THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 v\ 
 
 y
 
 VALENTIN.
 
 LONDON : 
 EOBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 f 
 
 VALENTIN 
 
 /rencd ptfs Stan) of SeHan. 
 
 By HENKY KINGSLEY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'GEOFFREY HAMLYN,' 'OLD MARGARET,' 'THE HARVEY S,' 
 ' HORNBY MILLS,' ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND. 
 
 1872. 
 
 [All rights reserved."]
 
 fltl 
 
 VALENTIN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 My father, at this present moment, in spite 
 of all that has come and gone, is a very rich 
 man. I do not say that he is rich as the 
 English understand it, but he has even now 
 rents to the amount of 48,000 francs a 
 vear, about 2000/. sterling- Had he been 
 poor, it might have been better or worse 
 for me, but he is rich even now. I am the 
 only son, and so I have been brought up in 
 entire idleness. I have had certainly a fine 
 education, partly at Metz and partly at 
 home ; but I have never done anything 
 great, simply because I never was taught 
 VOL. i. b 

 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 how to do anything. I am informed that 
 some of you young Englishmen are in ex- 
 actly the same position ; but it is hard to 
 believe, because I have always been taught 
 that you are so very practical. 
 
 You demand my nationality; I reply 
 that I am entirely uncertain of it. I call 
 myself a Frenchman. Still, although the 
 best part of my father's estates are now in 
 Germany, I begin to believe that I have no 
 nationality at all ; I speak German quite as 
 well as I do French. My heart is in France, 
 but my home is in Germany. The English 
 and the Scotch were at deadly war for 
 many years, yet now they are but one na- 
 tion. You can understand then that I, al- 
 though a Frenchman, have no prejudices; 
 in fact, I think that the people of the Rhine 
 Provinces are much more intelligent than 
 the peasants of Alsace, Lorraine, and Cham- 
 pagne, but I like the French the best. 
 
 When I talk with a good Englishman 
 he will always allow that the Scotch are
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. O 
 
 better educated than the English, but he 
 loves the English best; may it not be so 
 with ine? I must, however, leave specula- 
 tion and come to fact. I must, I fear, tell 
 you all about myself, except my character. 
 That I cannot give you, for I do not know 
 it myself. Pasteur Leroi, who prepared me 
 for confirmation, and started me to school 
 at Metz, wept when I went away, and told 
 me that I was a little angel ; whereas Mon- 
 seigneur the Bishop of Luxemburg on one 
 occasion, in consequence of my upsetting a 
 chair during mass, while I was on a visit 
 there, had a private interview with me, 
 boxed my ears, and said I was a little devil. 
 So do not you see I am rather abroad be- 
 tween the opinions of these two gentlemen, 
 both of whom are infallible ? 
 
 As I cannot give you anything more 
 about my character (I was forgetting again, 
 old Mathilde always says that I am a wehr 
 wolf, which is not true, and she is an Alsa- 
 tian), I had better tell you all the facts I
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 know about my birth, parentage, and edu- 
 cation. I hope before I begin that you will 
 entirely dismiss from your minds the re- 
 mark which old Mathilde made. I am not 
 a wehr wolf at all ; I am not afraid of 
 wolves, I allow that. I have killed more 
 wolves than any young man of my age, but 
 I have let many go because I make them 
 my hunting dogs when I want venison. It 
 is an easy thing when you know how to do 
 it; still, the reputation of being too familiar 
 with the wolves has been carried by old 
 Mathilde, the pedlar, from one end of the 
 Ardennes to the other, and has done me 
 no good. 
 
 At Petange, in Luxemburg, the other 
 day, I brought in a roebuck on my shoul- 
 ders, from the woods above Longwy late at 
 night, and cut him up in the back kitchen. 
 I wanted a steak cut off it for my supper. 
 Would you believe it, the idiotic landlord 
 sent for the priest and had the meat sprin- 
 kled with holy water before he would cook
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 5 
 
 a pound of it? In fact, I have my enemies, 
 and that old witch, Mathilde, is one of 
 them. She has the evil eye, that woman; 
 she cursed the Brandenburg Hussars all 
 through the wood by Audun la Tige, but 
 she showed them the way. She has not been 
 very poor since. She has taken the au- 
 befge at Audun la Romain. I know her, 
 she tried to ruin me, but she has not suc- 
 ceeded. Having for the present blown off 
 the steam about this most abominable old 
 smuggling pedlar (with whom I hope to be 
 right sides uppermost before I die), 1 will 
 proceed as quietly as the memory of my 
 unutterable wrongs will allow me. That 
 old wretch, indeed! I beg of you! She 
 ought to be ducked in a horsepond. I was 
 so glad when the Chasseurs d'Afrique 
 caught her and towed her along behind a 
 horse, with a picket rope, to show them the 
 line of the Luxemburg frontier. Well she 
 knew it, the smuggling old trot. 
 
 You say that I enrage myself in an un-
 
 6 VALENTIN : 
 
 necessary manner about this old woman. 
 Bah ! it is always the way with you Eng- 
 lish ; you are seldom enraged, but when you 
 are it is to good purpose ! If you say that 
 I am unnecessarily enraged about this old 
 woman, wait until I have told my story, 
 and decide then. I tell you that I hate her 
 entirely. 
 
 I was born in Sedan, at the house at the 
 corner of the street opposite the Statue of 
 Turenne, as you go towards Bazeilles. My 
 father's town house was there, his country 
 house was at Fond cle Givonne. My father 
 was from Treves, but my mother taught 
 me to speak, and taught me in French, and 
 not in German, as my father spoke gener- 
 ally. She also told me very early in life 
 that the German Rhine Provinces were the 
 property of the French; my father, on the 
 other hand, told me persistently that Alsace 
 and Lorraine — or, as he called them, Elsass 
 and Lotheringen — were the property of 
 the Germans. 1 cared but little for it all
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. i 
 
 then, but I loved my mother better than 
 my father, and so I grew up a Frenchman. 
 Our accursed fortifications, the things 
 which have ruined us for a generation, if 
 not for all time, were made by Vauban; evil 
 be to his name, he has entrapped more 
 armies than any other man ever did. I 
 hope some day or another that we shall 
 have no fortifications at all, but shall fight 
 as you English propose to do behind your 
 hedges, from point to point, where neither 
 cavalry nor artillery can act, and where 
 an enemy's pioneer who offers to put a 
 spade in the ground is a dead man. I 
 should very much like to see the army 
 which could fight through Kent, so long as 
 you have a hundred thousand regulars, with 
 a hundred thousand sharpshooting volun- 
 teers to back them, and your fleet behind 
 the enemy. But I am talking of your 
 country, not of mine. 
 
 In Lorraine and Champagne there is 
 neither hedge nor ditch ; you can gallop a
 
 8 VALENTIN : 
 
 horse for miles and miles without one single 
 jump. There is no place of shelter like 
 your continuous English hedges, from which 
 you can fight from point .to point, and 
 among which a Garibaldian rabble might 
 beat the best German troops. Our great 
 Ke volution (of which you have doubtless 
 heard) subdivided the land so infinitesimally 
 that every half acre was valuable, and so 
 fences were entirely done away with. While 
 we were on the offensive this did not matter, 
 we had Strasbourg, Metz, Toul, Phalsbourg, 
 Montmedy, Longwy, Thionville, between us 
 and the outer barbarians, who beat us in 
 art and in education ; but when we were on 
 the defensive the matter was utterly changed. 
 Our troops were detained to defend these 
 garrisons, the enemy took but little notice 
 of them, leaving but a moiety of their force 
 to mask and to reduce them, while the main 
 stream marched on, after they passed us in 
 our disaster. I am, however, anticipating, 
 though not in an unnecessary manner.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 9 
 
 Every English boy should know how to 
 defend his home, and every English boy 
 can learn it. Mon Dieu ! if we French boys 
 had had a Kent or a Sussex, not to mention 
 a sea between us and Germany, this would 
 never have happened. See what you Eng- 
 lish boys have — liberty and opportunity to 
 drill* with the best arms round your own 
 homes ; see that you do so. Let the Eng- 
 lish boy who will not drill be deprived of 
 other sports. There should be a moral 
 compulsion. You will see why I say this 
 in time.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The first thing I can remember is the old 
 slope on the glacis of Sedan, beyond the 
 gate which leads to Fond de Givonne. My 
 constant attendant, Jacques Cartier, who was 
 husband of the Mathilde previously spoken 
 of, used to bring me here and lay me in 
 the sun, when I was very little. He was 
 a very good man, and my father trusted 
 him profoundly ; but I remember very well 
 to have heard my mother say that he was 
 not happy with his wife. I know that he 
 was trusted continually with my precious 
 person, and also I know that he kept a 
 little shop by the bridge on the Meuse, 
 where he sold images and crucifixes. His 
 wife was a travelling pedlar woman, even 
 then, and she used to make more money
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 11 
 
 than he did, for I have heard her tell him 
 of it a score of times in the most angry 
 manner. The fact is that she was a smug- 
 gler. She put it about that the wolves 
 would not touch me ; I can swear that they 
 never would touch her. I have known her 
 come from Bouillon, over the hill, in the 
 snow "on the darkest night. 
 
 That side of Sedan towards Fond de 
 Givonne is very pleasant in summer; for 
 a great part of the glacis is planted with 
 trees, which whisper gently in the summer 
 wind, and where you can play or read, or 
 lie on your back looking up on the sum- 
 mer sky and the few fleeting clouds which 
 traverse the blue sky of Champagne and 
 cast purple shadows on the growing vines. 
 There are nice places also, secret places, 
 between the scarp and counterscarp, where 
 the flowers grow, toad-flax, purple geranium, 
 wild pinks, and campanulas. Here, on the 
 glacis, one can have great amusement when 
 the boys of the Ecole Polytechnique come
 
 12 VALENTIN : 
 
 out ; for by borrowing the citizens' ladders 
 one can make a real escalade, and get into 
 the casemates and frighten the wives of 
 the artillerymen who live there. They are 
 mostly middle-aged women, and when we 
 came through the embrasures into their 
 rooms, would throw saucepans and casse- 
 roles at us, crying out that we were young 
 devils of the Lycee; we would eat or spill 
 their soup, on the other hand, which was 
 amusing, though wrong. 
 
 Under the guidance of Jacques Cartier, 
 I soon began to go farther afield than the 
 glacis, right up into Fond de Givonne, to 
 my father's country house, on the road to 
 Givonne and Bouillon. I always thought 
 then, and I think now, that this house, 
 lying at the end of the broad dusty street, 
 is one of the most beautiful houses in the 
 world. You could scarcely see it from 
 the street, for it was blocked in by a tall 
 white wall; but when you had opened the 
 door in the wall, you saw the porch at the
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 13 
 
 end of along arched trellis-work of the vines 
 of Champagne, brilliant green in the hottest 
 sun, with clusters of dull purple grapes 
 hanoing down. Underneath this beautiful 
 arcade grew roses, Souvenir de Malmaison, 
 General Jacqueminot, Gloire de Dijon, your 
 own ravishing English moss-rose, and your 
 Cabbage rose. When the vines were bare, 
 and the March wind was shrill and wild, 
 we had other flowers— Violets, Primroses, 
 Crocuses, and Hepaticas. When the vines 
 began to shelter us from the sun with 
 their cool greenery, we had other flowers 
 —Jonquils, Narcissus, and the pale blue 
 English Cowslip, the Diana among flowers, 
 which my father had brought with his own 
 hand from Yorkshire, and which not one 
 Englishman in ten knows even by name. 
 In autumn, when the vine-leaves would 
 fall yellow and sear whenever the guns 
 of the fortress were fired for practice, and 
 when the windows would rattle in the still 
 autumn air with concussion, when little
 
 14 VALENTIN: 
 
 Marie would pretend to be frightened, and 
 say, ' It is the Allies who come,' then we 
 would have other flowers — Reines Mar- 
 guerites and Chrysanthemums. But when 
 the vine-leaves began to drop, I cared little 
 for the flowers, because my heart was in 
 the forest, in the old forest of the Ar- 
 dennes, the forest which your Shakespeare 
 has immortalised for ever. 
 
 You will notice, then, that this long 
 alley of vines completely hid the house 
 until you were close upon the porch. When 
 you came face to face with the house it- 
 self, you would, were you a stranger, say, 
 'Ah!' and look aloft at the wonderful 
 mass of high sloping roofs, with dormer 
 windows and clustered turrets, the home 
 of innumerable pigeons. The shadowless 
 white chateau soared aloft into the blue 
 sky most splendidly ; beside you was a 
 fountain, playing night and day in a basin 
 set in grass; below were woodlands; be- 
 yond was Sedan ; and far away rolled the
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 15 
 
 glorious old Meuse, like a silver riband, to- 
 ward Namur, toward Rotterdam, toward 
 the cold northern sea. 
 
 ' It was a' pleasant place in times of yore, 
 But something ails it now, the place is cursed.' 
 
 Heaven ! how I loved it ! My whole 
 life seems bound up in it; every sacred 
 stone of it is precious to me, and it seems 
 quite impossible that it can ever be seri- 
 ously touched. Strategetically, it is of no 
 use whatever; for it lies in a hollow under 
 the brow of the hill, and its only possible 
 utilisation is for the headquarters of a 
 general or a crown prince. 
 
 Some part of the old house dated from 
 the time of Godfrey de Bouillon, an old 
 and somewhat turbulent neighbour of my 
 ancestors. I have read every biography 
 of that gentleman, but I cannot find the 
 name of my mother's family (did I tell 
 you my mother's family name ? no, by the 
 bye, I don't think I did. De Quintain, if
 
 16 VALENTIN: 
 
 you £>lease) mentioned in it. The main 
 part of the building is sixteenth century, 
 exactly the sort of building which I see 
 reproduced in Scotland, at Holyrood, at 
 Grandtully, at Weem, and elsewhere ; for 
 the Scotch were much abroad, and copied 
 us in many things, notably in our archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 I have studied our chateau at Fond de 
 Givonne; but as our archives were lost in 
 the Revolution, I can make out but little 
 about it. My father is an Alsatian Schnei- 
 der, and the chateau came to him on his 
 marriage with Mademoiselle de Quintain; 
 so he cares nothing about the legends of 
 the De Quintains. My mother tells me 
 frankly that she does not know, and that 
 her mother did not know, the reason why 
 on every keystone and gargoyle appears 
 the wolf's head. It is our crest also; but 
 my mother does not know why. Old Ma- 
 thilde says that she knows, and she knows 
 so much of the wickedness of this world,
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 17 
 
 smuggling old woman as she is, that I 
 should not be surprised if she did know. 
 You don't know what an abominable old 
 woman that is. She makes horrible witch 
 rhymes, and pretends that they are old 
 legends. I asked her about the wolf busi- 
 ness, and why our house was all over wolves, 
 once when I was very young, and she ans- 
 wered, 
 
 ' Quintain est mort, 
 
 Le loup de Sedan ; 
 Les traiteurs dehors, 
 
 Et les Prussiens dedans.' 
 
 She always hated my father, and I am 
 bound to say that the feeling was entirely 
 mutual. I cannot get at the bottom of 
 the wolf story. I do not say that I have 
 not heard at least one dozen versions of it ; 
 but I cannot verify a single one. I have 
 been told, for example, that my mother's 
 ancestor, De Quintain, was a squire of God- 
 frey de Bouillon, and that he saved him 
 from a wolf at Libramont, and that God- 
 frey de Bouillon gave him our castle and 
 vol. i. c
 
 18 VALENTIN. 
 
 lands for doing it. About which I do not 
 happen to believe one word, simply because 
 no man of the commonest nerve need fear 
 a wolf any more than he need a fox. But 
 there are two singular stories about these 
 wolves which I will tell, because they were 
 told me by Jacques Cartier, and so I know 
 them to be true.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 First, then, as regards these wolf reports, 
 very soon after I was born, my mother was 
 lying with me on the terrace, and a large 
 dog -wolf came up along the gravel path, 
 looked at us both, and then trotted away 
 among the flowers before my mother had 
 time to scream for assistance. Secondly, 
 Cartier left me out on the same terrace, 
 lying on my stomach in the sun one day, 
 and when he came back a she -wolf was sit- 
 ting on her haunches watching me. At 
 least so he swears. I have seen so much 
 of wolves that I can, on simply scientific 
 grounds, believe a great deal of them. 
 These two stories I most implicitly believe ; 
 but with regard to our original connection 
 with wolves, I have nothing whatever to
 
 20 VALENTIN : 
 
 say. I only know that our neighbours at 
 Fond de Givonne used to say, 'Don't say 
 anything beginning with an L before a 
 Schneider, or the conversation will turn 
 on wolves.' And the curious thing was 
 that there are hardly any wolves close to 
 Sedan ; you must go into the Ardennes for 
 them. 
 
 I had but little education until I went 
 to the Lycee ; I was an only son, and I was 
 what you English would call spoilt. My 
 father and my mother taught me to read, 
 write, and sum; and my father, who had a 
 manufactory of wool in Sedan, told me that 
 I should make a man of business if I would 
 apply, and not go out so much at night. 
 Dr. Tullier used to come and see me at 
 this time (I was then eleven), and I rather 
 wondered why, though I liked him. I lis- 
 tened once, and I heard him say, 
 
 ' Let the boy have his own way ; his 
 mind has been abused by these superstitious 
 old women.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 21 
 
 ' Meaning Madame ?' said my father 
 with a laugh. 
 
 ' Yes,' said the doctor, ' and yourself 
 also, and Cartier. You have let this wolf 
 legend grow into the boy's brain ; you can- 
 not get it out at once. The boy is a beau- 
 tiful, well- grown boy, and I will not see 
 him ruined by half a dozen old women.' 
 
 'Shall I tell the priest?' 
 
 'Lunatic! no,' said the doctor, 'that 
 would be worse than all. Send him to the 
 Lycee, I will speak to young La Roche- 
 jacquelaine. When did your boy run away 
 last ?' 
 
 ' Three days ago.' 
 
 ' Did he bring home anything?' 
 
 ' The old story — a wolf's skin.' 
 
 ' Was Cartier with him ?' 
 
 'No,' said my father; 'he disappeared, 
 and he came back tired and worn, with the 
 fresh-flayed wolf's skin on his shoulder and 
 the little artillery carbine under his arm. 
 It is very horrible.'
 
 22 VALENTIN. 
 
 ' Not at all,' said the doctor ; t the little 
 hero!' 
 
 Now all this was strictly true, and it 
 was in consequence of these escapades of 
 mine that I got the name of the ' Wehr 
 Wolf.' I must explain to you how all this 
 happened.
 
 - CHAPTER IT. 
 
 Cartier was at the bottom of it all, and 
 I was no more a wehr wolf than you are, 
 though, thanks to my kind neighbours, I 
 got the credit of being one. Cartier had 
 been a Garde Champetre, and knew very 
 much of what is still the greatest forest in 
 Europe, the Ardennes. Whether he ever 
 assisted Mathilde in her smuggling I cannot 
 say ; but I know that very early in life he 
 taught me the use of the carbine, and car- 
 ried me over the frontier to the farm be- 
 yond Chateau Neuf, where his sister lived 
 with her granddaughter Marie. 
 
 I suppose that the beginning of it all 
 was this : Cartier asked my father if I might 
 stay away for a week with him at the farm 
 beyond Chateau Neuf, and my father had 
 gladly consented. In this resulted the first
 
 24 
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 great journey of my life. Kecall your own 
 first journey, and you will sympathise with 
 me in mine. I was now fifteen years old, 
 and was at school at the Lycee in Sedan. 
 
 Our French Lycees are utterly unlike 
 your English public schools. We have far 
 more petty discipline, and far less liberty. 
 The routine of our education again is com- 
 pletely different from that of yours and 
 from that of the Germans. The Germans 
 are forced to learn everything; the English 
 learn anything they like; the French are 
 forced to learn, but they are taught very 
 little which is of any use to them. I can 
 match any English boy I ever met in Latin 
 and in mathematics, and can beat him 
 hollow in history; but I never met a Ger- 
 man boy who was not my master in really 
 useful matters, such as geography, natural 
 science, and modern languages. Why, Ger- 
 man boys can— a great many of them— talk 
 English. I cannot. Even now it seems to 
 me a barbarous collection of mere arbitrary
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 25 
 
 sounds, and yet my German friends tell me 
 that it is incomparably the finest language 
 in the world, and that your poet Shake- 
 speare is the finest of all poets for all time. 
 Once more, neither English nor German 
 seem to understand poets like Hugo and 
 Beranger; they say that they are unable 
 to rhylne. I think that the Teutonic races 
 will never understand the Latin. 
 
 I have read much about Rugby and 
 much about Eton. From my point of view, 
 they must be absolute paradises. Eton, in 
 particular, would seem to me more like the 
 garden of the old man of the mountain than 
 a place of discipline. There, they tell me, 
 in a beautiful building, by a beautiful river, 
 close to the greatest palace in the world, 
 are eight hundred boys, who are actually 
 forced to do nothing at all in the way of 
 learning beyond simple class lessons, but 
 who are forced to learn to swim before they 
 are allowed to row in a boat. The story 
 of Rugby, told by Mr. Hughes, reads like
 
 26 
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 an Idyl to me. There is at Rugby force, 
 brutality, and, as he himself hints, vice. 
 We have in our Lycees all three things. I 
 suppose that they are everywhere ; but we 
 have very few masters who make friends of 
 their boys as your English masters seem to 
 do. Your punishments, too, are different, 
 and not so degrading. You are flogged, 
 we never are; you have impositions, so 
 have we ; but I would far sooner be flogo-ed 
 than be put en piquet for the whole hour of 
 recreation. Your men of Trafalgar were ha- 
 bitually flogged. Fancy a boy of from four- 
 teen to eighteen, nearly a man, being put 
 with his face to the wall of the playground 
 for an hour, in sight of his comrades (who 
 all jeer at him), for one ill-considered word. 
 I tell you that it makes boys desperate, and 
 rebellious against all authority. For me 
 I would much rather be flogged like any 
 of your noblemen's sons at Eton, and have 
 the degradation over, than stand en piquet 
 for half an hour. From what I learn I
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN". 27 
 
 think that your English schoolmasters are 
 the best of schoolmasters, though possibly 
 not the best instructors. The Freres Chre- 
 tiens are -very good instructors, but the 
 worst schoolmasters ; they care nothing for 
 boys with an opinion of their own, and we 
 most certainly care very little for them. 
 
 The Lycee, then, do you perceive, is by 
 no means such an agreeable place as your 
 Eton. I hated it, and when Jacques Cartier 
 called for me at four o'clock one summer's 
 morning, I made a sort of vow to myself 
 that I would never return to it any more. 
 
 My parents were both away at Metz, or, 
 as I thought, I should not have got leave for 
 my expedition, as they would have wanted 
 me at home. Cartier gave a receipt for my 
 person, and we immediately walked out to 
 my father's chateau at Fond cle Givonne, 
 from which we were in no hurry at all to 
 start, for we had many things to arrange. 
 I had breakfast in the kitchen with the 
 maids and young men, and they wished to
 
 28 VALENTIN : 
 
 know where I was going, or whether I was 
 going to stay with them. I had bound Car- 
 tier to secrecy, and so he confirmed me in 
 the story that we were going to Chateau 
 Neuf, and, probably, to Libramont. It was 
 certain that we were going to those places, 
 but where we were going after, that was our 
 secret, and we kept it. 
 
 I was heir and lord of the family. If I 
 had wanted anything, and it had cost fifty 
 pounds, I could have had it from any trades- 
 man in Sedan for asking, without consult- 
 ing my father ; so on this occasion I had no 
 difficulty in getting everything I wished for. 
 First, I told old Alice, our housekeeper, that 
 I must have two hundred francs, and about 
 that there was no difficulty at all — I wished 
 that I had said more ; then I got Louis, my 
 father's favourite young man, valet and 
 groom, to come up with me to my father's 
 study, and help me to arrange for our jour- 
 ney. You will perceive that I did not take 
 Cartier up there. There were reasons for
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 29 
 
 this. Cartier was a Norman of St. Malo 
 (he said himself a lineal descendant of the 
 famous Jacques). My father was more 
 than half German, and although he trusted 
 Cartier, he never would allow him any 
 liberties. Now I was bent on rummaging 
 and ransacking my father's study, and it 
 was possible that he might scold in his mild 
 way, which I did not want him to do ; but 
 I knew that if I could bring Louis in for 
 part of the blame, little would be said ; 
 whereas, if my father heard that Cartier had 
 taken his black beard into his study, he 
 would be really angry. Consequently, I 
 took Louis, or, to be more correct, Louis 
 took me, for I sat on his neck, with my legs 
 round his shoulders. Poor Louis ! my 
 heart is sorry for him as I write. I have 
 seen him and his brother Alphonse strip 
 themselves just as you do when you are 
 going to bathe, and jump into the wine -vat 
 together, splashing themselves up to the 
 chest with the jets of the red juice. Louis
 
 30 
 
 VALENTIN ; 
 
 was stained with a deeper red before he 
 went down at Ste. Marie. Well, this is little 
 to the purpose, though, as a Frenchman, I 
 cannot sometimes help thinking of the white 
 feet which I have seen so often in the wine- 
 vat turned up cold to the sky for ever. I 
 beg pardon for this digression, but as a man 
 of Champagne, the ruin of my country dis- 
 tresses me. We must submit; in fact, we 
 have submitted, but, at least, let us have 
 the sacred solace of lamentation. 
 
 Louis and I invaded my father's sacred 
 study, and then he set me down, and we 
 began our raid. The first thing fixed on 
 was an English trout-rod. I have men- 
 tioned before that my father made voyages 
 into your Yorkshire, in his business as a 
 wool manufacturer. Well, there he learnt 
 the art of fly-fishing for trout, an art un- 
 known to us. He had partly taught it to 
 me, and so I first desired his English rod, 
 knowing well that no other one was to be 
 got nearer than Frankfort-on-the-Maine, for
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 31 
 
 your English tourists never come our way. 
 But now another want possessed me ; I 
 must have his fly-book, for we cannot even 
 imitate your English flies. His fly-book 
 must be in some drawer, and I opened one. 
 There was a large paper lying on the top of 
 everything, and before I could stop myself, 
 I read: 
 
 [Copy.] 
 
 1 M. le Ministre, — I have said all that I 
 have to say. Alsace and Lorraine to Ger- 
 many, but Belgium to France. I would be 
 glad to know your ideas as regards tariffs in 
 case of the new arrangement being made ; 
 but as it is, I am transferring the greater 
 part of my property to Germany. I am 
 utterly disgusted with the course which 
 French affairs are taking, and decline to be 
 nominated. I have but one object in life — 
 to leave my only son rich, and to let him 
 marry well. I shall do that best, I con- 
 ceive, by putting him at the right side of
 
 32 VALENTIN : 
 
 the border. My son develops French pro- 
 clivities. — With high considerations, 
 
 ' George Schneider.' 
 
 I could not understand this at that time. 
 I looked under it, and found the fly-book. 
 I looked through it; the casting lines were 
 all right, and I was safe with the rest of the 
 paraphernalia which Louis had in his hand ; 
 rod, reel, casting lines, flies, were all right. 
 So far for the fish. Next for the winged 
 game. I could easily suit myself there. I 
 took down my father's breech-loading Le- 
 fauchaud, and told Louis to look about for 
 cartridges. Louis knew where they were, 
 and found one hundred and twenty, that I 
 considered would be enough and to spare. 
 What next? why, I am sorry to say, that 
 small document which I knew my father 
 had, giving the permission of no less a per- 
 son than the King of the Belgians for hunt- 
 ing in all his royal forests to the high-born 
 George Schneider of Sedan. I was perfectly
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 33 
 
 aware that my father had this permit, and 
 if I could have got hold of it, I fear I should 
 have used it. I could not tell where it 
 was. I consulted Louis, who would have 
 done anything in the world for me. 
 
