Japanese proverb : *' Taisho ni tan^
ga nashi," meaning that great men have no chil-
dren. France has realized the truth of this in the
present century. Where are the sons of Napoleon
the Great and Napoleon the Less?
One source for the character of filys^e M6raut
the tutor may have been Auguste Brachet, a
teacher of the Empress Eugenie, who wrote a book
called ** The Italy one Sees, and the Italy one does
Not See," and had in preparation a '* Comparative
Psychology of the Europeans." Daudet seems to
have combined for this character the fervent and
thoroughly honest loyalism of his own father, the
silk-weaver of Nimes, with the breadth of views
and talent for generalization he admired in Auguste
Brachet. Of him he said to his son : —
" I may be able to see individuals and discern
the motives for their action, but Brachet judges the
masses, nations and national events with an un-
rivalled sagacity. Listen attentively to him and
profit by him. You have before you one of the
finest brains of modern times ! "
In Tom L^vis and his wife S^phora Leemans
we have two character parts that affect us with a
sense of regret, because we would like to hear more
of them and their deeds of guile. That is a
delightful chapter in which Leemans, the old dealei
in bric'd'braCf has asked to dinner the other con^
viii Introduction.
spirators against the pocket of Christian II, when
the men vie one with another in anecdotes of the
tricks by which they have beguiled, not only the
ordinary public, but the big collectors.
M. Anatole France has recently touched the
same theme in *' L'Anneau d'Amethyste." The
astute Hebrew baron sees M. de Terremonde
coming out of the Hotel Drouot with a little
Ruysdael under his arm, a genuine canvas he has
picked up for thirty francs. The amateur shows
him his bargain with triumph, but the baron says,
** My dear sir, you ought to have paid ten thousand !
If you had, it would be worth thirty thousand in
your hands. But now, when you wish to hold
your sale, that little picture which cost only thirty
francs will scarcely bring five hundred ! You
should be reasonable. Goods cannot jump at one
bound from thirty to thirty thousand francs ! "
The novel by Anatole France recalls Daudet in
more ways than one, though not in certain inde-
cencies that are not needed for the development
of the story; but it deepens the impression of
Daudet's genius by its manifest inferiority. To be
sure, it is a pamphlet against the anti-Semites;
but its force as a pamphlet is weakened by the
contemptible traits of its Hebrew characters.
How different would have been Daudet's way of
showing France the folly and brutality of the anti-
Semitic movement ! In " Rois en Exil " the old
fabricator of antiques and Sephora the siren are
human beings who act in harmony with their origin
Introduction, ix
and bringing up ; they exhibit a certain apprecia-
tion of drollery, a certain humour in their various
scampish acts.
Not for the first time in this novel did Daudet
show the growth of great events from trivial causes ;
but rarely has he approached so closely as in this
case a distinct moral. The King of Illyria's pas-
sion for low amours lands him at last in the
meshes of a passed mistress of blackmail, who
prevents the expedition to rescue the crown of
Illyria from accomplishing anything, stops the
king on the French coast and brings him to the
verge of selling his claim to the throne. And
when the hopes of the exiles are raised once more
by Christian's voluntary abdication in favour of his
son, it is a piece of pure chance, the glancing of a
bullet fired for sport, that destroys their hopes of
a restoration. So in " L' Anneau d'Amethyste "
Anatole France hinges the elevation of the priest
Guitrel to the bishop's chair on the foolish de-
sire of a youth. The degenerate son of Baron
Jules de Bonmont, originally an Austrian Jew
named Gutenberg, wishes to figure conspicuously
at the hunts given annually by the Due de Br^c^.
He manages to have Guitrel appointed bishop,
so that the latter shall procure this social honour
for him out of gratitude. The social struggler, a
Catholic, but the son of a Jew, is all-powerful in
deciding an important election in the Catholic
church. In Daudet's book it is the prospect of
fleecing Christian II out of several hundred mil-
X Introduction,
lions of francs, which his former subjects are willing
to pay in order to be rid of his claims to the
throne, that sets Sephora and her husband and old
Leemans in motion. Anatole France takes advan-
tage of the Dreyfus case to write a timely novel ;
but Daudet was before him in satirizing the seamy
side of the Hebrews without so charging the colours
as to make his Israelites unreal.
We should recall the fact that Daudet could not
have published this book in France under the
Empire, though he had the Due de Morny for
patron. It was only the Republic that allowed a
novel crammed with Use majeste to appear. He
would have been compelled to adopt the practice
of a former century and issue it in another country.
We may feel sure that it would not have been writ-
ten had the Empire continued, and thus we should
have lacked a modern classic that permits us to
" sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the
death of kings," or, as Gray puts it, —
" With me the Muse shall sit and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the Crowd,
How low, how little are the Proud,
How indigent the Great ! "
Charles de Kay.
KINGS IN EXILE.
I.
THE FIRST DAY.
Frederica had slept since morning. A sleep
of fever and fatigue, with dreams of her distresses
as fallen, exiled queen ; a sleep still shaken by the
din and agony of a two months siege, broken by
bloody, hostile visions, sobs, shudders, spasms of
strained nerves, from which she waked with a start
of terror.
" Zara? . . Where is Zara? . ." she cried.
One of her women came to the bedside and re-
assured her softly. H. R. H. the Comte de Zara
was sleeping quietly in his room ; Mme. fil^onore
was with him.
"And the king?"
*' Gone out since mid-day in one of the hotel
carriages."
*' Alone ? "
No. His Majesty had taken the Councillor
Boscovich with him. While the woman was speak-
ing in her Dalmatian patois, hard and sonorous
as a flood rolling pebbles, the queen felt her fears
diminish ; little by little the peaceful hotel cham-
2 Kings in Exile,
ber, which she had scarcely seen on arriving in
the early dawn, seemed by its very commonplace-
ness to be comfortable and reassuring, with its
light hangings, its tall mirrors, the woolly white
of its carpet, on which the silent flight of the
swallows fell in shadow through the blinds, cross-
ing one another like large night moths.
" Already five o'clock ! . . Come, Petscha, dress
me quickly. . . I am ashamed to have slept so
long."
Five o'clock, and the loveliest day with which
the summer of 1872 had as yet delighted the
Parisians. When the queen stepped out upon
the balcony, that long balcony of the Hotel des
Pyramides, above which its fifteen windows veiled
in pink cambric look down upon the finest part
of the Rue de Rivoli, she marvelled. Below, in
the broad roadway, mingling the sound of their
wheels with the light rain of the water-carts, was
an uninterrupted line of carriages going to the
Bois with a twinkling of axles, harness, and gay
dresses, flying past in a gale of haste. Then,
beyond the crowd which pressed against the gilded
railings of the Tuileries, the fascinated eyes of
the queen fell on a luminous confusion of white
gowns, blond hair, dazzling silks, aerial games,
and all that gayety of Sunday-best and childhood
with which the great Parisian garden fills its ter-
races on sunny days, until they rested delight-
edly on the dome of verdure, the vast green roof
of broad and spreading leafage made by the
The First Day. 3
horse-chestnut trees, which sheltered, at this par-
ticular hour, a military band, to the brass bursts
of which the shouts of the children answered.
The bitter rancour in the heart of the exile sub-
sided, little by little, before that scene of gayety.
A comfortable warmth seemed to wrap itself about
her, clinging yet supple as a silken net; her
cheeks, faded by privations and long night-
watches, renewed their rosy life. The thought
came to her : *' Dieii! how good this is ! "
The heaviest misfortunes have these sudden and
unconscious comforts. It is not from human be-
ings that they come, but from the multiplying elo-
quence of things. To this deposed queen, cast
with her husband and child into a land of exile
by one of those sudden upheavals of a people that
make one think of earthquakes accompanied by
yawning abysses, flashes of lightning, and volcanic
eruptions, — to this woman, whose brow, rather low
but still so proud, bore the mark, and, as it were,
the furrow of one of the noblest crowns of Europe,
no human words could have brought consolation.
Yet here was Nature, joyous, fresh, and renewed in
this wondrous summer of Paris, which has some-
thing of a hothouse and of the soft coolness of
river lands, speaking to her of hope, of pacifica-
tion, of resurrection.
But while she thus allowed her nerves to relax,
her eyes to drink in rest from that verdurous
horizon, suddenly the exiled woman quivered. At
her left, over there, near the entrance of the
garden, a spectral building reared itself, made of
4 Kings in Exile.
calcined walls and scorched columns, roofless, the
windows mere blue holes looking into space, the
frontage opening to a perspective of ruin, while
quite at the end, above the Seine, was a pavilion,
almost entire, merely touched and gilded by the
flames which had blackened the iron of its balco-
nies. That was all that remained of the palace
of the Tuileries.
The sight caused her deep emotion, the giddi-
ness of a sudden fall, heart-foremost, on those
walls. Ten years ago, but it was not yet ten —
oh ! what sad chance was this, and how prophetic
it seemed to her to come and lodge before these
ruins — ten years ago she had lived in that palace
with her husband. It was in the spring of 1864.
Just three months married, she was travelling to
the various Courts in all her joys as hereditary
princess and wife. Everybody liked her and wel-
comed her. Especially at the Tuileries, what balls,
what fetes ! Beneath those crumbling walls she
saw them again. She saw the vast and splendid
galleries dazzling with lights and jewels, the Court
robes floating on the grand stairway between two
hedges of glittering cuirasses ; and that invisible
music now rising in gusts from the garden, seemed
to her Valdteufel's orchestra in the Salle des
Mar^chaux. Was it not to that gay, springing
tune that she had danced with her cousin Maxi-
milian just one week before he started for Mexico?
. . Yes, indeed it was. . . A quadrille of emperors
and kings, of queens and empresses, whose stately
interweavings and august faces this air from La
The First Day, 5
Belle H616ne brought back before her. . . Max, so
anxious, gnawing his blond beard ; Carlotta facing
him next to Napoleon, radiant, transfigured by this
joy of being empress. . . Where were they now,
the dancers of that beautiful quadrille? All dead,
exiled, or mad ! Was God no longer on the side
of kings? . .
Then she remembered all she had suffered since
the death of old Leopold, which placed upon
her head the double crown of Illyria and Dalmatia :
her daughter, her first-born, carried off in the midst
of the coronation fetes by one of those strange,
nameless maladies which prove the exhaustion of
a blood and the end of a race ; and so suddenly
that the tapers of the death-watch mingled with
the illuminations of the town, and no time was
given to take down the flags in the Cathedral for
the day of the funeral. Then, beside this great
sorrow, beside the transports of fear caused inces-
santly by the feeble health of her son, other sor-
rows known to herself alone lay hidden in the
most secret corners of her woman's soul. . . Alas !
the heart of the peoples is not more faithful than
that of kings. One day, without knowing why or
wherefore, this Illyria, which had always so feted
them, was disafTected to its princes. Then fol-
lowed misconceptions, obstinacy, distrust, and
finally hatred, — that horrible hatred of a whole
nation, that hatred which she felt in the air, in the
silence of the streets, the irony of glances, the
frowning of bent brows ; a hatred which made her
fear to show herself at a window, and held hef
6 Kings in Exile,
back in the depths of her carnage in her short,
infrequent drives. Oh ! those shouts of death
beneath the terraces of her castle of Leybach !
As she looked at the ruins of the palace of the
kings of France she thought she heard them still.
She saw the meeting of the Council, the ghastly
ministers wild with fear entreating the king to
abdicate . . . then the flight in peasants' clothes
through the darkness, across the mountains . . .
the villages uprisen and howling, drunk with
liberty like the towns . . . bonfires everywhere on
the heights . . . the burst of tender tears that came
to her in the midst of this great disaster on finding
milk in a hut for her child's supper . . . and lastly,
the sudden resolution with which she inspired the
king to throw himself into Ragusa, still faithful to
them, and the two months there . . . months of
privations and anguish, the town besieged, bom-
barded, her child ill, almost dying of hunger, the
shame of a surrender at last, the dreadful embarca-
tion in the midst of a silent and weary crowd . . .
and then the French ship bearing them away to
other miseries, to the chill, the unknown of exile ;
while behind them floated the flag of the Illyrian
Republic, new and all-conquering, above their bat-
tered castle. . . The Tuileries, in ruins before her,
recalled all this.
"Paris is fine, is it not?" said a voice behind
her that was young and joyous in spite of its nasal
tone.
The king had come out upon the balcony, hold-
ing in his arms the little prince, and was showing
The First Day, 7
him that horizon of trees, roofs, cupolas, and the
rush of the street in the beautiful light of the clos-
ing day.
" Oh, yes ! very fine ! . . " said the child, a poor
little boy some five or six years old, with drawn,
sharp features, hair too blond and closely cut, as
if after illness. He looked about him with the
gentle little smile of a sufferer, surprised to hear
no longer the cannon of the siege, and brightening
visibly from the gayety about him. To him, exile
came in happy fashion. Nor did the king seem
sad ; he had brought back from his two hours on
the boulevard a brilliant, exhilarated countenance
which formed a contrast to the grief of the queen.
They were, in any case, two absolutely distinct
types : he, slender, delicate, a dead-white skin and
crisp black hair and moustache, which he twisted
perpetually with a hand too pale and supple, hand-
some eyes but rather shifty, and something in
his glance that was irresolute and childish and
made a spectator say, although he was past his
thirtieth year : " How young he is ! " The queen,
on the contrary, a robust Dalmatian with a grave
air and little gesture, was the real male of the two,
in spite of the transparent splendour of her com-
plexion, and her magnificent hair, of that Venetian
auburn in which the Orient seems to have mingled
the tawny, ruddy tones of its henna. Christian, in
her presence, had the constrained, rather embar-
rassed manner of a husband who has accepted too
much devotion, too many sacrifices. He inquired
gently about her health, whether she had slept,
8 Kings in Exile.
and how she felt after her journey. She replied
with measured gentleness, full of condescension,
but in reality was thinking only of her son, whose
nose and cheeks she felt, and whose motions she
watched with brooding anxiety.
" He is already better than he was down there,"
said Christian, in a low tone.
" Yes, the colour is coming back to his cheeks,"
she replied in a tone of intimacy they never used
except when speaking to each other of the child.
As for him, he smiled to both of them, and drew
their foreheads close together in his pretty caress,
as if aware that his two little arms formed the
sole real link between these beings so dissimilar.
Below them, on the sidewalk, curious spectators,
already informed of the arrival of the princes, had
stopped to raise their eyes to this King and Queen
of lUyria, whose heroic defence of Ragusa made
them celebrated, and whose portraits were figuring
on the front page of all the illustrated papers.
Little by little, just as people look at an escaped
parrot or the pigeons on a roof, idlers had
gathered, their noses in the air, without knowing
really what they gazed at. A crowd formed itself
in front of the hotel and presently all eyes were
fixed on this young couple in travelling costume,
the child's fair head above them, as though up-
lifted by the hope of his vanquished parents and
the joy they felt in having brought him alive
through that awful storm.
" Are you coming in, Frederica? " said the king,
annoyed by the notice of so many persons.
The First Day, 9
But she, her head high, like a queen well-used
to face the antipathy of crowds —
*' Why should I ? " she said ; ** I am very well
here on this balcony."
" Because ... I was forgetting it . . . Rosen is
here, with his son and daughter-in-law. . . He asks
to see you. . ."
At the name of Rosen, which recalled to her so
many good and noble services, the eyes of the
queen lighted up.
" My brave duke ! I was expecting him . . ."
she said ; and then, as she turned to cast a haughty
glance upon the street before re-entering the room,
a man in front of her sprang upon the stone
base of the Tuileries railings, over-topping for a
moment the whole crowd. This was what had hap-
pened at Leybach when shots were fired through
their window. Frederica threw herself back with
a vague expectation of something of the same
kind. A noble brow, a raised hat, hair that was
streaming in the sunlight, while a calm, strong
voice cried out above the noises of the crowd,
" Vive le roi ! " was all that she saw of that un-
known friend who dared, in the face of republican
Paris, before the crumbling Tuileries, to offer a
welcome to these discrowned sovereigns. This
sympathetic greeting, of which she had been so
long deprived, made an impression on the queen
like that of a brightly burning fire after a march
through bitter cold. She was warmed from the
heart to the skin, and the sight of old Rosen com-
pleted this vivid and beneficent reaction.
lo Kings in Exile.
The Due de Rosen, general and former chief of
the Royal military household, had quitted lUyria
three years earlier, when the king took from him
his post of honour and confidence to give it to a
liberal ; favouring thus the new ideas to the detri-
ment of what was then called at Leybach the
queen's party. Certainly he had reason to blame
Christian, who sacrificed him coldly, and suffered
him to go without regret, without farewell — him,
the victor of Mostar, of Livno, the hero of the
grand Montenegrin wars. After selling his castles,
estates, and property, thus characterizing his de-
parture with all the dignity of a protestation, the
old general settled in Paris, married his son there,
and during three long years of vain expectation
felt his anger against royal ingratitude increased
by the griefs of emigration and the melancholy
of a life unoccupied. Yet, the moment that he
heard of the arrival of his princes he went to
them at once without hesitating; and now, stiff
and erect in the middle of the salon, his colossal
form rising almost to the height of the chandelier,
he was awaiting with such emotion the favour of
a gracious welcome that his long pandour legs
could be seen to tremble, his broad, short breast
in a tight blue military coat to pant beneath the
grand cordon of the Order. His head alone, the
small head of a hawk, steely glance, and beak of
prey, remained impassible, with its scanty white
hair bristling, and the hundred little wrinkles of
a skin shrivelled up under fire. The king, who
did not like scenes and was rather embarrassed by
The First Day, ii
this interview, got through it by taking a playful
tone of off-hand cordiality.
'' Well, general," he said, coming up to him
with outstretched hands, *' you were right, after
all ... I let the reins drop too much ... I allowed
myself to be flung — and flat, too."
Then, seeing that the old servitor bent his knee,
he raised him with a motion full of dignity and
pressed him long against his breast. But no one
could have prevented the duke from kneeling
before his queen, to whom the respectfully pas-
sionate caress of that ancient moustache on her
hand caused a strange emotion.
*' Ah ! my poor Rosen ! . . my poor Rosen ! . ."
she murmured.
Gently she closed her eyes that her tears might
not be seen. But those she had shed for years
had left their trace upon the delicate, crimpled
skin of her eyelids, together with the vigils, the
distresses, the disquietudes, all those murderous
wounds that a woman believes she is keeping in
the depths of her being while they mount to the
surface — just as every agitation of the water is
seen to furrow it in visible rings. For the space
of a second that noble face with its pure lines had
a weary, sorrowful expression, which did not es-
cape the eye of the old soldier. *' How she must
have suffered ! " he thought, as he looked at her.
Then, to hide his emotion, he rose abruptly, turned
to his son and daughter-in-law, who had remained
at the farther end of the room, and, in the same
stern tone with which he had shouted in the
12 Kings m Exile,
streets of Leybach, " Sabres up ! . . Charge that
canaille ! . ." he commanded : —
" Colette, Herbert, come here and salute your
queen."
Prince Herbert de Rosen, almost as tall as his
father, with the jaw of a horse, innocent and doll-
like cheeks, came forward, followed by his young
wife. He walked with difficulty, leaning on a cane.
Eight months earlier, at the Chantilly races, he
had broken a leg and a few ribs. The general
did not omit to remark that if it had not been for
that accident, which put his son's life in danger,
they would both have hastened eagerly to shut
themselves up in Ragusa.
" And I should have gone with you, father,"
interrupted the princess, in a tone of heroism not
at all in keeping with her name of Colette and
her gay and lively little cat's nose beneath frizzles
of light hair.
The queen could not restrain a smile as she held
out her hand very cordially. Christian, twisting
his moustache, stared, with the interest of an ama-
teur and eager curiosity, at this frisky little Parisian,
this pretty bird of fashion with its long and va-
riegated plumage, all petticoats and flounces,
whose decked-out daintiness was so great a change
from the noble features and majestic type of the
land from which he came. " That devil of a
Herbert ! how did he manage to get such a
jewel?" thought the king, envying the companion
of his childhood, the tall booby with prominent
eyes, and hair parted in the middle and plastered
The First Day, 13
down in the Russian fashion on either side of a
short and narrow forehead. Then the idea came
to him that if this type of woman was lacking in
Illyria, in Paris it filled the streets ; and exile began
to seem to him very definitely endurable. At any
rate, this exile could not last long. The Illyrians
would soon have enough of their republic. It
was only an affair of two or three months to be
spent away from his own country, a royal holi-
day, which he would certainly employ as gayly as
possible.
" What do you think, general ? " he said laugh-
ing ; " they are already trying to make me buy a
house. . . A gentleman, an Englishman, came to
me this morning. . . He engages to provide me
with a magnificent mansion, furnished, carpeted,
horses in the stable, carnages in the coachhouse,
linen, plate, servants, establishment all complete, <
in forty-eight hours and in whatever quarter I like
best."
" I know your Englishman, Sire ; that is Tom
Levis, an agent for foreigners. . ."
** Yes, I think it was . . . the name sounded like
that. . . Have you had dealings with him? "
" All strangers coming to Paris receive a visit
from Tom and his cab. . . But I wish for your Maj-
esty's sake the acquaintance may end there. . ."
The particular attention with which Prince Her-
bert, as soon as mention was made of Tom Levis,
began to consider the ribbons on his low shoes and
the stripes of his silk stockings, and the furtive
glance the princess cast at her husband, notified
14 Kings in Exile,
Christian that if he wanted information about the
illustrious speculator of the Rue Royale those two
young persons could furnish it. But how, he said
aloud, could the services of the Levis agency be
useful to him? He wanted neither house nor car-
riages, expecting to pass the few months of their
stay in Paris at this hotel.
" Is not that your opinion, Frederica?"
" Oh ! certainly, yes ; that is wisest," replied
the queen, though in her heart she shared none of
the king's illusions as to their return, nor his liking
for transient settlement.
Old Rosen, in his turn, risked a few observations.
This inn life seemed to him scarcely suitable to the
dignity of the house of Illyria. Paris, at this mo-
ment, was full of exiled sovereigns. They all lived
in sumptuous state. The King of Westphalia oc-
cupied a magnificent residence in the Rue de Neu-
bourg, with a pavilion annexed for the household
service. The house of the Queen of Galicia in the
Champs Elys6es, was a perfect palace of luxury and
kept in royal state. The King of Palermo had a
fine establishment at Saint-Mand^, numerous horses
in the stables, a battalion of aides-de-camp. Even
down to the Duke of Palma in his little house at
Passy, none of them were without the semblance
of a Court, and five or six generals at their table.
" No doubt, no doubt," said Christian, impa-
tiently. . . '' But it is not the same thing. . . Those
people will never leave Paris again; for them,
things are decided, finished, whereas for us . . .
Besides, there is a very good reason why we
The First Day, 15
should not buy a palace, friend Rosen. They
have taken all we had, over there. . . A few hun-
dred thousand francs with the Rothschilds in
Naples, and our poor crown, which Mme. de Silvis
saved in a hat-box, that is all we have left. . .
Just fancy the marquise making that long journey
into exile, on foot, in trains, in carriages, always
holding her precious hat-box in hand. 'Twas
droll, oh, so droll ! "
His childishness getting the upper hand, he be-
gan to laugh at their distress as if it was the fun-
niest thing in the world.
The duke did not laugh.
*' Sire," he said, " you did me the honour to as-
sure me just now that you regretted having kept
me so long out of your councils and your heart. . .
Well, I now ask the favour of reinstatement. . .
As long as your exile lasts, give me the functions
I had at Leybach near your Majesties ... as chief
of your civil and military household."
" See his ambition ! " cried the king, gayly.
Then he added in a tone of friendship : '* But
there is no household, my poor general, neither
civil nor military. . . The queen has her chap-
lain and two women . . . Zara, his governess - . . I
have brought Boscovich to do my correspondence,
and Lebeau to shave my chin. . . That is all- . ."
" I still further solicit. Sire. . . Will your Maj-
esty be so kind as to take my son Herbert as
aide-de-camp, and give the princess, my daughter-
in-law, here present, as reader and lady 0/ honour
to the queen? . ."
1 6 Khigs in Exile,
" Granted on my part, duke," said the queen,
turning her beautiful smile upon Colette, quite
dazzled by her new dignity.
As for the prince, he gave by way of thanks to
his sovereign, who granted the brevet of aide-de-
camp with equal courtesy, a graceful neigh, — a
habit he had acquired by dint of frequenting
Tattersall's.
" I will present the three appointments for sig-
nature to-morrow morning," added the general,
respectfully, in a business tone which indicated
that he considered himself as having already
entered upon his functions.
Hearing that tone, that formula, which had so
long and so solemnly pursued him, the young
king let an expression of ennui and discourage-
ment come upon his face ; then he consoled him-
self by looking at the princess, whom joy had
embellished and transfigured, as it does all pretty
faces without points, the charm of which Hes in
the piquant and ever changing surface of their
countenances. Imagine ! lady of honour to Queen
Frederica, she, Colette Sauvadon, niece of Sauva-
don the great wine-merchant of Bercy ! What
would be said in the Rue de Varennes, the Rue
Saint-Dominique, in those exclusive salons to
which her marriage with Herbert de Rosen ad-
mitted her on great occasions, but never intimately?
Already her worldly little mind was travelling in
a land of fancy. She thought of the visiting-
cards she would order printed, the renewal of her
wardrobe, a gown of the lUyrian colours, with
The First Day, 17
cockades of the same for the heads of her horses.
. . But the king's voice, speaking near her, inter-
rupted these thoughts.
** This is our first meal in the land of exile,"
he was saying to the general in a tone half-serious
and designedly emphatic. " I wish the table to be
gay and surrounded by our friends."
Then, noticing the alarmed air of the general
at this brusque invitation, he added : —
" Ah ! yes, very true, etiquette, propriety. . .
Bah ! we have lost the habit of all that since the
siege ; the chief of our household will find many
reforms to make. . . But I request that he will
not begin them until to-morrow."
At this moment the mattre d'hotely throwing
open both sides of the double door, announced
the dinner of their Majesties. The princess drew
herself up, all glorious, to take the arm of the
king ; but he offered it to the queen, and, without
further notice of his guests, conducted her to the
dining-room. All the ceremonial of a Court had
not been abandoned, whatever he might say, in
the casemates of Ragusa.
The transition from sun to artificial light struck
every one on entering. In spite of the chandelier,
the candelabra, and two large lamps on the side-
boards, it was difficult to see clearly; as if the
daylight, brutally excluded before its time, had
left on all things the haziness of twilight. This
melancholy effect was increased by the length
and disproportion of the table to the number of
guests, a table conforming in shape to the exigen-
1 8 Kings in Exile.
cies of etiquette, for which a search had been
made throughout the hotel, and where the king
and queen now took their seats together at one end,
with no one beside them and no one opposite ;
an arrangement which filled the little Princesse de
Rosen with surprise and admiration. Invited
once during the last days of the Empire to dine
at the Tuileries, she remembered very well that
the emperor and empress sat opposite to each
other, like any bourgeois couple at their wedding
feast. " Ah ! this " thought the little parvenue,
closing her fan with a resolute gesture and laying
it beside her with her gloves, *' this is legitimacy !
. . there 's nothing like it."
That thought transformed to her eyes this dreary
sort of depopulated table-d'hote^ the aspect of
which recalled the splendid inns of the Italian
Corniche between Monaco and Saint-Remo at
the beginning of a season, when the rush of the
tourists has not yet begun. The same mix-
ture of people and costumes ; Christian in a sack
coat, the queen in her travelling-dress ; Herbert
and his wife in boulevard watteaii ; while the Fran-
ciscan habit of Pere Alphee, the queen's chaplain,
rubbed against the starred semi-uniform of the
old general. Nothing less imposing could be
seen. One thing alone had grandeur, — the chap-
lain's prayer, asking for the Divine blessing on
this first meal in exile. ** Qiice sumns sumpturi
prima die in exilio "... said the monk, with out-
spread hands ; and those words slowly recited
seemed to prolong very far into the future the
The First Day, 19
royal holiday of King Christian. *' Amen ! " re-
sponded in a grave voice the deposed sovereign,
as if in the Church's Latin he had felt for the first
time the thousand broken links, still living, still
quivering, which the banished of all ages drag
after them, as trees uprooted drag their living
roots.
But the strongest impressions never held long
upon the polished, caressing nature of the Slav.
He was no sooner seated than he recovered his
gayety, his disengaged manner, and talked a great
deal; taking pains, out of regard to the French
lady present, to speak French, very purely, and
yet with a slight Italian zezaiement, which went
extremely well with his laugh. In a tone of heroi-
cal comedy he related certain episodes of the
siege, — the installation of the Court into the case-
mates, and the wonderful figure there made by
the Marquise El^onore de Silvis in her turban with
its green feather and her plaid. Fortunately, that
innocent dame was dining in her pupil's apartment
and could not hear the laughter produced by the
king's jokes. Boscovich and his herbarium served
him next as a target. One would really have
thought that he wanted by sheer boyish nonsense
to avenge him.self for the gravity of circumstances.
The aulic councillor Boscovich, a little man of no
age, timid and gentle, with rabbit-eyes that always
looked sideways, was a learned legal authority,
passionately devoted to botany. At Ragusa, the
courts of law being all closed, he spent his time
in herbalizing under the bomb-shells in the moats
20 Kings in Exile,
of the fortifications, — wholly unconscious heroism
of a mind given up to its mania, pre-occupied
solely, in the midst of this total upheaval of his
country, in saving a magnificent herbal which had
fallen into the hands of the liberals.
" Think, my poor Boscovich," said Christian to
worry him, ** what a splendid bonfire they must
have made of all those dried leaves . . . unless the
RepubUc, being so poor, took it into its head to
cut up your big gray dock-leaves into capes for its
militia."
The councillor laughed like the rest, but with
scared eyes, and many ^'' Ma che . . . ma che!' which
betrayed his innocent terrors.
" How charming the king is ! . . what wit ! . .
and what eyes ! . ." thought the little princess, to
whom Christian bent continually, endeavouring to
diminish the distance that ceremonial placed be-
tween them.
It was a pleasure to see her blossoming out
under the evidently admiring gaze of those august
eyes, playing with her fan, uttering little cries,
throwing back her supple figure, in which laughter
was palpitating in visible waves. The queen, by
her attitude and the private conversation she was
holding with the old duke, who sat next to her,
seemed to isolate herself from the overflowing
gayety. Two or three times, when the siege was
talked of, she said a few words, and each time to
set forth the king's bravery and his strategic knowl-
edge, after which she resumed her aside. In a low
voice the general inquired about the Court people,
The First Day, 21
his old companions who, more fortunate than
himself, had followed their princes to Ragusa.
Many remained there, and to each name men-
tioned by Rosen, the queen was heard to answer
in her grave voice : " Dead ! . . dead ! . ." a funeral
note, sounding the knell of her recent losses.
Nevertheless, after dinner, when they returned to
the salon, Frederica seemed gayer; she made
Colette de Rosen sit beside her on a sofa, and
talked to her with that affectionate familiarity
which she used to attract sympathy, and which
resembled the pressure of her beautiful out-
stretched hand, delicate in the fingers but strong
in the palm, communicating to others its benefi-
cent energy. Suddenly she said : —
** Let us go and see Zara put to bed, princess."
At the end of a long corridor, encumbered, Hke
the rest of the apartment, with piled-up cases, open
trunks from which linen and clothing were pro-
truding in the hurry and confusion of arrival, was
the room of the little prince, lighted by a lamp
with its shade covered so that the light fell below
the level of the bluish curtains of the bed.
A servant-woman was sitting asleep on a trunk,
her head enveloped in her white coif and the large
handkerchief edged with pink which completes the
head-dress of the Dalmatian women.
Near the table sat the governess, leaning lightly
on her elbow, an open book on her knees ; she, too,
had succumbed to a soporific influence, retaining
in her sleep the same romantic and sentimental
air the king had been ridiculing. The queen's
22 Kings i7i Exile,
entrance did not wake her; but the little prince,
at the first motion of the mosquito net that veiled
his cot, stretched out his Httle fists and made an
effort to rise, his eyes wide open, his glance wan-
dering. For months he was so accustomed to be
waked at night, hurriedly dressed for flight or de-
parture, and to see about him in the morning new
persons and new places, that his sleep had lost its
even tenour ; it was no longer that good ten hours'
journey in the land of dreams which children make
to the regular, continuous, almost imperceptible
breathing of their little half-opened mouths.
"Is that you, mamma?" he said in a whisper.
"Must we run away again?"
In that resigned and touching exclamation one
felt how the child had suffered, suffered from an
evil too great for him. *
" No, no, my darling ; we are safe this time. . .
Go to sleep, you must sleep."
" Oh ! then it is all right, and I can go back to
giant Robistor on the glass mountain ... I liked it
so."
" Those are Mme. fileonore's fairy tales ; they
disturb his ideas," said the queen softly. " Poor
little fellow ! life is so dark for him. . . He has
nothing to amuse him but stories. . . However,
we must soon determine to put something better
into his head."
As she spoke, she was re-arranging the child's
pillow, settling him to sleep with caressing motions
like a simple bourgeoise, which completely upset
the grandiose notions of Colette de Rosen as to
The First Day, 23
royalty. Then, as she leaned over her child to
kiss him, he asked in her ear if it was the cannon
or the sea he heard growling in the distance. She
listened a second to the confused, continuous roll
which, at moments, seemed almost to crack the
panes and make the partitions tremble, shaking
the house from top to bottom, lessening only to
grow louder, increasing suddenly and fleeing again
into soundless space.
" That is nothing. . . That is Paris, my son.
Go to sleep."
And the child fallen from a throne, who had
been told of Paris as a refuge, fell asleep in con-
fidence, rocked by the noises of the city of
revolutions.
When the queen and the princess returned to the
salon, they found there a young woman of grand
air and dignity who was standing up and talking
with the king. The familiar tone of the conversa-
tion, the respectful distance at which all present
held themselves, showed plainly that this was a
personage of importance. The queen gave an
agitated cry.
" Maria ! "
" Frederica ! "
And the same rush of tenderness in both threw
them into each other's arms. On a questioning
look from his wife, Herbert de Rosen named the
visitor. It was the Queen of Palermo. Rather
taller and thinner than her cousin of Illyria, she
seemed to be several years older. Her black
eyes and her black hair raised smoothly from her
24 Kings in Exile,
forehead, together with her pure white skin, gave
her the look of an Italian, although she was born
at the Court of Bavaria. There was nothing Ger-
man about her except the stiffness of her long,
flat waist, the haughty expression of her smile,
and a certain dowdiness, a something of discord
in her apparel which distinguishes the women of
the other side of the Rhine. Frederica, left an
orphan very young, was brought up in Munich
with this cousin ; though separated by life, they
had always retained a most lively affection for
each other.
" You see, I could not wait," said the Queen of
Palermo, holding Frederica's hand. " Cecco was
not in ... I have come without him ... I longed
so ! . . I have thought of you so often, of both of
you. . . Oh ! that cannon of Ragusa, I fancied I
heard it ... at night . . . from Vincennes . . ."
" It was only the echo of that of Cajeta," in-
terrupted Christian, making allusion to the heroic
attitude maintained a few years earlier by that
queen, dethroned and exiled like themselves.
She sighed.
" Ah ! yes, Cajeta. . . We, too, were left alone,
deserted. . . What a pity ! As if all crowns ought
not to maintain each other. . . But now it is
finished. The world is mad."
Then, turning to Christian : —
** All the same, cousin, I congratulate you . . .
you fell as a king."
** Oh ! " he said, motioning to Frederica, " there
is the true king of us two."
The First Day, 25
A gesture from his wife closed his lips. . . He
bowed, smiling, and turned on his heel.
" Come and smoke, Herbert," he said to his
aide-de-camp. And together they went out upon
the balcony.
The night was warm and splendid. Day, scarcely
extinquished by the dazzle of the gas, was dying
in blue gleams. The dark mass of the horse-
chestnuts of the Tuileries fanned a gentle breeze,
and the heavens above were brightening with the
light of the stars. By means of this background of
coolness, this space beyond the noises of the crowd,
the Rue de Rivoli escaped the stifled aspect of
the other streets of Paris in mid-summer ; one felt,
moreover, the vast current of the town toward the
Champs Elysees and its open-air concerts beneath
their flaming glass globes. The gayety that winter
incloses behind warm curtains now sang freely,
laughed, ran riot in flowery hats, floating man-
tillas, and cotton gowns, the outline of which
round white young necks tied with black ribbon
could be seen as they passed the street lamps.
The cafes and the ice-cream places overflowed
upon the sidewalk, with rattle of money, calls to
the waiters, and the ringing of glasses.
" This Paris is unspeakable," said Christian of
Illyria, blowing his smoke before him into the
darkness. " The air is not the same as it is else-
where . . . there is something in it that goes to
the head . . . When I think that at Leybach at
this hour all is locked up, gone to bed, extin-
guished ! . . " Then he added in a gayer tone :
26 Kings in Exile,
"Ah, 9a! my aide-de-camp, I hope to be ini-
tiated into Parisian pleasures. . . You seem to me
to be up to them . . . well launched, in fact."
" As to that, yes, Monseigneur," said Herbert,
neighing with gratified pride. . . ''At the club,
the opera, everywhere, they call me le roi de la
Gomme!' ^
While Christian was having the meaning of that
new word explained to him, the two queens, who,
in order to speak more freely, had withdrawn to
Frederica's bedroom, were opening their hearts
in long tales and sad confidences, of which the
low murmur only could be heard beyond the
blinds. In the salon, Pere Alphee and the old
duke were talking together in low tones.
*' He was right," said the chaplain, " it is she
who is king, the true king. . . If you had seen
her on horseback, riding night after night to
the outposts ! . . At Fort Saint- Angelo, where it
rained fire, she walked twice round the talus, whip
in hand, her habit over her arm as if in her own
park, to give heart to the soldiers. . . You ought
to have seen our sailors when she came down. . .
He, all this time, running about God knows where !
'BrdiWQ, parbleu ! yes, as brave as she. . . but no star,
no faith. . . And to save your crown as well as to
win heaven, Monsieur le due, you must have faith."
The monk grew excited, standing up in his long
robe and Rosen was obliged to calm him.
" Gently, Pere Alphee. . . Come, come, Pere
1 Slang expression for ultra fashion. Gommeux: effeminate
young dandy, — Tr.
The First Day, 27
Alph^e . . ." He was afraid that Colette would
overhear him.
The latter was abandoned to Councillor Bos-
covich, who discoursed to her of his plants, min-
gling scientific terms with the most minute details
of his botanizing excursions. His conversation
fairly smelt of dried herbs and the dust of an old
library. However, there is in grandeur so power-
ful an attraction, the atmosphere it sheds does so
strongly and deliciously intoxicate certain little
natures eager to imbibe it, that the young prin-
cess, that Princesse Colette of the balls of high-life,
of races and first representations, always in the
advance-guard of the Paris of amusement, kept her
prettiest smile while listening to the dreary no-
menclatures of the innocent botanist. It sufificed
her to know that a king was talking at that window,
and that two queens were exchanging confidences
in the adjoining chamber. That knowledge was
enough to fill the commonplace salon, where her
own elegance was quite out of place, with the gran-
deur, the sad majesty which make the vast rooms
of Versailles, with their waxed floors shining like
their mirrors, so melancholy. She would willingly
have stayed there in ecstasy till midnight, without
stirring and without being bored, only wondering
a little at the long conversation that the king
kept up with her husband. What grave questions
could they be discussing? What vast projects of
monarchical restoration? Her curiosity redoubled
when they both reappeared with animated faces
and decided, eager eyes.
28 Kings in Exile,
" I am going out with the king," Herbert said
to her in a low voice. ** My father will take you
home."
The king came up to her.
" You must not be vexed with me, princess. . .
His service begins from this moment."
" All the moments of our life belong to your
Majesties," replied the young wife, convinced that
some important and mysterious step was about to
be taken . . . perhaps a first meeting of conspira-
tors. Oh ! why could she not be present herself?
Christian had gone to his wife's room, but at the
door he paused.
"■ They are weeping," he said to Herbert ; then,
turning back : " Good-night, I will not come in."
In the street he gave way to an explosion of joy,
of comfort, as he passed his arm through that of
his aide-de-camp, after lighting a fresh cigar in the
hotel vestibule.
" It is so good, don't you see, to get off alone,
into a crowd, to walk in the ranks like the rest, to
be master of one's speech, one's gestures, and
when a pretty girl goes by to be able to turn and
look at her without all Europe being shaken. . .
That *s the blessing of exile. . . When I was here
eight years ago, I saw Paris only through the
windows of the Tuileries, or from the tops of those
gala coaches. . . This time I mean to know every-
thing, go everyw^here. . . Sapristi ! now I think
of it, I 'm making you walk, walk, and you limp,
my poor Herbert. . . Stop, we will take a cab."
The prince began to protest; his leg did not
The First Day. 29
hurt him; he felt quite strong enough to walk
there. But Christian was firm.
"No, no, my guide shall not be foundered on
the first day."
So saying, he hailed* a roaming cab, which was
making for the Place de la Concorde with a clatter
of worn-out springs and snappings of the whip on
the bony back of its horse, jumped lightly into it,
and settled himself, rubbing his hands with childish
joy, on the old blue cloth of the cushions.
"Where to, my prince?" asked the coachman
little suspecting that he spoke true.
And the king answered, with the triumphant joy
of an emancipated school-boy : —
" To Mabille ! "
30 Kings hi Exile.
\V
A ROYALIST.
With bare, shaven heads beneath a prickly fine
December rain which frosted like lace their brown
woollen gowns, two monks, wearing the girdle and
the cowl of the order of Saint-Francis, were strid-
ing down the incline of the Rue Monsieur-le-
Prince. Amid all the transformations of the Latin
quarter, and those great gaps through which are
lost in the dust of " demolition " the originality
and the very memories of old Paris, the Rue Mon-
sieur-le-Prince still keeps its ancient physiognomy
as a student's street. The book-stalls, the cream-
eries, the cook-shops, the old-clothes dealers, "pur-
chase and sale in gold and silver," alternate with
one another as far along as the hill of Sainte-
Genevieve, and students tramp it at all hours of
the day; no longer Gavarni's students, with long
hair flying from their woollen caps, but future law-
yers, buttoned from head to foot in their ulsters,
brushed and gloved, with enormous morocco cases
under their arms, and the cold, cunning air of the
business agent already upon them ; or else these
students are future doctors, a little freer in gait
and behaviour, still keeping a material human side
in their studies, an expansiveness of physical life,
A Royalist. 31
as if to counterbalance their close intercourse with
death.
At this early hour girls in dressing-gowns and
slippers, their eyes bloated with vigils and hair
hanging loose in swaying nets, were running
through the streets to the creameries for their
breakfast milk, — some laughing and skipping,
others, on the contrary, very dignified, swinging
their tin-boxes and trailing their faded finery and
their slippers with the majestic indifference of
queens of love ; and as, in spite of ulsters and
morocco bags, hearts of twenty are all of one age,
the students smiled at these beauties, and greeted
them with a '* Tiens, Lea " — " Good-morning
Clemence." They called to one another across
the street; appointments were being made for the
evening: ''At the Medical" --'' At Louis XIIL,"
when suddenly, on too lively a remark, or a madri-
gal taken amiss, one of the startling indignations
of such girls burst forth in the invariable formula,
" Go your way, insolence ! " We can fancy how
the two monks must have bristled in contact with
all this youth, laughing and turning to look at
them as they passed. But laughing low, for one
of these Franciscans, thin, brown, and dry as a
carob-bean, had a terrible, piratical countenance
under his bushy eyebrows, and his gown, which
the girdle held together in heavy plaits, defined
the muscles and the loins of an athlete. Neither
he nor his companion seemed to pay the least
attention to the street, the atmosphere of which
they were shaking off in great strides, with fixed,
32 Kings in Exile,
absorbed eyes, solely bent upon the end they had
in view. Before they reached the broad flight of
steps which leads to the Ecole de Medecine the
elder of the two signed to the other ; —
"This is it."
" It " was a furnished lodging-house of shabby
appearance, the alley to which, closed by a green
gate with a bell, opened between a newspaper
booth crowded with pamphlets, songs for a sou,
and coloured prints in which the grotesque hat
of Basile appeared in a hundred attitudes, and
a cellar brewery, bearing on its sign the words
*' Brewery of the Rialto," doubtless because it was
served by young ladies in Venetian head-dresses.
*' Has M. Elysee gone out?" asked one of the
Fathers as they passed the porter's lodge of the
house on the ground-floor.
A stout woman, who must have rolled through
many a lodging-house before keeping one of her
own, answered lazily from her chair and without
even looking at the line of keys hanging sadly on
their hooks : —
" Out ! at this hour ! . . You had better ask if
he has come in."
Then a glance at the brown gowns made her
change her tone, and she told in some anxiety
where to find the room of Elysee Meraut.
*' No. 36, fifth floor, at the end of the passage."
The Franciscans went up, making their way
through narrow corridors encumbered with muddy
boots, and other boots with high heels, gray,
bronzed, fantastic, luxurious, or wretched, which
A Royalist 33
told long tales on the manners and morals of the
" inhabitants " ; but they paid no attention, sweep-
ing the boots along the passage with their coarse
skirts and the cross of their great chaplets ; they
were scarcely moved when a handsome girl dressed
in a red petticoat, throat and arms bare under
a man's overcoat, leaned over the railing on the
third floor to shout something down to a waiter,
with the rasping voice and laugh of a singularly'
degraded mouth. They did, however, exchange
a significant glance.
" If he is the man you say he is," murmured the
corsair, in a foreign accent, " he has chosen to put
himself in singular surroundings."
The other, the elder, with a shrewd, intelligent
face, gave an unctuous smile of shrewdness and
sacerdotal indulgence. " Saint Paul among the
Gentiles," he said.
When they reached the fifth floor the monks
were somewhat puzzled ; the vault of the staircase,
now very low and very dark, scarcely allowed them
to read the numbers or the cards on some of the
doors, inscribed, for instance, '* Mile. AHce," with-
out indication of her calling, indication very use-
less for that matter, for there were many other
competitors of the same trade in the house, and
one of those worthy Fathers was knocking incon-
tinently at the door of one of them.
" We must call out to him, parhleu ! " said the
monk with the black eyebrows, who now made the
whole house resound with a " Monsieur M^raut ! "
in military tones.
34 Kings in Exile,
Not less vigorous, nor less ringing came back
the answer from a chamber at the end of the
passage. And when they opened the door the
same voice called out joyously : —
"So it is you, Pere Melchior. .. That's my
luck ! . . I thought they were bringing me a letter
full of . . . Come in, come in, my Reverends, you
are welcome ... sit down where you can.''
On every article of furniture were masses of
books, papers, reviews, clothing, concealing the
sordid fittings of a furnished lodging of the eight-
eenth class, its unpolished tiled floor, its collapsed
sofa, the eternal Empire secretary and the three
chairs covered in defunct velvet. On the bed,
papers from a printing office were jumbled with
clothing, a thin brown coverlet, and bundles of
proofs which the master of the place, still in
bed, was sabring with great dashes of a coloured
pencil. This miserable den of work, with its fire-
place without fire, its walls in their dusty nudity,
was Hghted by gleams from the neighbouring
roofs, the reflections of a rainy sky on the wet
slates ; and in the same uncertain light, the great
brow of Meraut, his passionate, powerful face
shone with the intelligent, sad lustre which dis-
tinguishes certain faces that we meet in Paris and
nowhere else.
** Still in my lair, you see, P^re Melchior ! . .
But what of it? I came here on my arrival in
Paris eighteen years ago. Since then, I have
never stirred out of it. . . So many dreams, hopes
buried in all its corners . . . ideas that I find be-
A Royalist, 35
neath the cobwebs. . . I am sure that if I quitted
this poor chamber I should leave the best part
of myself in it. . . That is so true that I kept it
when I started for over there."
** Just so, that journey of yours," said Pere Mel-
chior, with a little wink of his eye to his com-
panion. . . "I thought you had gone for a long
time. . . What happened? Didn't the employ-
ment suit you? "
" Oh ! if you talk of the employment," said M^-
raut, shaking his mane, " nothing could be finer. . .
Salary of a minister plenipotentiary, lodged in the
palace, horses, carriages, servants. . . Everybody
charming to me, emperor, empress, archdukes. . .
But in spite of all that, I was bored. I missed
Paris ; specially the Quarter, the air one breathes
here, light, vibrant, young; the galleries of the
Odeon, the new book turned over standing with
two fingers, the quest of the bookstalls, those stalls
that line the quays like a rampart sheltering studi-
ous Paris from the futility and egoism of the other
part. . . And then, for that's not all — " here
his voice became more serious — "You know
my ideas, Pere Melchior. You know what I was
ambitious of doing by accepting that subaltern
place. . . I wanted to make a king of that little
young man, a king really a king, which is not seen
nowadays ; to bring him up, knead him, mould
him for the grand role which surpasses and crushes
all others — like that armour of the middle ages
which remains in the museums to shame our
shrunken chests and shoulders. . . Ah ! bah ! . .
36 Kings in Exile,
liberals, my dear man, reformers, men of progress
and new ideas — that 's what I found at the Court
of X. . . Dreadful bourgeois, who could not com-
prehend that if monarchy is condemned it had
better die fighting, wrapped in its flag, than finish
in a perambulator pushed by a Parliament. . .
After my first lesson the palace was in a clamour.
'Where does he come from? What does he want
of us, that barbarian ? ' And they asked me with
all sorts of pretty speeches to confine myself to
simple matters of pedagogy. . . A pawn, I !
When I saw that, I took my hat, and good-night
Majesties ! "
He spoke in a strong, full voice, the Southern
accent of which struck all the metallic chords ; and
as he did so his countenance was transfigured.
The head, in repose enormous and ugly, with a
prominent projecting brow, above which was
twisted in disorder invincible a tangle of black
hair with an aigret of one white lock, a thick and
broken nose, a violent mouth without a bristle of
beard to hide it, for his skin had the heat, the
fissures, the sterility of volcanic soil, — that head
nevertheless became marvellously animated by
passion. Imagine the tearing away of a veil, the
black curtain of a hearth raised to show a joyous
and warmth-giving flame ; the visible display of an
eloquence attached to the very corners of the eyes,
the nose, the lips, and spreading, with blood from
the heart, over the whole of that worn face, hag-
gard with vigils and all excesses. The landscapes
of Languedoc, M6raut's native land, bare, sterile,
A Roy alts L 37
gray with dusty olive-trees, have, under the irised
settings of their implacable sun, just such splendid
upflamings, slashed with weird shadows that seem,
as it were, the decomposition of a ray, the slow
and graduated death of a rainbow.
" So, then, you were disgusted with grandeur?"
said the old monk, whose insinuating voice, with-
out resonance, formed a great contrast to that
burst of eloquence.
" Of course ! . . " replied the other, energetically.
"Nevertheless, all kings are notahke. . . I know
some to whom your ideas ..."
" No, no, Pere Melchior . . . that 's over. I will
not make that attempt a second time. . . If I see
sovereigns too near I am afraid I shall lose my
loyalty."
After a silence the sly priest made a circuit and
brought in his thought by another door.
" This six months' absence must have injured
your interests, Meraut."
"Why no, not much. . . In the first place,
uncle Sauvadon remained faithful to me . . . you
know Sauvadon, my rich man from Bercy. . . He
meets a great deal of company at the house of his
niece, Princesse de Rosen, and as he wants to join
in all the conversations, he comes to me to give
him three times a week what he calls * ideas of
things.' He is charmingly naifve and confiding,
the worthy man. * Monsieur Meraut, what must I
think about that book?' 'Execrable.' 'But it
seems to me ... I heard the other day, at the
princess's . . . ' 'If you have an opinion of your
38 Kings in Exile,
own, my presence here is useless/ 'Why, no, no,
my dear friend, you know I have n't any, no
opinion at all' . . . The fact is he has absolutely
none and takes with his eyes shut all I give
him ... I am his thinking matter. . . During my
absence he never spoke, for want of ideas. . .
When I returned, he flung himself upon me — you
ought to have seen it ! Besides him, I have two
Wallachians, to whom I am giving lessons on the
law of nations . . . and always some stroke or other
on hand ; for instance, I am just finishing a
' Memorial of the Siege of Ragusa ' from authen-
tic documents. . . There is not much of my own
in it . . . except the last chapter, which I am rather
pleased with. . . I have the proofs here. Shall I
read them to you ? I have headed it : ' Europe
without Kings.' "
While he read his royalist brief, exciting himself
to tears, the lodging-house woke up, scattering all
about it the laughter of youth, the gayety of secret
meetings with a rattle of plates and glasses, and
the cracked notes sounding on wood of an old
piano playing a dancing-hall tune. Astonishing
contrast, of which the Franciscans took little note,
completely absorbed as they were in the joy of
listening to that powerful and violent defence of
royalty ; the taller of the two, especially, quivering,
stamping, restraining his exclamations of enthu-
siasm with a vehement gesture that strained his
arms upon his breast till he seemed to crack it.
The reading over, he sprang up, and strode about
the room, with a flux of words and gestures.
A Royalist, 39
" Yes ! that 's it . . . that Is truth . . . right di-
vine, legitimate, absolute. . . No more Parliaments,
no more lawyers. . . Burn the whole gang ! "
And his eyes sparkled and flamed like the fag-
gots of the Sainte-Hermandad. Pere Melchior,
more calm, congratulated Meraut on his book.
** I hope you will put your name to it, this one."
" No more than to the others. . . You know
very well, Pere Melchior, that I have no ambition,
except for my ideas. . . The book will pay me ;
it was Uncle Sauvadon who procured me that
windfall — but I would have written it for nothing,
for the love of it. It is so fine to note the annals
of that royalty in the death-throes, to listen to
the failing breath of the old world fighting and
dying in these exhausted monarchies. . . Here,
at least, is a fallen king who has given a grand
lesson to the rest of them. . . A hero, that
Christian. . . It says in these notes that day after
day he rode under fire to Fort Saint-Angelo. . .
Ha ! 't was bold, that was ! . ."
