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 '" The Kin,i> will not pUiy ii^iin, M. Ic />//<".'" 
 
 l>ravvn by 1'. G. JUANNIUT. l'liotni;r;iviiri-d by (Jourii. iV ( . .. 
 
 KINGS IN KXII.K. /'V/;'.v//Vv
 
 K NGS N EX: LE 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY 
 
 BOSTON 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1899, 1900, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 SSntbrrsttg Press : 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
 
 KINGS IN EXILE. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE FIRST DAY. 
 
 FREDERICA had slept since morning. A sleep 
 of fever and fatigue, with dreams of her distresses 
 as fallen, exiled queen ; a sleep still shaken by the 
 din and agony of a two months siege, broken by 
 bloody, hostile visions, sobs, shudders, spasms of 
 strained nerves, from which she waked with a start 
 of terror. 
 
 " Zara? . . Where is Zara? . ." she cried. 
 
 One of her women came to the bedside and re- 
 assured her softly. H. R. H. the Comte de Zara 
 was sleeping quietly in his room ; Mme. fiteonore 
 was with him. 
 
 "And the king?" 
 
 " Gone out since mid-day in one of the hotel 
 carriages." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 No. His Majesty had taken the Councillor 
 Boscovich with him. While the woman was speak- 
 ing in her Dalmatian patois, hard and sonorous 
 as a flood rolling pebbles, the queen felt her fears 
 diminish ; little by little the peaceful hotel cham- 
 
 2033209
 
 2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ber, which she had scarcely seen on arriving in 
 the early dawn, seemed by its very commonplace- 
 ness to be comfortable and reassuring, with its 
 light hangings, its tall mirrors, the woolly white 
 of its carpet, on which the silent flight of the 
 swallows fell in shadow through the blinds, cross- 
 ing one another like large night moths. 
 
 " Already five o'clock ! . . Come, Petscha, dress 
 me quickly. . . I am ashamed to have slept so 
 long." 
 
 Five o'clock, and the loveliest day with which 
 the summer of 1872 had as yet delighted the 
 Parisians. When the queen stepped out upon 
 the balcony, that long balcony of the Hotel des 
 Pyramides, above which its fifteen windows veiled 
 in pink cambric look down upon the finest part 
 of the Rue de Rivoli, she marvelled. Below, in 
 the broad roadway, mingling the sound of their 
 wheels with the light rain of the water-carts, was 
 an uninterrupted line of carriages going to the 
 Bois with a twinkling of axles, harness, and gay 
 dresses, flying past in a gale of haste. Then, 
 beyond the crowd which pressed against the gilded 
 railings of the Tuileries, the fascinated eyes of 
 the queen fell on a luminous confusion of white 
 gowns, blond hair, dazzling silks, aerial games, 
 and all that gayety of Sunday-best and childhood 
 with which the great Parisian garden fills its ter- 
 races on sunny days, until they rested delight- 
 edly on the dome of verdure, the vast green roof 
 of broad and spreading leafage made by the
 
 The First Day. 3 
 
 horse-chestnut trees, which sheltered, at this par- 
 ticular hour, a military band, to the brass bursts 
 of which the shouts of the children answered. 
 The bitter rancour in the heart of the exile sub- 
 sided, little by little, before that scene of gayety. 
 A comfortable warmth seemed to wrap itself about 
 her, clinging yet supple as a silken net; her 
 cheeks, faded by privations and long night- 
 watches, renewed their rosy life. The thought 
 came to her: " Dieu! how good this is!" 
 
 The heaviest misfortunes have these sudden and 
 unconscious comforts. It is not from human be- 
 ings that they come, but from the multiplying elo- 
 quence of things. To this deposed queen, cast 
 with her husband and child into a land of exile 
 by one of those sudden upheavals of a people that 
 make one think of earthquakes accompanied by 
 yawning abysses, flashes of lightning, and volcanic 
 eruptions, to this woman, whose brow, rather low 
 but still so proud, bore the mark, and, as it were, 
 the furrow of one of the noblest crowns of Europe, 
 no human words could have brought consolation. 
 Yet here was Nature, joyous, fresh, and renewed in 
 this wondrous summer of Paris, which has some- 
 thing of a hothouse and of the soft coolness of 
 river lands, speaking to her of hope, of pacifica- 
 tion, of resurrection. 
 
 But while she thus allowed her nerves to relax, 
 her eyes to drink in rest from that verdurous 
 horizon, suddenly the exiled woman quivered. At 
 her left, over there, near the entrance of the 
 garden, a spectral building reared itself, made of
 
 4 Kings in Exile. 
 
 calcined walls and scorched columns, roofless, the 
 windows mere blue holes looking into space, the 
 frontage opening to a perspective of ruin, while 
 quite at the end, above the Seine, was a pavilion, 
 almost entire, merely touched and gilded by the 
 flames which had blackened the iron of its balco- 
 nies. That was all that remained of the palace 
 of the Tuileries. 
 
 The sight caused her deep emotion, the giddi- 
 ness of a sudden fall, heart-foremost, on those 
 walls. Ten years ago, but it was not yet ten 
 oh ! what sad chance was this, and how prophetic 
 it seemed to her to come and lodge before these 
 ruins ten years ago she had lived in that palace 
 with her husband. It was in the spring of 1864. 
 Just three months married, she was travelling to 
 the various Courts in all her joys as hereditary 
 princess and wife. Everybody liked her and wel- 
 comed her. Especially at the Tuileries, what balls, 
 what fetes ! Beneath those crumbling walls she 
 saw them again. She saw the vast and splendid 
 galleries dazzling with lights and jewels, the Court 
 robes floating on the grand stairway between two 
 hedges of glittering cuirasses ; and that invisible 
 music now rising in gusts from the garden, seemed 
 to her Valdteufel's orchestra in the Salle des 
 Mardchaux. Was it not to that gay, springing 
 tune that she had danced with her cousin Maxi- 
 milian just one week before he started for Mexico? 
 . . Yes, indeed it was. . . A quadrille of emperors 
 and kings, of queens and empresses, whose stately 
 interweavings and august faces this air from La
 
 The First Day. 5 
 
 Belle Helene brought back before her. . . Max, so 
 anxious, gnawing his blond beard ; Carlotta facing 
 him next to Napoleon, radiant, transfigured by this 
 joy of being empress. . . Where were they now, 
 the dancers of that beautiful quadrille? All dead, 
 exiled, or mad ! Was God no longer on the side 
 of kings? . . 
 
 Then she remembered all she had suffered since 
 the death of old Leopold, which placed upon 
 her head the double crown of Illyria and Dalmatia : 
 her daughter, her first-born, carried off in the midst 
 of the coronation fetes by one of those strange, 
 nameless maladies which prove the exhaustion of 
 a blood and the end of a race ; and so suddenly 
 that the tapers of the death-watch mingled with 
 the illuminations of the town, and no time was 
 given to take down the flags in the Cathedral for 
 the day of the funeral. Then, beside this great 
 sorrow, beside the transports of fear caused inces- 
 santly by the feeble health of her son, other sor- 
 rows known to herself alone lay hidden in the 
 most secret corners of her woman's soul. . . Alas ! 
 the heart of the peoples is not more faithful than 
 that of kings. One day, without knowing why or 
 wherefore, this Illyria, which had always so feted 
 them, was disaffected to its princes. Then fol- 
 lowed misconceptions, obstinacy, distrust, and 
 finally hatred, that horrible hatred of a whole 
 nation, that hatred which she felt in the air, in the 
 silence of the streets, the irony of glances, the 
 frowning of bent brows ; a hatred which made her 
 fear to show herself at a window, and held her
 
 6 Kings in Exile. 
 
 back in the depths of her carriage in her short, 
 infrequent drives. Oh ! those shouts of death 
 beneath the terraces of her castle of Leybach ! 
 As she looked at the ruins of the palace of the 
 kings of France she thought she heard them still. 
 She saw the meeting of the Council, the ghastly 
 ministers wild with fear entreating the king to 
 abdicate . . . then the flight in peasants' clothes 
 through the darkness, across the mountains . . . 
 the villages uprisen and howling, drunk with 
 liberty like the towns . . . bonfires everywhere on 
 the heights . . . the burst of tender tears that came 
 to her in the midst of this great disaster on finding 
 milk in a hut for her child's supper . . . and lastly, 
 the sudden resolution with which she inspired the 
 king to throw himself into Ragusa, still faithful to 
 them, and the two months there . . . months of 
 privations and anguish, the town besieged, bom- 
 barded, her child ill, almost dying of hunger, the 
 shame of a surrender at last, the dreadful embarca- 
 tion in the midst of a silent and weary crowd . . . 
 and then the French ship bearing them away to 
 other miseries, to the chill, the unknown of exile ; 
 while behind them floated the flag of the Illyrian 
 Republic, new and all-conquering, above their bat- 
 tered castle. . . The Tuileries, in ruins before her, 
 recalled all this. 
 
 "Paris is fine, is it not?" said a voice behind 
 her that was young and joyous in spite of its nasal 
 tone. 
 
 The king had come out upon the balcony, hold- 
 ing in his arms the little prince, and was showing
 
 The First Day. 7 
 
 him that horizon of trees, roofs, cupolas, and the 
 rush of the street in the beautiful light of the clos- 
 ing day. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! very fine ! . . " said the child, a poor 
 little boy some five or six years old, with drawn, 
 sharp features, hair too blond and closely cut, as 
 if after illness. He looked about him with the 
 gentle little smile of a sufferer, surprised to hear 
 no longer the cannon of the siege, and brightening 
 visibly from the gayety about him. To him, exile 
 came in happy fashion. Nor did the king seem 
 sad ; he had brought back from his two hours on 
 the boulevard a brilliant, exhilarated countenance 
 which formed a contrast to the grief of the queen. 
 They were, in any case, two absolutely distinct 
 types : he, slender, delicate, a dead-white skin and 
 crisp black hair and moustache, which he twisted 
 perpetually with a hand too pale and supple, hand- 
 some eyes but rather shifty, and something in 
 his glance that was irresolute and childish and 
 made a spectator say, although he was past his 
 thirtieth year : " How young he is ! " The queen, 
 on the contrary, a robust Dalmatian with a grave 
 air and little gesture, was the real male of the two, 
 in spite of the transparent splendour of her com- 
 plexion, and her magnificent hair, of that Venetian 
 auburn in which the Orient seems to have mingled 
 the tawny, ruddy tones of its henna. Christian, in 
 her presence, had the constrained, rather embar- 
 rassed manner of a husband who has accepted too 
 much devotion, too many sacrifices. He inquired 
 gently about her health, whether she had slept,
 
 8 Kings in Exile. 
 
 and how she felt after her journey. She replied 
 with measured gentleness, full of condescension, 
 but in reality was thinking only of her son, whose 
 nose and cheeks she felt, and whose motions she 
 watched with brooding anxiety. 
 
 " He is already better than he was down there," 
 said Christian, in a low tone. 
 
 " Yes, the colour is coming back to his cheeks," 
 she replied in a tone of intimacy they never used 
 except when speaking to each other of the child. 
 
 As for him, he smiled to both of them, and drew 
 their foreheads close together in his pretty caress, 
 as if aware that his two little arms formed the 
 sole real link between these beings so dissimilar. 
 Below them, on the sidewalk, curious spectators, 
 already informed of the arrival of the princes, had 
 stopped to raise their eyes to this King and Queen 
 of Illyria, whose heroic defence of Ragusa made 
 them celebrated, and whose portraits were figuring 
 on the front page of all the illustrated papers. 
 Little by little, just as people look at an escaped 
 parrot or the pigeons on a roof, idlers had 
 gathered, their noses in the air, without knowing 
 really what they gazed at. A crowd formed itself 
 in front of the hotel and presently all eyes were 
 fixed on this young couple in travelling costume, 
 the child's fair head above them, as though up- 
 lifted by the hope of his vanquished parents and 
 the joy they felt in having brought him alive 
 through that awful storm. 
 
 " Are you coming in, Frederica? " said the king, 
 annoyed by the notice of so many persons.
 
 The First Day. 9 
 
 But she, her head high, like a queen well-used 
 to face the antipathy of crowds 
 
 " Why should I ? " she said ; " I am very well 
 here on this balcony." 
 
 " Because ... I was forgetting it ... Rosen is 
 here, with his son and daughter-in-law. . . He asks 
 to see you. . ." 
 
 At the name of Rosen, which recalled to her so 
 many good and noble services, the eyes of the 
 queen lighted up. 
 
 " My brave duke ! I was expecting him . . ." 
 she said ; and then, as she turned to cast a haughty 
 glance upon the street before re-entering the room, 
 a man in front of her sprang upon the stone 
 base of the Tuileries railings, over-topping for a 
 moment the whole crowd. This was what had hap- 
 pened at Leybach when shots were fired through 
 their window. Frederica threw herself back with 
 a vague expectation of something of the same 
 kind. A noble brow, a raised hat, hair that was 
 streaming in the sunlight, while a calm, strong 
 voice cried out above the noises of the crowd, 
 " Vive le roi ! " was all that she saw of that un- 
 known friend who dared, in the face of republican 
 Paris, before the crumbling Tuileries, to offer a 
 welcome to these discrowned sovereigns. This 
 sympathetic greeting, of which she had been so 
 long deprived, made an impression on the queen 
 like that of a brightly burning fire after a march 
 through bitter cold. She was warmed from the 
 heart to the skin, and the sight of old Rosen com- 
 pleted this vivid and beneficent reaction.
 
 io Kings in Exile. 
 
 The Due de Rosen, general and former chief of 
 the Royal military household, had quitted Illyria 
 three years earlier, when the king took from him 
 his post of honour and confidence to give it to a 
 liberal ; favouring thus the new ideas to the detri- 
 ment of what was then called at Leybach the 
 queen's party. Certainly he had reason to blame 
 Christian, who sacrificed him coldly, and suffered 
 him to go without regret, without farewell him, 
 the victor of Mostar, of Livno, the hero of the 
 grand Montenegrin wars. After selling his castles, 
 estates, and property, thus characterizing his de- 
 parture with all the dignity of a protestation, the 
 old general settled in Paris, married his son there, 
 and during three long years of vain expectation 
 felt his anger against royal ingratitude increased 
 by the griefs of emigration and the melancholy 
 of a life unoccupied. Yet, the moment that he 
 heard of the arrival of his princes he went to 
 them at once without hesitating; and now, stiff 
 and erect in the middle of the salon, his colossal 
 form rising almost to the height of the chandelier, 
 he was awaiting with such emotion the favour of 
 a gracious welcome that his long pandour legs 
 could be seen to tremble, his broad, short breast 
 in a tight blue military coat to pant beneath the 
 grand cordon of the Order. His head alone, the 
 small head of a hawk, steely glance, and beak of 
 prey, remained impassible, with its scanty white 
 hair bristling, and the hundred little wrinkles of 
 a skin shrivelled up under fire. The king, who 
 did not like scenes and was rather embarrassed by
 
 The First Day. 1 1 
 
 this interview, got through it by taking a playful 
 tone of off-hand cordiality. 
 
 " Well, general," he said, coming up to him 
 with outstretched hands, "you were right, after 
 all ... I let the reins drop too much ... I allowed 
 myself to be flung and flat, too." 
 
 Then, seeing that the old servitor bent his knee, 
 he raised him with a motion full of dignity and 
 pressed him long against his breast. But no one 
 could have prevented the duke from kneeling 
 before his queen, to whom the respectfully pas-, 
 sionate caress of that ancient moustache on her 
 hand caused a strange emotion. 
 
 " Ah ! my poor Rosen ! . . my poor Rosen ! . ." 
 she murmured. 
 
 Gently she closed her eyes that her tears might 
 not be seen. But those she had shed for years 
 had left their trace upon the delicate, crimpled 
 skin of her eyelids, together with the vigils, the 
 distresses, the disquietudes, all those murderous 
 wounds that a woman believes she is keeping in 
 the depths of her being while they mount to the 
 surface just as every agitation of the water is 
 seen to furrow it in visible rings. For the space 
 of a second that noble face with its pure lines had 
 a weary, sorrowful expression, which did not es- 
 cape the eye of the' old soldier. " How she must 
 have suffered ! " he thought, as he looked at her. 
 Then, to hide his emotion, he rose abruptly, turned 
 to his son and daughter-in-law, who had remained 
 at the farther end of the room, and, in the same 
 stern tone with which he had shouted in the
 
 12 Kings in Exile. 
 
 streets of Leybach, " Sabres up ! . . Charge that 
 canaille ! . ." he commanded : 
 
 " Colette, Herbert, come here and salute your 
 queen." 
 
 Prince Herbert de Rosen, almost as tall as his 
 father, with the jaw of a horse, innocent and doll- 
 like cheeks, came forward, followed by his young 
 wife. He walked with difficulty, leaning on a cane. 
 Eight months earlier, at the Chantilly races, he 
 had broken a leg and a few ribs. The general 
 did not omit to remark that if it had not been for 
 that accident, which put his son's life in danger, 
 they would both have hastened eagerly to shut 
 themselves up in Ragusa. 
 
 " And I should have gone with you, father," 
 interrupted the princess, in a tone of heroism not 
 at all in keeping with her name of Colette and 
 her gay and lively little cat's nose beneath frizzles 
 of light hair. 
 
 The queen could not restrain a smile as she held 
 out her hand very cordially. Christian, twisting 
 his moustache, stared, with the interest of an ama- 
 teur and eager curiosity, at this frisky little Parisian, 
 this pretty bird of fashion with its long and va- 
 riegated plumage, all petticoats and flounces, 
 whose decked-out daintiness was so great a change 
 from the noble features and majestic type of the 
 land from which he came. " That devil of a 
 Herbert! how did he manage to get such a 
 jewel?" thought the king, envying the companion 
 of his childhood, the tall booby with prominent 
 eyes, and hair parted in the middle and plastered
 
 The First Day. 13 
 
 down in the Russian fashion on either side of a 
 short and narrow forehead. Then the idea came 
 to him that if this type of woman was lacking in 
 Illyria, in Paris it filled the streets ; and exile began 
 to seem to him very definitely endurable. At any 
 rate, this exile could not last long. The Illyrians 
 would soon have enough of their republic. It 
 was only an affair of two or three months to be 
 spent away from his own country, a royal holi- 
 day, which he would certainly employ as gayly as 
 possible. 
 
 "What do you think, general?" he said laugh- 
 ing ; " they are already trying to make me buy a 
 house. . . A gentleman, an Englishman, came to 
 me this morning. . . He engages to provide me 
 with a magnificent mansion, furnished, carpeted, 
 horses in the stable, carriages in the coachhouse, 
 linen, plate, servants, establishment all complete, 
 in forty-eight hours and in whatever quarter I like 
 best." 
 
 " I know your Englishman, Sire ; that is Tom 
 Levis, an agent for foreigners. . ." 
 
 " Yes, I think it was . . . the name sounded like 
 that. . . Have you had dealings with him ? " 
 
 " All strangers coming to Paris receive a visit 
 from Tom and his cab. . . But I wish for your Maj- 
 esty's sake the acquaintance may end there. . ." 
 
 The particular attention with which Prince Her- 
 bert, as soon as mention was made of Tom Levis, 
 began to consider the ribbons on his low shoes and 
 the stripes of his silk stockings, and the furtive 
 glance the princess cast at her husband, notified
 
 14 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Christian that if he wanted information about the 
 illustrious speculator of the Rue Royale those two 
 young persons could furnish it. But how, he said 
 aloud, could the services of the Levis agency be 
 useful to him? He wanted neither house nor car- 
 riages, expecting to pass the few months of their 
 stay in Paris at this hotel. 
 
 " Is not that your opinion, Frederica?" 
 
 " Oh ! certainly, yes ; that is wisest," replied 
 the queen, though in her heart she shared none of 
 the king's illusions as to their return, nor his liking 
 for transient settlement. 
 
 Old Rosen, in his turn, risked a few observations. 
 This inn life seemed to him scarcely suitable to the 
 dignity of the house of Illyria. Paris, at this mo- 
 ment, was full of exiled sovereigns. They all lived 
 in sumptuous state. The King of Westphalia oc- 
 cupied a magnificent residence in the Rue de Neu- 
 bourg, with a pavilion annexed for the household 
 service. The house of the Queen of Galicia in the 
 Champs filysdes, was a perfect palace of luxury and 
 kept in royal state. The King of Palermo had a 
 fine establishment at Saint-Mand6, numerous horses 
 in the stables, a battalion of aides-de-camp. Even 
 down to the Duke of Palma in his little house at 
 Passy, none of them were without the semblance 
 of a Court, and five or six generals at their table. 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt," said Christian, impa- 
 tiently. . . " But it is not the same thing. . . Those 
 people will never leave Paris again; for them, 
 things are decided, finished, whereas for us ... 
 Besides, there is a very good reason why we
 
 The First Day. 15 
 
 should not buy a palace, friend Rosen. They 
 have taken all we had, over there. . . A few hun- 
 dred thousand francs with the Rothschilds in 
 Naples, and our poor crown, which Mme. de Silvis 
 saved in a hat-box, that is all we have left. . . 
 Just fancy the marquise making that long journey 
 into exile, on foot, in trains, in carriages, always 
 holding her precious hat-box in hand. Twas 
 droll, oh, so droll!" 
 
 His childishness getting the upper hand, he be- 
 gan to laugh at their distress as if it was the fun- 
 niest thing in the world. 
 
 The duke did not laugh. 
 
 " Sire," he said, " you did me the honour to as- 
 sure me just now that you regretted having kept 
 me so long out of your councils and your heart. . . 
 Well, I now ask the favour of reinstatement. . . 
 As long as your exile lasts, give me the functions 
 I had at Leybach near your Majesties ... as chief 
 of your civil and military household." 
 
 " See his ambition ! " cried the king, gayly. 
 Then he added in a tone of friendship : " But 
 there is no household, my poor general, neither 
 civil nor military. . . The queen has her chap- 
 lain and two women . . . Zara, his governess ... I 
 have brought Boscovich to do my correspondence, 
 and Lebeau to shave my chin. . . That is all. . ." 
 
 " I still further solicit, Sire. . . Will your Maj- 
 esty be so kind as to take my son Herbert as 
 aide-de-camp, and give the princess, my daughter- 
 in-law, here present, as reader and lady of honour 
 to the queen? . ."
 
 1 6 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Granted on my part, duke," said the queen, 
 turning her beautiful smile upon Colette, quite 
 dazzled by her new dignity. 
 
 As for the prince, he gave by way of thanks to 
 his sovereign, who granted the brevet of aide-de- 
 camp with equal courtesy, a graceful neigh, a 
 habit he had acquired by dint of frequenting 
 Tattersall's. 
 
 " I will present the three appointments for sig- 
 nature to-morrow morning," added the general, 
 respectfully, in a business tone which indicated 
 that he considered himself as having already 
 entered upon his functions. 
 
 Hearing that tone, that formula, which had so 
 long and so solemnly pursued him, the young 
 king let an expression of ennui and discourage- 
 ment come upon his face ; then he consoled him- 
 self by looking at the princess, whom joy had 
 embellished and transfigured, as it does all pretty 
 faces without points, the charm of which lies in 
 the piquant and ever changing surface of their 
 countenances. Imagine ! lady of honour to Queen 
 Frederica, she, Colette Sauvadon, niece of Sauva- 
 don the great wine-merchant of Bercy ! What 
 would be said in the Rue de Varennes, the Rue 
 Saint-Dominique, in those exclusive salons to 
 which her marriage with Herbert de Rosen ad- 
 mitted her on great occasions, but never intimately? 
 Already her worldly little mind was travelling in 
 a land of fancy. She thought of the visiting- 
 cards she would order printed, the renewal of her 
 wardrobe, a gown of the Illyrian colours, with
 
 The First Day. 17 
 
 cockades of the same for the heads of her horses. 
 . . But the king's voice, speaking near her, inter- 
 rupted these thoughts. 
 
 " This is our first meal in the land of exile," 
 he was saying to the general in a tone half-serious 
 and designedly emphatic. " I wish the table to be 
 gay and surrounded by our friends." 
 
 Then, noticing the alarmed air of the general 
 at this brusque invitation, he added : 
 
 " Ah ! yes, very true, etiquette, propriety. . . 
 Bah ! we have lost the habit of all that since the 
 siege ; the chief of our household will find many 
 reforms to make. . . But I request that he will 
 not begin them until to-morrow." 
 
 At this moment the mafare d* hotel, throwing 
 open both sides of the double door, announced 
 the dinner of their Majesties. The princess drew 
 herself up, all glorious, to take the arm of the 
 king ; but he offered it to the queen, and, without 
 further notice of his guests, conducted her to the 
 dining-room. All the ceremonial of a Court had 
 not been abandoned, whatever he might say, in 
 the casemates of Ragusa. 
 
 The transition from sun to artificial light struck 
 every one on entering. In spite of the chandelier, 
 the candelabra, and two large lamps on the side- 
 boards, it was difficult to see clearly; as if the 
 daylight, brutally excluded before its time, had 
 left on all things the haziness of twilight. This 
 melancholy effect was increased by the length 
 and disproportion of the table to the number of 
 guests, a table conforming in shape to the exigen-
 
 1 8 Kings in Exile. 
 
 cies of etiquette, for which a search had been 
 made throughout the hotel, and where the king 
 and queen now took their seats together at one end, 
 with no one beside them and no one opposite; 
 an arrangement which rilled the little Princesse de 
 Rosen with surprise and admiration. Invited 
 once during the last days of the Empire to dine 
 at the Tuileries, she remembered very well that 
 the emperor and empress sat opposite to each 
 other, like any bourgeois couple at their wedding 
 feast. " Ah ! this " thought the little parvenue, 
 closing her fan with a resolute gesture and laying 
 it beside her with her gloves, " this is legitimacy ! 
 . . there 's nothing like it." 
 
 That thought transformed to her eyes this dreary 
 sort of depopulated table-d'hote, the aspect of 
 which recalled the splendid inns of the Italian 
 Corniche between Monaco and Saint-Remo at 
 the beginning of a season, when the rush of the 
 tourists has not yet begun. The same mix- 
 ture of people and costumes ; Christian in a sack 
 coat, the queen in her travelling-dress; Herbert 
 and his wife in boulevard watteau ; while the Fran- 
 ciscan habit of Pere Alphe"e, the queen's chaplain, 
 rubbed against the starred semi-uniform of the 
 old general. Nothing less imposing could be 
 seen. One thing alone had grandeur, the chap- 
 lain's prayer, asking for the Divine blessing on 
 this first meal in exile. " Qua sumus sumpturi 
 prima die in exilio "... said the monk, with out- 
 spread hands; and those words slowly recited 
 seemed to prolong very far into the future the
 
 The First Day. 19 
 
 royal holiday of King Christian. " Amen ! " re- 
 sponded in a grave voice the deposed sovereign, 
 as if in the Church's Latin he had felt for the first 
 time the thousand broken links, still living, still 
 quivering, which the banished of all ages drag 
 after them, as trees uprooted drag their living 
 roots. 
 
 But the strongest impressions never held long 
 upon the polished, caressing nature of the Slav. 
 He was no sooner seated than he recovered his 
 gayety, his disengaged manner, and talked a great 
 deal; taking pains, out of regard to the French 
 lady present, to speak French, very purely, and 
 yet with a slight Italian zezaiement, which went 
 extremely well with his laugh. In a tone of heroi- 
 cal comedy he related certain episodes of the 
 siege, the installation of the Court into the case- 
 mates, and the wonderful figure there made by 
 the Marquise file'onore de Silvis in her turban with 
 its green feather and her plaid. Fortunately, that 
 innocent dame was dining in her pupil's apartment 
 and could not hear the laughter produced by the 
 king's jokes. Boscovich and his herbarium served 
 him next as a target. One would really have 
 thought that he wanted by sheer boyish nonsense 
 to avenge himself for the gravity of circumstances. 
 The aulic councillor Boscovich, a little man of no 
 age, timid and gentle, with rabbit-eyes that always 
 looked sideways, was a learned legal authority, 
 passionately devoted to botany. At Ragusa, the 
 courts of law being all closed, he spent his time 
 in herbalizing under the bomb-shells in the moats
 
 2O Kings in Exile. 
 
 of the fortifications, wholly unconscious heroism 
 of a mind given up to its mania, pre-occupied 
 solely, in the midst of this total upheaval of his 
 country, in saving a magnificent herbal which had 
 fallen into the hands of the liberals. 
 
 " Think, my poor Boscovich," said Christian to 
 worry him, " what a splendid bonfire they must 
 have made of all those dried leaves . . . unless the 
 Republic, being so poor, took it into its head to 
 cut up your big gray dock-leaves into capes for its 
 militia." 
 
 The councillor laughed like the rest, but with 
 scared eyes, and many " Ma che . . . ma che" which 
 betrayed his innocent terrors. 
 
 " How charming the king is ! . . what wit ! . . 
 and what eyes ! . ." thought the little princess, to 
 whom Christian bent continually, endeavouring to 
 diminish the distance that ceremonial placed be- 
 tween them. 
 
 It was a pleasure to see her blossoming out 
 under the evidently admiring gaze of those august 
 eyes, playing with her fan, uttering little cries, 
 throwing back her supple figure, in which laughter 
 was palpitating in visible waves. The queen, by 
 her attitude and the private conversation she was 
 holding with the old duke, who sat next to her, 
 seemed to isolate herself from the overflowing 
 gayety. Two or three times, when the siege was 
 talked of, she said a few words, and each time to 
 set forth the king's bravery and his strategic knowl- 
 edge, after which she resumed her aside. In a low 
 voice the general inquired about the Court people,
 
 The First Day. 21 
 
 his old companions who, more fortunate than 
 himself, had followed their princes to Ragusa. 
 Many remained there, and to each name men- 
 tioned by Rosen, the queen was heard to answer 
 in her grave voice : " Dead ! . . dead ! . ." a funeral 
 note, sounding the knell of her recent losses. 
 Nevertheless, after dinner, when they returned to 
 the salon, Frederica seemed gayer; she made 
 Colette de Rosen sit beside her on a sofa, and 
 talked to her with that affectionate familiarity 
 which she used to attract sympathy, and which 
 resembled the pressure of her beautiful out- 
 stretched hand, delicate in the fingers but strong 
 in the palm, communicating to others its benefi- 
 cent energy. Suddenly she said : 
 
 " Let us go and see Zara put to bed, princess." 
 
 At the end of a long corridor, encumbered, like 
 the rest of the apartment, with piled-up cases, open 
 trunks from which linen and clothing were pro- 
 truding in the hurry and confusion of arrival, was 
 the room of the little prince, lighted by a lamp 
 with its shade covered so that the light fell below 
 the level of the bluish curtains of the bed. 
 
 A servant-woman was sitting asleep on a trunk, 
 her head enveloped in her white coif and the large 
 handkerchief edged with pink which completes the 
 head-dress of the Dalmatian women. 
 
 Near the table sat the governess, leaning lightly 
 on her elbow, an open book on her knees ; she, too, 
 had succumbed to a soporific influence, retaining 
 in her sleep the same romantic and sentimental 
 air the king had been ridiculing. The queen's
 
 22 Kings in Exile. 
 
 entrance did not wake her ; but the little prince, 
 at the first motion of the mosquito net that veiled 
 his cot, stretched out his little fists and made an 
 effort to rise, his eyes wide open, his glance wan- 
 dering. For months he was so accustomed to be 
 waked at night, hurriedly dressed for flight or de- 
 parture, and to see about him in the morning new 
 persons and new places, that his sleep had lost its 
 even tenour ; it was no longer that good ten hours' 
 journey in the land of dreams which children make 
 to the regular, continuous, almost imperceptible 
 breathing of their little half-opened mouths. 
 
 "Is that you, mamma?" he said in a whisper. 
 "Must we run away again?" 
 
 In that resigned and touching exclamation one 
 felt how the child had suffered, suffered from an 
 evil too great for him. 
 
 " No, no, my darling; we are safe this time. . . 
 Go to sleep, you must sleep." 
 
 " Oh ! then it is all right, and I can go back to 
 giant Robistor on the glass mountain ... I liked it 
 so." 
 
 " Those are Mme. fil6onore's fairy tales ; they 
 disturb his ideas," said the queen softly. " Poor 
 little fellow ! life is so dark for him. . . He has 
 nothing to amuse him but stories. . . However, 
 we must soon determine to put something better 
 into his head." 
 
 As she spoke, she was re-arranging the child's 
 pillow, settling him to sleep with caressing motions 
 like a simple bourgeoise, which completely upset 
 the grandiose notions of Colette de Rosen as to
 
 The First Day. 23 
 
 royalty. Then, as she leaned over her child to 
 kiss him, he asked in her ear if it was the cannon 
 or the sea he heard growling in the distance. She 
 listened a second to the confused, continuous roll 
 which, at moments, seemed almost to crack the 
 panes and make the partitions tremble, shaking 
 the house from top to bottom, lessening only to 
 grow louder, increasing suddenly and fleeing again 
 into soundless space. 
 
 " That is nothing. . . That is Paris, my son. 
 Go to sleep." 
 
 And the child fallen from a throne, who had 
 been told of Paris as a refuge, fell asleep in con- 
 fidence, rocked by the noises of the city of 
 revolutions. 
 
 When the queen and the princess returned to the 
 salon, they found there a young woman of grand 
 air and dignity who was standing up and talking 
 with the king. The familiar tone of the conversa- 
 tion, the respectful distance at which all present 
 held themselves, showed plainly that this was a 
 personage of importance. The queen gave an 
 agitated cry. 
 
 "Maria!" 
 