 'Where is it again?' said Louis, laugh- 
 ing; 'why, here,' and he pointed to the 
 strong 'dox, let into the wall. I asked had 
 he the key? and he said, ' No, that the mas- 
 ter had the key.' I perceived at once I 
 must begin life as a brigand, and really was 
 not very sorry. The King of the Belgians 
 had given my father leave to sport; if I 
 was taken up I could explain matters. And 
 when all was said and done, the French had 
 joined with England in guaranteeing the 
 neutrality of Belgium. It was as broad as 
 it was long. If we guaranteed their neu- 
 trality, a little poaching more or less was 
 no matter. 
 
 The next thing I took was a splendid 
 breech - loading carbine, sighted for six 
 hundred yards. The cartridges for this 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 VALENTIN : 
 
 were not so easily found, even Louis was 
 puzzled; but at last they were found in my 
 father's dressing-room. I had now every- 
 thing I wanted, and I went down to Cartier, 
 Louis and I carrying the spoils, and found 
 him just sitting down to his dinner. He 
 pointed out to me that we could not start 
 until we had dined, and so I had dinner 
 also, among the servants ; Alice, the house- 
 keeper, presiding. 
 
 ' M. Valentin,' she remarked, ' is going 
 to rectify the frontier of France ; M. Valen- 
 tin is going to push on to the Rhine.' 
 
 ' As why then, Alice ?' I said. 
 
 1 You have taken all the arms in the 
 house, even down to the English fish spear' 
 (she alluded to the spike on the English 
 fishing-rod). 
 
 ' We are only going to Chateau Neuf,' I 
 
 said. 
 
 ' I have been to Chateau Neuf,' replied 
 Alice, 'but I never took two guns and a fish 
 spear.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 35 
 
 I thought that it was wisest to get off 
 without any farther argument, and so I 
 told Cartier that we must be off — Madame 
 Alice looking extremely black, when she 
 had given me the two hundred francs. 
 
 Cartier, then a handsome man, a little 
 over forty, carried the sac, the double-bar- 
 relled gun, and the fishing-rod ; for my 
 part, I carried the carbine only. But when 
 we had got only as far as Givonne (just 
 over the hill from Fond de Givonne), Car- 
 tier stopped me at an auberge, where sin- 
 gularly enough was his own wife (she was 
 twenty years older than he was, they said), 
 and she had two blankets strapped up a la 
 Prussien, one of which she put round my 
 neck, and said, 
 
 ' Pour le beau contraband 
 
 Qui marche a sa mort. 
 Les traiteurs dedans, 
 
 Et les Allemands dehors.' 
 
 The old witch left us after this, and I 
 was glad of it. I wonder what could have
 
 36 VALENTIN : 
 
 made a handsome manly fellow like Cartier 
 marry such a creature. I asked my father 
 once, and he said that the old woman knew 
 too much, and that Cartier owed her money. 
 We have no more to do with her at present. 
 Cartier and I went out into the glorious 
 Ardennes forest together, and all care was 
 left behind. I fear I must become confi- 
 dential here. I fear that I must tell you 
 something about Cartier. We used to call 
 him old Cartier, because we had known him 
 so long ; but he was not forty-three when 
 the day of devastation came on us. I must, 
 however, speak more of his principles than 
 of his personal appearance, or his age ; this 
 handsome man, as fine a man as ever you 
 saw — handsomer than any of you English 
 — was wrong in his principles on one point. 
 He declared that he was no poacher. He 
 was no poacher on French soil certainly, but 
 he had erected a theory that when you had 
 once crossed the border, all morality was 
 changed, and one could do as one liked. I
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 37 
 
 suspect, but only suspect, that it was by his 
 poaching forays into Belgium that he got 
 into trouble with that old witch, his wife, 
 and married her to keep her quiet, but I 
 cannot say. He had no children — I was the 
 only child he ever had ; and I regret to say 
 that as soon as I could walk stoutly, and be 
 trusted to run if required, he took me over 
 the frontier poaching. When I was ran- 
 sacking my father's study, you will observe 
 that I was very anxious for the permit of 
 King Leopold ; in fact, I knew perfectly 
 well where we were going, and I thought 
 that we should be safer with it. It is use- 
 less to disguise from you that I knew that 
 we should not be on French soil that night ; 
 but what did it matter to me? I had Car- 
 tier with me, and I loved him better than 
 all the world, after my father and mother. 
 
 And let me be more confidential still. 
 We French despise the Belgians. When 
 we see you English, who have conquered 
 India, and done many things, treating them
 
 38 VALENTIN. 
 
 as equals, we laugh. You have guaranteed 
 their neutrality, but even with you at their 
 backs we could chase them like sheep to- 
 morrow. Ay, beaten as we are, we could 
 wipe them off the face of Europe to-morrow 
 and make Frenchmen of them. Well, no. 
 We could not do that; they are not fit for 
 it. Judge then that Cartier and I conceived 
 that we had as good a right to shoot game 
 in Belgium as you English ever had to in- 
 vade India. They call me, these cackling 
 neighbours, a wehr wolf. Did I ever shoot 
 a head of French game without authority ? 
 Never. Were I an English landlord I 
 would prosecute every poacher at once. 
 But circumstances alter cases, or you Eng- 
 lish, with all your purism, would not be 
 masters of one -third of the globe now. 
 After this preface of apologies for my first 
 misdoing I will tell you how we fared.
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 It was a glorious August day when we left 
 the open fields, and plunged into the great 
 forest through a small by-path. I had been 
 in the forest before, but never in this part 
 of it. I was at once lost among the dense 
 copsewoocl through which Cartier brushed, 
 warnino- me to follow him at a little dist- 
 ance, lest the twigs should whip back into 
 my face. He walked very stoutly for two 
 hours, and said very little ; at last we came 
 to an open space in the forest, where the 
 trees were larger, and then he sat down 
 with me and talked. 
 
 ' Are you afraid, my darling?' he said. 
 I laughed, and said, ' No.' 
 ' Will you go with me wherever I shall 
 take you ?'
 
 40 VALENTIN : 
 
 'A Berlin, si vous voulez/ I replied. 
 
 'Are you afraid of your father's anger?' 
 
 ' No, so long as you do not commit him 
 to any indiscretion in my person.' 
 
 ' I will not do so, bien-aime. But now, 
 are you absolutely certain that you are 
 afraid of nothing, and will betray nothing ? 
 The poor are very poor hereabouts, and the 
 poorest make combinations, and I fear talk 
 sad nonsense sometimes ; for me I know no- 
 thing whatever about politics, I leave them 
 to the Emperor. We practically pay the 
 Emperor, and he, being a gentleman, will 
 naturally wish to keep his place and his 
 prestige, and earn his money. But there 
 are some, my dear, who object to this rule, 
 and would object to any other. Did you 
 ever hear of the Carbonari ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' I said, ' they were the charcoal- 
 burners; they were great conspirators.' 
 
 ' Should you be afraid of them if you 
 saw them?' 
 
 ' Not I. I should like to see them. My
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 41 
 
 father says that France will flourish under 
 a Eepublic ; so I cry always, ' Vive la Re- 
 publique de 1792.' 
 
 'My boy,' said Cartier sadly, 'you do 
 not know of what you speak. France is 
 no more educated for a Republic than I 
 am educated for Heaven. After two hun- 
 dred years more she might be fit for it; 
 that is to say, when she has got rid of the 
 great curse of the Latin nations — that of 
 lying. But it matters not; we sleep to- 
 night with the Carbonari, and you are not 
 afraid ?' 
 
 I reiterated that I was not, and then 
 we rose and went on, I walking with greater 
 firmness because I felt that there was a 
 trifle of danger in our expedition. You 
 English had once a great man called Nelson, 
 who, by his dexterity and valour, destroyed 
 two of our navies — the first at Aboukir, 
 the second at Trafalgar. I find that he 
 was not altogether a hero ; for at school 
 he stole pears, and on the ice in the Arctic
 
 42 VALENTIN : 
 
 regions he attacked a bear to get the skin 
 for his sister. On the horrible clay of Co- 
 penhagen, again, he disobeyed the orders of 
 his commandant, Avon a great victory, and 
 helped to drive the knife home to onr 
 heart. I will allow that there never was 
 such a man before or since ; but you Eng- 
 lish call him hero ! Well, then, I will not 
 dispute at all, not for one instant. I only 
 say that he was only such a hero as Gari- 
 baldi; he disobeyed rules, and succeeded. 
 I, for my part, am neither a Nelson nor a 
 Garibaldi. I disobeyed rules and laws and 
 the respectability of things, as did Nelson 
 and Garibaldi, and so I found myself among 
 the Carbonari. I confess that I should have 
 liked to find myself anywhere else. Nelson 
 was not exactly comfortable at Naples, 
 though he had it all his own way; and 
 Garibaldi was by no means comfortable at 
 Mentana. C'est tout egal. I am only a 
 Frenchman ; that is to say, a man who 
 has to give continual apologies, and so I
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 43 
 
 say that I was no more wrong in going 
 anions: the Carbonari than Nelson or Gari- 
 baldi were at Naples. We had neither of 
 us any more business in the Ardennes or 
 at Naples than you English have in India 
 or in Australia. Let he who is without 
 sin among you saintly English cast the 
 first stone at us French. You English are 
 the greatest pirates on the face of the 
 earth, with the exception of all the other 
 nations. You English-speaking races have 
 succeeded, while we have failed; you can- 
 not say of us that we have not tried. Your 
 successes are built on our failures ; for ex- 
 ample, who was the practical discoverer of 
 your new republic, Australia? Why, no 
 other than La Perouse. You give us no 
 credit at all ; and since Sedan you say that 
 we cannot fight. Our prestige is so far 
 gone that I have actually, as a French- 
 man, to make all these apologies before I 
 can tell you of a poaching expedition over 
 the frontier. I am no worse than others.
 
 44 VALENTIN : 
 
 You English, I ask of you, Where are the 
 North- American Indians? Where are the 
 Maories? Where are the native Aus- 
 tralians? Can you answer me? I think 
 not. You sneer and say, Where are the 
 Algerians? I answer that they are there 
 still, as we know to our bitter cost in our 
 affliction. Had Algeria gone to the Eng- 
 lish, the iron heel would have gone down 
 on her neck, and it would have been a 
 case of finis Polonice. Algeria was left for 
 France; and I, as a Frenchman, appeal to 
 you English as to whether or not she has 
 been used well or ill. I think that no 
 Englishman will dare to give me the lie 
 here. 
 
 But we will discuss no more now. We 
 are down again, and we must keep down, 
 or we shall be ruined for ever and a day. 
 I have only to tell you a plain narrative 
 as to how these matters came about. If I 
 talk politics, it is only because I think that 
 every youth should know about them. At
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 45 
 
 the present moment the turn of you Eng- 
 lish is coming, and you must decide. 
 
 Cartier and I were together among the 
 fern until the afternoon was far advanced, 
 and the sun was only illuminating the very 
 highest boughs. I spent my time in ga- 
 thering flowers, and packing them away in 
 a tin box, for the purpose of taking them 
 home to dry them. I knew something of 
 botany, and loved it; and I also knew some- 
 thing of entomology. I rambled about in 
 the wood, and of flowers I got Impatiens 
 noli me tangere, and Colchicum autumnale, 
 not to mention several geraniums, and a 
 fern which is rare with us, and rarer with 
 you, Botrychium lunaria, which I found on 
 a rock. Of butterflies I got some which 
 would make your mouth water in England ; 
 for example, the Purple Emperor, which 
 with us flies low, whereas you only get it 
 on the tops of trees ; the White Admiral, a 
 fly very rarely seen with you; and, prize 
 of all prizes, the Vancosa Apollo, a gigantic
 
 46 VALENTIN : 
 
 white butterfly, with a peacock's eye in the 
 centre of his wing — a fly which you Eng- 
 lish have not at all. When I got this last 
 prize, I returned to Cartier, who was smok- 
 fno- at the foot of a tree. I showed him the 
 Apollo and my flowers ; but he was not at 
 all enthusiastic. He told me to cast all 
 that rubbish away, for that we had a very 
 long journey before us. 
 
 ' "Where do we go, then ?' I asked. 
 
 ' Possibly to Cologne,' he answered, 
 quite quietly. 
 
 ' But is not that the capital of Prussia?' 
 I asked, with that ignorance of geography 
 which has cost our countrymen so much. 
 
 ' My pretty one,' he said, ' we are bound 
 on a long and dangerous expedition. Be- 
 lieve one thing, that if you acquit yourself 
 well your father will not be very angry.' 
 
 ' Does he consent, then ?' 
 
 ' Could you have been here if he did 
 not? But I have said too much already. 
 Throw those flowers away, and we will go
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 47 
 
 sleep with the Carbonari. Bear yourself 
 bravely ; and remember this — any indiscre- 
 tion which you commit will be visited, not 
 on you, but on me. You are safe, I am 
 not.' 
 
 ' But, Cartier, my dear,' I said, ' why 
 are you in danger ?' 
 
 ' Can I trust you ?' 
 
 ' To death.' 
 
 ' Then I will tell you. I am a spy.' 
 
 'That is extremely charming,' I said; 
 1 that suits me entirely. You are sent, then, 
 to outwit the Prussians?' 
 
 ' I am sent,' he said quietly, ' to gain 
 information. I do not know what your 
 father will say about my taking you with 
 me, nor do I care. I think that you will 
 be useful, and besides, I love you like my 
 own son. You can go back now if you 
 will.' 
 
 I said at once, ' I will go, and so long as 
 I am not asked to lie, or to do anything 
 dishonourable, I will stay with you to the
 
 48 VALENTIN : 
 
 death.' I had read of Major Andre, and I 
 thought that a bold and clever spy was one 
 of the most noble of men. 
 
 1 You see,' said Cartier slowly, ' this 
 sudden debacle of Austria at Sadowa ren- 
 ders it necessary that we should look to 
 ourselves. The English are totally useless, 
 they could not help us if they would. Prus- 
 sia has destroyed Austria, and she may 
 come to our doors next. Somebody wants 
 to know facts about the Prussian army 
 which he could never get from our rascally 
 lying French press, and he has sent me. 
 Somebody invests rather heavily in foreign 
 funds, and so I suppose that somebody 
 wants private intelligence.' 
 
 I nodded; I quite understood. 
 
 ' You will rarely sleep in a house. You 
 must lie out with me. You understand 
 that ?' 
 
 The delight of sleeping in the open air 
 was so romantically pleasant to me that I 
 begged him to say no more. He rose, we
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 49 
 
 shouldered our impedimenta, and I followed 
 him through the wood upwards, until we 
 came to a little spring which welled up 
 through the grass at the foot of a large 
 rock. I stooped and drank ; and as I got up, 
 Cartier put his hand on my shoulder and 
 said, 
 
 'Will you follow that stream down? 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 'To the end?' 
 
 ' Yes ; but whither would it lead me ?' 
 
 4 To Rotterdam.' 
 
 ' But that is in Holland.' 
 
 1 It is one of the springs of the Meuse,' 
 he said, ' and it leads you into a free coun- 
 try — a country which would perish under 
 its own sea sooner than give up its freedom. 
 Did you notice that little stream which we 
 crossed when we first came into the forest ?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 1 That stream goes into the Moselle, and 
 into German territory — into the territory 
 of a nation who will barter freedom for 
 
 vol. i. E
 
 50 VALENTIN : 
 
 power. I think much, my beloved, and I 
 am not sure whether I would be a French- 
 man or a German ; but see, when the wars 
 come, the ruin all falls upon us who live 
 on the watershed.' 
 
 We followed the trickling little burn 
 down through the trees and the copsewood, 
 until it formed a larger stream, swirling 
 over gravel and lying in deep pools under 
 alder stems. When we got to the first 
 meadow I put down my pack, and took out 
 the English trout rod, for the water was 
 dimpled every half minute by rising trout. 
 
 ' I can catch fish here,' I said, ' in the 
 English way which I have learned. Will 
 you wait for me ?' 
 
 ' I will go on to the charcoal-burners,' 
 he said. 'Follow the stream down; if you 
 are late I will come to you ;' and so he de- 
 parted. 
 
 It was just the best hour of the day, 
 and I put my tackle together very rapidly. 
 I was perfectly sure offish, and I used only
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 51 
 
 one fly, what you call a red palmer, though 
 no monk I know of, not even in Belgium, is 
 dressed in that peculiar red and black. I 
 had not cast half-a-dozen times when I 
 saw that whirl and splash in the water 
 which every good fisherman loves; I had 
 hold of a splendid trout over an English 
 pound in weight. I kept him out of the 
 weeds, and in two minutes had him gasping 
 on the grass. 
 
 I went on with more and more success. 
 I had my basket well lined with trout, 
 when a circumstance occurred, which is not 
 very pleasant for me to recall, but which 
 must be set down nevertheless. 
 
 Coming to a long, rapid shallow, ending 
 in a large pool, I saw fish rising on the 
 shallow which were evidently not trout. I 
 tried them with my red palmer, but they 
 would not take. They moved to the fly, 
 but it seemed too large for them. What 
 these fish were I did not know, but I de- 
 termined to have one of them • and taking
 
 52 VALENTIN: 
 
 out my father's fly-book, I sat down to con- 
 sider. I was in a deep glen, and only the 
 tops of the highest trees were lit up by the 
 sun. Opposite me was a cliff of broken 
 slate, nearly covered with copsewood of 
 oak, and, as I sat down, some of the broken 
 slate rattled and fell down, but I took no 
 notice at all. 
 
 I found a fly in my father's book, a very 
 small one, which was marked ' blue dun.' 
 I put that on, and threw over the heads of 
 these mysterious fish; the very first one 
 took, and when I had him on the grass I 
 found that he was a fish I had never seen 
 before — a Thymallus, a grayling. I had 
 read that these fish smelt like violets, and I 
 knelt down to smell him at once. There 
 was another rattle in the crags on the other 
 side of the stream, but I was so enchanted 
 with my grayling that I took no notice. 
 
 I caught six or seven of these most 
 beautiful salmonidae, and then I heard the 
 plunge of a great trout in the pool below
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 53 
 
 me. I changed my fly at once, and ap- 
 proached him with my old red palmer, 
 determining that one or other of us should 
 be master or man, and that I was not going 
 to be the man if I could help it. Again 
 the slate on the other side of the stream 
 broke and fell, and looking up more care- 
 fully, I saw a large brown dog hidden 
 among the fern. 
 
 I thought that it must be one of the 
 charcoal-burners' dogs, and I cried to him, 
 ' You go home, sir ; you will catch it' (you 
 will have punishment, in French) ; but he 
 did not go, and I did not care, because I 
 wanted my trout. 
 
 My trout rose like a gentleman, but he 
 was too strong for me. He broke my line, 
 and went in under an alder stump. I could 
 see my line on the weeds, and I was de- 
 termined to have that and, if possible, my 
 trout. I stripped myself naked and went 
 in, and, as I did so, the brown dog on the 
 other side set up a terrific howling. I never
 
 54 VALENTIN I 
 
 had as yet heard such a noise. It was like 
 ' Loup, Loup, Loup, Loup-garou !' My at- 
 tention, however, was fixed on my tackle 
 and ray trout. 1 followed my line until I 
 got hold of my trout and threw him, a 
 noble two-pounder, out on the grass. Then 
 I knelt down, naked as I was, to look at 
 him. 
 
 Sudden as the attack on La Chapelle, a 
 pistol-shot went over my head, followed by 
 a howl from the other side of the stream. 
 I started up, all bare as I was, with my 
 hands to my ears. Two horsemen were 
 behind me in the gathering gloom, one of 
 whom was wiping an American or English 
 revolver with his handkerchief. 
 
 We French are quicker than you Eng- 
 lish. I apologised at once. 'You were 
 not shooting at me, monsieur ?' I said ; ' and 
 1 apologise for being naked. I am a gen- 
 tleman, though in my present state of cos- 
 tume it would be impossible to see whether 
 I was or not.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 55 
 
 'I did not fire on you, my boy,' said 
 one, in what I thought the Alsatian accent ; 
 ' I fired at that wolf opposite. The beast ' 
 was watching you, and without your clothes 
 you would have been a dead boy in three 
 minues. Are you mad, or are you a wehr 
 
 wolf?' 
 
 'I am very much obliged to you, sir,' I 
 said, dressing rapidly. ' I thought that it 
 was a sheep-dog. Will you accept a trout 
 
 from me?' 
 
 1 Potztauseud,' said the other, laughing, 
 'we must not take his trout; we must 
 push for Longwy.' He spoke in an odd 
 kind of German, which I thought was Alsa- 
 tian. 
 
 'Parlez Francais, s'il vous plait, mon 
 Colonel,' said the other. 'Young gentle- 
 man, can you give us the route to Longwy?' 
 
 I replied that it was a very long way off. 
 
 'I know,' said the first man; 'but is 
 there no road through the forest?' 
 
 ' There is none,' I said, ' through which
 
 56 VALENTIN. 
 
 you could drag a gun ;' for, do you see, I 
 had seen our own artillery in practice, and 
 I have lived to see six hundred guns piled 
 together in our own trenches. Where you 
 can get a gun you can get anything ; and 
 so I used that form of speech. 
 
 ' Little wretch !' said the more silent of 
 the two horsemen ; but his companion said, 
 ' By no means ; he has given a thousand 
 pounds' worth of intelligence, Von Alvens- 
 leben. It will be utterly impossible for us 
 to offer our right in these forests, without 
 violating the neutrality of both Luxem- 
 burg and Belgium; and as it will be equally 
 impossible for them to offer their left, Saar- 
 bruck and Colmar are the words.' 
 
 ' You need not talk before this little 
 French boy/ said Yon Alvensleben ; 'you 
 were correcting me just now.' 
 
 And so they rode off ; and I was more 
 than ever determined to go on with Cartier, 
 because I was sure that, if we were spies, 
 there were plenty of spies on the other side.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I confess entirely that I was very much 
 terrine'd by the sudden appearance of these 
 two terrible Germans ; they came on me so 
 very suddenly, and looked so very dreadful 
 against the sunset sky with their long blue 
 cloaks. The pistol-shot, too, had startled 
 me a great deal, and I was all alone and 
 naked, with a wolf watching me from the 
 other side of the stream. I had always 
 heard of the Germans from my mother as 
 men who spoke a barbarous tongue not 
 pronounceable by French lips, who were 
 utterly cruel in war, and who had assisted 
 the English to destroy us at Waterloo late 
 in the day. I had the strongest horror of 
 the Germans at the time, although my own
 
 58 VALENTIN : 
 
 father was one of them ; and so I gathered 
 ' up nay fish, put them in the basket, and 
 walked down the stream to rejoin Cartier, 
 thinking, meanwhile, of all the stories I 
 had heard about them. I learnt more when 
 I got to school at Metz, but just now I 
 thought more of what my mother had told 
 me of them than what my father had. 
 
 My mother told me that they were a 
 nation of wretches, and that the only one 
 who was likely to be saved ultimately was 
 my father, who was of Alsatian extraction. 
 The English, she said, were most excellent 
 people, but hopelessly stupid — only fit to 
 fight after all hope of a scientific vic- 
 tory was gone, and so won battles more 
 especially by sea. They were also Protest- 
 ants, which was an objection. Now, my 
 father gave me an entirely different account 
 of the two nations. He said that the Ger- 
 mans were beating the French hand over 
 hand in literature, art, and war; and that 
 when our miserable Chauvinism was dead
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 59 
 
 and forgotten, the French would acknow- 
 ledge it. With regard to the English, he 
 said that so far from being the stupidest, 
 they were infinitely the cleverest race on 
 the face of the globe; that they had a small 
 army recruited entirely by volunteers, 
 but that with that army and with their 
 tremendous navy they had annexed one- 
 eighth of the human race ; that the native 
 army in India had recently risen against 
 them, and that they had broken the back 
 of the mutiny before one single company of 
 reinforcement had arrived ; that the United 
 States, an offshoot of England, was the 
 most powerful state in the globe ; and that 
 the English language — the language of the 
 greatest poet which the world ever saw 
 or would see — would soon be talked by 
 200,000,000 of people ; that England was 
 going- to meddle no more in continental 
 affairs, either with money or men, unless 
 the road to India was threatened. In short, 
 my father had a very far higher opinion of
 
 60 VALENTIN: 
 
 you English than you have of yourselves. 
 Our Chauvinism is bad enough; you see 
 what it brought us to, and to what it is 
 bringing us. But self-depreciation is still 
 more dangerous than Chauvinism ; it is an 
 error on the other side. ' M. Victor Hugo 
 and M. Gambetta talk always of raising 
 the country like one man,' my father would 
 say ; ' that is all nonsense. If the men are 
 undrilled, or, still worse, unofficered, they 
 are no more use in modern warfare than so 
 many old women. The bravest will go to 
 the front, and so you kill all your very best 
 sires. We shall have a visit from these 
 Germans some day, Marie' (that was my 
 mother's name), 'and you are a perfect fool ; 
 and you will give me a kiss, my darling, 
 and we will go into the vineyard, for the 
 Germans have not come. The revenge for 
 Jena has not come yet.' 
 
 You may depend upon it that the re- 
 vanche de Jena was very little out of my 
 mind, and that I hated the Prussians pretty
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 61 
 
 heavily, and did not care much for the 
 English. Well, these matters are altered 
 with me now. I daresay that you cannot 
 understand why. You never had a bullet 
 lying against your femoral artery, driving 
 you mad with agony. You never had Dr. 
 Fuch's strong arm over your chest, holding 
 you down in your bed, while Dr. Morton of 
 London operated, at a time when one single 
 error of the knife would have produced in- 
 stant death, and when your own sweet- 
 heart, who had taken vows for a year, was 
 holding the basin. No, you happy English 
 know none of these things, but we do. 
 Nimporte. I know both Germans and Eng- 
 lish better now. 
 
 But at this time, do you see, I did not 
 know much about the Germans, because I 
 had only taken my mother's report of them ; 
 so when I came on Cartier, lying by a fire 
 in one of the forest meadows, I was scared, 
 and told him what I had seen. He took 
 it very coolly, and held up before me a
 
 62 VALENTIN : 
 
 wooden cross — a thing which I thought he 
 must have taken from some grave. 
 
 'Do you know/ he said, 'what that is?' 
 
 I said that I thought it was a cross from 
 a grave. 
 
 ' It is the cross from many graves,' he 
 answered. 'The Prussians are surveying 
 the country, and this is a cross set up by 
 their engineers on the top of yonder hill.' 
 
 Then I said that we ought to make for 
 Metz, and tell the commandant. 
 
 ' We must see more before we talk,' he 
 answered. ' Let us come on to the Carbo- 
 nari.' 
 
 'Had not you better take my watch 
 from me ?' I whispered. 
 
 ' No, they will be perfectly honest with 
 us,' he answered. 
 
 It was dark night now, and we followed 
 the glen down to one of the upper tribu- 
 taries of the Moselle. The glen narrowed 
 rather rapidly, and we had a dangerous 
 place to pass. I was following Cartier very
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 63 
 
 closely, "when he told me to be very careful 
 how I set my feet. I saw that it was ne- 
 cessary : the stream was on our right, and 
 a high cliff was on our left ; the path, if 
 such it could be called, between the cliff 
 and the stream was very narrow and slip- 
 pery. I had my English fishing-basket on 
 my left side and my rod in my right hand. 
 Cartier- forgot about my fishing-basket, and 
 passed on after his caution to me round the 
 corner of the rock. I followed, forgetting 
 my fishing - basket ; when I came to the 
 corner by which Cartier had passed, the 
 fishing-basket struck against the rock and 
 upset me headlong into the stream. 
 