One of the Fathers lowered his head. Better
than any one he knew what to believe of that
heroic manifestation, and of that lie, more heroic
still. . . But a will above his own compelled his
silence. He contented himself with making a sign
to his companion, who rose, and said abruptly
to Meraut : —
" Well, it is for the son of that hero that I have
come to see you . . . with Pere Alphee, almoner
to the Court of Illyria. . . Will you undertake
the education of the royal child?"
40 Kings in Exile,
"With us you will have neither palace nor
carriages," said Pere Alph^e, sadly, " nor the im-
perial generosities of the Court of X. . . You will
serve dethroned princes, around whom exile, al-
ready lasting over a year and threatening to con-
tinue, casts mourning and solitude. . . Your
ideas are ours. . . The king has had a few liberal
fancies, but he recognized their nothingness after
his fall. The queen . . . the queen is subHme . . .
you will see it."
" When ? " asked the fanatic, again seized by
his chimera to make a king through his own
genius, as a writer makes a work.
A meeting was at once agreed upon.
When Elys^e Meraut thought of his childhood
— and he often thought of it, for all the strong
impressions of his life lay there — this is what he
saw : a large room with three windows, inundated
with light, and each window occupied by a Jac-
quart loom for weaving silk, lifting its tall uprights
and interlacing meshes like a blind against the
light and the prospect without, namely, a cluster
of roofs of houses running downhill, all the win-
dows furnished with the same looms, at each of
which worked two men, seated, in their shirt-
sleeves, mingling their motions on the frame like
pianists in playing a duet. Between these houses
little gardens like alleys climbed the hillside, —
Southern gardens, burnt-up, arid, pallid, and de-
prived of air, filled with fleshy plants, rampant
bottle-gourds, and great sunflowers expanding
A Royalist 41
toward the west with the drooping attitude of
corollas seeking their god, and filling the air with
the sickly odour of their ripening seeds, an odour
which, after twenty years' absence, Elysee smelt
whenever he thought of his early home.
Above this workmen's quarter, humming and
crowded like a hive, was a stony height on which
stood a few old windmills now abandoned, former
feeders of the town and still preserved for their
long services, lifting high their skeleton sails like
gigantic antennae, letting their stones detach them-
selves and whirl away in the wind with the acrid
dust of those southern regions. Under the pro-
tection of these ancestral mills the manners and
traditions of another age were preserved. The
whole town (this corner of its suburb was called
the Enclos de Rey) was, and still is, ardently roya-
list ; in each workroom will be found hanging to
the wall — -pink, puffy, blond, with long hair curled
and pomatumed with high-lights on its curls —
the portrait (clothed in the fashions of 1840) of
him whom the weavers called familiarly among
themselves loii Goi — the lamester. In the work-
room of filysee's father, below this frame was
another, much smaller, surrounding a sheet of
blue letter-paper on which was a great red seal
with the two words. Fides, Spes, around a cross
of Saint Andrew. From his seat, as he kept his
shuttle going, Maitre Meraut could see the picture
and read the motto : " Faith, Hope." . . And his
broad face, with its sculptural lines like the coins
of Antoninus, which itself had the aquiline nose
42 Kings in ExiCe,
and the full outlines of the Bourbons he loved so
well, swelled up and crimsoned with his strong
emotion.
He was a terrible man, Maitre Meraut, violent,
despotic, to whom the habit of over-topping the
noise of battens and headles had given a voice like
the blast and rolling of a storm. His wife, on the
contrary, timid and retiring, imbued with those
submissive traditions which made the Southern
women of the vieille roche (the old regime) mere
slaves. Eastern slaves, had taken a resolution to
never utter a word. It was in such a home as this
that Elysee grew up, — treated less harshly than his
two brothers, because he was the last comer and
always puny. Instead of being put to the shuttle
when eight years old, he was left in a little of that
good liberty so necessary to childhood ; liberty
which he employed in roaming the suburb and
battling on the hill-top under the windmills, whites
against reds. Catholics against Huguenots. They
are still in the thick of those hatreds in that part
of Languedoc ! The children were divided into
two camps ; each had its mill, the falling stones
of which served them as projectiles. Then were
invectives launched, then did the missiles fly hiss-
ing from the slings. For hours together Homeric
battles were fought, ending tragically with some
bloody gash upon a ten-year-old forehead, or
among the tangle of a mass of curls, — wounds
that scar for a lifetime the tender epidermis, and
which Elysee the man still showed on one temple
and at the corner of his mouth.
A Royalist, 43
Oh ! those windmills ; the mother cursed them
when her last-born was brought back one evening,
all blood and tatters. The father scolded as a matter
of form and habit, and in order not to let his thunder
rust; but at table he made the boy relate all the
vicissitudes of the battle and the names of the
combatants.
" Tholozan ! . . Tholozan ! . . So there are still
some left of that race ! . . Ha ! the blackguard.
I had the father at the end of my gun in 18 15,
and I 'd better have laid him low then."
Here followed a long history, related in the
Languedocian patois, picturesque and brutal, which
spared neither phrase nor syllable, telling of the
days when he enrolled himself among the young
recruits of the Due d'Angouleme, a great general,
a saint
These tales, heard a hundred times, but varied
by the ardour of paternal fancy, remained as
deeply in Elysee's soul as the scars of the wind-
mill stones upon his face. He lived in a royalist
legend, of which the Saint-Henri and January 21
were the commemorative dates, in fervent vene-
ration of the prince-martyrs blessing the people
by the fingers of their bishops, and of brave
princesses wandering on horseback for the good
cause, persecuted, betrayed, and trapped at last
behind the chimney of a Breton hostelry. To
enliven the gloom which this series of griefs and
exile would otherwise have produced on the brain
of a child, the story of the '* Fowl in the pot " and
the song of the ** Vert-Galant " came in with glori-
44 Kings in Exile.
ous memories and all the dash of the old, old France.
That song of the *' Vert-Galant " was the Mar-
seillaise of the Enclos de Rey. When on Sunday,
after vespers, the table being wedged up with
much trouble on the slope of the little garden, the
Merauts dined " in the good of the air," as they say
in those parts, — that is, in the stifling atmgsphere
that follows a summer's day, when the heat, amassed
in the soil and in the plaster of the walls, comes
out fiercer and more unhealthy than under the
full sunlight, — the old weaver would peal forth in
a voice that was famous among his neighbours :
" Vive Henri IV ! Long live the King valiant ! "
All was silent around him throughout the neigh-
bourhood. Nothing was heard but the dry rending
of the reeds splitting with the heat, the crackling
of the wings of some belated cicala, and that
ancient royalist song rolling out majestically, with
its stiff and stately march in trunk-hose and far-
thingale, the refrain of which was always sung in
chorus : A la sanU de notre roi, — c'esi un Henri
de bon aloiy — qui f era le bien de toi^ de moi. That
de toiy de rnoi ("of thee, of me"), rhymed and
fugued, was very amusing to filysee and his
brothers, who sang it jostling and shoving each
other, — which always brought them a blast from
their father ; but the song did not stop for matters
like that, and on it went amid shouts and laughter
and sobs, like the canticle of the convulsionaries
round the tomb of the deacon Paris.
Mingled thus with all the family festivities, this
name of king had for filysee, quite outside of its
A Royalist, 45
prestige in fairy-tales and " history adapted to
childhood, " a certain something of home, of his
own life. What added to this sentiment were
mysterious letters on foreign paper which arrived
from Frohsdorf two or three times a year for all
the inhabitants of the Enclos, — autographs in a
delicate handwriting with long tails, in which the
king spoke to his people, urging them to have
patience. . . On those days Maitre Meraut threw
his shuttle with more gravity than usual, and in
the evening, the door being carefully closed, he
began to read the circular letter, always the same
mild and gentle proclamation in words as vague as
hope itself: " Frenchmen, they are deceived, and
they deceive you. . ." Always the same invariable
seal, — Fides J Spes. Ah ! poor souls, it was neither
faith nor hope they lacked.
" When the king returns," Maitre Mdraut would
say, " I shall buy me a good arm-chair. . . When
the king returns we will change the paper in the
bedroom." Later, after his journey to Frohsdorf,
the formula changed. *' When I had the honour
to see the king" he said on all occasions.
The good man had indeed accomplished that
pilgrimage, a true sacrifice of time and money for
a workman like himself; and never Hadji returning
from Mecca came back more dazzled. The inter-
view was, however, very short. To the faithful
introduced into his presence, the king, so-called,
had said, '' Ah ! here you are ; " and no one found
anything to say in reply to that affable greeting,
Meraut least of all, being suffocated with emotion,
46 Kings in Exile,
and his eyes so blurred with tears that he did not
even see the features of his idol. On departing,
however, the Due d'Athis, military secretary, had
questioned him long on the state of feeling in
France ; and we can imagine what the enthusiastic
weaver, who had never before left the Enclos de
Rey, made answer to that inquiry.
" But let him, coqiiin de bou sort ! let him come,
and come quickly, our Henri . . . they are languish-
ing to see him,"
Whereupon the Due d'Athis, delighted with
the information, thanked him much and asked
abruptly : —
" Have you children, MaJtre M^raut? "
" I have three. Monsieur le due."
•'Boys?"
" Yes . . . three children . . ." repeated the old
weaver, for among the people of those parts girls
are not counted as children.
'* Very good. I shall make note of that. , .
Monseigneur will remember them when the day
comes."
On which M. le due pulled out his note-book
and era . . . era . . . The era . . . era with which
the worthy man expressed the sound and motion of
the protector in writing down the fact of his three
sons invariably formed part of this tale included in
the family annals, annals so touching, if only for
the immutabilit)^ of their smallest details. Ever
after, in times when work was at a stand-still,
when the mother was terrified to see the husband
growing old and the savings of the household
A Royalist, 47
diminishing, that era . . . era . . . replied to her
anxieties, timidly expressed, for the future of her
children : " Be easy, va I . . the Due d'Athis made
note of them."
Becoming suddenly ambitious for his sons, the
old weaver, having seen his two elder boys leave
the home and enter the same narrow path as their
father, concentrated all his hopes and desires for
grandeur upon Elysee. He sent him to the In-
stitution Papel, kept by one of those Spanish
refugees who crowded the cities of the South after
the capitulation of Marotto. It was in the quarter
of the Butchers' shops, an old dilapidated house,
rotting in the shadow of the cathedral, as the
nitrified cracks in its walls and its verdigrised little
window-panes showed plainly. To get there, it
was necessary to follow a line of shops bristling with
lance-head railings, from which hung enormous
quarters of meat surrounded by an unhealthy
buzzing, and pass through a network of narrow
streets, the pavements of which were always sticky
and red with bloody detritus. When he thought
of it all in after years it seemed to Elysee as if he
had spent his childhood in the middle ages, be-
neath the ferule and the knotted rope of a terrible
fanatic, whose Latin in ous alternated, in the sordid
black classrooms, with the blessings or wrath of
the neighbouring bells as it descended on the apse
of the old church, on its buttresses, stone foliage,
and the fantastic heads of its gargoyles. This little
Papel — face enormous and oily, shaded by a greasy
white beretta, pulled down to the eyes to hide a
48 Kings in Exile,
thick and swollen blue vein which separated the
eyebrows — was like a dwarf in the pictures of
Velasquez, minus the brilliant tunics of the paint-
ing and the stern bronzing of time. Brutal withal
and cruel, but holding in his large skull a stupen-
dous magazine of ideas; a living, luminous ency-
clopedia, closed, one might say, by an obstinate
royalism as a bar put up across it, and well typified
by the abnormal swelling of that strange vein.
It was rumoured in town that the name of Papel
hid another that was much more famous, that of a
cabecilla of Don Carlos, celebrated for his fero-
cious manner of making war and varying death.
Living so near to the Spanish frontier, his dreadful
reputation hampered him and forced him to hve
anonymously. How much truth was there in that
tale? During the many years that he passed with
that master, ^lysee, although he was M. Papel's
favourite pupil, never heard the terrible dwarf say
one word, or knew him to receive a single visit
or letter, that could confirm this suspicion. But
when the boy became a man, and, his studies
being finished, the Enclos de Rey was found to be
too narrow for his laurels, his diplomas, and his
father's ambition, and it became a question of
sending him to Paris, M. Papel gave him several
letters of introduction to the chiefs of the legitimist
party, heavy letters sealed with mysterious armo-
rial bearings, which seemed to give some colour to
the cabecilla legend.
Maitre Meraut had exacted this journey; for he
had begun to think that the return of his king was
A Royalist, 49
too long delayed. He bled himself, as they say,
by all four veins ; he sold his gold watch, the
mother's silver key-chain, the vineyard which
every villager possessed, — and this quite simply,
heroically, for the Cause,
" Go and see what they are doing," he said to
his youngest. ''What are they waiting for? The
Enclos is wearying for the end of ends."
At twenty years of age Elysee Meraut arrived in
Paris, boiling over with passionate convictions, in
which the blind devotion of his father was fortified
by the well-equipped fanaticism of his Spanish
teacher. He was received by the royalist party
as a traveller is who enters a first-class railway
carriage during the night, when the other pas-
sengers have settled themselves down to sleep.
The intruder coming from the outside, his blood
stirred by the keen air and movement, with a
communicative desire to talk, question, and post-
pone sleep, brings up against the somnolent and
scowling ill-humour of persons buried in their
furs, rocked by the motions of the train, and
screened by the little blue curtain drawn across
the lamp, in a heavy, damp heat, fearing nothing
so much as draughts of air and the entrance of
disturbing passengers. That was the aspect of
the Legitimist clan under the empire, in its aban-
doned, side-tracked railway-carriage.
This fanatic, with his black eyes and his leaii
lion's-head, enunciating every syllable as if to carry
his audience, enforcing every sentence with ve-
hement gestures, possessing in himself, ready for
4
50 Ki7igs in Exile,
anything, the fire of a Suleau and the audacity of
a Cadoudal, caused an astonishment mingled with
alarm among the party. They thought him dan-
gerous, disquieting. Under their excessive polite-
ness and the marks of fictitious interest given by
well-bred people, Elysee, with that lucidity which
the South of France always retains in the midst of
its enthusiasms, soon felt what there was of selfish-
ness and dull acceptance of defeat among these
persons. In their opinion there was nothing to be
done at present; they ought to wait; above all,
be calm, and guard against enthusiasm and juvenile
rashness. " See Monseigneur," they said ; ** what
an example he sets us ! "
And these counsels of wisdom, of moderation,
suited well with the old mansions of the Faubourg,
swathed in ivy, deaf to the noise of the streets,
happed in comfort and idleness behind their
massive gates heavy with the weight of centuries
and traditions. Out of politeness he was invited
to two or three political meetings, held in great
mystery, with all sorts of fears and precautions, in
the recesses of these nests of rancour. There he
saw the great names of the Vendean wars and the
fusillades of Quiberon, glorious names inscribed on
the Field of Martyrs, borne by worthy old gentle-
men with shaved faces, clothed smugly in broad-
cloth like prelates, gentle of speech, and always
Sticky with gum-drops. They arrived with the
air of conspirators, each declaring that he was fol-
lowed by the police — who, in truth, amused
themselves much with these platonic rendezvous.
A Royalist. 51
Whist-tables having been started under the dis-
creet light of tall candles well-shaded, the skulls
leaned together, shining like billiard-balls; some
one gave news from Frohsdorf, and they all ad-
mired the inalterable patience of the exiles, exhort-
ing each other to imitate it. In very low voices, —
hush ! hush ! — they repeated de Barentin's last
pun about the empress, and hummed beneath their
breath a scandalous song on the emperor. Then,
frightened at their own audacity, the conspirators
slipped away, one by one, hugging the walls of the
Rue de Varennes, broad and deserted, which
returned them a disquieting echo of the sound of
their own feet.
!Elysee saw plainly that he was too young, too
active for these ghosts of Old France. Besides,
the full tide of the imperial epopee was on ; the
return from the wars of Italy brought a flight of
victorious eagles along the boulevards and beneath
the bannered windows. The son of the village
weaver was not long in comprehending that the
opinion of the Enclos de Rey was far from univer-
sally shared, and that the return of the legitimate
king would be more tardy than they supposed
down there. His royalism was not damaged ; but
he raised and enlarged the idea of it within himself,
inasmuch as outward action was now not possible.
He dreamed of writing a book, of casting forth his
convictions, his beliefs — all that he craved to say
and spread — to that great Paris he would fain
convince. His plan was made at once : he would
earn his livelihood by giving lessons, and these
52 Kings hi Exile,
were quickly found; he would write his book in
his leisure intervals, and this took more time than
he thought.
Like others of his region, filysee M^raut was,
above all, a man of speech and gesture. Ideas
only came to him on his feet, to the sound of his
own voice, like the lightning which the vibration
of bells attracts to the steeple. Fed by reading,
by facts, by constant meditation, his thought,
which escaped all-foaming from his lips, words
hurrying words in a sonorous eloquence, fell
slowly, drop by drop, from his pen, coming from
a reservoir too vast for such limited filtration and
all the delicacies of written language. To speak
his convictions soothed him, now that he could
find no other outlet for their flow. He spoke
therefore at t\\Q popottes (eating-house table -d'hotes)
at the conferences, but especially in caf^s, those
cafes of the Latin quarter which, in the crouching
Paris of the second empire, when book and news-
paper were both muzzled, formed the only Oppo-
sition. Every one of them had its orator, its great
man. Their frequenters said to each other : " Pes-
quidoux of the * Voltaire ' is very powerful, but
Larminat of the ' Procope * is more so." In fact,
to those cafes came a whole educated youth,
eloquent, their minds busy with lofty things,
transplanting (but with more warmth of fancy
and spirit) the fine political and philosophical dis-
cussions of the Breweries of Bonn and Heidelberg.
In these forges of ideas, smoking, noisy, whose
frequenters shouted hard and drank harder, the
A Royalist, 53
singular vehemence of this Gascon, ahvays im-
passioned, who never smoked, was drunk without
drinking, his blunt imaginative speech developing
convictions as out of date as hoops and powder,
as discordant with the place in which they were
uttered as the taste of an antiquary with the knick-
knacks of Paris — all this soon won fame and an
audience for the speaker. When the gas flamed
in the packed and roaring cafes, when he was seen
to appear on the threshold, with his lank and
slouching figure, his near-sighted, rather haggard
eyes, whose efforts at vision seemed to blow his
hair out to the wind, his hat on the back of his
head, and always under his arm some pamphlet or
review, from which stuck out a monstrous paper-
knife, everybody jumped up and the cry went
round: ''Here's Meraut ! " Then they would all
squeeze together and leave him a space in which
to play his elbows and gesticulate at his ease.
The moment he entered, this greeting of youth,
these cries excited him, also the warmth, the lights
— those gas-lights, intoxicating, congestionizing !
Then on some subject or another, — the newspaper
of the day, the book open on the stall under the
Odeon as he passed, — he was off at a tangent, sit-
ting, standing, holding the cafe with his voice,
gathering and grouping his auditors with a gesture.
The games at dominoes stopped rattling; the bil-
liard players on the floor above leaned over the
baluster, cues in hand, and their long pipes held
between their teeth. The window-panes, the beer-
glasses, the tin trays shook as when a mail-coach
54 Kings in Exile,
passed, and the dame du comptoir said with pride
to those who entered : " Come in, quick ! . . we
have M. Meraut." Ah! Pesquidoux, Larminat —
they were strong in their way, but he could beat
them all.
He thus became the orator of the quarter. That
glory, to which he had not aspired, sufficed him,
so that it fatally delayed and hindered him. Such
was the fate of more than one Larminat of that
period, — noble forces lost, motor powers or levers
allowing their steam to escape with a great
noise uselessly, through the carelessness, want of
method, or bad management of the engineer. In
filysee's case there was something besides. With-
out intrigue, without ambition, this Southerner,
who had nothing of his own land about him but its
fiery spirit, considered himself a missionary of his
faith ; and this missionary character showed itself
in his unwearying proselytism, his vigorous and in-
dependent nature, the disinterestedness that took
small account of fees and pay, — a life, in short, at
the mercy of the hardest chances of his vocation.
Certain it is that during the eighteen years when
he was sowing the seed of his ideas amid the
youth of Paris, more than one of his hearers attain-
ing later to great reputation, who had been known
to say, " Ah ! yes, Meraut ... an old student," did
actually win the greater part of his fame from the
rich scraps carelessly flung to all corners of the
table by the singular fellow who sat there. filys6e
knew this, and when he found, under the green
binding of some lord of letters, certain of his
A RoyalisL 55
chimeras reduced to reason in fine academic
phrase, he was happy, with the disinterested hap-
piness of a father who sees the daughters of his
heart married and rich, although he has no share
in their prosperity. It was the same chivalrous
abnegation as that of the old weaver of the Enclos
de Rey, but with something broader, higher,
because the confidence in success was lacking, —
that unshaken confidence which the brave old
Meraut kept to his dying day. The very evening
before his death — for he died of a sunstroke after
one of his dinners in "■ the good of the air " — the
old fellow said at the top of his voice: "Vive
Henri Quatre ! Long live the King valiant ! "
Nigh upon death, his eyes blurred, his tongue
heavy, he said to his wife : " Easy about the
children. . . Due d'Athis . . . took note . . ." and
with his dying hand he tried to make a cra-cra
upon the coverlet.
When Elysee, informed too late of this crushing
news, arrived from Paris, his father lay stretched
upon his bed, his hands crossed, motionless and
wan, the pillow to the wall, which still awaited its
new paper. Through the door of the work-room,
left open, he could see the looms at rest, that of
his father abandoned like a ship with its masts
gone which the winds can impel no more, and the
portrait of the king with the red seal beneath it,
which had presided ever over this life of toil and
of fidelity ; and above, away above the Enclos de
Rey, perched and humming on the hillside, those
old mills, still erect, raising their arms in the clear
56 Kings m Exile,
blue sky with despairing gesture. Never did
Elysee forget that spectacle of serene death tak-
ing the toiler from his work and closing his eyes
to the accustomed horizon. He was struck with
envy, — he who felt his own life in the grasp of
visions and adventure, and who incarnated in him-
self all the chimerical illusions of the fine old man
who lay there sleeping.
It was on his return from this sad journey that
the office of preceptor at the Court of X. . . was
offered to him. His disillusionment was so keen,
the pettinesses, the rivalries, the envious calumnies
in which he found himself involved, the splendid
stage of Monarchy seen too near, from the side
scenes as it were, all this had so deeply saddened
him that in spite of his admiration for the King
of Illyria, the monks had no sooner left him than
the fever of enthusiasm died away and he regretted
a decision made so hastily. His vexations at the
Court of X. . . came back to him, the sacrifice he
must make of his hfe, his liberty; and then his
book, that famous book always stirring in his
head. . . In short, after long debates with himself,
he resolved to say no, and the day before Christ-
mas, the proposed interview being very near, he
wrote to Pere Melchior to tell him of his decision.
The monk did not protest. He merely replied :
"To-night, Rue des Fourneaux, at midnight
mass. . . I still hope to convince you."
The convent of the Franciscans in the Rue des
Fourneaux, where Pere Melchior had the functions
A Royalist, 57
of bursar, is one of the most curious and most
unknown corners of Catholic Paris. This mother-
house of a celebrated Order, hidden mysteriously
in the sordid suburb that swarms behind the
station of the Montparnasse, is also called " The
Commissariat of Saint-Sepulchre." It is there
that monks of exotic appearance, mingling their
brown serge of travel with the black poverty of
the quarter, bring — for the commerce in relics —
pieces of the true Cross, chaplets in olive-wood
from the Mount of Olives, roses of Jericho, dry
and stringy, awaiting their drop of holy water ; in
short, a whole pack of miraculous things, changed
erelong in the large invisible pockets of the monks'
robes into good sound money, which makes its
way to Jerusalem for the maintenance of the sacred
tomb. Elysee had already been taken to the Rue
des Fourneaux by a sculptor, a friend of his, a
poor artist in camera, named Dreux, who had just
made a statue for the convent of Saint Margaret
of Ossuna, and therefore took all the people he
could muster to see it. The place was so curious,
so picturesque, it gratified the Southerner's con-
victions so much by connecting them — saving
them thus from modern lucidity — with the far-off
centuries and lands of tradition, that he often re-
turned there, to the great joy of his friend Dreux,
quite proud of this success of his Marguerite.
On the evening of the rendezvous, it was close
upon midnight when Elysee Meraut left the growl-
ing streets of the Latin quarter, where the hot-meat
shops, the ribbon-looking food of the pork-butchers,
58 Kings in Exile,
the stalls for other eatables, the women's breweries,
the student's lodging-houses, all the traffic of the
Rue Racine and the " Boul Mich," kept up until
early morning the odour and flare of a universal
junketing. Without transition he fell suddenly
into the sadness of deserted streets, where the
passers, diminished in height by the reflection of
the gas, seemed to creep instead of walk. The
shrill bells of the Communities were ringing be-
hind their walls, above which rose the skeletons of
trees ; the noises and heat of straw turned over in
the sleeping stables came from the great closed
courtyards of the dairy-men ; the broad street still
held the snow that had fallen through the day, a
vague and trampled whiteness ; while above, among
the stars that were brightened with the cold, the son
of the weaver, walking in a dream of ardent belief,
imagined that he saw the one which had guided
the kings to Bethlehem, Gazing at that star, he
recalled the Christmas Eves of other days, the
white Christmases of his youth celebrated in the
Cathedral ; again he returned, through the fan-
tastic streets of the Boucheries, slashed with
shadows of roofs and moonlight, to the family
table of the Enclos de Rey, around which they
awaited the reveillon^ namely: the three tra-
ditional wax-candles in the greenery of the holly
with its scarlet berries, and the esteveii07is (small
Christmas rolls) smelling so good of their warm
dough, and the fried bacon. He enveloped him-
self so thoroughly in these family recollections that
the lantern of a rag-picker coming along the side-
A Royalist, 59
walk seemed to him the one Pere Mdraut swung
as he marched at the head of his troop, returning
from the midnight mass.
Ah ! poor father, whom he should never see
again !
While he thus talked of the past in whispers
with those dear shades, Elysee reached the Rue des
Fourneaux, a suburb lighted by one street lamp
and occupied chiefly by long manufactories topped
with tall chimneys, standing behind board fences,
their walls built of the materials of torn-down
houses. The wind was blowing violently across
the open plain of the outskirts. From a neigh-
bouring slaughter-house came lamentable howls,
the dull sound of blows, and a fetid smell of blood
and grease ; for that is where they cut the throats
of pigs sacrificed at Christmas, as at the feasts of
the Teutates.
The convent, which stands about the middle of
the street, had its great portal open, and in the
courtyard were two or three equipages the sumptu-
ous appointments of which astonished M6raut. The
service had begun, gusts from the organ and chants
were issuing from the church, which was, however,
dark and deserted, the only light being that of the
small lamps upon the altar and the pale reflections
of a sno\vy night on the phantasmagoria of the
painted windows. The nave was nearly round,
draped with the red-cross standards of Jerusalem
hanging from the walls, and adorned with coloured
statues, rather barbaric, while among them stood
the Marguerite of Ossuna in pure white marble,
6o Kings in Exile,
flagellating pitilessly her snowy shoulders, because
— as the monks will tell you with a certain co-
quetry — " Marguerite was the great sinner of our
Order." The ceiling of painted wood crossed by
little beams; the high altar under a sort of dais
supported by columns; the choir, also rounded,
with carved wooden stalls now empty; a ray of
moonlight falling athwart the open page of a chant
book, — nothing of all this was distinct, all was di-
vined ; but, by a broad stairway concealed beneath
the choir, a descent was made into a subterranean
church, where they were now celebrating, perhaps
in memory of the catacombs, the midnight mass.
At the farther end of this cavern, in the white
masonry supported by enormous columns, was
reproduced the tomb of Christ at Jerusalem; its
low door, its narrow crypt lighted by a number
of sepulchral little lamps, glimmering from their
stone sockets on a Christ in tinted wax of natural
size, his wounds bleeding a rosy pink through gaps
in the shroud. At the other end of the cavern,
like a singular antithesis inclosing the entire Chris-
tian epic, was one of those artless reproductions of
the Nativity, the manger, the animals, the babe,
which are yearly taken from the store of legends
such as they came of old — worse carved, no
doubt, but very much larger — from the brain of
some visionary. Now, as then, a troop of children
and old women hungry for tenderness and marvels,
and the poor who love Jesus were clustering about
the manger, and among them, to filysee's surprise,
in the front rank of those humble believers, were
A Royalist, 6i
two men of social rank and two elegant women,
kneeling low upon the flags, one of the latter hold-
ing a little boy wrapped by her two arms, that were
crossed in a gesture of protection and prayer.
" Those are queens," an old woman whispered
to him, breathless with admiration.
£lysee quivered ; then, going nearer, he recog-
nized the delicate profile, the aristocratic bearing
of Christian II. of Illyria, and near him the brown,
bony head and the bald though still young fore-
head of the King of Palermo. Of the two women
he could only see the black hair, the auburn hair,
and that attitude of passionate motherhood. Ah !
how well he knew Meraut, that shrewd old priest,
who had thus brought together, as it were in a
scenic effect, the boy-prince and his future tutor.
These deposed sovereigns, coming to render hom-
age to God, who, to receive it, seemed to hide
himself, He too, in that sombre crypt, — this
assemblage of fallen royalty and of worship in
distress, the sad star of exile leading to a suburb
of Bethlehem these poor dethroned Magi, without
a cortege and with empty hands, — all this swelled
his heart. The child, the child above all, so
pathetic, with his little head bending to the
animals in the manger, the curiosity of his age
checked by a suffering quietude. . . And in
presence of that six-year-old brow, where the
future was even now inclosed, like the butterfly in
its white chrysalis, filysee thought how much of
knowledge and of tender care was needed to bring
it to a splendid outcome.
62 Kings in Exile,
III.
THE COURT OF SAINT-MANDE.
The provisional arrangement at the Hotel des
Pyramides had lasted three months, six months,
with trunks that were scarcely unpacked, bags
still buckled, the disorder and the uncertainty of
encampment. Every day came favourable news
from lUyria. Devoid of roots, on a new soil where
the Republic had neither past nor hero, it took no
hold. The people, weary of it, regretted their prin-
ces, and counsels of infallible certainty said to the
exiles : ** Hold yourselves ready . . . the day may
come to-morrow." Not a nail was knocked in the
apartments, not a single piece of furniture moved
without the exclamation of hope : " It is not worth
while." Nevertheless, the exile continued, and
the queen was not slow to understand that this life
in a hotel, amid a rush of foreigners, of birds of
passage of all plumage, was contrary to the dignity
of their rank. Accordingl)', the tents were struck,
a house was bought, and they installed themselves
in it. From being nomadic, the exile became
stationary.
The house was at Saint-Mande, on the Avenue
Daumesnil, at the top of the Rue Herbillon, in that
part of it which skirts the forest and is Hned with
The Court of Sahtt- Maude, 63
elegant houses and coquettish railings that allow a
view of gravelled paths, rounded porticos, and
English lawns which give illusion to a corner of
the Avenue of the Bois-de-Boulogne. The King
and Queen of Palermo, without much fortune and
wishing to avoid the seductions and the costly
quarters of high-life, had already taken refuge in
one of these houses. The Duchess of Mechlin-
bourg, sister of the Queen of Palermo, had joined
her at Saint-Mande, and together they had little
difficulty in attracting their cousin to that quarter.
But besides this question of friendship, Frederica
was very desirous of living apart from the joyous
excitements of Paris, of protesting against modern
society and the prosperities of a republic, and
also of avoiding the curiosity which follows well-
known persons, and seemed to her an insult to her
fall. The king at first objected to the remoteness
of the situation, but he soon found it a convenient
pretext for long daily absence and late returns at
night. Moreover, and this was a chief considera-
tion, living was cheaper there than elsewhere, and
luxury could still be maintained at lower cost.
The establishment was comfortable. A white
house of three storeys, flanked by two towers,
looked toward the forest through the trees of its
own little park ; while toward the Rue Herbillon,
betu'een the offices and the greenhouses, a large
gravelled courtyard swept in a circle to the portico,
which was covered by an awning in the form of a
tent, supported by two long, sloping lances. Ten
horses in the stable, — carriage and riding-horses
64 Kings in Exile.
(for the queen rode daily), — liveries of lUyria,
with bag-wigs, powdered, and a Swiss, whose
halberd and green and gold baldrick were as
legendary at Saint-Mande and Vincennes as the
wooden leg of old Daumesnil, — all this made a
suitable state, and was nearly new. In fact it was
scarcely a year since Tom Levis had improvised,
with all its decorations and accessories, the princely
scene on which was played the historic drama we
are about to relate.
Eh ! good heavens ! yes, Tom Levis. . . In
spite of distrust and repugnance they were forced
to have recourse to him. That fat little man had a
tenacity, an elasticity that were truly surprising.
And such tricks in his bag ! so many keys, nip-
pers to open or force resisting locks, — not to
speak of certain ways of his own that won the
heart of tradesmen, valets, and chambermaids.
** Above all, we shall not employ Tom Levis ; "
everybody said that to begin with. But nothing
advanced. Tradesmen did not deliver their goods,
servants rebelled, until the day when the man of the
cab, having appeared with his gold spectacles and
the dangles on his watch chain, draperies hung them-
selves on the walls, festooned and knotted them-
selves into portieres and curtains, and stretched
themselves out upon the floor in decorative and
padded carpets. The calorifhes burned, the
camellias in the greenhouses bloomed, the owners,
quickly installed, had only to enjoy themselves,
and await on the comfortable seats in the salon the
bundle of bills which soon arrived from all corners
The Court of Saint-Mande, 65
of Paris. In the Rue Herbillon it was old Rosen,
chief of the civil and military household who
received the bills, paid the costs, and managed the
little fortune of the king so adroitly that within this
gilded frame given to their misfortunes Christian
and Frederica still lived handsomely. Both kings,
children of kings, they were accustomed to see
themselves in Q^gy on their gold and silver coins,
and to coin money themselves at their own good
pleasure. Far, therefore, from being surprised at
this luxury, they felt, on the contrary, how much
was lacking in their new existence, not to speak of
the chilling void left about the heads from which a
crown has fallen. In vain did the house at Saint-
Mande, so simple without, adorn itself within as
a little palace ; the queen's bedroom exactly re-
producing, with its blue silk hangings covered with
old Brussels, her chamber in the castle of Leybach ;
the king's cabinet identical with the one he had
left ; on the staircases replicas of the statues of the
royal residence ; and in the conservatory a warm
little monkey-house with climbing Chinese plants
for the favourite ouistitis — what were all these
little details of delicate flattery to the possessors
of four historical castles and summer residences
between sky and water, their lawns dipping to the
waves, in those isles of verdure that are called
** the gardens of the Adriatic *' ?
At Saint-Mande the Adriatic was a little lake in
the wood which the queen could see from her
windows, and which she looked at sadly as the
exiled Andromache gazed at the false Simols.
66 Kings in Exile,
But, however restricted their life might be, it did
occur to Christian, more experienced than Fred-
erica, to wonder at this relative profusion.
" Rosen is incredible ... I don't really know
how he manages to provide all this with the little
we have." Then he added, laughing : " We may
be quite sure he does not put anything of his own
into it."
The fact is that in Illyria the name of Rosen was
synonymous with Harpagon. Even in Paris, the
fame of his avarice had followed the duke, and was
confirmed by the marriage of his son, — a marriage
arranged in the special agencies, and which all the
pretty ways of the little Sauvadon could not keep
from being a sordid misalliance. Yet Rosen was
rich. The old pandour, who carried his rapacious
and plundering instincts written on his profile of
bird of prey, had not made war upon the Turks
and the Montenegrins for glory only. After each
campaign his carriages returned loaded, and the
magnificent mansion in which he lived at the point
of the lle-Saint-Louis, close to the hotel Lambert,
was crowded with precious things : Eastern hang-
ings, furniture of the middle ages and of chivalry,
solid gold triptyches, carvings, reliquaries, gold
and silver stuffs, embroideries, booty from convents
or harems, massed in a suite of immense reception-
rooms, opened but once, for the marriage of Her-
bert and its fairy fete (paid for by Uncle Sauva-
don), and since then locked and bolted, guarding
these treasures behind drawn curtains and closed
blinds, not risking so much as the indiscretion of a
The Court of Saiiit-Mande, 67
ray of sun. The good man led in that house the
existence of a veritable monomaniac ; confined to
a single floor of the vast mansion, contenting him-
self with two servants for all his wants and the fare
of a provincial miser, while the great kitchens with
their motionless turnspits and cold ovens were
locked up as tightly as the state apartments.
The arrival of his sovereigns, the appointment of
the three Rosens to the offices of the little Court,
had slightly changed the old duke's habits. In the
first place the young pair came to live with him,
their own residence in the Pare Monceau — a true
modern cage with gilt railings — being found too
far from Vincennes. Every day at nine o'clock, no
matter what the weather might be, the Princesse
Colette was ready for the queen's leveVy and got
into the carriage beside the general, in that river
fog which every morning, winter and summer,
hangs about until mid-day on that point of the tie,
like a veil upon the magic scenery of the Seine.
At that hour Prince Herbert was endeavouring to
snatch a Httle of the sleep he had lost in the hard
duties of the night, king Christian having ten
years of provincial life and the conjugal curfew to
make up for. In fact the king was so little able to
do without nocturnal Paris, that on leaving the club
— theatres and cafes being closed — he found a
charm in roaming the deserted boulevards, dry and
sonorous or shiny with rain, the line of their bril-
liant lamps standing sentinel like fireguards along
the far perspective.
As soon as Colette reached Saint-Mand6 she
68 Kings in Exile,
went up to the queen. The duke installed himself
in a cottage-pavilion adjoining the offices and
convenient to the tradespeople and servants. The
household called it the administration-house ; and
it was touching to see that grand old man sitting
in his moleskin arm-chair among papers, classifica-
tions, green boxes, receiving and settling little
bills, he who had had under his orders in a palace
a whole regiment of clerks and ushers. But his
parsimony was so great that, even though he was
not paying on his own account, every time that he
had to give out money each feature of his face
contracted, his wrinkles puckered nervously as if
tied with a string, like a bag, his rigid, erect body,
and even the automatic gesture with which he
opened the safe built into the wall protested.
Nevertheless, he so arranged matters as to be
always ready and able to provide, from the modest
resources of the princes of lUyria, for the inevi-
table squandering of a great house, the charities
of the queen, the bounty of the king, and even his
pleasures — which counted in the budget, for
Christian II. had kept his promise to himself and
was spending his time of exile joyously. Assidu-
ous at all fetes, welcomed at the great clubs,
sought in the salons, his delicate, sarcastic profile,
always seen in the animated confusion of the first
boxes or the tumultuous rush of a return from
the races, took its place henceforth on the " me-
dallions " known to " all Paris " between the bold
locks of an actress then in vogue and the distorted
features of a disgraced prince-royal then roaming
The Court of Saint-Mande, 69
the cafes of the boulevard till the hour of his reign
should strike. Christian was leading the idle, yet
fully occupied life of a young Gomme. Tennis or
skating in the afternoons, then the Bois, a visit
at twilight in a certain chic boudoir, the luxurious
comfort of which and its excessive liberty of
speech he liked ; then, in the evening, the minor
theatres, the foyer of the dancers, the club, and
gambling, especially, where, in his handling of the
cards could be seen his Bohemian origin, the
passion for luck, and all his presentiments. He
scarcely ever went out with the queen, except on
Sunday to the church of Saint-Mande, and seldom
saw her at home unless at meals. He feared that
sensible, upright nature, always intent on duty,
whose contemptuous coldness goaded him like
a visible conscience. It recalled him to his office
of king, to the ambitions he desired to forget ; and,
too feeble to rebel openly against that mute con-
trol, he preferred to flee it, to lie, to keep away.
On her side, Frederica understood so well his
temperament, that Slav nature, ardent and effemi-
nate, emotional and feeble, she had so often for-
given the ill-conduct of that child-man, who kept
all his childhood about him, its grace, its laughter,
and its cruelty of caprice ; she had so often seen
him on his knees before her after one of those
misdeeds in which he risked his happiness and his
dignity, that she was now completely discouraged
as to the husband and the man, though some
respect for him as a king remained. The struggle
had lasted nearly ten years, although in appear-
70 Kings in Exile.
ance the pair were united. At those heights of
existence, with vast apartments, innumerable
servants, a daily ceremonial which widens distance
and compresses feehngs, falsehoods like these are
possible. But exile was now to reveal them.
Frederica at first hoped that this hard trial
would ripen the mind of the king and awaken in
him one of those fine uprisings which make heroes
and conquerors. On the contrary, she saw in his
eyes an ever increasing intoxication of pleasures,
of vertigo produced by the life of Paris and its
diabolical phosphorus, its temptations and facil-
ities of pleasure, and its incognito. Ah ! if she
had been willing to follow him, to share in that
wild course of the Parisian whirlwind, to have her
beauty, her horses, her toilets cited, to lend her-
self with all a woman's coquetry to the frivolous
vanity of her husband, they might still have
come nearer together. Impossible ; she was more
a queen than ever, abdicating none of her ambi-
tions, her hopes, and, eager from afar for the
struggle, sending letter after letter to friends
** over there ; " protesting, conspiring, and com-
municating with all the Courts of Europe on the
iniquity of their misfortune. Councillor Boscovich
wrote at her dictation ; and at mid-day, when the
king came down to breakfast, she herself gave him
the letters for the mail to sign. Sign ! parbleu !
he signed all she wanted, but always with a curl
of satire on his lips. The scepticism of his cold
and scoffing surroundings had seized him. To
his first illusions as to the shortness of their exile
The Court of Saint- Mande, 71
had succeeded, by a sudden change common to
these extreme natures, a settled conviction that
it would now be prolonged indefinitely. Hence
the air of ennui, of weariness he showed in the
conversations by which Frederica attempted to
rouse within him her own fire, seeking in the
depths of his eyes an attention she was unable
to fix. Indifferent, the chorus of some fooHsh
song pursuing him, his head was always full of
a vision of the night before, of that intoxicating,
stupefying whirl of pleasure. And what an " Ouf ! "
of relief he gave when he finally got away ; what a
renewal of youth and life came to him each time
that he left the queen sadder and more lonely !
After this work of writing letters in the morning
and the despatch of other short and eloquent notes
of her own, in which she revived the courage, the
devotion, near to failing, of her friends, Frederica's
sole amusements were the books of her library,
that of a sovereign (composed chiefly of memoirs,
correspondences, chronicles of times past, or high
religious philosophy), games with her child in
the garden, and a few rides on horseback through
the forest of Vincennes, — rides that were seldom
extended beyond the edge of the wood where the
last echoes of Parisian noise died away and the
miseries of the great faubourg ended ; for Paris
caused her an antipathy, an insurmountable horror,
which she could not overcome. Scarcely once a
month did she bring herself to make, her liveries
in great state, a tour of visits to the exiled princes.
Starting without pleasure, she returned discour-
72 Kings in Exile,
aged. Beneath these royal misfortunes, decently
and nobly borne, she felt abandonment of a
cause, complete renunciation, exile accepted, taken
patiently, habitually, cheated by hobbies, childish
absurdities, or even worse.
The proudest, the most dignified of these fallen
majesties was the King of Westphalia, a poor blind
man, a touching sight, with his daughter, his blonde
Antigone ; keeping up the pomp and the external
grandeur of his life, but occupied solely in collect-
ing snuff-boxes, and setting up glass cases of curi-
osities in his salon — singular satire on the infirmity
which kept him from enjoying his treasures. In
the King of Palermo, the same apathetic renounce-
ment, complicated with mourning, sadness, want of
money, a disunited household, ambitions killed by
the death of the only child. The king, nearly
always absent, left his wife alone on her widowed
and exiled hearth ; while the Queen of Galicia,
gorgeous, loving pleasure passionately, made no
change in her turbulent morals as an exotic sove-
reign ; and the Duke of Palma unhooked from
time to time his carbine from the wall and tried to
cross the frontier, whence he was each time
roughly cast back into the miserable idleness of
his life. At heart, however, more of a contraban-
dist than a pretender, making war to have money
and women, he gave his poor duchess all the cruel
emotions of a wretched woman married to a bandit
of the Pyrenees, whom she expects every night to
see brought back to her on a bier at the dawn of
day.
The Court of Saint- Mande. 73
All these deposed beings had but one word upon
their hps, a motto displacing the sonorous devices
of their royal houses: "Why do anything? . .
What good is it?" To the active fervour of Fred-
erica, to her outbursts, the most polite of them
answered by a smile, the women replied with
theatre, religion, gallantry, or fashion ; and, little
by little, this tacit lowering of a principle, this dis-
integration of forces, affected in the end the proud
Dalmatian herself Between the king who did not
wish to be a king, and the poor little Zara so slow
to develop, she was struck with a sense of extinc-
tion. Old Rosen, shut up by day in his office,
seldom spoke. Princesse Colette was only a bird,
incessantly employed in preening her feathers;
Boscovich a child ; the marquise a simpleton.
There was always Pere Alphee ; but that fierce
and rugged monk could never have understood
from a half-word the inward shudders of the queen,
the doubts, the fears that were beginning to invade
her. The season also had something to do with
it. That wood of Saint-Mande, in summer all
verdure and flowers, deserted and still as a park
throughout the week, but on Sundays swarming
with populace joy, was now taking, at the coming
of winter, in the gloom of a damp horizon and the
floating mist of its own lake, the desolate aspect,
without grandeur, of a region of pleasure aban-
doned. Flocks of crows flew low among the
blackened bushes and high above the tall, gnarled
trees, in whose discrowned summits the nests of
the magpies swung, and the long, fibrous threads of
74 Kings hi Exile.
the misletoe. This was the second winter Fred-
erica had passed in Paris. Why did it seem much
longer and far more dismal than the first? Did she
miss the lively racket of a hotel, the stir and life
of the tumultuous and rich city? No. But just
in proportion as the queen decreased, did the
woman begin to feel her weakness, the sorrows of
a neglected wife, the home-sickness of a stranger
torn from her native soil.
In the glassed gallery adjoining the grand salon
where she had made for herself a winter garden,
a quiet spot far from the household noises, hung
with light draperies and in every corner the green-
ery of plants, she now sat for days together inactive
before the ravaged garden and its tangle of leafless
branches defined like an etching on the gray
horizon, with a mixture of dark and resisting ver-
dure which box and holly still preserve beneath
the snow, through the whiteness of which their
stiff arms penetrate. In the three basins of the
fountain, rising one above another, the sheets of
faUing water had a cold, metallic sound, and beyond
the tall railing which skirted the Avenue Daumes-
nil, breaking the silence and solitude of the wood,
the steam-cars on the tramway passed, hissing,
from time to time, their long smoke streaming
backward and dispersing so slowly in the yellow
atmosphere that Frederica could follow it long
and watch it disappearing little by little, heavily
and without an object, like her life.
It was on a rainy winter morning that filys^e
The Court of Saint- Mande, 75
Meraut gave his first lesson to the royal child, in
this little haven of the sadness and reflections of
the queen, which from that day took the aspect of
a study: books and maps spread out upon the
table, the full light admitted as into a studio or
schoolroom, the mother, very simple in a gown of
black cloth fitting her tall figure closely, with a
little lacquered work-table before her, and the
master and pupil, both hesitating, and equally
disturbed the one as the other at this their first
interview. The little prince had vaguely recog-
nized the enormous and fulgurating head they had
shown to him on Christmas eve in the religious
twilight of the chapel, and which his imagination,
encumbered with the fairy tales of Mme. de Silvis,
connected with an apparition of the giant Robistor
or the wizard Merlin. And Elysee's own impres-
sion was quite as chimerical, fancying as he did
that he beheld in this frail little boy, wizened
and sickly, with a forehead as lined as though it
actually bore the six hundred years of his race, a
predestined chief, a leader of men and peoples ; to
whom he said gravely, with a trembling voice : —
" Monseigneur, you will be a king some day . . .
you must learn what it is to be a king. . . Listen
to me, look at me well, and what my mouth may
not express with sufftcient clearness, the respect in
my eyes will make you understand."
Then, bending down to the level of that little
intellect and the child's little throat, he explained,
with words and images that were suited to it, the
dogma of divine right, the mission of the kings on
76 Kings in Exile.
earth, between the peoples and God, charged with
duties and responsibilities that other men have not,
but which are laid upon kings from their earliest
childhood. . . That the little prince could under-
stand perfectly all he said to him is not to be
supposed, but it may be that he felt himself
enveloped by that vivifying warmth with which
florists, protecting some precious plant, surround
the delicate fibre, the fragile bud.
As for the queen, bending over her tapestry,
she listened in delightful surprise to words she
had despairingly awaited for years, words which
answered to her m.ost secret thoughts, called to
them, stirred them. . . So long had she dreamed
alone ! Of so many things that she knew not how
to say, did this Meraut now give her the formula !
Even on this first day she felt herself an un-
known musician, an artist unexpressed, before
this magic executor of her own work. Her vaguest
feelings on that great idea of royalty took shape
and were here summed up majestically, and yet
very simply, since a child, quite a little child,
could almost comprehend them. While she looked
at that man, his large features animated with be-
lief and eloquence, she saw, in contrast, the pretty,
indolent face, the unmeaning smile of Christian;
she heard the eternal "What good is it?" of all
those discrowned kings, and the chatter of the
princely boudoirs. Ah ! if Christian had been
like that they would still be on the throne, or both
would now have disappeared, buried beneath its
ruins. . . Strange to say, in the close attention
The Court of Saint- Maude, 77
she could not keep herself from paying, the voice,
the face of Elysee gave her the impression of a
recollection. From what dark corner of her mem-
ory rose up that brow of genius, those accents
which resounded to the depths of her being, in
the most secret cavities of her heart? . .
But now the master had begun to question his
pupil, not on what he knew, — that was nothing,
or, alas ! so little, — but seeking merely to dis-
cover what to teach him. " Yes, monsieur . . .
No, monsieur. . ." The little prince had only
those two words upon his lips, but he put all his
strength into saying them, with the gentle sweet-
ness of a boy brought up by women in a perpetu-
ation of his babyhood. He tried, nevertheless,
poor darling, to disentangle from the varied
knowledge put into him by Mme. de Silvis, a
few notions of general history as distinguished
from the adventures of dwarfs and fairies which
spangled his little imagination, artificial as the
scenes of a pantomime. From her seat the queen
helped him, encouraged him, lifted him, as it were,
on her own soul. When the swallows fly, if the
tiniest in the nest cannot launch itself forth, the
mother will give it the spring on her own wings.
When the child hesitated to answer, Frederica's
look, golden in those aquamarine eyes, darkened
like the wave as the squall passes ; but when he
answered rightly, what a smile of triumph she
turned to the master ! For many a month she
had not known such plenitude of comfort, of joy.
The waxen skin of the little Zara, his downcast
yS Kings in Exile,
countenance of weakly childhood, seemed to her
eyes infused with fresh blood ; even the dreary
landscape widened at the magic of those words,
and let her see what there was ot imposing and
grandiose in that vast stripping and baring of
Nature.
While the queen sat listening, leaning on her
elbow, her bosom forward, bending her whole
self toward that future in which the child-king
stood before her fancy in the triumph of their
return to Leybach, Elys6e quivered, marvelling at
a transfiguration he knew not he himself had
caused, and beholding upon that noble brow of
polished surface a royal diadem, twined and
rolled among the crossed reflections of her heavy
braids.
Mid-day was striking from all the clocks before
the lesson ended. In the principal salon, where
the little Court assembled every morning at the
breakfast hour, the party began to whisper and
wonder at the non-appearance of king or queen.
Hunger, and the vacuum of that moment when
a meal is delayed, mingled a certain ill-humour
with these low-toned remarks. Boscovich, pale
with cold and hunger, who had just been hunting
for two hours in the underbrush of the wood for
a certain late-blooming plant, was thawing his
fingers before the tall mantel of white marble in
the form of an altar, where Pere Alph^e sometimes,
on Sunday, said a private mass. The m^arquise,
majestic and stiff on the edge of a sofa, in a gown
of green velvet, was shaking her head on her long,
The Court of Saint-Maude, 79
thin neck wound round with a boa, in a tragic
manner, while making her confidences to Princesse
Colette. The poor woman was in despair at hav-
ing her pupil taken from her to be confided to
a common person . . . positively, a common per-
son ! . . she had seen him that morning crossing
the courtyard.
" My dear, he would have frightened you . . .
hair long like that; the look of a madman. . .
It takes Pere Alphee to find such people."
** They say he is very learned," said the princess,
her mind wandering to other matters.
The marquise bounded. . . Very learned ! . .
very learned ! . . Did the son of a king need to
be crammed with Latin and Greek like a diction-
ary? . . " No, no, my dear, such education requires
special knowledge . . . and I had it. I was pre-
pared. I have studied the treatise of the Abb^
Diguet on the ' Institution of a Prince.' I know
by heart the different means he indicates to dis-
cern men, and to repel flatterers. The first are
six in number, the second seven. This is order of
them. . ."
And she began to recite them to the princess,
who did not listen, being seated, sulky and un-
strung, on a mound of cushions over which flowed
the train of her pale-blue gown made in the last
fashion, and looking towards the door that led to
the apartments of the king with magnets at the
tips of her lashes, and the vexed expression of a
pretty woman who has made her toilet for one
who does not come. Stiff in his starred coat, the
8o Kings hi Exile,
old Due de Rosen was walking up and down with
automatic step, regular as a pendulum, stopping
at one or other of the windows looking on the
courtyard or the garden, and there, his eyes
raised beneath his anxious brow, he seemed like
the officer of the watch, charged with the sailing
of the ship and the responsibility of all on board.