 " Frederica ! " 
 
 And the same rush of tenderness in both threw 
 them into each other's arms. On a questioning 
 look from his wife, Herbert de Rosen named the 
 visitor. It was the Queen of Palermo. Rather 
 taller and thinner than her cousin of Illyria, she 
 seemed to be several years older. Her black 
 eyes and her black hair raised smoothly from her
 
 24 Kings in Exile. 
 
 forehead, together with her pure white skin, gave 
 her the look of an Italian, although she was born 
 at the Court of Bavaria. There was nothing Ger- 
 man about her except the stiffness of her long, 
 flat waist, the haughty expression of her smile, 
 and a certain dowdiness, a something of discord 
 in her apparel which distinguishes the women of 
 the other side of the Rhine. Frederica, left an 
 orphan very young, was brought up in Munich 
 with this cousin ; though separated by life, they 
 had always retained a most lively affection for 
 each other. 
 
 " You see, I could not wait," said the Queen of 
 Palermo, holding Frederica's hand. " Cecco was 
 not in ... I have come without him ... I longed 
 so ! . . I have thought of you so often, of both of 
 you. . . Oh ! that cannon of Ragusa, I fancied I 
 heard it ... at night . . . from Vincennes . . ." 
 
 " It was only the echo of that of Cajeta," in- 
 terrupted Christian, making allusion to the heroic 
 attitude maintained a few years earlier by that 
 queen, dethroned and exiled like themselves. 
 
 She sighed. 
 
 " Ah ! yes, Cajeta. . . We, too, were left alone, 
 deserted. . . What a pity ! As if all crowns ought 
 not to maintain each other. . . But now it is 
 finished. The world is mad." 
 
 Then, turning to Christian : 
 
 " All the same, cousin, I congratulate you . . . 
 you fell as a king." 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, motioning to Frederica, " there 
 is the true king of us two."
 
 The First Day. 25 
 
 A gesture from his wife closed his lips. . . He 
 bowed, smiling, and turned on his heel. 
 
 " Come and smoke, Herbert," he said to his 
 aide-de-camp. And together they went out upon 
 the balcony. 
 
 The night was warm and splendid. Day, scarcely 
 extinquished by the dazzle of the gas, was dying 
 in blue gleams. The dark mass of the horse- 
 chestnuts of the Tuileries fanned a gentle breeze, 
 and the heavens above were brightening with the 
 light of the stars. By means of this background of 
 coolness, this space beyond the noises of the crowd, 
 the Rue de Rivoli escaped the stifled aspect of 
 the other streets of Paris in mid-summer ; one felt, 
 moreover, the vast current of the town toward the 
 Champs Elysees and its open-air concerts beneath 
 their flaming glass globes. The gayety that winter 
 incloses behind warm curtains now sang freely, 
 laughed, ran riot in flowery hats, floating man- 
 tillas, and cotton gowns, the outline of which 
 round white young necks tied with black ribbon 
 could be seen as they passed the street lamps. 
 The caf6s and the ice-cream places overflowed 
 upon the sidewalk, with rattle of money, calls to 
 the waiters, and the ringing of glasses. 
 
 " This Paris is unspeakable," said Christian of 
 Illyria, blowing his smoke before him into the 
 darkness. "The air is not the same as it is else- 
 where . . . there is something in it that goes to 
 the head . . . When I think that at Leybach at 
 this hour all is locked up, gone to bed, extin- 
 guished ! . . " Then he added in a gayer tone :
 
 26 Kings in Exile. 
 
 "Ah, a! my aide-de-camp, I hope to be ini- 
 tiated into Parisian pleasures. . . You seem to me 
 to be up to them . . . well launched, in fact." 
 
 " As to that, yes, Monseigneur," said Herbert, 
 neighing with gratified pride. . . "At the club, 
 the opera, everywhere, they call me le roi de la 
 Gomme" 1 
 
 While Christian was having the meaning of that 
 new word explained to him, the two queens, who, 
 in order to speak more freely, had withdrawn to 
 Frederica's bedroom, were opening their hearts 
 in long tales and sad confidences, of which the 
 low -v murmur only could be heard beyond the 
 blinds. In the salon, Pere Alph6e and the old 
 duke were talking together in low tones. 
 
 " He was right," said the chaplain, " it is she 
 who is king, the true king. . . If you had seen 
 her on horseback, riding night after night to 
 the outposts ! . . At Fort Saint-Angelo, where it 
 rained fire, she walked twice round the talus, whip 
 in hand, her habit over her arm as if in her own 
 park, to give heart to the soldiers. . . You ought 
 to have seen our sailors when she came down. . . 
 He, all this time, running about God knows where ! 
 T$r3,ve,parbleu ! yes, as brave as she. . . but no star, 
 no faith. . . And to save your crown as well as to 
 win heaven, Monsieur le due, you must have faith." 
 
 The monk grew excited, standing up in his long 
 robe and Rosen was obliged to calm him. 
 
 " Gently, Pere Alph^e. . . Come, come, Pere 
 
 1 Slang expression for ultra fashion. Gommeux : effeminate 
 young dandy. TR.
 
 The First Day. 27 
 
 Alphe'e . . ." He was afraid that Colette would 
 overhear him. 
 
 The latter was abandoned to Councillor Bos- 
 covich, who discoursed to her of his plants,, min- 
 gling scientific terms with the most minute details 
 of his botanizing excursions. His conversation 
 fairly smelt of dried herbs and the dust of an old 
 library. However, there is in grandeur so power- 
 ful an attraction, the atmosphere it sheds does so 
 strongly and deliciously intoxicate certain little 
 natures eager to imbibe it, that the young prin- 
 cess, that Princesse Colette of the balls of high-life, 
 of races and first representations, always in the 
 advance-guard of the Paris of amusement, kept her 
 prettiest smile while listening to the dreary no- 
 menclatures of the innocent botanist. It sufficed 
 her to know that a king was talking at that window, 
 and that two queens were exchanging confidences 
 in the adjoining chamber. That knowledge was 
 enough to fill the commonplace salon, where her 
 own elegance was quite out of place, with the gran- 
 deur, the sad majesty which make the vast rooms 
 of Versailles, with their waxed floors shining like 
 their mirrors, so melancholy. She would willingly 
 have stayed there in ecstasy till midnight, without 
 stirring and without being bored, only wondering 
 a little at the long conversation that the king 
 kept up with her husband. What grave questions 
 could they be discussing? What vast projects of 
 monarchical restoration? Her curiosity redoubled 
 when they both reappeared with animated faces 
 and decided, eager eyes.
 
 28 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " I am going out with the king," Herbert said 
 to her in a low voice. " My father will take you 
 home." 
 
 The king came up to her. 
 
 " You must not be vexed with me, princess. . . 
 His service begins from this moment." 
 
 " All the moments of our life belong to your 
 Majesties," replied the young wife, convinced that 
 some important and mysterious step was about to 
 be taken . . . perhaps a first meeting of conspira- 
 tors. Oh ! why could she not be present herself? 
 
 Christian had gone to his wife's room, but at the 
 door he paused. 
 
 " They are weeping," he said to Herbert; then, 
 turning back : " Good-night, I will not come in." 
 
 In the street he gave way to an explosion of joy, 
 of comfort, as he passed his arm through that of 
 his aide-de-camp, after lighting a fresh cigar in the 
 hotel vestibule. 
 
 " It is so good, don't you see, to get off alone, 
 into a crowd, to walk in the ranks like the rest, to 
 be master of one's speech, one's gestures, and 
 when a pretty girl goes by to be able to turn and 
 look at her without all Europe being shaken. . . 
 That 's the blessing of exile. . . When I was here 
 eight years ago, I saw Paris only through the 
 windows of the Tuileries, or from the tops of those 
 gala coaches. . . This time I mean to know every- 
 thing, go everywhere. . . Sapristi ! now I think 
 of it, I 'm making you walk, walk, and you limp, 
 my poor Herbert. . . Stop, we will take a cab." 
 
 The prince began to protest; his leg did not
 
 The First Day. 29 
 
 hurt him; he felt quite strong enough to walk 
 there. But Christian was firm. 
 
 " No, no, my guide shall not be foundered on 
 the first day." 
 
 So saying, he hailed a roaming cab, which was 
 making for the Place de la Concorde with a clatter 
 of worn-out springs and snappings of the whip on 
 the bony back of its horse, jumped lightly into it, 
 and settled himself, rubbing his hands with childish 
 joy, on the old blue cloth of the cushions. 
 
 "Where to, my prince?" asked the coachman 
 little suspecting that he spoke true. 
 
 And the king answered, with the triumphant joy 
 of an emancipated school-boy : 
 
 " To Mabille ! "
 
 30 Kings in Exile. 
 
 II. 
 
 A ROYALIST. 
 
 WITH bare, shaven heads beneath a prickly fine 
 December rain which frosted like lace their brown 
 woollen gowns, two monks, wearing the girdle and 
 the cowl of the order of Saint-Francis, were strid- 
 ing down the incline of the Rue Monsieur-le- 
 Prince. Amid all the transformations of the Latin 
 quarter, and those great gaps through which are 
 lost in the dust of " demolition " the originality 
 and the very memories of old Paris, the Rue Mon- 
 sieur-le-Prince still keeps its ancient physiognomy 
 as a student's street. The book-stalls, the cream- 
 eries, the cook-shops, the old-clothes dealers, " pur- 
 chase and sale in gold and silver," alternate with 
 one another as far along as the hill of Sainte- 
 Genevieve, and students tramp it at all hours of 
 the day; no longer Gavarni's students, with long 
 hair flying from their woollen caps, but future law- 
 yers, buttoned from head to foot in their ulsters, 
 brushed and gloved, with enormous morocco cases 
 under their arms, and the cold, cunning air of the 
 business agent already upon them ; or else these 
 students are future doctors, a little freer in gait 
 and behaviour, still keeping a material human side 
 in their studies, an expansiveness of physical life,
 
 A Royalist. 31 
 
 as if to counterbalance their close intercourse with 
 death. 
 
 At this early hour girls in dressing-gowns and 
 slippers, their eyes bloated with vigils and hair 
 hanging loose in swaying nets, were running 
 through the streets to the creameries for their 
 breakfast milk, some laughing and skipping, 
 others, on the contrary, very dignified, swinging 
 their tin-boxes and trailing their faded finery and 
 their slippers with the majestic indifference of 
 queens of love; and as, in spite of ulsters and 
 morocco bags, hearts of twenty are all of one age, 
 the students smiled at these beauties, and greeted 
 them with a " Tiens, Lea " " Good-morning 
 Clemence." They called to, one another across 
 the street ; appointments were being made for the 
 evening : " At the Medical " " At Louis XIII.," 
 when suddenly, on too lively a remark, or a madri- 
 gal taken amiss, one of the startling indignations 
 of such girls burst forth in the invariable formula, 
 " Go your way, insolence ! " We can fancy how 
 the two monks must have bristled in contact with 
 all this youth, laughing and turning to look at 
 them as they passed. But laughing low, for one 
 of these Franciscans, thin, brown, and dry as a 
 carob-bean, had a terrible, piratical countenance 
 under his bushy eyebrows, and his gown, which 
 the girdle held together in heavy plaits, defined 
 the muscles and the loins of an athlete. Neither 
 he nor his companion seemed to pay the least 
 attention to the street, the atmosphere of which 
 they were shaking off in great strides, with fixed,
 
 32 Kings in Exile. 
 
 absorbed eyes, solely bent upon the end they had 
 in view. Before they reached the broad flight of 
 steps which leads to the ficole de Medecine the 
 elder of the two signed to the other : 
 
 "This is it." 
 
 " It " was a furnished lodging-house of shabby 
 appearance, the alley to which, closed by a green 
 gate with a bell, opened between a newspaper 
 booth crowded with pamphlets, songs for a sou, 
 and coloured prints in which the grotesque hat 
 of Basile appeared in a hundred attitudes, and 
 a cellar brewery, bearing on its sign the words 
 " Brewery of the Rialto," doubtless because it was 
 served by young ladies in Venetian head-dresses. 
 
 "Has M. Elysee gone out?" asked one of the 
 Fathers as they passed the porter's lodge of the 
 house on the ground-floor. 
 
 A stout woman, who must have rolled through 
 many a lodging-house before keeping one of her 
 own, answered lazily from her chair and without 
 even looking at the line of keys hanging sadly on 
 their hooks : 
 
 " Out ! at this hour ! . . You had better ask if 
 he has come in." 
 
 Then a glance at the brown gowns made her 
 change her tone, and she told in some anxiety 
 where to find the room of FJyse Meraut. 
 
 " No. 36, fifth floor, at the end of the passage." 
 
 The Franciscans went up, making their way 
 through narrow corridors encumbered with muddy 
 boots, and other boots with high heels, gray, 
 bronzed, fantastic, luxurious, or wretched, which
 
 A Royalist. 33 
 
 told long tales on the manners and morals of the 
 " inhabitants " ; but they paid no attention, sweep- 
 ing the boots along the passage with their coarse 
 skirts and the cross of their great chaplets ; they 
 were scarcely moved when a handsome girl dressed 
 in a red petticoat, throat and arms bare under 
 a man's overcoat, leaned over the railing on the 
 third floor to shout something down to a waiter, 
 with the rasping voice and laugh of a singularly 
 degraded mouth. They did, however, exchange 
 a significant glance. 
 
 " If he is the man you say he is," murmured the 
 corsair, in a foreign accent, " he has chosen to put 
 himself in singular surroundings." 
 
 The other, the elder, with a shrewd, intelligent 
 face, gave an unctuous smile of shrewdness and 
 sacerdotal indulgence. " Saint Paul among the 
 Gentiles," he said. 
 
 When they reached the fifth floor the monks 
 were somewhat puzzled ; the vault of the staircase, 
 now very low and very dark, scarcely allowed them 
 to read the numbers or the cards on some of the 
 doors, inscribed, for instance, " Mile. Alice," with- 
 out indication of her calling, indication very use- 
 less for that matter, for there were many other 
 competitors of the same trade in the house, and 
 one of those worthy Fathers was knocking incon- 
 tinently at the door of one of them. 
 
 " We must call out to him, parbleu ! " said the 
 monk with the black eyebrows, who now made the 
 whole house resound with a " Monsieur Me>aut ! " 
 in military tones.
 
 34 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Not less vigorous, nor less ringing came back 
 the answer from a chamber at the end of the 
 passage. And when they opened the door the 
 same voice called out joyously : 
 
 " So it is you, Pere Melchior. . . That 's my 
 luck ! . . I thought they were bringing me a letter 
 full of ... Come in, come in, my Reverends, you 
 are welcome ... sit down where you can." 
 
 On every article of furniture were masses of 
 books, papers, reviews, clothing, concealing the 
 sordid fittings of a furnished lodging of the eight- 
 eenth class, its unpolished tiled floor, its collapsed 
 sofa, the eternal Empire secretary and the three 
 chairs covered in defunct velvet. On the bed, 
 papers from a printing office were jumbled with 
 clothing, a thin brown coverlet, and bundles of 
 proofs which the master of the place, still in 
 bed, was sabring with great dashes of a coloured 
 pencil. This miserable den of work, with its fire- 
 place without fire, its walls in their dusty nudity, 
 was lighted by gleams from the neighbouring 
 roofs, the reflections of a rainy sky on the wet 
 slates ; and in the same uncertain light, the great 
 brow of M6raut, his passionate, powerful face 
 shone with the intelligent, sad lustre which dis- 
 tinguishes certain faces that we meet in Paris and 
 nowhere else. 
 
 " Still in my lair, you see, Pere Melchior ! . . 
 But what of it? I came here on my arrival in 
 Paris eighteen years ago. Since then, I have 
 never stirred out of it. . . So many dreams, hopes 
 buried in all its corners . . ideas that I find be-
 
 A Royalist. 35 
 
 neath the cobwebs. . . I am sure that if I quitted 
 this poor chamber I should leave the best part 
 of myself in it. . . That is so true that I kept it 
 when I started for over there." 
 
 " Just so, that journey of yours," said Pere Mel- 
 chior, with a little wink of his eye to his com- 
 panion. . . "I thought you had gone for a long 
 time. . . What happened? Didn't the employ- 
 ment suit you ? " 
 
 " Oh ! if you talk of the employment," said Me- 
 raut, shaking his mane, " nothing could be finer. . . 
 Salary of a minister plenipotentiary, lodged in the 
 palace, horses, carriages, servants. . . Everybody 
 charming to me, emperor, empress, archdukes. . . 
 But in spite of all that, I was bored. I missed 
 Paris ; specially the Quarter, the air one breathes 
 here, light, vibrant, young; the galleries of the 
 Odeon, the new book turned over standing with 
 two fingers, the quest of the bookstalls, those stalls 
 that line the quays like a rampart sheltering studi- 
 ous Paris from the futility and egoism of the other 
 part. . . And then, for that 's not all " here 
 his voice became more serious "You know 
 my ideas, Pere Melchior. You know what I was 
 ambitious of doing by accepting that subaltern 
 place. . . I wanted to make a king of that little 
 young man, a king really a king, which is not seen 
 nowadays ; to bring him up, knead him, mould 
 him for the grand role which surpasses and crushes 
 all others like that armour of the middle ages 
 which remains in the museums to shame our 
 shrunken chests and shoulders. . Ah ! bah ! . .
 
 36 Kings in Exile. 
 
 liberals, my dear man, reformers, men of progress 
 and new ideas that 's what I found at the Court 
 of X. . . Dreadful bourgeois, who could not com- 
 prehend that if monarchy is condemned it had 
 better die fighting, wrapped in its flag, than finish 
 in a perambulator pushed by a Parliament. . . 
 After my first lesson the palace was in a clamour. 
 'Where does he come from? What does he want 
 of us, that barbarian ? ' And they asked me with 
 all sorts of pretty speeches to confine myself to 
 simple matters of pedagogy. . . A pawn, I ! 
 When I saw that, I took my hat, and good-night 
 Majesties ! " 
 
 He spoke in a strong, full voice, the Southern 
 accent of which struck all the metallic chords ; and 
 as he did so his countenance was transfigured. 
 The head, in repose enormous and ugly, with a 
 prominent projecting brow, above which was 
 twisted in disorder invincible a tangle of black 
 hair with an aigret of one white lock, a thick and 
 broken nose, a violent mouth without a bristle of 
 beard to hide it, for his skin had the heat, the 
 fissures, the sterility of volcanic soil, that head 
 nevertheless became marvellously animated by 
 passion. Imagine the tearing away of a veil, the 
 black curtain of a hearth raised to show a joyous 
 and warmth-giving flame ; the visible display of an 
 eloquence attached to the very corners of the eyes, 
 the nose, the lips, and spreading, with blood from 
 the heart, over the whole of that worn face, hag- 
 gard with vigils and all excesses. The landscapes 
 of Languedoc, MeVaut's native land, bare, sterile,
 
 A Royalist. 37 
 
 gray with dusty olive-trees, have, under the irised 
 settings of their implacable sun, just such splendid 
 upflamings, slashed with weird shadows that seem, 
 as it were, the decomposition of a ray, the slow 
 and graduated death of a rainbow. 
 
 " So, then, you were disgusted with grandeur? " 
 said the old monk, whose insinuating voice, with- 
 out resonance, formed a great contrast to that 
 burst of eloquence. 
 
 " Of course ! . . " replied the other, energetically. 
 
 " Nevertheless, all kings are not alike. . . I know 
 some to whom your ideas ..." 
 
 " No, no, Pere Melchior . . . that 's over. I will 
 not make that attempt a second time. . . If I see 
 sovereigns too near I am afraid I shall lose my 
 loyalty." 
 
 After a silence the sly priest made a circuit and 
 brought in his thought by another door. 
 
 " This six months' absence must have injured 
 your interests, Meraut." 
 
 " Why no, not much. . . In the first place, 
 uncle Sauvadon remained faithful to me . . . you 
 know Sauvadon, my rich man from Bercy. . . He 
 meets a great deal of company at the house of his 
 niece, Princesse de Rosen, and as he wants to join 
 in all the conversations, he comes to me to give 
 him three times a week what he calls ' ideas of 
 things.' He is charmingly na'fve and confiding, 
 the worthy man. ' Monsieur Me*raut, what must I 
 think about that book?' 'Execrable.' 'But it 
 seems to me ... I heard the other day, at the 
 princess's . . . ' 'If you have an opinion of your
 
 38 Kings in Exile. 
 
 own, my presence here is useless/ 'Why, no, no, 
 my dear friend, you know I have n't any, no 
 opinion at all ' ... The fact is he has absolutely 
 none and takes with his eyes shut all I give 
 him ... I am his thinking matter. . . During my 
 absence he never spoke, for want of ideas. . . 
 When I returned, he flung himself upon me you 
 ought to have seen it ! Besides him, I have two 
 Wallachians, to whom I am giving lessons on the 
 law of nations . . . and always some stroke or other 
 on hand ; for instance, I am just finishing a 
 ' Memorial of the Siege of Ragusa ' from authen- 
 tic documents. . . There is not much of my own 
 in it ... except the last chapter, which I am rather 
 pleased with. . . I have the proofs here. Shall I 
 read them to you ? I have headed it : ' Europe 
 without Kings.' " 
 
 While he read his royalist brief, exciting himself 
 to tears, the lodging-house woke up, scattering all 
 about it the laughter of youth, the gayety of secret 
 meetings with a rattle of plates and glasses, and 
 the cracked notes sounding on wood of an old 
 piano playing a dancing-hall tune. Astonishing 
 contrast, of which the Franciscans took little note, 
 completely absorbed as they were in the joy of 
 listening to that powerful and violent defence of 
 royalty ; the taller of the two, especially, quivering, 
 stamping, restraining his exclamations of enthu- 
 siasm with a vehement gesture that strained his 
 arms upon his breast till he seemed to crack it. 
 The reading over, he sprang up, and strode about 
 the room, with a flux of words and gestures.
 
 A Royalist. 39 
 
 " Yes ! that 's it ... that is truth . . . right di- 
 vine, legitimate, absolute. . . No more Parliaments, 
 no more lawyers. . . Burn the whole gang ! " 
 
 And his eyes sparkled and flamed like the fag- 
 gots of the Sainte-Hermandad. Pere Melchior, 
 more calm, congratulated Meraut on his book. 
 
 " I hope you will put your name to it, this one." 
 
 " No more than to the others. . . You know 
 very well, Pere Melchior, that I have no ambition, 
 except for my ideas. . . The book will pay me ; 
 it was Uncle Sauvadon who procured me that 
 windfall but I would have written it for nothing, 
 for the love of it. It is so fine to note the annals 
 of that royalty in the death-throes, to listen to 
 the failing breath of the old world fighting and 
 dying in these exhausted monarchies. . . Here, 
 at least, is a fallen king who has given a grand 
 lesson to the rest of them. . . A hero, that 
 Christian. . . It says in these notes that day after 
 day he rode under fire to Fort Saint-Angelo. . . 
 Ha ! 't was bold, that was ! . ." 
 
 One of the Fathers lowered his head. Better 
 than any one he knew what to believe of that 
 heroic manifestation, and of that lie, more heroic 
 still. . . But a will above his own compelled his 
 silence. He contented himself with making a sign 
 to his companion, who rose, and said abruptly 
 to Meraut : 
 
 " Well, it is for the son of that hero that I have 
 come to see you . . . with Pere Alph6e, almoner 
 to the Court of Illyria. . . Will you undertake 
 the education of the royal child?"
 
 4-O Kings in Exile. 
 
 " With us you will have neither palace nor 
 carriages," said Pere Alphe, sadly, " nor the im- 
 perial generosities of the Court of X. . . You will 
 serve dethroned princes, around whom exile, al- 
 ready lasting over a year and threatening to con- 
 tinue, casts mourning and solitude. . . Your 
 ideas are ours. . . The king has had a few liberal 
 fancies, but he recognized their nothingness after 
 his fall. The queen . . . the queen is sublime . . . 
 you will see it." 
 
 "When?" asked the fanatic, again seized by 
 his chimera to make a king through his own 
 genius, as a writer makes a work. 
 
 A meeting was at once agreed upon. 
 
 When filysee Me"raut thought of his childhood 
 and he often thought of it, for all the strong 
 impressions of his life lay there this is what he 
 saw : a large room with three windows, inundated 
 with light, and each window occupied by a Jac- 
 quart loom for weaving silk, lifting its tall uprights 
 and interlacing meshes like a blind against the 
 light and the prospect without, namely, a cluster 
 of roofs of houses running downhill, all the win- 
 dows furnished with the same looms, at each of 
 which worked two men, seated, in their shirt- 
 sleeves, mingling their motions on the frame like 
 pianists in playing a duet. Between these houses 
 little gardens like alleys climbed the hillside, 
 Southern gardens, burnt-up, arid, pallid, and de- 
 prived of air, filled with fleshy plants, rampant 
 bottle-gourds, and great sunflowers expanding
 
 A Royalist. 41 
 
 toward the west with the drooping attitude of 
 corollas seeking their god, and filling the air with 
 the sickly odour of their ripening seeds, an odour 
 which, after twenty years' absence, FJysee smelt 
 whenever he thought of his early home. 
 
 Above this workmen's quarter, humming and 
 crowded like a hive, was a stony height on which 
 stood a few old windmills now abandoned, former 
 feeders of the town and still preserved for their 
 long services, lifting high their skeleton sails like 
 gigantic antennae, letting their stones detach them- 
 selves and whirl away in the wind with the acrid 
 dust of those southern regions. Under the pro- 
 tection of these ancestral mills the manners and 
 traditions of another age were preserved. The 
 whole town (this corner of its suburb was called 
 the Enclos de Rey) was, and still is, ardently roya- 
 list ; in each workroom will be found hanging to 
 the wall pink, puffy, blond, with long hair curled 
 and pomatumed with high-lights on its curls 
 the portrait (clothed in the fashions of 1840) of 
 him whom the weavers called familiarly among 
 themselves lou Got the lamester. In the work- 
 room of FJyseVs father, below this frame was 
 another, much smaller, surrounding a sheet of 
 blue letter-paper on which was a great red seal 
 with the two words, Fides, Spes, around a cross 
 of Saint Andrew. From his seat, as he kept his 
 shuttle going, Maitre Meraut could see the picture 
 and read the motto: "Faith, Hope." . . And his 
 broad face, with its sculptural lines like the coins 
 of Antoninus, which itself had the aquiline nose
 
 42 Kings in Exile. 
 
 and the full outlines of the Bourbons he loved so 
 well, swelled up and crimsoned with his strong 
 emotion. 
 
 He was a terrible man, Maitre Meraut, violent, 
 despotic, to whom the habit of over-topping the 
 noise of battens and headles had given a voice like 
 the blast and rolling of a storm. His wife, on the 
 contrary, timid and retiring, imbued with those 
 submissive traditions which made the Southern 
 women of the vieille roc he (the old regime) mere 
 slaves, Eastern slaves, had taken a resolution to 
 never utter a word. It was in such a home as this 
 that Elysee grew up, treated less harshly than his 
 two brothers, because he was the last comer and 
 always puny. Instead of being put to the shuttle 
 when eight years old, he was left in a little of that 
 good liberty so necessary to childhood ; liberty 
 which he employed in roaming the suburb and 
 battling on the hill-top under the windmills, whites 
 against reds, Catholics against Huguenots. They 
 are still in the thick of those hatreds in that part 
 of Languedoc ! The children were divided into 
 two camps; each had its mill, the falling stones 
 of which served them as projectiles. Then were 
 invectives launched, then did the missiles fly hiss- 
 ing from the slings. For hours together Homeric 
 battles were fought, ending tragically with some 
 bloody gash upon a ten-year-old forehead, or 
 among the tangle of a mass of curls, wounds 
 that scar for a lifetime the tender epidermis, and 
 which E"lys6e the man still showed on one temple 
 and at the corner of his mouth.
 
 A Royalist. 43 
 
 Oh ! those windmills ; the mother cursed them 
 when her last-born was brought back one evening, 
 all blood and tatters. The father scolded as a matter 
 of form and habit, and in order not to let his thunder 
 rust; but at table he made the boy relate all the 
 vicissitudes of the battle and the names of the 
 combatants. 
 
 " Tholozan ! . . Tholozan ! . . So there are still 
 some left of that race ! . . Ha ! the blackguard. 
 I had the father at the end of my gun in 1815, 
 and I 'd better have laid him low then." 
 
 Here followed a long history, related in the 
 Languedocian patois, picturesque and brutal, which 
 spared neither phrase nor syllable, telling of the 
 days when he enrolled himself among the young 
 recruks of the Due d'Angouleme, a great general, 
 a saint 
 
 These tales, heard a hundred times, but varied 
 by the ardour of paternal fancy, remained as 
 deeply in Elysee's soul as the scars of the wind- 
 mill stones upon his face. He lived in a royalist 
 legend, of which the Saint-Henri and January 21 
 were the commemorative dates, in fervent vene- 
 ration of the prince-martyrs blessing the people 
 by the fingers of their bishops, and of brave 
 princesses wandering on horseback for the good 
 cause, persecuted, betrayed, and trapped at last 
 behind the chimney of a Breton hostelry. To 
 enliven the gloom which this series of griefs and 
 exile would otherwise have produced on the brain 
 of a child, the story of the " Fowl in the pot " and 
 the song of the " Vert-Galant " came in with glori-
 
 44 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ous memories and all the dash of the old, old France. 
 That song of the " Vert-Galant " was the Mar- 
 seillaise of the Enclos de Rey. When on Sunday, 
 after vespers, the table being wedged up with 
 much trouble on the slope of the little garden, the 
 Merauts dined " in the good of the air," as they say 
 in those parts, that is, in the stifling atmosphere 
 that follows a summer's day, when the heat, amassed 
 in the soil and in the plaster of the walls, comes 
 out fiercer and more unhealthy than under the 
 full sunlight, the old weaver would peal forth in 
 a voice that was famous among his neighbours: 
 " Vive Henri IV ! Long live the King valiant ! " 
 All was silent around him throughout the neigh- 
 bourhood. Nothing was heard but the dry rending 
 of the reeds splitting with the heat, the crackling 
 of the wings of some belated cicala, and that 
 ancient royalist song rolling out majestically, with 
 its stiff and stately march in trunk-hose and far- 
 thingale, the refrain of which was always sung in 
 chorus : A la saute 1 de notre roi, c'est un Henri 
 de bon aloi, qui fera le bien de toi, de moi. That 
 de toi, de moi ("of thee, of me"), rhymed and 
 fugued, was very amusing to filys6e and his 
 brothers, who sang it jostling and shoving each 
 other, which always brought them a blast from 
 their father ; but the song did not stop for. matters 
 like that, and on it went amid shouts and laughter 
 and sobs, like the canticle of the convulsionaries 
 round the tomb of the deacon Paris. 
 
 Mingled thus with all the family festivities, this 
 name of king had for filys6e, quite outside of its
 
 A Royalist. 45 
 
 prestige in fairy-tales and " history adapted to 
 childhood, " a certain something of home, of his 
 own life. What added to this sentiment were 
 mysterious letters on foreign paper which arrived 
 from Frohsdorf two or three times a year for all 
 the inhabitants of the Enclos, autographs in a 
 delicate handwriting with long tails, in which the 
 king spoke to his people, urging them to have 
 patience. . . On those days Maitre Meraut threw 
 his shuttle with more gravity than usual, and in 
 the evening, the door being carefully closed, he 
 began to read the circular letter, always the same 
 mild and gentle proclamation in words as vague as 
 hope itself: " Frenchmen, they are deceived, and 
 they deceive you. . ." Always the same invariable 
 seal, Fides, Spes. Ah ! poor souls, it was neither 
 faith nor hope they lacked. 
 
 " When the king returns," Maitre Me'raut would 
 say, " I shall buy me a good arm-chair. . . When 
 the king returns we will change the paper in the 
 bedroom." Later, after his journey to Frohsdorf, 
 the formula changed. " When I had the honour 
 to see the king" he said on all occasions. 
 
 The good man had indeed accomplished that 
 pilgrimage, a true sacrifice of time and money for 
 a workman like himself; and never Hadji returning 
 from Mecca came back more dazzled. The inter- 
 view was, however, very short. To the faithful 
 introduced into his presence, the king, so-called, 
 had said, " Ah ! here you are ; " and no one found 
 anything to say in reply to that affable greeting, 
 Meraut least of all, being suffocated with emotion,
 
 46 Kings in Exile. 
 
 and his eyes so blurred with tears that he did not 
 even see the features of his idol. On departing, 
 however, the Due d'Athis, military secretary, had 
 questioned him long on the state of feeling in 
 France ; and we can imagine what the enthusiastic 
 weaver, who had never before left the Enclos de 
 Key, made answer to that inquiry. 
 
 " But let him, coquin de bon sort / let him come, 
 and come quickly, our Henri . . . they are languish- 
 ing to see him." 
 
 Whereupon the Due d'Athis, delighted with 
 the information, thanked him much and asked 
 abruptly : 
 
 " Have you children, Maitre Meraut? " 
 
 " I have three, Monsieur le due." 
 
 "Boys?" 
 
 " Yes . . . three children . . ." repeated the old 
 weaver, for among the people of those parts girls 
 are not counted as children. 
 
 " Very good. I shall make note of that. . . 
 Monseigneur will remember them when the day 
 comes." 
 
 On which M. le due pulled out his note-book 
 and era . . . era . . . The era . . . era with which 
 the worthy man expressed the sound and motion of 
 the protector in writing down the fact of his three 
 sons invariably formed part of this tale included in 
 the family annals, annals so touching, if only for 
 the immutability of their smallest details. Ever 
 after, in times when work was at a stand-still, 
 when the mother was terrified to see the husband 
 growing old and the savings of the household
 
 A Royalist. 47 
 
 diminishing, that era . . . era . . . replied to her 
 anxieties, timidly expressed, for the future of her 
 children : " Be easy, va ! . . the Due d'Athis made 
 note of them." 
 