 I cried out, and Cartier was in after me 
 in a moment. I had only dipped my head, 
 and had held my rod and my basket tight; 
 but I was wet through. Cartier had only 
 gone in up to his middle, and had saved 
 the guns and the ammunition with which 
 he was loaded, without one drop of water 
 being on them.
 
 64 VALENTIN I 
 
 When Cartier got me out on the grass, 
 I first inquired about my fish, and we found 
 that they were all right. Then I looked 
 round, deadly cold as I was, and saw that 
 we were among a crowd of persons, and, 
 moreover, among a number of curious dull 
 lights, the like of which I had never seen 
 before. 
 
 The glen towered high all around us, 
 and the moon was just rising above a tall 
 wooded crag; but I cared nothing for the 
 glen and nothing for the moon ; these slow 
 smouldering fires attracted all my attention. 
 I said to Cartier, 
 
 ' What are they ?' 
 
 ' They are the Carbonari.' 
 
 ' Not the people, the fires ?' 
 
 ' They are the fires of the Carbonari/ 
 said Cartier. ' The Carbonari are a secret 
 people, and do their business in the great 
 forest lands which divide nations. You are 
 among them now.' 
 
 I saw it. I had read of the Chouans and
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 65 
 
 the Carbonari of Italy, and I had sense to 
 see, in spite of my bitter chill. 
 
 To see what? That is easy to tell in 
 our French way. In the two German offi- 
 cers I had seen heartless organisation ; 
 among the Carbonari I saw heart, but no 
 organisation. Well, you English laugh at 
 us French because we are epigrammatical ; 
 laugh on— any one can laugh at us now. 
 
 These people who crowded round me 
 were not respectable; they were far other 
 than respectable, but they were very kind. 
 I was shivering from head to foot, and a 
 woman came up and felt my pulse. 
 
 'M. Cartier,' she said, 'this boy has 
 ague. He should have a warm bath, but 
 you can get none within ten miles. The 
 boy will be ill if he is not kept warm.' 
 
 ' I allow it, Mother Hortense,' said Car- 
 tier; 'he must sleep with me. We have 
 blankets here, and I can warm him with 
 my body.' 
 
 ' He must go to his bed at once, Cartier, 
 
 vol. i. F
 
 66 VALENTIN: 
 
 and you are wanted; we have much to 
 speak of. Our young men have seen the 
 German officers. Put the boy in the straw 
 with my boy, and he can have his supper 
 there. You have blankets for two ?' 
 
 Cartier had both the blankets, and the 
 thing was easily arranged. I was to sleep 
 with Hortense's son, my trout were to be 
 cooked, and were to be brought to me in 
 bed. A little difficulty arose : Mark, Hor- 
 tense's son, was away, having followed the 
 German officers through the forest, for what 
 purpose it is difficult to conceive, for the 
 two nations were in profound peace, and 
 the German officers had as perfectly good a 
 right to be here as they had to be in Paris. 
 Mark thought, as he told me, that he would 
 like to see what they were about, and, for 
 my part, I did not wonder at it. I was 
 taken into a hut, and put to bed by Cartier. 
 Soon after that I had my supper, with some 
 wine ; after which I got warm again, and 
 fell asleep.
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 67 
 
 I was awakened by some one getting 
 into bed with me. I asked, 'Who is that?' 
 
 'Mark,' said a voice I shall never forget 
 in this world. ' Cartier and Mere Hortense 
 said that I was to get into bed with you, 
 and keep you warm. Eaise your body, 
 boy, so that I may get my arm round your 
 back. You have had one of our chills.' 
 
 I did as he told me, and I fell asleep 
 with my face against his, and with his feet 
 twined in mine. 0, my brother! 0, my 
 brother ! by those white feet turned up to 
 the sky, I ask you if we are never to meet 
 again.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I awoke late in the morning, and looked 
 around me as you see a fox look. My bed- 
 fellow was gone, and Hortense and old Ma- 
 thilde were sitting on the ground looking 
 at me. I turned without opening my eyes, 
 and looked at them. They were strangely 
 alike. I lay and listened, though I was 
 
 still in pain. 
 
 ' Sister,' said old Mathilde Cartier, ' is 
 the little dog awake?' 
 
 'No, sister,' said Hortense; 'he is 
 
 asleep.' 
 
 ' If he was asleep for ever it would be 
 
 better. Is he very ill ?' 
 
 ' He caught the chill last night ; but 
 my boy has lain with him and warmed 
 him, so I think that he is better.' 
 
 ' You are a fool !' said Mathilde.
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 69 
 
 ' Why ?' said Hortense. 
 
 ' Because, if you had the feelings of a 
 mother, you would let me smother him 
 quietly,' said Mathilde. 
 
 I decided in my own mind that this 
 event should most certainly never occur, 
 and it never did occur. Hortense spoke 
 again. 
 
 ' You are a very wicked woman, Ma- 
 thilde,' said Hortense ; ' you are a better 
 hater than 1 am. I have more reason to 
 hate than you have.' 
 
 ' Yes, because I have more spirit. You 
 wanted spirit to kill him; could you not 
 kill even his son? You have let your 
 son sleep with his, and have brought 
 back the warmth to his body — to a body 
 which I would have sent floating down the 
 river.' 
 
 ' Sister,' said Hortense, ' I have had re- 
 venge enough. If I have taken one child, 
 I need not kill another ; and I love both 
 his children.'
 
 70 VALENTIN : 
 
 'You love his children!' cried Mathilde, 
 furiously. ' Did he not pay you attention? 
 Did he not walk with you publicly at Metz 
 when the Emperor came ? Was it not un- 
 derstood that he was to marry you ? Would 
 it not have made a difference in our for- 
 tunes ? Did he not cast you over ? Should 
 we be as we are now had it not been for 
 his shameful usage of you?' 
 
 ' That is all true, but I loved him,' Hor- 
 tense said. ' You do not know the truth. 
 I could not have him, and so I stole his 
 child.' 
 
 ' I would smother this young wretch 
 if I was in your place,' said Mathilde, 
 ' and let your own flesh and blood have its 
 own.' 
 
 ' You do not know the truth, sister,' said 
 Hortense. 
 
 ' Mark is your own son,' said Mathilde. 
 
 ' He is the boy of my own bosom,' said 
 Hortense, ' but not my son.' 
 
 ' If he was the son of my own bosom
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 71 
 
 I would see kirn righted,' said Mathilde, 
 'and I would smother this young cub in 
 
 •j. ? 
 
 doing it. 
 
 I sat up on my mattress, and said 
 quietly, 
 
 ' I don't see what you would gain by 
 that, Mere Mathilde. Your intellects seem 
 confused.' 
 
 At -this moment a fearful fit of trem- 
 bling, racking every bone, came upon me, 
 and I sank back on the mattress ; the ague 
 and fever were sharply upon me, and I was 
 out of my mind to some extent.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 I was confused in my mind and in great 
 pain for about a day and a half; then I 
 had a long sleep, and woke up quite re- 
 freshed, and found that I was as well as 
 ever I was in my life. These slight at- 
 tacks of ague, which we have in our woods, 
 are really nothing. I have seen a strong 
 man on the march fall out, and have it 
 over under the hedge, and catch up his 
 company before the day is over, not a bit 
 the worse. I have left the dinner- table 
 with one of them, and come back again 
 perfectly well before dinner was over. 
 This first one was rather severe, and it is 
 quite possible that I may have been a 
 little alarmed and tete month. On the se- 
 cond morning I got up, dressed myself,
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 73 
 
 and began looking to my sporting gear. 
 1 was busy at this when Mere Hortense 
 came into the hut. 
 
 ' Mere Hortense,' I said, 'where is Mere 
 Mathilde ?' 
 
 ' I believe,' she said, carelessly, ' that 
 she is at Thionville by now.' 
 
 ' At Thionville ! that is quite impossi- 
 ble.' - 
 
 ' Cartier told me that he had seen her 
 at Fond de Givonne or Givonne — I forget 
 which — and was on her way to Thion- 
 ville.' 
 
 ' Why,' I said, ' she was here last night.' 
 
 ' It is strange that I should not have 
 seen her then,' said Hortense, kneeling be- 
 fore the fire, and blowing it up with her 
 mouth. 
 
 ' Why, she was talking to you, and I 
 lay and listened. I heard every word you 
 two said.' 
 
 ' You have been out of your head, 
 sweetheart. Our people are often deliri-
 
 74 VALENTIN : 
 
 ous with ague. You were dreaming ; you 
 will be as well as ever now, and you must 
 travel to- clay.' 
 
 She looked me so straight in the face 
 as she said this, that I could hardly doubt 
 her, and went on preparing for my jour- 
 ney. I determined, however, to ask Car- 
 tier, and in a very short time he came in 
 and gave me ' Good-morning.' 
 
 ' Cartier,' I said, ' you would not de- 
 ceive me ?' 
 
 ' No, my darling. Why should I ?' 
 
 ' Then, was Mere Mathilde here last 
 night?' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' he answered, emphatic- 
 ally. 
 
 And I doubted no more. I do not 
 think that he would have deceived me. If 
 I had asked had she been there the night 
 before last, I should have got the truth 
 from him. As it was, I came to the con- 
 clusion that I had been delirious ; and yet 
 the dream of Mere Mathilde seemed so
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 75 
 
 wonderfully lifelike, that I could not make 
 it out one way or another. 
 
 We had a hurried breakfast, and then 
 we went out in the bright morning, while 
 the dew was on the grass, and while the 
 wooded glens were still bathed in shadow. 
 Our mornings in Lorraine are so bright 
 and pure, that they make old men young. 
 I once -was lying out after roe with an 
 Englishman, and he said to me, 'Your 
 mornings here are like those in Australia ; 
 the air is like the wine of Champagne.' On 
 such a morning Cartier and I started out 
 into the Ardennes forest, with every vein 
 in our bodies tingling with health and ex- 
 citement. 
 
 The Carbonari were all gone — at least, 
 only a few children, half naked, were play- 
 ing among the wild-flowers in front of the 
 huts. It occurred to me — I cannot say 
 why — to ask the name of this place as we 
 walked on. 
 
 Cartier asked why I wished to know.
 
 76 VALENTIN: 
 
 ' I might wish to come again when you 
 were not with me.' 
 
 'Well, then,' he said, 'it is the "Bois 
 des pas Perdus ;" that is the only name 
 which it has, and it is only known to the 
 initiated.' 
 
 ' Cartier,' I said suddenly, ' did I ever 
 have a brother ?' 
 
 I asked it so suddenly, that he was 
 taken by surprise, evidently. 
 
 He said, without a pause, ' Yes.' 
 
 1 Did he die ?' 
 
 ' Yes. He was killed by wolves at 
 Petange in Luxemburg, in snow time, ten 
 years ago.' 
 
 ' Why was he there ?' 
 
 ' He was there with your father, who 
 was going to Esche on an iron speculation, 
 and then on to his estates in the Rhine 
 provinces. And there was a terrible affray 
 above Petange : your father was saved by 
 some peasants who followed his carriage, 
 but your brother was killed.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 77 
 
 ' Did they get rny poor brother's body?' 
 ' About as much of it as they would get 
 of yours, if you were among the wolves in 
 the snow, after they have packed — that is 
 to say, nothing at all. There is a tomb to 
 him in Petange churchyard. Now you 
 know all about it, and you must ask me 
 no more. If ever your father knows that 
 I have told you so much, he will never let 
 me see you again.' 
 
 We walked on in silence for above a 
 mile through the open forest, when Cartier 
 told me not to speak, a thing which was 
 perfectly unnecessary, for I was thinking 
 of my poor brother ; how dearly I had 
 longed to have a brother ; how I would 
 have loved him ; why my father had never 
 told me of this hideous accident ; and of 
 how my mother went yearly to Petange; 
 and how I had pleaded to go with her, and 
 had always been refused. I say there was 
 no need to bid me be silent, but Cartier's 
 command to silence made me look up. We
 
 78 VALENTIN : 
 
 were in one of those dense bands of copse- 
 wood which are the rule and not the ex- 
 ception in the Ardennes, and before us the 
 path topped a little elevation, very nar- 
 row, walled by oak copse, and covered 
 with bright greensward, with one small 
 rock on the right-hand side. Cartier took 
 me into the copsewood, and we lay down 
 togther in the high fern, on a carpet of 
 lilies of the valley, some of which had thus 
 early their reddening berries on them. 
 
 'We must be here for some time,' he 
 said ; ' we had better have our dejeuner a 
 la fourchette here.' 
 
 So we had chicken, wine, and bread, 
 and we had finished quite a long time, 
 when I heard behind us a low howl, 'Loup, 
 loup, loup-garou !' 
 
 ' A wolf,' I said. 
 
 ' Not the real animal : it is our boy 
 driving the roe-deer for us. Load your 
 carbine and watch by the rock ; we shall 
 have a shot directly. This is better than
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN". 79 
 
 I thought ; hurrah ! the real wolves are up 
 the wind. What a boy that is !' 
 
 As he spoke, the wolf-cry was answered 
 from before us, up the wind, apparently 
 quite near. 
 
 ' Thatf said Cartier, ' is a real wolf,' 
 and he answered him with one of the most 
 perfect imitations I ever heard ; then we 
 lay still again, and Cartier whistled twice ; 
 the wolf-call was repeated behind us. You 
 talk of your English woodcraft, it is no- 
 thing to ours. At the second call, a splen- 
 did buck was standing before me on the 
 top of the rise, within twenty yards, tap- 
 ping the ground impatiently with his right 
 fore-foot. 
 
 ' Be steady,' said Cartier, and the cau- 
 tion was very necessary, for my hand was 
 shaking. I fired just behind the shoulder ; 
 the pretty beast stood stock-still for a mo- 
 ment, then he quietly doubled his knees, 
 and fell down motionless, quite dead. I 
 had shot him through the heart.
 
 80 VALENTIN : 
 
 In my wild triumph I was rising to my 
 feet, to look at my prey, when Cartier 
 pulled me down, and put his hand over my 
 mouth. 
 
 ' Be quiet,' he hissed in my ear ; ' be 
 perfectly quiet, our boy is calling the 
 wolves to the blood ; lie here, and load 
 your carbine.' 
 
 I obeyed, intensely interested ; and as 
 we waited nearly an hour, I may take this 
 opportunity of telling you that this was 
 the first wild animal I had ever killed. I 
 used to give my father immense anxiety 
 by going out all night with a carbine, and 
 coming home with a wolf's skin ; but, in 
 fact, I had never seen one. I used to buy 
 them from the Gardes Champetres and the 
 young men. I had a fancy for possessing 
 wolf-skins, and I used to buy them from 
 those who could shoot them, somewhere 
 late at night ; this gave my father and 
 Dr. Tullier the idea I had killed them, 
 and my father had not the heart to in-
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 81 
 
 quire into the real truth; when I found 
 that he thought so, my boyish vanity pre- 
 vented me from undeceiving him. So the 
 theory grew in my mother's mind— a fact 
 
 which I did not know until long after 
 
 that I was destined to revenge my brother's 
 death on the wolves. In the end of all 
 things— in the general ruin, when the con- 
 fessional was forgotten— Father Servi told 
 me that my mother had consulted him on 
 this point, and that he, not knowing what 
 to say, had said nothing at all. 
 
 But Cartier and I lay there a long time 
 in silence, and all this time the artificial 
 wolf behind us kept answering the real wolf 
 before us ; the real wolf getting more and 
 more to our left. ' If he catches the scent 
 of the blood first,' said Cartier, 'we shall 
 have him ; if he catches a whiff of us, we 
 shall lose him. He will call no more now; 
 I hope he has not got down the wind of 
 us.' And, indeed, our wolf behind us 
 had left off calling, but I thought that I 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 VALENTIN : 
 
 could hear a rustle approaching us in the 
 
 rear. 
 
 Cartier touched my arm, and I was still 
 as a stone ; for before us in the path, com- 
 ing silently up, was a magnificent dog-wolf 
 working steadily up to the dead buck. He 
 was the largest wolf I ever saw; he stood 
 as high as the table at which I write these 
 
 words. 
 
 I wondered why Cartier dared whisper 
 now in this awful" stillness, when I hardly 
 dared move to get my carbine ready, but 
 he told me in my ear, ' He has his nose to 
 the blood now, and cannot see us or hear 
 us. It is old Motier of Audun la Komain, 
 who disappeared two years ago. I knew 
 he was a wehr wolf, and he made away 
 with his own nephew about that two thou- 
 sand francs ; wait till he is opposite you, 
 and fire just behind the shoulder-blade.' 
 
 The wolf came on steadily towards the 
 blood which was trickling among the roots 
 of the daisies among the grass ; when he
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 83 
 
 was opposite to me I fired, as I thought 
 truly, and he gave a leap in the air and 
 lay motionless. At the same moment a 
 shriek rang on my ears, and a figure dashed 
 past me ; before there was the least time 
 for thought, I saw the wolf and a bare- 
 legged boy rolling over and over on the 
 grass in a death struggle. The wolf had 
 his teeth fixed apparently in the boy's 
 throat, and the boy was making fierce, wild 
 stabs at him with a short knife. I saw 
 that the wolf had been pretending death, 
 and I saw that the boy was Mark. Cartier 
 was on his legs with the fowling-piece at 
 his shoulder, but, of course, afraid to fire. 
 I caught sight of his couteau de chasse, and 
 seizing it from his sheath, I dashed at the 
 wolf, which had now thrown Mark over the 
 body of the dead buck, and was apparently 
 killing him, though I could see the firm 
 brown hand which held the knife brinoino; 
 blood at every thrust into the thick brown 
 hair.
 
 84 VALENTIN : 
 
 I seized the beast by the tail, and gave 
 one stab on the ribs — a slight one. The 
 wolf turned on me, and I met his eyes for 
 one instant only; then they seemed to fall 
 away from mine, and he lay down and died 
 in good earnest. 
 
 Now, what account do you think that 
 my dear foolish old Cartier gave of this 
 affair ? That the wolf had got Mark by 
 the throat, and had nearly killed him. (The 
 wolf had Mark by the shirt, and Mark was 
 only scratched by his paws, and not bitten in 
 one single place.) That I had missed my 
 shot (the bullet injured the spinal verte- 
 bra), and that the wolf was uninjured; that 
 I had run in with his couteau de chasse, and 
 had slightly wounded the wolf, scarcely 
 drawing blood; but at the instant the wolf 
 set his eyes on mine he had died. Such 
 was Cartier's account. Mine is, that on 
 flaying the wolf I found his back seriously 
 injured, with ten stabs from Mark's knife, 
 one of which must, I think, have pene-
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 85 
 
 trated the heart ; and my opinion is, that if 
 Mark and the wolf had been let to fight it 
 out together, Mark would have been little 
 the worse. However, give a dog a bad 
 name, and hang him. I was to be a wehr 
 wolf, and so I must be.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 We all three stood looking at the wolf and 
 the roebuck, and then Mark burst out laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 ' I led the old wretch on well, did I not?' 
 he said ; ' I have known of him this two 
 years. By the bye, little master, I owe my 
 life to you.' 
 
 'Nonsense!' I said. 
 
 ' Ah, it is always nonsense with heroes 
 like you. You risked your life to save 
 mine, and I well remember. Let us cut up 
 our game, Monsieur will like the wolf-skin. 
 Aha ! my old man' (kicking the wolfs head), 
 ' I deceived you finely.' 
 
 4 It is old Motier of Audun la Romain,' 
 said Cartier; 'he murdered his nephew for 
 two thousand francs, but do not kick him.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 87 
 
 ' Old Motier,' said Mark ; ' why, lie was 
 drowned in the Alssette, at Audun la Tige, 
 smuggling.' 
 
 'You think so, you young fool,' said 
 Cartier, ' but I tell you that he was loup- 
 garou, and there he lies.' 
 
 'It is all equal if it pleases M. Cartier,' 
 said Mark, with his eyes very wide open; 
 ' but we will skin these beasts. I will take 
 the wolf-skin to our people. M. Cartier, 
 you are a good forester, will you do it ?' 
 
 To ask Cartier to do a thing and to have 
 it done were one and the same thing. He 
 agreed at once, and Mark said, 
 
 ' Come you with me, and I will show you 
 where to catch trout in your English man- 
 ner. M. Cartier, I shall not come back. 
 Some of our people are close here, and will 
 be glad of such venison as you do not want ; 
 I will send them. Good-bye !' And so he 
 and I walked off together, I taking the fish- 
 ing-rod and basket. We soon came to a 
 small stream and sat down together, and
 
 88 VALENTIN : 
 
 Mark put his arm round my neck, saying 
 suddenly, 
 
 ' Why do I feel differently towards you 
 than towards any one I ever met?' 
 
 ' I cannot tell, Mark ; I feel in the very 
 same way towards you.' 
 
 'Little Monsieur, do you know where 
 you are going?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'You are going to Germany, to learn 
 German proclivities. 1 know your father is 
 no Frenchman.' 
 
 ' He is German born,' I replied. 
 
 ' Well, I will say no more ; but do not 
 be corrupted. Kemain a Frenchman. Will 
 you kiss me ?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 And so my brother was gone. What 
 passed before I ever knew he was my bro- 
 ther, time must tell. But nature seldom 
 deceives one. 
 
 I must still carry you on my first great 
 journey, because after this I made no journey
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 89 
 
 at all for nearly two years, except from Metz 
 to Sedan, and back again. The time of my 
 captivity was rapidly approaching, although 
 I was unconscious of it. I was soon to be 
 bound hand and foot at Metz, but I did not 
 know it. I only know that I hate Metz to 
 this day, and hope that the Germans may 
 like it better than I did; as I write I laugh, 
 I cannot at all help it. They have made 
 Metz a German town; what would you 
 English say if the Irish made London an 
 Irish town? It would be quite as ridiculous. 
 Here I am in my French way talking of 
 Metz before the proper time. We always 
 live now in the past or in the future, we 
 French. We have no present; at least we 
 will not accept it. JEnfin. 
 
 ' Where now !' I said to Cartier on the 
 next morning ; ' are we to lie in the woods 
 another night ?' 
 
 'Yes, and many,' he said. 'But I ask 
 you one thing; dare you lie in the wood by 
 yourself?'
 
 90 VALENTIN : 
 
 I answered roundly, ' Yes.' 
 
 'You must do so then to-night for many 
 hours.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 ' I fear to trust you, my darling, in the 
 work which I have on hand.' 
 
 ' But, Jacques, you can trust me.' 
 
 ' My boy, it is out of the question. You 
 cannot personate. I have to personate. 
 You might be known ; you might commit 
 some small indiscretion which would ruin 
 everything. Be content, I will tell you all 
 afterwards. As you love France, trust 
 me. 
 
 ' I will trust you, Jacques, but tell me 
 more.' 
 
 'We must walk very fast,' said Cartier; 
 'and your father's fortune partly depends 
 on your discretion.' 
 
 'I will walk fast and hold my tongue,' I 
 answered. 
 
 ' Well, then, we shall cross the Luxem- 
 burg frontier in three hours.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 91 
 
 ' The Luxemburg frontier !' I exclaimed, 
 aghast. 
 
 ' Yes, you do not know how far and how 
 fast we have been walking. Do you see 
 those two hills ?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 'One is Stomberg, the other Johansberg; 
 both are in Dutch territory.' 
 
 1 Blit the Dutch live in Holland.' 
 
 ' Both those mountains are in Holland, 
 however. English diplomacy will make 
 Paris the capital of Denmark some day. 
 They have the money these English, and 
 they used to move the states of Europe as 
 one moves chessmen. They guarantee this, 
 and they guarantee that, because they have 
 the power of putting an end to foreign 
 commerce; but now we know that they dare 
 not do it, because they would put an end to 
 their own. My dear, we shall be in the 
 dominions of the King of Holland in three 
 hours.' 
 
 ' And what shall we do there ?'
 
 92 VALENTIN : 
 
 ' I shall tell you when it is done. I shall 
 go into Luxemburg, and return into France 
 alone, representing myself as a Luxem- 
 burger. I shall thereby gain intelligence, 
 most likely, so as to guide your father in 
 his commercial speculations. It will pro- 
 bably be necessary for me to be arrested. 
 In that case you must leave all our traps 
 in the woods above the town, and make 
 across the country to the Baths of Mon- 
 dorf, where you will wait for me. I will 
 tell you farther when we part. Mind 
 what I say ; your father wants information, 
 and I must get it for Mm. In case of a 
 debacle your father might be half ruined, 
 and he does not want to be half ruined. Now, 
 come along, we must walk till the moon 
 
 rises.' 
 
 There was no sporting that day, for the 
 walking was all over high and uninteresting 
 cultivated downs, always bending to the 
 right of the wooded hill which the Dutch- 
 men call a mountain, but which every one
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 93 
 
 else would call a hill — Mont St. Jean. ' A 
 fine country for cavalry and artillery, mas- 
 ter!' said Cartier to me once. 'Those cursed 
 English know how to defend their country 
 better than we do.' But towards evening 
 we saw forests in the distance, and he was 
 no better pleased. ' These forests will help 
 to ruin us,' he said. In fact, he was in a 
 bad humour, an odd thing for him. We 
 came, late in the day, on an old peasant, 
 who was ploughing his ground for clover; 
 a little tiny strip of ground it was, with not 
 a vestige of hedge between it and the near- 
 est forest, three miles off. This peasant was 
 very old and without any speciality unless 
 one might say that a pocket-handkerchief 
 would have been an addition to his toilette. 
 Jacques Cartier arrested his ploughing, and 
 asked him for the shadow of his plough 
 while we had supper, to which he invited 
 him. The old peasant of Lorraine was 
 most pleased to sup with us, and we sat 
 down under the shadow of his two horses,
 
 94 VALENTIN : 
 
 which, as he remarked, gave more shadow 
 than the plough would do; 'for,' he con- 
 tinued, ' it was without doubt that both the 
 elder and the younger monsieur had re- 
 marked that the larger the object was, the 
 larger was the shadow which, it cast.' After 
 hearing this magnificent French platitude, 
 I felt sure that we were not yet over the 
 border, even into Luxemburg. I was sure 
 that I was still among the countrymen of 
 Yictor Hugo, and that Lorraine would 
 remain French as long as the world went 
 round. 
 
 As we sat under the shadow of the two 
 horses (whose convenience was not, after 
 the French manner, for a moment con- 
 sulted), we ate sausage and bread, and 
 drank wine. Cartier remarked to the old 
 peasant, 
 
 'Badinguet keeps his frontier pretty 
 open here, father.' 
 
 'And who is Badinguet?' said the old 
 man, chewing.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAX. 95 
 
 ' The Emperor.' 
 
 ' Ah ! the Emperor at Paris. Yes, I 
 have heard of him. His wife is a good and 
 pious woman, and I notice, Monsieur, that 
 the wife has much influence over the hus- 
 band; for me, I should never go to mass 
 unless my wife took me.' 
 
 ; Would you go to a bull-fight with your 
 wife?' '■shouted Cartier. 
 
 ' If she made it a point,' said the old 
 peasant. 'You see, it is necessary that 
 women should be amiable for one's peace 
 of mind, and if contradicted they are un- 
 amiable.' 
 
 ' "Would you vote as your wife told 
 you?' asked Cartier. 
 
 ' Undoubtedly. I should make a point 
 of doing so. Had Monsieur the experience 
 of women which I have, he would do the 
 same.' 
 
 Cartier arose soon afterwards, and strode 
 on towards the forest, about three miles 
 distant. I regret to say that his language
 
 96 VALENTIN: 
 
 during the next three miles was morally in- 
 defensible, and politically was sufficient to 
 send a dozen such men to Cayenne. When 
 we got into the forest he got cooler. 
 