And truly, the appearance of the vessel did him
honour. The red brick of the offices and the
administration building shone, washed by the rain
that was falling on the spotless stones of the porticos
and the fine pebbly gravel. On that gloomy day
a light positively shone from the neatness of every-
thing and was reflected in the salon, — already
cheerful with the warmth of carpets and calorifireSy
and Louis XVI. furniture in white and gold, with its
classic ornamentation on the panels and mirrors;
the latter very large, a little gilded label hanging
to one of them by ribbon fastenings. In one
corner of this large room, a console of the same
period served as pedestal to the crown saved from
wreck, and covered with a glass case. Frederica
insisted on its being there, '* to remind us," she
said. And in spite of Christian's sarcasms — he
called it rococo, a relic of kings gone to the
devil — the splendid jewel of the middle ages, its
precious stones sparkling in their goffered and
open-worked old gold setting, did cast a note
of ancient chivalry amid the coquetry of the
eighteenth century and the mixed taste of our
own.
The rolling of wheels on the gravel announced
The Court of Saint- Mande. 8i
the arrival of the aide-de-camp. At any rate, he
was some one.
" You come late on duty, Herbert," said the
duke, gravely.
The prince, though rather a big boy, always
trembled before his father ; he now coloured and
stammered a few excuses. . . " Very sorry . . .
not my fault ... on service all night."
" That is why the king is not yet down, I sup-
pose," said the princess, putting her delicate little
nose into the dialogue between the two men.
A stern look from the duke shut her lips. The
conduct of the king was nobody's business.
" Go up at once, monsieur ; the king must be
waiting for you."
Herbert obeyed, after vainly endeavouring to
obtain a smile from his beloved Colette, whose
ill-humour, far from being soothed by his coming,
took her off to sulk alone on a divan, her pretty
curls in disorder and the blue gown rumpled by
the nervous fidgeting of her childlike hands. And
yet Prince Herbert had of late made himself a
handsome and distinguished-looking man. His
wife had exacted that in his capacity as aide-de-
camp he should let his moustache grow, which
gave an expression that was formidably martial to
his kind, good face, now paled and thinned by the
sleepless nights and positive fatigue of his service
to the king. . . Moreover he still limped a little,
and walked with a cane, as became a hero of the
siege of Ragusa, a memorial of which he had just
written, a memorial made famous before its publi-
6
82 Kings in Exile.
cation, having been read by the author one even
ing in the salon of the Queen of Palermo, which
won him, in addition to a most brilliant social
ovation, the formal promise of a prize at the
Academy. Think what position, what authority
all that gave to Colette's husband ! But none the
less did he keep his good-natured, shy, and sim-
pleton air, especially before the princess, who
continued to treat him with gracious contempt.
Which goes to prove that there is no such thing
as a great man to his wife.
"Well, what is it now?" she exclaimed in a
saucy little tone on seeing him reappear, his face
quite aghast and stupefied.
*' The king has not come in ! "
These few words produced the effect of an elec-
trical discharge in the salon. Colette, very pale, the
tears in her eyes, was the first to recover speech.
" Is it possible ! "
Then the duke, in a curt voice : —
" Not in ! . . Why was I not informed ? "
The boa of Mme. de Silvis erected itself and
twisted convulsively.
" If only nothing has happened to him ! . ."
cried the princess, in a state of extraordinary
excitement.
Herbert tranquillized her. Lebeau, the king's
valet, had started an hour ago with his valise;
therefore he must have had news of him.
In the silence that followed this explanation one
disquieting thought filled the minds of all; the Due
de Rosen gave utterance to it : — •
The Court of Saint- Maude, 83
"What will the queen say?"
Boscovich, trembling all over, remarked : —
" His Majesty may have told her."
" I am certain he did not," affirmed Colette ; " for
the queen said only just now that she meant to
present the new tutor to the king this morning
at breakfast. . ." Then, trembling all over, she
added between her teeth : " If I were in her place,
I know what I would do."
The duke, his eyes flaming, turned round indig-
nantly toward the little bourgeoise whom he could
not succeed in polishing, and was probably about
to read her a severe lesson, when the queen
appeared, followed by Elysee, who led his royal
pupil by the hand. Every one rose. Frederica,
with the beautiful smile of a happy woman, which
none had seen her wear for many a long day, pre-
sented M. Meraut. . . Oh ! that bow of the mar-
quise ! sarcastic and top-lofty ; for the last eight
days she had practised it. As for the princess,
she was unable to make so much as a gesture. . .
From pale she became crimson as she recognized
in this new tutor the strange young man with
whom she had breakfasted at her uncle Sauvadon's,
and who had written Herbert's book. Was he
there by chance, or could this be some devilish
plot? What shame for her husband, what fresh
ridicule upon him if his literary fraud were dis-
covered ! She was rather reassured by M6raut's
cold bow, though he must have recognized her.
" He is a man of sense," she thought to herself.
Unfortunately, all was compromised by Herbert's
84 Kings in Exile,
artlessness, his amazement at the entrance of the
tutor, and the familiar grasp of the hand with which
he said: ** Good-morning. How are you?"
"Then you know Monsieur Mdraut?" said the
queen, who had heard from her chaplain the true
story of the " Memorial " and was smiling, not
without mischief. But she was much too kind to
amuse herself long by a cruel game, and said
immediately : —
" Certainly the king has forgotten us. Go up
and tell him, Monsieur de Rosen."
It was necessary now to tell her the truth,
namely, that the king was not in the house, that
he had spent the night out, and to mention the
fact of the valise. This was the first time that such
a thing had happened ; and those present expected
some explosion from that proud and ardent nature,
all the more because the presence of a stranger
aggravated the fact. No. She remained calm ; and
merely said a few words to the aide-de-camp, inquir-
ing at what hour he had last seen the king.
" About three in the morning. . . His Majesty
was walking down the boulevard on foot with
Mgr. the Prince d'Axel."
" Ah ! true ... I had forgotten. . . They had
something to say to each other."
In these tranquil intonations she completely
regained her serenity. But no one present was
duped by them. They all knew Prince d'Axel;
they knew for what sort of conversation that de-
graded Royal Highness, that dangerous viveur, was
sought.
The Court of Saint-Mande, 85
*' Come, let us go to breakfast," said Frederica,
rallying her little Court with the gesture of a sov-
ereign, to the calmness she had forced herself to
show.
Needing an arm to take her to the dining-room,
she hesitated for an instant, the king not being
there. Then, suddenly turning to the Httle Comte
de Zara, who was Hstening with eyes wide open and
the comprehending air of a sick and precocious
child, she said to him with infinite tenderness that
was almost respectful, and a serious smile he had
never seen before : —
" Come, Sire."
86 Kmgs in Exile,
IV.
THE KING MAKES FETE.
Three o'clock at night by the clock of Saint-
Louis-en-l'lle.
Wrapped in darkness and silence, the hotel de
Rosen slept, with all the weight of its heavy old
stones piled up by time, of its massive arched
gates with their ancient knockers; while behind
its closed shutters the muffled mirrors reflected
naught but the sleep of centuries, a sleep of which
the airy paintings on the ceilings seemed the
dreams, and the murmur of the neighbouring river
the fleeting and irregular breath. But that which
sleeps soundest throughout the mansion is Prince
Herbert, scarcely half an hour back from the club,
worn-out, exhausted, cursing his harassing existence
as a viveur in spite of himself, which deprived him
of all he liked best in the world — horses and his
wife : of his horses, because the king took no pleas-
ure in the active outdoor life of a sportsman ; of his
wife, because the king and queen living so far apart
and seeing each other only at the hours of meals,
the aide-de-camp and the lady of honour, following,
one the king, the other the queen, were as much
separated in this parting of the household as the
confidants in a tragedy. The princess started for
The King Makes Fete, 87
Saint-Mande long before her husband was awake
in the morning; at night, when he came in, she
was already asleep behind double-locked doors.
If he complained, Colette would reply majestically,
with a little smile at the corner of her dimples :
** We surely owe this sacrifice to our princes." A
hard put-off to the amorous Herbert, alone in his
great chamber on the first floor, with its ceil-
ing sixteen feet above his head, the tops of the
doors painted by Boucher, and tall mirrors let in
to the walls which returned him his own image
in endless perspective.
Sometimes, however, when utterly worn-out, as
he was this evening, Colette's husband did feel a
certain selfish comfort in stretching himself at full
length on his bed without conjugal explanations, in
taking back his easy habits as a bachelor, and
wrapping his head in a vast foulard handkerchief in
which he would never have dared to bundle him-
self under the satirical eyes of his Parisian wife.
No sooner was he in bed on the embroidered and
blazoned pillow-case, a veritable sleep-trap of rest
and forgetfulness, than the nocturnal and foundered
aide-de-camp fell into it ; but as suddenly he was
dragged out of it by the painful sensation of a
light passing and re-passing before his eyes, as a
shrill little voice said in his ear : —
" Herbert ! . . Herbert ! . . "
" Hein? What is it? . . Who 's there? "
" Do hold your tongue. . . It is I . . . Colette."
It was indeed Colette, standing beside the bed,
her lace dressing-gown with hanging sleeves open
88 Kings in Exile,
at the throat, her hair twisted up to the top of her
head, the nape of her neck a httle nest of golden
curls ; all this seen by the glimmer of a tiny lan-
tern, which brought out the glance of her eye, full,
at first, of a solemn expression, but suddenly hila-
rious at the sight of Herbert, scared, stupid, the
ends of his rumpled foulard sticking out in threat-
ening points, his head with its bristling moustache
issuing from his nocturnal garment as if from the
robe of an archangel, though its expression was not
unlike that of a bourgeois braggart surprised in a
bad dream. But the laughter of the princess did
not last long. She placed her night-lamp gravely
on the table, with the decided air of a woman
who intends to make a scene ; and, without taking
notice that the prince was still vague in his waking,
she began, her arms crossed, her two little hands
hugging her elbows : —
** And you call this a Hfe, do you? . . Coming
home every day at four o'clock in the morning ! . .
Is it proper? . . you, a married man ! . ."
" But, my dearest," — he interrupted himself
hastily to pull off his foulard, which he flung out of
sight, — " it is not my fault. . . I don't wish any-
thing better than to come home early to my little
Colette, to my darling wife, whom I . . . "
He tried, as he spoke, to draw towards him the
snowy wrapper, the whiteness of which enticed
him, but he was harshly repulsed.
" You ! as if it concerned you ! . . Why, every
one knows you . . . knows you are a great inno-
cent, incapable of the slightest ... I 'd Hke to see
The Ki7ig Makes Fete, 89
you venture to be otherwise. . . It is the king ; in
his position ! . . Think what a scandal such be-
haviour is ! . . If he were free, a bachelor . . .
for bachelors must, I suppose, amuse themselves ;
though as for that, his rank ! the dignity of exile ! "
(Oh ! that little Colette, perched on the tall heels
of her slippers, to talk of the dignity of exile!)
'* But he is married. And I don't see how the
queen . . . Has n't she anything in her veins, that
woman? "
" Colette ! . . "
" Yes, yes, I know . . . you are just like your
father. . . Everything the queen does ! . . Well,
to my mind, she is just as guilty as he. . . It is
she who has driven him to this by her coldness,
her indifference. . . "
" The queen is not cold. She is proud."
** Nonsense ! are women proud when they love?
If she loved him, the first night he passed away
from home would have been the last. Such
women talk, threaten, make themselves felt. They
have not this cowardice of silence under wrongs
that stab them . . . and the result is the king
spends his nights on the boulevard, at the club,
with Prince d'Axel, and in God knows what sort
of company ! "
" Colette ! . . Colette ! . . "
But try to stop Colette when she was once off!
— launched in that fluent speech of the true bour-
geoise brought up in our exciting Paris, where
the very dolls know how to talk.
" That woman loves nothing, I tell you, not even
90 Kings in Exile,
her son. . . If she did, would she ever have con-
fided him to that savage? . . They are wearing
him out with study, poor Httle boy ! . . At night,
when asleep, he recites Latin and all kinds of
things . . . the marquise told me so. . . The
queen never misses a lesson . . . they are both
of a pair about that child. . . All to make him
reign ! . . but they '11 kill him first . . Oh ! your
Meraut! I detest him."
" He is a good fellow, for all that. He might
have made it very disagreeable for me with the
history of that book, but he never said a word
about it."
*' Oh, really ! . . Well, I can assure you that
when you are praised for that book before the
queen she has a very singular smile as she looks at
you. But you are such a simpleton, my poor
Herbert."
Observing the vexed look on her husband's face,
which had turned quite red, his mouth puffing out
Hke that of a pouting child, the princess feared
she had gone too far to obtain the thing she had
come for. But he, how could he keep up any
anger against that pretty creature sitting on the
edge of the bed, her head half-turned with a
movement full of coquetry, and making play with
that lissome youthful figure beneath its laces, the
polished whiteness of her throat, the enticing, mis-
chievous eye between those lashes? Herbert's
honest countenance became once more amiable, it
even grew animated in a quite extraordinary manner
at the soft warm touch of the little hand that was
The King Makes Fete. 91
now in his, and the feminine fragrance of the woman
he adored. . . Ah ! 9a, what did she want to know,
that httle Colette?.. Very little, apparently;
simply a bit of information. . . The king, had he,
yes or no, any mistresses? Was it a passion for
gambling that was leading him on, or the love of
pleasure and violent emotions. . . The aide-de-
camp hesitated before replying. Comrade on
all battle-fields, he feared, by relating what he
knew, to be treacherous to professional secrecy.
But that little hand was so caressing, so press-
ing, so inquisitive, that Christian II. 's aide-de-camp
resisted no longer.
" Well, yes, the king has a mistress just now."
Within his hand, Colette's little palm turned
damp and cold.
"Who is she, that mistress?" she inquired in a
curt, half-breathless voice.
" An actress at the Bouffes . . . Amy F6rat."
Colette knew that Amy Ferat very well, and
thought her atrociously ugly.
" Oh ! " said Herbert, by way of excuse, " his
Majesty won't keep her long."
"Truly?" asked Colette, with an air of satis-
faction.
Whereupon Herbert, delighted with his success,
ventured so far as to catch a knot of satin ribbon
which fluttered on the bosom of the dressing-gown,
and to continue in an airy little tone : —
" Yes, I am afraid that before long poor Amy
Ferat will receive her ouistiti."
"A ouistiti? . . What do you mean? "
92 Kings in Exile,
" Why, yes ; I have remarked, and so have all who
see the king, as I do, closely, that when an intrigue
begins to tire him he sends one of his ouistitis,
P. P. C. . . A way he has of getting rid of a mis-
tress he no longer loves. . . "
" Oh ! upon my word ! " exclaimed the princess,
indignantly.
" Positive truth ! . . At the club we no longer
say 'get rid of a mistress, but 'send her a
ouistiti. . .' "
He stopped, nonplussed at seeing the princess
rise hastily, snatch her lantern, and depart in a
straight line from the alcove.
" Eh ! but . . . Colette ! . . Colette ! . ."
She looking back, contemptuous, choking. . .
** I have had enough of your vile stories. . . I
am sick of them at last."
And raising the portiere she left the unfortunate
roi de la Gomme stupefied, his arms extended, his
heart in flames, ignorant of the why and wherefore
of the untimely visit and this whirlwind departure.
With the rapid step of an actress leaving the
stage, the floating train of her dressing-gown
taken up and twisted round her arm, Colette
hurriedly regained her own bedroom at the
other end of the house. There on a couch, in a
cushioned hollow of Oriental embroideries, slept
the prettiest little animal in the world, gray, silky
fur Hke feathers, a long tail almost enveloping it,
and a little silver bell fastened round its neck by a
rose-coloured ribbon, — a delicious ouistiti which
the king had sent her a few days ago in a basket
The King Makes FHe, 93
of Neapolitan straw, an attention she had received
with the utmost gratitude. Ah ! if she had only
known the real meaning of the gift ! Furious, she
snatched up the poor little beast, that bundle of
living and clawing silk, from which, thus suddenly-
awakened, two human eyes shone out, and opening
the window toward the quay, she said, with a
ferocious gesture : —
" Go ! . . vile thing ! "
The poor little monkey rolled down over the
quay; and it was not he alone that disappeared
and died that night, but also a dream fragile and
capricious as himself, the dream of a poor little
creature who now flung herself on her bed and
hid her face upon the pillow to sob.
Their loves had lasted very nearly a year, an
eternity to that child, who was but a butterfly. He
had only to make a single sign, and Colette de
Rosen, dazzled, fascinated, fell into his arms, — she
who, until then, had kept herself an honest woman,
not for love of her husband or of virtue, but be-
cause in that little bird's-brain of hers there was a
liking for clean plumage which had preserved her
from soiling falls ; and because, moreover, she was
essentially French, of that race of women whom
Moliere, long before our modern physiologists,
had declared to be without temperament, simply
imaginative and vain.
It was not to Christian, but to the king of
lUyria that the little Sauvadon gave her love. She
sacrificed herself to that ideal diadem which,
through legends and romantic, frivolous reading,
94 Kings in Exile.
she saw, like a halo, above the selfish and passion-
ridden type of her lover. She pleased him so long
as he found in her only a new plaything prettily
coloured, a Parisian plaything which would serve
to initiate him to keener amusements. But she
had the bad taste to take seriously her position as
'* mistress of the king." All those female figures,
half historic, all that pinchbeck of the crown, more
brilliant than real jewels, glittered in her ambitious
dreams. She desired to be, not the du Barry, but
the Chateauroux of this Louis XV. of the coast.
Illyria to reconquer, conspirators to be led at the
tip of her fan, dashing attacks, heroic disembar-
cations became the subject of all her conversa-
tions with the king. She saw herself rousing the
natives, hiding in the tall wheat, in barns, like
those famous heroines of La Vendee whose adven-
tures she had been made to read in the convent of
the Sacr6-Coeur. She had even planned a page's
costume, — costume always playing a leading part
in her inventions, — for a pretty little renaissance
page, which would give her access to the king at
all hours and enable her to accompany him per-
petually. Christian did not particularly like these
elated dreams ; his own sense showed him the
false and silly side of them. Besides he did not
take a mistress to talk politics ; and when he held
his pretty Colette on his knee with her soft little
paws and her rosy muzzle, in all the abandonment
of love, reports about the recent resolutions of the
Diet of Leybach or the effect of the last royalist
manifesto gave his heart a shiver like that caused
The King Makes Fete, 95
by a sudden fall of temperature or the frosts of
April on the orchard buds.
From that moment scruples came to him, then
remorse, — the complicated, naive remorse of a Slav
and a Catholic. His caprice satisfied, he began to
feel the odious character of this intercourse so
near the queen, under her very eyes in fact ; the
danger of these furtive, hasty meetings in hotels,
where their incognito might be betrayed at any
moment; also the cruelty of deceiving such a
good, kind creature as that poor devil of a
Herbert, who spoke of his wife with unabated
tenderness and never once suspected, when the
king rejoined him at the club, his eyes bright,
his face flushed, that he came from the arms of
Colette. But more embarrassing still was the Due
de Rosen, extremely distrustful of the morals of
the daughter-in-law who was not of his caste, very
uneasy about his son, whom he suspected of being
deceived, and feeling himself responsible for the
whole of it because his avarice had made the
marriage. He watched Colette, took her himself,
night and morning, to and from Salnt-Mande ; he
would have followed her all day if the supple
creature had not known how to slip through his
clumsy fingers. Between them it came to be a
silent struggle. From the window of his office
the duke seated at his desk saw, with great vex-
ation, his pretty daughter-in-law, arrayed in the
delightful costumes she concocted with her dress-
maker, curl herself up in the carriage, all glowing
behind the mist on the glasses if it was cold, or
96 Kings in Exile,
sheltered behind a fringed sunshade on pleasant
days.
"Are you going out?" he would say.
*' On the queen's service," the little Sauvadon
replied triumphantly from behind her veil. And
it was true. Frederica seldom entered the whirl of
Paris, and gladly gave ail her errands to the lady
of honour, never having felt the vanity of proclaim-
ing her name and regal title to some fashionable
tradesman before the inquisitive curiosity of the
shop people and the customers present. Con-
sequently all social popularity was lost to her.
No one discussed in a salon the colour of her
hair and eyes, the rather stiff majesty of her figure,
and her free and independent manner of wearing
the Parisian fashions.
One morning the duke observed that Colette on
leaving Saint-Mand6 seemed so cheerfully serious,
and showed so marked an increase of her grisette
type, that from pure instinct, knowing nothing
(all true hunters have these sudden inspirations),
he started to follow her, and did follow her a long
time, to a famous restaurant on the Quai d'Orsay.
With much cleverness and imagination the prin-
cess had contrived to be excused from the cere-
mony of the queen's table, and was on her way to
breakfast with her lover in a private room. They
took their repast before a window, quite low, which
incased a splendid scene ; the Seine gilded by the
sun, the Tuileries beyond — a mass of trees and
stone ; near-by, the yards of the frigate school-
ship amid the shady verdure above the bulwarks
The King Makes Fete, 97
of the quay, where the sellers of blue glasses
spread out their wares. The weather, true weather
for a rendezvous, had the warmth of a sunny day
tempered by piquant breezes. Never had Colette
laughed so heartily; her laugh was the pearly
climax of her grace ; and Christian, who adored
her when she chose to be simply the creature of
joy he loved, enjoyed the choice breakfast in her
company. Suddenly she spied upon the opposite
sidewalk the figure of her father-in-law, walking
up and down at a regular pace, as if determined
on a long watch, — a sentry, in short, before the
door, which the old man knew to be the only issue
from the restaurant ; from which post he watched
the entrance of the fine, erect, and well-girthed
officers who came from the neighbouring cavalry
barracks ; for in his capacity as former general of
pandours he thought that arm irresistible, and he
doubted no longer that his daughter-in-law had
some intrigue with spurs and sabretache.
The anxiety of the king and Colette was great,
and was not unlike the dilemma of the learned man
perched on a palm-tree beneath which yawned a
crocodile. Certain of the discretion and the in-
corruptibility of the staff of the establishment, the
pair felt sure that the crocodile could not get
up to them. But how could they get out? The
king, no matter ! he had plenty of time before
him in which to wear out the patience of the
animal. But Colette ! . . the queen would be ex-
pecting her, uniting, possibly, her suspicions to
those of old Rosen. The master of the establish-
98 Kings in Exile,
ment, whom Christian sent for and informed as to
the facts of the situation, could at first think of
nothing but making a hole through the wall into
the next house, as in times of revolution ; then the
idea of a very much simpler expedient occurred to
him. Madame must wear the clothes of a baker's
boy, and put her gown and petticoats into the
basket she would carry on her head, and reclothe
herself in the house of the dame du comptoir, who
lived in the next street. At first, Colette objected.
Appear as a scullion before the king ! However,
it had to be, under peril of greater catastrophes ;
and the ironed-out habiliments of a boy of four-
teen turned Colette de Rosen, 7iee Sauvadon, into
the prettiest and most jaunty of the little restau-
rant boys who run about the streets of Paris at the
hungry hours. But how far away was that white
cap, those shoes in which her feet slipped about,
that jacket in the pockets of which the sous of the
poiirboires rattled, from the costume of the heroic
page, with pearl-handled dagger and high boots, in
which she had dreamed of following her Lara ! . .
The duke beheld without suspicion the two little
cook-boys pass him with baskets on their heads dif-
fusing an appetizing smell of warm pastry, which
gave him a cruel sense of hunger — he was fasting,
poor man ! Upstairs, the king, a prisoner, but
relieved of a weighty anxiety, sipped his Roederer
as he read the papers and looked, from time to
time, through a corner of the curtain to see if the
crocodile were still there.
When the old duke returned to Saint-Mand6 in
The King Makes Fete, 99
the evening the princess received him with a most
ingenuous smile. He saw he was successfully
tricked, and he said not a word of the adventure.
It was noised about, however. Who knows by
what cracks in the walls of a salon or antechamber,
by what lowered glass of a coupe window, by what
echo returned from blank walls to mute doors, are
scandalous rumours spread about Paris until they
appear in the light of day, that is to say, on the
front page of some society journal, thence to the
crowd through a thousand ears, becoming a pub-
lic shame after being first the amusing anecdote
of a coterie ? For a week all Paris diverted itself
with the tale of the little cook-boy. The names,
whispered as low as was possible for such great
titles, did not penetrate the epidermis of Prince
Herbert. But the queen had some inkling of the
adventure, for she, who never, since a terrible ex-
planation they had had at Leybach, reproached
the king for his conduct, took him aside a few
days later as they were leaving the table, and said
gravely, without looking at him : —
" A great deal is being said of a scandalous tale
in which your name is mixed up. . . Oh ! don't
defend yourself; I wish to hear nothing more on
that subject. . . Only, remember this, which is in
your keeping " (she pointed to the crown, its rays
veiled by the crystal shade). '* Endeavour to
keep shame and ridicule from touching it. . .
Your son must one day wear it."
Did she know the whole truth of the adventure?
Could she put the right name on the woman who
lOO Kings in Exile.
was half unveiled by scandal? Frederica was so
strong, so thoroughly in possession of herself, that
no one about her was able to say. At any rate,
Christian was aware that he was warned, and his
fear of scenes, the need of that weak nature to see
around him pleasant faces responding to the per-
petual smiles of his own careless indifference, de-
termined him to take from its cage the prettiest
and most coaxing of the ouistitis as an offering
to Princesse Colette. She wrote to him ; he did
not answer, nor would he comprehend either her
sighs or her dolorous attitudes, but continued to
speak to her with the gay politeness that women
liked in him so much; then, freed from the re-
morse which had begun to weigh upon him as his
fancy diminished, and having no longer at his
heels an affection that was otherwise tyrannical
than that of his wife, he rushed full speed into
pleasure, caring for nothing — to use the odious
and effeminate language of the dandies of the day
— caring for nothing but "making fete." That
was the fashionable expression at the clubs in that
year. No doubt they have another at the present
moment, for change is constant. But that which
remains, immutable and monotonous, are the fa-
mous restaurants where the thing takes place :
the gilded and flowery salons where high-priced
prostitutes invite themselves or are invited; the
enervating flatness of pleasure degrading itself
to orgy without the power of revival. That which
does not change is the classic stupidity of the
mass of rakes and harlots, their stereotyped slang
The King Makes Fete. loi
and laugh, without a single imaginative fancy
ever slipping into their world, as bourgeois, as
conventional, as the other world, under all its appar-
ent folly. It is regulated disorder, a programme
played out by yawning ennui and aching joints.
But the king, he, at least, '* made fete " with the
ardour of a lad of twenty. He carried into it that
hunger for escapade which took him to Mabille
on the night of his arrival, to satisfy desires
sharpened for a long time at a distance by the
reading of certain Parisian newspapers, which give
each day the appetizing menu of debauchery in
tales and articles which relate and idealize it for
the provinces and foreign countries. His intrigue
with Mme. de Rosen stopped him for a certain
time on this descent to easy pleasure — which
resembles the little staircases of the night restaur-
ants, inundated with light, carpeted from top
to bottom, descended step by step in the first
stage of drunkenness, which deepens and comes
on faster at the bottom in the fresh air of the open
door, and leads straight to the gutter, in the dim
hour of the scavengers and dustmen. Christian
now abandoned himself to that descent ; and what
encouraged and intoxicated him more than wine
was the little Court, the clique with which he sur-
rounded himself, — noblemen, ruined gamblers,
on the lookout for royal dupes ; journalists, gay-
livers, whose paid reports entertained him, and
who, proud of this intimacy with so illustrious an
exile, took him to the coulisse of the theatres,
where women with no eyes but for him, emotional
I02 Kings m Exile,
and provocative, painted him in blushing confu^
sion, with their enamelled cheeks. Quick to seize
the language of the boulevards, with its fads, its
exaggeration, its vapidity, he soon said, like
an accomplished gomme: " Chic, very chic. . ."
" 'T is infect [ugly, or silly]." " On se tord [fleeced
at cards, from pigeon's neck tvvisted]." But he
said these things less vulgarly than others, thanks
to his foreign accent, which relieved the slang and
gave it a Bohemian point. One word he especially
affected, — rigolo} He used it apropos of every-
thing, to appreciate what he liked. Plays, novels,
events, public or private, they were or they were
not rigolo. This dispensed Monseigneur from all
argument. At the end of a supper Amy Ferat,
who was drunk and irritated by the word, called
out to him : —
'' Hey ! see here, Rigolo ! "
This familiarity pleased him. She, at least, did
not treat him as a king. He made her his mis-
tress, and long after his connection with the fash-
ionable actress ended, the name stayed by him,
like that of '' Queue-de-Poule " given to Prince
d'Axel, no one ever knew exactly why.
Rigolo and Queue-de-Poule made a pair of
friends who were never separated ; they hunted
their game in couples, and united even in the
boudoirs their fates, which were much alike. The
disgrace of the hereditary prince constituting in
point of fact an exile, he bore it as best he could,
1 Rigolo, amusing, comical. Rigoler, to laugh, to divert one's
self; an old word, used by Rabelais. — Tr.
The King Makes Fete, 103
and for ten years past had " made fete " in all the
wineshops of the boulevard with the liveliness of
an undertaker. The King of Illyria had an apart-
ment in the hotel d'Axel on the Champs Elysees.
At first he slept there occasionally, but very soon
as often as at Saint-Mande. These explained ab-
sences, with apparent reason, left the queen quite
calm, but threw the princess into black despair.
No doubt her wounded pride still cherished the
hope of regaining that volatile heart. She em-
ployed all sorts of coquettish wiles, new adorn-
ments and coiffures, and combinations of cut and
colour in her gowns that harmonized well with
the allurements of her beauty. But what disap-
pointment when, at seven o'clock, the king not
having appeared, Frederica, imperturbably serene,
would say, ''The king does not dine here to-day,"
and order the little Zara's high chair to be put in
the place of honour ! The nervous Colette, obliged
to be silent and to swallow her vexation, longed
for an outburst from the queen which might have
avenged them both ; but Frederica, scarcely paler,
kept her sovereign calmness, even when the prin-
cess, with cruel feminine cleverness, slipping hints
between skin and flesh, tried to make to her reve-
lations about the clubs in Paris, the coarseness of
the conversations between men, the still coarser
amusements to which these irregular hours, these
habits of the coulisse led, the foolish wagers, the
fortunes crumbling like card-houses on the gam-
bling-table, the eccentric bets entered in a special
book, curious to look over, a gilded book of human
I04 Kings in Exile,
aberrations. But in vain, the queen was not
affected by the galling of these pin-pricks ; either
she did not or she would not comprehend them.
Once, and once only, she betrayed herself, — one
morning, as they were both on horseback in the
forest of Saint-Mande. A sharp little breeze of
the month of March was ruffling the waters of the
lake and driving them towards the shore, still bar-
ren and flowerless. A few buds were bursting in
the coppices which still kept the russet leaves of
winter, and the horses treading side by side a
wood-road strewn with fallen branches made them
crackle in unison with the opulent sound of creak-
ing saddles and jangling curb-chains. The two
women, each as good a rider as the other, rode
slowly, absorbed by the calm of an intermediate
season, which prepares, with rainy skies and soil
blackened by the departing snows, for the renewal
of all things. Colette, however, soon began upon
her favourite topic, as she always did when alone
with the queen. She dared not attack the king
directly, but she made up for it on his surround-
ings, on the gentlemen of the Grand-Club, whom
she knew through Herbert and Parisian slander,
and whom she now dressed out with the hand of
a connoisseur. Prince dAxel first of all. Really
and truly she could not comprehend how any one
could make a friend and companion of that man,
who spent his life in gambling and revelling, liking
none but the worst company, sitting openly on the
boulevard beside a slut, drinking, like a coachman,
with the first comer, and hail-fellow-well-met with
The King Makes Fete. 105
the lowest comedians. And to think that that was
an hereditary prince ! . . Did he take pleasure in
degrading and fouling royalty in his own person? "
On and on she went with fire and fury, while the
queen, intentionally abstracted, her eyes vague,
stroked the neck of her horse and presently urged
him on as if to escape the tales of her lady of hon-
our. But Colette kept up with her.
'' However," she went on, '' we know where
Prince d'Axel gets it. The conduct of his uncle
is as bad as his own. A king who proclaims his
mistresses with such impudence before his Court
and his wife. . . One can't help asking what sort
of slavish nature a queen can have who would bear
such outrages. . . "
This time the blow struck home. Frederica,
quivering, her eyes clouded, showed upon her feat-
ures, which seemed suddenly hollowed, an expres-
sion so sorrowful, so worn, that Colette felt herself
shaken as she saw that proud sovereign, whose soul
she had never yet been able to reach, come down
to the level of womanly suffering. But the queen
almost immediately recovered her pride.
'* The woman you speak of is a queen," she said
quickly; "and it would be a great injustice to
judge her as you do other women. Other women
can be happy or unhappy openly ; they can weep
their tears and complain if the sorrow is too
great to bear. But queens ! . . Sorrows as wives,
sorrows as mothers, they must hide all, and
bear all. . . Can a queen escape when she is
outraged ? Can she seek a separation and give that
io6 Kings in Exile,
joy to the enemies of a throne? No; at the risk
of seeming cruel, indifferent, blind, she must keep
her head erect to support the crown. And this
is not pride ; it is the sentiment of our grandeur
that sustains us. It is this which makes us show
ourselves in open carriages between husband and
child when threats of a conspirator's pistol are in
the air; this that makes exile and its mire less
heavy ; this that gives us strength to endure certain
cruel affronts of which you, Princesse de Rosen,
should be the last to speak to me."
She grew excited as she spoke, hurrying her words
at the last; then she struck her horse a vigorous
blow, which sent him through the wood in the
whirl of a rapid pace that made her blue veil
flutter and the folds of her cloth habit clap.
Henceforth, Colette left the queen in peace ;
but as her nerves needed soothing and distraction,
she turned her anger and her teasing tilts against
Elysee Meraut, putting herself prominently on
the side of the marquise, for the royal house was
now divided into two camps. Elysee had scarcely
any one on his side but Pere Alphee, whose rough
speech and ever ready thrust were a fine support on
some occasions ; but he was frequently making jour-
neys to Illyria charged with missions between the
mother-house in the Rue des Tourneaux and the
Franciscan monasteries at Zara and Ragusa. At
any rate, that was the pretext of his many absences,
made with the utmost mystery, from which he
returned always more ardent, mounting the stair-
case with furious leaps, his rosary twirling in his
The King Makes Fete, 107
fingers, and a prayer between his teeth which he
chewed Hke a ball. After such returns he was
shut up for long hours with the queen, and then
he was off again, leaving the coterie of the mar-
quise quite at liberty to league against the pro-
fessor. From the old duke, who was shocked in
all his military and social notions by the negligent
dress and touzled hair of poor Meraut, to Lebeau
the King's valet, enemy by instinct of all indepen-
dence, and even down to the humblest groom or
kitchen-boy, courtiers of Lebeau, nay, even to the
inoffensive Boscovich, who went with the rest from
cowardice and respect for the majority, there was
nothing less than a veritable coalition against the
new master. It showed itself less in acts than in
words, looks, attitudes, in the nervous little skir-
mishes which life in common brings about between
persons who detest each other. Oh ! those atti-
tudes which were Mme. de Silvis' specialty, —
disdainful, haughty, ironical, bitter; she played
off all the expressions of her head before Elysee,
taking especial pains to assume an air of respectful
pity, with smothered sighs and blank looks cast to
the ceiling, whenever she was in presence of the
little prince. "Don't you suffer, Monseigneur?"
and she felt him over with her long, thin fingers,
making him languid with her trembling caress.
Then the queen would say in lively tones : —
" Come, come, marquise, you will make Zara
think he is ill."
" I find his hands, his forehead, rather hot."
" He has just come in. . . It is the brisk air. . ."
lo8 Kings ijt Exile,
Then the mother would carry off the boy, rather
troubled at heart by remarks repeated to her, —
the household theory being that Monseigneur was
made to study too hard ; a theory that the Parisian
part of the household repeated without believing,
but which was taken seriously by the Illyrian ser-
vants, the tall Petscha and old Greb, who darted
their worst black looks at Meraut, and galled him
with that spiteful service of antipathy which is so
easy to exercise against dependents and absent-
minded persons. . . Again he encountered the pet-
tiness, the persecutions, the jealousies of the palace
. . . the same grovelling of souls, crawling round a
throne, of which exile and dethronement do not, it
appears, rid royalty. His nature, too generous,
too affectionate not to suffer from these aggressive
antipathies, felt the restraint to his simple, familiar
ways and bohemian artist habits, now compressed
into the narrow ceremonial of the house at those
meals, lighted by tall candelabra, where the men in
full dress and the women decolletees (seated far apart
around the table for lack of guests) did not speak
or eat until the king and queen had eaten and spoken,
ruling themselves by an implacable etiquette, the
observance of which was watched over by the
chief of the civil and military household with only
the more rigour as the exile was protracted. But
it sometimes happened, nevertheless, that the old
student of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince came to the
royal table in a coloured cravat, spoke without
permission, launched himself headlong into one of
those eloquent improvisations with which the walls
The King Makes Fete, 109
of the Cafe Voltaire still rang. Then it was that
the thundering looks he drew upon himself, the
ridiculous importance given to the slightest in-
fraction of Court rules, gave him a longing to
leave all and get back to his Quarter, as he had
done on a former occasion.
But — there was the queen !
Living always in Frederica's private existence,
the child between them, he became possessed by
a fanatical devotion to her, made up of respect,
admiration, and superstitious faith. She summed
up in herself and symbolized to his mind all his
monarchical beliefs and ideals, just as the Madonna
is the whole of religion to a peasant of the Trans-
tevere. For the queen he remained ; for her he
found courage to carry on his hard task to its end.
Oh ! yes, it was hard, very hard. What patience
was needed to put the slightest thing into the little
head of this child of a king ! He was charming,
poor little Zara, gentle and good. Will was not
lacking to him. The serious and upright soul of
his mother could be divined In the boy, with some-
thing, I know not what, that was trivial, volatile,
and younger than his years. Mind was visibly
belated in that stunted, almost aged little body,
which play did not tempt, and on which revery
weighed until it turned at times to torpor. Rocked
from his earliest years — which to him had been
a long convalescence — with the fantastic tales of
his governess, life, of which he was just beginning
to have some conception, struck him only through
its analogies with those stories where fairies and
1 1 o Kings in Exile,
good genii, hovering over kings and queens, helped
them out of towers and dungeons, deHvered them
from persecutions and plots with a single tap of
their golden wand, and laid low ramparts of thorns,
walls of ice, dragons spitting fire, and old women
who could change you into beasts. In the midst
of some careful explanation given to him in his
lesson, *' That is how it is in the story of the
little tailor," he would say; or, if he read the
account of a great battle, " Giant Robistor killed
more than that." It was this sense of the super-
natural so strongly developed within him which
gave him his abstracted expression and inclined
him to sit motionless for hours among the sofa
cushions, keeping in the depths of his eyes the
changing, floating phantasmagoria, the dazzling
false lights in the brain of a child issuing from
Rothomago, with the fable of the play developing
to his memory in marvellous prismatic tableaus.
All this m.ade the serious study and reasoning now
required of him very difficult.
The queen was present at the lessons, — in her
fingers an embroidery which never advanced, and
in her beautiful eyes that attention so precious to
the master, who felt her vibrating to all his ideas,
even to those he did not express. Indeed, it was
by these latter that they chiefly held to each
other, — by dreams, chimeras; all that floated
above their convictions and difl'used them. She
took him for counsellor, for confidant, but affect-
ing never to speak to him except in the king's
name.
The King Makes Fete, 1 1 1
" M. Meraut, his Majesty would like to know
your opinion as to this."
And Elysee's astonishment was great at never
receiving questions from the king himself on
topics in which he was so interested. Christian II.
treated him with a certain consideration, spoke to
him in a tone of familiar companionship, excellent
in its way, but very futile. Sometimes, in crossing
the study, he would stop for a moment to listen to
the lesson, and say, laying his hand on the boy's
shoulder, in a tone that echoed the subaltern out-
cry of the household : —
** Do not press him too hard. You don't want
to make a learned man of him. . ."
" I want to make a king of him," replied Fred-
erica, proudly.
Then, as her husband made a discouraged ges-
ture, she added : '' Will he not reign some day ? "
** Why yes . . . yes. . ."
And as the door closed quickly upon him (to
cut short all discussion), he was heard to hum an
air from an opera then much in vogue : " He will
reign ... he will reign . . . because he is Spanish."
In short, Elysee did not know what to think of this
cordial, superficial, perfumed, dainty prince, full
of caprices, lounging on sofas with enervated
limbs, whom he still believed to be the hero of
Ragusa, that king of energetic will and bravery
whose deeds he had told in the ^'^ Memorial."
However, in spite of Frederica's cleverness in con-
cealing the vacuum of that crowned brow, and
though she constantly effaced herself behind him.
112 Kings in Exile.
some unforeseen circumstance was always pre-
senting itself in which their true natures appeared.
One morning, after breakfast, when they re-
entered the salon, Frederica opened the newspapers
arriving by courier from lUyria, which she was
always the first to read, and presently made so
loud and painful an exclamation that the king,
who was preparing to go out, stopped short, and
all present gathered round her. The queen passed
the paper to Boscovich.
*' Read that," she said.
It was the authorized report of a session of the
Diet at Leybach, at which a resolution was passed
to return to the exiled sovereigns all the crown
property, more than two hundred millions, on the
express condition . . .
** Bravo ! " cried Christian's nasal voice. " That
suits me famously."
"■ Go on," said the queen, sternly.
'' ' On the express condition that Christian II.
renounces for himself and his descendants all rights
to the throne of Illyria.' "
The salon resounded with an indignant explo-
sion. Old Rosen choked, Pere Alph^e's cheeks
became as white as linen, rendering his beard and
his eyes still blacker.
'* We must answer ... we cannot remain silent
under this blow," said the queen, and, in her indig-
nation, she turned to Meraut who was making
notes with a feverish pencil at one corner of the
table.
" This is what I should write," he said advancing;
The King Makes Fete, 113
and he read, in the form of a letter to a royalist
deputy, a noble proclamation to the lUyrian people,
in which, after rejecting the outrageous proposition
made to him, the king reassured and encouraged
his supporters with the emotion of the head of a
family parted from his children.
The queen enthusiastically clapped her hands,
seized the paper, and gave it to Boscovich.
*' Quick, quick, translate it and send it. . . Is
not that your wish ? " she added, recollecting that
Christian was there and that eyes were upon
them.
'' No doubt ... no doubt ..." said the king,
much perplexed, and biting his nails furiously.
*' That 's all very fine . . . only, you see ... we
ought to know if we can keep to it."
She turned round, very pale, as if struck by a
blow between the shoulders.
" Keep to it ! . . If we can keep to it? . ." Is it
the king who speaks?"
He, very calm : —
** When Ragusa had no food, with the best will
in the world we had to surrender."
*' Well, this time, if food is wanting, we will take
a basket and beg at doors . . . but royalty shall not
surrender."
What a scene, in that narrow salon of the
suburbs of Paris ; what a debate between those two
fallen princes, one who was felt to be weary of the
struggle, his legs faltering under his own want of
faith, the other palpitating with faith and ardour.
And how the mere sight of them revealed their two
114 Kings 171 Exile.
natures ! — the king supple, slender, his throat
bare, his clothes loose, his feeble nature visible in
the effeminacy of his slack, pale hands, and the
light curls, slightly dampened, on his white fore-
head ; she, erect, superb in her riding-dress, with
its wide lapels and small upright collar and simple
cuffs edging the dark cloth of her habit, from which
the glowing blood, the lightning of her eyes, the
golden coils of her hair came forth dazzling.
Llys6e, for the first time, had a clear and rapid
vision of what was passing in that royal home.
Suddenly Christian II. turned towards the duke,
who was standing with bowed head, leaning against
the mantelpiece.
'' Rosen ! . . "
"Sire?.."
" You alone can tell us this. . . How do we
stand? . . Have we the means to go on any
longer? "
The chief of the household made a haughty
gesture.
" Certainly ! "
" How long? . . Do you know? . . about how
long? . . "
" Five years ; I have reckoned it."
"Without privation to any one? None whom
we love being injured or made to suffer? . . "
" Undoubtedly, Sire."
" You are sure? "
" Sure," affirmed the old man, erecting his vast
height.
"Very good. . . Meraut, give me your letter;
The King Makes Fete, 115
I will sign it now, before I go out." Then in a low
tone, taking the pen from his hand, he added :
"Just look at Mme. de Silvis. . . Wouldn't you
think she was preparing to sing ' Sombre Forest ' ? "
The marquise, entering at that moment from the
garden, leading the little prince by the hand, was
affected by the dramatic atmosphere of the salon,
and, arrayed in her green velvet spencer with a
green feather in her hat, had exactly the arrested
pose, struck and romantic, of an opera-singer.
Read in the lUyrian Parliament and published
in all newspapers, the protest was also, by Elysee's
advice, printed in autograph and sent through-
out the country-places in thousands of copies,
which P^re Alphee carried thither in bales, pass-
ing them through the custom-houses as *' objects of
piety " with chaplets of olive wood and roses from
Jericho. Royalist opinions were spurred ; espe-
cially in Dalmatia, where republican ideas had
made but little way, so that the people were now
moved by the eloquent words of their king, read
from the pulpit in many villages and distributed by
the begging friars of St. Frangois, who opened
their wallets at the doors of the farmhouses and
paid for the eggs and the butter given to them
with a little printed packet. Soon addresses to the
king were covered with signatures, and those
crosses in place of signatures which are so touch-
ing in their ignorant good-will ; pilgrimages, too,
were organized.
In the little house at Saint-Mande there were
now perpetual arrivals of fishermen, of porters from
1 1 6 Kings in Exile,
Ragusa, with black cloaks over their rich Mussul-
man costumes, Morlachian peasants, three-fourths
barbarous, all shod with the opanki of sheepskin,
tied around the foot with thongs of twisted straw.
They issued in bands from the tramway, where their
scarlet dalmatians, their fringed scarfs, and jackets
with metal buttons made violent contrast with the
gray monotony of Parisian clothing. They crossed
the courtyard with firm step, but stopped at the
vestibule and talked together in low voices, per-
turbed and intimidated. Elysee, who was present
at all these presentations, felt moved to the depths
of his being ; the legend of his infancy Hved again
in these enthusiasms coming from afar — the jour-
ney to Frohsdorf of the weavers of the Enclos de
Rey, the privations, the preparations for that jour-
ney, the unacknowledged disappointment on the
return — all these things came back to his memory,
and he suffered from Christian's indifferent, op-
pressed attitude, and his sighs of relief when each
interview was over.
At heart the king was furious at these visits,
which interfered with his pleasures and condemned
him to a long afternoon at Saint-Mande. On ac-
count of the queen, however, he greeted with a
few commonplace phrases the protestations choked
with tears of these poor people, avenging his
annoyance with some droll comment, or a carica-
ture scratched down at the end of a table in that
spirit of ill-natured satire that lurked at the corners
of his lips. On one occasion he caricatured the
syndic of the fishermen of Branizza, a broad Italian
The King Makes Fete, 117
face with hanging cheeks and round eyes, stupefied
by the agitation and joy of a royal interview, the
tears rolling down to his chin. This masterpiece
circulated round the table at the next meal, amid
the laughter and exclamations of the guests. The
duke himself, despising the popular, wrinkled his
old beak in sign of extraordinary hilarity. The
drawing finally reached Elysee with a noisy en-
comium from Boscovich. He looked at it for
some time ; then he gave it to his neighbour with-
out a word, and when the king, from the other end
of the table, called to him in his insufferable nasal
tone, —
" You don't laugh, Meraut . . . and he is good,
my syndic," —
** No, Monseigneur," he answered sadly, *' I can-
not laugh . . . It is a portrait of my father."
Some time after that, Elysee was witness of a
scene which completed his enlightenment as to
Christian's character and his relations with the
queen. It was on a Sunday after mass. The
little mansion, wearing an unusually festive appear-
ance, opened wide the iron gates of its courtyard
on the Rue Herbillon ; all the attendants were
afoot and ranged in line in the antechamber of the
portico, as verdant as a greenhouse. The recep-
tion on this occasion was of the highest importance.
A royalist deputation from the Diet itself was ex-
pected, the elite and flower of the party, who were
coming to offer to the king the homage of their
fidelity and devotion, and to consult with him as
to the proper measures for a speedy restoration.
Ii8 Kings in Exile,
It was a real event, long hoped for, and now an-
nounced ; the solemnity of which was brightened
by a splendid winter sun, which gilded and warmed
the great salon of reception where the king's chair
was placed as a throne, and woke from the shadows
the sparkling rubies, sapphires, and topazes of the
crown.
While the whole house was alive with a contin-
ual going and coming, and the trailing rustle of
silk gowns everywhere ; while the little prince, as
they put on his long red stockings, his velvet suit,
and its Venetian lace collar, repeated the speech
he had been learning for a week ; while old Rosen,
in full dress, covered with orders, drew himself up
more erect than ever to introduce the deputies,
Elysee, voluntarily aloof from all this bustle, was
sitting alone in the schoolroom, thinking of the
probable results of the approaching interview. In
a mirage, not infrequent, of his meridional brain,
he was beholding the triumphant re-entrance of
his princes into Leybach, amid salvos and chimes
and joyful streets heaped up with flowers — a king
and queen holding before them, like a promise to
the people, like a future which still further ennobled
them, and placed them in the rank of youthful
ancestors, his beloved pupil, the little Zara, grave
and intelligent, with that child-gravity crossed by
an emotion too great for a child's comprehension.
And the glory of this fine Sunday, the gayety of
the bells ringing out upon the air in the full sun
of mid-day only doubled his hope of a national
festival, in which the maternal pride of Frederica
The King Makes Fete. 1 1 9
might send to him, above the head of her child,
the blessing of a satisfied smile.
On the gravel of the court of honour the arrivals
were now echoing with the heavy roll of the state
coaches which had been sent to bring the deputies
from Paris. The doors of the carriages clapped,
the sound of steps died away on the carpets of
the vestibule and the salon, whence a murmur
of respectful voices rose. Then followed a long
silence, which surprised Elysee, who was expect-
ing to hear the speech of the king in his high
nasal tones. What was happening? What inter-
ruption had occurred to the pre-arranged order of
the ceremonies?
At this moment he saw, sidling along by the
wall and the blackened espaliers of the wintry
garden, the man whom he supposed to be in the
salon presiding over the official reception, the
king, who was walking towards the house with a
stiff and awkward step. He must have entered by
a secret door hidden under ivy in the Avenue
Daumesnil, and was now advancing slowly and
painfully. Elysee thought at first of a duel, an
accident; and shortly after the sound of a fall in
the upper story, a fall that shook the furniture and
hangings of the room, so long and heavy was it,
accompanied by the breakage of articles on the
floor, confirmed him in this idea. He ran up
rapidly to the king. Christian's room, in a half
circle of the principal wing of the mansion, was
warm and cosy as a nest, hung with crimson,
adorned on the walls with ancient armour, and
I20 Kings in Exile.
furnished with divans, low chairs, Hon and bear
skins; and amid this downy luxury that was al-
most oriental, stood the orlglnaHty of a small camp
bed on which the king always slept, from family
tradition and that pose of Spartan simplicity which
mlUionnalres and sov^ereigns are fond of assuming.
The door was open.
Opposite to it stood Christian, leaning against
the wall, his hat on the back of his head, his face
discomposed and pale, his long fur wrap half open
and showing a rumpled coat, a white cravat untied,
the broad white shirt-front creased and stained with
that foulness of linen which marks a night spent
in the disorder of drunkenness. The queen was
standing near him, erect, stern, speaking In a low,
threatening voice, and trembling with the violent
effort that she made to restrain herself
''You must . . . you must. . . Come ! "
But he, very low and with a shamed air : —
*' I cannot. . . You see I cannot. . . Later . . .
I promise you."
Then he stammered excuses, with a silly laugh
and childish voice. . . It was not that he drank too
much. Oh, no . . . but the air, the cold, coming
out after supper. . .
" Yes, yes. . . I know. . . It is no matter. . .
You must come down. . . Let them see you ; only
let them see you. . . I will speak to them, I will;
I know what to say. Come ! "
Then as he stood there motionless, mute with a
sort of torpor which began upon his face, that grew
horribly relaxed, Frederica's anger rose.
The King Makes Fete, 121
"Understand, I say, that our fate hangs upon
it. . . Christian, it is your crown, the crown of
your son, that you are risking at this moment. . .
Come! . . I beg of you. . . You shall comQ. . ."
She was superb at that moment with a strong
will whose currents from her aquamarine eyes
magnetized the king visibly. She held him by
that look, tried to steady him, erect him, helped
him to take off his hat and his furred coat, filled
with the vile fumes of drunkenness and tobacco.
He stiffened himself for a moment on his flaccid
legs, made a few steps staggering, with his hot
hands resting on the marble of the queen's arm.
But suddenly she felt that he was collapsing and
she recoiled herself from that fevered contact.
Brusquely repulsing him with violence, with dis-
gust, she let him fall at full length upon a divan;
then without a look at that disordered, inert mass,
already snoring, she left the room, passed before
Meraut without seeing him, walking straight before
her, her eyes half shut, murmuring in the distraught
and dolorous voice of a somnambuhst : —
" Alia fine sono stanca di fare gesti de questo
monarcaccio."
[At last, I am weary of making gestures for that
puppet-king.]
122 Kings ill Exile.
V.
J. TOM LEVIS, foreigners' AGENT.
Of all Parisian lairs, of all the caves of Ali-Baba
with which the great city is mined and counter-
mined, there is none more peculiar, of an organiza-
tion more interesting, than the Levis Agency. You
know it, all the world knows it, at any rate the out-
side of it. It is in the Rue Royale at the corner of
the Faubourg Saint-Honore, directly on the hne of
carriages going or returning from the Bois, so that
none can escape the beguiling announcement of
that sumptuous establishment, up eight steps, with
its tall windows of a single pane, each bearing the
emblazoned arms, gules, azure, and gold, of the
principal powers of Europe, — eagles, unicorns,
leopards, the whole heraldic menagerie. For
thirty metres, the entire width of that street, which
equals a boulevard, the Levis agency attracts the
eyes of the most indifferent passer. They all ask
themselves : " What is sold there? " "What is not
sold there? " we had better say. On each pane can
be read in beautiful golden letters : ** Wines, Hqueurs,
comestibles, pale-ale, kiimmel, raki, caviare, cod's-
roes ; " or else : *' Furniture ancient and modern, car-
pets, foliage-tapestries, Smyrna and Ispahan rugs ; "
farther on : " Paintings of great masters, marbles,
J, Tom Levis ^ Foreigners' Agent. 123
terra-cottas, armour, medallions, panoplies ; " else-
where : ** Exchange, discount, foreign money; " or:
'* Books and newspapers of all countries, all lan-
guages ; " and, in addition : " Sales or rentals, hunt-
ing, seashore, villegiatura ; " with : " Information, ce-
lerity, discretion."