 Becoming suddenly ambitious for his sons, the 
 old weaver, having seen his two elder boys leave 
 the home and enter the same narrow path as their 
 father, concentrated all his hopes and desires for 
 grandeur upon filysee. He sent him to the In- 
 stitution Papel, kept by one of those Spanish 
 refugees who crowded the cities of the South after 
 
 o 
 
 the capitulation of Marotto. It was in the quarter 
 of the Butchers' shops, an old dilapidated house, 
 rotting in the shadow of the cathedral, as the 
 nitrified cracks in its walls and its verdigrised little 
 window-panes showed plainly. To get there, it 
 was necessary to follow a line of shops bristling with 
 lance-head railings, from which hung enormous 
 quarters of meat surrounded by an unhealthy 
 buzzing, and pass through a network of narrow 
 streets, the pavements of which were always sticky 
 and red with bloody detritus. When he thought 
 of it all in after years it seemed to Elysee as if he 
 had spent his childhood in the middle ages, be- 
 neath the ferule and the knotted rope of a terrible 
 fanatic, whose Latin in ous alternated, in the sordid 
 black classrooms, with the blessings or wrath of 
 the neighbouring bells as it descended on the apse 
 of the old church, on its buttresses, stone foliage, 
 and the fantastic heads of its gargoyles. This little 
 Papel face enormous and oily, shaded by a greasy 
 white beretta, pulled down to the eyes to hide a
 
 48 Kings in Exile. 
 
 thick and swollen blue vein which separated the 
 eyebrows was like a dwarf in the pictures of 
 Velasquez, minus the brilliant tunics of the paint- 
 ing and the stern bronzing of time. Brutal withal 
 and cruel, but holding in his large skull a stupen- 
 dous magazine of ideas; a living, luminous ency- 
 clopedia, closed, one might say, by an obstinate 
 royalism as a bar put up across it, and well typified 
 by the abnormal swelling of that strange vein. 
 
 It was rumoured in town that the name of Papel 
 hid another that was much more famous, that of a 
 cabecilla of Don Carlos, celebrated for his fero- 
 cious manner of making war and varying death. 
 Living so near to the Spanish frontier, his dreadful 
 reputation hampered him and forced him to live 
 anonymously. How much truth was there in that 
 tale? During the many years that he passed with 
 that master, filys6e, although he was M. Papel's 
 favourite pupil, never heard the terrible dwarf say 
 one word, or knew him to receive a single visit 
 or letter, that could confirm this suspicion. But 
 when the boy became a man, and, his studies 
 being finished, the Enclos de Rey was found to be 
 too narrow for his laurels, his diplomas, and his 
 father's ambition, and it became a question of 
 sending him to Paris, M. Papel gave him several 
 letters of introduction to the chiefs of the legitimist 
 party, heavy letters sealed with mysterious armo- 
 rial bearings, which seemed to give some colour to 
 the cabecilla legend. 
 
 Maitre Meraut had exacted this journey; for he 
 had begun to think that the return of his king was
 
 A Royalist. 49 
 
 too long delayed. He bled himself, as they say, 
 by all four veins ; he sold his gold watch, the 
 mother's silver key-chain, the vineyard which 
 every villager possessed, and this quite simply, 
 heroically, for the Cause. 
 
 " Go and see what they are doing," he said to 
 his youngest. "What are they waiting for? The 
 Enclos is wearying for the end of ends." 
 
 At twenty years of age filyse"e Meraut arrived in 
 Paris, boiling over with passionate convictions, in 
 which the blind devotion of his father was fortified 
 by the well-equipped fanaticism of his Spanish 
 teacher. He was received by the royalist party 
 as a traveller is who enters a first-class railway 
 carriage during the night, when the other pas- 
 sengers have settled themselves down to sleep. 
 The intruder coming from the outside, his blood 
 stirred by the keen air and movement, with a 
 communicative desire to talk, question, and post- 
 pone sleep, brings up against the somnolent and 
 scowling ill-humour of persons buried in their 
 furs, rocked by the motions of the train, and 
 screened by the little blue curtain drawn across 
 the lamp, in a heavy, damp heat, fearing nothing 
 so much as draughts of air and the entrance of 
 disturbing passengers. That was the aspect of 
 the Legitimist clan under the empire, in its aban- 
 doned, side-tracked railway-carriage. 
 
 This fanatic, with his black eyes and his lean 
 lion's-head, enunciating every syllable as if to carry 
 his audience, enforcing every sentence with ve- 
 hement gestures, possessing in himself, ready for 
 
 4
 
 50 Kings in Exile. 
 
 anything, the fire of a Suleau and the audacity of 
 a Cadoudal, caused an astonishment mingled with 
 alarm among the party. They thought him dan- 
 gerous, disquieting. Under their excessive polite- 
 ness and the marks of fictitious interest given by 
 well-bred people, Elysde, with that lucidity which 
 the South of France always retains in the midst of 
 its enthusiasms, soon felt what there was of selfish- 
 ness and dull acceptance of defeat among these 
 persons. In their opinion there was nothing to be 
 done at present; they ought to wait; above all, 
 be calm, and guard against enthusiasm and juvenile 
 rashness. " See Monseigneur," they said ; " what 
 an example he sets us ! " 
 
 And these counsels of wisdom, of moderation, 
 suited well with the old mansions of the Faubourg, 
 swathed in ivy, deaf to the noise of the streets, 
 happed in comfort and idleness behind their 
 massive gates heavy with the weight of centuries 
 and traditions. Out of politeness he was invited 
 to two or three political meetings, held in great 
 mystery, with all sorts of fears and precautions, in 
 the recesses of these nests of rancour. There he 
 saw the great names of the Vendean wars and the 
 fusillades of Quiberon, glorious names inscribed on 
 the Field of Martyrs, borne by worthy old gentle- 
 men with shaved faces, clothed smugly in broad- 
 cloth like prelates, gentle of speech, and always 
 sticky with gum-drops. They arrived with the 
 air of conspirators, each declaring that he was fol- 
 lowed by the police who, in truth, amused 
 themselves much with these platonic rendezvous.
 
 A Royalist. 51 
 
 Whist-tables having been started under the dis- 
 creet light of tall candles well-shaded, the skulls 
 leaned together, shining like billiard-balls; some 
 one gave news from Frohsdorf, and they all ad- 
 mired the inalterable patience of the exiles, exhort- 
 ing each other to imitate it. In very low voices, 
 hush ! hush ! they repeated de Barentin's last 
 pun about the empress, and hummed beneath their 
 breath a scandalous song on the emperor. Then, 
 frightened at their own audacity, the conspirators 
 slipped away, one by one, hugging the walls of the 
 Rue de Varennes, broad and deserted, which 
 returned them a disquieting echo of the sound of 
 their own feet. 
 
 filysee saw plainly that he was too young, too 
 active for these ghosts of Old France. Besides, 
 the full tide of the imperial epopee was on ; the 
 return from the wars of Italy brought a flight of 
 victorious eagles along the boulevards and beneath 
 the bannered windows. The son of the village 
 weaver was not long in comprehending that the 
 opinion of the Enclos de Rey was far from univer- 
 sally shared, and that the return of the legitimate 
 king would be more tardy than they supposed 
 down there. His royalism was not damaged ; but 
 he raised and enlarged the idea of it within himself, 
 inasmuch as outward action was now not possible. 
 He dreamed of writing a book, of casting forth his 
 convictions, his beliefs all that he craved to say 
 and spread to that great Paris he would fain 
 convince. His plan was made at once : he would 
 earn his livelihood by giving lessons, and these
 
 ^ 2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 were quickly found; he would write his book in 
 his leisure intervals, and this took more time than 
 he thought. 
 
 Like others of his region, Elyse'e M^raut was, 
 above all, a man of speech and gesture. Ideas 
 only came to him on his feet, to the sound of his 
 own voice, like the lightning which the vibration 
 of bells attracts to the steeple. Fed by reading, 
 by facts, by constant meditation, his thought, 
 which escaped all-foaming from his lips, words 
 hurrying words in a sonorous eloquence, fell 
 slowly, drop by drop, from his pen, coming from 
 a reservoir too vast for such limited filtration and 
 all the delicacies of written language. To speak 
 his convictions soothed him, now that he could 
 find no other outlet for their flow. He spoke 
 therefore at \hz popottes (eating-house table-cThotes) 
 at the conferences, but especially in caf^s, those 
 cafs of the Latin quarter which, in the crouching 
 Paris of the second empire, when book and news- 
 paper were both muzzled, formed the only Oppo- 
 sition. Every one of them had its orator, its great 
 man. Their frequenters said to each other : " Pes- 
 quidoux of the ' Voltaire ' is very powerful, but 
 Larminat of the ' Procope ' is more so." In fact, 
 to those cafes came a whole educated youth, 
 eloquent, their minds busy with lofty things, 
 transplanting (but with more warmth of fancy 
 and spirit) the fine political and philosophical dis- 
 cussions of the Breweries of Bonn and Heidelberg. 
 In these forges of ideas, smoking, noisy, whose 
 frequenters shouted hard and drank harder, the
 
 A Royalist. 53 
 
 singular vehemence of this Gascon, always im- 
 passioned, who never smoked, was drunk without 
 drinking, his blunt imaginative speech developing 
 convictions as out of date as hoops and powder, 
 as discordant with the place in which they were 
 uttered as the taste of an antiquary with the knick- 
 knacks of Paris all this soon won fame and an 
 audience for the speaker. When the gas flamed 
 in the packed and roaring cafe's, when he was seen 
 to appear on the threshold, with his lank and 
 slouching figure, his near-sighted, rather haggard 
 eyes, whose efforts at vision seemed to blow his 
 hair out to the wind, his hat on the back of his 
 head, and always under his arm some pamphlet or 
 review, from which stuck out a monstrous paper- 
 knife, everybody jumped up and the cry went 
 round: "Here's Me"raut ! " Then they would all 
 squeeze together and leave him a space in which 
 to play his elbows and gesticulate at his ease. 
 The moment he entered, this greeting of youth, 
 these cries excited him, also the warmth, the lights 
 those gas-lights, intoxicating, congestionizing ! 
 Then on some subject or another, the newspaper 
 of the day, the book open on the stall under the 
 Odeon as he passed, he was off at a tangent, sit- 
 ting, standing, holding the cafe* with his voice, 
 gathering and grouping his auditors with a gesture. 
 The games at dominoes stopped rattling ; the bil- 
 liard players on the floor above leaned over the 
 baluster, cues in hand, and their long pipes held 
 between their teeth. The window-panes, the beer- 
 glasses, the tin trays shook as when a mail-coach
 
 54 Kings in Exile. 
 
 passed, and the dame du comptoir said with pride 
 to those who entered : " Come in, quick ! . . we 
 have M. Meraut." Ah! Pesquidoux, Larminat 
 they were strong in their way, but he could beat 
 them all. 
 
 He thus became the orator of the quarter. That 
 glory, to which he had not aspired, sufficed him, 
 so that it fatally delayed and hindered him. Such 
 was the fate of more than one Larminat of that 
 period, noble forces lost, motor powers or levers 
 allowing their steam to escape with a great 
 noise uselessly, through the carelessness, want of 
 method, or bad management of the engineer. In 
 Elysee's case there was something besides. With- 
 out intrigue, without ambition, this Southerner, 
 who had nothing of his own land about him but its 
 fiery spirit, considered himself a missionary of his 
 faith ; and this missionary character showed itself 
 in his unwearying proselytism, his vigorous and in- 
 dependent nature, the disinterestedness that took 
 small account of fees and pay, a life, in short, at 
 the mercy of the hardest chances of his vocation. 
 
 Certain it is that during the eighteen years when 
 he was sowing the seed of his ideas amid the 
 youth of Paris, more than one of his hearers attain- 
 ing later to great reputation, who had been known 
 to say, " Ah ! yes, Meraut ... an old student," did 
 actually win the greater part of his fame from the 
 rich scraps carelessly flung to all corners of the 
 table by the singular fellow who sat there, filys^e 
 knew this, and when he found, under the green 
 binding of some lord of letters, certain of his
 
 A Royalist. 55 
 
 chimeras reduced to reason in . fine academic 
 phrase, he was happy, with the disinterested hap- 
 piness of a father who sees the daughters of his 
 heart married and rich, although he has no share 
 in their prosperity. It was the same chivalrous 
 abnegation as that of the old weaver of the Enclos 
 de Rey, but with something broader, higher, 
 because the confidence in success was lacking, 
 that unshaken confidence which the brave old 
 Meraut kept to his dying day. The very evening 
 before his death for he died of a sunstroke after 
 one of his dinners in " the good of the air " the 
 old fellow said at the top of his voice : " Vive 
 Henri Quatre ! Long live the King valiant ! " 
 Nigh upon death, his eyes blurred, his tongue 
 heavy, he said to his wife : " Easy about the 
 children. . . Due d'Athis . . . took note . . ." and 
 with his dying hand he tried to make a era-era 
 upon the coverlet. 
 
 When Elysee, informed too late of this crushing 
 news, arrived from Paris, his father lay stretched 
 upon his bed, his hands crossed, motionless and 
 wan, the pillow to the wall, which still awaited its 
 new paper. Through the door of the work-room, 
 left open, he could see the looms at rest, that of 
 his father abandoned like a ship with its masts 
 gone which the winds can impel no more, and the 
 portrait of the king with the red seal beneath it, 
 which had presided ever over this life of toil and 
 of fidelity ; and above, away above the Enclos de 
 Rey, perched and humming on the hillside, those 
 old mills, still erect, raising their arms in the clear
 
 5 6 Kings in Exile. 
 
 blue sky with despairing gesture. Never did 
 Elysee forget that spectacle of serene death tak- 
 ing the toiler from his work and closing his eyes 
 to the accustomed horizon. He was struck with 
 envy,. he who felt his own life in the grasp of 
 visions and adventure, and who incarnated in him- 
 self all the chimerical illusions of the fine old man 
 who lay there sleeping. 
 
 It was on his return from this sad journey that 
 the office of preceptor at the Court of X. . . was 
 offered to him. His disillusionment was so keen, 
 the pettinesses, the rivalries, the envious calumnies 
 in which he found himself involved, the splendid 
 stage of Monarchy seen too near, from the side 
 scenes as it were, all this had so deeply saddened 
 him that in spite of his admiration for the King 
 of Illyria, the monks had no sooner left him than 
 the fever of enthusiasm died away and he regretted 
 a decision made so hastily. His vexations at the 
 Court of X. . . came back to him, the sacrifice he 
 must make of his life, his liberty; and then his 
 book, that famous book always stirring in his 
 head. . . In short, after long debates with himself, 
 he resolved to say no, and the day before Christ- 
 mas, the proposed interview being very near, he 
 wrote to Pere Melchior to tell him of his decision. 
 The monk did not protest. He merely replied : 
 
 "To-night, Rue des Fourneaux, at midnight 
 mass. . . I still hope to convince you." 
 
 The convent of the Franciscans in the Rue des 
 Fourneaux, where Pere Melchior had the functions
 
 A Royalist. 57 
 
 of bursar, is one of the most curious and most 
 unknown corners of Catholic Paris. This mother- 
 house of a celebrated Order, hidden mysteriously 
 in the sordid suburb that swarms behind the 
 station of the Montparnasse, is also called " The 
 Commissariat of Saint-Sepulchre." It is there 
 that monks of exotic appearance, mingling their 
 brown serge of travel with the black poverty of 
 the quarter, bring for the commerce in relics 
 pieces of the true Cross, chaplets in olive-wood 
 from the Mount of Olives, roses of Jericho, dry 
 and stringy, awaiting their drop of holy water ; in 
 short, a whole pack of miraculous things, changed 
 erelong in the large invisible pockets of the monks' 
 robes into good sound money, which makes its 
 way to Jerusalem for the maintenance of the sacred 
 tomb. Elysee had already been taken to the Rue 
 des Fourneaux by a sculptor, a friend of his, a 
 poor artist in camera, named Dreux, who had just 
 made a statue for the convent of Saint Margaret 
 of Ossuna, and therefore took all the people he 
 could muster to see it. The place was so curious, 
 so picturesque, it gratified the Southerner's con- 
 victions so much by connecting them saving 
 them thus from modern lucidity with the far-off 
 centuries and lands of tradition, that he often re- 
 turned there, to the great joy of his friend Dreux, 
 quite proud of this success of his Marguerite. 
 
 On the evening of the rendezvous, it was close 
 upon midnight when filys6e Meraut left the growl- 
 ing streets of the Latin quarter, where the hot-meat 
 shops, the ribbon-looking food of the pork-butchers,
 
 5 8 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the stalls for other eatables, the women's breweries, 
 the student's lodging-houses, all the traffic of the 
 Rue Racine and the " Boul Mich," kept up until 
 early morning the odour and flare of a universal 
 junketing. Without transition he fell suddenly 
 into the sadness of deserted streets, where the 
 passers, diminished in height by the reflection of 
 the gas, seemed to creep instead of walk. The 
 shrill bells of the Communities were ringing be- 
 hind their walls, above which rose the skeletons of 
 trees ; the noises and heat of straw turned over in 
 the sleeping stables came from the great closed 
 courtyards of the dairy-men ; the broad street still 
 held the snow that had fallen through the day, a 
 vague and trampled whiteness ; while above, among 
 the stars that were brightened with the cold, the son 
 of the weaver, walking in a dream of ardent belief, 
 imagined that he saw the one which had guided 
 the kings to Bethlehem. Gazing at that star, he 
 recalled the Christmas Eves of other days, the 
 white Christmases of his youth celebrated in the 
 Cathedral; again he returned, through the fan- 
 tastic streets of the Boucheries, slashed with 
 shadows of roofs and moonlight, to the family 
 table of the Enclos de Rey, around which they 
 awaited the rfoeillon, namely: the three tra- 
 ditional wax-candles in the greenery of the holly 
 with its scarlet berries, and the estevenons (small 
 Christmas rolls) smelling so good of their warm 
 dough, and the fried bacon. He enveloped him- 
 self so thoroughly in these family recollections that 
 the lantern of a rag-picker coming along the side-
 
 A Royalist. 59 
 
 walk seemed to him the one Pere MeVaut swung 
 as he marched at the head of his troop, returning 
 from the midnight mass. 
 
 Ah ! poor father, whom he should never see 
 again ! 
 
 While he thus talked of the past in whispers 
 with those dear shades, FJys^e reached the Rue des 
 Fourneaux, a suburb lighted by one street lamp 
 and occupied chiefly by long manufactories topped 
 with tall chimneys, standing behind board fences, 
 their walls built of the materials of torn-down 
 houses. The wind was blowing violently across 
 the open plain of the outskirts. From a neigh- 
 bouring slaughter-house came lamentable howls, 
 the dull sound of blows, and a fetid smell of blood 
 and grease ; for that is where they cut the throats 
 of pigs sacrificed at Christmas, as at the feasts of 
 the Teutates. 
 
 The convent, which stands about the middle of 
 the street, had its great portal open, and in the 
 courtyard were two or three equipages the sumptu- 
 ous appointments of which astonished MeVaut. The 
 service had begun, gusts from the organ and chants 
 were issuing from the church, which was, however, 
 dark and deserted, the only light being that of the 
 small lamps upon the altar and the pale reflections 
 of a snowy night on the phantasmagoria of the 
 painted windows. The nave was nearly round, 
 draped with the red-cross standards of Jerusalem 
 hanging from the walls, and adorned with coloured 
 statues, rather barbaric, while among them stood 
 the Marguerite of Ossuna in pure white marble,
 
 60 Kings in Exile. 
 
 flagellating pitilessly her snowy shoulders, because 
 as the monks will tell you with a certain co- . 
 quetry " Marguerite was the great sinner of our 
 Order." The ceiling of painted wood crossed by 
 little beams; the high altar under a sort of dais 
 supported by columns; the choir, also rounded, 
 with carved wooden stalls now empty; a ray of 
 moonlight falling athwart the open page of a chant 
 book, nothing of all this was distinct, all was di- 
 vined ; but, by a broad stairway concealed beneath 
 the choir, a descent was made into a subterranean 
 church, where they were now celebrating, perhaps 
 in memory of the catacombs, the midnight mass. 
 
 At the farther end of this cavern, in the white 
 masonry supported by enormous columns, was 
 reproduced the tomb of Christ at Jerusalem ; its 
 low door, its narrow crypt lighted by a number 
 of sepulchral little lamps, glimmering from their 
 stone sockets on a Christ in tinted wax of natural 
 size, his wounds bleeding a rosy pink through gaps 
 in the shroud. At the other end of the cavern, 
 like a singular antithesis inclosing the entire Chris- 
 tian epic, was one of those artless reproductions of 
 the Nativity, the manger, the animals, the babe, 
 which are yearly taken from the store of legends 
 such as they came of old worse carved, no 
 doubt, but very much larger from the brain of 
 some visionary. Now, as then, a troop of children 
 and old women hungry for tenderness and marvels, 
 and the poor who love Jesus were clustering about 
 the manger, and among them, to lilyseVs surprise, 
 in the front rank of those humble believers, were
 
 A Royalist. 61 
 
 two men of social rank and two elegant women, 
 kneeling low upon the flags, one of the latter hold- 
 ing a little boy wrapped by her two arms, that were 
 crossed in a gesture of protection and prayer. 
 
 " Those are queens," an old woman whispered 
 to him, breathless with admiration. 
 
 Elysee quivered ; then, going nearer, he recog- 
 nized the delicate profile, the aristocratic bearing 
 of Christian II. of Illyria, and near him the brown, 
 bony head and the bald though still young fore- 
 head of the King of Palermo. Of the two women 
 he could only see the black hair, the auburn hair, 
 and that attitude of passionate motherhood. Ah ! 
 how well he knew Meraut, that shrewd old priest, 
 who had thus brought together, as it were in a 
 scenic effect, the boy-prince and his future tutor. 
 These deposed sovereigns, coming to render hom- 
 age to God, who, to receive it, seemed to hide 
 himself, He too, in that sombre crypt, this 
 assemblage of fallen royalty and of worship in 
 distress, the sad star of exile leading to a suburb 
 of Bethlehem these poor dethroned Magi, without 
 a cortege and with empty hands, all this swelled 
 his heart. The child, the child above all, so 
 pathetic, with his little head bending to the 
 animals in the manger, the curiosity of his age 
 checked by a suffering quietude. . . And in 
 presence of that six-year-old brow, where the 
 future was even now inclosed, like the butterfly in 
 its white chrysalis, Elysee thought how much of 
 knowledge and of tender care was needed to bring 
 it to a splendid outcome.
 
 62 Kings in Exile. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE COURT OF SAINT-MANDE. 
 
 THE provisional arrangement at the Hotel des 
 Pyramides had lasted three months, six months, 
 with trunks that were scarcely unpacked, bags 
 still buckled, the disorder and the uncertainty of 
 encampment. Every day came favourable news 
 from Illyria. Devoid of roots, on a new soil where 
 the Republic had neither past nor hero, it took no 
 hold. The people, weary of it, regretted their prin- 
 ces, and counsels of infallible certainty said to the 
 exiles : " Hold yourselves ready . . . the day may 
 come to-morrow." Not a nail was knocked in the 
 apartments, not a single piece of furniture moved 
 without the exclamation of hope : " It is not worth 
 while." Nevertheless, the exile continued, and 
 the queen was not slow to understand that this life 
 in a hotel, amid a rush of foreigners, of birds of 
 passage of all plumage, was contrary to the dignity 
 of their rank. Accordingly, the tents were struck, 
 a house was bought, and they installed themselves 
 in it. From being nomadic, the exile became 
 stationary. 
 
 The house was at Saint-Mande, on the Avenue 
 Daumesnil, at the top of the Rue Herbillon, in that 
 part of it which skirts the forest and is lined with
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 63 
 
 elegant houses and coquettish railings that allow a 
 view of gravelled paths, rounded porticos, and 
 English lawns which give illusion to a corner of 
 the Avenue of the Bois-de-Boulogne. The King 
 and Queen of Palermo, without much fortune and 
 wishing to avoid the seductions and the costly 
 quarters of high-life, had already taken refuge in 
 one of these houses. The Duchess of Mechlin- 
 bourg, sister of the Queen of Palermo, had joined 
 her at Saint-Mande", and together they had little 
 difficulty in attracting their cousin to that quarter. 
 But besides this question of friendship, Frederica 
 was very desirous of living apart from the joyous 
 excitements of Paris, of protesting against modern 
 society and the prosperities of a republic, and 
 also of avoiding the curiosity which follows well- 
 known persons, and seemed to her an insult to her 
 fall. The king at first objected to the remoteness 
 of the situation, but he soon found it a convenient 
 pretext for long daily absence and late returns at 
 night. Moreover, and this was a chief considera- 
 tion, living was cheaper there than elsewhere, and 
 luxury could still be maintained at lower cost. 
 
 The establishment was comfortable. A white 
 house of three storeys, flanked by two towers, 
 looked toward the forest through the trees of its 
 own little park ; while toward the Rue Herbillon, 
 between the offices and the greenhouses, a large 
 gravelled courtyard swept in a circle to the portico, 
 which was covered by an awning in the form of a 
 tent, supported by two long, sloping lances. Ten 
 horses in the stable, carriage and riding-horses
 
 64 Kings in Exile. 
 
 (for the queen rode daily), liveries of Illyria, 
 with bag-wigs, powdered, and a Swiss, whose 
 halberd and green and gold baldrick were as 
 legendary at Saint-Mand6 and Vincennes as the 
 wooden leg of old Daumesnil, all this made a 
 suitable state, and was nearly new. In fact it was 
 scarcely a year since Tom Levis had improvised, 
 with all its decorations and accessories, the princely 
 scene on which was played the historic drama we 
 are about to relate. 
 
 Eh ! good heavens ! yes, Tom Levis. . . In 
 spite of distrust and repugnance they were forced 
 to have recourse to him. That fat little man had a 
 tenacity, an elasticity that were truly surprising. 
 And such tricks in his bag ! so many keys, nip- 
 pers to open or force resisting locks, not to 
 speak of certain ways of his own that won the 
 heart of tradesmen, valets, and chambermaids. 
 " Above all, we shall not employ Tom Levis ; " 
 everybody said that to begin with. But nothing 
 advanced. Tradesmen did not deliver their goods, 
 servants rebelled, until the day when the man of the 
 cab, having appeared with his gold spectacles and 
 the dangles on his watch chain, draperies hung them- 
 selves on the walls, festooned and knotted them- 
 selves into portieres and curtains, and stretched 
 themselves out upon the floor in decorative and 
 padded carpets. The calorifires burned, the 
 camellias in the greenhouses bloomed, the owners, 
 quickly installed, had only to enjoy themselves, 
 and await on the comfortable seats in the salon the 
 bundle of bills which soon arrived from all corners
 
 The Court of Saint-Maude. 65 
 
 of Paris. In the Rue Herbillon it was old Rosen, 
 chief of the civil and military household who 
 received the bills, paid the costs, and managed the 
 little fortune of the king so adroitly that within this 
 gilded frame given to their misfortunes Christian 
 and Frederica still lived handsomely. Both kings, 
 children of kings, they were accustomed to see 
 themselves in effigy on their gold and silver coins, 
 and to coin money themselves at their own good 
 pleasure. Far, therefore, from being surprised at 
 this luxury, they felt, on the contrary, how much 
 was lacking in their new existence, not to speak of 
 the chilling void left about the heads from which a 
 crown has fallen. In vain did the house at Saint- 
 Mande", so simple without, adorn itself within as 
 a little palace; the queen's bedroom exactly re- 
 producing, with its blue silk hangings covered with 
 old Brussels, her chamber in the castle of Leybach ; 
 the king's cabinet identical with the one he had 
 left ; on the staircases replicas of the statues of the 
 royal residence ; and in the conservatory a warm 
 little monkey-house with climbing Chinese plants 
 for the favourite ouistitis what were all these 
 little details of delicate flattery to the possessors 
 of four historical castles and summer residences 
 between sky and water, their lawns dipping to the 
 waves, in those isles of verdure that are called 
 " the gardens of the Adriatic " ? 
 
 At Saint-Mandd the Adriatic was a little lake in 
 the wood which the queen could see from her 
 windows, and which she looked at sadly as the 
 exiled Andromache gazed at the false Simoi's, 
 
 5
 
 66 Kings in Exile. 
 
 But, however restricted their life might be, it did 
 occur to Christian, more experienced than Fred- 
 erica, to wonder at this relative profusion. 
 
 " Rosen is incredible ... I don't really know 
 how he manages to provide all this with the little 
 we have." Then he added, laughing : " We may 
 be quite sure he does not put anything of his own 
 into it." 
 
 The fact is that in Illyria the name of Rosen was 
 synonymous with Harpagon. Even in Paris, the 
 fame of his avarice had followed the duke, and was 
 confirmed by the marriage of his son, a marriage 
 arranged in the special agencies, and which all the 
 pretty ways of the little Sauvadon could not keep 
 from being a sordid misalliance. Yet Rosen was 
 rich. The old pandour, who carried his rapacious 
 and plundering instincts written on his profile of 
 bird of prey, had not made war upon the Turks 
 and the Montenegrins for glory only. After each 
 campaign his carriages returned loaded, and the 
 magnificent mansion in which he lived at the point 
 of the lie-Saint-Louis, close to the hotel Lambert, 
 was crowded with precious things : Eastern hang- 
 ings, furniture of the middle ages and of chivalry, 
 solid gold triptyches, carvings, reliquaries, gold 
 and silver stuffs, embroideries, booty from convents 
 or harems, massed in a suite of immense reception- 
 rooms, opened but once, for the marriage of Her- 
 bert and its fairy fete (paid for by Uncle Sauva- 
 don), and since then locked and bolted, guarding 
 these treasures behind drawn curtains and closed 
 blinds, not risking so much as the indiscretion of a
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 67 
 
 ray of sun. The good man led in that house the 
 existence of a veritable monomaniac ; confined to 
 a single floor of the vast mansion, contenting him- 
 self with two servants for all his wants and the fare 
 of a provincial miser, while the great kitchens with 
 their motionless turnspits and cold ovens were 
 locked up as tightly as the state apartments. 
 
 The arrival of his sovereigns, the appointment of 
 the three Rosens to the offices of the little Court, 
 had slightly changed the old duke's habits. In the 
 first place the young pair came to live with him, 
 their own residence in the Pare Monceau a true 
 modern cage with gilt railings being found too 
 far from Vincennes. Every day at nine o'clock, no 
 matter what the weather might be, the Princesse 
 Colette was ready for the queen's lever, and got 
 into the carriage beside the general, in that river 
 fog which every morning, winter and summer, 
 hangs about until mid-day on that point of the lie, 
 like a veil upon the magic scenery of the Seine. 
 At that hour Prince Herbert was endeavouring to 
 snatch a little of the sleep he had lost in the hard 
 duties of the night, king Christian having ten 
 years of provincial life and the conjugal curfew to 
 make up for. In fact the king was so little able to 
 do without nocturnal Paris, that on leaving the club 
 theatres and caf^s being closed he found a 
 charm in roaming the deserted boulevards, dry and 
 sonorous or shiny with rain, the line of their bril- 
 liant lamps standing sentinel like fireguards along 
 the far perspective. 
 
 As soon as Colette reached Saint-Mande she
 
 68 Kings in Exile. 
 
 went up to the queen. The duke installed himself 
 in a cottage-pavilion adjoining the offices and 
 convenient to the tradespeople and servants. The 
 household called it the administration-house ; and 
 it was touching to see that grand old man sitting 
 in his moleskin arm-chair among papers, classifica- 
 tions, green boxes, receiving and settling little 
 bills, he who had had under his orders in a palace 
 a whole regiment of clerks and ushers. But his 
 parsimony was so great that, even though he was 
 not paying on his own account, every time that he 
 had to give out money each feature of his face 
 contracted, his wrinkles puckered nervously as if 
 tied with a string, like a bag, his rigid, erect body, 
 and even the automatic gesture with which he 
 opened the safe built into the wall protested. 
 Nevertheless, he so arranged matters as to be 
 always ready and able to provide, from the modest 
 resources of the princes of Illyria, for the inevi- 
 table squandering of a great house, the charities 
 of the queen, the bounty of the king, and even his 
 pleasures which counted in the budget, for 
 Christian II. had kept his promise to himself and 
 was spending his time of exile joyously. Assidu- 
 ous at all fetes, welcomed at the great clubs, 
 sought in the salons, his delicate, sarcastic profile, 
 always seen in the animated confusion of the first 
 boxes or the tumultuous rush of a return from 
 the races, took its place henceforth on the " me- 
 dallions " known to " all Paris " between the bold 
 locks of an actress then in vogue and the distorted 
 features of a disgraced prince-royal then roaming
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 69 
 
 the cafe's of the boulevard till the hour of his reign 
 should strike. Christian was leading the idle, yet 
 fully occupied life of a young Gomme. Tennis or 
 skating in the afternoons, then the Bois, a visit 
 at twilight in a certain chic boudoir, the luxurious 
 comfort of which and its excessive liberty of 
 speech he liked ; then, in the evening, the minor 
 theatres, the foyer of the dancers, the club, and 
 gambling, especially, where, in his handling of the 
 cards could be seen his Bohemian origin, the 
 passion for luck, and all his presentiments. He 
 scarcely ever went out with the queen, except on 
 Sunday to the church of Saint-Mande", and seldom 
 saw her at home unless at meals. He feared that 
 sensible, upright nature, always intent on duty, 
 whose contemptuous coldness goaded him like 
 a visible conscience. It recalled him to his office 
 of king, to the ambitions he desired to forget ; and, 
 too feeble to rebel openly against that mute con- 
 trol, he preferred to flee it, to lie, to keep away. 
 