 We pushed through more than a mile 
 of the densest copsewood without a path 
 before we stopped ; at last I stumbled over 
 a rock, and found that we were on rising 
 ground. The place was such that I should 
 fancy a murdered corpse might lie there 
 without discovery during seven years, and 
 only be found when the wood was cut at 
 the end of that time. Here we were very 
 busy; we hid everything away under piles 
 of fern in different places, and then he made 
 me a bed of boughs, fern, and blankets. 
 After that we had supper, and then he rose 
 to go with his pipe in his mouth, and he 
 told me to follow him. 
 
 In less than a quarter of a mile we came 
 on a potato-field, and he showed me a small 
 village in the hollow below. 'That,' he 
 said, ' is Petange, in Luxemburg territory.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 97 
 
 If I don't come back to-morrow mornmsr, 
 go down there, and ask for Pere Goton, at 
 the Couronne d'Or ; tell him that you are 
 nephew of M. Schneider, at the baths of 
 Mondorf, and he will put your feet in the 
 right way. Take this letter at the same 
 time, and deliver it to Mademoiselle Char- 
 lotte, at Mondorf, and wait for me.' 
 
 I promised to obey. In fact, I liked all 
 this mystery; and as we went back into 
 the wood again, I felt like one of your Eng- 
 lish Arthur's knights, with the delightful 
 feeling on me that I did not know what 
 was going to happen next. Cartier took 
 me back to our lair in the wood, made 
 me promise to lie down, and not sing or 
 whistle; and then told me that he was 
 going down into the town as soon as it 
 was dark. 
 
 ' To what town ?' I asked. 
 
 ' To Longwy ; we are but a mile and a 
 half from it.' 
 
 I lay down at once among the comfort- 
 vol. i. H
 
 98 VALENTIN. 
 
 able blankets and fern, and covered myself 
 over. Cartier smoked for above an hour, 
 until it was dark enough in spite of the 
 moon. Then he came to me, and looked at 
 my heavily-closed eyes, and listened to my 
 heavy breathing ; then he kissed me, and 
 went away, pushing the branches of the 
 copsewood, which glistened in the moon- 
 light. 
 
 Then, like a fox out of his lair, I rose 
 swiftly and silently, and followed him.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 There was danger, or lie would have let 
 me share his adventure. There was dan- 
 ger, and I would share it with him, whether 
 he would or no. I was not going to see 
 the man I loved best in the world o- ino- 
 into danger alone ; but what danger was it ? 
 What clanger could there be in our own 
 Longwy, ' the iron gate of France' ? 
 
 As I followed him I made no noise. I 
 was determined that he should not know 
 of my following until it was too late to 
 send me back. I thought that I had lost 
 him once, for the boscage was so thick ; but 
 immediately after I crashed down over a 
 rocky bank and lay in a rutted lane, rather 
 bruised; but I lay quite still, for he was in 
 the lane in the moonlight before me. He
 
 100 VALENTIN: 
 
 thought it was a wolf, and I let him turn 
 the corner before I got up. 
 
 I had to be very careful, for the moon 
 was now bright. When I came to the corner 
 of the lane where he had disappeared, I saw 
 a town with high chimney-stalks below me, 
 which was lower Longwy : above were 
 long straight lines on the top of a hill, 
 which, from my experience of Sedan, I 
 knew to be fortresses. Keeping in the sha- 
 dow of the garden and vineyard walls I 
 followed Cartier closely and yet more 
 closely towards the town. 
 
 Suddenly there came a bright flash of 
 light from overhead, which I thought was 
 lightning. I heard a ' roar,' or I should 
 rather use an English word, ' bang.' It 
 was the evening gun, and the drums and 
 horns began their magnificent music in the 
 citadel. I saw Cartier begin to run; the 
 town was about to be closed. I ran also, 
 but not quite fast enough to prevent my 
 being entangled in a crowd.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 101 
 
 Half a dozen pairs of red breeches were 
 before me, with their accompanying white 
 gaiters flashing in the moonlight, before I 
 was aware that I was among the belated 
 soldiers rushing in to drum call. I was 
 beginning to laugh when I was seized about 
 the waist by a strong arm, and looking 
 round I saw that I was being; carried along' 
 by a large chasseur, whose accent, if not 
 his appearance, would have brought him to 
 the guillotine were it a capital crime to be 
 a Gascon. 
 
 ' Run, my pretty little rascal!' he cried; 
 ' has heaven given thee legs for nothing ? 
 Run, then. Thou art of the Lycee, then?' 
 
 I said ' Yes,' with what breath I had 
 left, not taking care to say that I was of 
 the Lycee of Sedan, and that I was out as 
 a spy on that spy Jacques Cartier, who was 
 looking after things so as to be able to 
 advise my father as to selling out all his 
 property in France. I now suspected this 
 strongly; but this was not the place to
 
 102 VALENTIN : 
 
 speak about it. As we all, some forty of 
 us, rushed at the gate, it was just beiug 
 closed. I was bruised in spite of the care 
 of my chasseur, but not badly. In the end 
 I was inside the gate. Was Cartier in also? 
 
 Yes, he had come in on the end of the 
 mob, and I saw him slinking away under 
 a gas lamp. The soldiers soon separated, 
 and having been kissed by the Gascon I 
 was allowed to go. 
 
 I followed Cartier. Now for the first 
 time I knew that I had been set to watch 
 him. That my father to some extent dis- 
 trusted him, but knew that I would tell 
 him everything. Ah, father, you might 
 have trusted Cartier as well as I did; in- 
 deed you might. He was more intensely 
 French in sentiment than you were; but 
 he was as true to you as to France. What 
 was his worst crime? That of telling you 
 that it was time for poor old France to 
 prepare for the worst, and so save your 
 money.
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 103 
 
 I followed Cartier. He went to the 
 Cafe Cheval Blanc, and I peeped in after 
 him. The place was filled with officers ; 
 but -Cartier sat alone with his back to the 
 door, which enabled me to slip in without 
 his perceiving me. The waiter came to 
 me, and I had lemonade and cake put be- 
 hind the back of our unconscious Cartier, 
 who said nothing, but who listened to every- 
 thing. 
 
 I cannot repeat the conversation of the 
 officers. It was not good; it seemed to 
 me that their heart was not in their work ; 
 and there was a bragging self-sufficiency 
 about them which seemed to me quite dif- 
 ferent from all I had heard of the armies 
 of the great Frederick or the great Napo- 
 leon, and more particularly different from 
 that wondrous little army of you English, 
 which has the most extraordinary spkialite 
 of only being beaten on an average three 
 times in fifty years, and of always winning 
 in the long-run, as results show. I say
 
 104 VALENTIN: 
 
 that I was not at all pleased with our offi- 
 cers, until a tall general officer in a scarlet 
 cloak came in. I liked him. 
 
 ' Sit down, gentlemen,' he said, as they 
 rose. ' Can any of you give me the route 
 to Sierck?' 
 
 Not one, it seemed. 
 
 ' D'Estrange, you were born here — 
 surely you must know ?' said the General. 
 
 ' Upon my honour, General de Failly, I 
 do not,' said D'Estrange. 
 
 ' Is Captain Rossel here ?' asked Gene- 
 ral cle Failly. 
 
 ' Yes, he is quartered here, and is in 
 the next room ; but he is in bed.' 
 
 ' Call him,' said General de Failly. 
 
 D'Estrange did so, and in a few mo- 
 ments I saw a sight which I shall never 
 forget, and heard words which are burnt 
 into my heart as by fire. An inner door 
 opened, and a young man came out holding 
 a candle in front of his face. The young 
 officer had nothing on but a white shirt and
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 105 
 
 a pair of scarlet trousers, which he had 
 tied tightly round his waist by his belt. 
 His head was splendidly shaped, and he 
 had enough of French dexterity to hold 
 the candle so high over his head as to cast 
 the shadows downwards. The immobility 
 of his face would have done credit to an 
 English midshipman, while being scolded 
 by his' captain on the deck of a frigate. I 
 never saw him before or after, yet this 
 figure in the scarlet trousers and the white 
 shirt comes into 'my mind's eye whenever 
 I hear his name. 
 
 ' Captain Rossel,' said General de Failly, 
 ' can you give me the route to Sierck ?' 
 
 ' Cross the Luxemburg frontier, and 
 hold straight for it, leaving Mont St. Jean 
 on your right, and when you make the 
 Stomberg, you will see it at your feet on 
 the other side of the Moselle.' 
 
 ' But I mean through French territory,' 
 said General de Failly. 
 
 ' 0, miles round. This scoundrelly
 
 106 VALENTIN. 
 
 neutrality of Luxemburg prevents us get- 
 ting from one part of France to the other.' 
 ' We propose to buy it.' 
 ' But Prussia will not let you.' 
 ' Well, I will not urgue. I want to get 
 to Sierck without going out of France.' 
 
 ' You must go round,' said Rossel. 'Are 
 we going to — you know, General — to re- 
 spect the neutrality of Luxemburg in the 
 next war?' 
 
 ' Of course,' said the General. 
 ' Then let us hope the Prussians will do 
 the same,' said Rossel. ' I think, General, 
 that you will find a German spy in the 
 room now,' and Rossel pointed to Cartier.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Caetiee stood up at once, confronting Cap- 
 tain Ressel and General de Failly. 
 
 ' I conceive, General,' lie said, ' that 
 Captain Rossel is in error. I am no Prus- 
 sian spy, but a good Frenchman.' 
 
 Rossel's brows lowered. 'Where were 
 you last night?' he asked. 
 
 1 In the forest,' said Cartier coolly. 
 
 ' And what were you doing there ?' 
 asked Rossel. 
 
 ' Serving the people.' 
 
 ' That is an answer entirely without 
 sense,' said Rossel. 
 
 ' Xot entirely, Captain. You have served 
 the people before now. In the Rue Picpus, 
 for example.'
 
 108 VALENTIN: 
 
 ' Do you make an accusation against me, 
 then?' said Eossel. 
 
 ' Not I,' said Cartier ; ' but your con- 
 science does so.' 
 
 ' This is a bold dog,' said Rossel. ' Ask 
 him, General, to precise his accusation 
 against me.' 
 
 ' Precise the accusation,' said General 
 de Failly. 
 
 1 1 have made none,' said Cartier. ' The 
 cit — I should say the Captain Rossel knows 
 what I mean. We both love the people, 
 we would die for the people; but he has 
 denounced me as a Prussian spy. I de- 
 mand that he retracts those words. I de- 
 mand it.' 
 
 'And how can you disprove it?' said 
 Rossel. 'Where are your passports?' 
 
 'I have none,' said Cartier, advancing 
 towards General de Failly and Rossel. 
 ' Hear me in private.' 
 
 As he went up to these two men I 
 noticed that another man had risen from
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 109 
 
 his seat, and was standing behind General 
 de Failly and Rossel. I did not see him 
 clearly, but I thought that he was a hand- 
 some Jew, very eager and rather pale. I 
 saw this man behind De Failly and Rossel. 
 I sneaked up from table to table, until I 
 was close behind them, Cartier never hav- 
 ing seen me ; and I heard this conversation. 
 
 1 I am a Prussian spy,' said Cartier, 
 ' and I hold my life in my hands. But I 
 am a spy on the side of France. My wife 
 is a pedlar, and she goes to and fro. I am 
 nothing, I equally go to and fro. We French 
 are in horrible danger.' 
 
 ' He speaks well, this one,' said Rossel. 
 
 ' No one will believe, no one will give 
 credit to our danger. When 1 go to look 
 on the danger, then I am called a Prussian 
 spy by a friend of the people like Captain 
 
 Rossel.' 
 
 ' I retract the words, then,' said Rossel. 
 
 ' I think that you are right,' said De 
 Failly.
 
 110 VALENTIN: 
 
 Rossel and General de Failly were stand- 
 ing in almost absolute darkness, with Car- 
 tier before them, and the mysterious man 
 behind. Suddenly I saw two white hands 
 part Rossel and De Failly by the shoulders, 
 and I heard a voice which said, 
 
 1 Your name, then?' 
 
 ' Jacques Cartier.' 
 
 ' A good name, but Breton.' 
 
 ' It is not a sin to be Breton, Monsieur.' 
 
 ' It is little short,' said the gentleman 
 behind De Failly and Rossel. ' Are you true 
 to the service of France ?' 
 
 ' Most true, Monsieur.' 
 
 'To the death?' 
 
 ' To the death, Monsieur.' 
 
 ' You suppose that a great disaster is 
 hanging over France?' 
 
 ' I know it, Monsieur.' 
 
 ' Suppose, now, that every conceivable 
 evil was to happen to France,' said the in- 
 visible gentleman. ' Suppose that in conse- 
 quence of our present rotten government — '
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. Ill 
 
 ' My dear sir,' said the General. 
 
 ' Suppose,' continued tins gentleman, 
 'that Paris was taken and France ruined; 
 what would you do then?' 
 
 ' Die or be revenged,' said Jacques Car- 
 tier. 
 
 ' This is an estimable citizen,' said Gam- 
 betta, coming forward. ' I would have him 
 arrested for form's sake to-night, and then 
 let him go free.' 
 
 Cartier was therefore arrested and walked 
 off, without observing me at all. When he 
 was gone, I went to De Failly, Rossel, and 
 Gambetta, and I addressed them. 
 
 ' And who are you ?' said Rossel, smiling. 
 
 ' A Frenchman,' I answered. 
 
 ' To the death ?' said Rossel. 
 
 ' To the death.' 
 
 'What do you wish for, my little sir?' 
 said De Failly. 
 
 ' I wish a pass out of 'the town, and I 
 wish the freedom of Jacques Cartier.' 
 
 ' Are you republican?' asked Gambetta.
 
 112 * VALENTIN. 
 
 ' No,' I answered, ' I am Orleanist; but 
 before all I am French.' 
 
 'Will you not go to bed, my brave boy?' 
 
 said Gambetta. 
 
 ' Yes, to my lair in the wood,' I ans- 
 wered. ' Let me out of the town ; I have 
 work on hand for France.' 
 
 'What have you to do for France?' 
 said General de Failly. 
 
 ' Sir,' I answered, ' nothing, except to 
 tell grown men the truth. Seize Belgian 
 and Dutch Luxemburg, and save France.' 
 
 ' This is a strange boy,' said De Failly. 
 ' Where do you come from, boy ?' 
 
 ' Sedan.'
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 This chapter is rather a short one. Gam- 
 betta, Rossel, and De Failly took me out- 
 side and handed me over to the guard, 
 with particular instructions to see me 
 through the gate, and with promises that 
 Cartier should be released early the next 
 morning. My last words in Longwy were 
 with Gambetta at the gate. 
 
 ' My boy,' he said, ' will you have a sol- 
 dier to see you on the way ?' 
 
 ' No, sir,' I said; 'I know my way well, 
 but please let Cartier out to-morrow.' 
 
 ' I will ask De Failly to bully the mayor 
 for you,' said Gambetta, 'you poor little 
 innocent ; we are dragooned to death in this 
 old France of ours. And so you are not 
 a Republican?' 
 
 VOL. i. I
 
 114 VALENTIN: 
 
 'No, sir,' I said promptly; 'we are not 
 
 fit for it.' 
 
 ' Perhaps not,' said Gambetta thought- 
 fully. ' But we do not know ; had Wash- 
 ington spoken as you have spoken, where 
 wo aid the United States have been now?' 
 
 The drawbridge was lowered for me, 
 and I sped away under the twinkling stars 
 towards my lair in the woodlands above 
 Petano-e. Yet I was scarcely across the 
 drawbridge when I halted and looked back, 
 to see the last of Gambetta. He stood 
 under the light by the guard-house, with 
 his hand to his head, thinking; then he 
 turned and walked slowly back under the 
 arch, and was lost to my sight. 
 
 Let us think for a little, young English 
 gentlemen. I am a Monarchist, and for 
 that matter an Orleanist, yet I consider that 
 Gambetta is one of the greatest and noblest 
 of men which France has ever produced. 
 Our peoDles, our own French, have taken 
 it into their heads to laugh at him. I hate
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 115 
 
 his politics, and think him politically a fool, 
 but what does that matter? Look at the 
 man and what he has done. He rallied all 
 France, until our conquerors began to re- 
 spect our raw levies; he roused all France; 
 it was too late, but was that his fault? He 
 was ignorant of war, yet his rabble checked 
 the unconquerable Germans before Orleans ; 
 only certainly to be thrown back afterwards. 
 I confess that we were utterly ruined, no 
 Frenchman would deny that. I confess 
 also that we might have had better terms 
 had it not been for Gambetta ; but I wish 
 you to put yourselves in our place for a 
 minute. 
 
 Suppose that your fleet was ruined ; 
 suppose that three hundred thousand men 
 were in Surrey; suppose that London was 
 locked up from the outer world, and was 
 given up to starvation, banded round by an 
 impregnable army. Suppose, then, also 
 that your Queen had fled to America, and 
 that you had no government with which a
 
 116 VALENTIN: 
 
 foreign nation could treat. Suppose, in 
 fact, that London was in the state of Paris 
 the winter before last. What could you 
 do ? I am unable to say. We sent a young 
 lawyer out in a balloon to raise the provinces. 
 It was entirely useless ; you cannot make 
 trained soldiers in a day ; but Gambetta 
 did his best : no man, in fact, ever did bet- 
 ter; he got together three hundred thou- 
 sand men (not soldiers), and made them 
 fisht after the fashion of civilians. His 
 armies were overpowered ; he was ignorant 
 of modern war, he stuck to the traditions 
 of the early revolutionary wars; he ima- 
 gined that a nation could be raised to face 
 modern arms. Gambetta has seen his folly 
 by now, but his name should be a great one 
 in France as long as France lasts. 
 
 What, we are dead, are we? Yes, in- 
 deed! Quite so! For my part I do not 
 think that we are quite dead as yet. I am 
 not dead yet, in spite of that sausage which 
 Mere Hortense gave me at Longyon. I
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 117 
 
 think that you will hear of old France 
 again. Sept douleurs ! It maddens me to 
 hear France spoken of as dead, and Gam- 
 betta sneered at by fools, who never did 
 anything in their lives except cackle and 
 lie.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 You might as well ask a roebuck to ob- 
 serve the Ardennes frontier as Cartier. I 
 wonder very much how our pedlars manage 
 with regard to passports ; I strongly sus- 
 pect that they can manage entirely without 
 them. Knowing this, I was perfectly cer- 
 tain that the moment he was released he 
 would follow me at once, and that there 
 would be but little trouble. I went to our 
 lair in the woods, and took my carbine and 
 a game bag, which I filled with necessary 
 things, and then I went down into Petange. 
 I had no difficulty there, for I said 
 simply who I was and that I was wander- 
 ino\ desiring to get to Mondorf. The land- 
 lord was more than kind, he was deeply 
 interested in me. How was my mother,
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 119 
 
 and how was my father? Would I like to 
 see my brother's grave, while Madame got 
 breakfast? I thought that I would like to 
 see my poor brother's grave, very much 
 indeed; and so we started out, and very 
 soon stood against a tiny stone cross in the 
 churchyard. 
 
 'Here he lies then?' I asked inquir- 
 
 ingtyv 
 
 ' Xo, Monsieur, not a vestige of your 
 
 brother's body, or a relic of his death, was 
 
 ever recovered save one.' 
 
 ' And that my mother has,' I said care- 
 
 .lessly. 
 
 ' Pardon, Monsieur, my wife has it, and 
 has always kept it concealed from your 
 mother during her many visits.' 
 'What is it?' 
 
 ' It matters not what it is, Monsieur ; I 
 will give it to your father without a word, 
 should he claim it, but we will never give 
 it to your mother.' 
 
 ' I will take it to my father, if you like,'
 
 120 VALENTIN: 
 
 I said. And the landlord thought for some 
 little time. 
 
 ' Will you promise not to show it to your 
 mother ?' 
 
 ' I will.' 
 
 'Then come with me.' He took me 
 back to the inn, and up to his bed-room, 
 where out of an old oak press he took an 
 envelope, which he carefully sewed into my 
 waistcoat, I submitting with perfect quiet- 
 ness, but most fully determined to unsew 
 it and look at it the moment I had an op- 
 portunity. Then I had my breakfast, and 
 offered to pay for it, but he would not let 
 me. I got him to show me the road to 
 Mondorf, or rather the direction of Mon- 
 dorf, and then I started across the hedge- 
 less fields towards Mont St. Jean, skirting 
 the frontier, and feeling rather lonely with- 
 out Cartier. 
 
 I soon saw that I was watched, and by 
 a friend too. I saw a swift figure lurking 
 wherever it was possible and beckoning to
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 121 
 
 me to go towards, as I made it out, Mont 
 St. Jean. I did so, and no sooner was I in 
 the copsewood, than I heard a laugh behind 
 me, and turning, I saw Mark, bare-footed 
 and bare-headed. 
 
 ' Here we are, safe and sound ; Cartier 
 is free, but we must dodge and skulk till 
 you and he are through Luxemburg, you 
 must not be seen for fifty miles now. How 
 I wish I was going with you !' 
 
 I was so glad to see him again ; I never 
 loved any one as I did Mark, I think. I 
 asked him what we were to do. 
 
 ' Skulk here,' he said, ' for a little while 
 and watch; come higher up the hill, and 
 we can peer through the trees ; but we 
 must not get as high as the chapel, or at 
 least, I must not.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 4 Because of the Prussians.' 
 
 ' But we are in Luxemburg territory.' 
 
 ' Ay, but the garrison of Luxemburg 
 is Prussian. See, there are four of them
 
 122 VALENTIN : 
 
 in the field measuring; may the evil one 
 take them!' 
 
 Mark was enthusiastically French as Car- 
 tier, and a German could do no good; most 
 certainly there were four German officers 
 in the plain, below us, but they were not 
 measuring anything, but apparently out for 
 a ride, and coming straight towards us ; 
 evidently making for the road which led 
 up to the chapel at the summit of the 
 mountain. 
 
 ' Mark,' I said, ' they are making for the 
 top of the hill. I will go up to the chapel 
 myself, they can do nothing to me. Keep 
 my carbine and wait here.' 
 
 He took it from me, and I began climb- 
 ino-. Those who have climbed Mont St. 
 Jean know that the side towards Petange 
 is heavy work, alternate belts of copse- 
 wood and gazons of slippery turf. I made 
 good weather of it, however, and was at 
 the chapel on the summit before I heard 
 the Germans come toiling on horseback
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 123 
 
 up the stony ride which led to the sum- 
 mit. 
 
 Suddenly a gunshot rang through the 
 wood, and there was a splintering of stones 
 and a plunging of horses, followed by laugh- 
 ter; the four Germans came clinking up 
 the hill out of the wood, and then drew 
 bridle before me. I was lying at the chapel 
 door perfectly insouciant ; though with my 
 heart beating pretty fast, for I saw before 
 me the two officers whom I had met when 
 I was fishing in the Ardennes. 
 
 ' You had a narrow escape, Von — ,' said 
 one to the other. ' These Luxemburgers 
 ure no jagers. That shot missed the bird 
 entirely.' 
 
 ' Blitz, yes, but it has gone through my 
 coat,' said the other officer. ' If the wood 
 had not been so thick, I would have hunted 
 the careless fellow down and boxed his 
 ears for him. You say the bird ; did you 
 see any bird, then, at which he could have 
 shot?'
 
 124 VALENTIN: 
 
 ' Why, no, friend,' said the other officer, 
 ' that shot was fired at you.' 
 
 ' A man can only die once,' said the 
 other German officer. 'These Luxem- 
 burgers are French at heart. Let it be, it 
 is not worse than Ireland after all. And 
 we guarantee their neutrality, do we?' 
 
 ' We must stick to the letter of the law,' 
 said the other officer. 
 
 ' Confound the letter of the law,' said 
 the first officer. ' What letter of the law 
 warrants England in keeping Gibraltar ? and 
 yet an English minister who would let it 
 go ought to be hanged on the highest 
 tower of Windsor, and left to rot there. 
 What right has Luxemburg to exist? are 
 we to respect this tag on the Dutchman's 
 breeches ?' 
 
 ' We had better be on the right side,' 
 said the second officer. 
 
 The first officer grunted. ' It is better, 
 but suppose your fine man of the 2d of 
 December (a matter for which I honour
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 125 
 
 him) is not loyal, and violates this dirty 
 little strip of territory ; what then ? He 
 is not very scrupulous ; he has bought up 
 England by a commercial treaty, so he is 
 safe at sea. Suppose, I say, that he was 
 to play us that trick ; what should we look 
 like ?' 
 
 Tools,' said the other German officer. 
 ' But the king would never allow it.' 
 
 ' Then the king is a — most Quixotic 
 man,' said the second officer. ' Are we, 
 when the time comes, to lose 200,000 men 
 because we must march on Sierck instead 
 of on Sedan ?' 
 
 1 It seems so,' said the other. ' But we 
 hold Luxemburg.' 
 
 ' Well, that is good,' said the second 
 officer ; ' that is a nut to crack, at all 
 events. Ha! ha! Good luck to Luxem- 
 burg. Why, here is our little trout-fisher 
 on the steps of the chapel.' 
 
 I must call the attention of the very 
 youngest readers to these facts. At this
 
 126 VALENTIN: 
 
 time there was a Prussian garrison in the 
 neutral town of Luxemburg, and the Prus- 
 sian engineer officers were at work to make 
 it stronger than ever, with outlying forts. 
 Luxemburg is the key to France, and most 
 nations would have fought for it as you 
 would for the only place in the world which 
 is stronger, Gibraltar, the key to the road 
 to your Indian empire of 120,000,000 souls. 
 Soon after I heard this conversation be- 
 tween the two German officers at Mont 
 St. Jean, rather strange things happened. 
 The Emperor of the French, consulting no 
 one, offered to buy this fortress from the 
 King of Holland. I must say that a dead- 
 lier insult was seldom offered to another na- 
 tion than this from France to Prussia. Mu- 
 tual friends, however, stepped in, and Prus- 
 sia gave up the fortress without a blow, on 
 condition that it should be dismantled, that 
 is to say, that the Luxemburgers should 
 spend a million of money on a destruction 
 which never could be done, and which
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 127 
 
 never will be done. We ask now, in this 
 midnight of French humiliation, why a 
 kingdom like Prussia should have submit- 
 ted ? The answer is easy. Our prestige 
 was terribly great at that time. We had 
 done well in the Crimea ; we had beaten 
 the magnificent army of Austria like an 
 old sack ; Europe seemed to hang on our 
 handstand every one, you English included, 
 was afraid of us. Prussia yielded because 
 she was afraid ; let them dare to say other- 
 wise. If they were not afraid, why did they 
 cut down the trees on the glacis of Cologne? 
 It is pitiable and horrible to see how we 
 deceived ourselves, but it is almost amusing 
 to see how we deceived the Germans. We 
 knew nothing, our newspapers and our offi- 
 cials always lied, and the end of it was that 
 the Emperor himself was deceived by his 
 creatures, and went to war with 380,000 
 men against 1,000,000, in hopes that the 
 South German States would join him. The 
 end came, as you know, but not before some
 
 128 VALENTIN: 
 
 very long-headed men, including my father, 
 had learnt something about the temper and 
 resources of Germany, and made themselves 
 safe. Before we gave the old King of 
 Prussia the last cruel insult about the can- 
 didature of the Prince of Hohenzollern for 
 Spain, my father's money was mainly moved 
 into the Rhine provinces, to Amsterdam, 
 and to London. My father's subscription to 
 the last French loan was only 8000 francs. 
 