This swarm of inscriptions and brilliant heraldic
bearings on its glass obscured to a great degree
the show window, allowing very little to be seen
of the articles there displayed. Vaguely one could
distinguish bottles of foreign shape and colour,
chairs in carved wood, pictures, furs, and, in
wooden bowls, a few opened rolls of coin and
bundles of paper-money. But the vast cellars of
the agency, lighted from the street at the level of
the sidewalk through a species of grated port-holes,
gave an impression that the opulent warehouses of
the city of London were sustaining the ** chic " and
the " fla-fla " of the gorgeous show window of the
Boulevard de la Madeleine. Those cellars over-
flowed below with riches of all kinds : hogsheads
in rows, bales of stuffs, piled-up cases, coffers,
boxes of preserved provisions, depth upon depth,
enough to make one giddy, as when we look down
into the yawning hold of a steamboat in process
of being stowed.
Thus prepared and firmly spread irt the full
Parisian tide-way, the net floated agrip for the
great and the little fishes, even the young fry of
the Seine, the most wary of all ; and if you pass
that way about three in the afternoon you will
almost always find it full.
124 Kings hi Exile,
At the glass door on the Rue Royale, lofty,
light, and surmounted by a carved wooden pedi-
ment, — this is the entrance to the part devoted to
dress and fashions, — stands the chasseur of the
establishment, militarily gold-laced, who turns the
handle of the door as soon as he sees you, and
holds an umbrella (when there is need of it) over
clients who come in carriages. Before you, on
entering, is a vast hall, divided by counters, and
wire-gratings with little wickets, forming two lines
of compartments, regular " boxes," right and left
to the very end. The dazzling daylight shines
upon the polished packages, the carvings, the
correct frock-coats and the hair, curled with
tongs, of the clerks, all elegant, handsome, but
of foreign air and accent. Some have the olive
skin, pointed skulls, and narrow shoulders of
Asiatics; others, the American collar-beards be-
neath porcelain blue eyes, and the ruddy flesh
of Germans. In whatever tongue the buyer gives
his order he is certain of being understood, for
every language is spoken at the Agency, except
the Russian, that being useless, inasmuch as Rus-
sians speak all tongues except their own.
The crowd comes and goes about the wickets,
sits waiting on the light chairs, gentlemen and
ladies in travelling costume, a mingling of Astra-
khan and Scotch caps, long veils floating over
waterproofs, dust-cloaks, tweeds in checks in-
discriminately clothing both sexes, packages in
straps, leathern bags worn in satire, — in short, the
true public of a waiting-room, gesticulating, talk-
y. Tom Levis ^ Foreigners Agent. 125
ing, staring, with the unrestraint and assurance of
persons away from their own homes, and making
in many languages the same confused, variegated
hurly-burly which we hear in the bird-shops on
the Quai de Gevres. At the same time the pale-
ale and the Romanee-Conti corks are popping and
piles of gold are roUing about on the counters.
Also an interminable ringing is going on, whistles
descend through the speaking tubes, plans of
houses are being unrolled, scales and chords are
tried on a piano, while around an enormous car-
bon photograph a whole tribe of Samoyeds are
making exclamations.
From one box to another the clerks are tossing
information, a row of figures, the name of a person
or street, all smiling, eagerly polite ; till suddenly
they become majestic, icy, indifferent, with coun-
tenances completely detached from the affairs of
this globe, when some unfortunate, distracted one,
rejected already from wicket to wicket, leans down
to speak to them, in a low voice, of a certain mys-
terious thing, which seems to fill them with as-
tonishment. Sometimes, weary of being looked
at like a waterspout or a meteorite, the man
becomes impatient and asks to see J. Tom Levis
himself, who will, undoubtedly, understand the mat-
ter. On which he is told, with a superior smile
that J. Tom Levis is busy ... J. Tom Levis has
company ... not paltry little affairs like yours,
and nobodies like you, my good man ! . . . Here,
look down there, at the end of the hall. . . A door
opens. J. Tom Levis appears for a second, more
126 Kings in Exile,
majestic in himself alone than the whole of his
staff; majestic in his rounded paunch, majestic by
his polished cranium shining like the floor of his
agency, by the tipping back of his small head,
his fifteen-foot glance, the despotic gesture of his
short arm, and the solemnity with which he de-
mands, in a very loud voice and his insular accent,
whether *' the purchase of his Royal Highness
the Prince of Wales has been sent to him," while
with one hand he holds the door of his cabinet
hermetically closed behind him, to give the idea
that the august personage who is with him is one
of those who must not be disturbed on any con-
sideration. Needless to say that the Prince of
Wales never came to the agency, and there was
not the very smallest parcel to send to him ; but
you can imagine the effect of that name on the
crowd in the counting-room and the solitary client
in the cabinet, to whom Tom had just said : " Ex-
cuse me . . . one moment. . . A little inquiry to
make."
All trickery ! trickery ! There was no more a
Prince of Wales behind the door of the cabinet
than there was raki or kiimmel in the queer bottles
in the window, or beer, English or Viennese, in the
rows of hogsheads in the cellar ; no more than
there was merchandise in those emblazoned, gilded,
and varnished carts, marked J. T. L., which passed
at a gallop (all the more rapidly because empty)
through the finest quarters of Paris — a perambu-
lating advertisement, noisily rattling the pavement
with the frantic activity that characterized both
y. Tom Levis, Foreigtiers Agent, 127
man and beast at Tom Levis's agency. If a poor
devil, intoxicated by the sight of all that gold, had
thrust his fist through the window and greedily
plunged a bleeding hand into those wooden bowls,
he would have pulled it back full of counters ; if he
had snatched that enormous bundle of banknotes
he would have carried off a bill of twenty-five
francs at the top of a pile of bubble-paper.
Nothing in the show-cases, nothing in the cellars,
nothing, nothing, not so much as that! . . But
how about the port-wine those Englishmen tasted ;
and the money that boyard obtained for his roubles ;
and that little bronze undoubtedly packed up for a
Greek of the isles? Oh! good heavens ! nothing
simpler. The Enghsh beer came from the nearest
tavern ; the gold from a money-changer on the
boulevard ; the bronze from that shop of " So
and So" in the Ruedu Quatre-Septembre. 'Twas
merely the affair of an errand quickly done by two
or three employes always waiting in the cellar for
orders transmitted down the tubes.
Going out by the courtyard of the next house
they were back in a few minutes, emerging by
the winding stairway with its carved baluster and
crystal post-knob ; and then, behold the required
article, guaranteed and ticketed J. T. L. And
don't feel obliged to take it, prince ; if it does not
suit you, you can change it. The cellars of the
Agency are well supplied. Things are a little
dearer than elsewhere, perhaps even double and
treble, but is n't that much better than going from
shop to shop where they don't understand a word
128 Kings in Exile,
you say, in spite of the promise in the window of
" English spoken" or ma?tn spricht Deutschy of
those boulevard shops, where a foreigner, sur-
rounded and circumvented, really gets nothing
but the dregs of the boxes, the shelved and
worthless articles, that refuse of Paris, that deficit
on the ledger of ** things out of fashion" — the
show of last year, more faded and tarnished by
its date than by the sun and dust of its exhibi-
tion? Oh! that Parisian shopkeeper ! obsequious
and pertinacious, disdainful and adhesive; that's
enough, the foreigner wants no more of him,
weary at last of being so ferociously speculated
upon ; and not only by the shopkeeper but by the
hotel in which he sleeps, the restaurant where he
eats, the cab which he hails in the street, the
seller of tickets who sends him to yawn in empty
theatres. At the Levis place, that ingenious
agency where foreigners find all they can desire,
you are at least sure of never being cheated, for J.
Tom Levis is an Englishman, and the commercial
honesty of Englishmen is known to both hemi-
spheres.
English, Tom Levis is, beyond the possibility of
being more so, from the square toes of his Quaker
shoes to his long frock-coat descending on his
green checked trousers, and his tall hat with its
infinitesimal brim, that sets off his chubby, ruddy,
good-natured visage. Albion's honesty can be
read on that skin fed on beefsteaks, that mouth
stretching from ear to ear, the silky blondness of
those uneven whiskers — uneven from a trick their
y. Tom Levis ^ Foreigners^ Agent, 129
owner has of chewing one (always the same) in
moments of perplexity ; that insular honesty may
also be divined in the pudgy hand with its fingers
showing a reddish down and laden with rings.
Honest also seems the glance from behind a large
pair of spectacles in slender gold frames; so
honest that when it happens that Tom Levis lies
— even the best of us are liable to it — the pupils,
by a curious nervous spasm look inward to each
other like the little twirls in the perspective of a
gyroscope.
What completes the Anglican physiognomy of
J. Tom Levis is his cab, his hansom, the first
vehicle of the kind ever seen in Paris, the natural
shell of this original being. Has he some rather
complicated affair on hand, or one of those mo-
ments that come in all traffic, when a man feels
himself nipped, cornered, — *' I '11 take the cab,"
says Tom ; and he is sure to find within it some
idea. He combines, he weighs, he comments to
himself, while the Parisians see, rolling along in
that transparent case on wheels, the silhouette
of an absorbed man, chewing his right whisker
energetically. It is in the cab that he Invented
his finest strokes of business, his close-of-the-
empire strokes ! Ah ! those were the good times !
Paris abounded in foreigners, not only travelling
foreigners, but a settlement of exotic fortunes,
eager for feasts and merry-makings. We had
Hussein-Bey the Turk, and Mehemet-Pacha the
Egyptian, two celebrated fezes, on the lake; and
the Princesse de Verkatcheffs, who was throwing
9
130 Kiiigs in Exile,
all the gold of the Ural mountains through the
fourteen windows of her first-floor apartment on
the Avenue Malesherbes ; and the American Berg-
son, who squandered the enormous revenues of his
petroleum mines in Paris (Bergson has since then
recovered his wealth) ; together with nabobs,
swarms of nabobs of all colours, yellows, browns,
reds, variegating the boulevards and theatres,
hurrying to spend, to enjoy, as if they foresaw that
they would have to vacate that great merry
junketing-place before the terrible explosion which
was soon to burst the roofs and break the mirrors
and the windows.
Consider that J. Tom Levis was the indispensa-
able intermediary of all these pleasures ; that not
a louis was changed without his having previously
pared it, and also that to his foreign customers
were added certain Parisian bon vivants of the
period, lovers of rare game, poachers on private
preserves, who came to friend Tom as to the
shrewdest and ablest of agents ; and also because
their secrets seemed to them safer behind his
barbarous French and his difficulty of elocution.
The monogram of J. T. L. sealed all the scanda-
lous talcs of the close of the empire. It was in the
name of J. Tom Levis that the lower stage-box
No. 9 at the Opera-Comique was always taken
when the Baronne Mils came for an hour to hear
her tenorino, carrying away with her after the
cavatina, in the lace of her bosom, his handker-
chief steeped in perspiration and whitening. In
the name of J. Tom Levis was leased the little
y[ Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent, 131
hotel of the Avenue de Ch'chy, half and half (with-
out their being aware of it) and for the same
woman, to the brothers Sismondo, two bankers,
partners, unable to leave their counting-room at
the same hour. Ah ! the books of the Agency
at that period ! — what fine romances in a few
lines !
" House with two entrances : on the road to
Saint-Cloud. Rent, furniture, indemnity to lessee
...so much," and below it: "Commission to
general ... so much."
" Country-house at Petit- Valtin, near Plom-
bieres. Garden, coachhouse, two entrances, in-
demnity to lessee ... so much."
And invariably : " Commission to general ... so
much." That general had a good place on the
books of the Agency.
If Tom enriched himself in those days he spent
as largely, — not in play, nor in horses, nor women ;
simply to satisfy the caprices of an untutored child
or savage, of the silliest, most ridiculous imagina-
tion ever seen, which allowed no interval between
the dream and its realization. Once it was an
avenue of acacias which he wanted at the end of
his property at Courbevoie; and as trees are long
in growing, for one whole week were seen along
the shores of the Seine (very bare at that spot)
the slow defiling of huge carts bearing each its
acacia, the feathery green branches of which, nod-
ding to the movement of the wheels, threw their
quivering shadows on the water. The suburban
property, on which J. Tom Levis lived all the year
132 Kings in Exile,
round, after the manner of the great London
merchants, beginning as a mere box with only a
ground-floor and garret, became to him in the
end a source of monstrous expense. His business
prospered and grew; proportionally he enlarged
his property ; and from building to building, pur-
chase after purchase, he came at last to possess
a park made up of annexed lands, fields under
culture, and scraps of forest; a singular property
on which his tastes revealed themselves, his am-
bitions, his English eccentricity, deformed and
dwarfed by bourgeois ideas and attempts at art
that were failures. Along this very ordinary
house, above which upper storeys had been visibly
added, lay an Italian terrace with marble balusters,
flanked by two gothic towers, and communicating
by a covered bridge with another building, pre-
tending to be a chalet, with open-work balconies
swathed in ivy. All this in painted stucco and
brick, looking like a Black Forest toy, with a
wealth of towers, battlements, weather-vanes, bal-
conies, parapets; and, in the park, a bristhng of
kiosks and belvederes, a shimmering of greenhouses
and fountains, the black bastion of an immense
reservoir in which to raise water, topped by a real
windmill, the wings of which, sensitive to every
breeze, clacked and turned with an endless grind-
ing of their axle.
Certainly along the narrow space traversed by
the tramways of the Parisian suburbs many a bur-
lesque villa defiles before the windows of the cars,
like fantastic nightmares, the efl'ort of the escaping
y. Tom Levis ^ Foreigners Agent, 133
and gambolling shopkeeping brain. But none is
comparable to the Folly of Tom Levis ; unless it
be the villa of his neighbour Spricht, the great
Spricht, the ladies' dressmaker. That gorgeous
personage is in Paris only during his business
hours, namely, the three hours in which he gives
his consultations on coquetry in his grand office
on the boulevard ; after which, he instantly returns
to his house at Courbevoie. The secret of this
forced retreat is that dear Spricht, " dear " to all
ladies, while he possesses in his drawers, among
marvellous patterns of his Lyonnese fabrics, speci-
mens of flowing handwriting, dainty script from
the best gloved hands in Paris, is forced to con-
fine himself to an intimacy of correspondence, not
being received in any of the houses he gowns,
while his close relations with them have spoilt, for
him, his relations with the commercial world to
which he belongs. Consequently he lives much
retired, surrounded, like all parvenus, by a posse
of poor relations, and devoting his wealth to enter-
taining them royally. His only amusement, the
necessary fillip to this life of a retired outcast, is
the neighbourhood and rivalry of Tom Levis, the
hatred and contempt they reciprocally vow to each
other, without knowing why, which latter fact of
course renders all reconciliation impossible.
When Spricht puts up a tower — Spricht is
German, he likes the romantic, castles, valleys,
ruins, he has the passion of the middle ages —
instantly J. Tom Levis builds a veranda. When
Tom pulls down a wall, Spricht cuts down his
134 Kings in Exile,
hedges. There is a tale of a pavilion built by Tom
which interfered with Spricht's view towards Saint-
Cloud. The dressmaker on that put a gallery to
his pigeon-house. The other retorted by a second
story. Spricht was not beaten yet, and the two
edifices, with a great accumulation of stones and
workmen, continued their ascension until one fine
night they were toppled over by the wind, without
the least trouble, because of the flimsiness of their
construction. Spricht, on his return from a trip
to Italy, brought back a Venetian gondola, a real
gondola, which he installed in the little port at the
foot of his property ; a week later, pft ! pft ! a
pretty little steam-yacht, with sails also, was moored
at Tom's quay, churning in the water the reflected
towers, roofs, and battlements of his villa.
To keep up such a style of living, it was neces-
sary that the empire should continue forever, and
its last hour had come. The war, the siege, the
departure of foreigners, were an utter disaster to
the two traders ; especially to Tom Levis, whose
property was completely devastated by the inva-
sion, while that of Spricht was spared. But peace
restored, the struggle between the two rivals began
again more furiously than ever, — this time with
inequalities of wealth ; the man of fashions having
recovered all his customers, while poor Tom Levis
was still expecting vainly the return of his. The
sign " Information, celerity, discretion" produced
nothing, or next to nothing; the mysterious gen-
eral no longer received his clandestine fee from
the strong-box of the Agency. Any other man
J, Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent 135
in Tom's place would have retrenched, but that
devil of a fellow had invincible habits of extrava-
gance, something in his hands that prevented them
from closing. And then, Spricht was there, lugu-
brious since the *' events," declaring that the end
of the world was at hand, and building at the
end of his park a miniature of the ruins of the
Hotel de Ville, with its crumbling walls blackened
by flames. On Sunday evenings these ruins were
illuminated by Bengal lights and all the Sprichts
lamented around them. It was sinister. J. Tom
Levis, on the contrary, becoming repubHcan out
of hatred to his rival, feted regenerated France,
organized jousts, regattas, crowned '' La Rosiere,"
and at one of these coronations, in a gush of
expansive joy, carried off, one summer's evening,
the band from the Champs Elysees (at the concert
hour), and brought it on the yacht, all sails spread,
to Courbevoie, where it played upon the river.
Debts accumulated at this rate ; but the English-
man did not disturb himself for that. No one
knew better than he how to disconcert creditors
by mere force of coolness and impudent majesty.
No one — not even the clerks of the Agency, well-
trained as they were — had his manner of scruti-
nizing bills curiously, as if they were palimpsests,
and tossing them into a drawer with a superior
air ; no one had his methods to avoid payment,
and to gain time. Time ! It was on that that
Tom Levis counted to bring him some fruitful
enterprise, what he called, in the figurative slang
of his bohemia of money, " a grand stroke." But
136 Kings in Exile,
in vain did he take to his cab, In vain did he course
through Paris feverishly, eyes on the watch, teeth
long, scenting, expecting prey — years went by and
still the " grand stroke " did not present itself.
One afternoon when the Agency swarmed with
people, a tall young man with a languid, haughty
manner, a mocking eye, a delicate moustache on
the rather full whiteness of a pretty face, appeared
before the principal wicket and asked for Tom Levis.
The clerk, misled by the cavalier meaning that un-
derlay the inquiry, thought him a creditor, and was
about to take his most disdainful air when the
young man, in a high voice, the nasal tone of which
doubled its insolence, informed *' that species of
upstart " that he was to tell his master at once that
the King of Illyria wished to speak to him. . .
" Ah ! Monselgneur. . . Monselgneur. . ." Among
the cosmopolitan crowd which happened to be there
at that moment a movement of curiosity towards
the hero of Ragusa took place. From all the open
compartments rushed a swarm of clerks to escort
his Majesty to Tom Levis, who had not yet
arrived, but could not fail to be there from one
moment to another.
This was the first time that Christian had
appeared at the Agency, the old Due de Rosen
having until now paid all the bills of the little
Court. But the present matter concerned an
affair so private, so delicate, that the king did not
dare to confide it even to the clumsy hands of his
aide-de-camp. . . A little house to rent for a
J, Tom Levis y Foreig7iers Agent, 137
circus-rider who had just displaced Amy Ferat; a
furnished house with servants, stable, and certain
facilities of access, — one of those affairs, in short,
which the Levis agency alone knew how to
accomplish.
The salon where he waited contained exactly
two large arm-chairs in varnished leather, one of
those narrow and silent gas stoves which seem to
send you their fire from another room, and a small
round table covered with a blue cloth on which lay
an almanach Bottin. Half the room was taken up
by a tall wire grating, draped with blue curtains,
surrounding a desk carefully placed, on which was
a large book with steel corners, open, a weight on
the page; and around it powder-boxes, erasers,
rulers, pen-wipers, a long case filled with books of
the same shape — the books of the Agency ! —
their green backs in line, like Prussians on parade.
The order prevailing in this quiet little corner,
the neatness of the things within it, did honour to
the old bookkeeper, absent for the moment, whose
methodical existence must surely be passed there.
While the king waited, lolHng in his chair, his
nose in the air above his furs, suddenly, without
any movement of the glass door opening to the
counting-room and covered by an Algerine hang-
ing with a clown's hole, like a stage curtain, a sound
of the light, quick scratching of a pen made itself
heard. Some one was sitting at the desk, and it
was not the old clerk with a white wolfs-head
for whom the niche seemed to have been made,
but the most delicious little person who ever fin-
138 Kings in Exile,
gered a commercial ledger. At an exclamation of
surprise from Christian, she looked round, envel-
oped him with a soft glance, slowly turning and
drowning a sparkle at the corner of each eye.
The whole room was illuminated by that glance;
and musically charmed by an emotional, almost
trembling voice which murmured : '* My husband
keeps you waiting a long time, Monseigneur."
Tom Levis her husband ! . . the husband of that
sweet being with the pale, refined profile, the lithe
full form of a Tanagra figurine. . . How came she
there, alone in that cage, fingering those big books,
the whiteness of which was reflected on her ivory
skin while her little hands found difficulty in turning
their pages? And this on one of those beautiful
days of February when the toilets, the lively grace,
the smiles of women were shimmering along the
boulevard in the sunlight. The king made her, as
he approached, a gallant little speech, in which
various impressions were mingled, but his heart
interfered with his tongue, so quickly did it beat
in his breast, excited by a sudden, ungovernable
desire such as this spoilt and blase child could not
remember having ever felt before. This type of
woman between twenty-five and thirty was a nov-
elty to him; as far from the mutinous curls of
Colette de Rosen and the immodest painted eyes
and bold self-possession of the Ferat as it was
from the embarrassing and nobly sad majesty of
the queen. Neither coquetry, nor impudence, nor
proud reserve, nothing of what he had hitherto
encountered in good society or in his relations
J, Tom Levisy Foreigners Agent 139
with upper harlotry. This pretty person, calm
and home-keeping in manner, her beautiful dark
hair smooth as that of a woman who has dressed
it for the whole day, simply attired in a woollen
gown with violet reflections so that two enormous
briUiants at the rosy tips of her ears alone pre-
vented her from being classed among the humblest
of employees, this charming creature appeared to
him, in her office captivity and toil, hke a CarmeHte
nun behind the cloister grating, or some Eastern
slave imploring those without through the gilded
trellis of her terraced roof. Of the slave she had
indeed the submissive timidity, the bending profile,
while the amber tones where the hair began, the
two straight lines of the eyebrows, the lips that her
breathing parted, gave an Asiatic origin to this
Parisian. Standing before her, Christian pictured
to himself the bald heaa, the simian aspect of the
husband. How came she in the power of such an
object? Was it not robbery, a flagrant injustice?
But the sweet voice continued, slowly, with
excuses : ** It is too vexatious. . . Tom does not
come. . . If your Majesty would tell me what
brings you ... I might perhaps ..."
He coloured, slightly embarrassed. Never could
he have dared to confide to that candid kindness
the equivocal establishment he was meditating.
Whereupon she urged him, gently smiling : '' Oh !
Your Majesty may feel quite secure. . . It is I
who keep all the books of the Agency."
In fact her authority in the house was readily
seen ; for at every instant the little window which
140 Ki7igs 171 Exile,
communicated between her retreat and the count-
ing-room was opened by some clerk coming to ask
in low tones for the queerest information : " The
Pleyel of Mme. Karitides is wanted." . . " The per-
son from the Hotel Bristol is here." She seemed
to be concerned in it all, answered with a word,
spoken or written, and the king, much disturbed,
asked himself if that angel in commerce, that aerial
being could really know the secret dealings and
filibusterings of the Englishman.
** No, madame, the matter that brought me here
is not urgent ... or, at least, it is no longer so. . .
My ideas have changed within an hour."
He bent to the wire screen as he stammered the
words with emotion, and then stopped, blaming
himself for his audacity in presence of the placid
activity of that woman, her long lashes sweeping
toward the ledger and her pen running swiftly in
regular lines. Oh ! how he longed to snatch her
from that prison, carry her away in his arms far,
very far, with the murmuring, cradling tenderness
with which we soothe young children. The temp-
tation became so strong that he was forced to
escape and take leave suddenly, without having
seen J. Tom Levis.
It was now dark ; the night was misty and
bleak. The king, usually so chilly, did not observe
it, but sent away his carriage and went on foot
from the Madeleine to the Place Vend6me, so
enthusiastic, so transported that he talked to him-
self aloud, his thin lashes dropped over his eyes
y. Tom Levisy Foreigners Agent, 141
before which flames were dancing. We sometimes
rub shoulders in the street with these exuberant
happinesses, their step light, their heads high ; they
seem to leave a phosphorescence on your clothes
as they pass. Christian reached the club in the
same happy humour, in spite of the dulness of the
suite of salons at this uncertain, unoccupied twi-
light hour, always especially melancholy in clubs,
those semi-public places which lack the privacy
and habits of a home. Lamps were brought in.
A game of billiards was going on without interest
to the rattle of ivory and low voices, the rustling
of newspapers, and the snoring of a sleeper
stretched on a divan of the grand salon, whom the
king's entrance roused and caused to turn with a
toothless yawn and a long stretching of lean arms
as he asked in a mournful voice : —
" Do we make fete to-night? "
Christian gave a cry of joy.
" Ah ! prince, I was looking for you."
This was Prince d'Axel, more familiarly known
as " Queue-de-Poule," ^ who, during the ten years
that he had lounged the streets of Paris en
amateur, knew that city from top to bottom, in
length and breadth, from the portico of Tortoni to
the brook, and could therefore furnish the king
with all the information he wanted. Consequently,
knowing the right way to make his Highness talk
and to loosen that torpid, heavy mind which the
wines of France (although he abused them) were
1 Argot with several meanings ; " fashionable sharper " might
express it here. — Tr.
142 Kings ill Exile,
no more able to set a-going than the fermentation
of a vintage could raise into a balloon a hogshead
hooped with iron, Christian called quickly for
cards. As the heroines of Moli^re have no wit
unless with fan in hand, so d'Axel recovered a
little life only when "Juggling the pasteboard."
The fallen Majesty and the royal disgraced heir, the
two celebrities of the club, began before dinner a
Chinese beziqiie, the most gommeiix game of all,
because it does not burden the mind, and allows
an unskilful player to lose a fortune without the
slightest effort.
" So Tom Levis is a married man," said Chris-
tian II., with a careless air, as he cut the cards.
The other looked at him with his dead eyes edged
with red.
'^Didn't you know it? . . "
'' No. . . Who is the woman? "
** S^phora Leemans . . . celebrity. . . "
The king shuddered at the name Sephora.
" Then she is a Jewess? " he said.
'' Probably."
There was a moment's silence. The impression
made by Sephora must indeed have been very
strong — that oval, clear white face of the half-
hidden woman, her brilliant pupils, her hair
smoothed so seductively — to triumph over the
prejudices of the king, and continue to exist in a
Slav and Catholic memory haunted from infancy
by the pillagings and other infernal misdeeds of
the Bohemian Jews of his own country. Unfor-
tunately, the prince was losing the game, and quite
J, Tom Levis ^ Foreig7iers* Agent, 143
absorbed In It; he began to grumble In his long
yellow beard : —
" Ah ! I am getting stupid. . . I am stupid. . . "
Impossible to get another word out of him.
" Good ! here 's Wattelet. . . Come here, Wat-
telet ..." said the king to a tall young man who
now came in, frisky and noisy as a young puppy.
Wattelet, painter of the Grand-Club and of high
life, rather handsome at a distance, but bearing on
his features the marks and the weariness of too fast
a life, was a good representative of the modern
artist, who so little resembles the flaunting tradi-
tions of 1830. Correctly dressed, hair the same,
frequenter of coulisse and salon, there was nothing
of the studio rapiii about him, but a supple and
rather loose-jointed carriage under his fashionable
coat, and In his mind as In his language a certain
elegant misartlculatlon, a turn of the lip that was
careless and chaffing. Coming one day to the club
to decorate the dining-room, he made himself so
agreeable, so indispensable to all the gentlemen,
that he remained there, the organizer of the fetes
and the rather monotonous amusements of the
place ; infusing Into these pleasures the unexpected
of a picturesque imagination and of a training
acquired In all parts of the world. " My dear
Wattelet. . . That good Wattelet." . . They could
not do without him. He was the intimate friend of
all the members of the club, of their wives, of their
mistresses ; on one side of a card he designed the
costume of the Duchesse de V. . . for a ball at
the embassy, on the other side an airy petticoat
144 Kings in Exile,
for the flesh-coloured tights of Mile. Alzire, the
perfumed little ballet-girl of M. le due. On
Thursdays his studio was open to all his noble
dients, delighted with the freedom, the fantastic,
chattering ease of the establishment, the fluttering
of soft colours on the tapestries, the collections,
the lacquered furniture, and the artist's own pict-
ures, of a style that resembled himself, elegant,
with a touch of the canaille ; his portraits of women
being, for the most part, executed with a full
understanding of Parisian trickery — complexions
disguised, hair distraught, an art of costly frippery
in cascades, puffs, and trains, which made old
Spricht declare, with the disdainful condescension
of a successful merchant to a dawning artist:
*' There is no one but that young fellow who
knows how to paint the women I dress."
At the king's first words, the artist laughed.
'' Why, Monseigneur, that is the little Sephora."
" Do you know her? "
" Through and through."
" Tell me."
And while the game went on between the two
royal personages, the painter, brought into an
intimacy of which he felt very proud, straddled a
chair, posed, coughed, and, assuming the voice of
a tout at a booth describing the picture of what is
within, he began : —
*' Sephora Leemans, born in Paris in the year
one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, six, or
seven . . . among the second-hand dealers of the
Rue Eginhard, in the Marais ... a dirty little damp
y. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent, 145
alley, between the Passage Charlemagne and the
Church of Saint-Paul, regular Jewry. . . Some day,
as you come in from Saint-Mande, your Majesty
ought to make your coachman drive through that
tangle of streets down there. . You would see an
amazing Paris . . . such houses, such heads, a ver-
itable gabble of Alsatian and Hebrew; shops,
lairs of old-clothes-dealers, piled that high with
rags before every door, old women sorting them
with their hooked noses, or stripping off the covers
of the old umbrellas ; and the dogs ! the vermin !
the smells ! a regular ghetto of the middle ages,
swarming in houses of that very period, iron bal-
conies, tall windows cut into lofts. . . But Pere
Leemans is not a Jew ; he is a Belgian from Ghent,
and a Catholic ; the little one is called Sephora
[Zipporah], but she is only a half-breed Jewess;
complexion and eyes of that race, but not its nose
like the beak of a bird of prey ; on the contrary,
the prettiest little straight nose in the world. I
don't know where she got it. . . Pere Leemans has
one of your big, bulbous faces ! My first medal
at the Salon was for that phiz. . . Heavens ! yes,
and the old fellow still shows in a corner of his
dingy lair in the Rue Eginhard, in what he calls
his brocante (second-hand trade), his full-length
portrait signed Wattelet — and not one of my
worst, either. It was a way I took of insinuating
myself into the lair and making love to Sephora,
for whom I had one of those beqiiins [passing
passions]. . ."
''Be'quins ? " said the king, to whom the Parisian
i -
146 Kings in Exile,
vocabulary was constantly causing some new sur-
prise. '* Ah ! yes ... I see. . . Go on."
" I was not the only one on fire, that's certain.
All day long 'twas a procession to the shop in
the Rue de la Paix ; for I ought to have told you,
Monseigneur, that in those days Pere Leemans had
two establishments. Very shrewd and sly, that
old fellow understood the change that has taken
place about bric-a-brac in the last twenty years.
The romantic antiquity dealer of the dark quarters,
in the style of Hoffmann, and even of Balzac, has
given way to the seller of curiosities, installed in
the centre of Parisian luxury with show windows
and lighted shops. Leemans retained for himself
and for connoisseurs his musty old place in
the Rue Eginhard ; but, for the public, the street-
idler, the Parisian gaper and lounger, he opened
a splendid antiquarian shop in the Rue de la Paix,
where the tawny gold and the darkened silver of
old jewels and the laces yellowed to the tone of a
mummy outdid the sumptuous modern shops of
the jewellers and silversmiths overflowing with
magnificence beside it. Sephora was about fifteen
years old at that time, and that calm and juvenile
beauty of hers was well set off by those old treas-
ures. And so intelligent, so clever in exhibiting
them ! and her eye so sure and as well trained as
her father's on the true value of a bibelot. Ah !
there were plenty of amateurs in that shop, if only
for the pleasure of touching her fingers and that
silky hair of hers in leaning over the same glass
case. The mother was not troublesome, — an old
y. Tom Levis ^ Foreigners Agent 147
woman, with such black rings round her eyes
that she looked as if she wore spectacles, always
mending, her nose buried in a guipure or an old
bit of tapestry, and paying no attention to her
daughter. . . She had good reason for that ! S^-
phora was a serious person, who was not to be
diverted from her path."
"Really?" said the king, who seemed to be
enchanted.
" Your Majesty can judge. Mother Leemans
slept at the shop ; the girl always went back to the
Rue Eginhard at ten o'clock so that the old man
might not be alone. Well, that admirable creat-
ure, whose beauty was celebrated and chanted
in all the papers and who might by a mere * yes *
of the head have had Cinderella's coach start from
the ground before her, went, every evening, to
wait for the omnibus at the Madeleine, and thence
straight back to the parental owl's-nest. In the
morning, as the omnibuses were not running so
early, she came on foot in all weathers, her black
gown under a waterproof; and I swear to you that
in that crowd of girls who came down the Rue de
Rivoli-Saint-Antoine at that hour in caps and
hats or their own hair, pretty, pale, or smiling
faces and rosy little mouths coughing at the fog,
and always a gallant at their heels, not one could
hold a candle to her."
" What hour do they come down ? " growled
the royal prince, becoming excited.
But Christian was provoked.
" Let him finish " . . . he cried. ''What then?"
148 Kings ill Exile.
" Well, then, Monseigneur, I had succeeded in
making my way into the house of my angel and
was pushing my point very gently. . . On Sun-
days we played little family lotos with the other
second-hand dealers of the Passage Charlemagne.
Sweet society ! I always came home with fleas.
However, I sat beside Sephora and touched knees
with her under the table, while she looked at me
in a certain angelic and limpid way that made
me believe in innocence and the candour of a real
virtue. But one day when I went to the Rue
Eginhard, I found everything upside down, the
mother in tears, the father furious, rubbing up the
rusty old lock of an arquebuse with which he in-
tended to blow to bits the infamous seducer. . .
S6phora had gone off with Baron Sala, one of
Pere Leemans' richest clients, to whom, as I found
out later, he had himself sold her for some treasure
of old iron-work. For two or three years she hid
her joys and her loves with that old septuagenarian
in Switzerland, in Scotland, on the shores of blue
lakes. But one fine morning I heard that she had
come back and was keeping a * family hotel ' at
the end of the Avenue d'Antin. I rushed there,
and found my old passion as adorable and peace-
ful as ever, at the head of a very queer ^ad/e dliote
garnished with Brazilians, Englishmen, cocottcs.
One half the guests were still eating salad while
the other half had turned back the cloth to play
baccarat. That was where she first knew J. Tom
Levis, not handsome, no longer young, and with-
out a penny. What did he do to her? Mystery.
J, Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent 149
It is certain, however, that she sold her business,
and married him, helped him to start his Agency,
at first prosperous and well set-up, but now on the
down track; so that Sephora, who was never
seen, and lived a recluse in that droll castellated
cage Tom Levis sunk his money in, has lately,
that is, a few months ago, made her reappearance
in the world as the most enchanting of book-
keepers. . . Dante I how the clients flock ! the
flower of the clubs give themselves rendezvous in
the Rue Royale ; they flirt at the wicket of that
counting-room just as they used to do in the anti-
quity shop, or in the numbered chambers of the
* family hotel.' As for me, I 'm out of it. That
woman frightened me in the end. Always the same
for the last ten years ; not a line, not a wrinkle, her
long lashes lowered, the points of them turning up
as heart-hooks, the cheeks beneath the eyes as young
and fresh as ever, — and all this for a grotesque hus-
band whom she adores ! . . . There is something in
it all to trouble and daunt the most ardent lover."
The king threw the cards about angrily.
"Nonsense! How is it possible? . . A villan-
ous monkey, a fat carcass like Tom Levis ! . .
bald . . . fifteen years older than she ... a jabber-
ing pickpocket. . ."
" Some women Hke that, Monseigneur."
The prince-royal here remarked, in his drawling,
vulgar accent : —
" Nothing to be done with that woman. . . I *ve
whistled for the signal time and again. . . It is
not hung out. . . The road is blocked."
150 Kings in Exile,
" Pardieii! d'Axel, we all know your way of
whistling," said Christian, as soon as he under-
stood an expression which had passed from the
slang of a railway engineer to that of the haute
Gomme. . . "You have no patience. . . You want
every place to fly open . . . Divan of the Grand-
Signor . . . see, and conquer. . . But as for me,
I consider that the man who would give himself
the trouble to be in love with Sephora, and would
not balk at silence or disdain — why, it is an affair
of a month. Not more."
" I bet not," said d'Axel.
*' How much? "
" Two thousand louis."
" Done. Wattelet, send for the book."
The book on which the bets of the Grand-Club
were inscribed was as curious and instructive in its
way as the Levis trap. The grandest names of his-
toric France were there, sanctioning the silliest and
most preposterous wagers ; that, for instance, of the
Due de Courson-Launay, who, having bet and
lost all the hairs on his body, was forced to depi-
late himself like a Moor, and could neither walk
nor sit down for a fortnight. Other inventions still
more extravagant were there, with signatures of
heroes, already inscribed on a hundred glorious
parchments, but now misallying themselves in
this album of folly.
Several members of the club came up and
grouped themselves around the betters with re-
spectful curiosity. And this cynical and ridiculous
wager, excusable perhaps amid the laughter or
J, Tom Levis ^ Foreigners^ Agent 151
the drunkenness of exuberant youth, took an air,
before the gravity of those bald heads, the social
dignities they represented, and the heraldic impor-
tance of the signatures affixed, of an international
treaty regulating the destinies of Europe.
It was thus formulated : —
" February 3rd, one thousand eight hundred and
seventy-five, his Majesty Christian II. has bet two
thousand louis that he will sleep with Sephora L. . .
before the end of the present month.
" His Royal Highness Prince d'Axel accepts the
bet."
" It might be the right occasion to sign them-
selves Rigolo and Queue-de-Poule," thought Wat-
telet to himself as he carried off the book, and
across his fashionable clown's face there passed
the shiver of an evil laugh.
152 K trigs in Exile,
VI.
THE BOHEMIA OF EXILE.
" Well, well ! we know all that ! . . ' Aoh I . .
Yes . . . Goddam. . . Shocking. . .' It is when you
don't choose to pay or answer that you use that
sort of change. . . But with Bibi, here, that won't
do. . . We '11 settle our accounts now, old thief."
" Really, Master Lebeau, you speak to me with
such vehemence. . ."
And to say the word vehemence in French
(seemingly very proud to reckon it in his vocabu-
lary, for he repeated it two or three times) J. Tom
Levis threw himself back, his shirt front prominent,
and almost disappeared in the enormous white
clergyman's-cravat which bound his neck. At the
same time the pupils of his eyes began to veer
about and to muddle in those wide-open orbs
his undiscoverable thought ; while the glance of his
adversary, crouching and undulating beneath his
lowered lids, replied to the rascally eloquence of
the Englishman's look with the visible cunning of
the sharp and hairless muzzle of a weasel face.
With his fair hair, curled and rolled, his clothes
austerely black and buttoned to the chin, and the
correctness of his circumspect manner, Maitre
Lebeau, the king's valet, had something of a
The Bohemia of Exile, 153
solicitor of the old Chatelet about him; but as
there is nothing like a quarrel or discussion of sel-
fish interests to bring out the truth of natures, this
man, so well-trained, as polished as his finger-
nails, this dainty Lebeau, the reigning favourite of
royal antechambers, former valet at the Tuileries,
was now exhibiting the hideous rascal that he
really was, sharp after gain and quarry.
To shelter themselves from the spring rain that
was sweeping the courtyard at Saint-Mand6, the
pair had taken refuge in the vast coach-house
with white walls lately plastered and covered to
half their height with thick mats to protect from
dampness the numerous and magnificent carriages
lined up against them, wheel to wheel, from state-
coaches all glass and gilding, to the comfortable
four-in-hand for hunting breakfasts, the light,
useful phaeton, and even the sleigh used by the
queen upon the lakes in freezing weather ; all of
them keeping, as they reposed in the twilight
of the coachhouse, their showy or massive look of
beasts of luxury, sparkling and costly, like the
fantastic horses of Assyrian legends. The close
neighbourhood of the stables, the sonorous snort-
ing and kicking against the woodwork, the half-
open harness-room, showing its polished floor, its
billiard-room panels, with all the whips in rack,
the saddles on wooden horses, the harnesses like
trophies around the walls, with glitter of steel and
garlands of reins, completed the impression of
comfort and upper-class existence.
Tom and Lebeau were quarrelling in a corner,
154 Kings in Exile,
their voices rising above the rattle of the rain on
the asphalt courtyard. The valet especially, feel-
ing himself at home, shouted loudly: *' Who could
understand such a filibuster? Would any one have
suspected such a trick? When their Majesties
left the hotel des Pyramides for Saint-Mand^ who
had managed the affair? Was it Lebeau, yes or
no? And did, too, in spite of everybody, in spite
of the most open opposition. . . What had been
agreed upon in return? Were not they to divide,
half and half, all commissions, all fees from the
trades-people? Wasn't that it, precisely?"
" Aoh ! . . yes . . . that was it. . ."
" Then why do you cheat? "
*' No, no . . . never cheat," said J. Tom Levis,
his hand on his shirt-front.
" Nonsense, old humbug. . . All the tradesmen
give you forty per cent. . . I have proof of it. . .
And you told me it was only ten. . . So that on
the million it cost to get Saint-Mand6, I have my
five per cent — that is fifty thousand francs — and
you your thirty-five; in other words seven times
more than I, — three hundred and fifty thousand
francs ! . . three hundred and fifty thousand
francs ! ! . three hundred and fifty — "
He choked with rage, the figures sticking across
his throat like a fishbone. Tom tried to calm
him. In the first place, it was all much exagger-
ated . . . then the agent had enormous expenses . . .
his rent in the Rue Royale, just increased. . . So
much to put out, returns so slow. . . Not to
mention the fact that this was a chance thing for
The Bohemia of Exile, 155
him, whereas Lebeau was always there, and in a
household where more than two hundred thousand
francs a year were spent, there was no lack of
opportunity.
But the valet declined to see it in this way; his
affairs concerned no one, and very certainly he
should not let himself be duped by a dirty
Englishman.
** Monsieur Lebeau, you are an impertinent fel-
low . . . and I shall have nothing more to say to
you. . ."
And Tom Levis turned as if to reach the door.
But the other barred his way. " Escape without
paying me? . . No, no. . ." His lips were white.
His angry weasel snout stuck out, quivering,
towards the Englishman, who was still very calm,
with such exasperating coolness that the valet at
last^ losing all self-control, thrust his fist under his
nose with a coarse epithet. By a turn of the hand,
quick as the parry of a sword, though it had more
of a street boxer than of fencing about it, the
Englishman struck down the valet's fist and said,
in the purest Faubourg Saint- Antoine accent : —
** None of that, Lisette ... or I '11 down you."
The effect of those four words was stupendous.
Lebeau, bewildered, looked mechanically round
him at first, to see if it was really the English-
man who spoke ; then his eyes, returning to Tom
Levis (now very red and his pupils veering every
way), flashed into wild gayety, through which his
late anger still vibrated, — a gayety which after a
moment took possession of the agent himself.
156 Kings in Exile,
** Oh ! you damned humbug ! you damned hum-
bug ! . . I ought to have suspected it . . . No one
could be as Enghsh as all that ! . ."
They were still laughing, unable to recover
breath, when the door of the harness-room sud-
denly opened wider, and the queen appeared.
For the last few moments she had stopped in that
room, after visiting her favorite mare, and had not
lost a word of the conversation. Coming from so
low a region, the treachery touched her but little.
She had long known what to expect of Lebeau,
that Tartuffe valet, the witness of all her humilia-
tions, all her sorrows ; as for the other, the man of
the cab, she scarcely knew him, a mere tradesman.
But those two men had now revealed to her serious
matters. So the removal to Saint-Mande had cost
a million ! their expenses, which she thought so
modest, so restrained, were two hundred and fifty
thousand francs a year, when, as she knew, they had
but forty thousand. How could she have been so
long blind to their way of living, to the insufficiency
of their real resources? . . Who was meeting these
expenses? Who had paid for this luxury, house,
horses, carriages, even her own clothes and her
personal charities? . . Shame burned her cheeks
at the thought as she went straight through the
courtyard in the rain and up the steps of the
little portico of the Administration building.
Rosen, busy at the moment in classifying bills on
which lay piles of louis, had a shock of surprise on
seeing her, which put him on his feet.
"No! . . Stay where you are ! . ." she exclaimed,
The Bohemia of Exile, 157
in a brusque voice ; then leaning over the duke's
desk and stretching out her hand, still gauntleted
for the horse, she said, resolutely, urgently, authori-
tatively : —
" Rosen, on what have we lived for the last two
years? . . Oh ! no evasions. . . I know that all I
thought hired was bought in our name and paid
for. . . I know that Saint-Mande alone cost us
more than a million, the million we brought from
Illyria. . . You will tell me now who it is that has
assisted us since then, and from what hands we
receive charity?"
The convulsed face of the old man, the piteous
trembling of his shrunken, withered hands told
Frederica the truth.
" You ! . . It is you ! . ."
She had never dreamed of It. And while he
excused himself, stammering the words ** duty . . ,
gratitude . . . restitution. . ."
** Duke," she said, violently, '' the king does not
take back what he gives, and the queen is not kept
like a danseuse."
Tears gushed into her eyes like sparks, tears of
pride that did not fall.
*' Oh ! pardon . . . pardon. . ."
He was so humble, he kissed the tips of her
fingers with an expression of such sad regret that
she continued more gently : —
** You will draw up a statement of all your
advances, my dear Rosen. A receipt will be given
you, and the king will pay the debt as soon as pos-
sible. . . As for our future expenses I shall take
158 Kings m Exile,
charge of them myself henceforth ; I will see that
they do not exceed our revenue. We shall sell
horses and carriages and diminish the household.
Princes in exile should content themselves with
little."
The old duke gave a start.
** Undeceive yourself, madame. . . It is in exile
above all that royalty needs all its prestige. Ah !
if I had only been listened to ... it is not here, in
this suburb, with an establishment suitable at most
for a bathing-season, that your Majesties should
have lived. I wanted you in a palace, in full sight
of Parisian society, convinced as I am that what
dethroned kings have most to fear is the laisser
aller that comes over them when they drop their
rank, the familiarities, the street acquaintance. . .
Oh ! I know ... I know. . . they often think me
very ridiculous with my questions of etiquette, my
childish and superannuated punctilio. And yet
such forms were never more important ; they help
to maintain a pride of demeanour, too easily lost in
misfortune. It is the unyielding armour that keeps
the soldier on his feet, even though he may be mor-
tally wounded."
She stood a moment without replying, her pure
brow crossed by a reflection that came to her.
Then, raising her head, —
" It is impossible," she said. ** There is a higher
pride than that. I will that from this day things
shall be arranged as I have said."
Then he, growing more urgent, almost suppli-
cating: —
The Bohemia of Exile, 159
" But your Majesty does not realize. . . A sale
of horses and carriages ... a sort of royal fail-
ure. . . What an exposure ! What scandal ! "
" That which is going on is more scandalous
still."
"But who knows it ! . . Who suspects it? . .
How can any one suppose that that old miser
Rosen. . . You yourself doubted it just now. . .
Oh ! madame, madame, I conjure you, accept what
you are pleased to call my devotion. . . Indeed
you are attempting the impossible. . . If you
knew. . . Why, your whole yearly revenue would
not suffice for the king's purse at cards."
" The king will not play again, M. le Due."
This was said in a tone ! with such eyes ! . .
Rosen insisted no longer, but he allowed himself
to add : —
" I will do what your Majesty desires. But I
entreat you to remember that all I possess is
yours, and that, in case of distress, I deserve that
you should first come to me."
He was very certain that the occasion would
occur before long.
The next day the reforms began. Half the
household were dismissed ; the unnecessary car-
riages were sent to Tattersall's, where they were
sold under fairly good conditions, except the state-
coaches, too striking to the eye for private indi-
viduals. These were got rid of, however, thanks
to an American circus which came to Paris at
that time with a great display of posters ; and the
splendid coaches, which Rosen had caused to be
i6o Kings in Exile,
built to preserve to his princes a little of their
vanished pomp in a distant hope of their return to
Leybach, now served to exhibit Chinese dwarfs and
learned monkeys and to form grand historical cav-
alcades and apotheoses a la Franconi. Toward
the end of such performances these princely equi-
pages, with their blazons scarcely effaced, made the
tour of the benches three times on the dirty sand
of the arena, to the gay strains of the orchestra ;
while through their opened windows grotesque
faces grinned, or, with degraded head close-curled,
a famous female gymnast, her bust projecting in its
pink silk tights, bowed to the crowd a forehead
shining greasily with pomatum and sweat. All
these lost remains of consecrated kings reduced
to be the glitter of a circus ! housed among the
horses and trick elephants ! what an omen for
royalty !
This sale at Tattersall's was announced at the
same time as that of the diamonds of the Queen of
Galicia at the Hotel Drouot, and the two posters
covering the walls together made a certain noise ;
but Paris never stops long on any subject; its
ideas fly with the flying sheets of the newspapers.
People talked of the two sales for twenty-four
hours. The next day they thought no more about
them. Christian II. accepted without resistance
the reforms set on foot by the queen. Ever since
his melancholy exhibition of himself he had an
almost ashamed, humiliated attitude before her, a
wilful childishness, as if to excuse his follies in
that wa^' Besides, what did these reforms in the
The Bohemia of Exile, i6i
household matter to him? His life, all pleasure
and dissipation, was spent elsewhere. But, sur-
prising fact, in six months he had never once had
recourse to Rosen's purse. That raised him a
Httle in the eyes of the queen, who was also grati-
fied by no longer seeing the fantastic cab of the
Englishman in a corner of the courtyard, or meet-
ing on the stairway the obsequious smile of that
courtier creditor.
Nevertheless, the king was spending much and
" making fete " more gayly than ever. Where did
he get the money? Elysee Meraut discovered
where in a singular manner, through Uncle Sauva-
don, the worthy man to whom he had formerly
given '' ideas of things," the only one of his early
connections whom he had kept since his entrance
to Saint-Mande. From time to time he went
to breakfast with him at Bercy, and took him
news of Colette, whom the old man complained
of never seeing. She was the child of his adop-
tion, his little Colette, the daughter of a poor
brother tenderly loved and supported till he died.
His mind was always on her ; he paid for her nurses
and her christening cap, and later for her school-
ing in the most emblazoned convent in Paris.
She was his vice, his living vanity, the pretty
puppet whom he decked with all the grovelling
ambitions in his vulgar head of a millionnaire
parvenu ; and when in the parlour of the Sacre-
Coeur the little Sauvadon would tell him in a
whisper : ** That girl's mother is a baroness, or a
marquise, or a duchess," the uncle would shake
II
1 62 Kings in Exile.
his stout shoulders and answer : " We '11 do better
for you than that." He made her a princess at
eighteen. Highnesses in quest of dots were not
lacking in Paris ; the Levis Agency kept quite an
assortment; the only question was price. Sauva-
don considered two millions not too dear for being
able to figure in a corner of the salon when the
young Princesse de Rosen received her guests,
and to have the privilege of beaming in the
embrasure of a window with his broad smile curled
like the edge of a basin between short, tufted
whiskers, trimmed in the fashion of Louis- Philippe.
His Httle gray eyes, lively and sly — the eyes of
Colette — rather lessened the effect of the stam-
mering, ingenuous, incorrect remarks that came
from those thick, shapeless lips, cut as if from
a horse's hoof, and the revelations of his coarse
square hands, which recalled the fact, even in their
straw-coloured gloves, that they had formerly
rolled casks on the quay.
In the beginning he distrusted himself, said
little, surprised and even frightened others by his
silence. Dame ! it is not in the cellars of Bercy,
nor in trading Southern wines adulterated with
aniline dyes and logwood, that you learn to speak
fine language. After a while, thanks to Meraut,
he obtained a few ready-made opinions and bold
aphorisms on the events of the day or the book in
vogue. Then Uncle Sauvadon spoke, and did not
do it badly, except for certain fearful pronunciations
fit to bring down the lustres, and the alarm this
water-carrier in a white waistcoat excited by the
The Bohemia of Exile. 163
emission of certain theories a la Joseph de Maistre
picturesquely expressed. But suddenly the sov-
ereigns of lUyria carried off his provider of ideas,
and how could he then parade? Colette, more-
over, detained by her duties as lady of honour,
never left Saint-Mande, and Sauvadon knew the
chief of the civil and military household far too
well to expect to be received there. He never
even spoke of it. Imagine the duke introducing
thaty presenting that to the lofty Frederica ! . .
a wine-merchant ! Not even a retired merchant ;
on the contrary, a dealer in full activity; for, in
spite of his millions, in spite of his niece's en-
treaties, Sauvadon still worked, spent his life in his
storehouses or on the quays, a pen behind his
ear, his white hair touzled, among stevedores and
sailors, unlading and carting away the hogsheads ;
or else beneath the gigantic trees of an old park,
neglected and cut up, in which his wealth was
stored under sheds, in casks innumerable. " I
should die if I stopped working," he said, and he
really lived on the din of barrel-rolling and the
good smell of wine-lees that came up from the
damp cellars of the great storehouses where he
had started in life, forty-five years earlier, as a
journeyman cooper.