 On her side, Frederica understood so well his 
 temperament, that Slav nature, ardent and effemi- 
 nate, emotional and feeble, she had so often for- 
 given the ill-conduct of that child-man, who kept 
 all his childhood about him, its grace, its laughter, 
 and its cruelty of caprice ; she had so often seen 
 him on his knees before her after one of those 
 misdeeds in which he risked his happiness and his 
 dignity, that she was now completely discouraged 
 as to the husband and the man, though some 
 respect for him as a king remained. The struggle 
 had lasted nearly ten years, although in appear-
 
 yo Kings in Exile. 
 
 ance the pair were united. At those heights of 
 existence, with vast apartments, innumerable 
 servants, a daily ceremonial which widens distance 
 and compresses feelings, falsehoods like these are 
 possible. But exile was now to reveal them. 
 
 Frederica at first hoped that this hard trial 
 would ripen the mind of the king and awaken in 
 him one of those fine uprisings which make heroes 
 and conquerors. On the contrary, she saw in his 
 eyes an ever increasing intoxication of pleasures, 
 of vertigo produced by the life of Paris and its 
 diabolical phosphorus, its temptations and facil- 
 ities of pleasure, and its incognito. Ah ! if she 
 had been willing to follow him, to share in that 
 wild course of the Parisian whirlwind, to have her 
 beauty, her horses, her toilets cited, to lend her- 
 self with all a woman's coquetry to the frivolous 
 vanity of her husband, they might still have 
 come nearer together. Impossible ; she was more 
 a queen than ever, abdicating none of her ambi- 
 tions, her hopes, and, eager from afar for the 
 struggle, sending letter after letter to friends 
 "over there; " protesting, conspiring, and com- 
 municating with all the Courts of Europe on the 
 iniquity of their misfortune. Councillor Boscovich 
 wrote at her dictation ; and at mid-day, when the 
 king came down to breakfast, she herself gave him 
 the letters for the mail to sign. Sign ! parbleu ! 
 he signed all she wanted, but always with a curl 
 of satire on his lips. The scepticism of his cold 
 and scoffing surroundings had seized him. To 
 his first illusions as to the shortness of their exile
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 71 
 
 had succeeded, by a sudden change common to 
 these extreme natures, a settled conviction that 
 it would now be prolonged indefinitely. Hence 
 the air of ennui, of weariness he showed in the 
 conversations by which Frederica attempted to 
 rouse within him her own fire, seeking in the 
 depths of his eyes an attention she was unable 
 to fix. Indifferent, the chorus of some foolish 
 song pursuing him, his head was always full of 
 a vision of the night before, of that intoxicating, 
 stupefying whirl of pleasure. And what an " Ouf ! " 
 of relief he gave when he finally got away ; what a 
 renewal of youth and life came to him each time 
 that he left the queen sadder and more lonely ! 
 
 After this work of writing letters in the morning 
 and the despatch of other short and eloquent notes 
 of her own, in which she revived the courage, the 
 devotion, near to failing, of her friends, Frederica's 
 sole amusements were the books of her library, 
 that of a sovereign (composed chiefly of memoirs, 
 correspondences, chronicles of times past, or high 
 religious philosophy), games with her child in 
 the garden, and a few rides on horseback through 
 the forest of Vincennes, rides that were seldom 
 extended beyond the edge of the wood where the 
 last echoes of Parisian noise died away and the 
 miseries of the great faubourg ended ; for Paris 
 caused her an antipathy, an insurmountable horror, 
 which she could not overcome. Scarcely once a 
 month did she bring herself to make, her liveries 
 in great state, a tour of visits to the exiled princes. 
 Starting without pleasure, she returned discour-
 
 72 Kings in Exile. 
 
 aged. Beneath these royal misfortunes, decently 
 and nobly borne, she felt abandonment of a 
 cause, complete renunciation, exile accepted, taken 
 patiently, habitually, cheated by hobbies, childish 
 absurdities, or even worse. 
 
 The proudest, the most dignified of these fallen 
 majesties was the King of Westphalia, a poor blind 
 man, a touching sight, with his daughter, his blonde 
 Antigone ; keeping up the pomp and the external 
 grandeur of his life, but occupied solely in collect- 
 ing snuff-boxes, and setting up glass cases of curi- 
 osities in his salon singular satire on the infirmity 
 which kept him from enjoying his treasures. In 
 the King of Palermo, the same apathetic renounce- 
 ment, complicated with mourning, sadness, want of 
 money, a disunited household, ambitions killed by 
 the death of the only child. The king, nearly 
 always absent, left his wife alone on her widowed 
 and exiled hearth; while the Queen of Galicia, 
 gorgeous, loving pleasure passionately, made no 
 change in her turbulent morals as an exotic sove- 
 reign ; and the Duke of Palma unhooked from 
 time to time his carbine from the wall and tried to 
 cross the frontier, whence he was each time 
 roughly cast back into the miserable idleness of 
 his life. At heart, however, more of a contraban- 
 dist than a pretender, making war to have money 
 and women, he gave his poor duchess all the cruel 
 emotions of a wretched woman married to a bandit 
 of the Pyrenees, whom she expects every night to 
 see brought back to her on a bier at the dawn of 
 day.
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 73 
 
 All these deposed beings had but one word upon 
 their lips, a motto displacing the sonorous devices 
 of their royal houses: "Why do anything? . . 
 What good is it?" To the active fervour of Fred- 
 erica, to her outbursts, the most polite of them 
 answered by a smile, the women replied with 
 theatre, religion, gallantry, or fashion ; and, little 
 by little, this tacit lowering of a principle, this dis- 
 integration of forces, affected in the end the proud 
 Dalmatian herself. Between the king who did not 
 wish to be a king, and the poor little Zara so slow 
 to develop, she was struck with a sense of extinc- 
 tion. Old Rosen, shut up by day in his office, 
 seldom spoke. Princesse Colette was only a bird, 
 incessantly employed in preening her feathers; 
 Boscovich a child; the marquise a simpleton. 
 There was always Pere Alphee ; but that fierce 
 and rugged monk could never have understood 
 from a half-word the inward shudders of the queen, 
 the doubts, the fears that were beginning to invade 
 her. The season also had something to do with 
 it. That wood of Saint-Mande, in summer all 
 verdure and flowers, deserted and still as a park 
 throughout the week, but on Sundays swarming 
 with populace joy, was now taking, at the coming 
 of winter, in the gloom of a damp horizon and the 
 floating mist of its own lake, the desolate aspect, 
 without grandeur, of a region of pleasure aban- 
 doned. Flocks of crows flew low among the 
 blackened bushes and high above the tall, gnarled 
 trees, in whose discrowned summits the nests of 
 the magpies swung, and the long, fibrous threads of'
 
 74 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the misletoe. This was the second winter Fred- 
 erica had passed in Paris. Why did it seem much 
 longer and far more dismal than the first? Did she 
 miss the lively racket of a hotel, the stir and life 
 of the tumultuous and rich city? No. But just 
 in proportion as the queen decreased, did the 
 woman begin to feel her weakness, the sorrows of 
 a neglected wife, the home-sickness of a stranger 
 torn from her native soil. 
 
 In the glassed gallery adjoining the grand salon 
 where she had made for. herself a winter garden, 
 a quiet spot far from the household noises, hung 
 with light draperies and in every corner the green- 
 ery of plants, she now sat for days together inactive 
 before the ravaged garden and its tangle of leafless 
 branches defined like an etching on the gray 
 horizon, with a mixture of dark and resisting ver- 
 dure which box and holly still preserve beneath 
 the snow, through the whiteness of which their 
 stiff arms penetrate. In the three basins of the 
 fountain, rising one above another, the sheets of 
 falling water had a cold, metallic sound, and beyond 
 the tall railing which skirted the Avenue Daumes- 
 nil, breaking the silence and solitude of the wood, 
 the steam-cars on the tramway passed, hissing, 
 from time to time, their long smoke streaming 
 backward and dispersing so slowly in the yellow 
 atmosphere that Frederica could follow it long 
 and watch it disappearing little by little, heavily 
 and without an object, like her life. 
 
 It was on a rainy winter morning that FJyse'e
 
 The Court of Saint-Mande. 75 
 
 Meraut gave his first lesson to the royal child, in 
 this little haven of the sadness and reflections of 
 the queen, which from that day took the aspect of 
 a study: books and maps spread out upon the 
 table, the full light admitted as into a studio or 
 schoolroom, the mother, very simple in a gown of 
 black cloth fitting her tall figure closely, with a 
 little lacquered work-table before her, and the 
 master and pupil, both hesitating, and equally 
 disturbed the one as the other at this their first 
 interview. The little prince had vaguely recog- 
 nized the enormous and fulgurating head they had 
 shown to him on Christmas eve in the religious 
 twilight of the chapel, and which his imagination, 
 encumbered with the fairy tales of Mme. de Silvis, 
 connected with an apparition of the giant Robistor 
 or the wizard Merlin. And filysee's own impres- 
 sion was quite as chimerical, fancying as he did 
 that he beheld in this frail little boy, wizened 
 and sickly, with a forehead as lined as though it 
 actually bore the six hundred years of his race, a 
 predestined chief, a leader of men and peoples ; to 
 whom he said gravely, with a trembling voice : 
 
 " Monseigneur, you will be a king some day . . . 
 you must learn what it is to be a king. . . Listen 
 to me, look at me well, and what my mouth may 
 not express with sufficient clearness, the respect in 
 my eyes will make you understand." 
 
 Then, bending down to the level of that little 
 intellect and the child's little throat, he explained, 
 with words and images that were suited to it, the 
 dogma of divine right, the mission of the kings on
 
 j6 Kings in Exile. 
 
 earth, between the peoples and God, charged with 
 duties and responsibilities that other men have not, 
 but which are laid upon kings from their earliest 
 childhood. . . That the little prince could under- 
 stand perfectly all he said to him is not to be 
 supposed, but it may be that he felt himself 
 enveloped by that vivifying warmth with which 
 florists, protecting some precious plant, surround 
 the delicate fibre, the fragile bud. 
 
 As for the queen, bending over her tapestry, 
 she listened in delightful surprise to words she 
 had despairingly awaited for years, words which 
 answered to her most secret thoughts, called to 
 them, stirred them. . . So long had she dreamed 
 alone ! Of so many things that she knew not how 
 to say, did this Meraut now give her the formula ! 
 Even on this first day she felt herself an un- 
 known musician, an artist unexpressed, before 
 this magic executor of her own work. Her vaguest 
 feelings on that great idea of royalty took shape 
 and were here summed up majestically, and yet 
 very simply, since a child, quite a little child, 
 could almost comprehend them. While she looked 
 at that man, his large features animated with be- 
 lief and eloquence, she saw, in contrast, the pretty, 
 indolent face, the unmeaning smile of Christian ; 
 she heard the eternal "What good is it?" of all 
 those discrowned kings, and the chatter of the 
 princely boudoirs. Ah ! if Christian had been 
 like that they would still be on the throne, or both 
 would now have disappeared, buried beneath its 
 ruins. . . Strange to say, in the close attention
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 77 
 
 she could not keep herself from paying, the voice, 
 the face of FJyse"e gave her the impression of a 
 recollection. From what dark corner of her mem- 
 ory rose up that brow of genius, those accents 
 which resounded to the depths of her being, in 
 the most secret cavities of her heart? . . 
 
 But now the master had begun to question his 
 pupil, not on what he knew, that was nothing, 
 or, alas ! so little, but seeking merely to dis- 
 cover what to teach him. " Yes, monsieur . . . 
 No, monsieur. . ." The little prince had only 
 those two words upon his lips, but he put all his 
 strength into saying them, with the gentle sweet- 
 ness of a boy brought up by women in a perpetu- 
 ation of his babyhood. He tried, nevertheless, 
 poor darling, to disentangle from the varied 
 knowledge put into him by Mme. de Silvis, a 
 few notions of general history as distinguished 
 from the adventures of dwarfs and fairies which 
 spangled his little imagination, artificial as the 
 scenes of a pantomime. From her seat the queen 
 helped him, encouraged him, lifted him, as it were, 
 on her own soul. When the swallows fly, if the 
 tiniest in the nest cannot launch itself forth, the 
 mother will give it the spring on her own wings. 
 When the child hesitated to answer, Frederica's 
 look, golden in those aquamarine eyes, darkened 
 like the wave as the squall passes ; but when he 
 answered rightly, what a smile of triumph she 
 turned to the master ! For many a month she 
 had not known such plenitude of comfort, of joy. 
 The waxen skin of the little Zara, his downcast
 
 78 Kings in Exile. 
 
 countenance of weakly childhood, seemed to her 
 eyes infused with fresh blood ; even the dreary 
 landscape widened at the magic of those words, 
 and let her see what there was ot imposing and 
 grandiose in that vast stripping and baring of 
 Nature. 
 
 While the queen sat listening, leaning on her 
 elbow, her bosom forward, bending her whole 
 self toward that future in which the child-king 
 stood before her fancy in the triumph of their 
 return to Leybach, Elysd-e quivered, marvelling at 
 a transfiguration he knew not he himself had 
 caused, and beholding upon that noble brow of 
 polished surface a royal diadem, twined and 
 rolled among the crossed reflections of her heavy 
 braids. 
 
 Mid-day was striking from all the clocks before 
 the lesson ended. In the principal salon, where 
 the little Court assembled every morning at the 
 breakfast hour, the party began to whisper and 
 wonder at the non-appearance of king or queen. 
 Hunger, and the vacuum of that moment when 
 a meal is delayed, mingled a certain ill-humour 
 with these low-toned remarks. Boscovich, pale 
 with cold and hunger, who had just been hunting 
 for two hours in the underbrush of the wood for 
 a certain late-blooming plant, was thawing his 
 fingers before the tall mantel of white marble in 
 the form of an altar, where Pere Alph^e sometimes, 
 on Sunday, said a private mass. The marquise, 
 majestic and stiff on the edge of a sofa, in a gown 
 of green velvet, was shaking her head on her long,
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 79 
 
 thin neck wound round with a boa, in a tragic 
 manner, while making her confidences to Princesse 
 Colette. The poor woman was in despair at hav- 
 ing her pupil taken from her to be confided to 
 a common person . . . positively, a common per- 
 son ! . . she had seen him that morning crossing 
 the courtyard. 
 
 " My dear, he would have frightened you . . . 
 hair long like that; the look of a madman. . . 
 It takes Pere Alph6e to find such people." 
 
 " They say he is very learned," said the princess, 
 her mind wandering to other matters. 
 
 The marquise bounded. . . Very learned ! . . 
 very learned ! . . Did the son of a king need to 
 be crammed with Latin and Greek like a diction- 
 ary? . . " No, no, my dear, such education requires 
 special knowledge . . . and I had it. I was pre- 
 pared. I have studied the treatise of the Abbe 
 Diguet on the ' Institution of a Prince.' I know 
 by heart the different means he indicates to dis- 
 cern men, and to repel flatterers. The first are 
 six in number, the second seven. This is order of 
 them. . ." 
 
 And she began to recite them to the princess, 
 who did not listen, being seated, sulky and un- 
 strung, on a mound of cushions over which flowed 
 the train of her pale-blue gown made in the last 
 fashion, and looking towards the door that led to 
 the apartments of the king with magnets at the 
 tips of her lashes, and the vexed expression of a 
 pretty woman who has made her toilet for one 
 who does not come. Stiff in his starred coat, the
 
 8o Kings in Exile. 
 
 old Due de Rosen was walking up and down with 
 automatic step, regular as a pendulum, stopping 
 at one or other of the windows looking on the 
 courtyard or the garden, and there, his eyes 
 raised beneath his anxious brow, he seemed like 
 the officer of the watch, charged with the sailing 
 of the ship and the responsibility of all on board. 
 And truly, the appearance of the vessel did him 
 honour. The red brick of the offices and the 
 administration building shone, washed by the rain 
 that was falling on the spotless stones of the porticos 
 and the fine pebbly gravel. On that gloomy day 
 a light positively shone from the neatness of every- 
 thing and was reflected in the salon, already 
 cheerful with the warmth of carpets and caloriftres, 
 and Louis XVI. furniture in white and gold, with its 
 classic ornamentation on the panels and mirrors; 
 the latter very large, a little gilded label hanging 
 to one of them by ribbon fastenings. In one 
 corner of this large room, a console of the same 
 period served as pedestal to the crown saved from 
 wreck, and covered with a glass case. Frederica 
 insisted on its being there, " to remind us," she 
 said. And in spite of Christian's sarcasms he 
 called it rococo, a relic of kings gone to the 
 devil the splendid jewel of the middle ages, its 
 precious stones sparkling in their goffered and 
 open-worked old gold setting, did cast a note 
 of ancient chivalry amid the coquetry of the 
 eighteenth century and the mixed taste of our 
 own. 
 
 The rolling of wheels on the gravel announced
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 81 
 
 the arrival of the aide-de-camp. At any rate, he 
 was some one. 
 
 " You come late on duty, Herbert," said the 
 duke, gravely. 
 
 The prince, though rather a big boy, always 
 trembled before his father ; he now coloured and 
 stammered a few excuses. . . " Very sorry . . . 
 not my fault ... on service all night." 
 
 " That is why the king is not yet down, I sup- 
 pose," said the princess, putting her delicate little 
 nose into the dialogue between the two men. 
 
 A stern look from the duke shut her lips. The 
 conduct of the king was nobody's business. 
 
 " Go up at once, monsieur ; the king must be 
 waiting for you." 
 
 Herbert obeyed, after vainly endeavouring to 
 obtain a smile from his beloved Colette, whose 
 ill-humour, far from being soothed by his coming, 
 took her off to sulk alone on a divan, her pretty 
 curls in disorder and the blue gown rumpled by 
 the nervous fidgeting of her childlike hands. And 
 yet Prince Herbert had of late made himself a 
 handsome and distinguished-looking man. His 
 wife had exacted that in his capacity as aide-de- 
 camp he should let his moustache grow, which 
 gave an expression that was formidably martial to 
 his kind, good face, now paled and thinned by the 
 sleepless nights and positive fatigue of his service 
 to the king. . . Moreover he still limped a little, 
 and walked with a cane, as became a hero of the 
 siege of Ragusa, a memorial of which he had just 
 written, a memorial made famous before its publi- 
 
 6
 
 82 Kings in Exile- . 
 
 cation, having been read by the author one even- 
 ing in the salon of the Queen of Palermo, which 
 won him, in addition to a most brilliant social 
 ovation, the formal promise of a prize at the 
 Academy. Think what position, what authority 
 all that gave to Colette's husband ! But none the 
 less did he keep his good-natured, shy, and sim- 
 pleton air, especially before the princess, who 
 continued to treat him with gracious contempt. 
 Which goes to prove that there is no such thing 
 as a great man to his wife. 
 
 "Well, what is it now? "she exclaimed in a 
 saucy little tone on seeing him reappear, his face 
 quite aghast and stupefied. 
 
 " The king has not come in ! " 
 
 These few words produced the effect of an elec- 
 trical discharge in the salon. Colette, very pale, the 
 tears in her eyes, was the first to recover speech. 
 
 " Is it possible ! " 
 
 Then the duke, in a curt voice : 
 
 " Not in ! . . Why was I not informed ? " 
 
 The boa of Mme. de Silvis erected itself and 
 twisted convulsively. 
 
 " If only nothing has happened to him ! . ." 
 cried the princess, in a state of extraordinary 
 excitement. 
 
 Herbert tranquillized her. Lebeau, the king's 
 valet, had started an hour ago with his valise; 
 therefore he must have had news of him. 
 
 In the silence that followed this explanation one 
 disquieting thought filled the minds of all ; the Due 
 de Rosen gave utterance to it :
 
 The Court of Salnt-Mande. 83 
 
 " What will the queen say ? " 
 
 Boscovich, trembling all over, remarked : 
 
 " His Majesty may have told her." 
 
 " I am certain he did not," affirmed Colette ; " for 
 the queen said only just now that she meant to 
 present the new tutor to the king this morning 
 at breakfast. . ." Then, trembling all over, she 
 added between her teeth : " If I were in her place, 
 I know what I would do." 
 
 The duke, his eyes flaming, turned round indig- 
 nantly toward the little bourgeoise whom he could 
 not succeed in polishing, and was probably about 
 to read her a severe lesson, when the queen 
 appeared, followed by FJys^e, who led his royal 
 pupil by the hand. Every one rose. Frederica, 
 with the beautiful smile of a happy woman, which 
 none had seen her wear for many a long day, pre- 
 sented M. Meraut. . . Oh ! that bow of the mar- 
 quise ! sarcastic and top-lofty ; for the last eight 
 days she had practised it. As for the princess, 
 she was unable to make so much as a gesture. . . 
 From pale she became crimson as she recognized 
 in this new tutor the strange young man with 
 whom she had breakfasted at her uncle Sauvadon's, 
 and who had written Herbert's book. Was he 
 there by chance, or could this be some devilish 
 plot? What shame for her husband, what fresh 
 ridicule upon him if his literary fraud were dis- 
 covered ! She was rather reassured by Meraut's 
 cold bow, though he must have recognized her. 
 " He is a man of sense," she thought to herself. 
 Unfortunately, all was compromised by Herbert's
 
 84 Kings in Exile. 
 
 artlessness, his amazement at the entrance of the 
 tutor, and the familiar grasp of the hand with which 
 he said : " Good-morning. How are you? " 
 
 "Then you know Monsieur Me>aut?" said the 
 queen, who had heard from her chaplain the true 
 story of the " Memorial " and was smiling, not 
 without mischief. But she was much too kind to 
 amuse herself long by a cruel game, and said 
 immediately: 
 
 " Certainly the king has forgotten us. Go up 
 and tell him, Monsieur de Rosen." 
 
 It was necessary now to tell her the truth, 
 namely, that the king was not in the house, that 
 he had spent the night out, and to mention the 
 fact of the valise. This was the first time that such 
 a thing had happened ; and those present expected 
 some explosion from that proud and ardent nature, 
 all the more because the presence of a stranger 
 aggravated the fact. No. She remained calm ; and 
 merely said a few words to the aide-de-camp, inquir- 
 ing at what hour he had last seen the king. 
 
 " About three in the morning. . . His Majesty 
 was walking down the boulevard on foot with 
 Mgr. the Prince d'Axel." 
 
 " Ah ! true ... I had forgotten. . . They had 
 something to say to each other." 
 
 In these tranquil intonations she completely 
 regained her serenity. But no one present was 
 duped by them. They all knew Prince d'Axel; 
 they knew for what sort of conversation that de- 
 graded Royal Highness, that dangerous viveur, was 
 sought.
 
 The Court of Saint- Mande. 85 
 
 " Come, let us go to breakfast," said Frederica, 
 rallying her little Court with the gesture of a sov- 
 ereign, to the calmness she had forced herself to 
 show. 
 
 Needing an arm to take her to the dining-room, 
 she hesitated for an instant, the king not being 
 there. Then, suddenly turning to the little Comte 
 de Zara, who was listening with eyes wide open and 
 the comprehending air of a sick and precocious 
 child, she said to him with infinite tenderness that 
 was almost respectful, and a serious smile he had 
 never seen before : 
 
 " Come, Sire."
 
 86 Kings in Exile. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE KING MAKES FETE. 
 
 THREE o'clock at night by the clock of Saint- 
 Louis-en-1'lle. 
 
 Wrapped in darkness and silence, the hotel de 
 Rosen slept, with all the weight of its heavy old 
 stones piled up by time, of its massive arched 
 gates with their ancient knockers; while behind 
 its closed shutters the muffled mirrors reflected 
 naught but the sleep of centuries, a sleep of which 
 the airy paintings on the ceilings seemed the 
 dreams, and the murmur of the neighbouring river 
 the fleeting and irregular breath. But that which 
 sleeps soundest throughout the mansion is Prince 
 Herbert, scarcely half an hour back from the club, 
 worn-out, exhausted, cursing his harassing existence 
 as a viveur in spite of himself, which deprived him 
 of all he liked best in the world horses and his 
 wife : of his horses, because the king took no pleas- 
 ure in the active outdoor life of a sportsman ; of his 
 wife, because the king and queen living so far apart 
 and seeing each other only at the hours of meals, 
 the aide-de-camp and the lady of honour, following, 
 one the king, the other the queen, were as much 
 separated in this parting of the household as the 
 confidants in a tragedy. The princess started for
 
 The King Makes Ftte. 87 
 
 Saint-Mande long before her husband was awake 
 in the morning; at night, when he came in, she 
 was already asleep behind double-locked doors. 
 If he complained, Colette would reply majestically, 
 with a little smile at the corner of her dimples : 
 " We surely owe this sacrifice to our princes." A 
 hard put-off to the amorous Herbert, alone in his 
 great chamber on the first floor, with its ceil- 
 ing sixteen feet above his head, the tops of the 
 doors painted by Boucher, and tall mirrors let in 
 to the walls which returned him his own image 
 in endless perspective. 
 
 Sometimes, however, when utterly worn-out, as 
 he was this evening, Colette's husband did feel a 
 certain selfish comfort in stretching himself at full 
 length on his bed without conjugal explanations, in 
 taking back his easy habits as a bachelor, and 
 wrapping his head in a vast foulard handkerchief in 
 which he would never have dared to bundle him- 
 self under the satirical eyes of his Parisian wife. 
 No sooner was he in bed on the embroidered and 
 blazoned pillow-case, a veritable sleep-trap of rest 
 and forgetfulness, than the nocturnal and foundered 
 aide-de-camp fell into it ; but as suddenly he was 
 dragged out of it by the painful sensation of a 
 light passing and re-passing before his eyes, as a 
 shrill little voice said in his ear : 
 "Herbert! . . Herbert! . ." 
 " Hein? What is it? . . Who 's there? " 
 " Do hold your tongue. . . It is I ... Colette." 
 It was indeed Colette, standing beside the bed, 
 her lace dressing-gown with hanging sleeves open
 
 88 Kings in Exile. 
 
 at the throat, her hair twisted up to the top of her 
 head, the nape of her neck a little nest of golden 
 curls ; all this seen by the glimmer of a tiny lan- 
 tern, which brought out the glance of her eye, full, 
 at first, of a solemn expression, but suddenly hila- 
 rious at the sight of Herbert, scared, stupid, the 
 ends of his rumpled foulard sticking out in threat- 
 ening points, his head with its bristling moustache 
 issuing from his nocturnal garment as if from the 
 robe of an archangel, though its expression was not 
 unlike that of a bourgeois braggart surprised in a 
 bad dream. But the laughter of the princess did 
 not last long. She placed her night-lamp gravely 
 on the table, with the decided air of a woman 
 who intends to make a scene ; and, without taking 
 notice that the prince was still vague in his waking, 
 she began, her arms crossed, her two little hands 
 hugging her elbows : 
 
 " And you call this a life, do you ? . . Coming 
 home every day at four o'clock in the morning ! . . 
 Is it proper? . . you, a married man ! . ." 
 
 " But, my dearest," he interrupted himself 
 hastily to pull off his foulard, which he flung out of 
 sight, " it is not my fault. . . I don't wish any- 
 thing better than to come home early to my little 
 Colette, to my darling wife, whom I ..." 
 
 He tried, as he spoke, to draw towards him the 
 snowy wrapper, the whiteness of which enticed 
 him, but he was harshly repulsed. 
 
 " You ! as if it concerned you ! . . Why, every 
 one knows you . . . knows you are a great inno- 
 cent, incapable of the slightest ... I'd like to see
 
 The King Makes Ftte. 89 
 
 you venture to be otherwise. . . It is the king ; in 
 his position ! . . Think what a scandal such be- 
 haviour is ! . . If he were free, a bachelor . . . 
 for bachelors must, I suppose, amuse themselves ; 
 though as for that, his rank ! the dignity of exile ! " 
 (Oh! that little Colette, perched on the tall heels 
 of her slippers, to talk of the dignity of exile!) 
 " But he is married. And I don't see how the 
 queen . . . Has n't she anything in her veins, that 
 woman ? " 
 
 " Colette ! . . " 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know . . . you are just like your 
 father. . . Everything the queen does ! . . Well, 
 to my mind, she is just as guilty as he. . . It is 
 she who has driven him to this by her coldness, 
 her indifference. . . " 
 
 " The queen is not cold. She is proud." 
 
 " Nonsense ! are women proud when they love? 
 If she loved him, the first night he passed away 
 from home would have been the last. Such 
 women talk, threaten, make themselves felt. They 
 have not this cowardice of silence under wrongs 
 that stab them . . . and the result is the king 
 spends his nights on the boulevard, at the club, 
 with Prince d'Axel, and in God knows what sort 
 of company ! " 
 
 " Colette ! . . Colette ! . . " 
 
 But try to stop Colette when she was once off! 
 launched in that fluent speech of the true bour- 
 geoise brought up in our exciting Paris, where 
 the very dolls know how to talk. 
 
 " That woman loves nothing, I tell you, not even
 
 go Kings in Exile. 
 
 her son. . . If she did, would she ever have con- 
 fided him to that savage? . . They are wearing 
 him out with study, poor little boy ! . . At night, 
 when asleep, he recites Latin and all kinds of 
 things . . . the marquise told me so. . . The 
 queen never misses a lesson . . . they are both 
 of a pair about that child. . . All to make him 
 reign ! . . but they '11 kill him first. . . Oh ! your 
 Meraut! I detest him." 
 
 " He is a good fellow, for all that. He might 
 have made it very disagreeable for me with the 
 history of that book, but he never said a word 
 about it." 
 
 " Oh, really ! . . Well, I can assure you that 
 when you are praised for that book before the 
 queen she has a very singular smile as she looks at 
 you. But you are such a simpleton, my poor 
 Herbert." 
 
 Observing the vexed look on her husband's face, 
 which had turned quite red, his mouth puffing out 
 like that of a pouting child, the princess feared 
 she had gone too far to obtain the thing she had 
 come for. But he, how could he keep up any 
 anger against that pretty creature sitting on the 
 edge of the bed, her head half-turned with a 
 movement full of coquetry, and making play with 
 that lissome youthful figure beneath its laces, the 
 polished whiteness of her throat, the enticing, mis- 
 chievous eye between those lashes? Herbert's 
 honest countenance became once more amiable, it 
 even grew animated in a quite extraordinary manner 
 at the soft warm touch of the little hand that was
 
 The King Makes Fete. 91 
 
 now in his, and the feminine fragrance of the woman 
 he adored. . . Ah ! ga, what did she want to know, 
 that little Colette? . . Very little, apparently; 
 simply a bit of information. . . The king, had he, 
 yes or no, any mistresses? Was it a passion for 
 gambling that was leading him on, or the love of 
 pleasure and violent emotions. . . The aide-de- 
 camp hesitated before replying. Comrade on 
 all battle-fields, he feared, by relating what he 
 knew, to be treacherous to professional secrecy. 
 But that little hand was so caressing, so press- 
 ing, so inquisitive, that Christian II. 's aide-de-camp 
 resisted no longer. 
 
 " Well, yes, the king has a mistress just now." 
 
 Within his hand, Colette's little palm turned 
 damp and cold. 
 
 "Who is she, that mistress?" she inquired in a 
 curt, half-breathless voice. 
 
 " An actress at the Bouffes . . . Amy Fe>at." 
 
 Colette knew that Amy Frat very well, and 
 thought her atrociously ugly. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Herbert, by way of excuse, " his 
 Majesty won't keep her long." 
 
 "Truly?" asked Colette, with an air of satis- 
 faction. 
 
 Whereupon Herbert, delighted with his success, 
 ventured so far as to catch a knot of satin ribbon 
 which fluttered on the bosom of the dressing-gown, 
 and to continue in an airy little tone : 
 
 " Yes, I am afraid that before long poor Amy 
 F6rat will receive her ouistiti." 
 
 " A ouistiti ? . . What do you mean? "
 
 9 2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Why, yes ; I have remarked, and so have all who 
 see the king, as I do, closely, that when an intrigue 
 begins to tire him he sends one of his ouistitis, 
 P. P. C. . . A way he has of getting rid of a mis- 
 tress he no longer loves. . . " 
 
 " Oh ! upon my word ! " exclaimed the princess, 
 indignantly. 
 
 " Positive truth ! . . At the club we no longer 
 say 'get rid of a mistress, but 'send her a 
 ouistiti. . .' " 
 
 He stopped, nonplussed at seeing the princess 
 rise hastily, snatch her lantern, and depart in a 
 straight line from the alcove. 
 
 " Eh ! but ... Colette ! . . Colette ! . ." 
 
 She looking back, contemptuous, choking. . . 
 
 " I have had enough of your vile stories. . . I 
 am sick of them at last." 
 
 And raising the portiere she left the unfortunate 
 roi de la Gomme stupefied, his arms extended, his 
 heart in flames, ignorant of the why and wherefore 
 of the untimely visit and this whirlwind departure. 
 With the rapid step of an actress leaving the 
 stage, the floating train of her dressing-gown 
 taken up and twisted round her arm, Colette 
 hurriedly regained her own bedroom at the 
 other end of the house. There on a couch, in a 
 cushioned hollow of Oriental embroideries, slept 
 the prettiest little animal in the world, gray, silky 
 fur like feathers, a long tail almost enveloping it, 
 and a little silver bell fastened round its neck by a 
 rose-coloured ribbon, a delicious ouistiti which 
 the king had sent her a few days ago in a basket
 
 The King Makes Fete. 93 
 
 of Neapolitan straw, an attention she had received 
 with the utmost gratitude. Ah ! if she had only 
 known the real meaning of the gift ! Furious, she 
 snatched up the poor little beast, that bundle of 
 living and clawing silk, from which, thus suddenly 
 awakened, two human eyes shone out, and opening 
 the window toward the quay, she said, with a 
 ferocious gesture : 
 
 " Go ! . . vile thing ! " 
 
 The poor little monkey rolled down over the 
 quay; and it was not he alone that disappeared 
 and died that night, but also a dream fragile and 
 capricious as himself, the dream of a poor little 
 creature who now flung herself on her bed and 
 hid her face upon the pillow to sob. 
 