 But I am here at the chapel of Mont St. 
 Jean, before the two German officers, who 
 spoke to me in German. I did not choose 
 to remember that language to-day, and I 
 wished to see if they remembered that I 
 could speak it at all. They apparently did 
 not, but spoke to me in French. 
 
 ' Hah ! my little Frenchman,' said one 
 — the one I have called the second officer. 
 ' Come here to me, if you please.' 
 
 I came to him ; he caught me by the 
 back of the coat, and lifted me into the 
 saddle before him.
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 129 
 
 ' Xow, my boy,' lie said, ' you will sit 
 there. What is the name of your friend we 
 saw hiding down there, in the wood with a 
 gun ?' 
 
 I was so taken aback that T said, ' Mark,' 
 
 ' Ah ! well, do you see that if Mark 
 shoots at us again, he is as likely to hit you 
 as any of the other four.' 
 
 I was only a boy, and could not hold my 
 tongue. ' He cannot fire again, for I have 
 all the cartridges,' I said in my folly. 
 
 'It was Mark who fired at me, then,' 
 said the German, laughing. 
 
 I turned frankly to him. ' I cannot 
 think it possible,' I said, 'but he is a wild 
 boy out of the woods, and I know nothing 
 of him. You cannot believe, sir, that I 
 connived at such a thing ?' 
 
 ' Little trout -fisher, no,' he said, ' your 
 face is your passport. Tell him to take 
 better aim next time.' And when we came 
 out of the wood he put me down, and the 
 four rode away towards Luxemburg, leav- 
 
 vol. i. K
 
 130 VALENTIN. 
 
 ins; me standing like a fool in a potato- 
 
 field. 
 
 Mark was beside me as soon as they 
 were out of sight. ' You shot at that man,' 
 I said angrily. 
 
 'Indeed I did not,' said Mark eagerly. 
 'I was aiming at him, and thinking how 
 nice it would be, and the infernal arrange- 
 ment went off in my hands ; I swear that 
 
 is the truth.' 
 
 And so I was obliged to accept Mark's 
 
 explanation.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 'Now the route!' I said to Cartier, when 
 we started after our next meal. 'Where 
 shall we go next ?' 
 
 ' Nowhere,' he said, rising up and pre- 
 paring to walk. ' A long way, but to no- 
 where to-night.' 
 
 'We sleep out again, then?' 
 
 ' We sleep out many times. There will 
 be danger to-night again.' 
 
 ' I love it,' I replied. 
 
 ' Then you will have it. But we must 
 have game; and I think I know where to 
 get it. We'll now cross the railway here. 
 We are going into France again. Dost 
 thou hear ?' 
 
 I followed him over the railway, and 
 we seemed perfectly unobserved. After
 
 132 VALENTIN : 
 
 pushing through the forest, we came into 
 an open patch of potatoes and buck-wheat, 
 and at his advice we took our shot-guns. 
 We had not walked twenty yards when a 
 pack or covey of hazel grouse rose before 
 us, so close that you could not see between 
 them. We both fired, as you would say, 
 'into the brown,' and we brought down 
 two brace and a half. This was on the 
 south side of the wood, where the birds 
 were wild. When we had picked them up, 
 and deposited them in our game-bags, we 
 turned back through a narrow belt of 
 woodland, and Cartier told me that we 
 must ' stalk' very cautiously. We did so, 
 and at last I saw daylight between the 
 trees. We crept on; and then Cartier 
 showed me a little square of barley, which 
 had not grown clear to us within twenty 
 
 yards. 
 
 'Do you see,' he asked in a whisper, 
 ' that little brown patch about twenty-five 
 yards off?'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 133 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 1 Let us fire into it together. Take 
 good aim, and run with me.' 
 
 We fired together, and then ran. We 
 had killed ten partridges, two flew away, 
 and another ran into the wood. It was 
 rare sport. I hear that you English always 
 make j;hem fly before you shoot them. That 
 is a great betise. You should shoot them 
 as we do, sitting, at least if you have such 
 a chasseur in England as Jacques Cartier ; 
 for me, I do not think you have. 
 
 ' This will do,' said Jacques. ' Xow we 
 will have an excuse for anything. Let us 
 walk now as Ave never walked before.' 
 
 Twilight came, and then darkness. We 
 were walking and talking very pleasantly 
 over a smooth field, when we came to what 
 seemed to me a large rose-garden, as in- 
 deed it was. We passed to the left of 
 this, and I observed a mass of trees to nry 
 right level with us. I thought that we 
 were in perfectly flat country; everything
 
 134 VALENTIN : 
 
 was level as far as I could see, and there 
 was only one light — the light of what 
 seemed to be a large cafe in front of us 
 out on the plain. At once I heard the 
 sound of two horses approaching us. 
 
 Jacques Cartier said, 'Be silent and 
 firm ; speak only in German.' 
 
 The two horsemen came slowly on until 
 we stept aside. Then one said, 'Whom 
 
 have we here ?' 
 
 1 A young gentleman, sir, going to 
 school at Treves,' said Jacques readily. 
 
 ' You are a Frenchman,' said the horse- 
 man. 
 
 ' Yes, sir, I am the gamekeeper of his 
 father, a worthy gentleman, M. Schneider, 
 who has estates at Pont a Mousson.' 
 
 ' What have you got on your shoulder ?' 
 
 c Game, sir. May I ?' 
 
 1 Yes,' said the jolly outpost. 'Leave a 
 brace over at the cafe yonder with Made- 
 moiselle Marie Cartier. She and I are 
 what you would call au mieux together.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 135 
 
 Tell her they are from Private Ringersclorf, 
 her lover.' 
 
 Cartier caught hold of my arm. ' You 
 are too old, aud she is too young, for you 
 to be her lover,' he said. 
 
 ' You are right, my Frenchman,' said 
 the German. ' She is but thirteen, and I 
 am thirty-five. Yet she is like my little 
 daughter Gretchen away there in Pome- 
 rania, and I love her.' 
 
 And so they rode on. I, for my part, 
 loved the rough German from the way 
 he spoke of Marie Cartier. I thought it 
 so good that he should love the child be- 
 cause she was like his daughter. Cartier, 
 however, cursed him for an impudent Ger- 
 man, and then said to me, 
 
 ' You must go in there alone, and you 
 must stay there all night. Find out if 
 this Marie he speaks of is my niece or not. 
 You must be no one, and know nothing. 
 You must meet me to-morrow at the 
 Toison d'Or, at St. Pierre. Any one will
 
 YJ OS. 
 
 you be eau- 
 
 • Bur avV 
 
 [ MT. I' 3 
 
 ■ H >- I 
 
 s I am now. G 
 g, and s 
 
 • : - are y . - - - 
 
 skfid € 1 
 
 •The 
 
 : - " I - 
 
 : _ sJ k by these in- 
 
 - - _ . - - m Jim 
 - in the I 
 
 Remember what I am. and - 
 
 •But wkal «d when 
 
 • I am a P: - : raid wt :n the 
 _; ~ : "„-..::-.-_.." _
 
 CHAPTER XT. 
 
 I approached the cafe quite boldly : what 
 had I to care for ? It was an adventure, 
 or seemed likely to end in one ; and that I 
 loved. If there was no adventure. I w - 
 determined to make one ; and indeed I did. 
 I fell in love. 
 
 You will allow that that is something 
 of an adventure, I think. 
 
 I had partridges on my shoulder, and I 
 went in. ' Holla, messieurs et mesdames,' 
 I cried in French, ' who will buy partridges 
 and hazel hens here, then ?' 
 
 ' Here is a pretty little Frenchman/ 
 said a Brandenburg hussar. 'What price 
 are thy partridges at, then?' 
 
 ' Luxemburg a brace, and South Bel- 
 gram for the lot,' I answered, c always ox-
 
 138 VALENTIN: 
 
 cepting one brace for Mademoiselle Marie, 
 the neutrality of which is guaranteed by 
 England.' 
 
 There was a roar of laughter at this 
 joke. I notice that it is not very difficult 
 to make Germans laugh at political jokes. 
 They get very few at home. In fact, the 
 Germans are by no means smart at political 
 jokes: even Figaro and the Petit Journal 
 pour Eire can beat the German at political 
 jokes. Your Punch stands supreme in 
 Europe as regards both social and political 
 jokes ; but your Punch is an exception. 
 The Germans are far wittier on social ques- 
 tions than we are, but in politics we can 
 beat them hollow. Why? Because we 
 tasted a freedom in 1789, the taste of 
 which has never gone out of our mouths. 
 You may imprison Rochefort and shoot 
 Ferre; but, with all our faults and follies, 
 we will speak the truth in Europe— at least 
 as we see the truth. There is one thing 
 you can never do, try you ever so hard —
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 139 
 
 you can never stop the tongue of a French- 
 man or a woman. 
 
 Now here were these honest Germans 
 in this cafe on the glacis of Luxemburg. 
 The least educated among them knew far 
 more than ever I was likely to know. The 
 smallest drummer-boy there might have 
 thrashed me ; yet suddenly with my French 
 wit I was master of them all, by the mere 
 power of repartee. 
 
 ' Suppose, then,' said the Brandenburger, 
 ' that we seize the brace of partridges des- 
 tined for Mademoiselle Marie. What will 
 England do ?' 
 
 ' She will send her ironclad fleet up the 
 Moselle to Metz,' I answered; 'nothing is 
 impossible to her. One of her lords, before 
 the Crimean campaign, proposed to send her 
 fleet into the Caspian Sea.' 
 
 A geographical joke always takes among 
 the Germans, next to the English the great- 
 est geographers in the world. This one 
 took, and there was another roar of laughter.
 
 140 VALENTIN: 
 
 ' But suppose,' said the Brandenburger, 
 ' that Ave chose to invade England, and 
 conquer her ?' 
 
 ' That would be no doubt possible,' I 
 replied. ' In fact, the great Napoleon had 
 some idea of doing so ; but after Trafalgar 
 he did not see his wav to it, and turned 
 on you Germans as the easier prey. You 
 know the result.' 
 
 The Brandenburger got sulky. I wished 
 him to be so. 
 
 ' We won Waterloo,' he said. 
 
 i The greatest- mistake in the world,' I 
 said. ' The English, with their raw levies, 
 won Waterloo. The English troops who 
 beat us out of Spain were never at Water- 
 loo at all; they were in America.' 
 
 ' It would have s;one hard with the 
 English if we had not come up,' said the 
 Brandenburger. 
 
 ' I doubt that,' I replied. ' Wellington 
 never lost a battle or a gun. He had done
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 141 
 
 better at Waterloo before six o'clock on the 
 18th than ever yon did at Ligny.' 
 ' We had Napoleon against ns.' 
 ' So had Wellington. Napoleon looked 
 at your army, and beat them. He never 
 saw the English army but twice, and in 
 both cases he was defeated.' 
 
 ' You are fond of the English army 
 since the Crimea,' said the Brandenburger. 
 1 And before,' I said. ' They have sys- 
 tematically beaten us, as we have beaten 
 you.' 
 
 ' We may beat you yet,' said the Bran- 
 denburger. 
 
 ' It is possible, but not probable,' I said. 
 (0, if I had dreamt of what was going to 
 happen to us ! ) ' But this is not the ques- 
 tion. Who is going to buy my partridges ? 
 German money not taken. Neutrality of 
 one brace guaranteed by England. In case 
 of any dispute arising, I refer the matter 
 to the arbitration of Lord Derby, the Pre- 
 sident of the United States, and Mademoi-
 
 142 VALENTIN : 
 
 selle Marie.' I felt a touch on my arm, 
 and I turned and saw her. It was all over 
 at once; the boozing Germans might go 
 home. 
 
 Go, honest, hard-fighting, hard-thinking, 
 honest fellows, go your way; leave us to 
 go ours ; there is room enough in the world 
 for both of us. Make love in your own 
 way, if you like ; but read from Romeo and 
 Juliet by our French lights. You are slow 
 and sure at your love-making, and you 
 assert that you understand Shakespeare bet- 
 ter than we do. Possibly ; yet do you un- 
 derstand Borneo and Viola as well as we 
 do? I think not. 
 
 You dull northerns, you cannot under- 
 stand your own Shakespeare. With us, 
 some brilliant spark in early youth leaps 
 from one soul into another, and burns there 
 for ever. In one instant Romeo is in love 
 with Juliet, and death alone can part them. 
 It was so with me. 
 
 I turned and saw my fate : a little girl,
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 143 
 
 wonderfully beautiful, with large blue eyes, 
 and blonde hair falling down over her shoul- 
 ders. She turned her face to mine, and 
 said, ' You are Valentin ;' and I said, ' You 
 are Marie.' 
 
 It was all over. I had seen my love. I 
 was not much like Romeo, for my hair was 
 tangled, and my face brown, and the blood 
 of the partridges had stained my shirt ; yet 
 I had found my Juliet. 
 
 I tell things too fast; yet you will see 
 that just now I mentioned Romeo and Viola 
 together. Put me as Romeo, and then un- 
 derstancl, if you English can understand, 
 that I had not found my Juliet, but my 
 Viola. My darling is not Juliet, but Viola. 
 
 0, my pretty love, my innocent sweet- 
 heart! where should I have been without 
 thee? In the horrible midnight of disaster 
 at Sedan, where one's heart was burnt to 
 ashes, who was that pretty boy who tended 
 me so faithfully, and who helped the brave 
 Englishwoman to carry me out of the flam-
 
 144 VALENTIN. 
 
 ing Bazeilles? Was it my own wife, my 
 little bride of sixteen, dressed like a sol- 
 dier of the line ? I think it was she. 
 
 But it was on the glacis of Luxemburg 
 that I saw her first, and I kissed her; and 
 I heard the Brandenburger say, ' Habet !'
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Bang went the gun from the bouc down 
 below our feet, and there was a general 
 clatter of sabres and bayonets. The Prus- 
 sians were going, and had to go very fast; 
 they had been sitting here drinking and 
 amusing themselves until the last moment, 
 and if one of them was too late for the 
 raising of the drawbridge, he would, as you 
 'say in England, 'catch it.' What would 
 be the pains and penalties inflicted on a 
 young man who was left outside the for- 
 tress all night, I cannot say. 
 
 I am quiet again, and I can resume; 
 the affair understands itself quite well. I 
 
 VOL. i. l
 
 146 VALENTIN : 
 
 am a Frenchman, and can argue with any 
 one. I will argue with you, although my 
 argument goes against the French. If the 
 French had submitted to discipline as the 
 Germans do, and as your English young 
 gentlemen do, this disaster could never have 
 occurred. However, I argue like this : if 
 our officers and our men had attended to 
 discipline as the Prussians did, we might 
 
 have won. 
 
 The Prussians dashed out of the room, 
 and I was left alone with Marie. A cer- 
 tain kind of Frenchman, like a certain kind 
 of Irishman, never hesitates in love or 
 war. I was one of these Frenchmen ; I 
 had not exchanged twenty sentences with 
 Marie when I asked her to marry me. She 
 at once consented, and, in fact, we are 
 married now ; but that is of no moment at 
 all, at least not for the present. X®u will 
 perceive that I imitate the manner of the 
 inimitable M. Victor Hugo in telling my 
 story, but I am crippled, because he has
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 147 
 
 the latitude of fiction, whereas I am bound 
 down to the inexorable laws of fact. I can 
 only, say that in style I copy M. Victor 
 Hugo, the great master of prose in this age, 
 in the passage that follows. 
 
 We were alone, and I kissed Marie once 
 more. 
 
 ' Yori will marry none but me ?' 
 
 ' None.' 
 
 ' There is blood on your shirt,' she said; 
 ' is it sang ties Prusses V 
 
 ' It is sang des perclrix] I answered. 
 
 ' You joke, you make calembours. Lay 
 down your game and let us walk.' 
 
 'Whither?' 
 
 ' Through all the world, but at present 
 on the glacis.' 
 
 'And Mere Hortense?' 
 
 ' She is asleep.' 
 
 So we innocent children stole out, leav- 
 ing Mere Hortense asleep behind the buffet, 
 and we went on hand in hand. 
 
 By the rose-garden.
 
 148 VALENTIN : 
 
 By the little cross which marked the 
 place where the officer fell in the duel. 
 Past the old cemetery. 
 Past the little auberge of Madame la 
 
 Tige. 
 
 To the drawbridge. 
 
 A gentle whistle from Marie caused 
 it to be lowered in a minute ; and then 
 Past the Cheval Blanc. 
 Past the Hotel de l'Europe. 
 Past the post-office, the gaol, the bar- 
 racks, the convent, and we were in Luxem- 
 burg. 
 
 (Here follows a long description of the 
 fortress and town, Avhich the editor has 
 been obliged to excerpt. M. Valentin 
 Schneider has copied the style of M. Victor 
 Hugo a little too closely. The editor most 
 deeply admires M. Victor Hugo, and would 
 stand any amount of his narrative ; but 
 when he gets antiquarian, the editor must 
 really take care of himself. ) 
 
 (Note from M. Valentin Schneider) :
 
 I 
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 149 
 
 'The editor objects to M. Victor Hugo's 
 style of writing, and I of course submit ; I 
 am quite unused to narration. A friend of 
 the editor tells me that he considers Victor 
 Hugo the greatest humbug in Europe, who 
 is seldom amusing without being improper. 
 It seems now that Frenchmen must sub- 
 mit; but surely all the terrible faults and 
 stupidities of M. Victor Hugo must be half 
 edeemed by the tender and beautiful scenes 
 in the convent in the Rue Picpus, in Les 
 Miserahles. I am not here to judge, I am 
 only a Frenchman. Everybody knows we 
 are pretty humble now. Every donkey may 
 kick a dead lion. I will write no more in 
 the style of M. Hugo.' 
 
 (Here follows a very violent attack on 
 the Bavarians, which the editor has omitted, 
 as tending to no good. The editor begs his 
 readers to remember that M. Schneider is 
 in the same position as a high-feeling Eng- 
 lishman would be had we lost Hampshire 
 (including Portsmouth), with Kent and
 
 150 VALENTIN: 
 
 Sussex, permanently ; that London was half 
 destroyed ; that Windsor was a heap of 
 ruins like Meudon ; that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury had been shot ; and that the 
 House of Commons no more dared to meet 
 in London than they dared to fly off the 
 clock-tower, but were meeting at Oxford, 
 as in old times. Heat of language must 
 be excused to M. Valentin Schneider under 
 such circumstances; we must allow him to 
 continue his narrative. He is very angry 
 at times, but his bark is far worse than his 
 bite. — Ed.) 
 
 Marie and I found ourselves in Lux- 
 emburg, with the drawbridge closed be- 
 hind us. This, you would say, was not 
 only indiscreet, but improbable. As for the 
 indiscretion, I am one of the most discreet 
 of youths, so that answers itself; as for the 
 improbability, why, the fact actually hap- 
 pened, and therefore I argue that being a 
 fait accompli, a thing actually done, it can- 
 not be improbable.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 
 
 151 
 
 An Oxford student tells me that I am 
 wrong. He says that some of the greatest 
 facts in history, facts which no one denies, 
 were utterly improbable. He speaks of the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the battle 
 of Trafalgar ; he says that both those things 
 were highly improbable, yet he argues that 
 they are faits accomplis. I cannot argue 
 with that young man— I was educated by 
 the Freres Chretiens— I only say once more 
 emphatically that a thing which actually 
 happened cannot be improbable. It pleases 
 you English to amuse yourselves with the 
 logic of M. Louis Carroll. I think that 
 his logic is all wrong from beginning to 
 end. How, then, I beg of you, could la 
 petite Mees Alice have seen the noble poem 
 of Jabberwocky (German, I regret to say) 
 reversed when she got through the glass? 
 I say that M. Louis Carroll is all wrong, 
 and that Mees Alice would have seen Jab- 
 berwocky just as it was printed. I am, 
 for my own part, no casuist, like M.
 
 152 VALENTIN: 
 
 Louis Carroll ; but I will defy his casuistry 
 here. Again, I beg of M. Louis Carroll 
 to explain to me why he dared publish 
 a poem so wicked as that of ' The Wal- 
 rus and the Carpenter.' While the Latin 
 nations have been living on the purest 
 sentiment, the Teutonic nations have been 
 going from one grossness to another. 
 The wicked ballads of M. Louis Carroll 
 are worthy of the Fliegende Blatter of 
 Munich. M. Louis Carroll fancies that his 
 political allusions can escape the microsco- 
 pical eye of a Frenchman. Not at all. 
 That ballad of ' The Walrus and the Car- 
 penter' has a political signification. The 
 walrus is the Emperor of Germany (Mon- 
 sieur Tenniel, a Frenchman surely from his 
 genius, has made him very like) ; the car- 
 penter is the Archduke Charles — all Ger- 
 man princes (may Heaven confound them!) 
 learn trades; about the old oyster, who re- 
 fused to go out walking with the walrus 
 and the carpenter, I am puzzled. It could
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 153 
 
 not have been the French Emperor, be- 
 cause he did go out walking — that is to 
 say, he mounted to horse, and took that 
 little oyster his son with him. Also M. 
 Thiers followed the walrus and the car- 
 penter. I rather think that the oldest 
 oyster is the Comte de Chambord; but I 
 am not sure. Humpty Dumpty, who nearly 
 smiles the top of his head off, is evidently 
 the late emperor ; and the allusion to ' All 
 the king's horses and all the king's men,' is 
 at least premature, not to say indiscreet. 
 I do not, as a thinking Frenchman, believe 
 that the Comte de Chambord will give the 
 slightest assistance in putting Louis Napo- 
 leon on this throne again. Yet this poli- 
 tical satirist, this M. Louis Carroll, hints 
 that such an effort will be made, and made 
 shortly. The English do not understand 
 politics at all; and it would be much better 
 if M. Louis Carroll would attend to his 
 duties as a professor, instead of irritating 
 a very high-spirited nation as the French
 
 154 VALENTIN : 
 
 by political poems like that of ' Humpty 
 Dumpty.' The fish are the English, that 
 is patent. Look at the shameless political 
 intention of this passage, when the French 
 ask the English to stop supplying arms to 
 the Germans : 
 
 ' The little fish's answer Avas, 
 " We cannot do it, sir, because 
 
 That is bad enough ; but there is worse 
 behind. With regard to your great pubKc 
 satirist, M. Louis Carroll, I say that he is 
 all wrong. Look how he writes about Gam- 
 betta's appeal to Lord Granville : 
 
 ' But he was very proud and stiff; 
 He said, " I'll so and wake them if 
 
 Exactly the thing he did not do, be- 
 cause his coronet was at stake. He never 
 dared to rouse the latent republicanism of 
 England and of Europe about his ears. 
 Hear your M. Louis Carroll again, with 
 the Alabama claims hanging over his own 
 shoulders :
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 155 
 
 ' And when I found the door was shut, 
 I tried to turn the handle, hut ' 
 
 That door is shut for ever to you Eng- 
 lish, just as much as the bridegroom's door 
 was shut to the five foolish virgins. You 
 saw us down, and, by the memory of In- 
 kerman, you never raised your hands to 
 help us. May you be forgiven ! I pass like 
 a Frenchman from folly to seriousness. I 
 think that that allusion to the five foolish 
 virgins made me so suddenly serious. Per- 
 haps also it was recollection, for, in the 
 course of narrative, I am only just inside 
 Luxemburg, and on a slope of turf above 
 the bouc lie down with Marie near me, 
 while the whispering wind went through 
 our hair and moved the grass about our 
 heads. 
 
 She said to me, 
 
 ' I have heard of you so long, Valentin. 
 I knew nothing of you, but I knew that I 
 should love you.' 
 
 And I said,
 
 156 VALENTIN. 
 
 ' Darling, I love you better than Jacques 
 Cartier.' 
 
 So the little Paul and Virginia court- 
 ship came to an end for that time.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 You in?.ke love, you English, in one way, 
 we in another. I think, for my own part, 
 that you are stupid in your love-making, 
 and that, moreover, you leave it too late in 
 life. Is it conceivable that a fat rentier of 
 forty years can be pleasing to a woman? 
 For me I do not know. I should think 
 not. 
 
 Mind, I say nothing of our mariages de 
 convenance; that is a matter I do not un- 
 derstand. I am too young. It would seem 
 that any mature woman would marry any 
 man with ten thousand francs of rentes in 
 France now. In England, I am told, the 
 price for a clever and handsome woman is 
 still higher ; but of this I know nothing. 
 It is possible, as I allow that the rule in
 
 158 VALENTIN : 
 
 the great 'towns is different from that in 
 the provinces. I only know that my father 
 urged on my marriage with a penniless 
 girl, as you will see. 
 
 I want ao-ain to be heard. I will dash 
 at any young unmarried German whoever 
 was born, with my bayonet ; but I am 
 afraid of those Landwehr men who are 
 married. They carry two or three lives in 
 their hands, and I am afraid of them. Mar- 
 ried men fight with the ferocity of despera- 
 tion, and with ill-humour; unmarried men 
 fight for fio-htino-'s- sake, with no arriere 
 <pensee, and with good -humour. I could 
 give instances in our war, but your own 
 poet Tennyson has found out the secret 
 about the terrible power of the Landwehr. 
 I don't admire English poetry myself, it 
 seems to me entirely unmusical; but your 
 Tennvson has an idea now and then : 
 
 ' When all amidst the thundering drums 
 Thy soldier in the battle stands, 
 Thy face across his fancy comes, 
 
 And gives the battle to his hands.
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 159 
 
 One moment 'while the trumpets "blow, 
 He sees his "brood about thy knee, 
 
 The next like fire he meets the foe, 
 
 And strikes him dead for them and thee.' 
 
 I don't like the Landwehr at all, and I 
 have seen a good deal of them in Lorraine. 
 Let me ease my mind. Fiercer soldiers or 
 gentler citizens were never seen. One of 
 them came to us as we lay together talking 
 on the slope at Luxemburg, and he said : 
 
 ' Children, you will be cold here. Eise, 
 and go into the town. When you are old 
 enough, you will fall in love with one an- 
 other, which will be a good thing if you 
 reflect on three matters. That you two, if 
 you fall in love with one another, are bound 
 to go through eternity together. Eternity 
 is like space, perfectly illimitable. Of eter- 
 nity we know nothing; of space we know 
 nothing beyond the double nebulae; but 
 we all know that time and space mean the 
 same thing, and are illimitable. Life is but 
 one small episode in eternity ; as conscious-
 
 160 VALENTIN: 
 
 ness and recollection began at birth, so 
 consciousness and remembrance will end at 
 death, except in the case of two souls which 
 are brought together as yours seem to be. 
 Conceive your two selves standing on the 
 double nebulas, and looking into space. 
 You must allow space — it is impossible not 
 to allow it ; there can be no end and finish 
 of things. There is no end to things — 
 there can't be. For me, as a Pomeranian, 
 I believe that there is only one God, and 
 that He is infinite and governs all. Whe- 
 ther space is filled with matter I do not 
 know : I should think it was.' 
 
 ' In the mean time ?' I said. 
 
 ' In the mean time,' he answered, ' I 
 think this, that you had better go to your 
 friends in the town. There are French 
 spies about, my little lad, who know no- 
 thing whatever about the infinities of space, 
 and who don't know the map of their own 
 country. Just go to some respectable house, 
 or I shall be forced to have you locked up.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 161 
 
 You are young Schneider. Your precious 
 friend C artier is somewhere in the town. 
 Tell your father that he had better sell 
 out on the German side, and move to the 
 double nebula?. Tell Cartier to mind what 
 he is about in case of war, or we shall hang 
 him. You French are perfectly idiotic; 
 but that is no matter. Remember that life 
 is only an episode in eternity, that space 
 is infinite, and that this little girl ought to 
 go to her bed. When the Culbute Gene- 
 rale comes, you may remember the name of 
 General von Alvenstein the younger.' 
 