It was there that filysee sometimes went to see
his old pupil and enjoy a breakfast such as Bercy
alone knows how to serve, under the trees of the
park or the gateway of a cellar, with fresh wine
drawn from the cask, and fish that were frisking a
moment earlier in the fish-pond, cooked by a local
164 Kings in Exile.
receipt for matelotes as in Languedoc or the
Vosges. It was now no longer a question of
" ideas of things," inasmuch as there were no
evenings to be spent at Colette's; but the good
man liked to hear Meraut talk, and to see him eat
and drink liberally, for he always remembered the
den in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, and treated
Elysde as one saved from the shipwreck of ex-
istence. Affecting care of a man who has gone
hungry himself for another whom he knows to
be poor ! Meraut gave him news of his niece
and of her life at Saint-Mande, bringing him a
reflection of her grandeurs which had cost the
old man so dear and of which he was no longer
a witness. No doubt he was proud to think of the
lady of honour, dining with kings and queens, re-
volving in court ceremonial. Still, the grief of
never seeing her increased his rancour and ill-
humour against old Rosen.
"Why should he be so stuck up? His name?
his title ? . . Why, I paid for them, with my own
money. . . His crosses, his cordons, his orders ! . .
ha ! I can have them when I choose. . . By the
bye, Meraut, you don't know. . . Since I saw you
last, I have had a piece of luck."
"What kind, uncle?"
filysee called him " uncle " with an affectionate
familiarity that was quite Southern, — the desire to
give a name to the peculiar sympathy (without
any bond of mind) which he felt for the stout old
merchant.
** My dear fellow, I have the Lion of lUyria . . .
The Bohemia of Exile, 165
the cross of commander. . . That duke need n't be
so proud of his grand cordon ! . . On New Year's
day, when I go and pay him a visit, I shall stick on
my star . . . that will teach him to — "
Elysee could not believe it. The Order of
the Lion ! one of the oldest and most coveted
in Europe . . . given to uncle Sauvadon ! " my
uncle! . ." Why? . . for having sold adulterated
wine of Bercy?
*' Oh ! it is very simple," said the other, wrink-
ling up his little gray eyes. *' I bought the rank
of commander just as I bought the title of prince.
For a httle more I could have bought the grand
cordon itself; that's for sale, too."
"Where?" cried Meraut, turning pale.
'* Why, at the Levis Agency, Rue Royale. . .
You can get anything at that devil of an English-
man's. . . My cross cost me ten thousand francs
. . . the cordon was fifteen thousand. . . And I
know the man who has given it to himself. Guess
who. . . Biscarat, the great hair-dresser, Biscarat,
Boulevard des Capucines. . . But, my good fel-
low, what I am telling you is known to all Paris. . .
Go and ask Biscarat himself; you '11 see in the big
room where he officiates with his thirty assist-
ants an immense photograph representing him as
Figaro, razor in hand, and the collar of the Order
across his breast. . . The picture is reproduced in
miniature on the labels of all the bottles in the
shop. . . If the duke were to see that ! . . his
moustache would turn up into his nose. . . You
know, how he does. . ,"
1 66 Kings in Exile.
And he tried to mimic the duke's grimace, but
as he had no moustache it was not at all the true
thing.
** Have you your patent, uncle? Will you show
it to me?"
Elysee still had the hope that there was some
trickery under it all, some forgery on which the
Levis Agency would trade without scruple. No.
All was apparently regular, — drawn in due form,
stamped with the arms of Illyria, signed by Bosco-
vich and the scrawl of King Christian II. Doubt
was no longer possible. A traffic in crosses and
cordons was going on, with the king's permission.
But to convince himself finally, Meraut, as soon
as he returned to Saint-Mand6, went up to the
councillor.
In the corner of an immense hall, which covered
the whole upper floor of the house and served as
a business office for Christian, — in which he did
no business, — a fencing-room, a gymnasium, and
a library, he found Boscovich among his pigeon-
holes and layers of thick brown paper on which
were leaves affixed, or the last plants gathered
laid to dry. Since his exile the learned naturalist
had made in the Parisian woods of Vincennes
and Boulogne, which contain the richest flora of
France, the beginning of a new collection. More-
over, he had purchased the herbarium of another
famous naturalist, lately deceased, and now, ab-
sorbed in the examination of his new treasures,
his head bloodless, of no age, bending over the
lens of a magnifying glass, he was lifting cautiously
The Bohemia of Exile, 167
the heavy sheets between which the plants lay
flattened from corollas to extended roots, their
colours lost at the edges. When a specimen was
well-preserved, intact, he uttered cries of joy and
admiration, considered it long, with moistened lips,
reading aloud its Latin name and its description,
written below on a little label. At other times an
exclamation of anger escaped him on seeing the
flower attacked and perforated by that almost im-
perceptible worm well known to herbalists, an
atom born of the dust of plants and subsisting on
it, which is the danger and often the destruction
of collections. The stalk still holds, but move the
page and the whole, flowers, roots, drop into pow-
der and disappear in a thin vapour.
** 'T is the worm . . . the worm. . . " Boscovich
would say, the glass at his eye, and showing with
a sad, but self-satisfied air a perforation like that
the wood-mite makes, indicating the passage of the
monster. Meraut could have no suspicion of such
a being. The monomaniac was incapable of an
infamous action, but he was also incapable of the
slightest resistance. At the first word concerning
the decorations he began to tremble, looked side-
ways over his lens, timid and fearful. . . What was
all this? Yes, certainly, the king had lately made
him prepare a quantity of patents of all grades,
leaving the name in blank ; that was all he knew
about it, and never did he presume to ask more.
" Well, Monsieur le conseiller," said filys^e,
gravely, *' I warn you now that his Majesty is
trading his crosses at the Levis Agency."
1 68 Kings in Exile,
Thereupon he related the story of the Gascon
barber, with which all Paris had amused itself.
Boscovich gave one of his little feminine screeches,
but at heart he was very little scandalized ; all that
was not his mania had no real interest for him.
His collection left behind at Leybach was to him
the country; that which he was now preparing,
the exile in France.
** But don't you see it is unworthy ... a man
like you ... to lend a hand to such hideous
jobbing?"
Then the other, in despair at his eyes being
forcibly opened on that he desired not to see :
" Ma che . . . ma che . . . what can I do, my good
Monsieur M^raut? . . The king is the king. . .
When he says, * Boscovich, write that,' my hand
obeys without thinking. . . Especially as his Maj-
esty is so good to me, so generous. Why, it was
he who, seeing me in such despair over the loss of
my herbarium, made me a present of this one. . .
Fifteen hundred francs ! a magnificent bargain . . .
and over and above it I got the ' Hortus Cliffor-
tianus ' of Linnaeus, earliest edition, thrown in."
Naively, cynically, the poor devil bared his con-
science ; it was dry and dead, like his own herba-
rium. His hobby, cruel as the imperceptible
worm of naturalists, had perforated all, gnawing in
all directions. He was not really moved till Elysee
threatened to warn the queen. Then, at last, the
monomaniac dropped his lens, and in a low voice,
with the heavy sighs of a penitent at confession, he
made an avowal. Many things were happening
The Bohemia of Exile, 169
under his eyes, which he could not help, though
they made him wretched. . . The king was badly
surrounded. . . E poi die volete ? he had no voca-
tion for reigning ... no liking for the throne . . .
he never had it. . . ** Why, I remember ... it is
a long time ago ... in King Leopold's lifetime,
when he had his first attack on leaving the dinner-
table, and they came and told Christian he would
soon succeed his uncle, the child — he w^as only
twelve then, and was playing croquet in the patio
— the child began to cry, and cry ... a regular
nervous attack . . . and he sobbed out : * I don't
want to be king. . . I won't be king. . . Put my
cousin Stanislas in my place.' I often remember,
when I see it now in Christian II. 's eyes, the scared
and frightened look he had that morning, clutch-
ing his mallet with all his might as if he feared they
would carry him by force to the throne-room, and
crying out : * I don't want to be king ! . . ' "
Christian's whole character was revealed in that
anecdote. No, undoubtedly, he was not a wicked
man, but a childish man, married too young, with
exuberant passions and hereditary vices. The
life he led, the nights at the club, the women, the
suppers — in a certain society, that is the normal
condition of husbands — all this was made worse
by the role of king which he did not know how to
maintain, by its responsibilities above his measure
and his strength, and especially by this exile which
slowly demoralized him. A firmer nature than his
could have resisted the tumult of broken habits,
constant uncertainty, senseless hopes, the anguish
170 Kings in Exile,
and enervation of inactive waiting. Like the
ocean, exile has its torpor; it dulls, it benumbs.
*Tis a phase of transition. No one escapes the
ennui of a long voyage unless by periods of fixed
occupation or regular hours for study. But what
can a king find to do when he has no people, no
ministers, no council ; nothing to decide or sign,
and is possessed of too much intelligence or sar-
casm to amuse himself with a pretence at such
things, but also of too much ignorance to attempt
a diversion to some other assiduous labour? Exile
is the sea, but it is also shipwreck ; casting its first
cabin passengers, its privileged classes pell-mell
with the passengers of the steerage and the deck.
A man must have a sense of proud prestige, the
temperamentof a king, not to let himself be caught
by familiarities, by degrading promiscuities for
which he will later have to blush and suffer, and to
keep himself regal in the midst of privations, dis-
tresses, and impurities which mingle and confound
ranks in one general humanity.
Alas ! this Bohemia of exile was beginning to
swallow up the house of Illyria, which the Due de
Rosen had so long preserved at the cost of such
great personal sacrifices. The king was put to ex-
pedients in order to pay the costs of '^ making
fete." He began, like a son of the family, by giv-
ing notes, finding that means quite as simple and
even more convenient, J. Tom Levis assisting, than
drafts "on our privy purse," which he had hitherto
addressed to the civil and military chief of the
household. These notes reached maturity and
The Bohemia of Exile. 171
were renewed by a crowd of others, until the day
when Tom Levis, finding himself sucked dry, in-
vented the capital traffic in patents, — the trade of
king without people or civil list presenting no
other source of profit. The poor Lion of Illyria,
chopped up like butcher's meat in quarters and
slices, was sold at the stalls for so much the mane
and the rump, the ribs and the paws.
But that was only the beginning. Once in Tom
Levis's cab, the king would not stop on so fine a
road. Meraut said this to himself as he left Bosco-
vich. He saw that no reliance could be placed on
that man, easily led, like all others with a hobby. . .
He himself was too new, too entirely a stranger in
the house to have any influence upon Christian.
Should he speak to old Rosen ? At the first words
he uttered the duke would throw him a terrible
glance, all his religions being insulted. The king,
low as he had fallen, was still " the king" to that man.
No resource in the monk either, whose wild face
now appeared only at long intervals between two
journeys, and always more lean and sunburned.
The queen ? . . but he saw her so sad, so fevered
of late, her beautiful, discreet brow clouded by
care when she came to her boy's lessons, to which
she now listened with an absent mind, her fingers
suspended idly over her tapestry. Grave concerns
were troubling her, strange and new to her, and
coming from below; anxieties about money, the
humiliation of so many hands stretched to receive
it which she could not fill — tradesmen, the poor,
the companions of their exile and their misfor*
172 Kings in Exile.
tunes; all that sad business of a sovereign who
has duties and burdens though he has no rights.
Creditors who had learned their way to the once
prosperous house now waited for hours in the
antechambers, and often, weary of waiting, left
words behind them when they went away which
the queen guessed without hearing, from the dis-
contented manner and lagging step of men who
had been thrice dismissed. She strove in vain to
bring order into the new scale of living ; misfor-
tunes happened; bad investments; paralyzed
stocks. It was necessary to wait, or all would be
sacrificed in selling.
Poor queen, poor Frederica, who thought she
knew all there was to know in the matter of suffer-
ing ; she did not know the distresses that wilt the
spirit, the hard and wounding contact with daily
and commonplace existence. There were monthly
bills of which she thought at night, shuddering in
her bed, like the head of a business house. Some-
times when the wages were not paid, she dreaded
to see in the delay of an order, in a look less
humble, the discontent of a servant. In short, she
knew Debt, little by httle the galling debt which
forces with its dunning perseverance the loftiest
and most gilded doors. The old duke, grave and
silent, watched his queen's anguish and wandered
round her, as if to be always saying to her, " I am
here." But she was firmly resolved to exhaust all
possible means before she took back her word and
turned to him whom she had crushed with SO
haughty a lesson.
The Bohemia of Exile. 173
One evening the little Court was collected in
the grand salon, a monotonous assemblage, always
the same, and without the king as usual. Be-
neath the silver candelabra the queen's game, as it
was called, was going on at the whist table, the
duke facing her Majesty, with Mme. Eleonore
and Boscovich against them. The princess was
playing softly on the piano some of those ** echoes
of lUyria" to which Frederica never tired of listen-
ing, and at her first sign of satisfaction the player
would deepen them into paeans of war and valour.
Those evocations of their country, bringing to the
faces of the whist-players a tearful smile, alone
broke the atmosphere of resigned exile and its
settled habits in the rich bourgeois salon which
now sheltered majesty.
Ten o'clock struck.
The queen, instead of going up as usual to her
apartments, giving by her departure the signal to
retreat, cast an absent look around her and said ;
" You may retire. I have work to do with M.
Meraut."
Elys^e, who was reading near the fireplace,
bowed as he closed the pamphlet he had in his
hand and went into the schoolroom to fetch pens,
ink, and paper.
When he returned the queen was alone, listen-
ing to the carriages as they rolled from the court-
yard, the great gates closing behind them, while
along the corridors and stairways the various go-
ings and comings of a numerous household at the
hour for retirement sounded through the house.
174 Kings in Exile,
Silence came at last; silence increased by two
leagues of forest which deadened among its foliage
the distant murmurs sent from Paris. The de-
serted salon, still brilliantly lighted in its soH-
tude seemed all prepared for some tragic scene.
Frederica, resting her elbow on the table, pushed
back the blotter prepared by Meraut.
" No . . . no. . . We shall not work to-night,"
she said. *' That was a pretext. . . Sit down and
let us talk. . .
Then, in a lower voice : —
** I have something to ask of you."
But what she had to say must have cost her
much, for she collected herself a moment, her
mouth and eyes half-closed with that profoundly
sorrowful and aged expression already seen by
Elysee at moments, which made her noble counte-
nance seem still more noble, marked with all devo-
tions, all sacrifices ; hollowed in its pure lines by
the purest sentiments of queen and woman. Seen
thus, it was religious respect that she inspired. . .
At last, summoning all her courage, but speak-
ing very low, timidly, and putting her words one
after another like frightened steps, she asked him
whether he knew in Paris one of those . . . places
where . . . they lent on pawn. . .
Ask that of filys6e ! a bohemian who knew
every pawnshop in Paris, who for twenty years
had used them as storerooms, where in winter he
put his summer clothes, and in summer his winter
ones ! He ! if he knew the clou! if he knew ma
tante! Remembering his youth, that argot of
The Bohemia of Exile, 175
poverty coming back to his mind made him smile.
But the queen, endeavouring to steady her voice,
continued : —
" I should like to confide to you something to
carry there . . . jewels. . . One has moments of . . .
difficulty, sometimes . . ."
And her beautiful eyes, now raised, revealed an
abyss of calm, superhuman grief . . . that anguish
of kings, humiliated grandeur !
*' Could it be done?"
Meraut made a sign with his head that he was
ready to do what was asked of him. Had he
spoken, he would have sobbed outright; had he
made a movement, it would have been to fling
himself at the feet of that august distress. And
yet his admiration began to be affected by pity.
The queen did seem to him a trifle less exalted,
a little less above the vulgarities of life ; as if, in
the sad acknowledgment she had now made to
him, he had heard a faint accent of bohemia,
a something that was surely the beginning of the
fall, something that brought her nearer to himself.
Suddenly she rose and went to the globe of
crystal, from which she took the ancient discarded
relic and placed it on the table, like a handful of
jewels of all colours and rays.
Elysee quivered. '* The crown ! "
" Yes, the crown. . . For six hundred years it
has belonged to the house of lUyria. . . Kings
have died, floods of noble blood have flowed to
defend it. . . And now it must help us to exist.
Nothing else remains to us. . ."
176 Kings in Exile,
It was indeed a magnificent closed diadem of
the finest old gold, the arches of which, each
highly ornamented, met above the cap of main-
tenance made of scarlet velvet. On these arches
and around the circlet of twisted filagree, at the
heart of each floret made in the shape of a clover-
leaf, at the point of the arcade supporting each
floret, was every known variety of precious stone —
the transparent blue of sapphires, the velvet blue of
the turquoise, the aurora of the topaz, the flame of
oriental rubies, emeralds like drops of water upon
leaves, with the cabalistic opal and the milky-irised
pearl; but surpassing all, the diamonds — strewn
everywhere — reflected in their facets these myriad
hues, and, like a luminous dispersed dust, a mist
scattered by the sun, melted and softened the dazzle
of the diadem, already mellowed by long ages to
the gentle rays of a golden lamp in the depths of a
sanctuary.
The queen laid her trembling finger here and
there.
'* These stones must be pried out . . . the larg-
WW C • • •
"With what?"
They spoke in whispers like two criminals.
Seeing nothing in the salon that would do that
work, Frederica said : " Light me."
They passed into the glazed veranda, where
the tall lamp carried by filys6e threw fantastic
shadows and a long stream of light, which was lost
outside upon the lawn in the darkness of the
garden.
The Bohemia of Exile, 177
" No . . . no . . . not scissors," she murmured,
seeing that he looked into her work-basket;
" they are not strong enough ... I have tried."
They discovered at last, on the box of a pome-
granate tree, the delicate branches of which were
seeking the moonlight at the window panes, the
gardener's shears. Returning to the salon Elysee
tried to extract with the point of the instrument
an enormous sapphire which the queen pointed
out to him ; but the stone, solidly set, resisted
and slipped under the iron, immovable in its
place. Moreover, the hand of the operator, fear-
ing to injure the sapphire or break the setting
which bore traces of previous attempts, was neither
strong nor sure. The royalist suffered ; he was
shocked by the outrage he was made to com-
mit upon the crown. He felt it shudder, resist,
writhe.
** I cannot ... I cannot . . ." he said, wiping the
perspiration from his wet forehead.
The queen answered : —
*' It must be done."
*' But it will be seen."
A proud smile of irony crossed her face.
" Seen ! . . Does any one so much as look at
it? . . Who thinks of it, who cares for it here,
but me? . ."
And while he returned to the task, his pallid
face bent over it, his hair in his eyes, holding
between his knees the royal diadem which the tool
was mangling, Frederica, holding high the lamp
watched the operation, cold as the stones which
12
178 Kings in Exile,
glittered, with scraps of gold attached, upon the
table-cloth, intact and splendid in spite of their
violation.
The next day, filysee, who had been absent
all the morning, returned after the last bell had
rung for breakfast, and seated himself at the table,
troubled, agitated, and scarcely mingling in the
conversation — he who was usually the instigator
and life of it. His agitation conveyed itself to the
queen, though it did not in any way change her
smile or the serenity of her contralto tones. The
meal over, to was some time before they could
approach each other so as to speak freely, watched
as they were by etiquette and the rules of court-
life under the jealous eye of Mme. de Silvis and
the attendance of the lady of honour.
At last the hour of lessons came, and while the
little prince was placing himself and arranging his
books, the queen asked hurriedly : —
"What is the matter? What next will happen
to me?"
" Ah ! madame ... all those stones are false. . ."
" False ! "
" Very carefully imitated in paste. . . How
could it have been done? . . when? . . by whom?
There must be some criminal in the house ! . ."
She paled frightfully at the word " criminal."
Suddenly, with clenched teeth and a flash of anger
and despair in her eyes, she said : —
" It is true. There is a criminal in this house
. . . and you and I well know it."
Then, with a nervous gesture, violently grasping
The Bohemia 0/ Exile. 179
M6raut's wrist as if for a compact known to them-
selves only, —
" But we will never denounce him, will we? "
*' Never ! . . " he said, turning away his eyes ;
for, with a word, they had understood each
other.
i8o Kings in Exile.
VII.
POPULAR JOYS.
It was the afternoon of a Sunday early in May,
a splendid, luminous day, in advance of the season,
and so warm that the landau in which the queen,
the little prince, and his tutor were taking their
drive in the forest of Saint-Mande, was open.
This first caress of spring, coming to her through
the fresh green branches, warmed the queen's
heart as it brightened her face beneath the silk
of her sunshade. She felt herself happy, without
any cause, and forgetting for some hours amid
that universal clemency and sweetness the hard-
ness of her life, nestling in a corner of the heavy
carriage, her child beside her, she abandoned her-
self in security and privacy to a familiar talk with
Elys^e M^raut, who sat facing her.
" It is singular," she said to him, " how it seems
to me that we had seen each other before we met.
Your voice, your face at once awoke in my mind
an impression of recollection. Where could we
have met for the first time?"
Little Zara remembered very well where it was.
It was over there, in the convent, in that church
under ground, where M. filys6e had so frightened
him. And in the timid, gentle look the boy turned
Popular Joys, i8i
on his master there still remained something of his
superstitious fear. . . But no ! before that Christ-
mas Eve the queen was sure that they had met
each other.
" Unless it was in some former life," she added,
almost seriously.
filysee laughed.
*' Your Majesty is not mistaken. You saw me,
not in another life, but in Paris, the day of your
arrival. I was opposite to the hotel des Pyra-
mides, on the stone base of the Tuileries railing."
" And you cried out : Vive le roil . . Now I
remember. . . So that was you ? Oh ! how glad
I am. . . It was you who gave us our first wel-
come ... If you knew what good your cry did
me ! . ."
"And to myself too," said Meraut. " It was so
long since I had had a chance to utter it, that
triumphant cry of Vive le roi ! , . So long that
it sang to me on my lips ! . . It was our family
cry; associated with all my joys of childhood and
of youth, — the cry in which at home we summed
up all beliefs and all emotions. That cry brings
back to me the Southern accent, the gesture, the
very voice of my father; it forces to my eyes
the moisture I have seen in his so often. . . Poor
man ! in him it was instinctive ; a profession of
faith. . . One day, crossing Paris on his return
from a visit to Frohsdorf, he entered the Car-
rousel as Louis Philippe was about to go out.
People were loitering about, glued to the iron
railings, indifferent, even hostile, — the populace of
1 82 Kings in Exile,
the close of his reign. My father, hearing that
the king would pass, pushed and jostled his way
through the crowd to the front rank, that he might
eye, and insult with his contempt that brigand,
that beggar of a Louis Philippe who had stolen
the place of legitimacy. . . Suddenly the king
appeared, crossed the empty courtyard amid a
death-like silence, an oppressive silence, crushing
the very palace, in which one seemed to hear
distinctly the cocking of rebel muskets and the
cracking of the planks of the throne. . . Louis
Philippe was old, very bourgeois, and he walked
toward the gateway umbrella in hand, with
short little shambling steps. Nothing of the sov-
ereign, nothing of the master. But my father did
not see him as he was ; and at the thought that in
the great palace of the kings of France, paved with
glorious memories, the representative of monarchy
should pass through that frightful silence and soli-
tude forced on kings by the hatred of their people,
something arose and revolted within him ; he for-
got his rancour and, baring his head instinctively,
he cried, or rather he sobbed out a Vive le roi !
so ringing, so profoundly felt, that the old man
quivered and thanked him with a long look full
of emotion."
" That is how I, too, should have thanked you,"
said Frederica, and her eyes fixed themselves on
Meraut with such tender gratitude that the poor
fellow felt himself turn pale. But she added im-
mediately, full of the tale to which she had just
listened : —
Popular Joys. 183
"And yet your father was not a man of the
nobihty? "
" Oh ! no, madame ... all that is most humble,
most common ... a journeyman weaver."
** That is singular," she said reflectively.
And he answering her, an endless subject of
discussion between them began again. The queen
did not like, and did not understand the people ;
she had, in fact, a sort of physical horror of them.
She thought them brutal ; alarming in their joys
as they were in their vengeance. Even during the
fetes of the coronation, that honey-moon of her
reign, she feared them, feared those myriads of
hands stretched out to acclaim her, in which,
nevertheless, she felt herself a prisoner. Never
had the two understood each other; favours, gifts,
charities had fallen from her to her people like
one of those blighted harvests when the wheat will
not ripen, although no positive blame can be laid
to the seed or the soil.
Among the fairy-tales with which Mme. de
Silvis etherealized the mind of the little prince, was
the story of a Syrian young lady married to a lion,
who felt a horrible dread of her savage husband,
his roars, and his violent fashion of shaking his
mane. Nevertheless, he was full of attentions and
loving delicacy, that poor lion. He brought to
his child-wife the rarest game, and honey-comb,
he watched while she slept, and made the sea and
the forests and the animals keep silence. In spite
of all that she kept her repugnance, her insulting
dread, until one day the lion got angry and roared
184 Kings in Exile.
to her a terrible " Begone ! " his jaws open, his
mane erect, as if he were more inclined to devour
her than to let her go. This was somewhat the
story of Frederica and her people; and ever since
Elysee had lived beside her he had endeavoured,
but in vain, to make her admit the hidden good-
ness, the chivalric devotion, the savage suscepti-
bilities of that great lion that roared so many
times in play before he roared in anger. Ah ! if
kings only would. . . If they showed themselves
less distrustful. . . And then, as Frederica shook
her sunshade with an incredulous air he added :
" Yes, I know it well ... the people frighten
you. . . You do not love them, or rather you do
not know them. But if your Majesty would look
about you ... in these alleys, under these trees. . .
And yet this is the most dangerous suburb in
Paris which is walking about and amusing itself
here, the suburb from which revolutions issue and
barricade themselves in the torn-up streets. See
what a simple, kind, and natural, and naive expres-
sion these people have ! how they enjoy the com-
fort of a day of rest, and the sunny weather. . ."
From the wide avenue through which the landau
was slowly passing they could see beneath the
trees and shrubbery, on the ground all violet with
the first wild hyacinths, breakfasts laid out, white
plates spotting the grass, baskets with gaping
covers, and the thick glasses of the wine-merchants
sunk among the greenery of early buds like
peonies ; shawls and blouses were hanging to the
branches, women were in their home gowns, men
Popular Joys, 185
in their shirt-sleeves ; some reading, some taking
their siesta, the more industrious were sewing,
their backs to the trunks of the trees, and through
the joyous glades fluttered the ends of humble
stuffs, some in a game of shuttle-cock, or blind-
man's buff, others in an improvised quadrille to
the sounds of an invisible orchestra which came in
gusts. And the children ! quantities of children !
making common cause with sugar-plums and
games ; running together from one family to an-
other, jumping, shouting, filling the whole wood
with one vast warble of swallows; their endless
coming and going having the same bird-like rapid-
ity, caprice, and shadowy fluttering in the light
among the branches. This wood of Vincennes —
contrasting with that of Boulogne, — which is
always neat, brushed-up and protected by rustic
fences — seemed expressly prepared for the pas-
time of the people making holiday, with its paths
all free, its turf, though trodden, green, and its
trees, bending but resistant, as if nature were here
more perennial, more clement.
Suddenly, at a turn of the avenue, a burst of air
and of light from the lake which parted the wood
with its grassy banks, drew a cry of enthusiasm
from the little prince. The scene was indeed
superb ; like that of the ocean suddenly appearing
through the stony labyrinth of a Breton village
and bringing its tide to the very foot of its farthest
street. Boats with banners, filled with rowers
making lively spots of blue or red, ploughed the
lake in all directions with the silvery furrows of
1 86 Kings in Exile,
their oars, the white foam flashing into shoals of
httle waves. Flocks of ducks swam quacking;
swans, with nobler mien, followed the long circuit
of the shore, their light plumes ruffled by the
breeze ; while, in the distance, masked by the
green curtain of an isle, an orchestra sent through
the whole wood a joyous harmony, to w^hich the
surface of the lake served as a sounding-board.
And with it all, a gay disorder, the sparkle of
breeze and wave, the flapping of banners, the calls
of boatmen, the circling banks with seated groups
and scampering children, and two little noisy cafes
built almost into the water, their wooden floors
sonorous as a deck, and their open walls present-
ing the idea of a bath-house or a ferry-boat. . .
Carriages were few around the lake. Every now
and then came a hackney-coach loaded, the day
after a wedding, with a faubourg bridal party,
easily recognized by the new cloth of the frock-
coats and the showy arabesques of the shawls ; or
else the char-a-bancs of business houses bearing
their signs in gilded letters, and filled with stout
women in flowery bonnets, who gazed with an air
of pity at the humbler pedestrians tramping the
sand. But what was chiefly noticeable were the
little baby-carriages, that first luxury of the work-
man with a home ; those walking cradles, where
little heads in ruffled caps wabbled so blessedly,
preparing to sleep, their eyes uplifted to the
tracery of branches on the sky.
Amid this promenading of the people, the
equipage with the arms of lUyria, its horses and
Popular Joys, 187
its liveries, did not pass without exciting a cer-
tain wonder, Frederica having never driven there
before except on a week-day. People nudged
one another. Famihes of workmen In bands, silent
In the embarrassment of Sunday-clothes, drew
aside at the sound of wheels, and then, turning
round, did not check their enthusiasm at the noble
beauty of the queen beside the aristocratic child-
hood of Zara; and sometimes a bold little face
peeped out from the bushes to say : " Bonjour,
madame. . ." Was it Elys^e's words, or the splen-
did weather, and the gayety of the whole scene
stretching to the horizon now left rural by the silent
manufactories, or was it the cordiality of these little
encounters? Frederica was conscious of a sort of
sympathy with this Sunday of workmen, nearly all
of them made spruce with a touching cleanliness,
considering the nature of their hard toil and the
shortness of their leisure. As for Zara, he would
not be quiet, quivering and stamping in the car-
riage ; he wanted to get out, to roll with the others
on the lawns, and to row in the boats.
Meantime the landau had reached less noisy
avenues, where people were reading, or sleeping
on the benches, or passing beneath the copses in
close-pressed couples. Here the shadows held a
little mystery, — the cooling freshness of springs,
the true exhalations of a forest. Birds were
chirping in the branches. But the farther they
advanced from the lake, where noise had so far
concentrated, the echoes of another fete were
heard distinctly; the sound of firearms, the roll
1 88 Kings in Exile.
of drums, the blare of trumpets, and the ringing of
bells, — all detaching themselves from a great
clamour which suddenly passed athwart the sun
like a smoke. One might really have thought it
the sack of a city.
"What is that? What is it I hear?" cried the
little prince.
" The gingerbread fair, Monseigneur," said the
old coachman, turning round upon the box ; and
as the queen consented to go nearer to the merry-
making, the carriage left the park and threaded its
way through a crowd of narrow streets and roads
only half built-up, where new houses of six storeys
stood side by side with miserable huts, between
market-gardens and stable gutters. . . Everyvvhere
were drinking-shops and arbours, with their little
tables and their springboards, painted invariably
of the same vile green. All were overflowing with
people, the shakos of artillery-men, and the white-
gloved military in crowds. No noise. They lis-
tened to the wandering harpist or vioHnist who,
having permission to play among the tables, was
scraping out an air of the Favorita or the Trova-
tore ; for this scoffer of a people, this populace of
Paris adores the sentimental and pays Hberally to
its music if amused.
Suddenly the landau stopped. Carriages can go
no farther than the entrance to the great public
promenade of Vincennes, along which the fair is
held, having at its end towards Paris the two
columns of the Barriere du Trone, which rise above
the dusty atmosphere of the suburb. What was
Popular Joys, 189
seen from that point, namely, the swarming of a
great crowd in the midst of a veritable street of
enormous booths, lighted up the eyes of little Zara
with such an eager craving of childish curiosity
that the queen proposed to leave the carriage.
This desire of the proud Frederica to go on foot
in the dust of a Sunday was so extraordinary, and
filysee was so amazed, that he hesitated.
"Is there any danger?"
" Oh ! not the slightest, madame. . . Only, if
we go upon the fair ground it would be better that
no one accompanied us. The livery would make
you too noticeable."
At the queen's order, the tall footman, who was
preparing to follow them, resumed his place upon
the box, and it was arranged that the carriage
should wait where it was. Assuredly they did not
expect to make the round of the fair ; a few steps
in front of the first booths would be all.
Near the entrance were movable little benches
and a table covered with a white cloth, on which
were games, mechanical inventions. People passed
them disdainfully, without stopping. Next came
frying-stoves in full blast, surrounded by an acrid
smell of burning grease, with great flames rising
pink in the sunlight, around which scullions in white
aprons were busy behind mounds of sugared
fritters. Then came the makers of marsh-mallow
paste, twisting into gigantic rings the snow-white
compound that smells of almonds. . . The little
prince gazed at all this in stupor; it was so new to
him, the little caged birdling, bred in the lofty
IQO Kings in Exile,
chambers of a castle, behind the gilded railings of
a park, in the midst of alarms and terrors ; never
going out unless accompanied, and never seeing
the populace unless from a balcony or from a car-
riage surrounded by guards. Intimidated at first,
he pressed against his mother and held her tightly
by the hand ; but, little by little, he grew intoxi-
cated by the noise and the odour of the fete. The
tunes upon the barrel-organs excited him. A
wild desire to run, that made him drag Frederica
along, was checked only by the desire to stop
everywhere, and yet to go farther still ** over
there," where the noise was loudest, and the
crowd more dense.
Thus, without perceiving It, they were soon
quite far from their point of departure, with a
swimmer's lack of sensation that the tide is carry-
ing him out, and all the more easily because no
one noticed them. Amid those gaudy costumes,
the simple toilet of the queen in shades of fawn,
gown, mantle, and hat in harmony, passed unper-
ceived, as did the quiet elegance of Zara, whose
great starched collar and short jacket and bare
legs only made a few good women turn and say:
^'That's an English boy." He walked between his
mother and Elysee, who smiled to each other above
his joy. " Oh ! mother, see that ! . . Monsieur
Iilysee, what are they doing over there? Do let
us go and see ! " And from one side of the
road to the other in curious zigzags they plunged
farther and still farther into the crowd, following
its tidal way.
Popular Joys, 191
" Suppose we go back," proposed Elysee ; but
no, the child was beside himself. He entreated,
he pulled his mother's hand ; and she, so happy in
seeing her little torpid one alive, and herself ex-
cited by this popular fermentation, went on and
on still farther. . .
The day became warmer, as if the sun in going
down were gathering all its rays into a threat of
storm. As the skies changed, the fete with its
myriad colours took on a fairy aspect. 'Twas the
hour for parading. All the employes of the cir-
cuses and the booths came out beneath the awn-
ings of their entrances, in front of those canvas
signs swelling in the breeze till the gigantic beasts
and gymnasts and hercules painted thereon ap-
peared to be alive. This was the parade of a
grand military show, displaying the costumes of
Charles IX. and Louis XV., arquebuses, rifles, wigs,
and plumes mingling together, the Marseillaise
sounding from a brass band, while the young
horses of the circus, held by white reins as in
a bridal procession, executed clever steps, calcu-
lated with their hoofs, and bowed to the company.
On the opposite side, a booth of regular mounte-
banks were exhibiting a clown in his checked
garments, with shrivelled little Aztecs in tights,
and a tall, swarthy girl, dressed as a danseuse,
who juggled with gold and silver balls, bottles, and
knives with shining pewter blades, all jingling and
crossing one another above the tall erection of her
hair, held up by glass-bead pins.
The httle prince was lost in endless contempla-
192 Kings in Exile.
tion before this beautiful being, when a queen, a
real queen, such as she appears in fairy-tales, with
a brilliant crown,, a short tunic of silvered gauze,
her legs crossed one upon the other, suddenly
appeared leaning on the balustrade. Zara would
never have tired of looking at her if the orchestra
had not slightly distracted his attention, — an ex-
traordinary orchestra, composed, not of French
guards, nor of gymnasts in flesh-coloured tights,
but of gentlemen, real gentlemen, with short
whiskers, shining skulls, and dress boots, who
deigned to play on horns and trumpets while a
lady, yes, a veritable lady, with a little of Mme. de
Silvis' solemnity, in a silk mantle and a bonnet
with nodding flowers, looked with an indifl"erent
air to right and left, her arms being tossed
about till the fringes of her mantle caught the
roses of her hat. Who knows ? Some other royal
family fallen into grief . . But the fair-ground
presented many other things equally astonishing.
In a vast and perpetually varied panorama, bears
were dancing at the end of their chains, negroes
were running about in linen drawers, devils and
devilesses in crimson bandannas ; the wrestlers
gesticulated ; famous tumblers, one hand on their
hip, waved above the heads of the crowd the
breeches destined for the amateur; a fencing-
mistress in coat-of-mail, red stockings with gold
clocks, her face covered by a mask, her hands in
leathern gauntlets, was there ; and a man dressed
in black velvet who resembled Columbus, or
Copernicus, describing magic circles with a d«^^
Popular Joys, 193
mond-handled whip ; while from behind the hne
of booths came a sickly odour of hides and the
roaring of wild beasts in the Garel menagerie.
All these living curiosities were blended with the
pictured ones, — gigantic women in ball costume,
their shoulders exposed, their arms in short eider-
down sleeves and gloves tightly buttoned ; sil-
houettes of seated somnambuHsts, looking with
bandaged eyes into the future ; a doctor near-by
with a black beard; abnormal beings, accidents of
nature, eccentricities, oddities of all kinds, some-
times sheltered by only two great sheets held
up by a rope, with the money-box for the receipts
on a chair at the entrance.
Everywhere, at every step, was the king of the
revels. Gingerbread, under every aspect, every
form, in scarlet boots with golden fringes, wrapped
in glossy painted papers, tied with favours, deco-
rated with sweetmeats and burnt almonds, — Gin-
gerbread in flat, grotesque figures representing
the Parisian celebrities of the day, the lover of
Amanda, Prince Queue-de-Poule with his insep-
arable Rigolo, — Gingerbread hawked in baskets
and on portable benches, diffusing also a good smell
of honey and cooked fruits through the crowds who
were slowly and tightly moving onward, circula-
tion being now very difficult.
Impossible to return upon their steps. They
were forced to follow that despotic current, to ad-
vance, to retreat; unconsciously impelled toward
this booth and then to that, because the living
flood which presses together in the middle of a
13
194 Kings in Exile,
space is always seeking to flow away at the sides
without the possibility of issue. Laughter broke
forth and jokes in this continual and enforced
elbowing. The queen had never seen the People
so near. Encountering thus its very breath and
the rough contact of its shoulders, she was amazed
to find that she felt neither terror nor disgust.
She advanced like the others, with that hesitating
step of a crowd which seems like the murmur of a
march, and keeps, if carriages are absent, a sort of
rhythmic solemnity. The good-humour of all these
people reassured her, and also the exuberant gayety
of her son and the quantity of baby-carriages which
continued their way in the thick of it all. *' Don't
push ! . . see, there's a child ! " Not one child, but
ten, twenty, hundreds, carried by mothers in their
arms, or by fathers on their backs ; and Frederica
turned a kindly smile when one of these little popu-
lace heads of her own boy's age went past her.
filys6e, however, began to be uneasy. He knew
what a crowd really is, however calm it may be
apparently, and the real danger of its eddies and
tides. If one of those big black clouds overhead
were to burst in rain, what a rush ! what a panic !
His imagination, always at boiling point, represented
to his mind the scene, the horrible suffocation of
body to body, the crushing on the Place Louis XV.,
that dangerous massing of a whole people in the
midst of a broad city, not two steps from immense
deserted avenues it is unable to reach. . .
Between his mother and his tutor who protected
him, the little prince became very hot. He com-
Popular Joys, 195
plained that he could see nothing. Then, like the
workmen around them, Meraut lifted Zara to his
shoulder, which produced an explosion of joy, for
from that height, of course, the view of the fete was
splendid. On the western sky, rayed with jets of
light and great floating shadows, in the far per-
spective, between the two columns of the Barriere,
were lines of palpitating flags and oriflammes and
the flapping canvas of the booth fronts. The airy
wheels of gigantic merry-go-rounds lifted their
little cars, each filled with people; an immense
" chevaux-de-bois " in three stages, varnished and
coloured like a toy, turned mechanically, with its
lions, leopards, and fantastic iarasques, on which
the children sat as stiff as puppets. Close by
were struggling clusters of little red balloons ; in-
numerable whirling mills of yellow paper, looking
Hke artificial suns; and above the crowd, gazing
down upon it, quantities of little heads like Zara's,
erect, in a cloud of golden vapour. The rays of
the setting sun, now paling, left upon the clouds
brilliant layers of reflections, which lighted all
objects and shaded them in turn, giving an added
movement to the scene. Here, they struck a Pier-
rot and a Columbine, two white spots fluttering be-
fore each other — pantomime in chalk on the black
ground of a mountebank's platform — there, a lank,
stooping harlequin, wearing the pointed hat of a
Greek shepherd and making believe to push into
his booth, like loaves into an oven, the crowd that
are flowing past the steps of it. He has a big,
wide-opened mouth, that harlequin, and he must
196 Kings in Exile.
be shouting, roaring; but he is not heard any
more than the furious ringing of that bell at the
corner of a platform, or the discharge of muskets
of which the smoke and the muzzles can be seen.
All is lost in the stupendous clamour of the fair,
clamour of an element composed of the " tutti,"
discordant and general, rattles, jew's-harps, gongs,
drums, speaking-trumpets, roars of wild-beasts,
Barbary barrel-organs, and the shrieking of steam-
whistles. The prize was to him who employed — to
attract the crowd, as bees are caught by noise —
the loudest and most persistent instrument ; while
from swings and merry-go-rounds fell other shrieks,
and over all this frantic racket rose, every fifteen
minutes, the whistle of the trams on the circuit
railway as they passed the fair.
Suddenly the fatigue, the stifling odour of this
human mass, the dazzle of that five o'clock sun,
oblique and hot, in which so many vibrating, glit-
tering things were twirling, turned the queen giddy
and made her stop, half-fainting. She had only
time to catch the arm of Elysee and save herself
from falling ; and as she leaned there, clinging to it,
erect and pale, she murmured very low: '* Nothing,
nothing ; this is nothing ! . ." But her head, or
her nerves, beat painfully, and her body, losing the
sensation of existence, gave way for an instant . . .
Oh ! he will never forget it, that one instant ! . .
It was jver. Frederica again was strong. A
breath of cool air upon her forehead quickly re-
vived her, but she did not relax her hold on his
protecting arm ; and that queenly step conforny
Popular Joys. 197
ing to his own, that glove resting warmly upon
him, caused an inexpressible trouble in Elysee's
breast. The danger, the crowd, Paris, the fete, he
thought no more of them. He was in the land
impossible ; where dreams are realized with all their
magic, all their visionary extravagance. Buried
in that mass of the populace, he walked without
seeing it, without hearing it, borne by a vapour that
enveloped him to the eyes, impelled him, sustained
him and led him unconsciously from the fair to the
avenue. . . There at last he returned to earth and
knew himself. . . The queen's carriage was too far
off to be regained. They were forced to go on foot
to the chateau, following in the fading light the
wider paths and the streets lined with little cafes
full of a merry people making holiday. It was a
veritable escapade ; but neither of them thought
much about the strangeness of their return. Little
Zara talked, and talked, as children do after a fete,
in haste to express with their little lips all they
have amassed by their eyes of images, ideas, events.
Elysee and the queen were silent, — he quivering
still, seeking to recall and yet to escape that deli-
cious, penetrating moment which revealed to him
the secret, the sad secret of his life. Frederica
was thinking of all she had seen, so novel and
hitherto unknown to her. For the first time in her
life she had felt the beating of the heart of the
people ; she had laid her head on the lion's
shoulder. An impression remained to her, both
strong and sweet, a clasp, as it were, of tenderness
and of protection.
198 Kmgs in Exile,
VIII.
THE GRAND STROKE.
The door shut brusquely, autocratically, send-
ing from one end to the other of the Agency a
puff of air which swelled the blue veils and the
mackintoshes, and waved the bills in the fingers
of the clerks, and the little feathers in the hats of
the tourist ladies. Hands were extended, heads
inclined ; J. Tom Levis had entered the establish-
ment. A circular smile, two or three very brief
orders to the accountant, the time to ask, in a loud,
exulting tone, whether *' the package had been sent
to Monseigneur the Prince of Wales," and he was
already in his cabinet, while the clerks signalled to
one another with many winks the extraordinary
good-humour of their master. Undoubtedly some-
thing new was going on. The peaceful Sephora
herself became aware of it behind her railings, and
asked gently, as Tom entered : —
"What is it?"
" Things ! " he replied with a great silent laugh,
and his roll of the eye on important occasions.
He made a sign to his wife : —
*' Come ! . ."
Together they descended the fifteen steep and
narrow stairs brass-bound which led to a little
The Grand Stroke. 199
boudoir underground, very coquettishly carpeted
and hung, with a divan, a duchesse-dressing-table,
lighted constantly with gas, the little port-hole on
the Rue Royale being glazed with ground glass as
thick as a piece of horn. From there they could
communicate with the cellars and the courtyard,
an arrangement which enabled Tom to enter and
leave the Agency without being seen, and so avoid
bores and creditors, who are called in Paris " paves,"
that is to say, persons or things that obstruct cir-
culation. With affairs as complicated as those of
the Agency, such Comanche craft was indispensa-
ble. Without it, hfe would be spent in quarrels
and lawsuits.
Tom's oldest employes, men who had served him
for five or six months, had never descended into
this mysterious sub-salon, where S^phora alone had
the right to enter. It was the private nook of the
agent, his interior, his conscience, the cocoon from
which he issued transformed, — something like the
dressing-room of an actor, to which, indeed, the
boudoir at this moment bore a strong resemblance,
with its gas jets lighting the marble, the furbelowed
hangings, and the singular transformation which J.
Tom Levis was now accomplishing. With a twirl
of his hand he opened his long English frock-
coat and flung it away, then one waistcoat, then
another, the many-coloured waistcoats of a circus-
man ; he unwound the dozen yards of white muslin
that formed his cravat, the flannel bandages that
wrapped his waist and formed that majestic and
apoplectic rotundity which drove about Paris in the
200 Kings in Exile,
first and only hansom known there at that period,
and issued, all of a sudden, with an ** ouf" of satis-
faction, a lean and wiry little man, looking like a
spool unwound, a frightful blackguard of quinqua-
genary Paris, who might have been saved from a
fire or dragged from a lime-kiln, with the scars,
seams, and baldness of his baking; and yet, in
spite of all, v/ith an air of juvenility, of rollicking
boyhood, of the old mobile guard of '48, in short,
the true Tom Levis ; in other words, Narcisse
Poitou, son of an upholsterer in the Rue de
I'Orillon.
Growing up among the shavings of the paternal
establishment until he was ten years old, from ten
to fifteen taught by the " Mutuelle " and the street,
that incomparable school under the open sky,
Narcisse very early felt within himself a horror
of the people and of manual employments, and
at the same time, a passionate imagination, which
the Parisian gutter with the anomalous masses it
sweeps along had fed better than no matter what
progression through the schools. While still a
child, he invented projects and planned business.
Later this faculty for dreaming hindered him in
fixing his powers and making them productive.
He travelled, and undertook all sorts of employ-
ments. Miner in Australia, squatter in America,
actor in Batavia, bailiff at Brussels, — making debts
in both hemispheres, and leaving the stones that
pave hell in all four quarters of the universe. He
finally settled as broker in London, where he lived
for some time, and might have succeeded were it
The Grand Stroke, 201
not for his terrible, insatiable imagination, always
in quest of something; the imagination of a volup-
tuary perpetually in advance of the coming pleas-
ure, which flung him at last into the blackest of
Britannic poverty. That time he rolled very low,
and was caught at night in Hyde Park, poaching
among the swans in the Serpentine. A few months
in prison completed his disgust for *' free England,"
and he returned to the condition of waif and stray
on the Paris pavements whence he had departed.
It was only another fantastic caprice, joined to
his instincts of clown and comedian, that made
him naturalize himself as an Englishman in Paris;
which to him was easy, with his knowledge of the
habits and customs, the language and comicality of
Anglo-Saxons. The idea came to him suddenly,
as if by instinct, in his first affair, his first " grand
stroke," as go-between.
"Whom shall I announce?" asked a tall fellow
in livery, insolently.
Poitou felt himself so shabby, so down in his
luck, in that vast antechamber, fearing to be turned
away before he was heard, that he saw the need
of buoying things up by something abnormal and
singular.
"A — oh ! . . announce Sir Tom Levis."
And suddenly he felt a self-assurance come to
him under that name, improvised on the spur of
the moment, and from that borrowed nationality.
Henceforth he amused himself by perfecting its
peculiarities, its hobbies, while the attentive watch-
fulness required for his accent and behaviour cor-
202 Kings in Exile,
rected his exuberant fancy, and enabled him to
invent all sorts of dodges while seeming to be in
search of the French words.
Singular thing ! Of all the innumerable con-
trivances of that brain full of fanciful schemes, this,
the least sought of all, served him the best. To it,
he owed his intimacy with Sephora, who was then
keeping on the Champs Elysees a sort of family
hotel, a jaunty little place of three storeys, pink
curtains, and a portico on the Avenue d' Antin,
between wide asphalts made gay with greenery
and flowers. The mistress of the house, always
in proper dress, showed her calm, divine profile at
a window on the ground-floor, bending over her
work or else an account-book. Within, a society
queerly exotic — clowns, book-makers, grooms,
horse-dealers, the Anglo-American bohemia (worst
of all), the scum of placers and of gambling resorts.
The female contingent was recruited from the
quadrilles at Mabille, the violins of which could be
heard of a summer's evening, mingling with the
noise of the ** family " disputes and the rolling of
counters and louis ; for after dinner play ran high.
If at times a respectable foreign family, misled by
the lie on the sign, came to install themselves in
Sephora's house, the singularity of the guests, the
tone of the conversations drove them quickly
away on the first day, before their trunks were
unpacked.
In the midst of these adventurers and specu-
lators, Maitre Poitou, or rather Tom Levis, a little
fellow lodging under the roof, won a position very
The Grand Stroke, 203
quickly by his gayety, his suppleness, his practical
knowledge of business, and of all business. He
invested the money of the servants, and gained
through them the confidence of their mistress.
How should he not gain it with that smiling open
face of his, and those unfailing good spirits which
made him a precious guest at the table d'hote^
enticing clients, baiting the cloth, the instigator of
bets and of extra " consumptions." Cold and re-
served to others, the beautiful mistress of the
" family hotel " was free with none but Monsieur
Tom. Often in the afternoon, when going out or
coming in, he would stop in the neat little office
of the hotel, all glass and mats. Sephora would
tell him her affairs, show him her jewels and her
books, consult him about the bill of fare, and the
proper care to be given to the white arum with
flowers like a cornucopia which lived beside her
in a Minton pot. They laughed together at the
love-letters and the protestations of all sorts that
she received, for hers was a beauty that sentiment
never defaced. Without passion, she kept her
coolness everywhere and at all times, and treated
love as a matter of business. It is said that a
woman's first lover is the only one who counts.
Sephora's first, the sexagenary lover chosen by old
Leemans, had frozen her blood forever and per-
verted her love. She now saw nothing but money
in it, also intrigue, schemes, and traffic, this adora-
ble creature being born among second-hand things
and for second-hand purposes only. Little by
little a tie was formed between herself and Tom,
204 Kings in Exile,
the friendship of an uncle and ward. He advised
her, guided her, ahvays cleverly and with a fertility
of imagination that delighted her sedate and me-
thodical nature, in which Jewish fatalism was
joined to a heavy Dutch temperament. Never
had she invented or imagined anything, — living
wholly in the present moment; and Tom's brain,
that firework that was always going off, simply
dazzled her. The crowning point of all was when
she heard her lodger one evening, after he had
gabbled in his most comic fashion during dinner,
whisper in her ear as he took his key from the
*' family " office : —
** But, you know, not an Englishman at all."
From that day she fell in love, or rather — for
sentiments are only what you ticket them — she
became infatuated with him, just as a woman in
society is infatuated by an actor whom she alone
knows away from the foot-lights, the paint, and
the costume, such as he is and not such as he
seems to others ; love is always desirous of privi-
leges. Besides, the pair both came from the same
Parisian gutter. In it Sephora had soiled her
skirts, and Narcisse had rolled there ; but they
kept the stain and a liking for the mire. The
stamp of the streets, the crapulous line which
serves as a clue to the leering physiognomy of a
blackguard, and which raised at times a corner of
Tom's mask, showed itself in Sephora by flashes
along the biblical lines of her face, and in the
irony and canaille laugh of her Salome-like mouth.
This singular love of beauty and the beast only
The Grand Stroke, 205
grew the stronger as the woman entered more and
more into the life of the mountebank, into a knowl-
edge of his tricks and his contrivances, from the
invention of the hansom to that of the multiplied
waistcoats, by means of which J. Tom Levis, un-
able to make himself taller, endeavoured to at least
appear majestic ; and the more she herself was asso-
ciated with this unforeseeable, twirling existence of
projects, visions, great and little " strokes," the
more infatuated she became with him. And this
caricature of a man was really so strong that after
ten years of legitimate bourgeois marriage he still
amused her, still charmed her as in the early days
of their acquaintance. To be convinced of that, it
would suffice to have seen her on this particular
day, lying back on the divan of the little salon in
convulsions of laughter, saying with an enraptured
and delighted air : ** Is n't he silly ! . . Oh ! is n't
he silly ! " . . . while Tom in a tight, coloured jersey,
reduced to his leanest, baldest, most angular and
bony expression, was performing before her a fren-
zied jig, with jerking gestures and frantic stamps.
When both were weary, she of laughing and he of
jigging, he threw himself beside her on the divan
and put his monkey face beside that angelic head,
puffing his joy into her face.