 Their loves had lasted very nearly a year, an 
 eternity to that child, who was but a butterfly. He 
 had only to make a single sign, and Colette de 
 Rosen, dazzled, fascinated, fell into his arms, she 
 who, until then, had kept herself an honest woman, 
 not for love of her husband or of virtue, but be- 
 cause in that little bird's-brain of hers there was a 
 liking for clean plumage which had preserved her 
 from soiling falls ; and because, moreover, she was 
 essentially French, of that race of women whom 
 Moliere, long before our modern physiologists, 
 had declared to be without temperament, simply 
 imaginative and vain. 
 
 It was not to Christian, but to the king of 
 Illyria that the little Sauvadon gave her love. She 
 sacrificed herself to that ideal diadem which, 
 through legends and romantic, frivolous reading,
 
 94 Kings in Exile. 
 
 she saw, like a halo, above the selfish and passion- 
 ridden type of her lover. She pleased him so long 
 as he found in her only a new plaything prettily 
 coloured, a Parisian plaything which would serve 
 to initiate him to keener amusements. But she 
 had the bad taste to take seriously her position as 
 " mistress of the king." All those female figures, 
 half historic, all that pinchbeck of the crown, more 
 brilliant than real jewels, glittered in her ambitious 
 dreams. She desired to be, not the du Barry, but 
 the Chateauroux of this Louis XV. of the coast. 
 Illyria to reconquer, conspirators to be led at the 
 tip of her fan, dashing attacks, heroic disembar- 
 cations became the subject of all her conversa- 
 tions with the king. She saw herself rousing the 
 natives, hiding in the tall wheat, in barns, like 
 those famous heroines of La Vendee whose adven- 
 tures she had been made to read in the convent of 
 the Sacre-Cceur. She had even planned a page's 
 costume, costume always playing a leading part 
 in her inventions, for a pretty little renaissance 
 page, which would give her access to the king at 
 all hours and enable her to accompany him per- 
 petually. Christian did not particularly like these 
 elated dreams ; his own sense showed him the 
 false and silly side of them. Besides he did not 
 take a mistress to talk politics ; and when he held 
 his pretty Colette on his knee with her soft little 
 paws and her rosy muzzle, in all the abandonment 
 of love, reports about the recent resolutions of the 
 Diet of Leybach or the effect of the last royalist 
 manifesto gave his heart a shiver like that caused
 
 The King Makes Ftte. 95 
 
 by a sudden fall of temperature or the frosts of 
 April on the orchard buds. 
 
 From that moment scruples came to him, then 
 remorse, the complicated, naive remorse of a Slav 
 and a Catholic. His caprice satisfied, he began to 
 feel the odious character of this intercourse so 
 near the queen, under her very eyes in fact ; the 
 danger of these furtive, hasty meetings in hotels, 
 where their incognito might be betrayed at any 
 moment; also the cruelty of deceiving such a 
 good, kind creature as that poor devil of a 
 Herbert, who spoke of his wife with unabated 
 tenderness and never once suspected, when the 
 king rejoined him at the club, his eyes bright, 
 his face flushed, that he came from the arms of 
 Colette. But more embarrassing still was the Due 
 de Rosen, extremely distrustful of the morals of 
 the daughter-in-law who was not of his caste, very 
 uneasy about his son, whom he suspected of being 
 deceived, and feeling himself responsible for the 
 whole of it because his avarice had made the 
 marriage. He watched Colette, took her himself, 
 night and morning, to and from Samt-Mande" ; he 
 would have followed her all day if the supple 
 creature had not known how to slip through his 
 clumsy fingers. Between them it came to be a 
 silent struggle. From the window of his office 
 the duke seated at his desk saw, with great vex- 
 ation, his pretty daughter-in-law, arrayed in the 
 delightful costumes she concocted with her dress- 
 maker, curl herself up in the carnage, all glowing 
 behind the mist on the glasses if it was cold, or
 
 96' Kings in Exile. 
 
 sheltered behind a fringed sunshade on pleasant 
 days. 
 
 "Are you going out?" he would say. 
 
 " On the queen's service," the little Sauvadon 
 replied triumphantly from behind 'her veil. And 
 it was true. Frederica seldom entered the whirl of 
 Paris, and gladly gave all her errands to the lady 
 of honour, never having felt the vanity of proclaim- 
 ing her name and regal title to some fashionable 
 tradesman before the inquisitive curiosity of the 
 shop people and the customers present. Con- 
 sequently all social popularity was lost to her. 
 No one discussed in a salon the colour of her 
 hair and eyes, the rather stiff majesty of her figure, 
 and her free and independent manner of wearing 
 the Parisian fashions. 
 
 One morning the duke observed that Colette on 
 leaving Saint-Mand6 seemed so cheerfully serious, 
 and showed so marked an increase of her grisette 
 type, that from pure instinct, knowing nothing 
 (all true hunters have these sudden inspirations), 
 he started to follow her, and did follow her a long 
 time, to a famous restaurant on the Quai d'Orsay. 
 With much cleverness and imagination the prin- 
 cess had contrived to be excused from the cere- 
 mony of the queen's table, and was on her way to 
 breakfast with her lover in a private room. They 
 took their repast before a window, quite low, which 
 incased a splendid scene : the Seine gilded by the 
 sun, the Tuileries beyond a mass of trees and 
 stone; near-by, the yards of the frigate school- 
 ship amid the shady verdure above the bulwarks
 
 The King Makes Fete. 97 
 
 of the quay, where the sellers of blue glasses 
 spread out their wares. The weather, true weather 
 for a rendezvous, had the warmth of a sunny day 
 tempered by piquant breezes. Never had Colette 
 laughed so heartily; her laugh was the pearly 
 climax of her grace ; and Christian, who adored 
 her when she chose to be simply the creature of 
 joy he loved, enjoyed the choice breakfast in her 
 company. Suddenly she spied upon the opposite 
 sidewalk the figure of her father-in-law, walking 
 up and down at a regular pace, as if determined 
 on a long watch, a sentry, in short, before the 
 door, which the old man knew to be the only issue 
 from the restaurant ; from which post he watched 
 the entrance of the fine, erect, and well-girthed 
 officers who came from the neighbouring cavalry 
 barracks ; for in his capacity as former general of 
 pandours he thought that arm irresistible, and he 
 doubted no longer that his daughter-in-law had 
 some intrigue with spurs and sabretache. 
 
 The anxiety of the king and Colette was great, 
 and was not unlike the dilemma of the learned man 
 perched on a palm-tree beneath which yawned a 
 crocodile. Certain of the discretion and the in- 
 corruptibility of the staff" of the establishment, the 
 pair felt sure that the crocodile could not get 
 up to them. But how could they get out? The 
 king, no matter ! he had plenty of time before 
 him in which to wear out the patience of the 
 animal. But Colette ! . . the queen would be ex- 
 pecting her, uniting, possibly, her suspicions to 
 those of old Rosen. The master of the establish-
 
 98 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ment, whom Christian sent for and informed as to 
 the facts of the situation, could at first think of 
 nothing but making a hole through the wall into 
 the next house, as in times of revolution ; then the 
 idea of a very much simpler expedient occurred to 
 him. Madame must wear the clothes of a baker's 
 boy, and put her gown and petticoats into the 
 basket she would carry on her head, and reclothe 
 herself in the house of the dame du comptoir, who 
 lived in the next street. At first, Colette objected. 
 Appear as a scullion before the king ! However, 
 it had to be, under peril of greater catastrophes ; 
 and the ironed-out habiliments of a boy of four- 
 teen turned Colette de Rosen, nte Sauvadon, into 
 the prettiest and most jaunty of the little restau- 
 rant boys who run about the streets of Paris at the 
 hungry hours. But how far away was that white 
 cap, those shoes in which her feet slipped about, 
 that jacket in the pockets of which the sous of the 
 pourboires rattled, from the costume of the heroic 
 page, with pearl-handled dagger and high boots, in 
 which she had dreamed of following her Lara ! . . 
 The duke beheld without suspicion the two little 
 cook-boys pass him with baskets on their heads dif- 
 fusing an appetizing smell of warm pastry, which 
 gave him a cruel sense of hunger he was fasting, 
 poor man ! Upstairs, the king, a prisoner, but 
 relieved of a weighty anxiety, sipped his Rcederer 
 as he read the papers and looked, from time to 
 time, through a corner of the curtain to see if the 
 crocodile were still there. 
 
 When the old duke returned to Saint-Mande in
 
 The King Makes Fete* 99 
 
 the evening the princess received him with a most 
 ingenuous smile. He saw he was successfully 
 tricked, and he said not a word of the adventure. 
 It was noised about, however. Who knows by 
 what cracks in the walls of a salon or antechamber, 
 by what lowered glass of a coupe window, by what 
 echo returned from blank walls to mute doors, are 
 scandalous rumours spread about Paris until they 
 appear in the light of day, that is to say, on the 
 front page of some society journal, thence to the 
 crowd through a thousand ears, becoming a pub- 
 lic shame after being first the amusing anecdote 
 of a coterie? For a week all Paris diverted itself 
 with the tale of the little cook-boy. The names, 
 whispered as low as was possible for such great 
 titles, did not penetrate the epidermis of Prince 
 Herbert. But the queen had some inkling of the 
 adventure, for she, who never, since a terrible ex- 
 planation they had had at Leybach, reproached 
 the king for his conduct, took him aside a few 
 days later as they were leaving the table, and said 
 gravely, without looking at him : 
 
 " A great deal is being said of a scandalous tale 
 in which your name is mixed up. . . Oh ! don't 
 defend yourself; I wish to hear nothing more on 
 that subject. . . Only, remember this, which is in 
 your keeping " (she pointed to the crown, its rays 
 veiled by the crystal shade). " Endeavour to 
 keep shame and ridicule from touching it. . . 
 Your son must one day wear it." 
 
 Did she know the whole truth of the adventure ? 
 Could she put the right name on the woman who
 
 ioo Kings in Exile. 
 
 was half unveiled by scandal? Frederica was so 
 strong, so thoroughly in possession of herself, that 
 no one about her was able to say. At any rate, 
 Christian was aware that he was warned, and his 
 fear of scenes, the need of that weak nature to see 
 around him pleasant faces responding to the per- 
 petual smiles of his own careless indifference, de- 
 termined him to take from its cage the prettiest 
 and most coaxing of the ouistitis as an offering 
 to Princesse Colette. She wrote to him ; he did 
 not answer, nor would he comprehend either her 
 sighs or her dolorous attitudes, but continued to 
 speak to her with the gay politeness that women 
 liked in him so much ; then, freed from the re- 
 morse which had begun to weigh upon him as his 
 fancy diminished, and having no longer at his 
 heels an affection that was otherwise tyrannical 
 than that of his wife, he rushed full speed into 
 pleasure, caring for nothing to use the odious 
 and effeminate language of the dandies of the day 
 caring for nothing but "making fete." That 
 was the fashionable expression at the clubs in that 
 year. No doubt they have another at the present 
 moment, for change is constant. But that which 
 remains, immutable and monotonous, are the fa- 
 mous restaurants where the thing takes place: 
 the gilded and flowery salons where high-priced 
 prostitutes invite themselves or are invited; the 
 enervating flatness of pleasure degrading itself 
 to orgy without the power of revival. That which 
 does not change is the classic stupidity of the 
 mass of rakes and harlots, their stereotyped slang
 
 The King Makes Fete. 101 
 
 and laugh, without a single imaginative fancy 
 ever slipping into their world, as bourgeois, as 
 conventional, as the other world, under all its appar- 
 ent folly. It is regulated disorder, a programme 
 played out by yawning ennui and aching joints. 
 But the king, he, at least, " made fete " with the 
 ardour of a lad of twenty. He carried into it that 
 hunger for escapade which took him to Mabille 
 on the night of his arrival, to satisfy desires 
 sharpened for a long time at a distance by the 
 reading of certain Parisian newspapers, which give 
 each day the appetizing menu of debauchery in 
 tales and articles which relate and idealize it for 
 the provinces and foreign countries. His intrigue 
 with Mme. de Rosen stopped him for a certain 
 time on this descent to easy pleasure which 
 resembles the little staircases of the night restaur- 
 ants, inundated with light, carpeted from top 
 to bottom, descended step by step in the first 
 stage of drunkenness, which deepens and comes 
 on faster at the bottom in the fresh air of the open 
 door, and leads straight to the gutter, in the dim 
 hour of the scavengers and dustmen. Christian 
 now abandoned himself to that descent ; and what 
 encouraged and intoxicated him more than wine 
 was the little Court, the clique with which he sur- 
 rounded himself, noblemen, ruined gamblers, 
 on the lookout for royal dupes ; journalists, gay- 
 livers, whose paid reports entertained him, and 
 who, proud of this intimacy with so illustrious an 
 exile, took him to the coulisse of the theatres, 
 where women with no eyes but for him, emotional
 
 IO2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 and provocative, painted him in blushing confu- 
 sion, with their enamelled cheeks. Quick to seize 
 the language of the boulevards, with its fads, its 
 exaggeration, its vapidity, he soon said, like 
 an accomplished gomme: " Chic, very chic. . ." 
 " 'T is infect [ugly, or silly]." " On se tord [fleeced 
 at cards, from pigeon's neck twisted]." But he 
 said these things less vulgarly than others, thanks 
 to his foreign accent, which relieved the slang and 
 gave it a Bohemian point. One word he especially 
 affected, rigolo^ He used it apropos of every- 
 thing, to appreciate what he liked. Plays, novels, 
 events, public or private, they were or they were 
 not rigolo. This dispensed Monseigneur from all 
 argument. At the end of a supper Amy Ferat, 
 who was drunk and irritated by the word, called 
 out to him : 
 
 " Hey ! see here, Rigolo ! " 
 
 This familiarity pleased him. She, at least, did 
 not treat him as a king. He made her his mis- 
 tress, and long after his connection with the fash- 
 ionable actress ended, the name stayed by him, 
 like that of " Queue-de-Poule " given to Prince 
 d'Axel, no one ever knew exactly why. 
 
 Rigolo and Queue-de-Poule made a pair of 
 friends who were never separated ; they hunted 
 their game in couples, and united even in the 
 boudoirs -their fates, which were much alike. The 
 disgrace of the hereditary prince constituting in 
 point of fact an exile, he bore it as best he could, 
 
 1 Rigolo, amusing, comical. Rigoler, to laugh, to divert one's 
 self ; an old word, used by Rabelais. TR.
 
 The King Makes Fete. 103 
 
 and for ten years past had " made fete " in all the 
 wineshops of the boulevard with the liveliness of 
 an undertaker. The King of Illyria had an apart- 
 ment in the hotel d'Axel on the Champs Elysees. 
 At first he slept there occasionally, but very soon 
 as often as at Sairtt-Mande. These explained ab- 
 sences, with apparent reason, left the queen quite 
 calm, but threw the princess into black despair. 
 No doubt her wounded pride still cherished the 
 hope of regaining that volatile heart. She em- 
 ployed all sorts of coquettish wiles, new adorn- 
 ments and coiffures, and combinations of cut and 
 colour in her gowns that harmonized well with 
 the allurements of her beauty. But what disap- 
 pointment when, at seven o'clock, the king not 
 having appeared, Frederica, imperturbably serene, 
 would say, "The king does not dine here to-day," 
 and order the little Zara's high chair to be put in 
 the place of honour ! The nervous Colette, obliged 
 to be silent and to swallow her vexation, longed 
 for an outburst from the queen which might have 
 avenged them both ; but Frederica, scarcely paler, 
 kept her sovereign calmness, even when the prin- 
 cess, with cruel feminine cleverness, slipping hints 
 between skin and flesh, tried to make to her reve- 
 lations about the clubs in Paris, the coarseness of 
 the conversations between men, the still coarser 
 amusements to which these irregular hours, these 
 habits of the coulisse led, the foolish wagers, the 
 fortunes crumbling like card-houses on the gam- 
 bling-table, the eccentric bets entered in a special 
 book, curious to look over, a gilded book of human
 
 IO4 Kings in Exile. 
 
 aberrations. But in vain, the queen was not 
 affected by the galling of these pin-pricks ; either 
 she did not or she would not comprehend them. 
 
 Once, and once only, she betrayed herself, one 
 morning, as they were both on horseback in the 
 forest of Saint-Mande. A sharp little breeze of 
 the month of March was ruffling the waters of the 
 lake and driving them towards the shore, still bar- 
 ren and flowerless. A few buds were bursting in 
 the coppices which still kept the russet leaves of 
 winter, and the horses treading side by side a 
 wood-road strewn with fallen branches made them 
 crackle in unison with the opulent sound of creak- 
 ing saddles and jangling curb-chains. The two 
 women, each as good a rider as the other, rode 
 slowly, absorbed by the calm of an intermediate 
 season, which prepares, with rainy skies and soil 
 blackened by the departing snows, for the renewal 
 of all things. Colette, however, soon began upon 
 her favourite topic, as she always did when alone 
 with the queen. She dared not attack the king 
 directly, but she made up for it on his surround- 
 ings, on the gentlemen of the Grand-Club, whom 
 she knew through Herbert and Parisian slander, 
 and whom she now dressed out with the hand of 
 a connoisseur, Prince d'Axel first of all. Really 
 and truly she could not comprehend how any one 
 could make a friend and companion of that man, 
 who spent his life in gambling and revelling, liking 
 none but the worst company, sitting openly on the 
 boulevard beside a slut, drinking, like a coachman, 
 with the first comer, and hail-fellow-well-met with
 
 The King Makes Ftte. 105 
 
 the lowest comedians. And to think that that was 
 an hereditary prince ! . . Did he take pleasure in 
 degrading and fouling royalty in his own person? " 
 
 On and on she went with fire and fury, while the 
 queen, intentionally abstracted, her eyes vague, 
 stroked the neck of her horse and presently urged 
 him on as if to escape the tales of her lady of hon- 
 our. But Colette kept up with her. 
 
 " However," she went on, " we know where 
 Prince d'Axel gets it. The conduct of his uncle 
 is as bad as his own. A king who proclaims his 
 mistresses with such impudence before his Court 
 and his wife. . . One can't help asking what sort 
 of slavish nature a queen can have who would bear 
 such outrages. . . " 
 
 This time the blow struck home. Frederica, 
 quivering, her eyes clouded, showed upon her feat- 
 ures, which seemed suddenly hollowed, an expres- 
 sion so sorrowful, so worn, that Colette felt herself 
 shaken as she saw that proud sovereign, whose soul 
 she had never yet been able to reach, come down 
 to the level of womanly suffering. But the queen 
 almost immediately recovered her pride. 
 
 " The woman you speak of is a queen," she said 
 quickly ; " and it would be a great injustice to 
 judge her as you do other women. Other women 
 can be happy or unhappy openly ; they can weep 
 their tears and complain if the sorrow is too 
 great to bear. But queens ! . . Sorrows as wives, 
 sorrows as mothers, they must hide all, and 
 bear all. . . Can a queen escape when she is 
 outraged ? Can she seek a separation and give that
 
 io6 Kings in Exile. 
 
 joy to the enemies of a throne ? No ; at the risk 
 of seeming cruel, indifferent, blind, she must keep 
 her head erect to support the crown. And this 
 is not pride; it is the sentiment of our grandeur 
 that sustains us. It is this which makes us show 
 ourselves in open carriages between husband and 
 child when threats of a conspirator's pistol are in 
 the air; this that makes exile and its mire less 
 heavy ; this that gives us strength to endure certain 
 cruel affronts of which you, Princesse de Rosen, 
 should be the last to speak to me." 
 
 She grew excited as she spoke, hurrying her words 
 at the last; then she struck her horse a vigorous 
 blow, which sent him through the wood in the 
 whirl of a rapid pace that made her blue veil 
 flutter and the folds of her cloth habit clap. . 
 
 Henceforth, Colette left the queen in peace; 
 but as her nerves needed soothing and distraction, 
 she turned her anger and her teasing tilts against 
 lilysee Meraut, putting herself prominently on 
 the side of the marquise, for the royal house was 
 now divided into two camps. Elysee had scarcely 
 any one on his side but Pere Alph6e, whose rough 
 speech and ever ready thrust were a fine support on 
 some occasions ; but he was frequently making jour- 
 neys to Illyria charged with missions between the 
 mother-house in the Rue des Tourneaux and the 
 Franciscan monasteries at Zara and Ragusa. At 
 any rate, that was the pretext of his many absences, 
 made with the utmost mystery, from which he 
 returned always more ardent, mounting the stair- 
 case with furious leaps, his rosary twirling in his
 
 The King Makes Fete. 107 
 
 fingers, and a prayer between his teeth which he 
 chewed like a ball. After such returns he was 
 shut up for long hours with the queen, and then 
 he was off again, leaving the coterie of the mar- 
 quise quite at liberty to league against the pro- 
 fessor. From the old duke, who was shocked in 
 all his military and social notions by the negligent 
 dress and touzled hair of poor Meraut, to Lebeau 
 the King's valet, enemy by instinct of all indepen- 
 dence, and even down to the humblest groom or 
 kitchen-boy, courtiers of Lebeau, nay, even to the 
 inoffensive Boscovich, who went with the rest from 
 cowardice and respect for the majority, there was 
 nothing less than a veritable coalition against the 
 new master. It showed itself less in acts than in 
 words, looks, attitudes, in the nervous little skir- 
 mishes which life in common brings about between 
 persons who detest each other. Oh ! those atti- 
 tudes which were Mme. de Silvis* specialty, 
 disdainful, haughty, ironical, bitter; she played 
 off all the expressions of her head before Elysee, 
 taking especial pains to assume an air of respectful 
 pity, with smothered sighs and blank looks cast to 
 the ceiling, whenever she was in presence of the 
 little prince. "Don't you suffer, Monseigneur?" 
 and she felt him over with her long, thin fingers, 
 making him languid with her trembling caress. 
 Then the queen would say in lively tones : 
 
 " Come, come, marquise, you will make Zara 
 think he is ill." 
 
 " I find his hands, his forehead, rather hot." 
 
 " He has just come in. . . It is the brisk air. . ."
 
 io8 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Then the mother would carry off the boy, rather 
 troubled at heart by remarks repeated to her, 
 the household theory being that Monseigneur was 
 made to study too hard ; a theory that the Parisian 
 part of the household repeated without believing, 
 but which was taken seriously by the Illyrian ser- 
 vants, the tall Petscha and old Greb, who darted 
 their worst black looks at Meraut, and galled him 
 with that spiteful service of antipathy which is so 
 easy to exercise against dependents and absent- 
 minded persons. . . Again he encountered the pet- 
 tiness, the persecutions, the jealousies of the palace 
 . . . the same grovelling of souls, crawling round a 
 throne, of which exile and dethronement do not, it 
 appears, rid royalty. His nature, too generous, 
 too affectionate not to suffer from these aggressive 
 antipathies, felt the restraint to his simple, familiar 
 ways and bohemian artist habits, now compressed 
 into the narrow ceremonial of the house at those 
 meals, lighted by tall candelabra, where the men in 
 full dress and the women decolleties (seated far apart 
 around the table for lack of guests) did not speak 
 or eat until the king and queen had eaten and spoken, 
 ruling themselves by an implacable etiquette, the 
 observance of which was watched over by the 
 chief of the civil and military household with only 
 the more rigour as the exile was protracted. But 
 it sometimes happened, nevertheless, that the old 
 student of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince came to the 
 royal table in a coloured cravat, spoke without 
 permission, launched himself headlong into one of 
 those eloquent improvisations with which the walls
 
 The King Makes Fete. 109 
 
 of the Cafe Voltaire still rang. Then it was that 
 the thundering looks he drew upon himself, the 
 ridiculous importance given to the slightest in- 
 fraction of Court rules, gave him a longing to 
 leave all and get back to his Quarter, as he had 
 done on a former occasion. 
 
 But there was the queen ! 
 
 Living always in Frederica's private existence, 
 the child between them, he became possessed by 
 a fanatical devotion to her, made up of respect, 
 admiration, and superstitious faith. She summed 
 up in herself and symbolized to his mind all his 
 monarchical beliefs and ideals, just as the Madonna 
 is the whole of religion to a peasant of the Trans- 
 tevere. For the queen he remained ; for her he 
 found courage to carry on his hard task to its end. 
 Oh ! yes, it was hard, very hard. What patience 
 was needed to put the slightest thing into the little 
 head of this child of a king ! He was charming, 
 poor little Zara, gentle and good. Will was not 
 lacking to him. The serious and upright soul of 
 his mother could be divined in the boy, with some- 
 thing, I know not what, that was trivial, volatile, 
 and younger than his years. Mind was visibly 
 belated in that stunted, almost aged little body, 
 which play did not tempt, and on which revery 
 weighed until it turned at times to torpor. Rocked 
 from his earliest years which to him had been 
 a long convalescence with the fantastic tales of 
 his governess, life, of which he was just beginning 
 to have some conception, struck him only through 
 its analogies with those stories where fairies and
 
 no Kings in Exile. 
 
 good genii, hovering over kings and queens, helped 
 them out of towers and dungeons, delivered them 
 from persecutions and plots with a single tap of 
 their golden wand, and laid low ramparts of thorns, 
 walls of ice, dragons spitting fire, and old women 
 who could change you into be'asts. In the midst 
 of some careful explanation given to him in his 
 lesson, " That is how it is in the story of the 
 little tailor," he would say; or, if he read the 
 account of a great battle, " Giant Robistor killed 
 more than that." It was this sense of the super- 
 natural so strongly developed within him which 
 gave him his abstracted expression and inclined 
 him to sit motionless for hours among the sofa 
 cushions, keeping in the depths of his eyes the 
 changing, floating phantasmagoria, the dazzling 
 false lights in the brain of a child issuing from 
 Rothomago, with the fable of the play developing 
 to his memory in marvellous prismatic tableaus. 
 All this made the serious study and reasoning now 
 required of him very difficult 
 
 The queen was present at the lessons, in her 
 fingers an embroidery which never advanced, and 
 in her beautiful eyes that attention so precious to 
 the master, who felt her vibrating to all his ideas, 
 even to those he did not express. Indeed, it was 
 by these latter that they chiefly held to each 
 other, by dreams, chimeras ; all that floated 
 above their convictions and diffused them. She 
 took him for counsellor, for confidant, but affect- 
 ing never to speak to him except in the king's 
 name.
 
 The King Makes Ftte. in 
 
 " M. Meraut, his Majesty would like to know 
 your opinion as to this." 
 
 And Elysee's astonishment was great at never 
 receiving questions from the king himself on 
 topics in which he was so interested. Christian II. 
 treated him with a certain consideration, spoke to 
 him in a tone of familiar companionship, excellent 
 in its way, but very futile. Sometimes, in crossing 
 the study, he would stop for a moment to listen to 
 the lesson, and say, laying his hand on the boy's 
 shoulder, in a tone that echoed the subaltern out- 
 cry of the household : 
 
 " Do not press him too hard. You don't want 
 to make a learned man of him. . ." 
 
 " I want to make a king of him," replied Fred- 
 erica, proudly. 
 
 Then, as her husband made a discouraged ges- 
 ture, she added : " Will he not reign some day?" 
 
 " Why yes . . . yes. . ." 
 
 And as the door closed quickly upon him (to 
 cut short all discussion), he was heard to hum an 
 air from an opera then much in vogue : " He will 
 reign ... he will reign . . . because he is Spanish." 
 In short, Elysee did not know what to think of this 
 cordial, superficial, perfumed, dainty prince, full 
 of caprices, lounging on sofas with enervated 
 limbs, whom he still believed to be the hero of 
 Ragusa, that king of energetic will and bravery 
 whose deeds he had told in the " Memorial." 
 However, in spite of Frederica's cleverness in con- 
 cealing the vacuum of that crowned brow, and 
 though she constantly effaced herself behind him,
 
 U2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 some unforeseen circumstance was always pre- 
 senting itself in which their true natures appeared. 
 
 One morning, after breakfast, when they re- 
 entered the salon, Frederica opened the newspapers 
 arriving by courier from Illyria, which she was 
 always the first to read, and presently made so 
 loud and painful an exclamation that the king, 
 who was preparing to go out, stopped short, and 
 all present gathered round her. The queen passed 
 the paper to Boscovich. 
 
 " Read that," she said. 
 
 It was the authorized report of a session of the 
 Diet at Leybach, at which a resolution was passed 
 to return to the exiled sovereigns all the crown 
 property, more than two hundred millions, on the 
 express condition . . . 
 
 " Bravo ! " cried Christian's nasal voice. " That 
 suits me famously." 
 
 " Go on," said the queen, sternly. 
 
 " ' On the express condition that Christian II. 
 renounces for himself and his descendants all rights 
 to the throne of Illyria.' " 
 
 The salon resounded with an indignant explo- 
 sion. Old Rosen choked, Pere Alphee's cheeks 
 became as white as linen, rendering his beard and 
 his eyes still blacker. 
 
 " We must answer ... we cannot remain silent 
 under this blow," said the queen, and, in her indig- 
 nation, she turned to Me>aut who was making 
 notes with a feverish pencil at one corner of the 
 table. 
 
 " This is what I should write," he said advancing;
 
 The King Makes Ftte. 113 
 
 and he read, in the form of a letter to a royalist 
 deputy, a noble proclamation to the Illyrian people, 
 in which, after rejecting the outrageous proposition 
 made to him, the king reassured and encouraged 
 his supporters with the emotion of the head of a 
 family parted from his children. 
 
 The queen enthusiastically clapped her hands, 
 seized the paper, and gave it to Boscovich. 
 
 " Quick, quick, translate it and send it. . . Is 
 not that your wish ? " she added, recollecting that 
 Christian was there and that eyes were upon 
 them. 
 
 " No doubt ... no doubt ..." said the king, 
 much perplexed, and biting his nails furiously. 
 " That 's all very fine . . . only, you see . . . we 
 ought to know if we can keep to it." 
 
 She turned round, very pale, as if struck by a 
 blow between the shoulders. 
 
 " Keep to it ! . . If we can keep to it? . . Is it 
 the king who speaks?" 
 
 He, very calm : 
 
 " When Ragusa had no food, with the best will 
 in the world we had to surrender." 
 
 " Well, this time, if food is wanting, we will take 
 a basket and beg at doors . . . but royalty shall not 
 surrender." 
 
 What a scene, in that narrow salon of the 
 suburbs of Paris ; what a debate between those two 
 fallen princes, one who was felt to be weary of the 
 struggle, his legs faltering under his own want of 
 faith, the other palpitating with faith and ardour. 
 And how the mere sight of them revealed their two 
 
 8
 
 H4 Kings in Exile. 
 
 natures ! the king supple, slender, his throat 
 bare, his clothes loose, his feeble nature visible in 
 the effeminacy of his slack, pale hands, and the 
 light curls, slightly dampened, on his white fore- 
 head ; she, erect, superb in her riding-dress, with 
 its wide lapels and small upright collar and simple 
 cuffs edging the dark cloth of her habit, from which 
 the glowing blood, the lightning of her eyes, the 
 golden coils of her hair came forth dazzling. 
 Elysee, for the first time, had a clear and rapid 
 vision of what was passing in that royal home. 
 
 Suddenly Christian II. turned towards the duke, 
 who was standing with bowed head, leaning against 
 the mantelpiece. 
 
 " Rosen ! . . " 
 
 "Sire?. . " 
 
 " You alone can tell us this. . . How do we 
 stand? . . Have we the means to go on any 
 longer ? " 
 
 The chief of the household made a haughty 
 gesture. 
 
 " Certainly ! " 
 
 " How long? . . Do you know? . . about how 
 long? . . " 
 
 " Five years ; I have reckoned it." 
 
 "Without privation to any one? None whom 
 we love being injured or made to suffer? . . " 
 
 " Undoubtedly, Sire." 
 
 "You are sure?" 
 
 " Sure," affirmed the old man, erecting his vast 
 height. 
 
 "Very good. . . Me>aut, give me your letter;
 
 The King Makes Fete. 115 
 
 I will sign it now, before I go out." Then in a low 
 tone, taking the pen from his hand, he added : 
 " Just look at Mme. de Silvis. . . Would n't you 
 think she was preparing to sing ' Sombre Forest ' ? " 
 
 The marquise, entering at that moment from the 
 garden, leading the little prince by the hand, was 
 affected by the dramatic atmosphere of the salon, 
 and, arrayed in her green velvet spencer with a 
 green feather in her hat, had exactly the arrested 
 pose, struck and romantic, of an opera-singer. 
 
 Read in the Illyrian Parliament and published 
 in all newspapers, the protest was also, by Elysee's 
 advice, printed in autograph and sent through- 
 out the country-places in thousands of copies, 
 which Pere Alphee carried thither in bales, pass- 
 ing them through the custom-houses as " objects of 
 piety " with chaplets of olive wood and roses from 
 Jericho. Royalist opinions were spurred ; espe- 
 cially in Dalmatia, where republican ideas had 
 made but little way, so that the people were now 
 moved by the eloquent words of their king, read 
 from the pulpit in many villages and distributed by 
 the begging friars of St. Francois, who opened 
 their wallets at the doors of the farmhouses and 
 paid for the eggs and the butter given to them 
 with a little printed packet. Soon addresses to the 
 king were covered with signatures, and those 
 crosses in place of signatures which are so touch- 
 ing in their ignorant good-will; pilgrimages, too, 
 were organized. 
 