 ' General,' I said, ' you spoke of Culbute 
 Generale. What will be the watchword on 
 that day?' 
 
 ' Paris,' he said, laughing. 
 
 ' That is not the word,' I said. 
 
 He thought for a moment, and then he 
 said: 
 
 ' Chalons, then.' . 
 
 'That will not do,' I said. 'Is it 
 Sedan?' 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 VALENTIN: 
 
 ' Try Cologne or Berlin, boy, and take 
 that little French girl in out of the cold. 
 Nobody is likely to try Sedan except a 
 
 lunatic' 
 
 So Alvenstein the younger stalked away 
 over the slope above the bouc, and left us 
 watching him as he went. It is all over 
 now, and you shall hear how we got 
 through it. But the other night Marie 
 and I were sleeping together, and she sud- 
 denly shook my shoulder. I asked her 
 what was the matter. 
 
 'Valentin, Valentin!' she said, 'strike 
 
 a light.' 
 
 I did so, and then she spoke. 
 
 ' Valentin,' she said, ' General von Al- 
 venstein was here in the room, at our bed- 
 side.' 
 
 ' My darling,' I answered, ' he was killed 
 at St. Privat, and you yourself put a bou- 
 quet of autumn crocuses on the helmet on 
 
 his grave.' 
 
 'That is true,' she said; 'but he was
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 163 
 
 here for all that. He said that life was 
 only one episode in all eternity.' 
 
 I quieted her, and asked her : 
 
 1 Did he say anything more ?' 
 
 ' Yes ; he said that there "were one hun- 
 dred thousand upturned feet appealing to 
 Christ for justice, and that Christ had 
 turned away his head from the world.' 
 
 ' Were the feet French or German ?' 
 
 1 Both.'
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Marie and I went to a cousin of Mere 
 Hortense, who kept a wine shop in the 
 lower town, to which she directed me. 
 The cousin was an old lady who seemed to 
 expect us somehow, for she opened the 
 door a little way, shut it again at once, and 
 did not seem in the least degree surprised 
 at seeing us. Marie was taken by her 
 up to bed at once, and then the old lady 
 came down to me again, and began getting 
 me some supper. 
 
 'And the news from Champagne then, 
 my pretty little gentleman,' she said ; ' have 
 you been to the camp at Chalons ?' 
 
 I answered, ' No.' 
 
 'Hah! I would like to see the dear
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 165 
 
 French army. We are all French here, 
 you know. 
 
 'And indeed I am French also,' I re- 
 plied, but I had time to say no more, for 
 there was a loud trampling of men outside, 
 and a halt at the door. Immediately after 
 a sword-hilt was banged against the door, 
 and a loud German voice called for admit- 
 
 tance. 
 
 My dame was equal to the occasion. In 
 one instant she had pushed me down on 
 the settle before the fire, and caught up a 
 blanket which she threw over me, saying, 
 ' Tuck in and go to sleep. When you are 
 awakened, be stupid and know nothing 
 at all. Don't open the door till 1 tell 
 you.' 
 
 At the third beat of the sword-hilt at 
 the door, not twenty seconds after the first 
 alarm, I sleepily cried out, 'Who is there?' 
 for I was a French boy, and had my ideas. 
 'Who is there?' I said in a whimpering, 
 sleepy voice.
 
 166 VALENTIN: 
 
 4 Hauptmann Fischer,' was the reply; 
 1 open your door, you treasonable old Jeze- 
 bel.' 
 
 I believe that I should laugh if I was 
 going to execution. I laughed now, but I 
 laughed more when I heard a window over- 
 head opened, and the voice of my new 
 friend, querulously from the open window 
 on the second story crying out, ' Aux vo- 
 leurs! auxvoleurs! an feu! aufeu!' 
 
 The transcendent old conspirator had 
 torn her clothes off, as she afterwards told 
 me, and was looking into the street in her 
 — well, in her night-dress. I laughed as 
 never boy laughed before, I think. 
 
 ' Come down, thou ridiculous old lunatic, 
 and let us in,' said the Hauptmann, laugh- 
 in o" : and I gathered that Madame Hortense 
 was looking rather absurd in the moonlight. 
 Her tone changed in an instant. 
 
 ' Herr Hauptmann Fischer,' she cried in 
 German, ' dear and highborn gentleman, I 
 will put on my clothes and be down directly.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 167 
 
 It is very late, and I am only a lone widow, 
 but I will get my clothes on and come 
 down.' Then she began yelling from the 
 top of the stairs to me, while she was appa- 
 rently dressing, 'Valentin! Valentin! Sleepy 
 boy, let the gentleman in at once, do you 
 hear ? Holy Virgin, how the boy sleeps ! is 
 he dead?' 
 
 I arose, but now, having learnt a lesson 
 out of the old lady's book, in my shirt 
 alone, shivering and yawning, and I undid 
 the bolts with my bare feet upon the cold 
 stone floor. The Prussian guard were in 
 the room at once. 
 
 The Hauptmann took me by the two 
 shoulders, and looked at me in the face; 
 he said at once, 'This is young Valentin 
 Schneider. Boy, where is Cartier ?' 
 
 I told him frankly that I had not the 
 least idea, and he saw that I was speaking 
 the truth. 'Pat on your clothes, little 
 gentleman,' he said, 'you will catch cold. 
 I see you speak the truth; but would you
 
 168 VALENTIN: 
 
 have told on your friend had you known 
 where he was?' 
 
 I replied, 'You might have burnt me 
 alive, and I would not have done so.' 
 
 There was a murmur of applause from 
 the whole guard when I said this. The 
 sentiment seemed to meet their views en- 
 tirely. A young man of Bonn (the young 
 men of Bonn are generally the rudest 
 among the Germans) knelt down and put 
 on my socks for me. 
 
 This was young Muchnitz. He lay quite 
 close to my brother, and from the position 
 of the two bodies, I am inclined to think 
 that they had been assisting one another 
 before they died. It is awfully strange,, yet 
 perfectly true, that my brother died bare- 
 footed, and that the three young men who 
 lay with him behind the hedge in the potato 
 field had only their stockings on. 
 
 It is most absolutely certain, that al- 
 though we may never know the details, the 
 17th of the French line were surprised in
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 169 
 
 their beds above Fond de Givonne, in the 
 early morning. I found four young men 
 lying dead together under a little hedge on 
 the top of the cutting. All four had their 
 boots off, and one had been sleeping with- 
 out his stockings, probably from sore feet. 
 It may be suggested that the camp followers 
 had stripped them. That is absolutely 
 ridiculous; before the war heated itself into 
 fury, the Germans were most careful of the 
 dead, and in fact made one take one's hat 
 off in the presence of the corpses. Besides, 
 how was it that with the exception of these 
 four, I saw nothing which looked like the 
 plundering of corpses among so many? 
 
 However, I am, after the manner of that 
 master of fiction, Eugene Sue, getting dis- 
 cursive. 
 
 By the time I was dressed, the old wo- 
 man was partly dressed, and came into 
 the room with her gray hair down like 
 Madame Macbeth, an awful figure, fit for 
 any murder in the history of the world.
 
 170 VALENTIN: 
 
 Madame Macbeth did I say ? Try Judith ; 
 try Salome, the daughter of Herodias. She 
 came in wanting nothing but John the 
 Baptist's head in a charger, to make a per- 
 fect murderess, and she said, 
 
 ' What will the good Hauptmann order 
 to drink then ?' 
 
 At this point I went off in an eclair de 
 rire. What you call at school the bathos 
 was too much for me. The Germans, such 
 as understood French, laughed loudly also, 
 and the Hauptmann said, 
 
 ' Come, mother, we only want to be 
 friendly. We want Louis Cartier. You 
 will get yourself into serious trouble by 
 harbouring him. Potz tausend,' he said, 
 turning to me, humorously, 'your father 
 sends you out in pretty company. Do you 
 know, for this old fool would never under- 
 stand, that the Ordonnance Department 
 here has been robbed of certain very im- 
 portant plans?' 
 
 I told him fairly that I had not the
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 17 1 
 
 wildest idea of such an event having oc- 
 curred, which was strictly true. 
 
 'Well, it is so. These Luxemburgers 
 would do anything, and one of them has 
 these plans; and we believe has handed 
 them to that scoundrel, Jacques Cartier. 
 If he will give them up he may go ; if not, 
 we shall take our own course with him. Is 
 he in tKe house, mistress?' 
 
 ' On my soul, no !' said the old woman. 
 
 And it came on my mind afterwards 
 that the Roman Catholic religion is the 
 most accommodating in the world, for a 
 more thundering he was never told under 
 the sun ; but she got quit of it by card. 
 
 1 Well, I must search the house at all 
 events,' said the Hauptmann. ' Sergeant, 
 go forward. Young Schneider, you come 
 with us.' 
 
 In the cellars there were beer and wine ; 
 on the ground floor nothing suspicious ; on 
 the first floor nothing particular, save that 
 in opening a doubtful-looking closet a very
 
 172 VALENTIN: 
 
 tall broom, which had been set on end in 
 that closet, came majestically down on the 
 Hauptm aim's head, and knocked his helmet 
 on to old madame's toes, which gave rise to 
 complications and apologies. We searched 
 the whole house over, save one room which 
 the old lady wished to be spared. 
 
 'It is little Marie's bedroom,' she 
 said. ' You all know little Marie, of the 
 glacis, Messieurs. You may surely trust 
 an old woman's word, and not awake the 
 g-irl. She has come in on a visit to me.' 
 
 'A dear little soul, niece to the very 
 man we want. Go in, old woman, tell her 
 to cover herself up, for we must search here 
 in spite of your word.' 
 
 Madame Hortense went in. Almost at 
 once we were admitted. A light was burn- 
 ing, and Ave saw before us a sight which 
 none of us ever forgot. A very beautiful 
 child sitting up in bed, with her hands 
 folded on the counterpane, and her hair 
 falling round her in masses like those of
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 173 
 
 Fra An<relico's angels. A child who seemed 
 to wonder (ah, you English cannot act) — 
 a child who was amused at the invasion of 
 her bedroom by these good, quaint savages, 
 the Prussians. The room was searched, 
 and nothing was found. Of course not. 
 The Germans made their adieux with all 
 apologies, and left Marie sitting up in 
 bed, with all her clothes, and Mere Hor- 
 tense's clothes also about her, to keep her 
 warm. 
 
 The little heroine had got her uncle in 
 bed with her, boots and all !
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Meke Christine told me to remain in Ma- 
 rie's bedroom while she showed the Prus- 
 sian gentlemen out. I did so with much 
 modesty, standing with my face to the 
 staircase, down which the Prussians were 
 being escorted by this good woman, who 
 stood at the head of the stairs with a candle, 
 entreating them to take care how they 
 stepped. 'For, Messieurs,' she said, 'the 
 stairs are very old, and my landlord is not 
 a good landlord for repairs; landlords are 
 never good to solitary old widows like me. 
 Ah ! if my good man Max was alive, we 
 should have had these stairs mended. Take 
 great care, Messieurs, the narrow stairs are 
 to the right,' (Here a big young man of
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 175 
 
 Audernach went thundering and crashing 
 down to the bottom amidst roars of laugh- 
 ter from his comrades.) ' Ah ! Monsieur 
 has hurt himself, I fear ;' and so the old 
 lady went on, holding the light above the 
 retreating leather and brass helmets. 
 
 I much regret to say that, in spite of 
 all our troubles, I have always an inclina- 
 
 
 
 tion to laugh at those helmets even now. 
 I never can forget them groping down that 
 narrow winding staircase, with the old 
 Frenchwoman holding the light all wrong, 
 and giving them utterly wrong directions. 
 I know that it is immoral and undignified 
 to laugh at our conquerors, but I cannot 
 help it. The English laugh at the French ; 
 the French, again, caricature the English 
 and Germans. The nation which most ha- 
 bitually caricatures itself is the French. We 
 have laughed ourselves into a pretty state 
 of affairs. I see that you are making 
 all your leaders and politicians ridiculous 
 in Vanity Fair. You will reap the fruits
 
 176 VALENTIN: 
 
 of this. This is done, I believe, by an 
 Italian. 
 
 Well, I laughed when I saw the pickel- 
 haubes go downstairs, and I laughed more 
 when I heard the door banged behind them. 
 I turned again into Marie's bedroom, and 
 she was sitting up in bed laughing also, 
 with her finger on her lips. 
 
 'My little angel!' I said, 'these Ger- 
 man dogs are gone. Have you been fright- 
 ened ?' 
 
 There was a great heave in the bed; 
 her uncle put himself out sideways, and in 
 another moment Jacques Cartier, with 
 touzled hair, stood by her side, grinning 
 from ear to ear. 
 
 'Here is a little heroine for you,' he 
 said, ' never flinched for a minute, though 
 she knew that her wicked uncle had the 
 plans in the bed; or, to be more correct, 
 that she had them in her bosom. There is 
 not a finer girl in all France. Did I bruise 
 you with my boots, darling?'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 177 
 
 'You frightened me out of my wits, 
 uncle, when y >u began laughing, and made 
 the bed shake so. I thought that we were 
 all undone.' 
 
 ' I could not help it,' said Jacques Car- 
 tier, 'Mere Chri -tine was so clever andbizarre. 
 I am born to e hung, but I should laugh 
 at the ^scaffold, I think. Now, lie down, 
 pretty love, for M. Valentin and I have 
 something to say. Here comes Mere 
 Christine.' 
 
 I went up co Marie's bed, and bent 
 down and ki i her in all boyish loyalty 
 and admiration. She threw her arms round 
 my neck, and drew my face close to hers, 
 so that my hair and hers were mixed to- 
 gether. I wondered at this favour very 
 much, until ie whispered shortly and 
 sharply in my ear, 'Valentin, you fool, be 
 careful. Make him destroy those papers, 
 or we are all in trouble ; he has committed 
 felony. He is a receiver of stolen goods.' 
 
 0, the di> tion of the romance ! Still 
 
 vol. i. N
 
 178 VALENTIN: 
 
 I took two kisses more, and got two smart 
 boxes on the ear in return. I then turned 
 to Mere Christine and Jacques Carder, and I 
 found that Mere Christine was preparing to 
 light the fire, a matter at which I very 
 much wondered. 
 
 'You see, M. Valentin,' said Jacques 
 Cartier, 'that I have so far succeeded in 
 my object in getting into Luxemburg. Well 
 and good. Now I have to get out again. 
 Of that we will talk presently.' 
 
 'But, Jacques, dear, you cannot get 
 
 out.' 
 
 ' Can I not ? You will allow that I got 
 
 in.' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' You will soon have to allow that I can 
 get out again. Bon. I may or I may not. 
 In case I do not, you must attend to me 
 with all your attention.' 
 
 'Good,' I said. 'Can we not write 
 down anything ?' 
 
 ' Nothing,' he replied. ' I am about to
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 179 
 
 burn everything. I am going to tell you 
 what you must tell your father, and no one 
 else. You must mind what I say very 
 carefully.' 
 
 I determined to do so, and I told him so. 
 
 ' I have done hitherto all that your 
 father asked me. I have endangered my 
 life for him this night. If I am taken here, 
 I shall never get out of the prison at Treves 
 at all, because I have become a receiver of 
 stolen goods in his interests. Well and 
 good, I am a Frenchman after all. If I am 
 taken, nothing must be found on me. You 
 will go free, I shall go to prison. You must 
 tell your father these things, and be sure 
 to forget none of them. The plan of the 
 Prussians is to refortify Luxemburg by 
 star forts, a mile from the enceinte all 
 round. By doing this they violate Dutch 
 neutrality, and are therefore committed to 
 anything. I have here the plans of those 
 forts, but I must burn them ; nevertheless, 
 assure him of the fact. France is neo-o-
 
 180 VALENTIN: 
 
 tiating with Holland for the sale of Luxem- 
 burg, and Prussia will fight sooner than 
 o-ive it up. In case of war now, France 
 could not stop Germany short of Chalons. 
 Your father should back up General Mel 
 in every way. Our army must be reor- 
 ganised. Can you remember all this?' 
 I said it over to him. 
 1 Bon? he said. 'Now we will burn 
 these papers,' and to my horror into the 
 fire went a whole pile of Prussian staff 
 maps and plans. Some of our precious 
 friends had stolen- them; Jacques Cartier 
 had received them, and now he was de- 
 stroying them. I was a felon by construc- 
 tion. I said so. 
 
 ' My dear,' said Jacques Cartier, ' there 
 is no felony in politics.' 
 
 I rather doubted that, but I said no- 
 thing on that point. I only asked, 'How 
 are you going to escape?' 
 
 He laughed. ' You must go a long way 
 by yourself now,' he said. 'Opposite the
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 181 
 
 church you will find a shop ; in that shop 
 are maps. You buy the map which con- 
 tains the Eifel forest, and you come as fast 
 as you can to a place called Mandercheid. 
 I will meet you there. If I am taken, go 
 straight home; no one will stop you. If 
 you hear nothing of me, go there. If you go 
 home, tell your father to sell out in France.'' 
 
 There was a little time in deliberating 
 where all our things should be left. In the 
 end, I took charge of a shot-gun, a large 
 number of cartridges, and about eight hun- 
 dred francs. Jacques Cartier took the car- 
 bine and a game-bag, and prepared to start ; 
 how, I did not exactly see, and so I asked 
 him. 
 
 ' I am going out of that window when 
 the signal comes, and along the roofs of 
 three or four houses. We shall have a 
 messenger by and by.' 
 
 In about an hour there was a tap at the 
 window ; it was opened, and Mark jumped 
 into the room barefooted.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 I was to leave the house, and go by Treves 
 to Bittburg alone. Meanwhile, Jacques 
 was to join me at Bittburg, and I was to 
 send from Treves the following telegram to 
 my father : 
 
 VY. T. P. S. V. X. 1. A. 
 It would be impossible for any one to 
 make out this telegram, from the mere 
 reason that it was absolutely simple, and 
 that Cartier and my father were in perfect 
 confidence. When I say perfect confidence, 
 I mean that my father was in as much 
 confidence with Jacques Cartier as he was 
 with any one; that is to say, he had sent 
 out Jacques Cartier as a spy, but had sent 
 me to watch him. 
 
 Let us, however, examine this telegram,
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 18 
 
 o 
 
 and see how easily the cleverest are cheated 
 when two men understand one another. 
 First, Y V. 
 
 •That is simply ' Vendez, Yendez.' Sell 
 at once. My father sold out all his rentes 
 immediately, and bought into the English 
 three-per-cent consols. He said afterwards 
 that those rascals of English would fight 
 for their money, and that they had twenty 
 miles of sea-water between them and a gen- 
 tleman. You see, my father was one of 
 the old school, and did not like the English 
 as I do. Xow we come to 
 
 T. P. S. Y. N. 
 That is to me pretty plain. ' Tout est 
 Perdu Sails la Fie de Mel.' I think that 
 Jacques Cartier was right here. I think 
 that if Mel's scheme of the reorganisation 
 of our army had been carried out, and if 
 the Radicals had not opposed it, we might 
 have been in a different position. I can- 
 not say, but certainly Niel's scheme was 
 better than Gambetta's. There is the same
 
 184 VALENTIN: 
 
 difference between these two as there is 
 between Epiraetheus and Prometheus. Now 
 we come to the last letters of the telegram, 
 
 LA. 
 
 ' lis Arment,' I read it. Certainly it 
 was perfectly true, and my father acted on 
 it. I think that my father r. i her wished the 
 Germans to win in what followed. I rather 
 think that his interests, as v\ ell as his in- 
 clinations, went that way. I • me, I would 
 have swept the streets for a living had 
 France won. 
 
 JSTow, I had the telegram, and now 
 Jacques was to be got out he town. It 
 appeared, on consultation, i t we must at 
 once communicate with Pe Eugon, who 
 kept the tannery down on the Alssette. 
 When I say that he kept the tannery, I 
 only mean that he kept it from fire. He 
 was a very poor old man. who watched 
 the premises by night, and >vho slept all 
 day. Some one must go I > him. I of 
 course determined to go.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 185 
 
 But I was stopped at once. ' I should 
 have difficulty enough in getting out of the 
 town myself,' they said. ' Marie must go.' 
 And at last I consented to let Marie go, 
 with the reservation that I was to follow 
 her twenty yards behind. 
 
 Marie was very soon dressed and 
 let out. The street was very quiet as she 
 trotted along, so quiet that the twenty 
 yards diminished to fifteen, then to ten 
 then to five, and at last to nothing at all; 
 so that when we came to old Pere Hugon's 
 tannery I had my arm round her waist. 
 When we got to Pere Hugon's tannery 
 we knocked at the door, and he opened the 
 window three stories above, and cried out, 
 ' Au feu !' just like Mere Hortense had 
 
 clone. 
 
 ' Be quiet, you old fool,' I said. 
 
 Whereupon he began crying out, ' Aux 
 voleurs.' 
 
 ' You old idiot,' I said, ' you will have 
 the Prussians on us directly.'
 
 186 VALENTIN: 
 
 He went for a light, and reappeared in 
 a large pair of gold spectacles, through 
 which he looked at the bouc, the moon, 
 and the stars. 
 
 I cried out impatiently, ' Come down ; 
 the patrol is in the next street.' And then 
 he shut the window. 
 
 I spoke the truth; the Prussian patrol 
 was in the next street, and was on us be- 
 fore we could get in. Fischer was in com- 
 mand of it, and he said to me, pausing as 
 he passed, ' Get your man out of the town 
 quietly. If there is any difficulty, go to 
 Yon Alvenstein.' 
 
 ' You mean Cartier?' 
 
 ' Yes. He has no business here ; get him 
 out quietly.' 
 
 I had some spirit, and I asked, 'What 
 has he done?' 
 
 ' Ask that in two years' time,' said 
 Fischer, and passed on. 
 
 Old Hugon admitted us. I opened the 
 conversation by saying that Jacques Cartier
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 187 
 
 must be got out of the town in safety. Old 
 Hugon took off his spectacles, and, order- 
 in o- Marie out of the room, stroked his 
 beard, and said : 
 
 ' That is very easily done.' 
 ' I am glad to hear it,' I said ; ' I thought 
 it was difficult.' 
 
 ' Has he got the plans of the outlying 
 forts on him ?' asked old Hugon. 
 ' No,' I said ; ' they are burnt.' 
 1 Hum ! What an ass is Jacques Cartier ! 
 Did he believe them real?' 
 
 ' They were real,' I said, but with a 
 little wonder. 
 
 ' Young goose,' he said. ' Those plans 
 
 which Jacques Cartier took so much trouble 
 
 to steal were carefully prepared for the 
 
 French market. You met Yon Alvenstein?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 c Yon Alvenstein is not in the secret of 
 those plans. They were prepared at con- 
 siderable expense (for the Germans) on 
 purpose to be captured by spies. The fool
 
 188 VALENTIN: 
 
 Cartier has burnt them. Just like him. 
 Well, tell your father to sell at once, and 
 buy into English funds. If they respect 
 our neutrality, it is all which we can hope 
 for.' 
 
 ' But, sir,' I said, ' France can fight for 
 herself.' 
 
 ' And get beaten,' said old Hugon, who 
 was Parisian born. ' Tell your father that 
 in two years from now we are ruined; and 
 now get out of the house. I will see Jacques 
 Cartier all safe. Go home and to bed. 
 Start in the morning for Bittburg, and you 
 will meet Cartier there. Remember that 
 you are a spy, and are watched.' 
 
 I took Marie home, and kissed her as 
 she went to her room. I was very un- 
 easy in my mind about matters. But I had 
 a holiday before me, and I knew that two 
 years' drill at Metz was coming to me. I 
 had an idea that I was passing now, or 
 about to pass, the pleasantest time in all 
 my life. So, in the early morning I roused
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 189 
 
 Mere Christine, and I went in and said good- 
 bye to Marie ; and then I took my bag, 
 my fishing-rod, and my carbine, walking 
 out of the street of Luxemburg as though 
 it belonged to me. Passing out of a certain 
 gate I heard one Prussian sentry say to 
 another, ' That pretty boy is a French spy. 
 He looks too good for such work.' I turned 
 at once' and said, ' Sir, I am no spy.' The 
 German said, ' Your face betrays you, boy, 
 you are not.' 'Arrest him,' said two or 
 three others ; and arrested I was, to have 
 coffee with much milk in it, Bretzels (a de- 
 licious form of food) and butter. They let 
 me go at last, those jolly Germans, and 
 stood looking after me. I went down the 
 road, between the high-piled rocks by the 
 little river. I ought to hate them, but I 
 love them. I ask, is not the world large 
 enough for both of us? 
 
 Why, look you, English, at your own 
 case. What did Xapoleon the Great write 
 to your Prince of Wales, when Napoleon
 
 190 VALENTIN. 
 
 had lost all? ' The most constant, the most 
 generous, the most powerful of my enemies.' 
 The English had the principal part in send- 
 ing him to St. Helena; he the idol of the 
 majority of the French. Many Frenchmen 
 vowed eternal hatred against the English : 
 your name was a name of infamy to most 
 Frenchmen. At Waterloo the Emperor 
 cried out in the last disaster. ' Mon Dieu ! 
 ils sont meles ensemble;' that was true. 
 Then the English and French were against 
 one another. Forty years later they were 
 meles ensemble once more, at Inkerman — 
 Guards and Zouaves shoulder to shoulder. 
 These hatreds do not continue themselves, 
 my friend. If you are as young as I am, 
 you may see French and Prussians stand by 
 shoulder to shoulder, in defiance of the 
 world. Have you not seen it yourself in 
 the boxing matches at your public schools ? 
 However, I must get away on the road 
 to Treves, on the road to Bittburg.
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 I was now entirely alone, and I found that 
 to be extremely pleasant. I loved the 
 society of Jacques Cartier beyond measure, 
 yet there was something very pleasant in 
 being entirely alone. 
 
 There are probably few things more 
 beautiful in the world than the exit from 
 Luxemburg, on the road towards Treves. 
 Behind you are the great bridges spanning 
 the glen, above and around are yellowish 
 gray scarps and pillars of rock, fringed with 
 copsewood and vineyard, before the glen 
 goes on winding away towards fairyland, 
 where there are no fortifications and no 
 I Russians. The river dances merrily on at 
 your side, and you can gather flowers, or
 
 192 VALENTIN: 
 
 fish, or sing, or lie down and sleep ; you can 
 do anything you like. 
 
 And if you are very young and in love, 
 you will have every now and then that feel- 
 ing which the learned call pre-cordial anx- 
 iety. That is to say, you will be anxiously 
 wondering where a certain young lady is, 
 and what she is doing. I am not sure whe- 
 ther that feeling is pleasurable or painful. 
 Men of the middle age sometimes say that 
 they would give all their wealth to feel it 
 again. 
 
 You see that everything groups itself 
 round one pure and holy object, and for the 
 first time in your life you feel that you are 
 totally unselfish. You are raised into a 
 higher and nobler atmosphere. 
 
 Here, for instance, by the river is a 
 flower, the ' Impatiens noli me tangere.' 
 How beautiful it is, deep yellow with pearly 
 green leaves! Bon del, how splendid it 
 would look in her golden hair ! There must 
 be a trout there where the water rushes
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 193 
 
 clown so freshly; we will put our rod to- 
 gether and have him. A splash, and the 
 speckled beauty lies panting on the grass, 
 among the cowslips. I wish she were here 
 to see him, what would she say at our luck ? 
 Why, she would say, sir, that you, being so 
 transcendently happy yourself, ought not 
 to deprive one of God's creatures of its 
 happiness; so you (or, at least, I) take the 
 hook gently from the trout's lip, and send 
 him wriggling away free. 
 