" Done for ! those Sprichts ! Ousted ! Spricht
and Sprichters ! I Ve found my stroke, the GRAND
STROKE."
** What, really? . . Who is it? "
The name which he said brought a pretty gri-
mace of disdain to Sephora's lips.
2o6 Kings in Exile,
*' That great gaby ! . . Why, he has n't a sou, . .
We have shorn him, skinned him, him and his Lion
of lUyria. . . He has n't one atom of down left
upon his back."
" Don't scoff at the Lion of Illyria, my girl. . .
His skin alone is worth two hundred millions,"
said Tom, recovering his composure.
The woman's eyes flamed. He repeated the
words, pausing on each syllable : —
" Two — hundred — millions ! . ."
Then coolly, clearly, he explained the " stroke."
Christian IL must be induced to accept the prop-
ositions of the Diet, and cede his rights to the
crown for the fine price offered to him. After all,
what was it? — a signature to give, that was all.
Christian himself would have done it long ago.
It was those around him, the queen especially,
who stopped him and prevented the signing of the
renunciation. He must come to it sooner or later.
Not a sou in the house. Debts all over Saint-
Mand^; to the butcher, to the grain-dealer — for
in spite of the master's penury there were horses
still in the stable. The house was always kept up
and the table served with all the appearances of
luxury while disastrous privations lay beneath.
The royal linen, bearing the crown, was in holes in
the closet, with none to replace it. The stables
were empty, the largest pieces of plate in pawn;
the servants, scarcely sufficient in number, were
often for months unpaid. All these details Tom
had obtained from Lebeau, the valet, who had also
told him the tale of the two hundred millions
1 he Gra7id Stroke. 207
offered by the Diet of Leybach and the scene
which had ensued thereon.
Ever since the king had been made aware that
two hundred milHonswere close beside him, against
a penful of ink, he was no longer the same man ;
never laughed, never talked, kept to this fixed
idea as a neuralgic pain always keeps to one side
of the forehead. He had the temper of a bull-dog,
sighed heavily and silently. And yet nothing
was changed in his personal attendance — secre-
tary, valet, coachman, footmen, they were all there.
The same costly luxury in furniture and dress.
That haughty Frederica, crazy with pride, believing
she masked their poverty to the eye of all by
her loftiness, had never allowed the king to be de-
prived of anything. When by chance he dined at
Saint-Mande, the table must always be luxuriously
served. What he lacked, however, and what she
could not supply, was money in his pocket, for
the club, gambling, and women. Evidently, the
king would succumb in the end on that line.
Some fine morning, after a long night at baccarat, not
being able to pay and not daring to owe — fancy
Christian II. posted at the Grand-Club! — he
would take his pen and sign his resignation of
monarchy in a flash. The thing would have hap-
pened already, if it were not for that old Rosen,
who secretly, in spite of the queen's order, had
begun again to pay for Monseigneur. So the
plan was made to entice him to pass the level of
small current debts and drag him into real ex-
penses, into multiplied obligations beyond the
2o8 Kings in Exile,
resources of the old duke. All this required a
considerable advance of money.
" But," said Tom, "■ the affair is such a fine one
that funds will not be lacking. The best way will
be to speak to your father and do the business in
the family. The only thing that troubles me is the
mainspring — the woman."
" What woman ? " asked Sephora, widening her
ingenuous eyes.
*' She who is to pass the rope round the king's
neck. , . We must find a regular squanderer for
that ; a serious girl with a strong stomach, who '11
attack the big dishes at once."
'* Amy Ferat, perhaps? "
" Ho ! whisht ! . . used-up, done-with . . . besides,
not serious enough, sups, sings, makes love in
real youth . . . not the woman to worm out her
little million a month peacefully, without seeming
to touch it, holding her sugarplum high, balking
at details, haggling over every square inch, and
dearer than a bit of ground in the Rue de la Paix."
" Oh ! I know exactly how the thing should be
managed," said Sephora, thoughtfully. . . " But
who?"
"Ah! that's it. . . Who?"
And the silent laugh each sent the other was
as good as a bond of partnership.
" Go on ! inasmuch as you have already be-
gun. . ."
"What! you know? . . "
" Don't I see his game when he looks at you,
and his attendance at the rail as soon as he thinks I
The Grand Stroke, 209
have departed ? . . Besides, he makes no mystery
of his love, and tells it to anybody who listens . . .
why, he has even written and countersigned it on
the Club-Book."
When told the whole story of the bet, the tran-
quil S^phora was roused : —
" Ha ! really. . . Two thousand louis that he
will sleep. . . Upon my word ! that 's too much ! "
She rose and walked about the room to shake off
her anger, then, returning to her husband, —
" You know, Tom," she said, " that for more than
three months I have had that great fool hanging
behind my chair. . . Well, see ! . . not so much as
that ! "
And the snap of a little nail was heard against a
tooth which only sought to bite.
She told no lie. Ever since the king had been
in pursuit he had got no farther than touching the
tips of her fingers, nibbling her pens beside her,
and getting himself intoxicated with the rustle of
her gown. Never had such a thing happened
before to this Prince Charming, spoilt by women,
assailed by soliciting smiles and perfumed letters.
His handsome curly head, where the print of a
crown still lingered, the heroic legend of a kingly
conduct, carefully kept up by the queen, and
beyond all else that perfume of seduction which
hangs about a much-loved being, had won him in
society certain real successes. More than one
young woman could have shown, curled up on the
divan of an aristocratic boudoir, a little ouistiti
from the royal cage ; and in the world of green-
14
2IO Kings in Exile,
rooms, usually monarchical and " right-thinking," it
placed a young woman at once if she could show in
her album of souvenirs the portrait of Christian II.
That man, accustomed to feel all eyes and lips
and hearts press towards him, and never to cast his
own glance without a quiver from the spot where
it fell, had now for months been dancing a vain
attendance on the coldest and most peaceful of
natures. She played the part of model cashier;
she counted, ciphered, turned heavy pages, show-
ing her admirer nothing more than the velvety
roundness of her profile, with the glimmer of a
smile that ended at the eye among the lashes. At
first, the caprice of the Slav was amused by this
struggle, but vanity soon had a part in it, the eyes
of the Grand-Club were fixed upon him, and the
matter ended In a real passion, fed by the void of
that unoccupied existence, in w^hich the flame now
mounted straight without an obstacle. Every after-
noon he came at five o'clock, the gayest moment
of the Parisian day, the hour of visits when the
pleasures of the evening are selected. Little by
little, all the young men of the Club who lunched
at the Agency and circled round Sephora ceded
their places respectfully. This desertion, dimin-
ishing the current little gains of the Agency, in-
creased the lady's coldness; and as the Lion of
lUyrla no longer brought in anything, she was
beginning to make Christian feel that he bored
her, and monopolized too royally the wicket of her
railing, when, all of a sudden, a change occurred
— on the morrow of her talk with Tom.
TIu Grand Stroke, 211
" They say your Majesty was seen, last night at
the Fantaisies? . . "
At this inquiry, accompanied by a sad and anx-
ious look, Christian II. felt delightfully troubled.
" Yes, certainly. . . I was there. . . "
"Not alone? . . "
" But. . . "
" Ah ! . . Some women are born to be happy."
Immediately, as if to lessen the instigation of her
speech, she added that she had long had a wild
desire to go to that little theatre '' to see the
Swedish danseuse, you know. . . " But her hus-
band would never take her anywhere.
Christian at once proposed to take her.
" You? Oh ! you are too well known."
" But we will sit quite hidden in a stage-box."
In short, the rendezvous was made for the next
evening; because it so happened that Tom was
to spend the evening out. What a delightful
escapade ! She, at the front of the box, in a
discreet and knowing toilet, beamed with child-
ish joy at the dancing of that foreigner who had
her hour of celebrity in Paris, — a Swede with thin
face and angular gestures, showing beneath her
blonde bandeaux a pair of brilliant eyes, the black
pupils of which covered the whole iris, the eyes of
a rodent, and in her darts and silent springs with
her black garments the blind bewilderment of a
monstrous bat.
" Oh ! how it amuses me ! how amused I am ! "
cried Sephora.
And the dissipated king, motionless behind her,
212 Kings in Exile,
a box of sweetmeats on his knee, could not remem-
ber a more voluptuous pleasure than the touch of
that bare arm beneath its laces and that fresh
breath as it turned upon him. He insisted on
taking her to the Saint-Lazare station when she
returned that night to Courbevoie ; and on the way,
in the carriage, a transport seized him and he drew
her with both arms to his heart.
" Oh ! " she said, in a grieved voice, " you will
spoil all my pleasure."
The immense waiting-room at the station was
deserted and ill-lighted. They seated themselves
side by side on a bench, Sephora shivering, and
the king protecting her with his ample furs. Here
she was no longer timid, but let hersell go and
talked to the king with whispers in his ear. From
time to time some official passed them, swinging
his lantern, or a group of actors living in the
suburbs and returning home from the theatre.
Among them, came a couple with arms interlaced,
walking somewhat apart.
" How happy they are," she murmured. . . " No
ties, no duties. . . Following the impulse of the
heart ! All else is cheatery. . ."
She knew something of that, alas ! and suddenly,
as if impelled, she related her sad existence with
a sincerity that touched him ; the snares, the temp-
tations of the streets of Paris for a girl made poor
by her father's avarice ; and sold at sixteen, her
life ended ; the four years passed with that old
man, to whom she had been only a nurse ; then,
not willing to return to the traffic of her father,
The Grand Stroke, 213
needing a guide, a supporter, she had married this
Tom Levis, a man of money. She had given her-
self, devoted herself, deprived herself of all pleas-
ures to be buried alive in the country, and now
put to toil as a clerk ; and this without thanks,
without so much as a kindness from that ambi-
tious man, who cared for nothing but his business
and who, at the slightest sign of a revolt, at the
faintest desire to see life, held up to her invari-
ably that wretched past for which she was not
responsible. . .
" A past," she said, rising, " which brought me
that vile outrage signed b/ your name on the book
of the Grand-Club."
The bell ringing for departure cut short at the
right moment this admirable theatrical effect.
She walked away with her gliding step, which the
folds of her black gown followed ; sending Chris-
tian a salute with eye and hand and leaving him
motionless, stupefied, bewildered by what he had
heard. . . So she knew it ! . . How could she
know it? . . Oh! how he blamed himself for his
baseness, his bragging. . . He spent the whole
night in writing to her, imploring pardon in varie-
gated French, bestrewn with the flowers of his
national poesy, which compared his beloved to
a cooing dove, and the glowing fruit of the
pomegranate.
Marvellous invention of Sephora, that reproach
about the wager ! It gave her a barrier against
the king, and for some time to come. Also it
explained her long coldness, her almost inimical
214 Kmgs in Exile.
greetings, and the clever bargaining she intended
to make of her person. A man ought to bear all
from a woman to whom he had offered such an
insult ! Christian became the timid, docile servant
of her caprices, the acknowledged sigisbeo in the
sight and hearing of all Paris.
If the beauty of the lady was able to excuse
him in the eyes of the world, certainly the friend-
ship, the familiarity of the husband had nothing
creditable. " My friend, Christian II." said J. Tom
Levis, drawing up his stocky figure. Once he
took a fancy to receive the king at Courbevoie, for
the sake of causing Spricht one of those jealous
furies which shortened the days of the illustrious
dress-maker. The king went over the house and
park, boarded the yacht, and consented to let him-
self be photographed on the portico of the man-
sion with its master and mistress, who desired to
eternalize the memory of this never-to-be-forgotten
day. And that evening, while fireworks were go-
ing up in honor of his Majesty, their rockets
doubled by reflections in the Seine, S^phora,
leaning on Christian's arm, said beside the horn-
beams, all white with the glare of the Bengal
lights : —
" Oh ! how I would love you if you were not a
king. . ."
It was the first avowal, and very cleverly made.
All the mistresses Christian had had up to this
time adored him as the sovereign, the glorious
possessor of that title, and a line of ancestors.
This one loved him for himself " If you were
The Grand Stroke, 215
not a 'king," she said. He was so little of a king
that he would willingly have cast away at her wish
the rag of dynastic crimson which now scarcely
held upon his shoulders !
Soon after, she explained herself more clearly
still. He was uneasy at finding her, one after-
noon, pale and weeping.
" I am afraid we shall see each other no more
before long," she said.
'^Why so?"he asked.
*' He declared to me just now that business
affairs in France were doing so badly that he
should have to close up and go elsewhere. . ."
"And take you?"
" Oh ! I am but a clog on his ambition. . He
said to me : * Come, if you like. . .' I must follow
him. . . What would become of me, left here all
alone."
" Naughty child, am I not here? "
She looked him fixedly in the eye.
" Yes, it is true, you love me . . . and I love
you. . . I cou] be yours without shame. . . But
no, it is impossible. . ."
*' Why impossible?" he asked, breathless at the
thought of that paradise.
'' You are too high for Sephora Levis, Mon-
seigneur. . ."
And he, with adorable fatuity : —
" But I will raise you to myself. . . I will make
you countess, duchess. That is a right that still
remains to me. We will find somewhere in Paris
a lover's nest, where I will install you in a manner
2i6 Kings in Exile,
worthy of your rank; where we can live alone, —
no one but ourselves. . ."
'' Oh ! that would be too beautiful. . ."
She thought a little, lifting her candid, mois-
tened, childlike eyes. Then she said hastily:
" No, no . . . you are a king. . . Some day, in
the midst of our happiness you will leave me. . ."
" Never."
"But if you are recalled?"
" Where? . . To lUyria? . . That is all over, for-
ever done with. . . I missed last year one of those
occasions that never return."
"Truly?" she said, with a joy that was not
feigned. " Oh ! if I could only be sure of it. . ."
He had a word upon his lips that convinced her,
though he did not say it ; but she understood it
well. That evening, Tom Levis, whom Sephora
kept informed of everything, declared solemnly
that " the thing was sure ; and that father Leemans
had better be informed."
Seduced, like his daughter, by the imagination,
the contagious ardour and inventive volubility of
his son-in-law, Leemans had several times put
money into the Agency. After gaining, he had
lost ; following in that respect the luck of cards ;
but when he found himself " rolled," as he ex-
pressed it, two or three times the old fellow took
a stand. He did not recriminate, nor get angry,
for he knew business too well and detested useless
words ; but when his son-in-law came to talk
about his being a sleeping-partner in one of those
marvellous castles in the air which Tom's eloquence
The Grand Stroke, 217
raised to the skies, the old man smiled a significant
*'n, o, no . . . that 's over," in his beard, and lowered
his eyelids in a way that brought down to reason
and to the level of things feasible Tom 's wild
imaginations. The latter knew that; and as he
wisely desired that this Illyrian affair should not
go out of the family, he despatched Sephora to the
old man, who, as he aged, had been seized by a
sort of affection for his only child, in whom, more-
over, he felt that he lived again.
Since the death of his wife, Leemans had given
up his antiquity shop in the Rue de la Paix, con-
tenting himself with the old place in the Rue
Eginhard. It was there that Sephora went one
morning, very early, to be sure of finding him ;
for he was seldom at home, the old fellow. Im-
mensely rich and retired from trade, at least in
appearance, he continued to ferret about Paris
from morning till night, attending sales, seeking
the odour, the friction of business, and above all
watching with marvellous perspicacity the crowd
of little dealers, traders, sellers of bric-a-brac, to
whom he was sleeping partner, but without owning
that fact, for fear his wealth should be suspected.
Sephora, from a fancy, a memory of her youth,
went on foot from the Rue Royale to the Rue
Eginhard; following almost the same way she
used to take in former days when returning from
the shop. It was not yet eight o'clock. The air
was keen, carriages were few, and towards the
Bastille there remained of the dawn an orange
glow, in which the gilded genius on the column
2i8 Kings 171 Exile,
seemed to bathe his wings. From this direction,
through all the adjacent streets came a charming
population of the girls of the faubourg on their
way to work. If Prince d'Axel had risen early-
enough to watch for that flood, his eyes would
have been well content that morning. By twos,
by threes, chattering, alert, and walking very fast,
they reached the swarming work-rooms of the
Rues Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Vieille-du-Temple ;
and some - — these were the few stylish ones —
the shops on the boulevards, farther away, but
later to open.
The animation of the scene was not that of
evening, when, tasks finished and their heads full
of the day's events, they returned to their lodg-
ings with racket and laughter, and sometimes with
envy of the luxury encountered which made the
garret seem higher up and the stairway more
gloomy than before. But now, if sleep still clung
to these young heads, rest had adorned them with
a sort of freshness, completed by the careful dress-
ing of their hair, the knot of ribbon fastened to
the braid or beneath the chin, and the brushing
given before daylight to the black gowns. Here
and there a trumpery jewel at the tip of an ear
rosy with cold, a shining comb, the glitter of a
buckle at the waist, the white edge of a newspaper
folded into the pocket of a waterproof. And what
haste ! what courage ! — light mantles, thin skirts,
unsteady steps on heels too high and worn-down
sideways by much tramping. Among them all,
the desire, the vocation for coquetry, a way of
The Grand Stroke, 219
walking with their foreheads up, their eyes for-
ward, with an eager curiosity for what the day
may bring, — natures all ready for whatever turns
up, just as their Parisian type, which is not one, is
ready for all transformations.
Sephora was by no means sentimental, she saw
nothing beyond the present hour and its events ;
nevertheless this confused pattering, this hurried
bustle amused her. Her youth came back to her
on all these pretty faces, in that early morning
sky, in that curious old quarter, where each street
bears at its corner on a poster the names of its
noted merchants, names that had not changed in
fifteen years. In passing through the black arch-
way which serves as an entrance to the Rue Egin-
hard from the Rue Saint-Paul, she encountered
the long robe of a rabbi on his way to the neigh-
bouring synagogue ; two steps farther on was a
rat-catcher with his pole and his plank, to which
hung the hairy corpses, a type of old Paris no
longer to be seen except in this tangle of mouldy
buildings, where all the rats in the city have their
headquarters ; farther on was the driver of a
rented carriage, whom she had seen every morn-
ing of her work-girl life walking just there, with
his big boots quite unfit for going afoot, and
holding preciously in his hand, as straight as the
taper of a communicant, that whip which is the
sword of a Jehu, the insignia of his order, and
never leaves him. At the door of two or three
shops, comprising the whole street, and where the
shutters were just being taken down, she saw the
220 Kmzs in Exile,
i>
same old garments hanging in a mass, and heard
the same Hebraic and Teutonic gabble, so that
when, having crossed the low porch of the paternal
domicile, the little courtyard, and the four steps
leading up to the shop, she pulled the string
of the cracked bell, it seemed to her that she had
fifteen years less upon her shoulders — fifteen
years, however which did not weigh upon her.
As at that earlier period, the Darnet opened the
door to her, — a robust Auvergnat creature, whose
shiny, high-coloured face with dark undertones,
tightly knotted shawl, and black cap edged with
white, seemed to wear the mourning of a coal-
dealer's shed. Her role in the house was made
visible by the manner in which she opened the
door to S6phora, and by the stiff smile that the
two women exchanged as they looked at each
other.
" My father is in ? "
" Yes, madame. . . In the workshop. . . I will
call him."
" Useless. . . I know the way."
She crossed the antechamber, the salon, and
the garden, a black pit between great walls
above which trees were growing, its narrow paths
encumbered with innumerable old articles, —
iron-work, lead-work, wrought-iron railings, stout
chains, their oxidized, blackened metal harmon-
izing well with the melancholy box and the
greenish tones of an old fountain. On one side
was a shed overflowing with rubbish, carcasses
of furniture broken for years, piles of carpeting
The Grand Stroke, 221
rolled into corners; on the other a workshop
almost wholly of ground-glass, to escape the curi-
osity of the neighbouring windows. There, piled
to the ceiling in apparent disorder, was an assem-
blage of treasures, their true value known only to
the old man himself, — lanterns, lustres, torches,
panoplies, incense-burners, bronzes, antique or
foreign. At the lower end were two blacksmiths'
forges, with carpenters' and locksmiths' benches.
Here it was that the old antiquarian dealer
vamped up, copied, rejuvenated his old models
with amazing cleverness and the patience of a Ben-
edictine. Formerly the racket was great from
morning till night when five or six workmen sur-
rounded the master; but now nothing more was
heard than the click of a hammer on fine metal and
the nibbling of files, while at night the gleam of a
single lamp showed that the trade within was not
yet dead.
As his daughter entered, old Leemans, in a big
leather apron, his shirt-sleeves pushed up on his
hairy, light-skinned arms as if he had been carrying
copper to the benches, was in the act of hammer-
ing out the stem of a Louis XIII. chandelier, the
model of which stood before him. At the sound
of the opening door, he raised his rubicund face
lost in a mass of hair and beard of a reddish white,
and knitted his thick, shaggy eyebrows, from
which his glance issued as if from the long hairy
fur of a griphon.
" Morning, pa. . ." said S^phora, pretending not
to see the annoyed gesture of the old man as he
2 22 Kings in Exile,
tried to conceal the hammer he was wielding ; for
he did not like to be disturbed or seen at his
work.
"It IS you, is it, little girl?"
He rubbed his old muzzle to her delicate
cheek.
"What has happened to you?.." he asked,
pushing her into the garden. " Why did you get
up so early? "
" I have something very important to tell you."
" Come ! "
And he pulled her towards the house.
** Oh ! but you know, I don't want to have the
Darnet there . . ."
" Well, well . . ." said the old man, laughing in
his bristles ; and going in, he called to the woman
who was polishing a Venetian mirror :
" Darnet, you will go in the garden and see if
I am there."
And the tone in which this was said proved that
the old pacha had not yet abdicated into the hands
of his favourite slave. They remained, father and
daughter, alone in the neat bourgeois litde salon,
the furniture of which, covered with white cloths,
and the little bits of woollen carpet before each
chair, contrasted with the chaos of dusty treasures
in the shed and shop. Like those fine cooks who
will eat none but the simplest dishes, Pere Lee-
mans, so expert and knowing in things of art, did
not possess in his own house a single specimen of
them. In that he showed the sort of merchant
that he was; appraising, trading, exchanging, with-
The Grand Stroke, 223
out feeling or regret ; unlike those artists in bric-
4-brac who before they part with a rare article
inquire anxiously how the amateur intends to sur-
round it and show its merits. There was nothing
on Pere Leemans' walls but his own full length
portrait by Wattelet, representing him at the forge
in the midst of his iron-work. It was he him-
self, not so white-haired, but quite unchanged ;
lean, bent, always the same dog-man head, with its
straight, reddish-white beard and long hair forming
a kind of helmet, and showing little more of the
face than a nose reddened by chronic inflamma-
tion, which gave to this sober tea-drinker the look
of a drunkard. This picture was the sole char-
acteristic thing in the room, together with a church
prayer-book, lying open and leaves down, on the
mantel-shelf. Leemans owed several good sales to
that book. It distinguished him from his rivals ;
from that old miscreant Schwalbach, from Mother
Esau and others with their Ghetto origin, whereas
he was, he, a Christian, married for love to a Jewess
who became a Christian and even a Catholic. This
served him well with his upper-class customers;
he went to mass in the oratory of those ladies, in
that of the Comtesse Malet, for instance, and the
elder of the two Sismondos. On Sundays he
appeared at Saint-Thomas d'Aquin and at Sainte-
Clotilde, where his best clients went ; while through
his wife he kept on the right side of the great Jew-
ish houses. As he grew older this religious sham
became a fixed habit, and often in the morning, on
starting out for his day's business, he would enter
224 Kings hi Exile,
St. Paul's " to get," as he said quite seriously, " a
little scrap of mass," having remarked that he
always succeeded better in business on those
days.
'' Well? . ." he said, looking slyly at his
daughter.
*' A great affair, pa. . ."
She took from her bag a bundle of drafts and
notes bearing Christian's signature.
" These have got to be cashed. . . Will you
do it?"
At the mere sight of that signature the old fel-
low made a grimace which puckered his whole
face and made it disappear into his beard with the
motion of a hedgehog at bay.
" Illyrian paper ! . . Thank you, I know it. . .
Your husband must be a fool to send you here on
such an errand. . . Come now, really, have you got
to that?"
Without being discomfited by this reception,
which, indeed, she expected, —
"■ Listen . . ." she said, and in her composed way
she related the affair, the Grand Stroke, in de-
tail, giving proofs to support it, — a copy of the
" Quernaro " in which the session of the Diet was
reported, and letters from Lebeau keeping them
informed of the situation . . . the king, madly in
love, bent on establishing his happiness. . . A
superb mansion, Avenue de Messine, servants,
equipages, he wanted them all for the lady, and
was ready to sign as many bills as they chose, at
any interest. . . Leemans now began to prick up
The Grand Stroke. 225
his two ears, made objections, ferreting into all the
corners of the affair so knowingly contrived.
** How long, the notes? "
" Three months."
" Then in three months? . ."
She made the gesture of tightening a slip noose,
and her mouth, drawing in, thinned her calm hps.
** And the interest?"
" Whatever you like. . . The heavier the notes,
the better for us. . . He must have no other
resource than to sign the renunciation."
"And once signed? . ."
" That concerns the woman. . . She has before
her a man with two hundred millions to nibble at."
" And suppose she keeps it all for herself? . .
We ought to be devilishly sure of that woman. . ."
"We are sure. . ."
"Who is it?"
" You don't know her," said Sephora, without
blinking, putting the papers back in her httle
bag.
" Let those be," said the old man, hastily. . .
" It takes a lot of money, you know. . . A large
investment. . . I '11 talk it over with Pichery."
"Take care, papa... We mustn't let too
many on to it. . . There 's already ourselves,
Lebeau, and now you. . . If you go and let in
others ..."
"Only Pichery. . . You must see that I alone
could n't do it. . . It is a great deal of money . . .
great deal of money."
She answered coldly : —
226 Kings in Exile.
"Oh! we shall want more than this."
Silence. The old man reflected, sheltering his
thought behind his bristles.
'' Well, come . . ." he said at last. '' I '11 do the
thing ; but on one condition. That house on the
Avenue de Messine. . . It must be furnished of
course stylishly. . . Well, I am to furnish the
bric-i-brac. . ."
Into even his usurious traffic the second-hand
dealer must put his paw. S6phora's thirty-two
teeth burst into a laugh.
** Oh ! the old greedy ! the old greedy ! " she
cried, using a word that came to her suddenly in
that second-hand den, contrasting absurdly with
her air of distinction and her elegant attire.
"Come, that *s agreed to, pa. . . You shall furnish
the bric-a-brac . . . only, nothing from mamma's
collection, mind."
Under that humbugging title, "Mme. Leemans'
Collection," the old dealer had grouped a mass of
damaged, unsalable articles, which, thanks to this
sentimental title, he got rid of magnificently ; de-
taching from the precious lot, from the relics of
his dear deceased, only such things as were paid
for by their weight in gold.
" You understand me, old man ... no shams,
no rubbish. . . The lady knows what's what."
"You think so. . . Does she know? . ." said
the old dog in his beard.
" As well as you or I, I tell you."
" But just tell me. . ."
He put his muzzle to her dainty face ; and on
The Grand Stroke. 227
both of them the spirit of low traffic was written,
on the old parchment and the downy rose-leaf
" Just tell me who she is, that woman. . . You
ought to tell me, now I am in it."
" She is . . ."
S^phora stopped a moment to tie the broad
strings of her bonnet beneath the soft oval of her
face, casting into a mirror, as she did so, the satis-
fied look of a pretty woman, in which a certain
new pride appeared to mingle.
*' She is the Comtesse de Spalato," she said
gravely.
228 Kings in Exile.
IX.
AT THE ACADEMY.
The classic palace which sleeps under the lead
of its cupola, at the end of the Pont des Arts and
the beginning of studious Paris, had, on this par-
ticular morning, an unusual air of life, and seemed
to be advancing to the line of the quay. In spite
of the rain, a pattering June rain, that came in
showers, a crowd was collecting at the steps of the
great entrance, and extending, like the queue at a
theatre, along the railings, the walls, and even to
the arches of the Rue du Seine ; a gloved crowd,
well-dressed, well-behaved, waiting patiently, know-
ing that it was certain of admittance in virtue of
little cards of different colours, brightened by the
shower, with which all were supplied. Carriages
were standing single file along the deserted Quai
de la Monnaie, the most luxurious carriages that
Paris contained, with coquettish or splendid liv-
eries, democratically sheltered by umbrellas and
water-proofs, showing, nevertheless, clubbed wigs
and gold lace, and on their panels the armorial
bearings and greatest blazons of France and Eu-
rope, even royal arms, like enlarged plates of a
Pierre d'Hozier, moving in line along the Seine.
When a ray escaped, a ray of that Parisian sunlight
At the Academy, 229
which has the grace of a smile on a grave face,
everything sparkled with wet reflections, the har-
nesses, the helmets of the guards, the arch of the
dome, the cast-iron lions at the entrance, usually
dusty and shabby, but now of a rain-washed, beau-
tiful black.
At long intervals, on days of solemn reception,
the old Institute has these sudden and interesting
wakings-up of an afternoon. But this morning
the affair was not a reception. The season was
far too much advanced; the new members, co-
quettish as comedians, would never have consented
to make their first appearance after the ** Prix de
Paris " had been competed for, the Salon closed,
and trunks packed ready for departure. It was
simply a distribution of Academic prizes, — a cere-
mony without much interest, which usually attracts
none but the famiHes of the prize-winners. The
circumstance which now brought this exceptional
influx, this aristocratic crowd, to the doors of the
Institute was the fact that among the crowned
works was the " Memorial of the Siege of Ragusa "
by Prince Herbert de Rosen ; and the monarchical
coterie had profited by that event to organize,
under the protection of the police, a demonstration
against the government.
By an extraordinary chance, or by the act of one
of those intrigues which mysteriously work like
moles in official or academic soil, the Secretary
being ill, the report upon the crowned works was
to be read by the noble Due de Fitz-Roy, and it
was known that he, legitimist of the whitest and
230 Kings in Exile,
most anaemic blood, would bring out with empha-
sis the ardent passages in Herbert's book, that
noble historical manifesto around which the devo-
tion and the fervour of the party had gathered.
In short, it was one of those malicious protestations
which the Academy occasionally ventured upon
even under the second Empire, and which the
good-natured indulgence of the Republic per-
mitted.
Mid-day, The twelve strokes ringing from the
old clock cause a stir and a murmur among the
crowd. The doors are opened. Those on foot
advance slowly, methodically, toward the en-
trances on the square and on the Rue Mazarine;
while the emblazoned carriages, turning into the
courtyard, deposit their masters, the bearers of
privileged tickets, beneath the portico, where,
among the ushers with their gold chains, bustled
the affable head of the secretariat, in silver lace,
smiling and polite as the majordomo of the Palace
of the Sleeping Beauty when, after a nap of a
hundred years, the princess awakes on her state
bed. Doors fly open, the sleepy footmen, in long
surtouts, spring from their seats ; bows, long-
trained curtseys, smiles, whispers among the ha-
bitiih, are exchanged as the arrivals pass with a
sound of rustling silks along the carpeted passage
leading to the reserved boxes, or through the nar-
row corridor sloping downward as if sunken by
the steps of centuries, which leads to the interior
of the palace.
The hall, an amphitheatre, soon filled up on the
At the Academy, 231
sides reserved for the general public. The benches
were occupied one after another, and behind the
last row were persons standing, their silhouettes
defined against the glass of the windows. Not a
place empty. A sweUing sea of heads as in the
half-light of a church, or a cold museum, made
colder by the polished yellow stucco of the walls
and the marble of the great meditative statues, —
Descartes, Bossuet, Massillon, all the glory of the
great century congealed in one motionless attitude.
Facing the crowded semicircle were a few un-
occupied benches, and a small green table with
the traditional glass of water, awaiting the Acad-
emy and its committee, who would enter presently
through those tall doors surmounted by a gilded
and tomblike inscription: LETTERS, SCIENCES,
Arts. All is ancient, cold, meagre ; contrasting
with the springlike toilets with which the hall is
actually blooming, — light, delicate materials, fluffy
grays, auroral pinks, made in the new and rather
tight fashion of the day, and sparkling with jet
and steel; airy hats and bonnets, a medley of
mimosa and lace with flashes of tropic birds amid
knots of velvet and sun-coloured straw; and
around and above it all the regular, continuous
beat of those large fans, the scent of which made
the big eye of the great Meaux eagle wink. For
you know very well it is no reason, because you
belong to old France, that you should smell mil-
dewed and dress like a fright.
All that Paris could show of chic, well-born,
and " right-thinking " had rendezvoused here ;
2 2^2 Khigs ill Exile.
smiling and recognizing one another with little
masonic signs, — the flower of the clubs, the cream
of the Faubourg, a society that never exhibits
itself, takes no part in anything, is never seen at
first representations, and only on certain days at
the Opera or the Conservatoire, — a discreet and
muffled society; closing its salons with many
curtains from the noise and light of the street;
giving no occasion to be talked about, except now
and then by a death, a suit for separation, or an
eccentric adventure of one of its members, a hero
of the " Persil " or the Gomme. Among this
choice society were a few Illyrian nobles, who had
followed their princes into exile, splendid types
of men and women, a little too accentuated, too
exotic for this delicately refined company. And
also, grouped at certain very apparent points, were
the academic circles which prepare, beforehand,
the elections and direct the votes, the social cultiva-
tion of whom is worth more to a candidate than
his weight in genius. Illustrious losers in the
Empire lottery were also here, worming themselves
in among the " old party," whose sarcasms on their
parvenu condition they have long since exhausted ;
and even, select as the assembly may be, a few
questionables, celebrated for monarchical ties, have
managed to slip in, in simple toilets, with two or
three actresses then in vogue, faces known to all
Paris, visions the more commonplace and wearily
besetting because other women in all societies per-
sist in copying them. Besides these, journalists,
reporters of foreign newspapers, armed with blot-
At the Academy, 233
ters, perfected pencil-cases, tools of their trade, as
if for a journey to Central Africa.
Lower down, in a little circle reserved at the foot
of the benches, was seen the Princesse Colette de
Rosen, wife of the laureate, delicious in a costume
of greenish blue, Indian cashmere, and moire
antiqiie, wearing a triumphant, beaming look be-
neath the silky fluff of her flaxen hair. Near her
was a stout man with a common face, old Sauva-
don, very proud of accompanying his niece ; but
having, in his ignorant zeal and his desire to do
honour to the ceremony, put himself into an even-
ing suit, he became extremely unhappy. Stiff in
his white cravat as if in the stocks, he watched the
men who entered, hoping to find a mate to his
dress-coat Of course, not one.
From this flutter of colour and animated figures
came a murmur of voices, rhythmed, but distinct
and loud, which seemed to establish a magnetic
current from one end of the hall to the other.
The slightest laugh spread itself, was communi-
cated ; the slightest sign, the mute gesture of two
parted hands preparing to applaud was perceivable
from top to bottom of the benches. It was emotion
and good-will, all prepared and ready for a first
representation of which the success was certain ;
and when, from time to time, the celebrities en-
tered and took their seats, the quivering excite-
ment of the crowded assembly turned towards
them, merely restraining as they passed its curious
or admiring murmurs.
Do you see, high up, above the Sully, the two
234 Kings in Exile,
women who have just entered, accompanied by a
little boy, who fill the whole front of their box?
They are the Queens of Illyria and Palermo ; two
cousins, their figures erect and proud, dressed in
the same maiive faille, with the same rare em-
broideries, and on the golden hair of one and the
dark braids of the other the same caress of sweep-
ing feathers around their hats, women of noble
types completely different. Frederica is paler, the
gentleness of her smile is saddened by an ageing
look ; and the face of her darker cousin is also
stamped with the distresses, the anxieties of exile.
Between them the little Comte de Zara shakes the
blond curls of his hair, pushed back upon a pretty
head that is growing daily more erect, more vigor-
ous, while the glance of the eyes and the mouth
are gaining assurance. True seedling of kingship
beginning to bloom.
The old Due de Rosen stands at the back of the
box with another personage, not Christian II., —
who avoids an ovation, — but a tall fellow with a
bushy mane, an unknown man, whose name will
not be pronounced throughout this ceremony al-
though it ought to be on every lip. It is in his
honour that this fete takes place ; it is he who has
given cause for this glorious requiem of monarchy
in presence of the last gentlemen of France and of
the royal families exiled in Paris ; for they are all
there, those exiles, those dethroned ones, come to
do honour to their cousin Christian ; and it has not
been a small matter to place those crowns in their
due rank. Nowhere are questions of precedence
At the Academy, 235
more difficult to solve than in exile, where vanities
are embittered, and susceptibilities may be enven-
omed into actual wounds.
In the box Descartes — all the boxes bear the
names of the statues beneath them — the king of
Westphalia maintains, a haughty attitude, which
renders the more observable the fixity of his eyes,
eyes which look, but do not see. His constant
effort is to hide his irremediable blindness ; and
his daughter aids him in this with her devotion, —
that tall, slender creature, whose head seems ever
bending beneath the weight of its golden hair, the
colour of which she so carefully conceals from her
father. The blind king likes brunettes only. " If
you had been a blonde," he says sometimes, strok-
ing his daughter's hair, " I think I should have loved
you less." A remarkable couple, walking their road
of exile with the dignity, the lofty calmness of a
promenade in a royal park. When Queen Frede-
rica in her hours of depression thought of that
helpless infirmity guided by that sweet innocence,
she was comforted and strengthened by the spell,
so pure, that issued from them.
Farther on, behold, in a turban of dazzling satin,
the solid Queen of Galicia, who resembles, with her
massive cheeks and high colour, a blood-orange
in its coarse skin. She enters with a great stir
about her, puffs, fans herself, laughs and talks with
a woman, still young, who wears a white mantilla
on her head, and has a sad, kind countenance,
furrowed by the track of tears from the rather
reddened eyes to the pallid mouth. This is the
236 Kings i7t Exile,
Duchess of Palma. an excellent creature, little
fitted to bear the shocks and terrors to which the
adventurous highwayman of a sovereign to whom
her life is bound condemns her. He is there, he
too, the tall duke, sticking familiarly between the
two women his shiny black beard and his insolent
face, bronzed by his last expedition, as costly and
disastrous as those that preceded it. He has played
at being king, had a Court, fetes, women, Te Deums,
and paths strewn with flowers. He has caracoled,
decreed, danced, made ink and powder speak, shed
blood, sown hatreds. And the battle lost, the
saiive-qid-peiit cried out by himself, he returns to
Paris to seek for new recruits to risk, more millions
to melt, wearing always a garb of travel and adven-
ture, a frock-coat tight to the figure, buttoned and
frogged in a way that makes him look like a vaga-
bond. A noisy youth clusters in this box, talking
loud with the freedom of the Court of Queen
Pomar^; and the national language, rough and
hoarse, bounds in Biscayan missiles from one to
another, accompanied with familiarities of speech,
the privacies of which are heard throughout the
hall.
Singular thing ! on a day when all the good
places are so hard to obtain that princes of the
blood are lost in the amphitheatre, a small box,
Bossuet's box, stands empty. Every one is asking
who can be coming there, what great dignitary,
what sovereign passing through Paris is so late in
arriving that the session is now to begin without
him. The old clock strikes the hour: One. A
At the Academy, 22^*]
curt voice calls without : " Present, arms ! " and
during the automatic rattle of the handled muskets,
through the tall doors, both wide open, LETTERS,
Sciences, and Arts make their appearance.
What is most remarkable among these illustrious
beings, all alert and lively, preserved, as one might
say, by the principle, the will of tradition, is
that the older ones affect a juvenile bearing, a
frisky dash, whereas the younger ones endeavour
to appear more grave and solemn according as
they have fewer gray hairs upon their head. Their
general aspect lacks grandeur, owing perhaps to
our modern curtailment of locks and the black
cloth of the frock-coat. The wigs of Boileau and
of Racan (whose greyhound bitch ate up his
speech) must have had more authority, rising as
they did more worthily in keeping with the cupola.
In the matter of picturesqueness> however, two or
three frock-coats tinged with green installed them-
selves in the centre behind the table and the glass
of eau sucree ; and it was one of these who pro-
nounced the hallowed words : " The session is
opened." But in vain does he say so ; nobody
believes it; he does not believe it himself. He
knows very well that the true session is not for
the reception of this report on the Montyon prize,
which one of the most fluent of the Academy
proceeds to detail and modulate in fine rhythmic
accents.
Truly, a model of academic speech, written in
academic style, with " so-to-speaks " and " per-
hapses " that seem to make thought return upon
238 Kings in Exite,
its steps like a pious woman forgetting her sins
at confession ; a style adorned with arabesques,
paraphrases, fine flourishes of a masterly pen at
writing running among the sentences to mask and
fill out the void, — a style, in short, that ought to
be learned, for every one has to put it on with the
frock-coat webbed with green. Under all other
circumstances, the usual audience of this hall
would have been ecstatic over this homily; you
would have seen it pawing and neighing with
delight at the tortuous little phrases of which it
could guess the outcome. But to-day there is
haste to get through with such speeches ; the peo-
ple now assembled are not here for a literary fete.
It was worth seeing with what an air of contemp-
tuous ennui the aristocratic company listened to
the recital of humble devotions, fidelity under
all tests, obscure, jogging, bent-in-two existences,
as they passed before them in that finical superan-
nuated phraseology which resembled the narrow,
tireless, brick-paved passages of the provinces
where those lives evolved themselves. Plebeian
names, ragged cassocks, old blue smocks faded by
sun and water, scenes in distant villages, where for
an instant the pointed clock-tower and the walls of
hovels plastered with cow-dung are visible — all of
which seems abashed and ill at ease when evoked
in the midst of this fine company, beneath the cold
light of an inconsiderate Academy as in the show
window of a photographer. The noble society is
surprised that there are so many worthy persons
among the populace. . . What, more ! . . Still
At the Academy, 239
more? . . Will they never have done suffering,
devoting their lives, being heroic? . . So say the
clubs impatiently. Colette de Rosen smells her
salts; all these old people, these humble people
they are talking about, have, she thinks, *' the
poor smell." Ennui is on all foreheads, it oozes
from the stuccoes of the wall. The speaker begins
to understand that he is boring his audience, and
he hurries to an end.
Ah ! poor Marie Chalaye of Amberieux-les-
Combes, you whom the people of your region call
the Saint, who for fifty years have taken care of
your old paralytic aunt, and washed, put to bed,
and blown the noses of eighteen little cousins ;
and you, most worthy Abbe Bourrillon, minister
of Saint-Maximin-le-Haut, you who go in fiendish
weather to carry succour and consolation to the
cheese-makers on the mountain, you little think
that the Institute of France, after crowning your
deeds with public recompense, will be ashamed
of you, and that your names will be hurried over
and stuttered and scarcely distinct in the inatten
tive buzz of impatient or satirical conversations !
The end of the speech was a complete rout. As
if to run faster, the fugitive cast away haversack
and weapons ; deeds of heroism, angelic abnega-
tions are abandoned in a ditch without the least
remorse, for the speaker knows that the news-
papers of the next day will report his speech in
full, and not one of those pretty sentences, as
twisted as curlpapers, will be lost.
At last, the end. A few '' bravos " and com-
240 Kings in Exile,
forted " Ahs ! " The unfortunate speaker sits
down, mops himself, receives the congratulations
of two or three of his associates — last vestals of
the academic style. Then follows five minutes'
intermission, and a general rustling through the
hall, which stretches and readjusts itself.
Suddenly deep silence. Another green coat
rises.
It is the noble Fitz-Roy. Every one has per-
mission to admire, while he arranges his papers
on the cloth of the little table. Thin, bent, debili-
tated, narrow-shouldered, gesture cramped by
arms too long and all elbows, he is fifty years old,
but he looks seventy. On this worn-out, ill-built
body is a very small head with distorted features
of a boiled pallor, between scanty whiskers and a
few tufts of hair. Do you remember in ** Lucrezia
Borgia " that Montefeltro who drank the poison
of Pope Alexander, and whom we see passing
across the stage, plucked, broken, shivering,
ashamed of living? Well, the noble Fitz-Roy
might figure as that personage. Not that he ever
drank anything, poor man, Borgia poison or any-
thing else ; but he is the heir of a horribly ancient
family, which never crosses itself in its descen-
dants ; the scion of a plant that has so lost its sap
that there is no longer any use in misallying it.
Uncle Sauvadon thinks him divine. " Such a fine
name, monsieur ! . ." Women think him distin-
guished : a Fitz-Roy ! . .
It is this privilege of name, this long genealogy
(in which fools and knaves have never been lack-
At the Academy. 241
ing), that has won him his entrance to the Academy
far more than his *' Historical Studies," a mere com-
pilation, the first volume of which alone showed its
value. It is true that another man wrote it for
him ; and if the noble Fitz-Roy had perceived up
there, in Queen Frederica's box, the luminous and
solid head from which his best work issued, per-
haps he would not have gathered up in his hand
the sheets of his speech with that air of supreme
and disdainful surliness, or begun his lecture with a
haughty circular glance that surveyed all and saw
nothing. To begin with, he adroitly and airily
clears away the petty works the Academy had just
crowned ; and to mark how completely such affairs
are beneath him, he says little, and mutilates inten-
tionally the names and titles of the books. This
amuses the audience. . . He comes at last to the
" Roblot prize," given to the finest historical work
published during the five preceding years, " This
prize, gentlemen, as you know, has been awarded
to Prince Herbert de Rosen for his magnificent
* Memorial of the Siege of Ragusa. . .* " A formi-
dable roar of applause saluted these simple words,
uttered in a resounding voice with the gesture of a
sower. The noble Fitz-Roy allowed this burst of
enthusiasm to pass off; then, using an effect of
contrast, artless but sure, he resumed, gently, com-
posedly : '' Gentlemen ..." Then he stopped,
looked around upon that crowd which waited,
breathless, so wholly his that he held it as it were,
in his hand. He seemed to be saying, " Hein ! if I
said no more, how tricked you would be ! " And
16
242 Kings in Exile.
it is he, he, who is tricked, for when he makes
ready to continue, not a person listens to him.
A door has slammed above, in the box left
empty until now. A woman has entered ; she
takes her seat without embarrassment, but in so
doing forces herself instantly on the attention of
every one. The dark costume, cut by the great
maker, trimmed with embroidered peacock's-eyes,
the hat with a fall of gold-edged lace, set off deli-
ciously that supple figure and the oval face, white
and rosy, of an Esther sure of her Ahasuerus. The
name is muttered. All Paris knows her; for the
last three months nothing has been talked of but
her loves and her luxury. Her house in the
Avenue de Messine recalls the splendours of the
fine days of the second Empire. The newspapers
have given the details of this fashionable scandal,
the height of the stables, the cost of the pictures in
the dining-room, the number of equipages, the dis-
appearance of the husband, who, more virtuous than
another celebrated Menelaus, would not live on his
dishonour, but had gone to sulk in foreign parts, a
victim to the great century. Nothing was lacking
to these chronicles but the name of the purchaser,
which was left in blank. At the theatres the lady
was always alone in the front of her box, escorted
by a pair of pointed moustaches, barely visible in
the shadow. At the races, in the Bois, still alone,
the empty place beside her occupied by an
enormous bouquet; while on the panels of her
carriage around a mysterious blazon, was the
silly device, 7no7i droit, mon roy, with which her
At the Academy, 243
lover had endowed her together with the title of
countess. . .
On this occasion, the favourite was proclaimed.
To place her there, on such a day, in these seats of
honour reserved for Majesties, giving her for escort
Wattelet, Christian's henchman, and the Prince
d'Axel, always ready when a compromising folly
was to be committed, meant acknowledging her be-
fore the eyes of all and stamping her with the arms
of lUyria. And yet her presence excited no out-
raged feeling. All sorts of immunities are granted
to kings ; their pleasures are as sacred as their per-
sons; especially in the aristocratic world of Old
France, where the tradition of Louis XIV.'s and
Louis XV.'s mistresses, driving in the Queen's car-
riage and supplanting her in the great hunts, is still
preserved. A few little sham prudes like Colette
de Rosen took virtuous airs and wondered that the
Institute should admit such creatures ; but you
may be sure that each of these ladies had a pretty
little ouistiti at home that was dying of consump-
tion. In point of fact, the impression made was
excellent. The clubs said : '* Very chic." The
journalists : " That *s pluck ! . ." They all smiled
benevolently ; and the immortals themselves turned
their opera-glasses complacently on the fascinating
young woman, who sat unaffectedly at the edge of
her box, merely showing in her velvet eyes that
resolute fixity assumed by women when besieged
by the attention of opera-glasses.
People turned with curiosity toward the Queen
of Illyria to see how she took the thing. Oh !
244 Kings in Exile,
extremely well. Not a feature of her face, not a
feather in her bonnet quivered. Never mingling
in current amusements, Frederica did not, of course,
know this woman ; she had never seen her, and
merely looked at her, at first, as one toilet looks
at another. "Who is she?" she asked of the
Queen of Palermo, who hastened to answer : " I
don't know. . ." But in the next box a name
loudly uttered and repeated struck her to the
heart : " Spalato . . . Comtesse de Spalato."
For some months, that nam.e of Spalato had
haunted her Hke an evil dream. She knew it was
borne by the new mistress of her husband, who
remembered he was king only to decorate with one
of the noblest titles of his absent country the
creature of his pleasure. That thought had ren-
dered this infidelity more bitter to her than others.
But this present act overflowed the cup. There,
in her presence and that of the royal heir, that
woman installed in the rank of a queen — what out-
rage ! Almost without being conscious of it, the
grave and intelligent beauty of the woman made
Frederica feel the gross insult more keenly.
Defiance was clear in those fine eyes, the brow was
insolent in its composure, the brilliancy of those
lips braved her. . . A thousand thoughts jostled
in her brain . . . their great poverty . . . her daily
humiliations . . . yesterday that carriage-builder
who shouted beneath her windows, and whom
Rosen had paid — for she had had to come to
that. . . Where did Christian get the money that
he gave to this woman ? . . Ever since the affair of
At the Academy, 245
the false jewels she knew of what he was capable ;
and something told her that this Spalato would
lead to the dishonour of the king, and of his race.
For an instant, a second, through that intense
nature there passed the temptation to rise, to leave
the hall, leading her child by the hand, to escape
openly from a neighbourhood so infamous, a
rivalry so degrading. But she remembered she
was queen, wife and daughter of kings, that Zara
would be a king also ; and she would not give their
enemies the joy of such a scandal. A dignity,
higher than her dignity of womanhood, a dignity
which she had made the proud, despairing rule of
her life, maintained her in her rank here in public
as in the secrecy of her desolated home. O cruel
fate of queens who are so envied ! The effort that
she made was so violent that the tears started to
her eyes as the still water of a pond leaps under
the blow of an oar. Quickly, that no one may
see them, she seizes her opera-glass and looks
obstinately, fixedly, beyond the misty mirrors to
that gilded and reposeful inscription : Letters,
Sciences, Arts, iridescent through her tears
above the head of the orator.
The noble Fitz-Roy is continuing his speech.
It is in a style as gray as a prison coat that
pompous eulogy of the " Memorial," of the elo-
quent and forceful historical volume written by
Prince Herbert de Rosen "' who wields a pen as he
does a sword." It is a eulogy above all of the
hero who inspired that Memorial, ** that chivalrous
Christian II. in whom were centred all the grace,
246 Kings in Exile,
nobility, strength, seduction, and fine temper
which we are ever certain to find on the steps of
a throne." [Applause, and little cries of ecstasy.]
Evidently a good audience, sensible, alert, seizing
all illusions on the fly, even the most feeling, and
comprehending them. . . Sometimes, in the midst
of those mealy sentences, a note would ring true
and convincing, a passage quoted from the " Me-
morial," for which the queen had furnished all
the documents, substituting everywhere the king's
name for hers, annihilating herself to the profit
of Christian II. . . O God of justice ! this was his
return ! . . The crowd cheered loudly at those
quoted words of haughty, careless courage, of acts
heroic, simply performed, — told by the writer in
graphic prose, in which they stood revealed like
epic tales of ancient times ; and, i' faith ! before
the enthusiastic greeting given to these quotations,
the noble Fitz-Roy, who is no fool, renounced his
own literature, and contented himself with reading
aloud the finest pages of the book.
In that narrow classic building 't was like a
lifting, vivifying wing ; the very walls seemed to
widen, and through the rising cupola a fresh breeze
entered from an outer world. People drew breath ;
fans no longer beat a rhythmic time to indifferent
attention. No, the whole audience are standing,
all heads turned to Frederica's box ; they acclaim,
they salute the vanquished but glorious monarchy
in the wife and son of Christian II., the last king,
the last knight. And little Zara, whom the noise,
the bravos intoxicated, as they do all children,
At the Academy, 247
applauded na'fvely with his litde gloved hands,
tossing his golden curls, while the queen, retreat-
ing slightly backward, affected herself by this con-
tagious enthusiasm, tasted, for a minute, the joy,
the illusion that it gave her. Thus it was that she
could still surround with a halo that puppet of a
king behind whom she effaced herself, and enrich
with a fresh glory the lUyrian crown that her son
would one day wear, a glory that no one could
ever traffic with. When that day came, what of
exile, treachery, poverty? and even now these
dazzling moments drown all present shadow. . .
Suddenly she turned, thinking to pay the homage
of her joy to him who, there, behind her, his head
against the wall, his eyes lost in the cupola,
listened to those magic phrases in pure forget-
fulness that they came from him ; assisting at this
triumph without regret, without bitterness, without
for one instant saying to himself that all this fame
was stolen from him. Like the monks of the mid-
dle ages growing old anonymously in the building
of cathedrals, the weaver's son was content to have
done the work, to see it rise, soHd, in the sun-
shine. And for that abnegation, that aloofness of
his seer's smile, for that which she felt in him was
like unto herself, the queen stretched out her hand
to him with a soft *' Thank you . . . thank you. . ."
Rosen, who stood nearest to her, thought she was
congratulating him on the success of his son. He
caught the grateful gesture as it passed him and
rubbed his rough moustache on her glove ; and
the two victims, happy in the triumph, were re-
248 Kings in Exile,
duced to exchange at a distance in a look the
unuttered thoughts that unite two souls in bonds
mysterious and durable.