 In the little house at Saint-Mande" there were 
 now perpetual arrivals of fishermen, of porters from
 
 1 1 6 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Ragusa, with black cloaks over their rich Mussul- 
 man costumes, Morlachian peasants, three-fourths 
 barbarous, all shod with the opankt of sheepskin, 
 tied around the foot with thongs of twisted straw. 
 They issued in bands from the tramway, where their 
 scarlet dalmatians, their fringed scarfs, and jackets 
 with metal buttons made violent contrast with the 
 gray monotony of Parisian clothing. They crossed 
 the courtyard with firm step, but stopped at the 
 vestibule and talked together in low voices, per- 
 turbed and intimidated. Elys^e, who was present 
 at all these presentations, felt moved to the depths 
 of his being ; the legend of his infancy lived again 
 in these enthusiasms coming from afar the jour- 
 ney to Frohsdorf of the weavers of the Enclos de 
 Rey, the privations, the preparations for that jour- 
 ney, the unacknowledged disappointment on the 
 return all these things came back to his memory, 
 and he suffered from Christian's indifferent, op- 
 pressed attitude, and his sighs of relief when each 
 interview was over. 
 
 At heart the king was furious at these visits, 
 which interfered with his pleasures and condemned 
 him to a long afternoon at Saint-Mande. On ac- 
 count of the queen, however, he greeted with a 
 few commonplace phrases the protestations choked 
 with tears of these poor people, avenging his 
 annoyance with some droll comment, or a carica- 
 ture scratched down at the end of a table in that 
 spirit of ill-natured satire that lurked at the corners 
 of his lips. On one occasion he caricatured the 
 syndic of the fishermen of Branizza, a bread Italian
 
 The King Makes Fete. 117 
 
 face with hanging cheeks and round eyes, stupefied 
 by the agitation and joy of a royal interview, the 
 tears rolling down to his chin. This masterpiece 
 circulated round the table at the next meal, amid 
 the laughter and exclamations of the guests. The 
 duke himself, despising the popular, wrinkled his 
 old beak in sign of extraordinary hilarity. The 
 drawing finally reached Elysee with a noisy en- 
 comium from Boscovich. He looked at it for 
 some time ; then he gave it to his neighbour with- 
 out a word, and when the king, from the other end 
 of the table, called to him in his insufferable nasal 
 tone, 
 
 " You don't laugh, Mraut . . . and he is good, 
 my syndic," 
 
 " No, Monseigneur," he answered sadly, " I can- 
 not laugh . . . It is a portrait of my father." 
 
 Some time after that, filys^e was witness of a 
 scene which completed his enlightenment as to 
 Christian's character and his relations with the 
 queen. It was on a Sunday after mass. The 
 little mansion, wearing an unusually festive appear- 
 ance, opened wide the iron gates of its courtyard 
 on the Rue Herbillon ; all the attendants were 
 afoot and ranged in line in the antechamber of the 
 portico, as verdant as a greenhouse. The recep- 
 tion on this occasion was of the highest importance. 
 A royalist deputation from the Diet itself was ex- 
 pected, the elite and flower of the party, who were 
 coming to offer to the king the homage of their 
 fidelity and devotion, and to consult with him as 
 to the proper measures for a speedy restoration.
 
 n8 Kings in Exile. 
 
 It was a real event, long hoped for, and now an- 
 nounced ; the solemnity of which was brightened 
 by a splendid winter sun, which gilded and warmed 
 the great salon of reception where the king's chair 
 was placed as a throne, and woke from the shadows 
 the sparkling rubies, sapphires, and topazes of the 
 crown. 
 
 While the whole house was alive with a contin- 
 ual going and coming, and the trailing rustle of 
 silk gowns everywhere ; while the little prince, as 
 they put on his long red stockings, his velvet suit, 
 and its Venetian lace collar, repeated the speech 
 he had been learning for a week ; while old Rosen, 
 in full dress, covered with orders, drew himself up 
 more erect than ever to introduce the deputies, 
 filysee, voluntarily aloof from all this bustle, was 
 sitting alone in the schoolroom, thinking of the 
 probable results of the approaching interview. In 
 a mirage, not infrequent, of his meridional brain, 
 he was beholding the triumphant re-entrance of 
 his princes into Leybach, amid salvos and chimes 
 and joyful streets heaped up with flowers a king 
 and queen holding before them, like a promise to 
 the people, like a future which still further ennobled 
 them, and placed them in the rank of youthful 
 ancestors, his beloved pupil, the little Zara, grave 
 and intelligent, with that child-gravity crossed by 
 an emotion too great for a child's comprehension. 
 And the glory of this fine Sunday, the gayety of 
 the bells ringing out upon the air in the full sun 
 of mid-day only doubled his hope of a national 
 festival, in which the maternal pride of Frederica
 
 The King Makes Fete. 119 
 
 might send to him, above the head of her child, 
 the blessing of a satisfied smile. 
 
 On the gravel of the court of honour the arrivals 
 were now echoing with the heavy roll of the state 
 coaches which had been sent to bring the deputies 
 from Paris. The doors of the carriages clapped, 
 the sound of steps died away on the carpets of 
 the vestibule and the salon, whence a murmur 
 of respectful voices rose. Then followed a long 
 silence, which surprised Elysee, who was expect- 
 ing to hear the speech of the king in his high 
 nasal tones. What was happening? What inter- 
 ruption had occurred to the pre-arranged order of 
 the ceremonies? 
 
 At this moment he saw, sidling along by the 
 wall and the blackened espaliers of the wintry 
 garden, the man whom he supposed to be in the 
 salon presiding over the official reception, the 
 king, who was walking towards the house with a 
 stiff and awkward step. He must have entered by 
 a secret door hidden under ivy in the Avenue 
 Daumesnil, and was now advancing slowly and 
 painfully. Elysee thought at first of a duel, an 
 accident; and shortly after the sound of a fall in 
 the upper story, a fall that shook the furniture and 
 hangings of the room, so long and heavy was it, 
 accompanied by the breakage of articles on the 
 floor, confirmed him in this idea. He ran up 
 rapidly to the king. Christian's room, in a half 
 circle of the principal wing of the mansion, was 
 warm and cosy as a nest, hung with crimson, 
 adorned on the walls with ancient armour, and
 
 I2O Kings in Exile. 
 
 furnished with divans, low chairs, lion and bear 
 skins; and amid this downy luxury that was al- 
 most oriental, stood the originality of a small camp 
 bed on which the king always slept, from family 
 tradition and that pose of Spartan simplicity which 
 millionnaires and sovereigns are fond of assuming. 
 
 The door was open. 
 
 Opposite to it stood Christian, leaning against 
 the wall, his hat on the back of his head, his face 
 discomposed and pale, his long fur wrap half open 
 and showing a rumpled coat, a white cravat untied, 
 the broad white shirt-front creased and stained with 
 that foulness of linen which marks a night spent 
 in the disorder of drunkenness. The queen was 
 standing near him, erect, stern, speaking in a low, 
 threatening voice, and trembling with the violent 
 effort that she made to restrain herself. 
 
 " You must . . . you must. . . Come ! " 
 
 But he, very low and with a shamed air : 
 
 " I cannot. . . You see I cannot. . . Later . . . 
 I promise you." 
 
 Then he stammered excuses, with a silly laugh 
 and childish voice. . . It was not that he drank too 
 much. Oh, no ... but the air, the cold, coming 
 out after supper. . . 
 
 "Yes, yes. . . I know. . . It is no matter. . . 
 You must come down. . . Let them see you ; only 
 let them see you. . . I will speak to them, I will ; 
 I know what to say. Come ! " 
 
 Then as he stood there motionless, mute with a 
 sort of torpor which began upon his face, that grew 
 horribly relaxed, Frederica's anger rose.
 
 The King Makes Fete. 121 
 
 "Understand, I say, that our fate hangs upon 
 it. . . Christian, it is your crown, the crown of 
 your son, that you are risking at this moment. . . 
 Come ! . . I beg of you. . . You shall come. . ." 
 
 She was superb at that moment with a strong 
 will whose currents from her aquamarine eyes 
 magnetized the king visibly. She held him by 
 that look, tried to steady him, erect him, helped 
 him to take off his hat and his furred coat, filled 
 with the vile fumes of drunkenness and tobacco. 
 He stiffened himself for a moment on his flaccid 
 legs, made a few steps staggering, with his hot 
 hands resting on the marble of the queen's arm. 
 But suddenly she felt that he was collapsing and 
 she recoiled herself from that fevered contact. 
 Brusquely repulsing him with violence, with dis- 
 gust, she let him fall at full length upon a divan ; 
 then without a look at that disordered, inert mass, 
 already snoring, she left the room, passed before 
 Meraut without seeing him, walking straight before 
 her, her eyes half shut, murmuring in the distraught 
 and dolorous voice of a somnambulist : 
 
 " Alia fine sono stanca di fare gesti de questo 
 monarcaccio." 
 
 [At last, I am weary of making gestures for that 
 puppet-king.]
 
 122 Kings in Exile. 
 
 V. 
 j. TOM LEVIS, FOREIGNERS' AGENT. 
 
 OF all Parisian lairs, of all the caves of Ali-Baba 
 with which the great city is mined and counter- 
 mined, there is none more peculiar, of an organiza- 
 tion more interesting, than the Levis Agency. You 
 know it, all the world knows it, at any rate the out- 
 side of it. It is in the Rue Royale at the corner of 
 the Faubourg Saint-Honore, directly on the line of 
 carriages going or returning from the Bois, so that 
 none can escape the beguiling announcement of 
 that sumptuous establishment, up eight steps, with 
 its tall windows of a single pane, each bearing the 
 emblazoned arms, gules, azure, and gold, of the 
 principal powers of Europe, eagles, unicorns, 
 leopards, the whole heraldic menagerie. For 
 thirty metres, the entire width of that street, which 
 equals a boulevard, the Levis agency attracts the 
 eyes of the most indifferent passer. They all ask 
 themselves : " What is sold there ? " " What is not 
 sold there ? " we had better say. On each pane can 
 be read in beautiful golden letters : " Wines, liqueurs, 
 comestibles, pale-ale, kiimmel, raki, caviare, cod's- 
 roes ; " or else : " Furniture ancient and modern, car- 
 pets, foliage-tapestries, Smyrna and Ispahan rugs ; " 
 farther on : " Paintings of great masters, marbles,
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 123 
 
 terra-cottas, armour, medallions, panoplies ; " else- 
 where : " Exchange, discount, foreign money; " or : 
 " Books and newspapers of all countries, all lan- 
 guages ; " and, in addition : " Sales or rentals, hunt- 
 ing, seashore, villegiatura ; " with : " Information, ce- 
 lerity, discretion." 
 
 This swarm of inscriptions and brilliant heraldic 
 bearings on its glass obscured to a great degree 
 the show window, allowing very little to be seen 
 of the articles there displayed. Vaguely one could 
 distinguish bottles of foreign shape and colour, 
 chairs in carved wood, pictures, furs, and, -in 
 wooden bowls, a few opened rolls of coin and 
 bundles of paper-money. But the vast cellars of 
 the agency, lighted from the street at the level of 
 the sidewalk through a species of grated port-holes, 
 gave an impression that the opulent warehouses of 
 the city of London were sustaining the " chic " and 
 the " fla-fla " of the gorgeous show window of the 
 Boulevard de la Madeleine. Those cellars over- 
 flowed below with riches of all kinds : hogsheads 
 in rows, bales of stuffs, piled-up cases, coffers, 
 boxes of preserved provisions, depth upon depth, 
 enough to make one giddy, as when we look down 
 into the yawning hold of a steamboat in process 
 of being stowed. 
 
 Thus prepared and firmly spread in the full 
 Parisian tide-way, the net floated agrip for the 
 great and the little fishes, even the young fry of 
 the Seine, the most wary of all ; and if you pass 
 that way about three in the afternoon you will 
 almost always find it full.
 
 124 Kings in Exile. 
 
 At the glass door on the Rue Royale, lofty, 
 light, and surmounted by a carved wooden pedi- 
 ment, this is the entrance to the part devoted to 
 dress and fashions, stands the chasseur of the 
 establishment, militarily gold-laced, who turns the 
 handle of the door as soon as he sees you, and 
 holds an umbrella (when there is need of it) over 
 clients who come in carriages. Before you, on 
 entering, is a vast hall, divided by counters, and 
 wire-gratings with little wickets, forming two lines 
 of compartments, regular " boxes," right and left 
 to the very end. The dazzling daylight shines 
 upon the polished packages, the carvings, the 
 correct frock-coats and the hair, curled with 
 tongs, of the clerks, all elegant, handsome, but 
 of foreign air and accent. Some have the olive 
 skin, pointed skulls, and narrow shoulders of 
 Asiatics; others, the American collar-beards be- 
 neath porcelain blue eyes, and the ruddy flesh 
 of Germans. In whatever tongue the buyer gives 
 his order he is certain of being understood, for 
 every language is spoken at the Agency, except 
 the Russian, that being useless, inasmuch as Rus- 
 sians speak all tongues except their own. 
 
 The crowd comes and goes about the wickets, 
 sits waiting on the light chairs, gentlemen and 
 ladies in travelling costume, a mingling of Astra- 
 khan and Scotch caps, long veils floating over 
 waterproofs, dust-cloaks, tweeds in checks in- 
 discriminately clothing both sexes, packages in 
 straps, leathern bags worn in satire, in short, the 
 true public of a waiting-room, gesticulating, talk-
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners' Agent. 125 
 
 ing, staring, with the unrestraint and assurance of 
 persons away from their own homes, and making 
 in many languages the same confused, variegated 
 hurly-burly which we hear in the bird-shops on 
 the Quai de Gevres. At the same time the pale- 
 ale and the Romanee-Conti corks are popping and 
 piles of gold are rolling about on the counters. 
 Also an interminable ringing is going on, whistles 
 descend through the speaking tubes, plans of 
 houses are being unrolled, scales and chords are 
 tried on a piano, while around an enormous car- 
 bon photograph a whole tribe of Samoyeds are 
 making exclamations. 
 
 From one box to another the clerks are tossing 
 information, a row of figures, the name of a person 
 or street, all smiling, eagerly polite; till suddenly 
 they become majestic, icy, indifferent, with coun- 
 tenances completely detached from the affairs of 
 this globe, when some unfortunate, distracted one, 
 rejected already from wicket to wicket, leans down 
 to speak to them, in a low voice, of a certain mys- 
 terious thing, which seems to fill them with as- 
 tonishment. Sometimes, weary of being looked 
 at like a waterspout or a meteorite, the man 
 becomes impatient and asks to see J. Tom Levis 
 himself, who will, undoubtedly, understand the mat- 
 ter. On which he is told, with a superior smile 
 that J. Tom Levis is busy . . . J. Tom Levis has 
 company . . . not paltry little affairs like yours, 
 and nobodies like you, my good man ! . . . Here, 
 look down there, at the end of the hall. . . A door 
 opena J. Tom Levis appears for a second, more
 
 126 Kings in Exile. 
 
 majestic in himself alone than the whole of his 
 staff; majestic in his rounded paunch, majestic by 
 his polished cranium shining like the floor of his 
 agency, by the tipping back of his small head, 
 his fifteen-foot glance, the despotic gesture of his 
 short arm, and the solemnity with which he de- 
 mands, in a very loud voice and his insular accent, 
 whether " the purchase of his Royal Highness 
 the Prince of Wales has been sent to him," while 
 with one hand he holds the door of his cabinet 
 hermetically closed behind him, to give the idea 
 that the august personage who is with him is one 
 of those who must not be disturbed on any con- 
 sideration. Needless to say that the Prince of 
 Wales never came to the agency, and there was 
 not the very smallest parcel to send to him ; but 
 you can imagine the effect of that name on the 
 crowd in the counting-room and the solitary client 
 in the cabinet, to whom Tom had just said : " Ex- 
 cuse me . . . one moment. . . A little inquiry to 
 make." 
 
 All trickery ! trickery ! There was no more a 
 Prince of Wales behind the door of the cabinet 
 than there was raki or kiimmel in the queer bottles 
 in the window, or beer, English or Viennese, in the 
 rows of hogsheads in the cellar; no more than 
 there was merchandise in those emblazoned, gilded, 
 and varnished carts, marked J. T. L., which passed 
 at a gallop (all the more rapidly because empty) 
 through the finest quarters of Paris a perambu- 
 lating advertisement, noisily rattling the pavement 
 with the frantic activity that characterized both
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigiurs Agent. 127 
 
 man and beast at Tom Levis's agency. If a poor 
 devil, intoxicated by the sight of all that gold, had 
 thrust his fist through the window and greedily 
 plunged a bleeding hand into those wooden bowls, 
 he would have pulled it back full of counters; if he 
 had snatched that enormous bundle of banknotes 
 he would have carried off a bill of twenty-five 
 francs at the top of a pile of bubble-paper. 
 Nothing in the show-cases, nothing in the cellars, 
 nothing, nothing, not so much as that! . . But 
 how about the port-wine those Englishmen tasted ; 
 and the money that boyard obtained for his roubles ; 
 and that little bronze undoubtedly packed up for a 
 Greek of the isles ? Oh ! good heavens ! nothing 
 simpler. The English beer came from the nearest 
 tavern ; the gold from a money-changer on the 
 boulevard ; the bronze from that shop of " So 
 and So" in the Ruedu Quatre-Septembre. 'Twas 
 merely the affair of an errand quickly done by two 
 or three employes always waiting in the cellar for 
 orders transmitted down the tubes. 
 
 Going out by the courtyard of the next house 
 they were back in a few minutes, emerging by 
 the winding stairway with its carved baluster and 
 crystal post-knob; and then, behold the required 
 article, guaranteed and ticketed J. T. L. And 
 don't feel obliged to take it, prince ; if it does not 
 suit you, you can change it. The cellars of the 
 Agency are well supplied. Things are a little 
 dearer than elsewhere, perhaps even double and 
 treble, but is n't that much better than going from 
 shop to shop where they don't understand a word
 
 128 Kings in Exile. 
 
 you say, in spite of the promise in the window of 
 " English spoken" or mann spricht Deutsch, of 
 those boulevard shops, where a foreigner, sur- 
 rounded and circumvented, really gets nothing 
 but the dregs of the boxes, the shelved and 
 worthless articles, that refuse of Paris, that deficit 
 on the ledger of "things out of fashion" the 
 show of last year, more faded and tarnished by 
 its date than by the sun and dust of its exhibi- 
 tion? Oh! that Parisian shopkeeper ! obsequious 
 and pertinacious, disdainful and adhesive; that's 
 enough, the foreigner wants no more of him, 
 weary at last of being so ferociously speculated 
 upon ; and not only by the shopkeeper but by the 
 hotel in which he sleeps, the restaurant where he 
 eats, the cab which he hails in the street, the 
 seller of tickets who sends him to yawn in empty 
 theatres. At the Levis place, that ingenious 
 agency where foreigners find all they can desire, 
 you are at least sure of never being cheated, for J. 
 Tom Levis is an Englishman, and the commercial 
 honesty of Englishmen is known to both hemi- 
 spheres. 
 
 English, Tom Levis is, beyond the possibility of 
 being more so, from the square toes of his Quaker 
 shoes to his long frock-coat descending on his 
 green checked trousers, and his tall hat with its 
 infinitesimal brim, that sets off his chubby, ruddy, 
 good-natured visage. Albion's honesty can be 
 read on that skin fed on beefsteaks, that mouth 
 stretching from ear to ear, the silky blondness of 
 those uneven whiskers uneven from a trick their
 
 J. Tom Levis > Foreigners Agent. 129 
 
 owner has of chewing one (always the same) in 
 moments of perplexity ; that insular honesty may 
 also be divined in the pudgy hand with its fingers 
 showing a reddish down and laden with rings. 
 Honest also seems the glance from behind a large 
 pair of spectacles in slender gold frames ; so 
 honest that when it happens that Tom Levis lies 
 even the best of us are liable to it the pupils, 
 by a curious nervous spasm look inward to each 
 other like the little twirls in the perspective of a 
 gyroscope. 
 
 What completes the Anglican physiognomy of 
 J. Tom Levis is his cab, his hansom, the first 
 vehicle of the kind ever seen in Paris, the natural 
 shell of this original being. Has he some rather 
 complicated affair on hand, or one of those mo- 
 ments that come in all traffic, when a man feels 
 himself nipped, cornered, "I '11 take the cab," 
 says Tom ; and he is sure to find within it some 
 idea. He combines, he weighs, he comments to 
 himself, while the Parisians see, rolling along in 
 that transparent case on wheels, the silhouette 
 of an absorbed man, chewing his right whisker 
 energetically. It is in the cab that he invented 
 his finest strokes of business, his close-of-the- 
 empire strokes ! Ah ! those were the good times ! 
 Paris abounded in foreigners, not only travelling 
 foreigners, but a settlement of exotic fortunes, 
 eager for feasts and merry-makings. We had 
 Hussein-Bey the Turk, and Mehemet-Pacha the 
 Egyptian, two celebrated fezes, on the lake; and 
 the Princesse de Verkatcheffs, who was throwing 
 
 9
 
 130 Kings in Exile. 
 
 all the gold of the Ural mountains through the 
 fourteen windows of her first-floor apartment on 
 the Avenue Malesherbes ; and the American Berg- 
 son, who squandered the enormous revenues of his 
 petroleum mines in Paris (Bergson has since then 
 recovered his wealth) ; together with nabobs, 
 swarms of nabobs of all colours, yellows, browns, 
 reds, variegating the boulevards and theatres, 
 hurrying to spend, to enjoy, as if they foresaw that 
 they would have to vacate that great merry 
 junketing-place before the terrible explosion which 
 was soon to burst the roofs and break the mirrors 
 and the windows. 
 
 Consider that J. Tom Levis was the indispensa- 
 able intermediary of all these pleasures ; that not 
 a louis was changed without his having previously 
 pared it, and also that to his foreign customers 
 were added certain Parisian bon vivants of the 
 period, lovers of rare game, poachers on private 
 preserves, who came to friend Tom as to the 
 shrewdest and ablest of agents ; and also because 
 their secrets seemed to them safer behind his 
 barbarous French and his difficulty of elocution. 
 The monogram of J. T. L. sealed all the scanda- 
 lous tales of the close of the empire. It was in the 
 name of J. Tom Levis that the lower stage-box 
 No. 9 at the Op6ra-Comique was always taken 
 when the Baronne Mils came for an hour to hear 
 her tenorino, carrying away with her after the 
 cavatina, in the lace of her bosom, his handker- 
 chief steeped in perspiration and whitening. In 
 the name of J. Tom Levis was leased the little
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 131 
 
 hotel of the Avenue de Clichy, half and half (with- 
 out their being aware of it) and for the same 
 woman, to the brothers Sismondo, two bankers, 
 partners, unable to leave their counting-room at 
 the same hour. Ah ! the books of the Agency 
 at that period ! what fine romances in a few 
 lines ! 
 
 " House with two entrances : on the road to 
 Saint-Cloud. Rent, furniture, indemnity to lessee 
 ... so much," and below it : " Commission to 
 general ... so much." 
 
 " Country-house at Petit- Valtin, near Plom- 
 bieres. Garden, coachhouse, two entrances, in- 
 demnity to lessee ... so much." 
 
 And invariably : " Commission to general ... so 
 much." That general had a good place on the 
 books of the Agency. 
 
 If Tom enriched himself in those days he spent 
 as largely, not in play, nor in horses, nor women ; 
 simply to satisfy the caprices of an untutored child 
 or savage, of the silliest, most ridiculous imagina- 
 tion ever seen, which allowed no interval between 
 the dream and its realization. Once it was an 
 avenue of acacias which he wanted at the end of 
 his property at Courbevoie ; and as trees are long 
 in growing, for one whole week were seen along 
 the shores of the Seine (very bare at that spot) 
 the slow defiling of huge carts bearing each its 
 acacia, the feathery green branches of which, nod- 
 ding to the movement of the wheels, threw their 
 quivering shadows on the water. The suburban 
 property, on which J. Tom Levis lived all the year
 
 Kings in Exile. 
 
 round, after the manner of the great London 
 merchants, beginning as a mere box with only a 
 ground-floor and garret, became to him in the 
 end a source of monstrous expense. His business 
 prospered and grew; proportionally he enlarged 
 his property; and from building to building, pur- 
 chase after purchase, he came at last to possess 
 a park made up of annexed lands, fields under 
 culture, and scraps of forest ; a singular property 
 on which his tastes revealed themselves, his am- 
 bitions, his English eccentricity, deformed and 
 dwarfed by bourgeois ideas and attempts at art 
 that were failures. Along this very ordinary 
 house, above which upper storeys had been visibly 
 added, lay an Italian terrace with marble balusters, 
 flanked by two gothic towers, and communicating 
 by a covered bridge with another building, pre- 
 tending to be a chalet, with open-work balconies 
 swathed in ivy. All this in painted stucco and 
 brick, looking like a Black Forest toy, with a 
 wealth of towers, battlements, weather-vanes, bal- 
 conies, parapets; and, in the park, a bristling of 
 kiosks and belvederes, a shimmering of greenhouses 
 and fountains, the black bastion of an immense 
 reservoir in which to raise water, topped by a real 
 windmill, the wings of which, sensitive to every 
 breeze, clacked and turned with an endless grind- 
 ing of their axle. 
 
 Certainly along the narrow space traversed by 
 the tramways of the Parisian suburbs many a bur- 
 lesque villa defiles before the windows of the cars, 
 like fantastic nightmares, the effort of the escaping
 
 J. Tom Levts, Foreigners Agent. 133 
 
 and gambolling shopkeeping brain. But none is 
 comparable to the Folly of Tom Levis ; unless it 
 be the villa of his neighbour Spricht, the great 
 Spricht, the ladies' dressmaker. That gorgeous 
 personage is in Paris only during his business 
 hours, namely, the three hours in which he gives 
 his consultations on coquetry in his grand office 
 on the boulevard ; after which, he instantly returns 
 to his house at Courbevoie. The secret of this 
 forced retreat is that dear Spricht, " dear " to all 
 ladies, while he possesses in his drawers, among 
 marvellous patterns of his Lyonnese fabrics, speci- 
 mens of flowing handwriting, dainty script from 
 the best gloved hands in Paris, is forced to con- 
 fine himself to an intimacy of correspondence, not 
 being received in any of the houses he gowns, 
 while his close relations with them have spoilt, for 
 him, his relations with the commercial world to 
 which he belongs. Consequently he lives much 
 retired, surrounded, like all parvenus, by a posse 
 of poor relations, and devoting his wealth to enter- 
 taining them royally. His only amusement, the 
 necessary fillip to this life of a retired outcast, is 
 the neighbourhood and rivalry of Tom Levis, the 
 hatred and contempt they reciprocally vow to each 
 other, without knowing why, which latter fact of 
 course renders all reconciliation impossible. 
 
 When Spricht puts up a tower Spricht is 
 German, he likes the romantic, castles, valleys, 
 ruins, he has the passion of the middle ages 
 instantly J. Tom Levis builds a veranda. When 
 Tom pulls down a wall, Spricht cuts down his
 
 134 Kings in Exile. 
 
 hedges. There is a tale of a pavilion built by Tom 
 which interfered with Spricht's view towards Saint- 
 Cloud. The dressmaker on that put a gallery to 
 his pigeon-house. The other retorted by a second 
 story. Spricht was not beaten yet, and the two 
 edifices, with a great accumulation of stones and 
 workmen, continued their ascension until one fine 
 night they were toppled over by the wind, without 
 the least trouble, because of the flimsiness of their 
 construction. Spricht, on his return from a trip 
 to Italy, brought back a Venetian gondola, a real 
 gondola, which he installed in the little port at the 
 foot of his property ; a week later, pft ! pft ! a 
 pretty little steam-yacht, with sails also, was moored 
 at Tom's quay, churning in the water the reflected 
 towers, roofs, and battlements of his villa. 
 
 To keep up such a style of living, it was neces- 
 sary that the empire should continue forever, and 
 its last hour had come. The war, the siege, the 
 departure of foreigners, were an utter disaster to 
 the two traders ; especially to Tom Levis, whose 
 property was completely devastated by the inva- 
 sion, while that of Spricht was spared. But peace 
 restored, the struggle between the two rivals began 
 again more furiously than ever, this time with 
 inequalities of wealth ; the man of fashions having 
 recovered all his customers, while poor Tom Levis 
 was still expecting vainly the return of his. The 
 sign " Information, celerity, discretion" produced 
 nothing, or next to nothing ; the mysterious gen- 
 eral no longer received his clandestine fee from 
 the strong-box of the Agency. Any other man
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 135 
 
 in Tom's place would have retrenched, but that 
 devil of a fellow had invincible habits of extrava- 
 gance, something in his hands that prevented them 
 from closing. And then, Spricht was there, lugu- 
 brious since the " events," declaring that the end 
 of the world was at hand, and building at the 
 end of his park a miniature of the ruins of the 
 Hotel de Ville, with its crumbling walls blackened 
 by flames. On Sunday evenings these ruins were 
 illuminated by Bengal lights and all the Sprichts 
 lamented around them. It was sinister. J. Torn 
 Levis, on the contrary, becoming republican out 
 of hatred to his rival, feted regenerated France, 
 organized jousts, regattas, crowned " La Rosiere," 
 and at one of these coronations, in a gush of 
 expansive joy, carried off, one summer's evening, 
 the band from the Champs Elysees (at the concert 
 hour), and brought it on the yacht, all sails spread, 
 to Courbevoie, where it played upon the river. 
 
 Debts accumulated at this rate ; but the English- 
 man did not disturb himself for that. No one 
 knew better than he how to disconcert creditors 
 by mere force of coolness and impudent majesty. 
 No one not even the clerks of the Agency, well- 
 trained as they were had his manner of scruti- 
 nizing bills curiously, as if they were palimpsests, 
 and tossing them into a drawer with a superior 
 air ; no one had his methods to avoid payment, 
 and to gain time. Time ! It was on that that 
 Tom Levis counted to bring him some fruitful 
 enterprise, what he called, in the figurative slang 
 of his bohemia of money, " a grand stroke." But
 
 136 Kings in Exile. 
 
 in vain did he take to his cab, in vain did he course 
 through Paris feverishly, eyes on the watch, teeth 
 long, scenting, expecting prey years went by and 
 still the " grand stroke " did not present itself. 
 
 One afternoon when the Agency swarmed with 
 people, a tall young man with a languid, haughty 
 manner, a mocking eye, a delicate moustache on 
 the rather full whiteness of a pretty face, appeared 
 before the principal wicket and asked for Tom Levis. 
 The clerk, misled by the cavalier meaning that un- 
 derlay the inquiry, thought him a creditor, and was 
 about to take his most disdainful air when the 
 young man, in a high voice, the nasal tone of which 
 doubled its insolence, informed " that species of 
 upstart " that he was to tell his master at once that 
 the King of Illyria wished to speak to him. . . 
 " Ah ! Monseigneur. . . Monseigneur. . ." Among 
 the cosmopolitan crowd which happened to be there 
 at that moment a movement of curiosity towards 
 the hero of Ragusa took place. From all the open 
 compartments rushed a swarm of clerks to escort 
 his Majesty to Tom Levis, who had not yet 
 arrived, but could not fail to be there from one 
 moment to another. 
 
 This was the first time that Christian had 
 appeared at the Agency, the old Due de Rosen 
 having until now paid all the bills of the little 
 Court. But the present matter concerned an 
 affair so private, so delicate, that the king did not 
 dare to confide it even to the clumsy hands of his 
 aide-de-camp. . . A little house to rent for a
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 137 
 
 circus-rider who had just displaced Amy Fe"rat ; a 
 furnished house with servants, stable, and certain 
 facilities of access, one of those affairs, in short, 
 which the Levis agency alone knew how to 
 accomplish. 
 
 The salon where he waited contained exactly 
 two large arm-chairs in varnished leather, one of 
 those narrow and silent gas stoves which seem to 
 send you their fire from another room, and a small 
 round table covered with a blue cloth on which lay 
 an almanach Bottin. Half the room was taken up 
 by a tall wire grating, draped with blue curtains, 
 surrounding a desk carefully placed, on which was 
 a large book with steel corners, open, a weight on 
 the page; and around it powder-boxes, erasers, 
 rulers, pen-wipers, a long case filled with books of 
 the same shape the books of the Agency ! 
 their green backs in line, like Prussians on parade. 
 The order prevailing in this quiet little corner, 
 the neatness of the things within it, did honour to 
 the old bookkeeper, absent for the moment, whose 
 methodical existence must surely be passed there. 
 
 While the king waited, lolling in his chair, his 
 nose in the air above his furs, suddenly, without 
 any movement of the glass door opening to the 
 counting-room and covered by an Algerine hang- 
 ing with a clown's hole, like a stage curtain, a sound 
 of the light, quick scratching of a pen made itself 
 heard. Some one was sitting at the desk, and it 
 was not the old clerk with a white wolf's-head 
 for whom the niche seemed to have been made, 
 but the most delicious little person who ever fin-
 
 138 Kings in Exile. 
 
 gered a commercial ledger. At an exclamation of 
 surprise from Christian, she looked round, envel- 
 oped him with a soft glance, slowly turning and 
 drowning a sparkle at the corner of each eye. 
 The whole room was illuminated by that glance ; 
 and musically charmed by an emotional, almost 
 trembling voice which murmured : " My husband 
 keeps you waiting a long time, Monseigneur." 
 