 This is sentimental folly. I quite allow 
 it, but I never knew much good of a young 
 man who was not a sentimental fool when 
 he was in love. When the shattered brown 
 keep of St. Etienne burst on my sight 
 suddenly, I gave a cry of gladness, but in 
 an instant more I was very sorry. She was 
 not here to see it soaring in the summer 
 air. 
 
 I walked swiftly when I did not stay to 
 play, and struck the Moselle at Wasserbilig. 
 The river was rushing on majestically, green 
 
 vol. i. o
 
 194 VALENTIN: 
 
 now in the early summer, a noble flood, 
 dashing onwards to meet her bridegroom, 
 the Ehine at Coblence. 
 
 ' As the silence that is broken 
 When the wished-for word is spoken, 
 
 And the heart hath a home where it may dwell, 
 As the sun and moon together, 
 In a sky of splendid weather, 
 
 Is the meeting of the Ehine and the Moselle.' 
 
 o 
 
 I was fairly in Germany now. What 
 idiots our people were ever to think that 
 we could make the Rhine provinces French ! 
 Will the Germans ..make Alsace and Lorraine 
 German ? Will the British ever make Ire- 
 land English? I leave these questions to 
 MM. Bismarck, Erckman-Chatrian, and the 
 late Lord Londonderry, commonly called 
 Lord Castlereagh. Since the utter submis- 
 sion of the slave-holding states in America, 
 and since the new movement for home rule 
 in Ireland, I have rather given up imperial 
 politics as a hopeless business. For the 
 Irish, having an amount of freedom which
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 195 
 
 we shall not get in a century, say they are 
 a clown-trodden and oppressed race. In the 
 name of heaven, how? Still, I only speak 
 as a Frenchman, as one who is puzzled by 
 your insular politics, which I think ridicu- 
 lous. 
 
 At Wasserbilig I met a German boy, and 
 we were comfortable together. He kept my 
 clothes while I swam in the river, and then 
 we talked. He was a very nice boy, he 
 hated the French in general, but he liked 
 me in particular. We had sausage together, 
 and we talked. 
 
 ' You hate us ?' I said. 
 
 ' Yes,' said the German boy, ' we do.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 ' For many reasons.' 
 
 ' Old reasons or new ?' 
 
 ' Not for old reasons so much ; you beat 
 us heavily, and without cause, until we beat 
 you at Waterloo ; no, not for old reasons.' 
 
 'The English beat us at Waterloo,' I 
 said.
 
 196 VALENTIN: 
 
 ' They held the ground till we came up. 
 They did nothing more than that. They 
 would have been in the forest but for us. 
 You say that because they beat you through 
 Spain.' 
 
 ' Alas,' I said, ' wherever the English 
 met us they beat us. England is a name of 
 bad omen to us.' 
 
 ' You seem to be happy enough together 
 now,' said the German boy, ' you are robbing 
 and plundering in company. There is no 
 safety for an honest nation. Look at Pekin.' 
 
 I apologised for the summer palace spo- 
 liation as well as I could. 
 
 ' The English and the French are the 
 greatest robbers on the face of the earth,' 
 said the German boy. ' England has appro- 
 priated India without a shadow of right; 
 and you French, wherever you came you 
 robbed and stole. In our public library at 
 Treves there is a copy of the "Gallerie 
 Francaise;'' a catalogue of pictures stolen 
 by Napoleon, which he had to give back.'
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 197 
 
 I asked him if he would kindly hand me 
 my right stocking, which lay on the grass 
 beside him. I was getting rather the worst 
 of the argument, you see. 
 
 'Mind,' he said, as he handed me the 
 stocking, 'when our turn comes we shall 
 take what we want, and do, not as we have 
 been done by, but simply do what is neces- 
 sary for our own safety. However, ice are 
 friends. Where are you going ?' 
 
 'To Treves.' 
 
 'I also. Come, and I will show you 
 Eiger. Come in my boat, I have a boat 
 below.' 
 
 This was entirely delightful; the Ger- 
 man boy let his boat float down stream and 
 talked to me the while. 
 
 'French boy,' he said, 'is your name 
 Schneider ?' 
 
 'Yes, Valentin Schneider.' 
 
 ' You are to be let go where you will, 
 and do what you like. My name is Von 
 Lindenau, son of the Librarian at Treves.
 
 198 VALENTIN: 
 
 We have heard much of you. We hope to 
 get your father on our side. You, however, 
 are French and will remain French.' 
 
 I rather thought of throwing him out of 
 the boat, when he said this about my father ; 
 but he looked very cool and strong, so I 
 only said, with great heat, that my father 
 was no traitor. 
 
 ' No, no,' he said. ' See where we are 
 passing. This is the mouth of the Sarre. 
 What battles have been fought here for 
 eighteen centuries !' 
 
 My good humour was restored, and I 
 begged his pardon for being angry. He 
 bent over from his oars and kissed me. ' I 
 wish you were a German,' he said. 
 
 ' But about the battles ?' I asked ; 'where 
 are we now ?' 
 
 'In the reft in the hills, which in old 
 times divided Roman and Celt, and which 
 now divide Teuton and Celt. Look to the 
 left instead of looking into my eyes.' 
 
 I looked to the left, and there was the
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 199 
 
 great monument of Eiger towering over the 
 trees. I held my breath ; it was the most 
 magnificent specimen of Roman work I had 
 ever seen. And then we floated on. 
 
 ' When vou force it on us, Valentin, we 
 shall push our frontier farther forward, or 
 perish as a nation. If you ever say your 
 prayers, pray that you and I may not meet, 
 for Hike you so very much.' 
 
 And so we floated on, talking about many 
 things, and at last he said, ' Here is Treves.' 
 I o-ot my things out of the boat and went 
 with him along the street, for he told me 
 that he would show me the way to the Hotel 
 d'Ano-leterre. Passing the corner of one 
 street I clutched his arm and said, ' What 
 
 is that?' 
 
 ' The Porta Nigra,' he said, coolly, ' the 
 gate between the Roman and the Celt in 
 old times, now the gate between the Teuton 
 and the Celt. In a year or two we shall 
 pull it down and build it up again to the 
 west of Metz.'
 
 200 VALENTIN : 
 
 I went to bed after my dinner at the 
 Hotel d'Angleterre. I rolled myself up in 
 the sheets, but I could not sleep. I looked 
 out of window and saw the horrible watch- 
 men in long black cloaks, who frightened 
 me. They looked like fiends ; but they were 
 not fiends, because they were very kind to 
 an old Frenchwoman, who was very obstre- 
 perous and who apparently could give no 
 account of herself. I thought that this old 
 lady looked very like Mere Mathilde, but I 
 was not sure. At last, trying bed again, I 
 got to sleep. But whatever turn my dreams 
 took there was the black gate at Treves 
 being moved, stone after stone, off my chest, 
 and all through the middle of the night I 
 was engaged in removing each stone to the 
 west side of Metz. Towards morning Ma- 
 rie appeared (in my dream), and pelted all 
 the stones merrily right and left, and so I 
 slept heavily until the gar 9011 came and 
 shook me roughly by the shoulder. 
 
 Then I rose, and having had my break-
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 
 
 201 
 
 fast, went on the road to Bittburg. I left 
 Treves, the beautiful, by the northern gate. 
 We wished to have her, but we shall never 
 get her now. The question is, shall we 
 set back Strasburs:. or even Metz? How- 
 ever, the peace of continental Europe is 
 impossible until we do.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 I walked very much faster than an old 
 woman could possibly do, and in one dajr 
 I had arrived at Bittburg, twenty -three 
 miles. Bittburg was by no means interest- 
 ing, and I stayed only one day and two 
 nights for Jacques Cartier. I found it to 
 be pleasanter without him than with him; 
 for, dear fellow as he was, I was compelled 
 to confess that he seemed always in trou- 
 ble, and what is more, seemed to be always 
 getting me into trouble. I was rather tired 
 of it. 
 
 I had no fault to find with Bittbur£. I 
 had a little room which opened on the 
 street, a rather dull street. But my room 
 was very pleasant — I think the best room 
 in the house, with a bed in a little alcove.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 
 
 203 
 
 The good woman of the house paid very 
 particular attention to me, and the head of 
 the gendarmerie (as we should call it in 
 France) came to see me. He told me that 
 although I had no passports, I could go in 
 any direction I liked. This was very civil, 
 for indeed I had no passport at all, and I 
 thanked him very much. 
 
 'Little gentleman,' he said, 'I have a 
 son just your age.' 
 
 ' I should like to know him, sir,' I said. 
 ' Well, vou knoAv his cousin.' 
 ' My friend of yesterday ?' 
 ' Yes. Now, my little man, I would 
 not have sent him out on such an expedi- 
 tion as this to save my life.' 
 I hung my head. 
 
 ' I do not think that your father is 
 right. Yet your father is a good man. 
 See now, don't cry. Go where you will. 
 Make a holiday and enjoy yourself. I think 
 a wolf will come to your door to-night, 
 little wehr wolf.'
 
 204 
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 ' A wolf, sir ?' 
 
 'Ay, with bare legs,' said the Prus- 
 sian, laughing. And lo ! a wolf did come. 
 
 I had gone to bed; but I could not 
 sleep, because of what he had told me about 
 the bare -legged wolf coming to the door. 
 At about twelve o'clock at night, I, lying 
 awake, heard as plainly as possible some- 
 thing moving at that door. I got out of 
 bed and looked out through the French 
 windows. The street was still and empty, 
 and I could see nothing at all. I went to 
 bed, and had dropped off to sleep, when I 
 heard as plainly as possible a very small 
 voice, coming from I know not where, say, 
 ' Valentin, my feet are so cold.' 
 
 I had been dreaming, and I had dreamt 
 of a picture by M. Horace Vernet, of the 
 retreat from Moscow, and of a poor con- 
 script lying on the cold snow, with his feet 
 turned up. I notice that the pictures of 
 M. Horace Vernet are apt to come to one 
 in one's dreams, I think, more than those
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 205 
 
 of M. Gustave Dore. I dreamt, I say, of 
 this picture, and how our poor French lay 
 down and died with then feet to the sky. 
 
 I thought that I was asleep. But the 
 voice seemed natural. Once more, ' Valen- 
 tin, my feet are as cold as death. Let me 
 in, for the memory of old Sedan.' 
 
 ' Old Moscow is what the ghost means, 
 I said aloud. And I was fairly roused by 
 the voice saying, ' Not Moscow, Valentin ; 
 Sedan, Sedan; let me in.' 
 
 I was awake now, and I went to the 
 door and opened it. 
 
 My brother Mark stood before me, 
 shivering in the moonlight. (You will 
 remember that I did not know him for my 
 brother.) He said: 
 
 ' Let me come in and lie on the floor, 
 it was so cold outside that I could not wait 
 
 till morning.' 
 
 ' Were you waiting for me, Mark?' 
 
 ' Yes, Mere Mathilde is after you to fetch 
 
 you back. You are to be at Metz for two
 
 206 VALENTIN: 
 
 years; now is your only chance of pure 
 liberty, my darling. Jacques Cartier is 
 stopped ; we can go on. Let us fly in the 
 morning, and I will show you the most 
 wonderful things in the world. But my 
 feet are so cold.' 
 
 ' Get into my bed, Mark, it is warm, 
 and then we will talk.' 
 
 He was not long in accepting of my 
 invitation, and I rolled my Jersey shirt 
 round his feet to warm them. I rolled the 
 coat of one of the 17th of the line round 
 them at last; but they were too cold for 
 warming then. 
 
 ' Valentin,' he said, when we were in 
 bed comfortably, ' you must come on with 
 me.' 
 
 < Whither?' 
 
 ' To the Eifel. You are your own mas- 
 ter, you can go where you choose. Let us 
 escape to-morrow morning and leave those 
 others to find us. Mere Mathilde has been 
 detained at Treves for being turbulent : we
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAX. 207 
 
 are utterly free ; let us go on until we are 
 sent back.' 
 
 Before we dropped to sleep, I had 
 agreed. When I said 'yes,' he rolled his 
 heavy head over on my chest, and said, 
 ' We must fly early, my feet are very cold.' 
 And then I went to sleep in good earnest, 
 and dreamt persistently of Moscow and the 
 passage of the Beresina. I dreamt also of 
 Marie, and of many things ; but dreams 
 are always of the past, never of the future. 
 Or I should have dreamt of the warm 
 feet now twined in mine, cold for ever. I 
 should have dreamt of a shattered wall and 
 a very pretty boy in a drummer's dress, 
 against whose breast General von Alvens- 
 leben put his finger, and said, 
 
 ' Madame Schneider, you must go back. 
 I know all; I cannot allow you to follow 
 these two English ladies.'
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 I have often seen summer days which 
 ended in thunderstorms. I have been out, 
 for my part, gathering spring flowers in 
 the afternoon, and at night have arrived 
 home drenched and miserable. For me 
 now it is all equal. Providence has afflicted 
 us bitterly, and Marie and I pray that 
 the affliction may do us good. You Eng- 
 lish are unable to understand the depth of 
 our affliction : everything has gone well 
 with you. I cannot perceive how you 
 could have helped us, yet you will forgive 
 a Frenchman for going half mad over his 
 ruin. 
 
 To pleasanter matters. I was by no 
 means half mad when I awoke Mark at 
 Bittburg. That time was the summer day
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 209 
 
 of rny life. I was young, innocent, pure, 
 audacious, and I was bound on a great 
 holiday. Mark and I stood alone in the 
 street together, without one single care, or 
 one single hope which troubled us. 
 
 Stay, there was a single hope, and only 
 one. The hope of penetrating beyond that 
 sheet of yellow rolling down, which spread 
 above Bittburg, and of seeing the wonders 
 which those downs enclosed. There was a 
 hope, and it was realised. 
 
 Mark and I went arm in arm for a 
 little; but then we parted, for we were in 
 the forest, and there was but one track 
 through the copsewood. I had my fishing- 
 rod, and he told me to get it ready. That 
 was not exactly possible, as the forest was 
 so thick, but I did my best. I had my 
 English trout tackle perfectly ready in five 
 minutes after Mark and I sat down by the 
 side of a little stream which he told me 
 was the Kyll. 
 
 That is a very lovely stream. Your 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 VALENTIN: 
 
 English streams are purer, possibly, but I 
 have seen few of them, and must not speak. 
 Your Itch en is wonderfully pure, yet not, 
 I assert, more pure than our Arques. To 
 compare the Kyll with the Arques or the 
 Itchen, would be absurd. I do not do so. 
 I think that for perfect beauty of sur- 
 roundings, the Kyll would surpass any 
 English or French river. One place, where 
 the stream comes through the magnesian 
 limestone was so beautiful, that I christened 
 it 'The Nymph's Bath.' A young English- 
 man, of the county of Derbyshire, now 
 studying as a cadet at the college of Wool- 
 wich, in England, tells me that these glens 
 in the Eifel are far surpassed by the glens 
 in Derbyshire. He is of the most excel- 
 lent, this young man from Woolwich. He 
 says that he has a plan by which there 
 shall be no more war at all, and that all 
 nations shall live in peace for ever. His 
 name is Jones, and he belongs to your 
 engineers. Possibly, I am wrong in giving
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 211 
 
 his name, because it might make injury to 
 him, and stop his promotion. That, how- 
 ever, I do not believe, with a nation so 
 generous as yours is. 
 
 Jones happened to be fishing on the 
 Kyll, when Mark and 1 arrived at the 
 banks of that stream. Jones happened to 
 have hitched his flies up on the other side, 
 and so happened to meet us without a rag- 
 on his body, he having taken off his 
 clothes to recover his flies. I put it to 
 you as a young English gentleman whe- 
 ther you can tell another gentleman to be 
 a gentleman if he is stark naked. I can't. 
 I asked him what ever he was doing there ; 
 and he told me to ask my grandmother 
 (she has been dead these twenty years), and 
 also offered to knock my head off. I de- 
 clined both propositions ; and by degrees, 
 as his clothes went on, I saw that I was 
 speaking to a gentleman. 
 
 Oddly enough, Mark says that he knew 
 he was a gentleman from the first, because
 
 212 VALENTIN: 
 
 his feet were so white and clean, and that 
 his nails were like filbert-nuts. Well, that 
 is only what Mark said. 
 
 Jones got his clothes on, and I saw 
 at once that he was a gentleman. Jones 
 spoke French very well for an English- 
 man, and he thought that my brother 
 Mark was a gipsy; to tell the truth I 
 thought so too. Jones was puzzled about 
 me entirely, and took me for granted, as 
 something of which he had not read in 
 Cuvier. 
 
 'I see you have an English rod,' he 
 said. ' Let us fish up the stream to Kyll- 
 burg — I on one side, you on the other. 
 Your handsome gipsy friend is coming, I 
 suppose. Do you know this country, my 
 lad ? I want to see Kyllburg.' 
 
 ' Fish up, and you will see it, English- 
 man,' said Mark. 
 
 And so we worked up the stream. We 
 caught in the slow parts of the stream 
 chub and grayling, in the sharper parts of
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 213 
 
 the stream we got trout. Before we got 
 to Kyllburg, the Englishman had left me. 
 I was just landing a small chub with the 
 assistance of Mark, when he came back. 
 
 ' Come with me, my boy,' he said. 
 
 I left my rod and went with him. He 
 pushed aside the briers and brambles, as I 
 followed him. We stood by a still pool by 
 the river, and I looked for the first time 
 at Kyllburg. 
 
 Archduke Frederick Charles, do you 
 ever dream? If you ever dream, try to 
 dream of Kyllburg. Until you awakened 
 its echoes with your drums and trumpets 
 as you marched to ruin France last year, 
 those echoes had not been awakened for four 
 centuries. 
 
 A mass of tangled vegetation, and 
 through the vegetation the noble red 
 sandstone cloisters asserting themselves. 
 I am as utterly unable to describe Kyll- 
 burg, as I am to describe Mont St. Michel. 
 I looked on the formulated red sandstone
 
 214 VALENTIN: 
 
 cloisters, and the (apparently) unformu- 
 lated vegetation, and I said to the Eng- 
 lishman, 
 
 ' Tell me about this.' 
 
 He almost whispered, 
 
 ' This is the death of an idea,' he said ; 
 ' the men who piled those beautiful stones 
 together thought that they could have 
 peace in this world. You see the ruin of 
 their work. Women and idiots may get 
 peace, but no man. Be as silent as death, 
 boy. Give me your carbine ; is it loaded?' 
 
 I gave it to him. 
 
 'Watch those roses, those wild -brier 
 roses,' he whispered to me; 'how prettily 
 they trail over that pillar. The dead monks 
 might even admire the ruins of their own 
 creation. Give me another cartridge.' 
 
 I did so. 
 
 He raised the carbine to his shoulder, 
 took a steady aim, and fired right into the 
 roses. 
 
 In one instant a desperately wounded
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 215 
 
 wolf bounded out and stood at bay before 
 us with grinning fangs. 
 
 For the life of me I cannot say why I 
 ran on to the wolf to prevent a second 
 shot. It was a kind of mad, stupid in- 
 stinct. The beast was on his haunches 
 when I approached him. I heard the Eng- 
 lishman shout, 'Stand aside, I have an- 
 other- cartridge.' I heard Mark say, ' It 
 matters nothing, he is the wolf's brother, 
 he is wehr wolf.' Then the beast met my 
 eyes and turned over stone-dead before 
 me. And then, as it seemed to me, I 
 passed into the garden of the Arsacidas, 
 and remained there some time. 
 
 The fact was that my ague was on me 
 again, and I had fainted away. Mark says 
 that I fell flat on the wolf, and that the 
 Englishman was half mad at not being able 
 to put another bullet into him.
 
 CHAPTER XXIY. 
 
 I promise that no grass grew under our 
 feet. Mark struck away from the main 
 road at once, through a dell fringed with 
 copsewood, a dell which carried its waters 
 towards the Moselle. I can see his pretty 
 bare feet brushing through the impatiens 
 and the geranium as I write. The stream 
 was a very small one where we hit it, but 
 other streams came in and made it larger 
 and larger. At last there was a cascade, 
 and I wanted Mark to go down and bathe 
 under it, but Mark said, ' No, we must push 
 up aloft at present.' And so we clam- 
 bered through the woods until I was nearly 
 tired. 
 
 'Mark,' I said, 'we are following in a 
 path.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 
 
 217 
 
 ' To be sure we are,' he said, ' and we 
 are nearly at the end of it. Now load your 
 carbine, and keep perfectly steady. When 
 he rises at us, fire here.' 
 
 My pretty brother took my hand and 
 laid it on his jugular vein. 
 
 ' Between the cheek and shoulder, you 
 know,' said Mark. 'He will in all pro- 
 bability charge, in which case jump over 
 his back and dodge behind a tree till you 
 have loaded again. Don't let him catch 
 you between the legs. He is not difficult 
 to escape.' 
 
 ' But who is he f I asked, not, I confess, 
 without anxiety. 
 
 'Who is who?' said Mark. 
 ' I mean, whom am I going to shoot?' 
 'Why,' said Mark, 'Old Moses, to be 
 sure. I love you, little gentleman, and I 
 think you love me. We are out on plea- 
 sure together, and I want to give you the 
 best pleasure. Our people tracked Old 
 Moses to his frank, and I have given you
 
 218 VALENTIN: 
 
 the chance of killing him. I can tell you 
 that the priest at Mauclerscheid would give 
 me twenty -five francs to put him where 
 you are now.' 
 
 'But who is Old Moses?' I once more 
 asked. 
 
 'Why, don't you know? He is the 
 largest wild boar in the Eifel. I know of 
 one larger in the Ardennes, but Old Moses 
 is the largest in the Eifel. The priest at 
 Lazel had a try at him with one dog, and 
 he killed the dog and wounded the priest 
 in the leg. That was when he was quite 
 young, a mere pig. He is an old boar now, 
 and will spare nothing. It is a matter of 
 life or death to attack him.' 
 
 ' I think,' I said, ' that some other amuse- 
 ment would be better.' 
 
 ' You need not be afraid, dear,' said my 
 unknown brother. 'If you miss when he 
 charges I will stand close to you and throw 
 myself on him while you reload. I shall 
 have my knife. I may kill him with it if
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 
 
 219 
 
 you have wounded him with your shot; 
 but if I fail, for mercy's sake don't hesitate 
 a second time in firing for fear of hitting 
 me. Remember that your life is worth a 
 hundred times mine. I am only a poor 
 dog, and you are a gentleman.' 
 
 'Mark,' I said very quickly, 'I don't 
 like this adventure, it is extremely danger- 
 
 ousf 
 
 'Why, of course,' said Mark, 'it is very 
 dangerous— the sort of thing for an Eng- 
 lishman. Why, an English officer in India 
 will walk up to a tiger and shoot him stone 
 dead before he has time to spring. We are 
 not less courageous than the English.' 
 
 I said, ' Certainly not ;' but I could not 
 help wondering whether the English officers 
 Avho shot tigers on foot felt exactly the 
 same anxiety about their personal safety as 
 I did when I was going to attack the great 
 wild boar of the Eifel. I reflected, how- 
 ever that I was a Frenchman. I am told 
 that your Lord Nelson at the battle of
 
 220 
 
 VALENTIN 
 
 Trafalgar signalled to his fleet, 'England 
 expects every man to do his duty.' I think 
 that is a very fine sentiment. The duty 
 was to fire the guns with rapidity and pre- 
 cision until we and the Spaniards had left 
 off. That duty was done well, and we were 
 beaten. (It was that grand bete Napoleon, 
 who never in passing was a Frenchman at 
 all, but a Corsican, an Italian, who forced 
 out Villeneuve.) The duty of the English 
 was to stand by their guns. My duty was 
 to follow Mark. 
 
 I beg of you to reflect. 
 
 When a nation loses honour and the 
 power of courage, she has lost everything 
 which is worth having. That nation can 
 live no longer — she may exist. 
 
 In matters of national honour the slight- 
 est boy or the weakest woman can give the 
 key-note to a trumpet which will rouse a 
 nation to utter desperation and to ultimate 
 triumph. You want examples ? He ! Men 
 done :
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 221 
 
 The death of Madam Garibaldi ended 
 in the freedom and consolidation of Italy. 
 
 What song is that which yon English 
 boys sing called ' Casabianca' ? Casabianca 
 was a French boy, yet there is surely not 
 an English boy who does not envy him his 
 death. 
 
 Look once more at Gambetta's hair- 
 dressers' and linendrapers' apprentices, who 
 at the last moment rode with scarlet trou- 
 sers and white cloaks straight at the Prus- 
 sians before Paris. They could not fight, 
 but those young men were not dastards. 
 
 Those who undervalue the courage of 
 the French might find themselves terribly 
 mistaken. 
 
 Why do I say this? Why, because I 
 wish to draw a moral. I am not in the 
 least degree answerable for the morality of 
 my moral. Take it as you find it. The 
 members of a great nation dare not be 
 cowards. 
 
 No, depend upon that. For me, I am 
 not particularly courageous; for example,
 
 222 VALENTIN: 
 
 I used to cry when I was left alone in the 
 dark when I was young. But mutter the 
 word ; France' in my ear, and I will go to 
 the stake at once. As for crying, you can- 
 not turn that against us, because your own 
 terrible Collingwood, when he was sent on 
 board ship at ten years old, sat clown on 
 a gun and cried like a haby ; and when the 
 lieutenant came to him and told him not to 
 ciy, and said that they would be kind to 
 him, little Collingwood offered the lieuten- 
 ant the cake which his mother had given 
 him. I think that your Collingwood was 
 almost worthy of being a Frenchman. 
 
 The last remark, however, is a little too 
 strong. I am no Chauvinist, but I do not 
 acknowledge the equality of any nation with 
 the French. At the same time, I had bet- 
 ter recur to the actual facts which occurred 
 in this wonderful boar hunt. 
 
 The boar's frank was among a lot of 
 tangled briers. I could actually see the 
 beast's hide as he lay asleep. 
 
 We had a short conversation.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 
 
 223 
 
 ' You see his rump ?' said Mark. 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 'Now calculate where his heart is, and 
 fire ; then load again like lightning, for he 
 
 will be on us.' 
 
 I heard a stealthy footstep behind me, 
 and felt a touch on my shoulder. It was 
 only a half-naked young man, one of the 
 ubiquitous Carbonari. 
 
 'Fire straight through that rose,' he 
 said ; and I did so. It was like lighting a 
 powder magazine. The beast, with a noise 
 between a grunt and a roar, was on his 
 haunches at once, looking round for his 
 enemies. I had loaded again before he 
 made an effort to charge. It was a feeble 
 effort only. I put another bullet into his 
 head, and he dropped dead ; to ravage the 
 potato-fields no more. 
 
 The young man took possession of him, 
 and sold him to the landlord of the hotel at 
 Treves, as I afterwards learnt. Meanwhile 
 Mark hurried me away over the hill-side.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 'There are no vines here,' I said to Mark. 
 
 ' No,' he said, ' we are out of the region 
 of vines. The vines here only grow about 
 the rivers, and we are beyond rivers now — 
 we are among the lakes. Climb this last 
 hill bravely and you shall see one, such a 
 one as you have never seen before.' 
 
 How there could be a lake on the sum- 
 mit of the high doAvn covered with short 
 grass, I could not imagine; but when we 
 got to the top I gave a loud cry almost of 
 alarm, for I was on the edge of the Schal- 
 kenmar, and one false step would have sent 
 me rolling down two hundred feet into the 
 forty fathoms of water, which is without 
 any shore whatever. As it was, one foot 
 slipped on the slippery grass, and Mark
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 225 
 
 seized me, for, heavily laden as I was, I 
 must inevitably have been drowned had I 
 rolled over. 
 