Tis over. The session ends. The noble Fitz-
Roy, applauded, compHmented, disappears, as if
through a trap-door ; the LETTERS, SCIENCES, and
Arts follow him, leaving the platform empty. By
all the issues the crowd makes haste to spread
about, as at the close of an assembly or the opera,
those rumours which, on the following day are to
form the opinion of all Paris. Among the worthy
people thus departing, some, pursuing their retro-
grade dreaming, might well expect to find their
sedan chairs waiting before the doors of the Insti-
tute. It was rain that awaited them, streaming
down on the hurly-burly of omnibuses and the
carnival-like butting of street cars. The privi-
leged alone, in their well-appointed carriages were
able to still nurse their fond royalistic illusions.
Under the great colonnaded portico, while a
crier called up the royal equipages through the
wet and shining courtyard, 't was a pleasure to
hear the animated cackle of that aristocratic
world while awaiting the issue of the Majesties:
What a session ! . . What a success ! . . Could
the Republic ever recover from it? . . The Prin-
cesse de Rosen is surrounded : *' You must be
very happy ! " — " Oh, yes ! very happy." And
the pretty creature ambled and bowed to right
and left like a trained filly in a circus. Uncle
Sauvadon did his best beside her though still
embarrassed by his white cravat and his butler's
At the Academy, 249
shirt-front, which he strove to conceal behind his
hat, but very proud all the same of his nephew's
success. Certainly no one knew better than he
what was the true texture of that success, and that
Prince Herbert had not written a single line of the
crowned work; but at that moment he never so
much as thought of this. Nor Colette either, I
do assure you. True Sauvadon in vanity, ap-
pearances sufficed her ; and when she saw, prick-
ing forward through the group of gommeux who
were congratulating her, the waxed points of her
Herbert's enormous moustache coming to meet
her, it was all she could do not to throw herself
upon his breast before the assembled company, so
convinced was she that he had managed the siege
of Ragusa, and written the Memorial, and that his
splendid moustache did not conceal the jaws of a
gaby. If the kind, good fellow was delighted and
overcome by the ovation made to him and the
glances flung in his direction (the noble Fitz-Roy
had said to him, solemnly : " Whenever you wish
it, prince, you can be one of us"), nothing was to
him more precious than this unexpected greeting
of his Colette, the almost loverlike manner in
which she hung upon his arm, — a thing that had
not happened to him since the day of their mar-
riage, when they walked down the nave to the
grand roll of the organ in the choir of Saint-
Thomas d'Aquin.
But see, the crowd makes way ; respectfully, the
hats come off. The guests in the boxes are com-
ing down ; all those fallen Majesties, who are now
250 Kings in Exile,
to return into darkness after this brief resurrection.
A regular defile of royal shadows, the old blind
man leaning on his daughter, the Galician queen
with her handsome nephew, a rustling of stiff stuffs
as at the passage of a Peruvian Madonna. Lastly,
the Queen of Illyria, her cousin, and her son. The
royal landau is driven to the portico ; she enters
it, amid an admiring but restrained murmur, beau-
tiful, her brow lofty, radiant. The queen of the
left hand and secret stairways has already departed
with d'Axel and Wattelet, so that nothing mars the
full glory of this exit. . .
Nothing further was now to be seen, or said.
The tall footmen rushed forward with their um-
brellas. For an hour it was nothing but pawing,
stamping, the rolling of wheels, the slamming of
carriage doors, mingled with dripping water, and
names shouted and repeated by the stony echoes
which haunt old buildings and are seldom disturbed
in the ancient Institute of France.
That evening, the coquettish allegories of Bou-
cher painted on the panels of Herbert de Rosen's
bed-chamber were roused from their languid atti-
tudes and rather faded colours by the warbling of
a little voice : *' It is I ... it is Colette." It was
indeed Colette, wrapped in a mantle of floating
mechlin, who had come to say good-night to her
hero, her knight, her man of genius.
At almost the same moment Elys6e was walking
alone in the garden at Saint-Mande beneath the rain-
washed verdure, lighted now by a clear heaven, one
At the Academy, 251
of those June heavens In which the ediptic hght of
a long day hngers, defining very sharply the leafy
shadows on the wan circle of the roadway, and
making the house, with all its blinds fast-closed,
look white and dead. On the upper story alone
the king's light was still burning. No sound but
the trickling of water In the fountains and the faint
trill of a nightingale, to which its mate responded.
Floating in the atmosphere were the penetrating
effluences of magnolias, roses, and southern-wood
set free by the rain. The fever that for two
months, ever since the fair at Vincennes, had never
left Elysee's bosom, which burned his hands and
brow, instead of growing calmer in this harmony
of scents and sounds, was beating, vibrating the
more, and sending its waves to his heart.
'* Ah ! old fool ! . . old madman ! . . " said a voice
quite close to him under the trees. He stopped,
confounded. It was so true, so just, so exactly what
he had been saying to himself for the last hour.
" Madman, miserable maniac. . . You ought to
be burned — you and your herbal."
" Is that you, monsieur le conseiller? "
** Don't call me councillor. . . I am no longer
one. . . Nothing, nothing . . . neither honour, nor
intelligence. . . Ah ! porco. . . "
And Boscovich, sobbing with a passion that was
truly Italian, shook his ridiculous head which shone
fantastically in the light that fell between the
branches of the lindens. The poor man had been
for some time past a little off the track. Some-
times very gay and gabbling, he bored them with
252 Kings in Exile,
his herbal, the famous Leybach herbarium, posses-
sion of which he expected very soon to recover;
then suddenly, in the midst of a delirium of words,
he would interrupt himself, give a sort of sidelong,
underhand look, and not a word more could be
got out of him. This time Elysee thought he had
gone absolutely crazy, especially when, after this
childish explosion, he bounded forward and seized
him by the arm, shouting as one who cries for
help : —
" Impossible, Meraut ! . . We must prevent it."
*' Prevent what?" said the other, endeavouring
to loosen his arm from that nervous grip.
Boscovich, in a low voice, breathless, answered :
" The act of renunciation is ready . . . drawn by
me. . . His Majesty is now signing it. . . I never
ought to have. . . Ma che I . . ma che ! . . He is
the king. . . And then my herbal, my Leybach
herbal he promised to recover for me. . . Such
magnificent specimens ! . . "
The maniac was off upon his topic, but filysee
did not listen to him ; he was stunned by the ter-
rible blow. His first, his only thought was for the
queen. This, then, was the reward of her devo-
tion, her abnegation, the end of this day of sacri-
fice ! . . What nothingness was that glory wreathed
about a head that did not like a crown of any
kind ! . . In the suddenly darkened garden he saw
nothing but that one light up there, lighting the
commission of a crime. What must be done?
How prevent it? . . The queen, she alone. . . But
how could he reach her? ....
At the Academy, 253
The maid on duty, Mme. de Silvis dreaming of
fairies, the queen herself, every one believed that
the sleeping house was on fire when !£lys^e de-
manded to see her Majesty at once. A cackle of
fluttered women was heard through the rooms like
a dovecote awakened too early. At last Frederica
appeared in the little salon where the tutor awaited
her, wrapped in a long blue peignoir which moulded
finely her arms and shoulders. Never had Elys^e
felt so near to the woman herself.
"What is it?" she asked very low, very quickly,
with that flicker of the eyelids which expects and
sees the coming blow. At the first word she
bounded.
" It cannot be. . . It shall not be, I living ! . . "
The violence of her movement loosened the
phosphorescent masses of her hair, and she caught
them up by a turn of her arm with a free and
tragic gesture that threw her sleeve back to the
elbow.
'* Waken his Highness," she said in a low voice
into the curtained darkness of her son's room ; then,
without adding a word, she went up to the king.
254 Kings in Exile,
X.
FAMILY SCENE.
All the magic of that June night was enter-
ing through the wide-opened window portal of the
large upper hall, where a single lighted candela-
brum left enough of mystery for the moonlight to
lie upon the walls in a milky way, and glitter on the
polished bar of a trapeze, on the bow, shaped like
an arch, of a guzla hanging to the wall, and on the
glass doors of a rather scantily furnished book-case,
which the brown-paper cahiers of the herbalist had
filled with the sickly and fetid odour of a cemetery
of dried plants. On the table, lying upon a pile
of dusty papers, was a crucifix of tarnished silver ;
for though Christian II. did not write much in this
sanctum, he remembered his Catholic education
and surrounded himself with pious objects ; and
sometimes, when " making fete " with courtesans,
the trumpets of pleasure blowing breathlessly
around him, he would finger in his pocket, with
a moist, half-drunken hand the coral rosary he was
never without. Beside the Christ lay a large and
heavy sheet of parchment, closely written over in
a rather trembling hand. This was the act of re-
nunciation of the kingdom, properly drawn up.
Nothing was lacking to it but the signature, 3
Family Scene. 255
stroke of a pen, a violent effort of will ; and that
was why the feeble Christian still delayed, his
elbows on the table, motionless beneath the light
of the wax candles waiting to melt the wax for the
royal seal.
Near him, uneasy, ferreting, softly silent as a
hawk-moth or the swifts in a ruin, Lebeau, his
confidential valet, watched him, spurred him
mutely, having brought him at last to the de-
cisive moment which the band had been awaiting
for months, with ups and downs and beating hearts
and all the uncertainties of a game that had to
depend on that rag of a king. Notwithstanding
the magnetism of this oppressing desire, Christian,
with the pen in his fingers, did not sign. Plunged,
almost sunken in his arm-chair, he gazed at the
parchment and dreamed. It was not that he clung
to the crown he had never desired or loved, which,
even as a child, he found too heavy, feeling later
its irritating bonds, its crushing responsibilities.
To be rid of it, to put it in the corner of a salon
he would never enter, to forget it as much as he
could — that much was done already ; but this
determination, this extreme decision to make, was
what frightened him. In no other way, however,
could he procure the money that was indispen-
sable to his new existence ; three millions in notes
signed by him were in circulation and about to fall
due, which the usurer, a certain Pichery, refused
to renew. Could he allow everything to be seized
at Saint-Mande? The queen, the royal child, what
would become of them ? Scene for scene — for he
256 Kings in Exile,
foresaw the fearful echoes of his baseness — was it
not better to have it over at once, to face at one
stroke both anger and recriminations? And then
— and then, all that, even, was not the determin-
ing reason.
He had promised the countess to sign the re-
nunciation ; and in view of that promise, Sephora
had consented to let her husband go alone to
London, and to accept the mansion in the Avenue
de Messine and the name and title which pro-
claimed her as belonging to Christian, reserving
other compliances until the day when the king
should bring her the act itself, signed by his hand.
For this she gave the reasons of a loving woman :
perhaps he would, later, return to Illyria, abandon
her for throne and power ; she would not be the
first whom those terrible reasons of State had
driven to despair and weeping. D'Axel and
Wattelet and all the young gommeux of the
Grand-Club little knew that when the king,
leaving the Avenue de Messine, joined them at
the club, his eyes worn-out and feverish, that he
had spent his evening on a sofa alternately re-
pulsed and attracted, strung and vibrating like
a bow, rolling at the feet of an implacable will,
a supple resistance, which left in his passionate
clasp the ice of two little Parisian hands, clever at
freeing and defending themselves, and on his Hps
the burn of a delirious promise : " Oh ! when you
are no longer a king, all — all ! " She made him
pass through the intermittences, dangerous in-
deed, from passion to coldness. Sometimes, at
Family Scene. 257
the theatre, after a frigid greeting, a stately smile,
she had a certain slow way of taking off her glove
as she looked at him and giving her bare hand an
offering to his kisses
" So you say, Lebeau, that Pichery will do
nothing?"
*' Nothing, sire. . . If the notes are not paid he
will put them at once into the sheriff's hands."
It was needful to have heard the despairing
whine which emphasized that word " sheriff" in
order to understand the dangerous formalities that
Christian was dragging after him : stamped paper ;
execution ; the royal mansion invaded ; the home
turned out of doors. But Christian saw nothing of
all that. He saw himself arriving in the Avenue
de Messine, anxious, trembling, going up that
mysteriously draped staircase stealthily, entering
that room where the lamp shone dim beneath its
laces : " 'T is done, 't is done ! I am a king no
longer. . . To me, all . . . all ! "
" Come ! " he said with a start, as the vision
fled before him. And he signed the deed.
The door opened. The queen entered. Her
presence in Christian's apartment at this hour was
so novel, so unexpected, they had so long lived
apart from each other, that neither the king who
was signing his infamy, nor Lebeau who was
watching him, turned at the sound. They thought
it was Boscovich coming back from the garden.
Gliding and light as a shadow she was almost
beside the table and the two accomplices before
Lebeau saw her. By a finger on her lips she
17
258 Kings in Exile,
ordered him to be silent as she still advanced,
meaning to seize the king in the act of treachery,
and so avoid subterfuges and useless deceptions.
But the valet defied her order and gave the alarm :
" Sire, the queen ! . . " Furious, the Dalmatian
struck out before her, with her firm, horsewoman's
hand, directly on the mouth of the evil-minded
wretch ; then, standing erect, she waited till the
valet had disappeared before she addressed the
king.
" What has happened to you, my dear Fre-
derica? Why have you come to me? "
He was standing now, half leaning on the table,
which he tried to conceal, in a supple attitude that
showed to advantage his foulard jacket embroidered
in rose, and speaking with pale lips but a calm
voice and that grace of politeness which he never
omitted towards his wife, putting between them a
certain something like the flowery and complicated
arabesques on the hard, polished lacquer of a
casket. With a word, a gesture, she brushed away
that barrier, behind which he was trying to shelter
himself.
" Oh ! no speeches ... no pretences ... I know
what you are writing there ! . . do not try to de-
ceive me. . ."
Then coming nearer, and dominating with her
proud form that cringing figure, —
*' Listen, Christian ..." she said, and in her
tone there was something grave and solemn.
*' Listen . . . you have made me suffer much since
I have been your wife. . . I have said nothing
Family Scene. 259
but once, that first time, you remember? . . After
that, when I saw that you loved me no longer, I
allowed you to do as you pleased; but I was
Ignorant of nothing, nothing . . . not one of your
infidelities, your mad follies. For surely you are
mad . . . mad as your father, who exhausted him-
self with his love for Lola; mad as your grand-
father John, who died in a shameful delirium,
foaming, and with his very death-rattle uttering
words that turned the nursing Sisters white. Yes !
it is the same mad blood, the same hellish lava that
consumes you. At Ragusa, the nights of the
sorties, they had to fetch you from Fedora's. . . I
knew that; I knew she had left her theatre to
follow you. . . I have never reproached you.
The honour of the name was safe with me. . .
And when the king was missing on the ramparts, I
took good care that his place was not empty. . .
But in Paris ... in Paris ..."
Up to this point she had spoken slowly, coldly,
keeping to the end of each sentence an intonation
of pity, of maternal reproach which accorded well
with the dropped eyes of the king and his sulky
look, as of a naughty child who was being lectured.
But the name of Paris put her beside herself City
without faith, accursed and scoffing city, bloody
pavements, torn up perpetually for riots and barri-
cades ! What madness possessed them all, those
poor exiled kings, to take refuge in that Gomorrah?
It is Paris, Paris, with its foul air reeking with
vice and gunpowder, which has finished the ruin of
the great races ; Paris which has torn from Chris-
26o Kings in Exile.
tian what the maddest of his ancestors had kept in
safety, respect, and pride for the blazon. Oh ! from
that first day of arrival, from that first night of
exile, seeing him so gay, so excited while those
about him wept in secret, Frederica had foreseen
the humiliations, the shame, that she would have
to endure. . . And now, in one breath, without a
pause, with stinging words that marbled with red
the pallid face of that royal libertine, lashing it as
with a whip, she recalled to him all his deeds,
his rapid gliding from pleasure to vice, and from
vice to crime.
**You betrayed me before my eyes, in my
household . . . adultery at my table, touching my
very gown. . . And when you had had enough of
that curled doll, who did not even hide her tears
before me, you went to the gutter, to the mud of
the streets, shamelessly wallowing there in idleness,
bringing back to us your morrows of orgy, your
sated remorse, the filth of that mire. . . Remem-
ber how I saw you, stumbling, stammering, that
morning when for the second time you lost your
throne. . . What have you not done ? oh ! Holy
Mother of angels ! . . what have you not done ? . .
you have trafficked with the royal Seal, you have
sold your crosses, your titles ..."
Then, in a lowered voice as if she dreaded lest
the silence and the darkness should overhear her :
** And you stole . . . you stole ! . . Those dia-
monds, those stones ... it was you. . . And I let
my old Greb be suspected and sent away. . . I was
forced to it . . . the theft was known, a false crimi-
Family Scene. 261
nal was found lest the true one be suspected. . .
For that has been my sole and constant thought —
to maintain the king erect, intact, to accept all, all,
for that one purpose, even the shame which to the
eyes of the world soils me myself. I gave to
my own soul a word of command which spurred
me, which upheld me in hours of trial : For the
Crown I . . And now you wish to sell it, that
crown which has cost me such tears, such agony;
you mean to barter it for gold to lavish on that
foul Jewish image, whom you had the indecency to
put before me to-day, face to face. . ."
He had listened without a word, cowed, his
head drawn in. The insult to the woman he loved
roused him. Looking fixedly at the queen, with
her stinging blows still cutting his face, he said,
politely as ever, but very firmly : —
"You are mistaken. . . The woman of whom
you speak has nothing to do with the resolution
I have taken. . . What I do is done for you, for
me, for the peace of all. . . Come, are you not
yourself weary of this life of expedients, of priva-
tions? . . Do you think I am ignorant of what is
going on here, that I do not suffer at seeing that
pack of tradesmen and creditors at your heels? . .
The other day when that man was shouting in the
courtyard, I drove in, and heard him ... if it had
not been for Rosen, I 'd have crushed him under
the wheels of my phaeton. And you, you were
watching for his departure behind the curtain of
your chamber. A pretty business for a queen ! . .
We owe everybody. There is but one cry against
262 Kings in Exile,
us. Half your servants are unpaid. . . That tutor,
it is ten months since he has had a penny. . .
Mme. de Silvis pays herself by wearing majesti-
cally your old gowns ; and there are days when
M. le conseiller, Keeper of the Seals of the Crown,
borrows from my valet the money to buy his
snuff. . . You see I know what is going on. . .
But you do not know my debts. I am riddled
with them. . . Everything will blow up soon.
That will be a pretty sight ! You will see it sold,
that crown of yours, with the old silver forks and
spoons and knives, under a doorway. . ."
Little by little, carried away by his satirical
nature and the scoffing habits of his set, he aban-
doned the reserved tone of his first words, and in
his insolent, nasal little voice he rattled off sar-
casms, some of which must have come from
Sephora, who never lost a chance to demolish
with mockery her lover's last scruples.
** You accuse me of talking for effect, my dear,
but it is you who bewilder yourself with words.
What, after all, is that crown of Illyria that you
are always talking to me about? It is worth
nothing unless it is on the head of a king ; other-
wise it is a cumbersome, useless article, which is
hidden in a bandbox when one has to run away,
and kept under a glass globe Hke the laurels
of an actor or the orange-flowers of a porter's
bride. . . You ought to be convinced of this, Fre-
derica. A king is not a king unless he is on the
throne, power in hand ; fallen, he is less than
nothing — a rag. . . It is nonsense to keep to
Family Scene. 263
etiquette, and titles, and put Majesty everywhere,
on the panels of the carriages, on our sleeve-
buttons ; hampering ourselves with a worn-out
ceremonial. It is all hypocrisy on our part,
and politeness and pity in those who surround us,
both friends and servants. Here, in this house,
I am Christian II. to you and Rosen and two
or three faithful. The moment I am out of it
I become a man like the rest. Mr. Christian
Second. . . Not even a surname . . . just a given
name, Christian, like any strolling player at the
Gaiete. . ."
He stopped, out of breath ; it is doubtful if he
had ever spoken so long standing up. . . Sharp
notes of the fern-owl, hasty trills of the night-
ingale pricked through the silence of the night.
A great moth, which had shortened its wings
in the candles, was knocking itself everywhere.
Nothing was heard within the room but that
fluttering distress and the smothered sobs of
the queen, who knew well how to hold her own
against anger and violence, but whom sarcasm,
taking her sincere nature falsely, deprived of
weapons ; just as a valiant soldier expecting
honest blows is helpless under pin-pricks. See-
ing her so feeble. Christian thought she was van-
quished, and to complete the work he put a last
touch to his burlesque picture of monarchs in
exile. What a pitiful figure they cut, those poor
princes in partibuSy figurantes of royalty, draped
in its frippery, and continuing to declaim before
264 Kings in Exile.
empty benches, and not a penny of receipts !
Was n't it far better to be silent and come down
to common life and obscurity? Those who had
money might keep it up ; 'twas a luxury like any
other, this passion for grandeurs. . . But as for
others, their poor cousins of Palermo, for instance,
piled into a house too small for them with their
cursed Italian cooking ! always smelling of onions
whenever you went there. . . Worthy, oh yes ! but
what an existence ! And they were not the most
wretched either. . . The other day a Bourbon, a
real Bourbon, ran after an omnibus. . . " Full,
monsieur." But still he ran. " Don't I tell you it
is full, old fellow ? " And he was very angry, be-
cause they did not call him Monseigneur ! As if
it was visible on his cravat ! . . " Operetta kings,
I tell you, my dear. And it is to get out of
this ridiculous situation, and to put ourselves in
safety under the shelter of an assured and
dignified position that I have decided to sign
this act. . . And remark," he added, suddenly
revealing the tortuous Slav brought up by Jesuits,
" that it is only an expedient, this signature. . .
They simply return us our property, and I do
not consider myself in any way bound. . . Who
knows? These millions may enable us to recover
the throne."
The queen raised her head impetuously, held
him by the eye for a minute till his own blinked,
and said, shrugging her shoulders : —
"Do not make yourself more vile than you
Family Scene, 265
are. . . You know well that once signed. . . But
no ! The truth is that strength is lacking to you.
You desert your post of king at the perilous
moment, when the new social order, which wants
neither God nor master, pursues with hatred the
representatives of divine right, making heaven
tremble above their heads and the soil beneath
their feet. Knife, bombs, balls, all are good . . .
for treachery, for murder. . . In the great pro-
cessions or at fetes not one of us but trembles
when a man advances from the crowd. . . Every
petition hides a dagger. . . Leaving our palaces,
which of us can be sure of returning to them? . .
And this is the moment that you choose, you, to
leave the battle ! . ."
** Ah ! if it were fighting ! " cried Christian II.,
hastily. . . " But to struggle as we do against
ridicule, poverty, all the ordures of life, and
to feel we get deeper and deeper into them
daily. . ."
A flame of hope flashed in her eyes.
*' Truly? Would you fight? . . Then, listen. . .**
Breathless, she unfolded to him in a few brief
words an expedition which Elysee and herself had
been preparing for three months ; sending letters
upon letters, speeches, despatches, Pere Alphee
forever on the road among the villages and
mountains ; for this time it was not to the nobility
they addressed themselves, but to the people, the
muleteers, the porters of Ragusa, the market-
gardeners of the Breno and the Brazza, the men of
266 Kings in Exile,
the Isles, who came to the markets in their feluc-
cas, the primitive and traditional nation, ready to
rise, to die for their king, but on condition that
they should see him at their head. . . The com-
panies were formed, the word of command already
circulating, the signal alone was awaited. And the
queen, rushing her words in a vigorous charge
on the feeble Christian, felt a cruel shock as she
beheld him shake his head with more indifference
than discouragement. Perhaps in his heart he felt
provoked that all this had been planned without
him. But he did not believe the project feasible.
They could never advance inland ; they must
hold the Isles and devastate a noble country with
little or no chance of succeeding ; 't would be the
Duke of Palma over again ; an effusion of useless
blood.
" No, don't you see, my dear, that the fanat-
icism of your chaplain and the enthusiasm of
that Gascon are misleading you? . . I have my
reports just as you have yours. . . The truth
is that in Dalmatia, as elsewhere, monarchy
has had its day. . . They have had enough
of it down there. . . They don't want any
more. . ."
" Ah ! I know, I know the coward who wants
no more . . ." said the queen.
Then she left the room hastily, leaving Christian
much astonished that the scene had ended so
rapidly. He crumpled up the deed, put it
hastily into his pocket, and was preparing to go
Family Scene, 267
out, when Frederica returned, accompanied this
time by the little prince.
Caught up from his sleep, and dressed in haste,
Zara — who had passed from the hands of the
maid to those of his mother without a word being
uttered — opened his great eyes beneath his
auburn locks, but asked no questions, remembering
confusedly in his little head, still humming with
sleep, certain other wakings for hasty flight amid
pallid faces and panting exclamations. It was
then that he had taken a habit of giving himself
up, of letting himself be led, provided his mother
called him in her grave and resolute voice and he
could feel the tender folding of her arm about
him, and her shoulder all ready for his infant weari-
ness. She had said to him : " Come ! " and he
came with confidence, surprised by the calmness
of this night's waking compared with the tumult of
others, when flames and the noises of musketry
and cannon surrounded him.
He saw the king standing up ; not the kind and
careless father who sometimes surprised him in
bed or crossed his schoolroom with a smile of
encouragement, but a man annoyed and angry,
whose face grew harder at their entrance.
Frederica, without a word, led the child to
Christian's feet and kneeling down herself with an
abrupt motion she placed him standing before her
and joined his little fingers within her own clasped
hands.
"The king will not listen to me," she said;
268 Kings in Exile,
*' perhaps he may listen to you, my Zara. . . Say
with me : ' My father . . . ' "
The timid voice repeated : " My father. . ."
"■ My father, my king, I conjure you ... do not
despoil your child; do not take from him the
crown he ought to wear some day. . . Remember
that it is not yours only; it comes from afar;
it comes from God, who gave it, six hundred
years ago, to the House of Illyria. . . God
wills that I be king, my father. . . It is my
heritage, mine own ; you have no right to take it
from me."
The little prince followed his mother's words,
with the fervent murmur, the imploring eyes of
prayer; but Christian turned away his head;
shrugging his shoulders and furious, though
always polite, he muttered a few words between
his teeth. . . " Excitement . . . improper scene . . .
turn the child's head." Then he freed himself and
moved to the door. With a bound the queen was
on her feet ; she looked at the table now empty
of the parchment, and, comprehending that the
infamous act was signed and that he held it, she
uttered what was truly a roar !
" Christian ! . ."
He continued his way.
She made one step and the gesture of gathering
her gown to pursue him; then she said, suddenly:
''So be it!"
He stopped, and saw her, erect before the open
window, her foot upon the narrow stone cop-
Family Scene, 269
ing, with one arm bearing her son to death, with
the other threatening the escaping coward. The
glimmer of the sky lighted this strange group from
without.
" To the operetta king, a tragic queen ! " she
said, grave and terrible. ** If you do not instantly
burn that which you have just signed, with an oath
upon that cross that you will not sign again . . .
your race is ended, crushed . . . wife . . . child . . .
there, upon those stones. . ."
And in her words, in her beautiful body leaning
to the void, there was such impulse to the spring
that the king, terrified, rushed forward to grasp
her.
" Frederica ! . . "
At his father's cry, at the quivering of the arm
that bore him, the child — now entirely outside the
window — believed that all was over and that death
had come. He said not a word, not a plaint, for
was he not going with his mother? But his little
hands clung to the queen's neck tightly, and throw-
ing back his head from which those victim locks
streamed down, he closed his sweet eyes to the
horror of the fall.
Christian resisted no longer . . . that courage,
that resignation of the child-king, who already
knew this much of his royal business — how to die
well ! . . The king's heart burst in his bosom.
He flung upon the table the crumpled deed he
had been twisting in his fingers for the last few
minutes, and fell, sobbing, into a chair. Frederica,
270 Kings in Exile.
still distrustful, read through the paper from the
first line to the signature; then, putting it to a
candle, she burned it to her fingers' ends and
scattered the black fragments on the table.
That done, she carried away her child, who was
beginning to drop asleep in his heroic attitude
of suicide.
The Watchers. ^ji
XL
THE WATCHERS.
It was the end of an amicable meal in the
parlour of the second-hand establishment in the
Rue figinhard. Old Leemans when he is alone
munches his crust at the kitchen table, opposite to
the Darnet, without cloth or napkin ; but when he
has company the careful housekeeper takes off,
grumbling, the white covers to the furniture, hides
away the little mats before the chairs, and sets the
table before the portrait of " monsieur," in the
neat and peaceful salon, worthy of a priest, which
is for several hours delivered over to smells of fry
and garlic, and to discussions, highly seasoned
also, in the argot of low money-dealing.
Ever since the " Grand Stroke " had been pre-
paring, these dinners were frequent. It is well for
all such affairs with mixed accounts to meet often
and concert together ; and nowhere could this be
done so safely as in the depths of the little Rue
Eginhard, lost in the past of ancient Paris. There,
at any rate, they could talk aloud, discuss, and
plot. . . And now the end was near. In a few
days, what am I saying? in a few hours the renun-
272 Kin^s in Exile,
ciation would be signed and the '* affair " which
had already swallowed up so much money would
begin to be profitable. The certainty of success
illumined the eyes and voices of the guests with a
sort of gilded gayety, made the table linen whiter,
the wine better. It was a true wedding-feast, pre-
sided over by old Leemans and Pichery, his in-
separable, — a wooden head, stiff and pomatumed
Hungarian fashion, above a stiff stock ; something
military but not frank, the aspect of a cashiered
officer. Present profession : usurer in pictures, a
new and complicated trade well versed in our pres-
ent art manias and adapted to them. When the
son of a family is high and dry, shorn and raked,
he goes to Pichery, picture-dealer, sumptuously
installed in the Rue Lafitte.
*' Have you a Corot, a treasure of a Corot? . . I
am so in love with that painter."
" Ah ! Corot ! . . " says Pichery, closing his dead
fish-eyes with beatific admiration ; then, changing
his tone: "Yes, I have just what you want . . ."
and then, on a great easel, rolled in front of them,
he shows a pretty Corot, a morning scene all
quivering with silvery mists and nymphs dancing
beneath the willows. The spendthrift dandy puts
up his monocle and pretends to admire it.
" Chic ! . . very chic ! . . How much? "
*' Fifty thousand francs," says Pichery without
blinking. The other does not blink either.
** Three months ? . . "
" Three months, with security."
The dandy gives his note and carries away the
The Watchers, 273
picture to his own house or his mistress's, and for a
whole day he allows himself the joy of saying at
the club and on the boulevard : " I have just bought
a stunning Corot." The next day he sends his
Corot to the auction rooms where Pichery de-
spatches old Leemans to buy it back for ten or
twelve thousand francs, its proper price. This is
usury at exorbitant interest, but legal, without
risk. Pichery himself is not expected to know
whether or not the amateur buys in good faith.
He sells his Corot very dear, cuir et polls, as they
say in that pretty business, but he is strictly
within his rights, for the value of an art object is
conventional. Moreover he is very careful not to
sell any but authentic merchandise, passed upon
by old Leemans, who, by the way, has taught him
his artistic vocabulary, very surprising in the
mouth of that shady veteran, who is intimate how-
ever with the young Gomme and the cocottes of
the Opera quarter, both of whom are very nec-
essary to his traffic.
On the other side of Patriarch Leemans, sat
Sephora and her husband, playing lovers; their
chairs and their glasses touching one another.
They had met so seldom since the beginning of this
affair ! J. Tom Levis, who, for the world at large,
was in London, was really living shut up in his
castellated abode at Courbevoie, fishing with a line
all day for want of dupes to bait, and much occu-
pied in worrying the Sprichts with his tomfoolery.
Sephora, more restrained than a Spanish queen,
awaiting the king at any hour, and always cere-
18 .
2 74 Kings in Exile,
monious and under arms, was forced to lead the
life of an upper-class demi-mondaine ; a life so
empty and so little amusing that such ladies nearly
always live in couples in order to endure their long,
weary drives and heart-breaking leisure. But the
Comtesse de Spalato had no double in all the town.
She could not visit courtesans, nor the other
declassees of the questionable world ; honest women
would not receive her; and Christian II. would
not have tolerated around her that whirl of idlers
who fill the salons frequented by men only. Con-
sequently, she was absolutely alone in her boudoirs
with their painted ceilings, and their mirrors gar-
landed with cupids and roses, but reflecting nought
except her indolent image, bored by the king's
insipid incense, burned at her feet like those head-
ache perfumes that smoke in a golden cup. Ah !
she would give quickly enough that melancholy
princely life for the little cellar salon in the Rue
Royale, with her mountebank before her executing
his jig of the Grand Stroke ! Scarcely could she
even write to him to keep him informed of what
was going on.
Consequently, how happy she is to-night; how
she snuggles to Tom, excites him, stirs him up.
" Come, make me laugh." And Tom bestirs him-
self, but his liveliness is not quite frank, and it
drops after each outburst into a troublesome
thought which he does not utter, and about which
I will give you a thousand guesses. . .
Tom Levis is jealous. He knows that there can
be nothing as yet between Christian and S^phora;
The Watchers, 275
that she is much too clever to give herself without
proper security; but the psychologic moment is
approaching; that paper once signed, the agree-
ment must be kept; and i' faith, my friend Tom
felt troubles, uneasinesses, that were very strange
in a man devoid of all superstitions and childish
notions. Little feverish, terrified, cold chills ran
over him as he looked at his wife, who had never
seemed to him so pretty as she did now in her
toilet elegance and the title of countess, which
seemed to polish her features, brighten her eyes,
and raise her hair beneath a coronet with pearls
upon its spikes. Evidently J. Tom Levis is not up to
the level of his part ; he has not the solid shoulders
of his trade. A mere nothing would decide him
to take back his wife and let everything go. But a
sort of shame restrains him, the fear of ridicule ;
and then, such sums of money spent on the affair.
The unfortunate fellow argued the matter with him-
self and was torn by these various scruples, which
the countess would never have supposed him capa-
ble of feeling. He affected great gayety, gesticu-
lating with the dagger in his heart, enlivening the
company with a choice relation of his Agency
tricks, and ended by so exhilarating old Leemans
and the glacial Pichery himself that they pulled
their choicest tricks from their bags and told their
best hoaxes on amateurs.
They get to that point, don't they, — these part-
ners, these cronies, their elbows on the table?
Yes, they told all ; the underside of auctions ;
their trap-doors and pitfalls ; the coalitloii of big
276 Kings in Exile.
dealers, rivals apparently ; their dodges ; their
traffic with porters, that mysterious free-masonry
which puts a real barrier of greasy collars and
ragged coats between a rare object and the caprice
of a purchaser, and forces the latter at last to a
folly at some great price. It was a tournament
of cynical tales, a joust to the cleverest, the most
rascally sharper.
" Did I ever tell you tJiat about my Egyptian
lantern and Mora?" asked Pere Leemans, sipping
his coffee. Then he told for the hundredth time
— as an old soldier tells of his favourite campaign
— the tale of the lantern which a distressed Levan-
tine had let him have for two thousand francs,
and which he resold the same day to the president
of the council for forty thousand, with a double
commission, five hundred from the Levantine and
five thousand from the duke. But what made
the charm of the tale was the account given of the
sly twists and turns, the shrewd art of exciting and
leading on a rich and conceited customer. " Yes,
no doubt, a fine thing, but dear, too dear. . . I
advise you. Monsieur le due, to let some one else
commit that folly. . . I am pretty sure the Sis-
mondos. . . Ah ! yes, yes, a pretty bit of work . . .
this framework of little bars . . . that embossed
chain . . ." And the old fellow, stimulated by the
laughter that shook the table, fingered a shabby
little note-book worn at the edges that lay on the
table-cloth, and from which his memory refreshed
itself now and then as to a date, a figure, an ad-
dress. All the famous amateurs were classed and
The Watchers, 2'j'j
noted in that book, like the marriageable girls
with large dots on the gra7id livre of M. de. Foy,
with their peculiarities, their hobbies, their com-
plexions brown or fair; those who must be bul-
lied; those who only value an object if it costs
very dear; the sceptical amateur; the artless
amateur, to whom you can say when you sell him a
fraud : " Yon know . . . don't let any one get that
away from you." To old Leemans personally the
note-book was worth a fortune.
** Look here, Tom," said S6phora, who wanted
to make her husband shine, '* suppose you tell them
that about your arrival in Paris . . . you know, your
first affair, Rue Soufflot."
Tom did not need to be urged ; he poured him-
self out a little brandy to strengthen his voice, and
related how, about a dozen years before, returning
from London, cleaned out and shabby, with his last
five francs in his pocket, he heard from an old
comrade, whom he met in an English tavern near
the station, that the Agencies were just then
engaged in a big affair, the marriage of Mile.
Beaugars, daughter of a contractor, who had twelve
millions of dot and had taken it into her head to
marry a great seigneur, a real one. A magnificent
commission was offered, and the hounds were
numerous. Tom was not hindered by that. He
went to a reading-room and turned over all the
genealogical books of France, the Gotha and
Bottin, and finally discovered an ancient, a very
ancient family ramifying into all that were most
celebrated, and living at that time in the Ku€
27^ Kings in Exile,
Soufflot. The incongruity between the title and
the name of the street informed him plainly of
either a downfall or a vice. " On what floor does
M. le Marquis de X live? " He sacrificed his last
bit of silver and obtained from the concierge a few
scraps of information. . . Great nobility indeed . . .
widower, son just leaving Saint-Cyr and a daughter
of eighteen, very well brought-up. . . *' Rent two
thousand francs, including gas, water, and carpet,'*
added the concierge, for whom that last detail in-
creased the dignity of his lodger. . . " Exactly
what I want," thought Tom ; and he went up, rather
dashed, it must be said, by the respectable air of the
staircase, statue at the bottom, arm-chairs at each
landing, the luxury of a modern house, not much
in keeping with his threadbare coat, his boots that
let in water, and his very delicate errand.
'* Part way up," related the agent, *' I had half a
mind to go down again. Then, i' faith, I thought
it plucky to risk the stroke. I said to myself:
* You have wits, and cheek, and your living to
make . . . honour to intellect ! . .' And up I went,
four steps at a time. They ushered me into- a great
salon, of which I soon made the inventory. Two
or three fine antiquities, pompous relics, a portrait
by Largilliere, much poverty underneath, sofa
rickety, chairs without horsehair, chimney as cold
as its marble mantelpiece. Enter the master of the
house; majestic old man, very chic, Samson in
* Mademoiselle de la Seigliere.' ' You have a son.
Monsieur le marquis?* At the first words Samson
rose, indignant; I uttered the sum . . . twelve mil-
TJie Watchers, 279
lions . . . that made him sit down again, and we
talked. . . He began by owning that he had not a
fortune equal to his name, twenty thousand francs
a year at the most, and that he would not be sorry
to regild his blazon. The son would have one
hundred thousand francs for a portion. * Oh !
Monsieur le marquis, the name suffices. . .' Then
we settled the amount of my commission, and I got
away, in a great hurry, being wanted at my place
of business. . . Place of business, indeed ! when I
did n't know where to sleep. . . But at the door
the old gentleman stopped me, and said, in a kindly
way : ' Look here, you seem to me a lively fel-
low. . . I have a mind to propose to you. . . You
might marry my daughter also. . . She has n't a
dot. For to tell you the truth, I exaggerated just
now about the twenty thousand francs a year.
There 's not the half . . But I can dispose of the
title of a Roman count for my son-in-law . . . and
what is more, if he is in the army, my relationship
to the minister of war will secure him advance-
ment' I took notes : ' Rely upon me, M. le
marquis,' and I was going out ... A hand was
laid flat upon my shoulder. . . I turned round.
Samson looked at me, and laughed, with such a
droll air. . . ' And then, there 's myself,' he said. . .
'What, M. le marquis?' 'Yes, I'm not too far
gone, and if I found an opportunity . . .' He ended
by admitting that he was rotten with debts, and not
a penny to pay them. ' PardieUy my dear Mon-
sieur Tom,' he said, ' if you could ferret out for me
some good business-woman with serious savings,
2 So Kings in Exile.
old maid or widow, send her this way with hef
purse ... I '11 make her a marquise.' When I left
that house my education was complete. I under-
stood the whole of what there was to do in
Parisian society; the Levis Agency was morally
founded. . .
This tale was marvellous as narrated, or rather
as acted by Tom Levis. He rose, sat down, imi-
tated the majesty of the old noble quickly degen-
erating into the cynicism of bohcmia, and his way
of spreading his handkerchief between his knees
when he wanted to cross his legs, and the three
corrections as to the nothingness of his actual
resources. One might have thought it a scene
from the " Neveu de Rameau," but Rameau's
nephew in the nineteenth century, without powder,
without grace, without violin, and with something
hard, ferocious, the fierceness of an English bull-
dog in the satirical intonation of the former sub-
urban blackguard. The others laughed and were
mightily amused, deducing from Tom's narrative
reflections philosophical and cynical.
" Don't you see, my children," said old Leemans,
" that if we second-hand brokers combined together
we should be masters of the world? . . People
traffic with everything in these days, and every-
thing passes through our hands, leaving a bit of
its skin behind it. . . When I think of all the
business that has been done for the last forty years
in this hole of the Rue Eginhard, all that I have
sold, vamped-up, exchanged ! I lacked nothing
but a crown to sell ; and here it is ... in the bag."
The Watchers, 281
He rose, glass in hand, his eyes brilliant and
ferocious.
'* A la Brocante, mes enfants ! " ^
At the lower end of the room la Darnet, on the
watch behind her black peasant's-cap, heard all
and learned much about the business, in which
she hoped to establish herself at ** monsieur's '*
death, and sell on her own account.
Suddenly the little bell at the entrance door
rang violently in a strangled way, like an old
catarrh. They all quivered. Who could be com-
ing at such an hour?
** It must be Lebeau," said old Leemans. " None
but he would . . ."
Loud shouts welcomed the valet, whom they had
not seen for some time, and who now made his
entrance, pale, haggard, his teeth clenched, utterly
prostrate in manner and out of temper.
" Sit down, my old rascal," said Leemans, mak-
ing room between himself and his daughter.
" The devil ! " said the other, looking round
upon their jovial faces, the table and the remains
of the feast. ** You seem to be amusing yourselves
here. . ."
At that observation and the funereal tone in
which it was made, they looked at one another,
rather uneasy. . . Parbleu ! yes, they were amus-
ing themselves, they were gay. Why should they
be sad?
1 No English word for brocante, nor any term that gives an idea
of it : brokerage in old things, from clothes to rare pictures, fur-
niture, and bric-a-brac.
282 Kings in Exile,
M. Lebeau seemed stupefied.
"What! . . You don't know? . . When did
you see the king, countess?"
" Why, this morning . . . yesterday . . . every
day."
''And he told you nothing of the terrible
quarrel? . ."
In two words he related the scene with the
queen, the burned deed, their whole affair burned
up with it, apparently.
'' Ah ! the sneak ! " cried Sephora. " I 'm sold ! "
Tom, very uneasy, looked his wife in the eye.
Could she, by chance, have had a moment of impru-
dent weakness? . . But milady was in no humour
to explain herself, being full of her rage and indig-
nation against Christian, who, for more than a
week had been floundering in a series of Hes to
explain to her how it was that the deed of renun-
ciation was not yet signed. . . Oh ! the coward,
the base coward and liar ! . . But why had not
Lebeau warned them earher?
" Ah ! yes, why indeed? " said the valet, with his
hideous smile. . . "I should have had fine trouble
to do that. . . For the last ten days I 've roamed
the highways. . . Five hundred leagues without
taking breath, without halting. . . Not even the
chance to write a letter, watched as I was by a
cursed monk, a Franciscan Father who smells like
a wild beast and twirls his knife like a bandit. . .
He watched my every movement; never let me
out of his sight one second, under pretence that he
did not know enough French to make himself
The Watchers » 283
understood. . . The truth is, they distrust me at
Saint-Mande, and they have taken advantage of
my absence to get a great affair under way.
'* What affair? " asked all their eyes.
" Something, I think, about an expedition to
Dalmatia. . . It is that devil of a Gascon who has
turned their heads. . . Oh ! I said from the first
we ought to get rid of that fellow. . ."
But in vain did they try to hide things from
him ; he, the valet, had scented preparations in the
air for some time past ; letters departing at all
hours ; mysterious consultations. One day, open-
ing a water-colour album which that little fool of
a Rosen had left about, he had seen designs for
uniforms, costumes drawn by her : " Illyrian volun-
teers, dragoons of the Faith, blue shirts, cuirassiers
of the true Right." Another day he had overheard
the princess and Mme. de Silvis in a grave dis-
cussion concerning the shape and size of the cock-
ades. From all of which, and from scraps of
remarks gathered here and there, he suspected a
great expedition ; and the journey he had just
made was probably concerning it. The little dark
man, a sort of hunchback, whom they had gone
to find among the mountains of Navarre, must be
some great general charged with leading the army
under the orders of the king.
*' What ! the king going too ! . ." cried old Lee-
mans, casting a contemptuous look at his daughter.
A tumult of words followed the old man's
exclamation.
" And our money ? "
284 Kings in Exile.
" And the notes ? "
*' 'T is an infamy ! "
*' A theft ! "
And as, in these days, politics, Hke ^sop's dish
is served up everywhere, Pichery, who is an im-
perialist, apostrophized the Republic stiff in his
horse-hair stock : —
** Never under the Empire would such a thing
have been allowed ! — to endanger the tranquillity
of a neighbouring State ! . ."
" It is very certain," said Tom, gravely, " that if
it were known to our authorities they would never
permit it. . . They ought to be warned, stirred
up. . ."
** Yes, I have thought of that," replied Lebeau.
" Unluckily, I don't know anything positive, pre-
cise. They would not listen to me. Besides, our
people are very distrustful ... all their precautions
are taken to mislead suspicions. . . This very
evening, the queen's birthday, there is a great fete
at the hotel de Rosen. . . What good would it
do to tell the authorities that those dancers are
conspiring and preparing for battles? . . And yet
there certainly is something out of the common
going on at that ball. . ."
Then for the first time it was noticed that the
valet was in evening dress, thin shoes, white cravat;
yes, he is in charge of the buffets, and he must get
back as fast as he can to the lie Saint-Louis.
Suddenly Sephora, who had been reflecting for a
few moments, said : —
** Listen, Lebeau ... if the king starts, you will
The Watchers. 285
know it, will you not? . . They will tell you, if
only to pack his trunks. . . Well, if I am warned
only one hour in advance I swear to you the
expedition shall not take place."
She said this in her tranquil voice with slow but
firm decision. And while Tom Levis was asking
himself by what means his wife could prevent the
king from starting, and the other conspirators, much
dejected, were calculating what the non-success of
the grand stroke would cost them, Maitre Lebeau,
returning to the ball, hurries along on the tips of his
pumps through a labyrinth of dark little streets, old
roofs, old balconies, scutcheoned portals, through
all that aristocratic quarter of the last century now
turned into workshops and manufactories, which,
shaken by day with the rolling of heavy carts and
the swarming of a poor population, resumes at
night its character of a strange dead city.
The fete was seen and heard afar, — a summer
fete, a midnight fete, sending along the two banks
of the river its scattered echoes and its lights in a
ruddy mist of flame from the extremity of the
Island, which looks, as it projects into the flowing
water, like the high and rounded poop of some
gigantic vessel riding at anchor. Come nearer;
tall and brilliantly lighted windows can be distin-
guished ; a thousand coloured fires in glass globes
are fastened among the copses, to the single trees
of the garden; and along the Quay d'Anjou,
usually asleep at that hour, the lanterns of the
waiting carriages are making holes in the darkness
286 Kings in Exile.
with their motionless little lights. Since Herbert's
marriage the hotel Rosen had seen no fete like
this ; in fact, the present one was finer, more vast,
more crowded, with all its doors and windows open
to the splendour of a starlit night.
The ground-floor apartments formed one long
gallery of salons, lofty as a cathedral, decorated
with paintings, ancient gilding, Dutch or Venetian
lustres lighting a strange decoration, hangings
shimmering with gold reflections upon green or
red, heavy shrines of massive silver, ivories, framed
in a medley, old mirrors with blackened quick-
silver, rehquaries, banners, treasures of Monte-
negro and Herzegovina, which Parisian taste had
known how to group and to display, with nothing
discordant, nothing too exotic about them. The
orchestra, stationed in the gallery of an ancient
oratory recalling that of Chenonceaux, was sur-
rounded with oriflammes, which sheltered also the
chairs of the king and queen. In contrast to all
this past, to these rich reflections from antiquity
which would put old Leemans beside him.self, came
the waltzes of the day, languorous or whirling;
the waltzers with long embroidered trains, with
fixed and briUiant eyes in a mist of fluffy hair,
passing like a defiance of abounding youth; fair
young visions, slender, floating, and brunette ap-
paritions of a moist white pallor. From time to
time, from this tangle of dancers moving in a
circle, from this medley of silken stuffs which
added to the music a sound of coquettish and
mysterious rippling, couples would detach them-
The Watchers, 2% J
selves and waltz through the tall glass door, receiv-
ing on their heads, inclined in opposite directions,
the white reflections of the illuminated frontal
where the queen's monogram was glittering, and
continue through the garden paths the rhythm of
their dance, with some hesitation and little pauses
caused by the distance of the music, making the
waltz at last a cadenced march, a tuneful prome-
nade, skirting the balmy groups of roses and mag-
nolias. In short, apart from the rarity and the
curiosity of the decorations and the presence of a
few types of foreign women with the tawny hair
and the languid suppleness of their Slav nature,
there was nothing here, at first sight, but one of
those fashionable kermesses such as the Fau-
bourg Saint-Germain (represented at the hotel
Rosen by its most ancient and imposing names)
was in the habit of giving in its old gardens of the
Rue de I'Universite, where the dancers often
passed from the waxed floors to the lawns, the
black coats being suffered to redeem themselves
with light-coloured trousers, — summer fetes in the
open air, freer and more exuberant than others.
From his bedroom on the second floor the old
duke, crippled for the last week by an acute attack
of sciatica, listened to the echoes of his ball, smoth-
ering beneath the bedclothes his moans of pain,
and his barrack-room maledictions on the ironical
cruelty of the disease which nailed him to his bed
on such a day, making it impossible that he
should himself join that band of noble youth which
was destined to start on the morrow.
288 Kings in Exile.
The decree had gone forth, the posts for the
struggle chosen, and this ball was a farewell, a sort
of defiance to war's mischances, and, at the same
time, a protection against the suspicions of the
French police. Though the duke could not ac-
company the volunteers, he consoled himself with
the thought that his son Herbert would take part
in the affair, and his money too, for their Majes-
ties had kindly permitted him to assume all the
costs of the expedition. On his bed, mingled
with maps for the staff and strategic plans, lay
bills for the outfit: such as cases of muskets,
shoes, blankets, victuals ; all of which he carefully
verified, with a terrible bristling of his moustache
— heroic grimace of the royalist striving to get
the better of his parsimonious instincts. Now
and then, he lacked a figure or a fact, and then he
sent for Herbert, — a pretext to keep for a few
moments near him, there under his curtains, the tall
son who was to leave him on the morrow for the
first time, whom he might never see again perhaps,
and for whom he felt an infinite tenderness, ill-
concealed by his stiff manner and majestic silences.
But the prince when he came would not stay long,
being in haste to do the honours of the house, and,
above all, unwilling to lose a moment of the short
hours he had still to spend with his dear Colette.
Standing with him in the first salon, she helped
him to receive his father's guests ; looking prettier
and more dainty than ever in her narrow tunic of
old lace, made of the alb of a Greek bishop, the
(lull white reflections of which set off her fragile
The Watchers. 289
beauty, that wore an impress of almost solemn
mystery on this last evening. It gave repose to
her features, it darkened the blue of her eyes, the
same blue as that pretty little cockade fluttering
among her curls beneath a diamond aigrette. . .
Hush ! the cockade of an lUyrian volunteer, the
model designed by herself and adopted by the
expedition. . . Ah ! for three months she had not
been idle, the pretty httle thing ! Copying procla-
mations, carrying them secretly to the convent of
the Franciscans, designing costumes, banners, foil-
ing the police whom she always believed were at
her heels; it was thus she played her part as a
royalist great lady, inspired by her former studies
at the Sacre-Coeur. One only detail was lacking to
her programme of Vendean guerilla warfare ; she
could not go, she could not follow her Herbert.
For now it was Herbert, Herbert only ; by some
blessing of nature, the other was no more thought
of than the poor ouistiti so cruelly crushed and
mangled on the pavement of the quay. This de-
light of sporting a man's costume and of putting her
feet into stout little boots was denied to Colette for
two reasons : one, her service near the queen ; the
other, very private, whispered only the night before
into Herbert's ear. Yes, if she were not mistaken,
after a lapse of time easy to calculate by taking
the day of the session of the Academy as the point
of departure, the race of Rosen would be blessed
with one representative the more ; and it was quite
impossible to expose a hope so dear, so precious,
to the fatigues of an expedition which could not
19
290 Kings hi Exile,
terminate without some rough and bloody thrusts ;
quite as impossible as it was to accept an invitation
for a waltz in those splendid salons. What secrets
the little woman was now obliged to keep ; and in
spite of her mysterious lips, her eyes, adorably tell-
tale, and the languid way in which she hung on
Herbert's arm had a fancy to tell all.
Suddenly the music was hushed, the dancers
stopped ; every one stood up to await the entrance
of Christian and Frederica. They crossed the
three salons resplendent in national treasures,
where the queen could see her monogram em-
broidered everywhere in flowers, lights, and jewels ;
where all things spoke to them of their country, of
its glories ; and now they stood upon the threshold
of the garden. . . Never was monarchy represented
in a loftier and more brilliant fashion ; a perfect
couple to engrave upon the coins of a people, on
the frontal of a dynasty. The queen, especially,
was admirable ; younger by ten years in a splendid
white attire, and on her neck, for all jewels, a heavy
amber collar from which hung a cross. Given and
blessed by the Pope, this collar has its legend, which
the faithful relate to one another in whispers. Fre-
derica wore it during the whole period of the siege
of Ragusa, where it was twice lost in the sorties,
and twice miraculously recovered under fire of the
battle. She attaches a sort of superstition to it,
fastens a queen's vow upon it, without one thought
of the charming effect of its gold pearls close be-
side the golden hair of which they seem, as it were,
to scatter the reflections.