 Tom Levis her husband ! . . the husband of that 
 sweet being with the pale, refined profile, the lithe 
 full form of a Tanagra figurine. . . How came she 
 there, alone in that cage, fingering those big books, 
 the whiteness of which was reflected on her ivory 
 skin while her little hands found difficulty in turning 
 their pages ? And this on one of those beautiful 
 days of February when the toilets, the lively grace, 
 the smiles of women were shimmering along the 
 boulevard in the sunlight. The king made her, as 
 he approached, a gallant little speech, in which 
 various impressions were mingled, but his heart 
 interfered with his tongue, so quickly did it beat 
 in his breast, excited by a sudden, ungovernable 
 desire such as this spoilt and blase child could not 
 remember having ever felt before. This type of 
 woman between twenty-five and thirty was a nov- 
 elty to him ; as far from the mutinous curls of 
 Colette de Rosen and the immodest painted eyes 
 and bold self-possession of the Ferat as it was 
 from the embarrassing and nobly sad majesty of 
 the queen. Neither coquetry, nor impudence, nor 
 proud reserve, nothing of what he had hitherto 
 encountered in good society or in his relations
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 139 
 
 with upper harlotry. This pretty person, calm 
 and home-keeping in manner, her beautiful dark 
 hair smooth as that of a woman who has dressed 
 it for the whole day, simply attired in a woollen 
 gown with violet reflections so that two enormous 
 brilliants at the rosy tips of her ears alone pre- 
 vented her from being classed among the humblest 
 of employees, this charming creature appeared to 
 him, in her office captivity and toil, like a Carmelite 
 nun behind the cloister grating, or some Eastern 
 slave imploring those without through the gilded 
 trellis of her terraced roof. Of the slave she had 
 indeed the submissive timidity, the bending profile, 
 while the amber tones where the hair began, the 
 two straight lines of the eyebrows, the lips that her 
 breathing parted, gave an Asiatic origin to this 
 Parisian. Standing before her, Christian pictured 
 to himself the bald head, the simian aspect of the 
 husband. How came she in the power of such an 
 object? Was it not robbery, a flagrant injustice? 
 
 But the sweet voice continued, slowly, with 
 excuses : " It is too vexatious. . . Tom does not 
 come. . . If your Majesty would tell me what 
 brings you ... I might perhaps ..." 
 
 He coloured, slightly embarrassed. Never could 
 he have dared to confide to that candid kindness 
 the equivocal establishment he was meditating. 
 Whereupon she urged him, gently smiling : " Oh ! 
 Your Majesty may feel quite secure. . . It is I 
 who keep all the books of the Agency." 
 
 In fact her authority in the house was readily 
 seen ; for at every instant the little window which
 
 140 Kings in Exile ^ 
 
 communicated between her retreat and the count- 
 ing-room was opened by some clerk coming to ask 
 in low tones for the queerest information : " The 
 Pleyel of Mme. Karitides is wanted." . . " The per- 
 son from the Hotel Bristol is here." She seemed 
 to be concerned in it all, answered with a word, 
 spoken or written, and the king, much disturbed, 
 asked himself if that angel in commerce, that aerial 
 being could really know the secret dealings and 
 filibusterings of the Englishman. 
 
 " No, madame, the matter that brought me here 
 is not urgent ... or, at least, it is no longer so. . . 
 My ideas have changed within an hour." 
 
 He bent to the wire screen as he stammered the 
 words with emotion, and then stopped, blaming 
 himself for his audacity in presence of the placid 
 activity of that woman, her long lashes sweeping 
 toward the ledger and her pen running swiftly in 
 regular lines. Oh ! how he longed to snatch her 
 from that prison, carry her away in his arms far, 
 very far, with the murmuring, cradling tenderness 
 with which we soothe young children. The temp- 
 tation became so strong that he was forced to 
 escape and take leave suddenly, without having 
 seen J. Tom Levis. 
 
 It was now dark; the night was misty and 
 bleak. The king, usually so chilly, did not observe 
 it, but sent away his carriage and went on foot 
 from the Madeleine to the Place Vend6me, so 
 enthusiastic, so transported that he talked to him- 
 self aloud, his thin lashes dropped over his eyes
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners' Agent. 141 
 
 before which flames were dancing. We sometimes 
 rub shoulders in the street with these exuberant 
 happinesses, their step light, their heads high ; they 
 seem to leave a phosphorescence on your clothes 
 as they pass. Christian reached the club in the 
 same happy humour, in spite of the dulness of the 
 suite of salons at this uncertain, unoccupied twi- 
 light hour, always especially melancholy in clubs, 
 those semi-public places which lack the privacy 
 and habits of a home. Lamps were brought in. 
 A game of billiards was going on without interest 
 to the rattle of ivory and low voices, the rustling 
 of newspapers, and the snoring of a sleeper 
 stretched on a divan of the grand salon, whom the 
 king's entrance roused and caused to turn with a 
 toothless yawn and a long stretching of lean arms 
 as he asked in a mournful voice : 
 
 " Do we make fete to-night? " 
 
 Christian gave a cry of joy. 
 
 " Ah ! prince, I was looking for you." 
 
 This was Prince d'Axel, more familiarly known 
 as " Queue-de-Poule," 1 who, during the ten years 
 that he had lounged the streets of Paris en 
 amateur, knew that city from top to bottom, in 
 length and breadth, from the portico of Tortoni to 
 the brook, and could therefore furnish the king 
 with all the information he wanted. Consequently, 
 knowing the right way to make his Highness talk 
 and to loosen that torpid, heavy mind which the 
 wines of France (although he abused them) were 
 
 1 Argot with several meanings ; " fashionable sharper " might 
 express it here. TR.
 
 142 Kings in Exile. 
 
 no more able to set a-going than the fermentation 
 of a vintage could raise into a balloon a hogshead 
 hooped with iron, Christian called quickly for 
 cards. As the heroines of Moliere have no wit 
 unless with fan in hand, so d'Axel recovered a 
 little life only when "juggling the pasteboard." 
 The fallen Majesty and the royal disgraced heir, the 
 two celebrities of the club, began before dinner a 
 Chinese bezique, the most gommeux game of all, 
 because it does not burden the mind, and allows 
 an unskilful player to lose a fortune without the 
 slightest effort. 
 
 " So Tom Levis is a married man," said Chris- 
 tian II., with a careless air, as he cut the cards. 
 The other looked at him with his dead eyes edged 
 with red. 
 
 " Didn't you know it? . . " 
 
 " No. . . Who is the woman? " 
 
 " Sephora Leemans . . . celebrity. . . " 
 
 The king shuddered at the name Sephora. 
 
 " Then she is a Jewess? " he said. 
 
 " Probably." 
 
 There was a moment's silence. The Impression 
 made by Sephora must indeed have been very 
 strong that oval, clear white face of the half- 
 hidden woman, her brilliant pupils, her hair 
 smoothed so seductively to triumph over the 
 prejudices of the king, and continue to exist in a 
 Slav and Catholic memory haunted from infancy 
 by the pillagings and other infernal misdeeds of 
 the Bohemian Jews of his own country. Unfor- 
 tunately, the prince was losing the game, and quite
 
 J. Tom Levis> Foreigners Agent. 143 
 
 absorbed in it; he began to grumble in his long 
 yellow beard : 
 
 "Ah ! I am getting stupid. . . I am stupid. . . " 
 
 Impossible to get another word out of him. 
 
 " Good ! here 's Wattelet. . . Come here, Wat- 
 telet ..." said the king to a tall young man who 
 now came in, frisky and noisy as a young puppy. 
 
 Wattelet, painter of the Grand-Club and of high 
 life, rather handsome at a distance, but bearing on 
 his features the marks and the weariness of too fast 
 a life, was a good representative of the modern 
 artist, who so little resembles the flaunting tradi- 
 tions of 1830. Correctly dressed, hair the same, 
 frequenter of coulisse and salon, there was nothing 
 of the studio rapin about him, but a supple and 
 rather loose-jointed carriage under his fashionable 
 coat, and in his mind as in his language a certain 
 elegant misarticulation, a turn of the lip that was 
 careless and chaffing. Coming one day to the club 
 to decorate the dining-room, he made himself so 
 agreeable, so indispensable to all the gentlemen, 
 that he remained there, the organizer of the fetes 
 and the rather monotonous amusements of the 
 place ; infusing into these pleasures the unexpected 
 of a picturesque imagination and of a training 
 acquired in all parts of the world. " My dear 
 Wattelet. . . That good Wattelet." . . They could 
 not do without him. He was the intimate friend of 
 all the members of the club, of their wives, of their 
 mistresses ; on one side of a card he designed the 
 costume of the Duchesse de V. . . for a ball at 
 the embassy, on the other side an airy petticoat
 
 144 Kings in Exile. 
 
 for the flesh-coloured tights of Mile. Alzire, the 
 perfumed little ballet-girl of M. le due. On 
 Thursdays his studio was open to all his noble 
 clients, delighted with the freedom, the fantastic, 
 chattering ease of the establishment, the fluttering 
 of soft colours on the tapestries, the collections, 
 the lacquered furniture, and the artist's own pict- 
 ures, of a style that resembled himself, elegant, 
 with a touch of the canaille ; his portraits of women 
 being, for the most part, executed with a full 
 understanding of Parisian trickery complexions 
 disguised, hair distraught, an art of costly frippery 
 in cascades, pufifs, and trains, which made old 
 Spricht declare, with the disdainful condescension 
 of a successful merchant to a dawning artist: 
 "There is no one but that young fellow who 
 knows how to paint the women I dress." 
 
 At the king's first words, the artist laughed. 
 
 " Why, Monseigneur, that is the little Sephora." 
 
 " Do you know her? " 
 
 " Through and through." 
 
 " Tell me." 
 
 And while the game went on between the two 
 royal personages, the painter, brought into an 
 intimacy of which he felt very proud, straddled a 
 chair, posed, coughed, and, assuming the voice of 
 a tout at a booth describing the picture of what is 
 within, he began : 
 
 " Sdphora Leemans, born in Paris in the year 
 one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, six, or 
 seven . . . among the second-hand dealers of the 
 Rue Eginhard, in the Marais ... a dirty little damp
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 145 
 
 alley, between the Passage Charlemagne and the 
 Church of Saint-Paul, regular Jewry. . . Some day, 
 as you come in from Saint-Mande, your Majesty 
 ought to make your coachman drive through that 
 tangle of streets down there. . . You would see an 
 amazing Paris . . . such houses, such heads, a ver- 
 itable gabble of Alsatian and Hebrew; shops, 
 lairs of old-clothes-dealers, piled that high with 
 rags before every door, old women sorting them 
 with their hooked noses, or stripping off the covers 
 of the old umbrellas ; and the dogs ! the vermin ! 
 the smells ! a regular ghetto of the middle ages, 
 swarming in houses of that very period, iron bal- 
 conies, tall windows cut into lofts. . . But Pere 
 Leemans is not a Jew ; he is a Belgian from Ghent, 
 and a Catholic ; the little one is called Sephora 
 [Zipporah], but she is only a half-breed Jewess; 
 complexion and eyes of that race, but not its nose 
 like the beak of a bird of prey ; on the contrary, 
 the prettiest little straight nose in the world. I 
 don't know where she got it. . . Pere Leemans has 
 one of your big, bulbous faces ! My first medal 
 at the Salon was for that phiz. . . Heavens ! yes, 
 and the old fellow still shows in a corner of his 
 dingy lair in the Rue Eginhard, in what he calls 
 his brocante (second-hand trade), his full-length 
 portrait signed Wattelet and not one of my 
 worst, either. It was a way I took of insinuating 
 myself into the lair and making love to S6phora, 
 for whom I had one of those b/quins [passing 
 passions]. . ." 
 
 "Beqttins ? " said the king, to whom the Parisian
 
 146 Kings in Exile. 
 
 vocabulary was constantly causing some new sur- 
 prise. " Ah ! yes ... I see. . . Go on." 
 
 " I was not the only one on fire, that's certain. 
 All day long 'twas a procession to the shop in 
 the Rue de la Paix ; for I ought to have told you, 
 Monseigneur, that in those days Pere Leemans had 
 two establishments. Very shrewd and sly, that 
 old fellow understood the change that has taken 
 place about bric-a-brac in the last twenty years. 
 The romantic antiquity dealer of the dark quarters, 
 in the style of Hoffmann, and even of Balzac, has 
 given way to the seller of curiosities, installed in 
 the centre of Parisian luxury with show windows 
 and lighted shops. Leemans retained for himself 
 and for connoisseurs his musty old place in 
 the Rue Eginhard ; but, for the public, the street- 
 idler, the Parisian gaper and lounger, he opened 
 a splendid antiquarian shop in the Rue de la Paix, 
 where the tawny gold and the darkened silver of 
 old jewels and the laces yellowed to the tone of a 
 mummy outdid the sumptuous modern shops of 
 the jewellers and silversmiths overflowing with 
 magnificence beside it. Sephora was about fifteen, 
 years old at that time, and that calm and juvenile 
 beauty of hers was well set off by those old treas- 
 ures. And so intelligent, so clever in exhibiting 
 them ! and her eye so sure and as well trained as 
 her father's on the true value of a bibelot. Ah! 
 there were plenty of amateurs in that shop, if only 
 for the pleasure of touching her fingers and that 
 silky hair of hers in leaning over the same glass 
 case. The mother was not troublesome, an old
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigners Agent. 147 
 
 woman, with such black rings round her eyes 
 that she looked as if she wore spectacles, always 
 mending, her nose buried in a guipure or an old 
 bit of tapestry, and paying no attention to her 
 daughter. . . She had good reason for that ! S6- 
 phora was a serious person, who was not to be 
 diverted from her path." 
 
 "Really?" said the king, who seemed to be 
 enchanted. 
 
 " Your Majesty can judge. Mother Leemans 
 slept at the shop ; the girl always went back to the 
 Rue Eginhard at ten o'clock so that the old man 
 might not be alone. Well, that admirable creat- 
 ure, whose beauty was celebrated and chanted 
 in all the papers and who might by a mere ' yes ' 
 of the head have had Cinderella's coach start from 
 the ground before her, went, every evening, to 
 wait for the omnibus at the Madeleine, and thence 
 straight back to the parental owl's-nest. In the 
 morning, as the omnibuses were not running so 
 early, she came on foot in all weathers, her black 
 gown under a waterproof; and I swear to you that 
 in that crowd of girls who came down the Rue de 
 Rivoli-Saint-Antoine at that hour in caps and 
 hats or their own hair, pretty, pale, or smiling 
 faces and rosy little mouths coughing at the fog, 
 and always a gallant at their heels, not one could 
 hold a candle to her." 
 
 " What hour do they come down ? " growled 
 the royal prince, becoming excited. 
 
 But Christian was provoked. 
 
 " Let him finish " . .he cried. " What then? "
 
 148 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Well, then, Monseigneur, I had succeeded in 
 making my way into the house of my angel and 
 was pushing my point very gently. . . On Sun- 
 days we played little family lotos with the other 
 second-hand dealers of the Passage Charlemagne. 
 Sweet society ! I always came home with fleas. 
 However, I sat beside Sephora and touched knees 
 with her under the table, while she looked at me 
 in a certain angelic and limpid way that made 
 me believe in innocence and the candour of a real 
 virtue. But one day when I went to the Rue 
 Eginhard, I found everything upside down, the 
 mother in tears, the father furious, rubbing up the 
 rusty old lock of an arquebuse with which he in- 
 tended to blow to bits the infamous seducer. . . 
 Sephora had gone off with Baron Sala, one of 
 Pere Leemans' richest clients, to whom, as I found 
 out later, he had himself sold her for some treasure 
 of old iron-work. For two or three years she hid 
 her joys and her loves with that old septuagenarian 
 in Switzerland, in Scotland, on the shores of blue 
 lakes. But one fine morning I heard that she had 
 come back and was keeping a ' family hotel ' at 
 the end of the Avenue d'Antin. I rushed there, 
 and found my old passion as adorable and peace- 
 ful as ever, at the head of a very queer table d'hote 
 garnished with Brazilians, Englishmen, cocottes. 
 One half the guests were still eating salad while 
 the other half had turned back the cloth to play 
 baccarat. That was where she first knew J. Tom 
 Levis, not handsome, no longer young, and with- 
 out a penny. What did he do to her? Mystery.
 
 J. Tom Levis, Foreigner Agent. 149 
 
 It is certain, however, that she sold her business, 
 and married him, helped him to start his Agency, 
 at first prosperous and well set-up, but now on the 
 down track; so that Sephora, who was never 
 seen, and lived a recluse in that droll castellated 
 cage Tom Levis sunk his money in, has lately, 
 that is, a few months ago, made her reappearance 
 in the world as the most enchanting of book- 
 keepers. . . Dame / how the clients flock ! the 
 flower of the clubs give themselves rendezvous in 
 the Rue Royale; they flirt at the wicket of that 
 counting-room just as they used to do in the anti- 
 quity shop, or in the numbered chambers of the 
 ' family hotel.' As for me, I 'm out of it. That 
 woman frightened me in the end. Always the same 
 for the last ten years ; not a line, not a wrinkle, her 
 long lashes lowered, the points of them turning up 
 as heart-hooks, the cheeks beneath the eyes as young 
 and fresh as ever, and all this for a grotesque hus- 
 band whom she adores ! . . . There is something in 
 it all to trouble and daunt the most ardent lover." 
 
 The king threw the cards about angrily. 
 
 "Nonsense! How is it possible? . . A villan- 
 ous monkey, a fat carcass like Tom Levis ! . . 
 bald . . . fifteen years older than she ... a jabber- 
 ing pickpocket. . ." 
 
 " Some women like that, Monseigneur." 
 
 The prince-royal here remarked, in his drawling, 
 vulgar accent : 
 
 " Nothing to be done with that woman. . . I Ve 
 whistled for the signal time and again. . . It is 
 not hung out. . . The road is blocked."
 
 150 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Pardieu! d'Axel, we all know your way of 
 whistling," said Christian, as soon as he under- 
 stood an expression which had passed from the 
 slang of a railway engineer to that of the haute 
 Gomme. . . "You have no patience. . . You want 
 every place to fly open . . . Divan of the Grand- 
 Signor . . . see, and conquer. . . But as for me, 
 I consider that the man who would give himself 
 the trouble to be in love with Sephora, and would 
 not balk at silence or disdain why, it is an affair 
 of a month. Not more." 
 
 " I bet not," said d'Axel. 
 
 " How much?" 
 
 " Two thousand louis." 
 
 " Done. Wattelet, send for the book." 
 
 The book on which the bets of the Grand-Club 
 were inscribed was as curious and instructive in its 
 way as the Levis trap. The grandest names of his- 
 toric France were there, sanctioning the silliest and 
 most preposterous wagers ; that, for instance, of the 
 Due de Courson-Launay, who, having bet and 
 lost all the hairs on his body, was forced to depi- 
 late himself like a Moor, and could neither walk 
 nor sit down for a fortnight. Other inventions still 
 more extravagant were there, with signatures of 
 heroes, already inscribed on a hundred glorious 
 parchments, but now misallying themselves in 
 this album of folly. 
 
 Several members of the club came up and 
 grouped themselves around the betters with re- 
 spectful curiosity. And this cynical and ridiculous 
 wager, excusable perhaps amid the laughter or
 
 J. Tom LeviS) Foreigners' Agent. 151 
 
 the drunkenness of exuberant youth, took an air, 
 before the gravity of those bald heads, the social 
 dignities they represented, and the heraldic impor- 
 tance of the signatures affixed, of an international 
 treaty regulating the destinies of Europe. 
 
 It was thus formulated : 
 
 "February 3rd, one thousand eight hundred and 
 seventy-five, his Majesty Christian II. has bet two 
 thousand louis that he will sleep with Sephora L. . . 
 before the end of the present month. 
 
 " His Royal Highness Prince d'Axel accepts the 
 bet." 
 
 " It might be the right occasion to sign them- 
 selves Rigolo and Queue-de-Poule," thought Wat- 
 telet to himself as he carried off the book, and 
 across his fashionable clown's face there passed 
 the shiver of an evil laugh.
 
 152 Kings in Exile. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE BOHEMIA OF EXILE. 
 
 " WELL, well ! we know all that ! . . ' Aoh ! . . 
 Yes . . . Goddam. . . Shocking. . .' It is when you 
 don't choose to pay or answer that you use that 
 sort of change. . . But with Bibi, here, that won't 
 do. . . We '11 settle our accounts now, old thief." 
 
 " Really, Master Lebeau, you speak to me with 
 such vehemence. . ." 
 
 And to say the word vehemence in French 
 (seemingly very proud to reckon it in his vocabu- 
 lary, for he repeated it two or three times) J. Tom 
 Levis threw himself back, his shirt front prominent, 
 and almost disappeared in the enormous white 
 clergyman's-cravat which bound his neck. At the 
 same time the pupils of his eyes began to veer 
 about and to muddle in those wide-open orbs 
 his undiscoverable thought ; while the glance of his 
 adversary, crouching and undulating beneath his 
 lowered lids, replied to the rascally eloquence of 
 the Englishman's look with the visible cunning of 
 the sharp and hairless muzzle of a weasel face. 
 With his fair hair, curled and rolled, his clothes 
 austerely black and buttoned to the chin, and the 
 correctness of his circumspect manner, Maitre 
 Lebeau, the king's valet, had something of a
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 153 
 
 solicitor of the old Chatelet about him ; but as 
 there is nothing like a quarrel or discussion of sel- 
 fish interests to bring out the truth of natures, this 
 man, so well-trained, as polished as his finger- 
 nails, this dainty Lebeau, the reigning favourite of 
 royal antechambers, former valet at the Tuileries, 
 was now exhibiting the hideous rascal that he 
 really was, sharp after gain and quarry. 
 
 To shelter themselves from the spring rain that 
 was sweeping the courtyard at Saint-Mande", the 
 pair had taken refuge in the vast coach-house 
 with white walls lately plastered and covered to 
 half their height with thick mats to protect from 
 dampness the numerous and magnificent carriages 
 lined up against them, wheel to wheel, from state- 
 coaches all glass and gilding, to the comfortable 
 four-in-hand for hunting breakfasts, the light, 
 useful phaeton, and even the sleigh used by the 
 queen upon the lakes in freezing weather ; all of 
 them keeping, as they reposed in the twilight 
 of the coachhouse, their showy or massive look of 
 beasts of luxury, sparkling and costly, like the 
 fantastic horses of Assyrian legends. The close 
 neighbourhood of the stables, the sonorous snort- 
 ing and kicking against the woodwork, the half- 
 open harness-room, showing its polished floor, its 
 billiard-room panels, with all the whips in rack, 
 the saddles on wooden horses, the harnesses like 
 trophies around the walls, with glitter of steel and 
 garlands of reins, completed the impression of 
 comfort and upper-class existence. 
 
 Tom and Lebeau were quarrelling in a corner,
 
 154 Kings in Exile. 
 
 their voices rising above the rattle of the rain on 
 the asphalt courtyard. The valet especially, feel- 
 ing himself at home, shouted loudly: "Who could 
 understand such a filibuster? Would any one have 
 suspected such a trick? When their Majesties 
 left the hotel des Pyramides for Saint-Mande who 
 had managed the affair? Was it Lebeau, yes or 
 no? And did, too, in spite of everybody, in spite 
 of the most open opposition. . . What had been 
 agreed upon in return ? Were not they to divide, 
 half and half, all commissions, all fees from the 
 trades-people? Wasn't that it, precisely?" 
 
 " Aoh ! . . yes . . . that was it. . ." 
 
 " Then why do you cheat? " 
 
 " No, no ... never cheat," said J. Tom Levis, 
 his hand on his shirt-front. 
 
 " Nonsense, old humbug. . . All the tradesmen 
 give you forty per cent. . . I have proof of it. . . 
 And you told me it was only ten. . . So that on 
 the million it cost to get Saint-Mande", I have my 
 five per cent that is fifty thousand francs and 
 you your thirty-five; in other words seven times 
 more than I, three hundred and fifty thousand 
 francs ! . . three hundred and fifty thousand 
 francs ! ! . three hundred and fifty " 
 
 He choked with rage, the figures sticking across 
 his throat like a fishbone. Tom tried to calm 
 him. In the first place, it was all much exagger- 
 ated . . . then the agent had enormous expenses . . . 
 his rent in the Rue Royale, just increased. . . So 
 much to put out, returns so slow. . . Not to 
 mention the fact that this was a chance thing for
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 155 
 
 him, whereas Lebeau was always there, and in a 
 household where more than two hundred thousand 
 francs a year were spent, there was no lack of 
 opportunity. 
 
 But the valet declined to see it in this way ; his 
 affairs concerned no one, and very certainly he 
 should not let himself be duped by a dirty 
 Englishman. 
 
 " Monsieur Lebeau, you are an impertinent fel- 
 low . . . and I shall have nothing more to say to 
 you. . ." 
 
 And Tom Levis turned as if to reach the door. 
 But the other barred his way. " Escape without 
 paying me? . . No, no. . ." His lips were white. 
 His angry weasel snout stuck out, quivering, 
 towards the Englishman, who was still very calm, 
 with such exasperating coolness that the valet at 
 last, losing all self-control, thrust his fist under his 
 nose with a coarse epithet. By a turn of the hand, 
 quick as the parry of a sword, though it had more 
 of a street boxer than of fencing about it, the 
 Englishman struck down the valet's fist and said, 
 in the purest Faubourg Saint-Antoine accent : 
 
 " None of that, Lisette ... or I '11 down you." 
 
 The effect of those four words was stupendous. 
 Lebeau, bewildered, looked mechanically round 
 him at first, to see if it was really the English- 
 man who spoke ; then his eyes, returning to Torn 
 Levis (now very red and his pupils veering every 
 way), flashed into wild gayety, through which his 
 late anger still vibrated, a gayety which after a 
 moment took possession of the agent himself.
 
 156 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Oh ! you damned humbug ! you damned hum- 
 bug ! . . I ought to have suspected it ... No one 
 could be as English as all that ! . ." 
 
 They were still laughing, unable to recover 
 breath, when the door of the harness-room sud- 
 denly opened wider, and the queen appeared. 
 For the last few moments she had stopped in that 
 room, after visiting her favorite mare, and had not 
 lost a word of the conversation. Coming from so 
 low a region, the treachery touched her but little. 
 She had long known what to expect of Lebeau, 
 that Tartufife valet, the witness of all her humilia- 
 tions, all her sorrows ; as for the other, the man of 
 the cab, she scarcely knew him, a mere tradesman. 
 But those two men had now revealed to her serious 
 matters. So the removal to Saint-Mande had cost 
 a million ! their expenses, which she thought so 
 modest, so restrained, were two hundred and fifty 
 thousand francs a year, when, as she knew, they had 
 but forty thousand. How could she have been so 
 long blind to their way of living, to the insufficiency 
 of their real resources? . . Who was meeting these 
 expenses? Who had paid for this luxury, house, 
 horses, carriages, even her own clothes and her 
 personal charities? . . Shame burned her cheeks 
 at the thought as she went straight through the 
 courtyard in the rain and up the steps of the 
 little portico of the Administration building. 
 
 Rosen, busy at the moment in classifying bills on 
 which lay piles of louis, had a shock of surprise on 
 seeing her, which put him on his feet. 
 
 " No ! . . Stay where you are ! . ." she exclaimed,
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 157 
 
 in a brusque voice ; then leaning over the duke's 
 desk and stretching out her hand, still gauntleted 
 for the horse, she said, resolutely, urgently, authori- 
 tatively : 
 
 " Rosen, on what have we lived for the last two 
 years ? . . Oh ! no evasions. . . I know that all I 
 thought hired was bought in our name and paid 
 for. . . I know that Saint-Mande alone cost us 
 more than a million, the million we brought from 
 Illyria. . . You will tell me now who it is that has 
 assisted us since then, and from what hands we 
 receive charity?" 
 
 The convulsed face of the old man, the piteous 
 trembling of his shrunken, withered hands told 
 Frederica the truth. 
 
 " You ! . . It is you !. ." 
 
 She had never dreamed of it. And while he 
 excused himself, stammering the words " duty . . . 
 gratitude . . . restitution. . ." 
 
 " Duke," she said, violently, " the king does not 
 take back what he gives, and the queen is not kept 
 like a danseuse." 
 
 Tears gushed into her eyes like sparks, tears of 
 pride that did not fall. 
 
 " Oh ! pardon . . . pardon. . ." 
 
 He was so humble, he kissed the tips of her 
 fingers with an expression of such sad regret that 
 she continued more gently : 
 
 " You will draw up a statement of all your 
 advances, my dear Rosen. A receipt will be given 
 you, and the king will pay the debt as soon as pos- 
 sible. . . As for our future expenses I shall take
 
 158 Kings in Exile. 
 
 charge of them myself henceforth ; I will see that 
 they do not exceed our revenue. We shall sell 
 horses and carriages and diminish the household. 
 Princes in exile should content themselves with 
 little." 
 
 The old duke gave a start. 
 
 " Undeceive yourself, madame. . . It is in exile 
 above all that royalty needs all its prestige. Ah ! 
 if I had only been listened to ... it is not here, in 
 this suburb, with an establishment suitable at most 
 for a bathing-season, that your Majesties should 
 have lived. I wanted you in a palace, in full sight 
 of Parisian society, convinced as I am that what 
 dethroned kings have most to fear is the laisser 
 aller that comes over them when they drop their 
 rank, the familiarities, the street acquaintance. . . 
 Oh ! I know ... I know. . . they often think me 
 very ridiculous with my questions of etiquette, my 
 childish and superannuated punctilio. And yet 
 such forms were never more important ; they help 
 to maintain a pride of demeanour, too easily lost in 
 misfortune. It is the unyielding armour that keeps 
 the soldier on his feet, even though he may be mor- 
 tally wounded." 
 
 She stood a moment without replying, her pure 
 brow crossed by a reflection that came to her. 
 Then, raising her head, 
 
 " It is impossible," she said. " There is a higher 
 pride than that. I will that from this day things 
 shall be arranged as I have said." 
 
 Then he, growing more urgent, almost suppli- 
 cating:
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 159 
 
 " But your Majesty does not realize. . . A sale 
 of horses and carriages ... a sort of royal fail- 
 ure. . . What an exposure ! What scandal ! " 
 
 " That which is going on is more scandalous 
 still." 
 
 "But who knows it ! . . Who suspects it? . . 
 How can any one suppose that that old miser 
 Rosen. . . You yourself doubted it just now. . . 
 Oh ! madame, madame, I conjure you, accept what 
 you are pleased to call my devotion. . . Indeed 
 you are attempting the impossible. . . If you 
 knew. . . Why, your whole yearly revenue would 
 not suffice for the king's purse at cards." 
 
 "The king will not play again, M. le Due." 
 
 This was said in a tone ! with such eyes ! . . 
 Rosen insisted no longer, but he allowed himself 
 to add : 
 
 " I will do what your Majesty desires. But I 
 entreat you to remember that all I possess is 
 yours, and that, in case of distress, I deserve that 
 you should first come to me." 
 
 He was very certain that the occasion would 
 occur before long. 
 
 The next day the reforms began. Half the 
 household were dismissed ; the unnecessary car- 
 riages were sent to Tattersall's, where they were 
 sold under fairly good conditions, except the state- 
 coaches, too striking to the eye for private indi- 
 viduals. These were got rid of, however, thanks 
 to an American circus which came to Paris at 
 that time with a great display of posters ; and the 
 splendid coaches, which Rosen had caused to be
 
 160 Kings in Exile. 
 
 built to preserve to his princes a little of their 
 vanished pomp in a distant hope of their return to 
 Leybach, now served to exhibit Chinese dwarfs and 
 learned monkeys and to form grand historical cav- 
 alcades and apotheoses a la Franconi. Toward 
 the end of such performances these princely equi- 
 pages, with their blazons scarcely effaced, made the 
 tour of the benches three times on the dirty sand 
 of the arena, to the gay strains of the orchestra ; 
 while through their opened windows grotesque 
 faces grinned, or, with degraded head close-curled, 
 a famous female gymnast, her bust projecting in its 
 pink silk tights, bowed to the crowd a forehead 
 shining greasily with pomatum and sweat. All 
 these lost remains of consecrated kings reduced 
 to be the glitter of a circus ! housed among the 
 horses and trick elephants ! what an omen for 
 royalty ! 
 
 This sale at Tattersall's was announced at the 
 same time as that of the diamonds of the Queen of 
 Galicia at the Hotel Drouot, and the two posters 
 covering the walls together made a certain noise ; 
 but Paris never stops long on any subject; its 
 ideas fly with the flying sheets of the newspapers. 
 People talked of the two sales for twenty-four 
 hours. The next day they thought no more about 
 them. Christian II. accepted without resistance 
 the reforms set on foot by the queen. Ever since 
 his melancholy exhibition of himself he had an 
 almost ashamed, humiliated attitude before her, a 
 wilful Childishness, as if to excuse his follies in 
 that way. Besides, what did these reforms in the
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 161 
 
 household matter to him? His life, all pleasure 
 and dissipation, was spent elsewhere. But, sur- 
 prising fact, in six months he had never once had 
 recourse to Rosen's purse. That raised him a 
 little in the eyes of the queen, who was also grati- 
 fied by no longer seeing the fantastic cab of the 
 Englishman in a corner of the courtyard, or meet- 
 ing on the stairway the obsequious smile of that 
 courtier creditor. 
 