 There was a vast hollow depression in 
 the hills about three-quarters of a mile in 
 diameter, but only at one place a small cliff 
 of rock. All round this turf sloped down 
 nearly perpendicular into the water, the 
 profound depth of which was shown by its 
 being of a sapphire blue. Salt water shows 
 the sapphire blue at forty fathoms, as our 
 sailors tell us, but fresh water at a much 
 greater depth. A German professor tried 
 to fathom this lake, but found no bottom 
 at two hundred and forty English feet. 
 One of the horrible things about it is that 
 it has no outlet at all, but is hemmed in on 
 all sides by a perfectly level line of downs 
 without a break. People who have once 
 seen it never forget it. It strikes me with 
 terror in my dreams even now. There is 
 not a tree or a bush round it, and it is as 
 terrible now when filled with water as it 
 
 vol. i. Q
 
 226 VALENTIN: 
 
 was in old times, when it was a roaring 
 volcano, casting stones and fire all around 
 the neighbouring country. 
 
 'What an awful place,' I said, 'what an 
 awful land ! But, Mark, is there no way 
 by which the water gets out V 
 
 ' No,' said Mark. ' Once it was an open- 
 ing out of hell, and the fire and smoke used 
 to burst out, but the good St. Christopher, 
 who bore Christ through the river Jor- 
 dan, prayed to the bon Dieu, and the bon 
 Dieu filled it up with water. And then 
 Lazarus, who lies in the bosom of Abraham, 
 prayed also the bon Dieu that He would 
 let the water drip out of the bottom of it 
 in hell, and cool the tongue of Dives in 
 torment. The bon Dieu agreed to that, 
 because He loved the kindness of Lazarus 
 towards a man who had been unkind to 
 him when he was living. So when there is 
 a long drought, you can hear Dives crying 
 for water, but when the lake is at its full 
 height, Dives is silent.' 
 
 ' But—'
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 227 
 
 ' Ah, wait ; you do not know all. When 
 the drought is very long, a shepherd's dog 
 runs away, and, coining this Avay, goes 
 down there, leaps into the lake, and disap- 
 pears. That dog is one of the descendants 
 of the dogs that licked the sores of Lazarus, 
 which goes to ask Lazarus to plead with 
 the bon Dieu for rain. You see Dives fed 
 the 'dogs but neglected Lazarus, so they 
 plead for him. After a dog drowns himself 
 in this lake rain always comes.' 
 
 I thought it highly improbable, but I 
 kept my opinions to myself. 'Who told 
 you this — well — legend?' I asked. 
 
 'Mere Mathilde; and she said that it 
 was a very good legend, because it shows 
 that the bon Dieu has pity even on souls 
 supposed to be lost.' 
 
 'You must not say such things,' I an- 
 swered. ' The story is a foolish story, an 
 old woman's story. What does Mere Ma- 
 thilde know of religion? Leave such things 
 to the priest.'
 
 228 VALENTIN: 
 
 Mark promised that he would do so ; 
 and we had a little religious conversation, 
 which showed me that he was actually 
 ignorant of the very first principles of 
 Christianity. He thought that Joshua was 
 a Prussian, and that Samson had carried 
 away the great gates at Thionville, and was 
 afterwards engaged in the burning of Mos- 
 cow. I decline to repeat all I gathered 
 from him as to his notions of New Testa- 
 ment history, as we lay together in the 
 short grass over the lake. For example, I 
 asked him, 'Who was St. Paul?' He an- 
 swered that he was the Paris gentleman 
 who had the contract for the tents at Cha- 
 lons, but who had quarrelled with Marshal 
 Niel. He had heard about St. Paul's hav- 
 ing been a tent -maker evidently, but far- 
 ther than that he seemed to know nothing. 
 ' Who was St. Peter ?' He was the Pope ; 
 and Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi would 
 have hung him long ago, only Mazzini and 
 Victor Emmanuel had fallen out, because
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 229 
 
 Victor Emmanuel had discouraged the Car- 
 bonari. He appeared to have a dim notion 
 of contemporary politics, but none what- 
 ever of religion. I asked him if he went 
 to church. He replied, rather proudly, that 
 he was not a woman. I could do nothing 
 with him, he was lost in ignorance; but 
 there are many such. I was determined to 
 consult my father and mother about him. 
 I had not taken my first communion then, 
 but I made a secret vow that if Heaven 
 o-ave me grace, this poor outcast, Mark, 
 should go to the altar with me. 
 
 I burst into tears. I loved him so well, 
 and yet we had no hope, no aspiration in 
 common. He asked me why I wept; and 
 before the sun set behind the hill, I had 
 told him the whole great story of the Re- 
 demption, and he sat on the grass and 
 stared at me in wonder. 
 
 'Why, Christ was a hundred times 
 greater than Mazzini himself,' he said, ' and 
 the Son of the bon Dieu! And He rose
 
 230 
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 from the dead! Let us leave here now 
 and seek Him. The Freres Chretiens are 
 wise men ; they will tell us where He is. 
 If we can find Him, as we will, we will tell 
 Him how hardly we poor folks live, and He 
 will mend that. Let us go hence, you and 
 I, and seek Him through the world.' 
 
 'But He has ascended into heaven,' I 
 said. 
 
 ' Up there ?' he answered, pointing aloft. 
 ' Ay, but He will hear us if we call on 
 Him,' I said. ' He is not here, but He is 
 risen. He will come again when the world 
 is fit for Him, and then there will be 
 peace.' 
 
 'Let us ask Him to come quickly,' said 
 Mark. 
 
 We did so. We knelt down together 
 on the bare down, and I prayed with him. 
 I ended by praying that Christ would come 
 as soon as the world was fit for Him, and 
 give that universal peace which existed on 
 the night of His birth.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 231 
 
 We rose from our knees, and Mark said, 
 ' The world is not fit for Him yet, We must 
 
 wait.' 
 
 The answer to our prayer had come. 
 On the opposite down, across the lake, was 
 a squadron of Prussian cavalry — blue, sil- 
 ver, and gold — wending along under the 
 westering sun. We had got our answer 
 for 'the time.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ; Lend me your carbine, Valentin,' whis- 
 pered Mark. 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 l I could pick off one of those men,' 
 said Mark. ' Nothing would be more easy.' 
 
 'And what would be the use of that?' 
 I asked. 
 
 ' There would be one less.' 
 
 ' You, however, would be hung for do- 
 ing it, and so there would be one less on 
 our side.' 
 
 ' That is true,' said Mark very quietly. 
 ' I did not think of that. Let us go round 
 the lake and hear what they are saying. 
 Be stupid, you Valentin; do not under- 
 stand German. I might get my knife into 
 one of them to-night, for all you know.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 233 
 
 'Mark, Mark! have we not been pray- 
 ing together?' I said. 
 
 ; Yes; and the bon Dieu sent an answer 
 to our prayer in the form of a Prussian 
 squadron. It is certain to me that the bon 
 Dieu will have us fight. I will have one 
 of those men before the morning.' 
 
 'We are not at war, Mark,' I said; 
 ' and even if we were, such an act would 
 be sheer assassination. In any case it is 
 against the laws of war.' 
 
 'Laws of war!' said Mark; 'you are 
 talking nonsense. There can be no law in 
 a practice which puts aside all law. What 
 is the case? The Germans wish to ruin us, 
 and we wish to ruin the Germans. That 
 is fair, is it not ?' 
 I said, ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Good,' said Mark. ' In war you wish 
 to kill your enemy. Is it not so ?' 
 I said, ' Certainly.' 
 
 ' Why not, then,' said Mark, ' stop all 
 Avar by killing your chief enemy before the
 
 234 
 
 VALENTIN 
 
 war begins ? The assassination of one man 
 might stop the whole thing. If on the op- 
 posite hill yon saw Frederick William, Yon 
 Moltke, or Bismarck, would you not fire 
 on them?' 
 
 ' Not in time of peace,' I said ; ' that 
 would be the act of a scoundrel.' 
 
 ' You are a fool,' he answered fiercely. 
 ' Give me that carbine.' 
 
 He fell on me and struggled with me 
 for it. He was stronger than I, but I re- 
 tained possession of it, not, I am sorry to 
 say, without bruising him heavily on the 
 head with the butt end of it. 
 
 He was dazed and partially stunned. 
 He sat up on the grass, and said, 'May 
 Heaven forgive vou.' 
 
 I was at his feet in one moment. 'I 
 only did it to save you, Mark.' 
 
 'To save me, ay, I know,' said Mark; 
 ' but you might have let me save France 
 first. You have done a very foolish thing, 
 and forty thousand dead men will curse
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 235 
 
 you for ever. I could have hit that man, 
 if you had not fought me. I cannot now, 
 for my head is bad. Curse him ! I might 
 get my knife in his ribs, though. Look at 
 him, and curse him!' 
 
 I was rather surprised at this outbreak 
 of Mark's, and I was very much alarmed 
 at it. I looked at the Prussian officer on 
 the other side of the Schalkenmar. He was 
 a tall man, who sat his horse well; and 
 he had brought his horse to the very edge 
 of the slippery gazon, and was looking into 
 the lake, two hundred feet below him. The 
 distance was, as I now know, three hun- 
 dred and fifty yards ; and if Mark had killed 
 his horse, he would have fallen into the 
 lake hopelessly. I felt that we had had an 
 escape, and I felt also that I was with a 
 very dangerous companion. I looked at the 
 Prussian officer, and then I turned to Mark. 
 ' Mark, if argument will do nothing, love 
 may do somewhat.' 
 ' Well.'
 
 236 VALENTIN : 
 
 ' Let us go back to Sedan.' 
 
 ' Let me kill that man first.' 
 
 4 No, no; I will not have it,' I answered. 
 
 ' Well, then, see,' said Mark. ' You go 
 back to Sedan, and leave me to kill him.' 
 
 'You shall not do it; I will kill you 
 first,' I said. 
 
 ' My darling,' said Mark, ' do you think 
 I would mind being killed by you ? I will 
 stand up and you shall shoot me dead. 
 You do not know what you are doing 
 when you forbid me to kill this man.' 
 
 ' I will have no assassination.' 
 
 ' But, see, my brother ; he sits there with 
 his horse's hoofs on the verge of the gazon 
 glacis. We could kill him so easily now. 
 Give me your carbine.' 
 
 I held my carbine the tighter. ' What 
 is the use of shooting Prussian officers ?' I 
 said rather vaguely. 
 
 ' Not much,' said Mark. ' Kill one, and 
 you get a dozen in their place. But this 
 one surely has been given into our hands.'
 
 A STOEY OF SEDAN. 237 
 
 4 This one !' I said. ' Do you know him, 
 then?' 
 
 'Do not you?' 
 . ' Not I.' 
 
 ' Why, it is our bitterest enemy — it is 
 the Archduke Frederick Charles. You 
 Avill give me your carbine, will you 
 not?' 
 
 Let us thank Heaven that such fearful 
 temptations come seldom in the life of a 
 man. My first instinct was to hold my 
 carbine very tight, because I determined 
 that, if the thing was to be done, I could 
 do it myself, and not let Mark do it. Then 
 I had a petulant wish that the Archduke 
 would go away, and not tempt me ; but 
 the Archduke sat in thought, and peered 
 into the lake. 
 
 He little knew what awful danger he 
 was in. One shot would have brought him 
 and his horse down two hundred feet. But 
 I could not do it. The carbine was loaded, 
 and a wild duck flew over the surface of
 
 238 
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 the lake. I pretended to fire at the duck, 
 and so emptied the carbine. 
 
 1 You missed him/ said Mark in a whis- 
 per. ' He sits there on his horse still. Give 
 me another cartridge and your carbine, and 
 I will kill him for you.' 
 
 1 On the contrary,' I said, 'we will walk 
 round the lake and talk to him.' 
 
 ' That is very just,' said Mark. ' I give 
 my word that I will not molest him. Let 
 us hear what this dog has to say.' 
 
 So, passing round the end of the lake, 
 we came among the Prussian cavalry. 
 
 Mark was by no means a bad actor. I 
 rather flatter myself that I am an exceed- 
 ingly good one, though my friends disagree 
 with me. At all events, Mark could act 
 well enough to imitate me. Our role was 
 the role dHngenu, and we did it to perfec- 
 tion; at least, I did it to perfection— Mark," 
 my brother, overdid it a little. . 
 
 For example, we first came on two 
 hussars with lances and flags. We spoke
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 239 
 
 to them. Both Mark and I knew German; 
 but our utter and entire ignorance of it 
 then cannot be described. We knew no- 
 thing on earth but French. The two young 
 men spoke to us in German ; but we were 
 so utterly and stolidly ignorant of that lan- 
 guage, that they lost their tempers, and 
 called us names. At this, Mark winked at 
 me-, and one of the young men saw him 
 
 do it. 
 
 To put matters entirely right, and to 
 disarm suspicion, I took Mark round and 
 round these two young men, and discoursed 
 about their personal appearance in French. 
 I pointed out to him their eyes, their nose, 
 and their moustaches. Finally, to crown 
 all, I went up to one of the young men, 
 took his foot out of the stirrup, and, hold- 
 ing it in my hand, pointed out to bare- 
 legged Mark that the spur of the German 
 was longer than that of the French. 
 
 You may destroy France, Poland, or 
 Ireland, but you will never destroy the un-
 
 240 VALENTIN : 
 
 utterable impudence of those three nations. 
 And please, young English gentleman, who 
 lives at home at ease, answer me this. 
 Would you not sacrifice everything short 
 of your soul to be friends with Ireland? 
 You know you would. What we have done 
 for Poland you would do for Ireland. To 
 tell the truth, you are doing more for Ire- 
 land than any one has ever done for us. 
 But, young English gentleman, think of 
 old France brought down to this level. 
 Don't be angry with us if we tear at our 
 chain ; you would tear at yours. We 
 cannot bear it much longer. One desper- 
 ate rally there will be, and then we shall 
 die as a nation. But I wander a little. My 
 argument is, that although we may perish 
 as a nation politically, yet we shall still re- 
 main as peculiar a nation as the Jews, in 
 consequence of our illimitable impudence. 
 
 We left the two young Uhlans, and at 
 once inspected the staff-officers. They un- 
 derstood French, and so my remarks told.
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 241 
 
 I took Mark up to one solemn hauptmann, 
 and discussed his personal appearance and 
 the state of his horse. I took up that 
 horse's hind foot, and held it in my hand, 
 discoursing to Mark as to the bad shoeing 
 of German horses. The hauptmann was 
 beginning to get angry at this liberty ; but 
 I heard the staff-officer in gold spectacles, 
 who sat next him, say : 
 
 1 Let the boy do what he likes. He is 
 mad. He is the little Schneider of Sedan. 
 He sleeps with the wolves. He is a Car- 
 bonaro. Let him get on to the Archduke.' 
 I put down the horse's foot, and went 
 on just as if I had heard nothing at all. 
 Mark, however, was not so fortunate. The 
 staff-officer in gold spectacles hunted him 
 back, and I went on to the Archduke alone. 
 I have known strong men, in good 
 health, who were nervous at being pre- 
 sented to the Emperor. I, poor young lad, 
 with many guilty secrets, was going alone 
 to see the Archduke Charles. 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 The Archduke Frederick Charles turned to 
 me and told me to wait. I had never seen 
 a real prince before, and so I looked at this 
 one and examined him very carefully. 
 
 I was very much impressed with him. 
 You ask me, as a Frenchman, ' Did I like 
 him?' I answer, as a Frenchman, that I 
 liked him very much indeed. The most 
 amiable princes I have seen are the Em- 
 peror Napoleon, the Crown Prince of Saxony, 
 the Prince de Joinville, and the Archduke 
 Frederick. He looked steadily on his right, 
 and at last he put his hand down on my 
 shoulder, turned my face to his, and said : 
 
 'Well, my pretty little spy, you will 
 not make any great success in your pre- 
 sent business.'
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 243 
 
 ' In what business, your Highness ?' 
 
 ' In the business of a spy,' said the ter- 
 rible Archduke. 
 
 ' I am no spy, your Highness.' 
 
 ' Your pretty frank face and your eyes 
 tell me that. What is the distance be- 
 tween your house at Sedan and Madame 
 Debranche's at Mezieres?' 
 
 'I decline to answer that, your High- 
 ness/ I replied. 
 
 'As if I did not know,' said the Arch- 
 duke, laughing. ' If every Frenchman was 
 as loyal as you are, we should have great 
 trouble with you. Where is that little 
 scoundrel, Mark?' 
 
 I was utterly astonished at his know- 
 ing of Mark's existence. I told him where 
 Mark was. 
 
 1 Tell him to mind what he is about,' 
 said the Archduke. ' The pitcher that goes 
 often to the well is broken at last. I am 
 afraid that he is a sad little rascal. Can 
 you ride ?'
 
 244 
 
 VALENTIN 
 
 ' Yes, sir ; I can ride well. I had a 
 pony once.' 
 
 ' And broke his knees on the chaussee 
 in Bazeilles, I doubt not,' said the Arch- 
 duke. 
 
 ' Your Highness does not know Bazeilles, 
 I see,' I replied volubly. 
 
 'No; I was never there,' said the Arch- 
 duke. 
 
 ' Ah !' I said; ' but you should go. The 
 road — macadam, I think they call it — is an 
 English road, with fine trees on each side.' 
 
 1 Trees, eh ?' 
 
 ' Yes, most beautiful trees. And also 
 the street is not wide at all ; and when you 
 come to the end of the street, you can see 
 right into Sedan.' 
 
 ' It must be a pretty place ; but Fond 
 de Givonne, that is prettier.' 
 
 ' One of the pleasantest places in the 
 world,' . I said, proud of talking to a real 
 prince. ' You should come out and gather 
 the autumn crocuses on the hill between
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 245 
 
 Fond cle Givonne and Givonne itself. Hah, 
 dear prince, the view on that hill is lovely. 
 You look straight into Sedan and beyond 
 La Chapelle — ' 
 
 The Archduke turned on me and said, 
 very emphatically, ' Hold your tongue, boy. 
 If you are a fool, remember that I am a 
 gentleman. Say no more.' 
 
 I could not conceive what he meant at 
 that time ; but when I saw the white Arabs 
 of the Chasseurs d'Afrique wandering about 
 riderless, masterless, seeking for water on 
 the same hill, I saw that I was a fool and 
 that he was a gentleman. 
 
 With all their Uhlans, they never found 
 out one thing. The road, cursed by all 
 Frenchmen for ever, which runs into Fond 
 de Givonne, between the potato-field and 
 the corn-field (as the crops were on the 
 1st of September), runs through a deep cut- 
 ting. In five minutes more I should have 
 told him that; but he was a gentleman, and 
 stopped me. The road in their map is set
 
 246 VALENTIN : 
 
 down as level. I might have saved one 
 thousand lives by telling hini the truth; 
 but he stopped me because he did not think 
 it right for a gentleman to get information 
 from a boy. But here are the facts as I look 
 at them. The horrible slaughter of the 
 17th of the line in the potato-field occurred 
 simply because the Saxons were not aware 
 that the road went down through a cut- 
 ting. A Saxon officer told me that his 
 colonel ordered the first company to double 
 back through the second, when he came to 
 this obstacle. He then countermarched his 
 regiment round his centre, with what ob- 
 ject I am unable to state, not believing in 
 German regimental tactics ; and then the 
 French were aroused from their beds, ' than 
 which,' said the Saxon engineer officer, 
 ' nothing has happened more disgraceful to 
 the art of war since those turbulent riots 
 which occurred during the civil war in 
 America, and which it pleases the Ameri- 
 cans to call great battles.'
 
 A STOKY OF SEDAN. 247 
 
 Well, the Archduke was very good to 
 me. He was cruel to us, you say. I ask, 
 have you never been cruel? We were very 
 cruel to his nation; it was his time for re- 
 vanche. You English have been more cruel 
 than any, except the French. You have 
 no right to rail against the Germans for 
 their punishment of us. We lost, and we 
 have paid ; we may pay in another manner 
 some day. But you English, what right 
 have you to speak of the Germans in this 
 sanctimonious way? The quarrel was a 
 very old one ; it was fairly fought out, and 
 the Germans won. We have to pay. But 
 if you say the Germans were cruel, look at 
 yourselves, my friend. How did you get 
 and keep India? How did you get Canada? 
 Last and worst of all, how did you get your 
 new provinces, one might almost call them 
 kingdoms, of Australia and New Zealand ? 
 I see your answer in your eyes. They were 
 inferior nations. Quite so; but we French 
 are apt to be logical. Were the French
 
 248 VALENTIN : 
 
 and Spaniards at Saint Sebastian of the in- 
 ferior races? No; I admire your insular 
 Chauvinisms immensely, but you will hardly 
 go so far as to say that the French and 
 Spaniards belong to the inferior races. The 
 man who says that the French did not fight 
 well at Sedan is a liar. 
 
 I lose my temper. I heat myself un- 
 necessarily. It is the French way. We are 
 as proud as you are, which is saying much ; 
 and sometimes I enrage myself over this 
 German occupation. Bismarck has been a 
 fool about that. We would have paid him 
 every penny, but he' should not have in- 
 sulted us by putting an execution in our 
 house. And we have behaved very well. 
 I know I should not like to leave a French 
 army of occupation in England on such 
 terms ; very few of them would come back. 
 But you, with the strip of silver sea, could 
 repudiate any treaty forced down your 
 throats in a moment of desperation, and 
 you could hem yourselves in with an iron
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 249 
 
 band, making commerce impossible to other 
 nations. You are the arbiters of the world's 
 fate. Keep your trust, and keep it hon- 
 estly. 
 
 The Archduke Frederick might have 
 been thinking of all these things, or, on 
 the other hand (as is very probable), he 
 might not. He, however, got off his horse, 
 and told me to come and have mittagsessen 
 with him. I complied at once, as a hungry 
 boy would, and we sat on the grass toge- 
 ther and had sausage and white wine. 
 
 The Archduke seemed to take a great 
 fancy for me. At one time he asked me 
 for bread, and as I was cutting it he passed 
 his hand over my hair. Mere Mathilde 
 says that he had a son who was drowned 
 at my age. Of this I know nothing ; I only 
 say that the terrible Archduke, who has 
 left a red band on the map of Europe from 
 Sierck on the Moselle to Paris on the Seine, 
 seemed to me one of the gentlest and kind- 
 est of human beings. Look at your own
 
 250 VALENTIN: 
 
 Nelson. Was he not kind? See what he 
 did at Naples. 
 
 "We were so comfortable together that 
 I should quite have forgotten that he was 
 an archduke at all, had it not been that a 
 solitary lancer stood in front of us, lance to 
 heel. I had got so familiar with the Arch- 
 duke, that I was going to ask him whether 
 the young man might not dismount and 
 have his dinner, when the young man 
 solved the difficulty. He waved his lance 
 three times to the right, jumped off his 
 horse, took off his helmet and hung it on 
 his arm, and then knelt bareheaded in the 
 sun. 
 
 ' Get up,' said the Archduke to me. ' It 
 is the King.' 
 
 I rose and saw him. His face is fami- 
 liar enough to all of us now, so I need not 
 describe it. He held his hand shading his 
 face, and he said, 'Frederick, I wish to 
 speak to you.' They went apart — Frederick 
 Charles on foot, bareheaded, and bending
 
 A STORY OP SEDAN. 251 
 
 low, and they talked together, about what 
 I know not. 
 
 Two gentlemen were left sitting on 
 horseback, behind them were eight or ten 
 Uhlans, as they are called; who knows why. 
 I looked at these two gentlemen with great 
 interest, because it so happened that I had 
 never seen two such gentlemen before. 
 
 One had a dark moustache, and looked 
 very wan and worn. The other was much 
 older, apparently a very old man; but his 
 beardless face actually looked younger than 
 the handsome face of the man with the 
 moustache. The old man had an immensely 
 powerful face; but the younger one, though 
 his face was very powerfully cast, had a 
 restless look, as though he was either suf- 
 fering or thinking — in fact, he was doing 
 , both. 
 
 I gazed on them intensely. I cannot 
 say why, maybe I have some genius. As 
 I was looking at them, the man with the 
 moustache, who had evidently been riding
 
 252 
 
 VALENTIN : 
 
 hard, took out his pocket-handkerchief to 
 wipe his face. He dropped it, and I ran 
 forward, picked it up, and gave it to him. 
 
 He took it from me, and smiled at me — 
 such a weary, dull smile. 
 
 ' You are a French boy, surely,' said 
 Von Bismarck. 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' I should have guessed so from your 
 looks and your politeness. This is a pretty 
 boy, general.' 
 
 Von Moltke turned and looked at me. 
 
 ' He is a very pretty boy, indeed. Where 
 do you come from, my child ?' 
 
 ' From Sedan, sir.' 
 
 Von Moltke gave one glance at Von 
 Bismarck, and then looked over my head. 
 I heard a deep voice say : 
 
 'What boy is this?' 
 
 ' A boy from Sedan, sire,' said Von 
 Moltke. 
 
 I turned and looked. Behind me were 
 the King and the Archduke Frederick
 
 A STORY OF SEDAN. 253 
 
 Charles; in front of me were Yon Bis- 
 marck and Yon Moltke. As I looked on 
 the four stern faces I lost nerve. I cannot 
 tell why, but I would have given anything 
 to cry. I turned to the King, and I said : 
 
 1 If you please, sire, I want to go to 
 Mark.' 
 
 The Archduke (who spared Audun la 
 Tige) said suddenly : 
 
 1 This is a very nice boy, sire. Let him 
 go to his brother Mark.' 
 
 The Archduke little thought that he 
 was unconsciously telling me what I did not 
 know myself. The King smiled kindly on 
 me, and then they rode away. As they 
 went I heard the King say : 
 
 4 The boy is from Mezieres, is he not ?' 
 
 And Bismarck said : 
 
 ' From Sedan.' 
 
 Then I was on the bleak down alone. 
 I saw the King, the Archduke, Yon Moltke, 
 and Yon Bismarck go trotting through the 
 grass, followed by a steel-blue line of ca-
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-25m-9, , 47(A5618)444 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 OOO 378 225 
 
 9 
 
 09 
 
 r*- 
 
 H- 1 
 
 3 
 
 < 
 
 2. 
 
 ft 
 
 r> 
 
 ft 
 
 < 
 
 Ordere 
 Of 
 
 CJ1 
 
 r- > 
 
 ft 
 ft 
 w 
 
 01 
 
 
 «> g. 
 
 Pi 
 
 
 5' 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 01 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 ~\ a o e o 
 
 
 »3* 
 
 
 n> O 5° <r* « 
 
 
 z 
 
 mmend 
 charge 
 
 ° 
 
 1 l-*» 
 
 
 3 c 
 
 CT 
 
 
 H 
 
 US 
 £ 
 
 ed by. 
 d to... 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 P ; 
 
 X 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 -. 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 i-j | 
 
 01 
 
 
 id ! ' 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 CD : 
 
 J-» 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 3 i 
 
 (D 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ct : 
 
 «<: 
 
 
 <t> 
 
 
 
 
 
 H- | 
 
 <• 
 
 
 « : 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 * 1 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 a. 
 
 1' 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 ! £ 
 
 • 2 
 
 t 
 
 » 
 
 3 
 * 
 
 y 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 « c 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : s 
 
 n' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i ft 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5' 
 
 3 
 
 : o> 
 
 » 
 
 HI 
 
 : f 
 
 i S 
 
 i 
 
 2 
 
 ft 
 
 
 
 
 JO 
 
 3 
 
 B 
 
 r 
 w 
 
 
 Sri 
 
 C3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 h 
 
 *- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 3 ': 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Q,