The Watchers, 291
While the sovereigns stood there, radiant, admir-
ing the fete and the garden and its fairy illumina-
tion, suddenly three strokes of a bow, fantastic,
rasping, energetic, were given from the middle of
a clump of rhododendrons. Every Slav in the
assembly quivered, recognizing the notes o{ guzlas^
whose long-stemmed mandolins could be seen amid
the dark-green foliage. The notes began with a
humming prelude, an overflowing of distant and
sonorous waves, advancing, rising, increasing, shed-
ding themselves around. 'Twas like a heavy cloud,
charged with electricity, from which, now and
again, a sharper bow struck lightnings, whence
there presently gushed forth, stormy and voluptu-
ous, the heroic rhythm of the national air, hymn
and dance in one, that air of Rodoi'tza which " down
there "takes part in all the fetes and all the battles,
presenting finely the double character of its antique
legend : — The soldier RodoTtza, fallen into the
hands of the Turks, pretends death to escape them.
They light a fire on his breast; the soldier does
not flinch. They slip a snake, roused by the sun,
into his bosom ; they drive a score of nails beneath
his nails : he maintains his stony stillness. Then,
they bring to him Halkouna, the tallest and love-
liest of the daughters of Zara, who dances as she
sings to him the air of Illyria. At the first notes,
as Rodoi'tza heard the tinkle of the sequins of her
necklet, the quiver of the fringes of her belt, he
smiled, his eyes opened and he would have been
lost, if the dancer in a whirling step had not flung
upon his face the silken scarf with which she timed
292 Kings hi Exile,
and crowned her dance. Thus was the soldier
saved, and this is why for two hundred years the
national air of lUyria is called the " air of Rodoitza."
Hearing it ring now beneath the sky of exile,
all the lUyrians, men and women, turned pale.
This call of the guzlas^ which the orchestra at
the farther end of the salon accompanies in
undertones, like a murmur of waves above which
rises the cry of the stormy petrel, this is the cry of
the nation itself, swollen with memories, with tears,
regrets, and hopes inexpressible. The huge bows,
heavy, shaped like the bows of archers, did not
vibrate upon common strings, but on nerves
strained to the breaking point, on fibres delicately
resonant. These young men, bold and proud, of
martial cut, felt within them, all, the indomitable
courage of Rodoitza, so well repaid by woman's
love ; and these beautiful Dalmatians, tall as HaY-
kouna, have in their hearts her tenderness for
heroes. And the old men, thinking of their dis-
tant country, the mothers looking at their sons,
crave all to sob, all, all — were it not for the pres-
ence of the king and queen — uniting their voices
to the strident cry which the guzla players, their
playing ended, fling to the stars in a last rushing
firework of chords.
Immediately after, the dances were resumed, with
a spring, a dash, surprising in a society where
we may amuse ourselves only in conventional
ways. Certainly there was, as Lebeau had said,
something in this fete that was out of the common,
something ardent, feverish, passionate, which was
The Watchers, 293
felt in the clasp of the arms around the waists, in
the spring of the dancers, in certain glittering
looks that crossed each other, even in the
cadence of the waltzes, the mazurkas, which rang
at times with the clanking of swords and spurs.
Toward the end of balls, when morning pales the
windows, the last hour of pleasure has a hurried
ardour, a tired intoxication. But on this occasion
the ball had hardly begun before the hands of all
were burning in their gloves, hearts were beating
beneath the corsage bouquets or the diamond
orders, and as each couple passed, lost in a
cadenced love, eyes rested long and tenderly
upon them, smiling. All present knew that those
handsome youths, the nobles of Illyria exiled with
their princes, and the nobles of France ever ready
to give their blood to the good cause, were to start
at dawn of day on a bold and perilous expedition.
Even in case of victory, how many would return of
those high-spirited young men who now enrolled
themselves without a count of cost? How many,
within a week, would bite the earth, lying on
mountain slopes, the sound of that mazurka still
humming in their ears to the beat of their ebbing
life-blood ? 'T was the nearness of danger, min-
gling with the joy of a ball the anxiety of a night-
watch, that made those young eyes glitter with
tears and flashes, audacity and surrender, — for
what could be denied to him who goes, who goes
to death, it may be? That death which hovered
in the air, whose wing swept round them in the
cadence of the violins, how it tightened the em-
294 Kings in Exile,
brace, and hastened the avowal ! Fugitive loves !
meeting of ephemera in a single ray of sunshine !
They had hardly seen each other, they might never
meet again, but here were two hearts chained.
Some, the more haughty of the women, tried to
smile in spite of their emotion ; but what gentle-
ness beneath that pride ! And all this as they
danced with heads thrown back and locks floating,
each couple fancying themselves alone, hid, lost in
the twining magic whirl of a waltz of Brahms or a
mazurka of Chopin.
One was there, vibrating too, and deeply moved.
It was Meraut, in whom the notes of the guzlas^
soft and savagely energetic in turn, had awakened
the adventurous, bohemian spirit which lies at the
bottom of all the sun-temperaments, with a mad
desire to rush afar through unknown paths to the
Light, to adventure, to battle, to do some bold
and valiant action for which women would admire
him. Meraut, who did not dance, who had never
fought, the intoxication of this ball of heroism
attained him ; and to think that all this youth was
departing, to give its blood, to do great deeds and
dangerous emprises, while he remained behind
with old men, children ! To think that, having
organized the enterprise, he must leave it to be
carried on without him ! All this was sadness,
hardship inexpressible. The idea, the ideal, was
put to shame before action ! It may be that this
wringing of the heart, this desire to die, poured
into him by the songs and the Slavic dances, was
not disconnected with the radiant pride of Fre-
The Watchers, 295
derica on the arm of Christian II. How happy he
felt her to be in beholding, at last, the king, the
warrior in her husband ! . . Haikouna, Haikouna,
in the clash of arms thou canst all forget and all
forgive, — betrayal, lies : what thou lovest above all
things is personal valour ; on that thy handkerchief,
warm with thy tears, with the faint fragrance of
thy face, is cast. . . And while he thus bemoaned
himself, Haikouna, who saw, in the corner of the
salon, that broad poetic brow where the thick
rebellious locks, so little in the fashion, massed
themselves, Haikouna smiled, and made him a sign
to come to her. It seemed as though she had
divined the reason of his sadness.
''What a beautiful fete. Monsieur Meraut! "
Then, lowering her voice : —
" I owe this, too, to you. . . But we owe you so
much ... we know not how to thank you."
It was he, indeed, whose robust faith had
breathed upon the dying flames, given hope to
despair, and prepared the rising which on the
morrow was to turn to action. The queen did
not forget him, she ; there was not a person in
that illustrious assembly to whom she would
have spoken with that deferent kindness, that
glance of gratitude and sweetness, there, before
them all, in the midst of the respectful circle
ranged around the sovereigns. But Christian II.
turned towards him, again taking Frederica's arm.
" The Marquis de Hezeta is here," he said to
Elysee. "Have you seen him?"
" I do not know him. Sire. . ."
296 Kings hi Exile.
" But he says that you and he are old friends. . ,
See, there he is."
The Marquis de Hezeta was the leader who, in
the absence of old General Rosen, was to com-
mand the expedition. In the last attempt of the
Duke of Palma he had shown astonishing qualities
as a corps commander, and never, had he been
listened to, would the affair have ended as it did.
When he saw his efforts wasted, and the Pre-
tender himself giving the signal and the example
of flight, the cabecilla, seized with lassitude and mis-
anthropy, flung himself into the Basque mountains,
and lived there, safe from childish conspiracies,
false hopes, sword-thrusts into water, which ex-
hausted his moral forces. He wished to die ob-
scurely in his own country, but was now once more
tempted forth to adventure by the seductive roy-
alism of Pere Alphee and the renown for bravery
of Christian II. The ancient nobility of the parti-
san, his romantic life of exile, persecution, grand
and dashing strokes, and fanatical cruelty, all this
surrounded the Marquis Don Jose Maria de
Hezeta with an almost legendary interest, and
made him now the personage of the ball.
'* Good-evening, Ely . . ." he said, coming up to
Elysee with extended hand, and calling him by his
child's name in the old days of the Enclos de
Rey. . . ** Yes, yes, it is I . . . your old master . . .
Monsieur Papel."
The black coat, laden with crosses and orders,
the white cravat had not changed him, nor yet the
additional score of years that lay upon that huge
The Watchers, 297
dwarfs-head, so swarthy with powder and the tan
of the mountain air that his frontal vein, terrible
and characteristic, was scarcely seen. With its
disappearance his royalist infatuation seemed atten-
uated, as if the cabecilla had left in his Basque
beretta, which he flung into a torrent at the end of
his last campaign, a part of his old beliefs, his early
illusions.
Elysee was strangely surprised to hear the talk
of his old master, of the man who had made him
what he was.
*' You see, my little Ely . . ."
The little Ely was two feet taller than himself,
and not lacking in gray hairs.
" . . . it is all over, there are no kings now. . .
The principle is alive, but the men are wanting.
Not one of these unhorsed ones is capable of get-
ting back into the saddle . . . and not one of them
really wishes to. . . Ha ! what I Ve seen, what I Ve
seen, during this last war ! . ."
A bloody mist seemed to cross his brow and
inject his eyes, fixed and as if enlarged by a vision
of shame, cowardice, treachery. . .
" But all kings are not alike," protested Mdraut,
" and I am sure that Christian ..."
** Yours is worth no more than ours. . . A child,
a mere enjoyer. . . Not an idea, no will in those
eyes of pleasure. . . Look at him now ! "
He pointed to the king, who was waltzing past
them, his eyes vague, his forehead moist, his
small head bending to the bared shoulder of his
partner, inhaling it with his open mouth as if he
298 Kings m Exile.
would fain have rolled there. In the rising intoxi-
cation of the ball, the pair passed on, touching them
with their panting breaths but without seeing them ;
and as the company crowded into the gallery to
see Christian IL, the finest waltzer in his kingdom,
dance, Hezeta and Meraut took refuge in the deep
embrasure of an open window looking on the Quai
d'Anjou. They stayed there a long time, half
within the whirl and tumult of the ball and half in
the cool fresh shadow, the stiUing silence of the
night.
'* Kings believe no longer . . . they will no
longer. Why should we strive for them?" said
the Spaniard, with a sullen air.
" You believe in them no longer. . . And yet
you go to-morrow?"
*' Yes, I go."
" Without hope ? "
** One only. . . That of getting my head broke ;
my poor head, which I know not where to lay."
''And the king?"
*' Oh ! as for him, I am easy enough. . ."
Did he mean to say that Christian II. was not
yet gone, or that, like his cousin the Duke, of
Palma, he would always know how to get safely
back from a battle ? Hezeta did not explain him-
self further.
Around them the ball continued its giddy whirl,
but Elys^e saw it now through the discouraged
eyes of his old master and his own disillusions.
He felt an immense pity for that valiant youth
which so gayly was preparing to fight beneath
The Watchers, 299
leaders whose faith was gone ; already the fete, its
scene confused, its lights veiled, disappeared to his
eyes in the smoke of a battlefield, in a great melee
of disaster, from which the unknown dead were
gathered up. For an instant, in order to shake off
that threatening vision, he leaned upon the window-
sill above the deserted quay, on which the palace
shed great squares of light that reached beyond it
to the Seine. And the water to which he listened,
always tossing and tumultuous at this angle of the
Isle, mingled the noises of its current and its
furious dash against the arches of the bridge with
the sighs of the violins and the rasping plaints of
the guzlas, leaping in short gasps like the sobs of
a heart oppressed or spreading itself in weltering
waves like the blood of an open wound.
300 Kin^s in Exile.
XII.
THE NIGHT-TRAIN.
" We leave to-night, eleven o'clock, Lyons Sta-
tion. Destination unknown. Probably Cette, Nice,
or Marseilles. Take warning."
When this note, hastily scratched off by Lebeau,
reached the Avenue de Messine, the Comtesse de
Spalato had just left her bath, all fresh, fragrant,
and supple, and was moving about her boudoir,
watering and taking care of her flowers and her
green plants, gloved to the elbows in Swedish kid
for this excursion through the artificial garden.
She showed no emotion, but stopped a moment to
reflect in the calm half-light of the closed blinds ;
then she made a little resolute gesture and shrugged
her shoulders as if to say : " Bah ! who wants the
end must take the means. . ." After which she
rang for her maid, to be put under arms to receive
the king.
" What will madame put on? "
" Nothing. . . I shall stay as I am. . ."
And certainly nothing could be more becoming
to her than that long garment of pale blue flannel,
in soft, clinging folds, a great fichu tied, childlike,
behind her waist, and her black hair, twisted,
curled and raised very high, showing the nape of
The Night-Train, 301
the neck, and the starting line of the shoulders,
which could easily be imagined of a brighter tone
than the face, the brightness of warm and polished
amber.
She thought, with reason, that no formal toilet
could equal this dishabille, which enhanced the
simple, girlish air the king so delighted in ; but
this decision obliged her to breakfast in her
chamber, for she could not, of course, go down-
stairs in such attire. She had organized her
household on a grave and serious footing ; there
was nothing here of the fantastic and bohemian
allurements of Courbevoie. After breakfast she
installed herself in her boudoir, from which a wide
veranda projected over the avenue, and there,
peacefully seated and rosy in the reflection of the
window shades, she watched for the king. Chris-
tian never came before two o'clock ; but from that
hour an altogether novel emotion began in her
placid nature, namely : expectant waiting — at first
quivering slightly like a ripple in the water, then
agitated, feverish, humming. Carriages were rare
at that hour on the tranquil avenue, now bathed in
sunshine between its double rows of plane-trees
and new hotels, ending in the gilded railings and
lamp-posts of the Pare Monceaux. At the faintest
roll of wheels Sephora drew aside the blind to see
who was coming, and her expectation, each time
balked, was irritated by that exterior quietude,
that rural calniness.
What had happened ? Would he really go with-
out seeing her?
302 Kings in Exile,
She sought for reasons, pretexts ; but when we
are waiting, all else waits ; the whole being remains
in suspense, and ideas, floating, disconnected, are
no more completed than words that are stammered
by the lips. S6phora felt this torture, this swoon-
ing, in the tips of her fingers where all nerves
reach and quiver. Again she raised the rose-
coloured linen of the shade. A warm breeze
stirred the branches like green feathers, a cool
breath rose from the roadway, which the water-
carts were bathing in spasmodic jets, stopped for
the passing of carriages, now more numerous, on
their way at five in the afternoon to the Bois. By
this time she was seriously afraid that the king had
abandoned her, and she hastily despatched two
letters to him, one addressed to the house of
Prince d'Axel, the other to the club. Then she
dressed, not being able with propriety to remain
till evening as a young girl fresh from her bath ;
after which she wandered, first from her chamber
to her boudoir and her dressing-room, and finally
over all the house, striving to allay her expecta-
tion by restless motion.
It was not a little cocotte's cage that la Spalato
had purchased, nor one of those stupendous houses
with which a thousand contractors have encum-
bered the new quarters of western Paris, but an artis-
tic mansion, worthy of the names of its surrounding
streets : Murillo, Velasquez, Van Dyck ; a house
distinguished from all its neighbours, from the
pediment of its frontal to the knocker on its door.
Built by Count Ponicki for his mistress, an ugly
The Night-TraiJt, 303
woman, whom he paid every morning with a thou-
sand-franc note folded in four and laid upon the
marble of her toilet-table, this marvellous dwelling
had been sold hap-hazard, with all its art-furniture,
for two millions on the death of the rich Polish
nobleman, who left no will, and Sephora had ob-
tained at one stroke these treasures.
By the solid carved wooden staircase, capable
of bearing the weight of a carriage and four, which
gave to the serious beauty of its present mistress
the sombre background of a Dutch picture, the
Comtesse de Spalato descended to her three salons
on the ground-floor : the Dresden salon, a small
room all Louis XV., containing a ravishing collec-
tion of vases, statuettes, enamels, in that fragile art
of the eighteenth century which seems to have
been moulded by the rosy fingers of favourites
and animated by the roguery of their smile. Next
was the salon of the ivories, where, in glass cases
lined with flame-colour were Chinese ivories in a
medley of little personages, trees with fruits of
precious stones, fishes with jade eyes, and certain
other ivories of the middle ages, dolorous and im-
passioned in expression, on which the blood in red
wax of the crucifixes made stains as on the pallor
of human flesh. The third room, lighted from
above, and hung in Cordova leather, was awaiting
the time when Pere Leemans should complete its
furnishing. Usually the soul of the daughter of the
" brocante " exulted amid these lovely things em-
bellished by the bargain she had made of them ;
but to-day she comes and goes without looking,
304 Kings in Exile,
without seeing, her thought afar, lost in irritating
arguments. . . What ! would he really go in this
way? . . Then he did not love her! . . And she
had felt so sure that he was captured, netted ! . .
The servant whom she had despatched with her
letters returned. No news of the king. He had
not been seen anywhere. . . Ah ! that was Chris-
tian indeed ! . . Knowing himself weak, he was
fleeing, hiding, escaping her. . . A rush of furious
anger swept for an instant from her natural calm-
ness the woman who possessed herself so well.
She would have torn, broken, everything about
her were it not for her long habit of sale^ which
put a ticket of the price, as one might say, visibly
on every object. Flinging herself at last into an
arm-chair as the twilight deepened on her treasures,
she saw them fleeing, disappearing in the dusk
together with her dream of a colossal fortune*
The door opened violently.
" Madame la Comtesse is served."
She was forced to sit down to table alone, in the
majestic dining-room, adorned on its eight panels
with grand portraits by Franz Hals, valued at eight
hundred thousand francs, — stern, strong faces, stiff
and solemn in their ruffs, but less solemn than the
white-cravatted butler who is carving on a side-
table the dishes which a pair of impassible flunkeys
dressed in nankeen are to serve to their mistress.
The irony of this pompous attendance, contrasting
with the desertion that threatened her, made her
heart wince with vexation ; one might almost have
thought that the kitchen department suspected her
The Night- Train, 305
trouble, so stiffly did the footmen enforce their cere-
monious disdain as she ate, and waited till she had
finished, motionless and grave as a photographer's
assistant who has fixed a client before the lens.
Little by little, however, the abandoned one re-
turned to her true self, and recovered her nerve. . .
No ! she would not allow herself to be cast off in
this way. . . It was not that she cared for the
king, but the affair, the grand stroke, all her self-
loves at stake before the eyes of her associates. . .
Come ! her plan is made. . . Going up to her
room she wrote a line to Tom ; then, while the
servants were dining and gossiping in the lower
regions about the solitary and restless day of their
mistress, Madame la comtesse, with her little hands,
that were far from awkward, packed a valise which
had often made its trip from Courbevoie to the
Agency, threw around her shoulders a gray
woollen cloak for the chilly night, and furtively
left her palace on foot, going straight to a stand
of street carriages, valise in hand, like a lady-
companion who has just received her pay.
Christian II., on his side, had passed his day not
less uneasily. Remaining late at the ball with the
queen, he woke in the morning with head and
heart both full of those heroic strains oi'Csx^guzlas.
Preparations for his journey, arms to examine,
also that uniform of lieutenant-general, not worn
since the days of Ragusa, — all this kept him busy
till eleven o'clock, surrounded and watched by
Lebeau, much perplexed, and not daring to push
too far his insinuating questions. At eleven o'clock
20
3o6 Kings in Exile.
the little Court assembled around a low mass said
by Pere Alphee in the salon, transformed into an
oratory, the mantelpiece serving as altar, its velvet
lambrequin covered by an embroidered cloth.
The Rosens were not present, the old man being
in his bed, and the princess having gone to the
station with Herbert, who had already started with
a party of young men. Hezeta was to leave by
the following train, — the little band scattering itself
thus along the day to cause no suspicion. This
secret mass, which recalled the times of trouble,
the exultant head of the monk, the military energy
of his gesture and his voice, made the very air
itself seem full of incense and of gunpowder, and
the religious ceremony the more solemn through
the sense of a coming battle.
The breakfast was oppressed by these mingled
emotions, though the king put a certain coquetry
into leaving behind him none but agreeable memo-
ries; affecting towards the queen a tenderly re-
spectful attitude, the affectionateness of which was
dashed by the rather distrustful coldness of Fre-
derica. The eyes of the child watched them timidly,
for the horrible scene of the other night haunted
his young memory, leaving nervous intuitions within
it beyond his years. The Marquise de Silvis was
exhaling in advance heavy sighs of farewell. As
for Elys6e, to whose breast confidence had re-
turned, he could scarcely contain his joy, as he
thought of this counter-revolution of the People
of which he had dreamed so long, this popular
uprising to force the doors of a palace and restore
The Night-Train, 307
a king. To his mind, success was not doubtful.
Christian had by no means the same certainty;
but beyond this trifling discomfort of departure —
when it seems as though soHtude were suddenly
made by the receding of objects or beings who
have hitherto surrounded us — beyond this feehng
he had no unpleasant apprehension, but rather a
relief in escaping from a false position, threatened
as he was by notes falling due and debts of honour.
In case of victory, the civil-list would settle all.
Defeat would bring with it, on the contrary, a
general and total ruin . . . death, a ball in the fore-
head, straight between the eyes. . . He thought
of that as a final solution to all his troubles of
money and of heart. So thinking, his indifference
made no bad figure between the queen's absorbed
reflections and Elysee's enthusiasm. But as the
three were talking together in the garden a groom
went by.
"Tell Samy to put the horses in," ordered
Christian. Frederica shuddered.
" Are you going out? " she said.
" Yes, for prudence' sake. . . The ball last night
will make all Paris talk. . . I ought to show my-
self ... let people see me, on the boulevard, at the
club. . . Oh ! I '11 return to dine with you."
He sprang up the portico at a bound, joyous and
free as a boy out of school.
" I shall fear to the very end ! " said the queen ;
and Meraut, doubtful like herself, could say no
word to encourage her.
The king, however, had really made strong reso-
3o8 Kings in Exile,
lutions. During the mass he had sworn not to see
Sephora, knowing well that if she tried to retain
him, if she wound her arms about his neck, he
would not have strength to leave her. In all sin-
cerity, therefore, he went to his club, where he found
a few bald-heads absorbed in silent whist, or in
majestic slumber around the tables in the reading-
room. The place was all the more lifeless and
deserted because they had played very high the
night before. In the early morning, as the party of
players left the club, Prince d'Axel at their head,
it appeared that they met a troop of she-asses
ambling past the door, their bells jingling . . . and
Monseigneur and the rest called to the donkey-
boy. . . They drank warm milk in champagne-
glasses, and then these gentlemen, all rather high,
jumped astride of the poor little beasts, in spite of
their kicks and the cries of the boy, and they ran
the most amusing steeple-chase ever seen, the
whole length of the Rue de la Paix ! . . It was
worth hearing, this majestically excited account of
M. Bonoeil, steward of the Grand-Club: ''Ah! it
was so droll ! . . Monseigneur on that little don-
key, obliged to curl up his long legs — for Mon-
seigneur is admirably made in the legs. . . And
that imperturbable phlegm of his ! . . Ah ! if his
Majesty had only been there ! . ."
His Majesty sincerely regretted having missed
that fine show of fools. . . Lucky Prince d'Axel !
At open quarrel with the king, his uncle, turned
out of his own country for all sorts of Court
intrigues, he may never come to the throne, be-
The Night-Train, 309
cause the old monarch now talks of remarrying
with a young woman and begetting a crowd of little
presumptives. But all that does not disturb him
the least in the world. To *' make fete " in Paris
seems to him far more interesting than to make
politics " down there ". . . Little by little, the
spirit of blagtie, of sceptical satire, returned to
Christian as he lay extended on the divan, where
the prince-royal had left the effluence of his con-
tagious laxity. In the aimless atmosphere of the
club, everything — the heroic ardour of the night
before, the great attempt of the morrow — seemed
to the young king worthless, without glory, with-
out magic, without grandeur. Positively, as one
might say, he decomposed as he lay there ; and to
escape the torpor which was overcoming him like
a stupefying poison in all his veins, he rose, and
went out into the open air of living, active, circu-
lating humanity.
Three o'clock. The hour at which he usually
turned in the direction of the Avenue de Messine,
after breakfasting at the club, or at Mignon's.
Mechanically his steps took their habitual way
through this summer Paris, always a little larger
and a Httle less heady than the winter Paris, but
offering charming aspects, prolonged vistas with
its verdure massed against stonework, and the
shadows of its foliage on the whiteness of the
asphalt.
What pretty women were gliding there half-
screened by sunshades, with a grace, a seductive
charm, a sweet good-humour ! What other women
3IO Kings m Exile »
could walk as these did, or drape themselves with
motion, or talk, or dress, or do the opposite, like
them ? Ah ! Paris, Paris, city of facile pleasures
and brief hours ! To think that in quitting all that
he was going, perhaps, to get his head broke. But
at any rate, what good moments he had had there !
— what intelligent and complete enjoyment!
In the fervour of his gratitude the Slav had a
sparkle in his eye for all the passing dames who
attracted him by a glance or the twirl of a lace
skirt spreading fan-like. The knightly king of the
morning between wife and son, kneeling in the
oratory before departing to recover his kingdom,
was far indeed from this pretty flusher of women,
his nose on the alert, his conquering hat on his
curled little head, with a rosy glow of the fever of
pleasure on his cheeks. Frederica was not wrong
in cursing the ferment of Paris, and dreading it for
this fickle brain, frothy as a wine that will not
keep.
At the forking of the Boulevard Hausmann with
the Avenue de Messine Christian stopped and let
several carriages pass him. This recalled him
to reason. How had he come there, — and so
quickly? . . The hotel Potnicki rose in the vapor-
ous light of the western sun with its two little tur-
rets, a Parisian castle, and its alcoved balcony. . .
What temptation ! Why should he not go there?
Why not see for the last time that woman who
would remain forever in his life with the dry and
thirsty memory of an unsatisfied desire?
At last, after a terrible momentary debate, his
The Night' Train, 311
uncertainty plainly visible in the reed-like swaying
of that faltering body, he took an heroic decision,
jumped into an open cab that was then passing,
and was driven to the club. Never would he have
had the courage to do this without his oath made
to God in the morning during mass. To that
pusillanimous soul, the soul of a Catholic woman,
that oath carried all before it.
At the club he found a letter from Sephora
which, merely by the perfume of its paper, com-
municated to him the fever in which it was written.
Prince d'Axel brought him the second letter, a few
hasty, imploring phrases in a writing that the books
of J. Tom Levis had never witnessed. But here
Christian II., surrounded, sustained, watched, felt
himself stronger, being of those to whom the gal-
lery imparts an attitude. He crumpled the letters
into his pocket. The gay youth of the club was
now arriving, still under the excitement of the tale
of the donkey race, related at full length in a
morning paper. The sheet was passed from hand
to hand, and all as they read it gave that exhausted
laugh, that stomach laugh of men worn-out.
"Do we make fete to-night?" asked these
young noblemen, absorbing sodas and other
hygienic waters, of which the club had an un-
limited supply.
Enticed by them, the king went off to dinner
at the Cafe de Londres ; not in one of those salons
where the well-known hangings had danced a dozen
times before their drunkenness, and the mirrors
bore their names written and scratched like a
"12 Kings in Exile,
J
wintry frost upon the panes, but in the cellars,
those wonderful catacombs of barrels and bottles
drawn up in regular lines, bearing white porcelain
tickets and extending as far as beneath the theatre
of the Opera-Comique. Every vintage of France
lay sleeping there. The table was laid at the
farther end, among the Chateau-Yquems, which
softly beamed, their prostrate, glaucous bottles
spangled with reflections from the gas and the
coloured-glass chandeliers. This dinner was an
idea of Wattelet, who wished to mark the king's
departure (known only to himself and Prince
d'Axel) by a wholly original repast. But the
effect was spoiled by the dampness of the walls
and ceilings, which penetrated those present, al-
ready worn-out with the fatigues of the night
before. Queue-de-Poule went to sleep and only
woke by shivering starts. Rigolo said little; he
laughed, or pretended to do so, and looked at his
watch every five minutes. Was he thinking of the
queen, whom this delay in his return would terrify?
At the dessert a few women arrived, — diners
at the Cafe de Londres, who, knowing that the
princes were below, left their tables, and, guided
by the waiters with candelabra, slipped down into
the cellars, their trains over their arms, with little
cries and pretences of fright. Nearly all were
in low gowns. At the end of five minutes they
began to cough and grow pale, shivering on the
knees of " these gentlemen," who themselves were
protected by the upturned collars of their coats.
*' A pretty joke," said one of them, more chilly or
The Night- Train, 313
less madcap than the rest, '* to make us all split
our lungs." It was soon decided to take coffee in
the salons, and during the removal thither the
king disappeared. It was just nine o'clock. His
coupe was at the door.
" Avenue de Messine . . ." he said in a low voice,
his teeth clenched.
The thought had seized him like a madness.
Throughout the dinner he had seen but her, her,
breathing of her alone from the bare skins that
surrounded him. Oh ! to seize her in his arms
and be no longer the dupe of her tears, of her
prayers ! . .
" Madame is out."
It was a dash of cold water in a furnace. Ma-
dame was out. He could not doubt it, on behold-
ing the hcense of the household, delivered over to
a crowd of servants, whose coloured ribbons and
striped waistcoats Christian saw fleeing in all direc-
tions at his entrance. He asked no questions ; sud-
denly sobered, he measured the bottomless abyss
into which he had been about to fall. Perjured to
God, a traitor to the crown ! . . The chaplet was
in his burning fingers ; he told its beads in aveSy
in thanksgivings, as the carriage rolled to Saint-
Mande through the fantastic aspects and the
nocturnal terrors of the night.
" The king ! " said Elysee, on the watch at the
window, as soon as he saw the lamps of the coupe
turning brightly into the courtyard. The king !
It was the first word any one had spoken since
dinner. As if by magic, faces were illuminated,
314 Kings in Exile,
tongues were loosened at once. The queen her^
self, in spite of her apparent calmness, her force
of will, could not restrain a cry of joy. She had
thought all lost, Christian kept by that woman,
abandoning his friends, and forever dishonoured.
Not a person about her, during those three mortal
hours of expectant waiting, but thought the same,
with the same uneasiness ; even poor little Zara,
whom the queen had kept up, and who, under-
standing the anguish, the drama of that silence,
and without asking one of those questions often
so cruel, so oracular in a child's shrill voice, had
sheltered himself behind the covers of a large
portfolio, whence his pretty face reappeared of
a sudden when the king was announced, bathed
in tears, which had flowed silently for more than
an hour. When asked, later, why he had felt
such grief, he owned he was unhappy because
he feared the king had gone without kissing him.
Loving little soul, to whom this young and lively,
smiling father was like an elder brother full of
pranks and frolics, a most attractive elder brother,
though he made their mother wretched.
Christian's quick, curt voice was heard giving
orders. Then he went to his chamber, and five
minutes later appeared all equipped for his journey
in a little hat with a coquettish buckle and blue
band, and dainty gaiters, like a tourist on a beach
in one of Wattelet's pictures. The monarch how-
ever, was visible beneath the dandy ; authority,
the grand air, the ease of appearing nobly, no
matter under what circumstances. He approached
The Night-Train. 315
the queen and murmured a few excuses for being
late. Still pale with emotion she said to him, very
low : ** If you had not come, I should have gone
with Zara to take your place." And he knew very
well she spoke the truth ; he saw her for an instant,
her child in her arms amid the balls, as on the
balcony of his window that terrible night, and the
child closing his beautiful, resigned eyes in face
of death. Without replying, he raised Frederica's
hand to his lips with fervour ; then, with an im-
petuous, youthful movement he drew her to him
and whispered : " Forgive ! . . forgive ! . ."
Forgiveness ! she was still capable of it; but at
that instant she saw at the door of the salon,
ready to accompany his master, Lebeau, that
shuffling valet, the confidant of pleasures and
treachery, and the dreadful thought came to
her, as she gently disengaged herself: "What if
he is lying? . . what if he does not go?" Christian
divined it. Turning to Meraut he said : " You
will accompany me to the station. . . Samy will
bring you back." Then, as time was short, he
hurried his farewells, said an amiable word to
each, to Boscovich, to the marquise, took Zara
on his knee and spoke to him of the expedition he
was about to undertake to recover his kingdom ;
told him never to cause grief to the queen ; and if
he did not see his father again to remember that
he died for the country, doing his duty as a king.
A httle speech a la Louis XIV., really not ill-
timed and to which the little prince Hstened
gravely, somewhat disconcerted by the gravity
3i6 Kings in Exile.
of the words from lips he had always seen smil-
ing. But Christian was ever the man of the
moment, all mobility, and excessive volatility, now
wholly occupied with his departure, the chances
of the expedition, and more touched than he was
willing to show ; a feeling which made him shorten
the tenderness of the last minute. " Adieu ! . .
Adieu ! . ." he said, as, with a wave of the hand to
them all, and a profound bow to the queen, he
departed.
Truly, if !Elysee Meraut had not for three whole
years seen the interior of the royal household
troubled by the weaknesses, the shameful frailties
of Christian II., he could never have recognized
the Rigolo of the Grand Club in the lofty, heroic
prince who explained to him his plans, his proj-
ects, his political views, so broad, so wise, as they
drove at a rapid pace to the Lyon station.
The royalist faith of the tutor, always a little
superstitious, beheld in this a divine intervention, a
privilege of caste, the king recovering himself, as
he should, at a vital moment, by grace of con-
secration and heredity; and, without explaining
to himself exactly why, this moral rebirth of
Christian, foreshadowing, foretelling his restora-
tion, caused him an inexpressible distress, a sin-
gular jealousy of which he would not analyze the
cause. While Lebeau was engaged in buying
tickets and registering the luggage, they walked
together up and down the long waiting-room, and
in the solitude of this night departure the king
could not keep himself from thinking of S^phora
The Night-Trai7t, 317
and his tender escortings of her to the Saint-
Lazare station. While under the influence of this
memory a woman who passed them attracted his
eye ; the same height, a certain something of that
virtuous yet coquettish step. . .
Poor Christian ! poor unwilh'ng king !
At last, however, he was in a carriage, the door
of which Lebeau opened to him, one of the usual
carriages for all travellers, so as not to attract
attention. He flung himself into a corner, in haste
to be done with departure, to be off. . . This,
slow tearing himself away was painful to him. A
whistle, the train moves, draws out, leaps noisily
over the bridges that crossed the sleeping suburbs
with their rows of lamps, and reached the open
country. Christian II. breathed freely; he felt
himself strong, saved, out of danger; he would
almost have sung were he alone in the carriage.
But at the farther end, by the other window, a
little figure, sunk in the dark corner seemed to
shrink with the desire to escape attention. 'Twas
a woman. Young, old, ugly, pretty? The king
— mere habit — cast a look that way. Nothing
stirred but the two feathers of a little hat, which
seemed to droop and fold as if to rest. " She
sleeps," he thought, *^ and so will I. . ." He
stretched himself out, wrapped a rug about him,
and looked vaguely for a time at the silhouettes
of the trees and bushes confused and softened by
the darkness and seeming to fall one upon another
as the train went by, at the mile-posts, at the
clouds errant on the midnight sky. His eyelids.
3i8 Kings in Exile,
growing heavy, were about to close when he felt
upon his cheek the caress of a soft curl and low-
ered eyelids, a violet breath, and t^vo lips murmur-
ing upon his lips : " Cruel ! . . without bidding me
farewell ! " . . .
Ten hours later. Christian II. awoke to a sound
of cannon, to the blinding light of a country
sun checkered with murmuring foliage. He had
dreamed that he was mounting at the head of
his troops beneath a hail of fire the steep ascent
from the port of Ragusa to the citadel. But in-
stead of that he awoke to find himself motionless
in a vast bed, his eyes and brain blurred, his limbs
resting in a delightful lassitude. What had hap-
pened ? Little by little he saw more clearly ; he
gathered himself together. He was at Fontaine-
bleau, in the hotel du Faisan, opposite to the
forest, where the green and close-pressed tree-
tops rose in the blue of ether, while the cannon
of the neighbouring camp was being exercised.
And the living reality, the visible link of his
ideas, Sephora, was seated before that eternal
secretary (seen nowhere now but in hotels) writ-
ing actively with a pen that spluttered.
She saw in a mirror before her the admiring,
grateful glance of the king, and replied, without
turning round, by a tender kiss from her eyes and
the tip of her pen, after which she continued to
write placidly, showing the glimmer of a smile at
the corner of those seraphic lips. ** A telegram
that I am sending just to reassure my people,"
she said, as she rose to ring the bell. The de-
The AUght-Train, 319
spatch given, and the waiter gone, she opened
the window, reheved of a great anxiety, to let in
the golden sunshine, which entered in floods, like
the waters of a sluice. *' Heavens ! how lovely it
is ! . ." she said. Then she went to the bed and
sat down upon the edge of it near her lover. She
laughed, she was wild with delight at being in the
country, at the prospect of wandering in the woods
on this exquisite day. They had plenty of time
before the midnight train that brought them
should carry Christian on his way; for Lebeau,
who had continued his journey, was to notify
Hezeta and his gentlemen that the embarcation
of the king, and consequently their own, was de-
layed for a day. The amorous Slav himself would
have preferred to draw the curtains on his happi-
ness till the very last hour. But women are more
ideal ; and directly after breakfast a hired landau
took them through the splendid avenues, bordered
with lawns and groups of trees, which open into
the forest, like the park at Versailles, before the
great rocks break it up into superb and natural
sites. It was the first time Sephora and the king
had ever driven out together, and Christian enjoyed
the brief pleasure on the terrible eve of battle and
disaster.
They rolled along under the vast arcades of
greenery where the foliage of the beeches drooped
in slender branches, motionless, threaded by a
distant sunshine which seemed to find it hard to
pierce this verdure of primeval development.
Beneath that shade, with no other horizon than
320 Kings in Exile,
the profile of a beloved woman, without other
hope, other memory, other desire than her ca-
resses, the poetic nature of the Slav poured itself
out. Oh ! to live there, both of them, they alone,
in the little house of a keeper, moss and thatch
without, a soft, luxurious nest within ! . . He
wanted to know when she had begun to love him ;
what impression had he made on her at first? He
translated for her the love-songs of his native
land, with kisses on her throat and on her eyes;
and she listened, feigning to comprehend, to reply,
her eyelids closing, heavy from want of sleep.
Eternal discord in the duets of love ! Christian
wished that they should bury themselves in soli-
tary, unexplored places ; Sephora sought the cele-
brated points, the curiosities of the forest, the
places shown where boulders trembled, and rocks
wept, and trees were blasted, and the people shel-
tered in huts and caves, from which they ran at the
slightest sound of wheels. She hoped to escape in
this way the wearisome and monotonous canticle
of love, while Christian was admiring her touching
patience in listening to the interminable talk of
the worthy country-people, who have time and to
spare for all they do.
At Franchart she insisted on drawing water
from the famous well of the old monks, so deep
that it takes the bucket twenty minutes to come
up. Fancy how amusing to Christian ! . . Next
was a woman medalled like an old gendarme,
who showed them the beauties of the site, the
ancient pond on the banks of which the stag was
The Night-Train, 321
always taken, — an old story told in the same lan-
guage for so many years that she fancied she had
belonged to the convent, and, three centuries later,
had been present in person at the sumptuous
country pleasure-parties of the first Empire. " It
was here, monsieur, madame, that the great
emperor sat down with all his Court; " and she
showed among the bushes a granite bench long
enough for three or four persons at most. Then
in a lofty tone : " Opposite, the empress, with her
ladies of honour. . ." It was sinister, this evoca-
tion of imperial pomp amid the fallen rocks and
gnarled and twisted trees, and arid gorse. " Come,
Sephora ! . ." said Christian. But Sephora was
looking at an esplanade where, according to the
guide, they were taking the little King of Rome
when he saw in the distance his august parents
and stretched his arms to them. This vision of
the child-prince reminded the King of lUyria of
his little Zara. The child rose up before him,
held by Frederica, and looked at him with his
great sad eyes as if asking him what he was doing
there. But it was only a vague reminiscence
quickly smothered, and they continued their way
beneath those oaks of all sizes, the meeting-
places of famous hunts, through the slopes of
green valleys and along the crest of hills over-
looking the amphitheatres of crumbling granite
or gravel-pits where fir-trees ploughed the red
and sandy soil with their strong projecting roots.
Presently they were following a dark path im-
penetrably shady, with deep, damp ruts. On either
322 Kings in Exile,
side a line of great tree-trunks, like the columns of
a cathedral formed silent naves, where the patter
of a squirrel or the fall of a detached leaf like a bit
of gold was heard. An immense sadness seemed
to fall from those tree-tops, those branches with-
out birds, sonorous and empty as deserted houses.
Christian, full of his love, deepened its passion as
the day advanced with a note of melancholy and
mourning. He told how before departing he had
made his will, and dwelt on the emotion those
words from beyond the grave, written when full
of life, had caused him.
"Yes, very annoying . . ." said Sephora, like
one who is thinking of something else. But he
believed himself so loved, he was so accustomed
to be loved, that he paid no heed to her absent-
mindedness. He even consoled her in advance in
case of misfortune ; he traced her a plan of exist-
ence ; she must sell the house in the Avenue de
Messine, retire to the country, and live with her
memories. It was all adorably conceited, naive,
and sincere ; he felt in his heart a sadness of fare-
well which he mistook for presentiments. And
then in a lowered voice, their hands clasped, he
spoke of the other world. Round his neck was a
medal of the Virgin, which never left him ; he now
took it off — for her. You can imagine Sephora's
happiness ! . .
After a while an artillery encampment, the gray
tents of which became visible through the branches,
the light smoke, the unbridled horses, tethered for
the night, turned the king's thoughts to another
The Night- Train, 323
channel. The coming and going of uniforms, of
convoys, all that camp activity in the open air and
the setting sun, that fortifying sight of soldiers in
the field, roused his nomad and warrior-race in-
stincts. The carriage, rolling along the mossy
green carpet of the wide avenue, caused all the
soldiers, busy in pitching tents or in making soup,
to hft their heads, and watch the smiling civilian
and his pretty companion pass. Christian would
fain have spoken to them, harangued them, plung-
ing his eyes beneath the copses to the very
extremity of the camp. In front of a command-
ing officer's tent standing a little apart on a level
piece of ground, a beautiful Arab horse was rear-
ing, nostril expanded, mane to the breeze, and
neighing for the warrior summons. The Slav's
eyes sparkled. Ah ! the fine life a few days hence !
the good solid blows he was soon to give ! But
what a pity that Lebeau in going on to Mar-
seilles had taken the luggage with him ! How he
wished that she might see him in his lieutenant-
general's uniform ! Thus exciting himself, he fan-
cied the gates of the towns all forced, the republi-
cans put to flight, and he pictured his triumphal
entry into Leybach, the streets gay with banners.
She would be there, thank God ! He would send
for her and install her in a splendid palace at the
gates of the town. There they would continue to
see each other as freely as in Paris. To these fine
projects S^phora did not answer very much. No
doubt she would have preferred to keep him for
herself, wholly her own; and Christian admired
324 Kings in Exile.
that silent abnegation which placed her so truly
in her station as mistress of the king.
Ah ! how he loved her, and how quickly that
evening at the hotel des Faisans went by in their
red room ; the great light curtains dropped before
the summer evening of a little town with its few
lights, humming with the talk of promenaders or
of persons before their doors, — soon dispersed,
however, by the '* taps " of drum and bugle. What
kisses, what follies, what passionate promises, going
to rejoin the kisses and oaths of the night before !
Delightfully weary, pressing against each other,
they listened to their hearts beating with great
throbs, while the warm wind shook their curtains,
after murmuring in the trees and scattering the
drops of a fountain in the little garden of the
hotel, that resembled an Arab patio, into which
gleamed the red and flickering lamp of the office.
One o'clock. It was time to go. Christian
dreaded this wrench at the last moment, believing
that he should have to struggle against prayers and
appeals that would summon all his courage to with-
stand. On the contrary, Sephora was ready first,
determined to accompany him to the station, less
anxious for her love than for the honour of her
royal lover. . . Ah ! if he could only have heard
the "' ouf ! " of relief she gave, cruel creature, when,
standing alone upon the platform she saw the two
green eyes of the train wind away in the distance !
If he could but have known how glad she was to
return to the hotel alone for a night's rest, saying
to herself as the empty omnibus jolted over the
The Night- Train, 325
old paved streets of Fontainebleau, In a composed
tone, utterly without any loverlike emotion : ** Now,
if Tom has only done what is necessary ! . ."
Most assuredly Tom had done what was neces-
sary ; for on the arrival of the train at Marseilles,
Christian II., getting out of his carriage, valise in
hand, was much astonished to see a flat cap with
silver lace approach him and request, very politely,
that he would enter the office for a moment.
*'Why? . . Who are you?" asked the king,
very haughtily.
" Commissary of inspection," the flat cap replied,
bowing.
In the office. Christian found the prefect of
Marseilles, a former journalist, with a red beard
and a shrewd and lively face.
** I regret to inform your Majesty that your jour-
ney ends here," he said with exquisite politeness.
'* My government cannot allow a prince to whom
France has given hospitality to profit by that
privilege to conspire and arm against a friendly
nation."
The king attempted to protest. But every detail
of the expedition was known to the prefect.
" You intended to embark at Marseilles ; your
companions at Cette, on a steamer from Jersey . . .
the landing to be made on the beach at Gravosa ;
the signal two rockets, one on board, the other on
shore. . . You see we are thoroughly informed. . .
So they are at Ragusa ; and I am saving you from
a veritable ambuscade."
326 Kings in Exile,
Christian II,, thunderstruck, asked himself who
could possibly have revealed information known
only to himself, the queen, de Hezeta, and one
other, whom he was far indeed from suspecting.
The prefect smiled in his blond beard.
" Come, monsieur," he said, '' you must make up
your mind to it. The affair is a failure. You may
be more lucky another time — and more prudent
also. . . At present I entreat your Majesty to
accept the shelter which I offer at the prefecture.
Elsewhere you will be at the mercy of annoying
curiosity. The affair is known in the town. . . "
Christian made no immediate reply. He looked
round at the little office with its green arm-chair,
green boxes, porcelain stove, and the huge cards
marked with train departures, the miserably bour-
geois corner where his heroic dream had come to
nought and the last echoes of Rodoitza died away.
He was like a traveller in a balloon, starting for
heights above all summits and coming down almost
at the same place in a peasant's hovel with his poor
collapsed aerostat, a bundle of gummed cloth, under
the roof of a stable.
He ended however, by accepting the Invitation,
and found in the prefect's apartments a really
Parisian interior, — a charming wife, very good
musician, who after dinner and a general conversa-
tion, in which were reviewed all the topics of the
day, sat down to the piano and turned over the
score of a recent opera. The lady had a very
pretty voice and sang agreeably; little by little,
Christian approached her and talked music and
The Night' Train. 327
opera. The " Echos of Illyria" was lying on the
piano between the ** Reine de Saba " and the
" Jolie Parfumeuse." Madame requested the king
to show her the time and tone of his native songs.
Christian II. sang several of the popular airs :
" Sweet eyes, blue as summer skies," and " Young
girls, Hsten as you braid your hair. . . "
And while he thus leaned, pale and seductive,
on the piano, taking the intonations and the mel-
ancholy attitude of an exile, afar on the lUyrian
seas, where the '* Echos " sang of waves snow-
tipped and shores of bristling cactus, a fine enthu-
siastic band of youth and hope, whom Lebeau
had neglected to delay, was sailing joyously to
death, with wind abaft and cries of ** Long live
Christian II.!"
328 Kings in Exile,
o
XIII.
IN THE CHAPEL.
" My dear love, we have just been brought back
to the citadel of Ragusa, M. de Hezeta and I, after
a session of ten hours in the Corso theatre, where
the council of war appointed to try us was sitting.
We are unanimously condemned to death.
*' I must tell you that I like it better so. At least
one now knows what to expect, and we shall be no
longer in solitary confinement. I may read your
dear letters, and I can write to you. Silence was
choking me. To know nothing of you, my Colette,
of my father, of the king, whom I thought killed,
the victim of an ambush ! Happily his Majesty
escapes with a sad disappointment and the loss of
a few loyal servants. Things might have been
worse.
"The newspapers must have told you — have
they not? — how matters turned out. The counter-
order of the king by some incredible fatality never
reached us. At seven in the evening, as agreed
upon we were to leeward of the islands, which was
the rendezvous : Hezeta and I on deck, the others
below, all armed, equipped, with your pretty
cockade in their hats. We cruised about for two
hours, three hours. Nothing in sight but fisher-
In the Chapel. 329
men's boats or those great feluccas of the coast-
guard service. Night came on and with it a
sea-fog very hindering to our meeting with the
king. After long waiting, we ended by thinking
that his Majesty's steamer must have passed ours
without seeing us, and that he himself might have
landed. And sure enough, from the shore where
we were told to expect our signal, a rocket went
up. That signified : ' Disembark ! ' No longer
any doubt, the king was there ; we started to join
him.
*' In virtue of my knowledge of the country — -
many a time I have shot wild-duck along this coast
— I commanded the first boat, Hezeta the second,
M. de Miremont the third with the Parisians. We
were all Illyrians in my boat and our hearts beat
high. The country was before us! — that black
shore rising in the fog and ending in a small red
speck, the revolving light of Gravosa; still, the
silence on the shore surprised me. Nothing but
the sound of receding waves, like the clapping
of wet cloths ; not that murmur which the most
silent of crowds must make, the clicking of arms,
the panting of restrained breaths.
" ' I see our men ! . .' said San Giorgio, in a low
voice close beside me.
*' We discovered, the moment we sprang ashore,
that what we had taken for the king's volunteers
were clumps of cactus and Barbary figs behind the
beech. I advanced. No one. But the sands
were trampled and cut up. I said to the marquis :
* It is suspicious. . . Let us re-embark.' Un-
330 Kings in Exile,
fortunately the Parisians arrived just then. There
was no restraining them. Away they went, scatter-
ing along the shore, examining the bushes, the
copses. All of a sudden, a line of fire, the crackle
of a volley. They shouted : * Treachery ! . . treach-
ery ! . . get back ! ' and rushed for the boats. A
regular helter-skelter like sheep, maddened, jost-
ling, into the sea. A moment of wild panic,
lighted by the moon, just risen, which showed us
our English sailors escaping with all oars to the
ship. . . But it did not last long. Hezeta was
the first to spring forward, revolver in hand.
* Avanti ! . . avanti ! . .' What a voice ! The
whole shore resounded with it. We flung our-
selves behind him. . . Fifty against an army ! . .
There was nothing to do but die. That is what
they all did, with a grand courage : Pozzo, de
Mehda, the little de Soris, your lover of last year,
Henri de Trebigne — calling out to me in the
melee : * Look here, Herbert, we miss the guz-
las. . .' and Jean de Veliko, who sang ' La Ro-
doi'tza ' as he sabred his way, all — all — fell ; I
saw them on the shore, lying on the sand, looking
up to the sky. The rising tide came up and
buried them, the dancers at our ball ! . . Less
fortunate than our comrades, the marquis and I,
sole survivors of that hail-storm, were taken pris-
oners, bound, and ridden into Ragusa on mule-
back, your Herbert roaring with impotent rage,
while Hezeta, very calm, said merely : ' It is
fate. . . I expected it ! . .' Strange man ! How
could he know that we should be betrayed, sacri-
In the Chapel. 331
ficed, received on landing with pointed guns and
volleys of bullets? And if he knew it, why did
he lead us ? However, the stroke has missed ;
the game is still to play again with more pre-
cautions.
" I now understand from your dear letters, which
I never tire of reading and rereading, why the
settlement of our case has hung on so long, why
these sessions of black robes in the citadel, these
negotiations about our two lives, these ups and
downs and long delays. So it seems that the
wretches are treating us as hostages, hoping that
the king, who would not renounce his rights for
hundreds of millions, would yield at last, rather
than sacrifice two of his faithful servants. And
you are angry, dear, that he does not; you are
amazed, blinded by your tenderness, that my
father does not urge him in favour of his son.
But a Rosen — could a Rosen do so base a
thing? . . He does not love me less, the poor old
man, and my death will be to him an awful blow.
As for our sovereigns, whom you accuse of cruelty,
we do not have, in judging them, the lofty point of
view from which they govern men. They have
duties, rights, outside of common rules. Ah !
what things could Meraut tell you about that. I
feel them, but I cannot express them. Thoughts
stay within, they will not come out ; my jaws are
too heavy. How many a time has this hampered
me with you, whom I love so much, but to whom
I could never tell it ! Even here, separated by so
many leagues and those thick iron bars, the thought
332 Kings in Exile,
of your sweet gray eyes, so Parisian, those mis-
chievous lips beneath the pretty Httle nose that
wrinkles to deride me, still intimidates, still para-
lyzes me.
" And yet, before I leave you forever, I must
indeed strive to make you understand for once,
that I have loved but you in this world, and that
my life began the day when I first saw you. Do
you remember it, Colette? It was in those shops
in the Rue Royale, that agency of Levis. We were
there, my father and I, by chance, so-called. You
were trying a piano ; you played, you sang some-
thing so gay, so gay, and it made me long, I knew
not why, to weep. Ah ! I had fallen in love. . .
Who would have thought it ! A marriage a la
Parisientte, a marriage through an agency, to turn
into a marriage of love ! And since then, in society,
in any society, I have seen no woman so delightful
as my Colette. You may rest easy, you were
always with me, even absent ; the thought of your
pretty little visage kept me forever in good-
humour; I laughed to myself all alone when I
thought of it It is true that you have always
inspired me to that — to laughing tenderly. . .
Why, even now, when our fate is terrible, especially
the way in which they present it to us — Hezeta
and I are m 