 Nevertheless, the king was spending much and 
 " making fete " more gayly than ever. Where did 
 he get the money? Elysee Meraut discovered 
 where in a singular manner, through Uncle Sauva- 
 don, the worthy man to whom he had formerly 
 given " ideas of things," the only one of his early 
 connections whom he had kept since his entrance 
 to Saint-Mande. From time to time he went 
 to breakfast with him at Bercy, and took him 
 news of Colette, whom the old man complained 
 of never seeing. She was the child of his adop- 
 tion, his little Colette, th*e daughter of a poor 
 brother tenderly loved and supported till he died. 
 His mind was always on her ; he paid for her nurses 
 and her christening cap, and later for her school- 
 ing in the most emblazoned convent in Paris. 
 She was his vice, his living vanity, the pretty 
 puppet whom he decked with all the grovelling 
 ambitions in his vulgar head of a millionnaire 
 parvenu ; and when in the parlour of the Sacr6- 
 Cceur the little Sauvadon would tell him in a 
 whisper : " That girl's mother is a baroness, or a 
 marquise, or a duchess," the uncle would shake
 
 1 62 Kings in Exile. 
 
 his stout shoulders and answer : " We '11 do better 
 for you than that." He made her a princess at 
 eighteen. Highnesses in quest of dots were not 
 lacking in Paris ; the Levis Agency kept quite an 
 assortment ; the only question was price. Sauva- 
 don considered two millions not too dear for being 
 able to figure in a corner of the salon when the 
 young Princesse de Rosen received her guests, 
 and to have the privilege of beaming in the 
 embrasure of a window with his broad smile curled 
 like the edge of a basin between short, tufted 
 whiskers, trimmed in the fashion of Louis- Philippe. 
 His little gray eyes, lively and sly the eyes of 
 Colette rather lessened the effect of the stam- 
 mering, ingenuous, incorrect remarks that came 
 from those thick, shapeless lips, cut as if from 
 a horse's hoof, and the revelations of his coarse 
 square hands, which recalled the fact, even in their 
 straw-coloured gloves, that they had formerly 
 rolled casks on the quay. 
 
 In the beginning he distrusted himself, said 
 little, surprised and even frightened others by his 
 silence. Dame ! it is not in the cellars of Bercy, 
 nor in trading Southern wines adulterated with 
 aniline dyes and logwood, that you learn to speak 
 fine language. After a while, thanks to Meraut, 
 he obtained a few ready-made opinions and bold 
 aphorisms on the events of the day or the book in 
 vogue. Then Uncle Sauvadon spoke, and did not 
 do it badly, except for certain fearful pronunciations 
 fit to bring down the lustres, and the alarm this 
 water-carrier in a white waistcoat excited by the
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 163 
 
 emission of certain theories a la Joseph de Maistre 
 picturesquely expressed. But suddenly the sov- 
 ereigns of Illyria carried off his provider of ideas, 
 and how could he then parade? Colette, more- 
 over, detained by her duties as lady of honour, 
 never left Saint-Mande, and Sauvadon knew the 
 chief of the civil and military household far too 
 well to expect to be received there. He never 
 even spoke of it. Imagine the duke introducing 
 that, presenting that to the lofty Frederica ! . . 
 a wine-merchant ! Not even a retired merchant ; 
 on the contrary, a dealer in full activity; for, in 
 spite of his millions, in spite of his niece's en- 
 treaties, Sauvadon still worked, spent his life in his 
 storehouses or on the quays, a pen behind his 
 ear, his white hair touzled, among stevedores and 
 sailors, unlading and carting away the hogsheads ; 
 or else beneath the gigantic trees of an old park, 
 neglected and cut up, in which his wealth was 
 stored under sheds, in casks innumerable. " I 
 should die if I stopped working," he said, and he 
 really lived on the din of barrel-rolling and the 
 good smell of wine-lees that came up from the 
 damp cellars of the great storehouses where he 
 had started in life, forty-five years earlier, as a 
 journeyman cooper. 
 
 It was there that filysee sometimes went to see 
 his old pupil and enjoy a breakfast such as Bercy 
 alone knows how to serve, under the trees of the 
 park or the gateway of a cellar, with fresh wine 
 drawn from the cask, and fish that were frisking a 
 moment earlier in the fish-pond, cooked by a local
 
 164 Kings in Exile. 
 
 receipt for matelotes as in Languedoc or the 
 Vosges. It was now no longer a question of 
 "ideas of things," inasmuch as there were no 
 evenings to be spent at Colette's; but the good 
 man liked to hear Meraut talk, and to see him eat 
 and drink liberally, for he always remembered the 
 den in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, and treated 
 Elysee as one saved from the shipwreck of ex- 
 istence. Affecting care of a man who has gone 
 hungry himself for another whom he knows to 
 be poor ! Meraut gave him news of his niece 
 and of her life at Saint-Mande, bringing him a 
 reflection of her grandeurs which had cost the 
 old man so dear and of which he was no longer 
 a witness. No doubt he was proud to think of the 
 lady of honour, dining with kings and queens, re- 
 volving in court ceremonial. Still, the grief of 
 never seeing her increased his rancour and ill- 
 humour against old Rosen. 
 
 " Why should he be so stuck up ? His name ? 
 his title? . . Why, I paid for them, with my own 
 money. . . His crosses, his cordons, his orders ! . . 
 ha ! I can have them when I choose. . . By the 
 bye, Meraut, you don't know. . . Since I saw you 
 last, I have had a piece of luck." 
 
 "What kind, uncle?" 
 
 filyse'e called him " uncle " with an affectionate 
 familiarity that was quite Southern, the desire to 
 give a name to the peculiar sympathy (without 
 any bond of mind) which he felt for the stout old 
 merchant. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I have the Lion of Illyria . . .
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 165 
 
 the cross of commander. . . That duke need n't be 
 so proud of his grand cordon ! . . On New Year's 
 day, when I go and pay him a visit, I shall stick on 
 my star . . . that will teach him to " 
 
 Elysee could not believe it. The Order of 
 the Lion ! one of the oldest and most coveted 
 in Europe . . . given to uncle Sauvadon ! " my 
 uncle! . ." Why? . . for having sold adulterated 
 wine of Bercy? 
 
 " Oh ! it is very simple," said the other, wrink- 
 ling up his little gray eyes. " I bought the rank 
 of commander just as I bought the title of prince. 
 For a little more I could have bought the grand 
 cordon itself; that's for sale, too." 
 
 "Where?" cried M6raut, turning pale. 
 
 " Why, at the Levis Agency, Rue Royale. . . 
 You can get anything at that devil of an English- 
 man's. . . My cross cost me ten thousand francs 
 . . . the cordon was fifteen thousand. . . And I 
 know the man who has given it to himself. Guess 
 who. . . Biscarat, the great hair-dresser, Biscarat, 
 Boulevard des Capucines. . . But, my good fel- 
 low, what I am telling you is known to all Paris. . . 
 Go and ask Biscarat himself; you '11 see in the big 
 room where he officiates with his thirty assist- 
 ants an immense photograph representing him as 
 Figaro, razor in hand, and the collar of the Order 
 across his breast. . . The picture is reproduced in 
 miniature on the labels of all the bottles in the 
 shop. . . If the duke were to see that ! . . his 
 moustache would turn up into his nose. . . You 
 know, how he does. . ."
 
 1 66 Kings in Exile. 
 
 And he tried to mimic the duke's grimace, but 
 as he had no moustache it was not at all the true 
 thing. 
 
 " Have you your patent, uncle? Will you show 
 it to me?" 
 
 Elysee still had the hope that there was some 
 trickery under it all, some forgery on which the 
 Levis Agency would trade without scruple. No. 
 All was apparently regular, drawn in due form, 
 stamped with the arms of Illyria, signed by Bosco- 
 vich and the scrawl of King Christian II. Doubt 
 was no longer possible. A traffic in crosses and 
 cordons was going on, with the king's permission. 
 But to convince himself finally, M6raut, as soon 
 as he returned to Saint-Mande", went up to the 
 councillor. 
 
 In the corner of an immense hall, which covered 
 the whole upper floor of the house and served as 
 a business office for Christian, in which he did 
 no business, a fencing-room, a gymnasium, and 
 a library, he found Boscovich among his pigeon- 
 holes and layers of thick brown paper on which 
 were leaves affixed, or the last plants gathered 
 laid to dry. Since his exile the learned naturalist 
 had made in the Parisian woods of Vincennes 
 and Boulogne, which contain the richest flora of 
 France, the beginning of a new collection. More- 
 over, he had purchased the herbarium of another 
 famous naturalist, lately deceased, and now, ab- 
 sorbed in the examination of his new treasures, 
 his head bloodless, of no age, bending over the 
 lens of a magnifying glass, he was lifting cautiously
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 167 
 
 the heavy sheets between which the plants lay 
 flattened from corollas to extended roots, their 
 colours lost at the edges. When a specimen was 
 well-preserved, intact, he uttered cries of joy and 
 admiration, considered it long, with moistened lips, 
 reading aloud its Latin name and its description, 
 written below on a little label. At other times an 
 exclamation of anger escaped him on seeing the 
 flower attacked and perforated by that almost im- 
 perceptible worm well known to herbalists, an 
 atom born of the dust of plants and subsisting on 
 it, which is the danger and often the destruction 
 of collections. The stalk still holds, but move the 
 page and the whole, flowers, roots, drop into pow- 
 der and disappear in a thin vapour. 
 
 " 'T is the worm . . . the worm. . . " Boscovich 
 would say, the glass at his eye, and showing with 
 a sad, but self-satisfied air a perforation like that 
 the wood-mite makes, indicating the passage of the 
 monster. Meraut could have no suspicion of such 
 a being. The monomaniac was incapable of an 
 infamous action, but he was also incapable of the 
 slightest resistance. At the first word concerning 
 the decorations he began to tremble, looked side- 
 ways over his lens, timid and fearful. . . What was 
 all this? Yes, certainly, the king had lately made 
 him prepare a quantity of patents of all grades, 
 leaving the name in blank ; that was all he knew 
 about it, and never did he presume to ask more. 
 
 " Well, Monsieur le conseiller," said Iilyse'e, 
 gravely, " I warn you now that his Majesty is 
 trading his crosses at the Levis Agency."
 
 1 68 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Thereupon he related the story of the Gascon 
 barber, with which all Paris had amused itself. 
 Boscovich gave one of his little feminine screeches, 
 but at heart he was very little scandalized ; all that 
 was not his mania had no real interest for him. 
 His collection left behind at Leybach was to him 
 the country; that which he was now preparing, 
 the exile in France. 
 
 " But don't you see it is unworthy ... a man 
 like you ... to lend a hand to such hideous 
 jobbing?" 
 
 Then the other, in despair at his eyes being 
 forcibly opened on that he desired not to see : 
 
 " Ma che . . . ma che . . . what can I do, my good 
 Monsieur Meraut? . . The king is the king. . . 
 When he says, ' Boscovich, write that,' my hand 
 obeys without thinking. . . Especially as his Maj- 
 esty is so good to me, so generous. Why, it was 
 he who, seeing me in such despair over the loss of 
 my herbarium, made me a present of this one. . . 
 Fifteen hundred francs ! a magnificent bargain . . . 
 and over and above it I got the ' Hortus Cliffor- 
 tianus ' of Linnaeus, earliest edition, thrown in." 
 
 Naively, cynically, the poor devil bared his con- 
 science ; it was dry and dead, like his own herba- 
 rium. His hobby, cruel as the imperceptible 
 worm of naturalists, had perforated all, gnawing in 
 all directions. He was not really moved till filysee 
 threatened to warn the queen. Then, at last, the 
 monomaniac dropped his lens, and in a low voice, 
 with the heavy sighs of a penitent at confession, he 
 made an avowal. Many things were happening
 
 The Bohemia of facile. 169 
 
 under his eyes, which he could not help, though 
 they made him wretched. . . The king was badly 
 surrounded. . . E poi che volete ? he had no voca- 
 tion for reigning ... no liking for the throne . . . 
 he never had it. . . " Why, I remember ... it is 
 a long time ago ... in King Leopold's lifetime, 
 when he had his first attack on leaving the dinner- 
 table, and they came and told Christian he would 
 soon succeed his uncle, the child he was only 
 twelve then, and was playing croquet in the patio 
 the child began to cry, and cry ... a regular 
 nervous attack . . . and he sobbed out : ' I don't 
 want to be king. . . I won't be king. . . Put my 
 cousin Stanislas in my place.' I often remember, 
 when I see it now in Christian II.'s eyes, the scared 
 and frightened look he had that morning, clutch- 
 ing his mallet with all his might as if he feared they 
 would carry him by force to the throne-room, and 
 crying out : ' I don't want to be king ! . . " 
 
 Christian's whole character was revealed in that 
 anecdote. No, undoubtedly, he was not a wicked 
 man, but a childish man, married too young, with 
 exuberant passions and hereditary vices. The 
 life he led, the nights at the club, the women, the 
 suppers in a certain society, that is the normal 
 condition of husbands all this was made worse 
 by the role of king which he did not know how to 
 maintain, by its responsibilities above his measure 
 and his strength, and especially by this exile which 
 slowly demoralized him. A firmer nature than his 
 could have resisted the tumult of broken habits, 
 constant uncertainty, senseless hopes, the anguish
 
 170 Kings in Exile. 
 
 and enervation of inactive waiting. Like the 
 ocean, exile has its torpor; it dulls, it benumbs. 
 'Tis a phase of transition. No one escapes the 
 ennui of a long voyage unless by periods of fixed 
 occupation or regular hours for study. But what 
 can a king find to do when he has no people, no 
 ministers, no council ; nothing to decide or sign, 
 and is possessed of too much intelligence or sar- 
 casm to amuse himself with a pretence at such 
 things, but also of too much ignorance to attempt 
 a diversion to some other assiduous labour? Exile 
 is the sea, but it is also shipwreck ; casting its first 
 cabin passengers, its privileged classes pell-mell 
 with the passengers of the steerage and the deck. 
 A man must have a sense of proud prestige, the 
 temperament of a king, not to let himself be caught 
 by familiarities, by degrading promiscuities for 
 which he will later have to blush and suffer, and to 
 keep himself regal in the midst of privations, dis- 
 tresses, and impurities which mingle and confound 
 ranks in one general humanity. 
 
 Alas ! this Bohemia of exile was beginning to 
 swallow up the house of Illyria, which the Due de 
 Rosen had so long preserved at the cost of such 
 great personal sacrifices. The king was put to ex- 
 pedients in order to pay the costs of " making 
 fete." He began, like a son of the family, by giv- 
 ing notes, finding that means quite as simple and 
 even more convenient, J. Tom Levis assisting, than 
 drafts " on our privy purse," which he had hitherto 
 addressed to the civil and military chief of the 
 household. These notes reached maturity and
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 171 
 
 were renewed by a crowd of others, until the day 
 when Tom Levis, finding himself sucked dry, in- 
 vented the capital traffic in patents, the trade of 
 king without people or civil list presenting no 
 other source of profit. The poor Lion of Illyria, 
 chopped up like butcher's meat in quarters and 
 slices, was sold at the stalls for so much the mane 
 and the rump, the ribs and the paws. 
 
 But that was only the beginning. Once in Tom 
 Levis's cab, the king would not stop on so fine a 
 road. Meraut said this to himself as he left Bosco- 
 vich. He saw that no reliance could be placed on 
 that man, easily led, like all others with a hobby. . . 
 He himself was too new, too entirely a stranger in 
 the house to have any influence upon Christian. 
 Should he speak to old Rosen ? At the first words 
 he uttered the duke would throw him a terrible 
 glance, all his religions being insulted. The king, 
 low as he had fallen, was still " the king " to that man. 
 No resource in the monk either, whose wild face 
 now appeared only at long intervals between two 
 journeys, and always more lean and sunburned. 
 
 The queen ? . . but he saw her so sad, so fevered 
 of late, her beautiful, discreet brow clouded by 
 care when she came to her boy's lessons, to which 
 she now listened with an absent mind, her fingers 
 suspended idly over her tapestry. Grave concerns 
 were troubling her, strange and new to her, and 
 coming from below; anxieties about money, the 
 humiliation of so many hands stretched to receive 
 it which she could not fill tradesmen, the poor, 
 the companions of their exile and their misfor-
 
 172 Kings in Exile. 
 
 tunes; all that sad business of a sovereign who 
 has duties and burdens though he has no rights. 
 Creditors who had learned their way to the once 
 prosperous house now waited for hours in the 
 antechambers, and often, weary of waiting, left 
 words behind them when they went away which 
 the queen guessed without hearing, from the dis- 
 contented manner and lagging step of men who 
 had been thrice dismissed. She strove in vain to 
 bring order into the new scale of living; misfor- 
 tunes happened ; bad investments ; paralyzed 
 stocks. It was necessary to wait, or all would be 
 sacrificed in selling. 
 
 Poor queen, poor Frederica, who thought she 
 knew all there was to know in the matter of suffer- 
 ing ; she did not know the distresses that wilt the 
 spirit, the hard and wounding contact with daily 
 and commonplace existence. There were monthly 
 bills of which she thought at night, shuddering in 
 her bed, like the head of a business house. Some- 
 times when the wages were not paid, she dreaded 
 to see in the delay of an order, in a look less 
 humble, the discontent of a servant. In short, she 
 knew Debt, little by little the galling debt which 
 forces with its dunning perseverance the loftiest 
 and most gilded doors. The old duke, grave and 
 silent, watched his queen's anguish and wandered 
 round her, as if to be always saying to her, " I am 
 here." But she was firmly resolved to exhaust all 
 possible means before she took back her word and 
 turned to him whom she had crushed with so 
 haughty a lesson.
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 173 
 
 One evening the little Court was collected in 
 the grand salon, a monotonous assemblage, always 
 the same, and without the king as usual. Be- 
 neath the silver candelabra the queen's game, as it 
 was called, was going on at the whist table, the 
 duke facing her Majesty, with Mme. Eleonore 
 and Boscovich against them. The princess was 
 playing softly on the piano some of those " echoes 
 of Illyria" to which Frederica never tired of listen- 
 ing, and at her first sign of satisfaction the player 
 would deepen them into paeans of war and valour. 
 Those evocations of their country, bringing to the 
 faces of the whist-players a tearful smile, alone 
 broke the atmosphere of resigned exile and its 
 settled habits in the rich bourgeois salon which 
 now sheltered majesty. 
 
 Ten o'clock struck. 
 
 The queen, instead of going up as usual to her 
 apartments, giving by her departure the signal to 
 retreat, cast an absent look around her and said : 
 
 " You may retire. I have work to do with M. 
 Meraut." 
 
 Elysee, who was reading near the fireplace, 
 bowed as he closed the pamphlet he had in his 
 hand and went into the schoolroom to fetch pens, 
 ink, and paper. 
 
 When he returned the queen was alone, listen- 
 ing to the carriages as they rolled from the court- 
 yard, the great gates closing behind them, while 
 along the corridors and stairways the various go- 
 ings and comings of a numerous household at the 
 hour for retirement sounded through the house.
 
 174 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Silence came at last; silence increased by two 
 leagues of forest which deadened among its foliage 
 the distant murmurs sent from Paris. The de- 
 serted salon, still brilliantly lighted in its soli- 
 tude seemed all prepared for some tragic scene. 
 Frederica, resting her elbow on the table, pushed 
 back the blotter prepared by Meraut. 
 
 " No . . . no. . . We shall not work to-night," 
 she said. " That was a pretext. . . Sit down and 
 let us talk. . . " 
 
 Then, in a lower voice : 
 
 " I have something to ask of you." 
 
 But what she had to say must have cost her 
 much, for she collected herself a moment, her 
 mouth and eyes half-closed with that profoundly 
 sorrowful and aged expression already seen by 
 Elysee at moments, which made her noble counte- 
 nance seem still more noble, marked with all devo- 
 tions, all sacrifices; hollowed in its pure lines by 
 the purest sentiments of queen and woman. Seen 
 thus, it was religious respect that she inspired. . . 
 At last, summoning all her courage, but speak- 
 ing very low, timidly, and putting her words one 
 after another like frightened steps, she asked him 
 whether he knew in Paris one of those . . . places 
 where . . . they lent on pawn. . . 
 
 Ask that of filysee ! a bohemian who knew 
 every pawnshop in Paris, who for twenty years 
 had used them as storerooms, where in winter he 
 put his summer clothes, and in summer his winter 
 ones ! He ! if he knew the clou! if he knew ma 
 tante! Remembering his youth, that argot of
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 175 
 
 poverty coming back to his mind made him smile. 
 But the queen, endeavouring to steady her voice, 
 continued : 
 
 " I should like to confide to you something to 
 carry there . . . jewels. . . One has moments of ... 
 difficulty, sometimes . . ." 
 
 And her beautiful eyes, now raised, revealed an 
 abyss of calm, superhuman grief . . . that anguish 
 of kings, humiliated grandeur ! 
 
 "Could it be done?" 
 
 Meraut made a sign with his head that he was 
 ready to do what was asked of him. Had he 
 spoken, he would have sobbed outright; had he 
 made a movement, it would have been to fling 
 himself at the feet of that august distress. And 
 yet his admiration began to be affected by pity. 
 The queen did seem to him a trifle less exalted, 
 a little less above the vulgarities of life ; as if, in 
 the sad acknowledgment she had now made to 
 him, he had heard a faint accent of bohemia, 
 a something that was surely the beginning of the 
 fall, something that brought her nearer to himself. 
 
 Suddenly she rose and went to the globe of 
 crystal, from which she took the ancient discarded 
 relic and placed it on the table, like a handful of 
 jewels of all colours and rays. 
 
 Elysee quivered. " The crown ! " 
 
 " Yes, the crown. . . For six hundred years it 
 has belonged to the house of Illyria. . . Kings 
 have died, floods of noble blood have flowed to 
 defend it. . . And now it must help us to exist. 
 Nothing else remains to us. . ."
 
 176 Kings in Exile. 
 
 It was indeed a magnificent closed diadem of 
 the finest old gold, the arches of which, each 
 highly ornamented, met above the cap of main- 
 tenance made of scarlet velvet. On these arches 
 and around the circlet of twisted filagree, at the 
 heart of each floret made in the shape of a clover- 
 leaf, at the point of the arcade supporting each 
 floret, was every known variety of precious stone 
 the transparent blue of sapphires, the velvet blue of 
 the turquoise, the aurora of the topaz, the flame of 
 oriental rubies, emeralds like drops of water upon 
 leaves, with the cabalistic opal and the milky-irised 
 pearl; but surpassing all, the diamonds strewn 
 everywhere reflected in their facets these myriad 
 hues, and, like a luminous dispersed dust, a mist 
 scattered by the sun, melted and softened the dazzle 
 of the diadem, already mellowed by long ages to 
 the gentle rays of a golden lamp in the depths of a 
 sanctuary. 
 
 The queen laid her trembling finger here and 
 there. 
 
 " These stones must be pried out . . . the larg- 
 est . . ." 
 
 "With what?" 
 
 They spoke in whispers like two criminals. 
 Seeing nothing in the salon that would do that 
 work, Frederica said : " Light me." 
 
 They passed into the glazed veranda, where 
 the tall lamp carried by filyse'e threw fantastic 
 shadows and a long stream of light, which was lost 
 outside upon the lawn in the darkness of the 
 garden.
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 177 
 
 " No ... no ... not scissors," she murmured, 
 seeing that he looked into her work-basket; 
 " they are not strong enough ... I have tried." 
 
 They discovered at last, on the box of a pome- 
 granate tree, the delicate branches of which were 
 seeking the moonlight at the window panes, the 
 gardener's shears. Returning to the salon Elys6e 
 tried to extract with the point of the instrument 
 an enormous sapphire which the queen pointed 
 out to him; but the stone, solidly set, resisted 
 and slipped under the iron, immovable in its 
 place. Moreover, the hand of the operator, fear- 
 ing to injure the sapphire or break the setting 
 which bore traces of previous attempts, was neither 
 strong nor sure. The royalist suffered; he was 
 shocked by the outrage he was made to com- 
 mit upon the crown. He felt it shudder, resist, 
 writhe. 
 
 " I cannot ... I cannot . . ." he said, wiping the 
 perspiration from his wet forehead. 
 
 The queen answered : 
 
 " It must be done." 
 
 " But it will be seen." 
 
 A proud smile of irony crossed her face. 
 
 " Seen ! . . Does any one so much as look at 
 it?". . Who thinks of it, who cares for it here, 
 but me? . ." 
 
 And while he returned to the task, his pallid 
 face bent over it, his hair in his eyes, holding 
 between his knees the royal diadem which the tool 
 was mangling, Frederica, holding high the lamp 
 watched the operation, cold as the stones which 
 
 12
 
 178 Kings in Exile. 
 
 glittered, with scraps of gold attached, upon the 
 table-cloth, intact and splendid in spite of their 
 violation. 
 
 The next day, lilysee, who had been absent 
 all the morning, returned after the last bell had 
 rung for breakfast, and seated himself at the table, 
 troubled, agitated, and scarcely mingling in the 
 conversation he who was usually the instigator 
 and life of it. His agitation conveyed itself to the 
 queen, though it did not in any way change her 
 smile or the serenity of her contralto tones. The 
 meal over, to was some time before they could 
 approach each other so as to speak freely, watched 
 as they were by etiquette and the rules of court- 
 life under the jealous eye of Mme. de Silvis and 
 the attendance of the lady of honour. 
 
 At last the hour of lessons came, and while the 
 little prince was placing himself and arranging his 
 books, the queen asked hurriedly : 
 
 "What is the matter? What next will happen 
 to me?" 
 
 " Ah ! madame ... all those stones are false. . ." 
 
 " False ! " 
 
 " Very carefully imitated in paste. . . How 
 could it have been done? . . when? . . by whom? 
 There must be some criminal in the house ! . ." 
 
 She paled frightfully at the word " criminal." 
 Suddenly, with clenched teeth and a flash of anger 
 and despair in her eyes, she said : 
 
 " It is true. There is a criminal in this house 
 . . . and you and I well know it." 
 
 Then, with a nervous gesture, violently grasping
 
 The Bohemia of Exile. 1 79 
 
 Meraut's wrist as if for a compact known to them- 
 selves only, 
 
 " But we will never denounce him, will we? " 
 " Never ! . . " he said, turning away his eyes ; 
 for, with a word, they had understood each 
 other.
 
 i8o Kings in Exile. 
 
 VII. 
 
 POPULAR JOYS. 
 
 IT was the afternoon of a Sunday early in May, 
 a splendid, luminous day, in advance of the season, 
 and so warm that the landau in which the queen, 
 the little prince, and his tutor were taking their 
 drive in the forest of Saint-Mande", was open. 
 This first caress of spring, coming to her through 
 the fresh green branches, warmed the queen's 
 heart as it brightened her face beneath the silk 
 of her sunshade. She felt herself happy, without 
 any cause, and forgetting for some hours amid 
 that universal clemency and sweetness the hard- 
 ness of her life, nestling in a corner of the heavy 
 carriage, her child beside her, she abandoned her- 
 self in security and privacy to a familiar talk with 
 lyse"e Me*raut, who sat facing her. 
 
 " It is singular," she said to him, " how it seems 
 to me that we had seen each other before we met. 
 Your voice, your face at once awoke in my mind 
 an impression of recollection. Where could we 
 have met for the first time ? " 
 
 Little Zara remembered very well where it was. 
 It was over there, in the convent, in that church 
 under ground, where M. filyse'e had so frightened 
 him. And in the timid, gentle look the boy turned
 
 Popular Joys. 1 8 1 
 
 on his master there still remained something of his 
 superstitious fear. . . But no ! before that Christ- 
 mas Eve the queen was sure that they had met 
 each other. 
 
 " Unless it was in some former life," she added, 
 almost seriously. 
 
 filysee laughed. 
 
 " Your Majesty is not mistaken. You saw me, 
 not in another life, but in Paris, the day of your 
 arrival. I was opposite to the hotel des Pyra- 
 mides, on the stone base of the Tuileries railing." 
 
 " And you cried out : Vive le roi! . . Now I 
 remember. . . So that was you ? Oh ! how glad 
 I am. . . It was you who gave us our first wel- 
 come ... If you knew what good your cry did 
 me ! . ." 
 
 "And to myself too," said M6raut. " It was so 
 long since I had had a chance to utter it, that 
 triumphant cry of Vive le roi! . . So long that 
 it sang to me on my lips ! . . It was our family 
 cry; associated with all my joys of childhood and 
 of youth, the cry in which at home we summed 
 up all beliefs and all emotions. That cry brings 
 back to me the Southern accent, the gesture, the 
 very voice of my father; it forces to my eyes 
 the moisture I have seen in his so often. . . Poor 
 man ! in him it was instinctive ; a profession of 
 faith. . . One day, crossing Paris on his return 
 from a visit to Frohsdorf, he entered the Car- 
 rousel as Louis Philippe was about to go out. 
 People were loitering about, glued to the iron 
 railings, indifferent, even hostile, - the populace of
 
 1 82 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the close of his reign. My father, hearing that 
 the king would pass, pushed and jostled his way 
 through the crowd to the front rank, that he might 
 eye, and insult with his contempt that brigand, 
 that beggar of a Louis Philippe who had stolen 
 the place of legitimacy. . . Suddenly the king 
 appeared, crossed the empty courtyard amid a 
 death-like silence, an oppressive silence, crushing 
 the very palace, in which one seemed to hear 
 distinctly the cocking of rebel muskets and the 
 cracking of the planks of the throne. . . Louis 
 Philippe was old, very bourgeois, and he walked 
 toward the gateway umbrella in hand, with 
 short little shambling steps. Nothing of the sov- 
 ereign, nothing of the master. But my father did 
 not see him as he was ; and at the thought that in 
 the great palace of the kings of France, paved with 
 glorious memories, the representative of monarchy 
 should pass through that frightful silence and soli- 
 tude forced on kings by the hatred of their people, 
 something arose and revolted within him ; he for- 
 got his rancour and, baring his head instinctively, 
 he cried, or rather he sobbed out a Vive le roi ! 
 so ringing, so profoundly felt, that the old man 
 quivered and thanked him with a long look full 
 of emotion." 
 
 " That is how I, too, should have thanked you," 
 said Frederica, and her eyes fixed themselves on 
 Meraut with such tender gratitude that the poor 
 fellow felt himself turn pale. But she added im- 
 mediately, full of the tale to which she had just 
 listened:
 
 Popular Joys. 183 
 
 " And yet your father was not a man of the 
 nobility? " 
 
 " Oh ! no, madame ... all that is most humble, 
 most common ... a journeyman weaver." 
 
 " That is singular," she said reflectively. 
 
 And he answering her, an endless subject of 
 discussion between them began again. The queen 
 did not like, and did not understand the people ; 
 she had, in fact, a sort of physical horror of them. 
 She thought them brutal; alarming in their joys 
 as they were in their vengeance. Even during the 
 fetes of the coronation, that honey-moon of her 
 reign, she feared them, feared those myriads of 
 hands stretched out to acclaim her, in which, 
 nevertheless, she felt herself a prisoner. Never 
 had the two understood each other ; favours, gifts, 
 charities had fallen from her to her people like 
 one of those blighted harvests when the wheat will 
 not ripen, although no positive blame can be laid 
 to the seed or the soil. 
 
 Among the fairy-tales with which Mme. de 
 Silvis etherealized the mind of the little prince, was 
 the story of a Syrian young lady married to a lion, 
 who felt a horrible dread of her savage husband, 
 his roars, and his violent fashion of shaking his 
 mane. Nevertheless, he was full of attentions and 
 loving delicacy, that poor lion. He brought to 
 his child-wife the rarest game, and honey-comb, 
 he watched while she slept, and made the sea and 
 the forests and the animals keep silence. In spite 
 of all that she kept her repugnance, her insulting 
 dread, until one day the lion got angry and roared
 
 184 Kings in Exile. 
 
 to her a terrible " Begone ! " his jaws open, his 
 mane erect, as if he were more inclined to devour 
 her than to let her go. This was somewhat the 
 story of Frederica and her people ; and ever since 
 Elysee had lived beside her he had endeavoured, 
 but in vain, to make her admit the hidden good- 
 ness, the chivalric devotion, the savage suscepti- 
 bilities of that great lion that roared so many 
 times in play before he roared in anger. Ah ! if 
 kings only would. . . If they showed themselves 
 less distrustful. . . And then, as Frederica shook 
 her sunshade with an incredulous air he added : 
 
 " Yes, I know it well . . . the people frighten 
 you. . . You do not love them, or rather you do 
 not know them. But if your Majesty would look 
 about you ... in these alleys, under these trees. . . 
 And yet this is the most dangerous suburb in 
 Paris which is walking about and amusing itself 
 here, the suburb from which revolutions issue and 
 barricade themselves in the torn-up streets. See 
 what a simple, kind, and natural, and na'fve expres- 
 sion these people have ! how they enjoy the com- 
 fort of a day of rest, and the sunny weather. . ." 
 
 From the wide avenue through which the landau 
 was slowly passing they could see beneath the 
 trees and shrubbery, on the ground all violet with 
 the first wild hyacinths, breakfasts laid out, white 
 plates spotting the grass, baskets with gaping 
 covers, and the thick glasses of the wine-merchants 
 sunk among the greenery of early buds like 
 peonies ; shawls and blouses were hanging to the 
 branches, women were in their home gowns, men
 
 Popular Joys. 185 
 
 in their shirt-sleeves; some reading, some taking 
 their siesta, the more industrious were sewing, 
 their backs to the trunks of the trees, and through 
 the joyous glades fluttered the ends of humble 
 stuffs, some in a game of shuttle-cock, or blind- 
 man's buff, others in an improvised quadrille to 
 the sounds of an invisible orchestra which came in 
 gusts. And the children ! quantities of children ! 
 making common cause with sugar-plums and 
 games ; running together from one family to an- 
 other, jumping, shouting, filling the whole wood 
 with one vast warble of swallows; their endless 
 coming and going having the same bird-like rapid- 
 ity, caprice, and shadowy fluttering in the light 
 among the branches. This wood of Vincennes 
 contrasting with that of Boulogne, which is 
 always neat, brushed-up and protected by rustic 
 fences seemed expressly prepared for the pas- 
 time of the people making holiday, with its paths 
 all free, its turf, though trodden, green, and its 
 trees, bending but resistant, as if nature were here 
 more perennial, more clement. 
 
 Suddenly, at a turn of the avenue, a burst of air 
 and of light from the lake which parted the wood 
 with its grassy banks, drew a cry of enthusiasm 
 from the little prince. The scene was indeed 
 superb ; like that of the ocean suddenly appearing 
 through the stony labyrinth of a Breton village 
 and bringing its tide to the very foot of its farthest 
 street. Boats with banners, filled with rowers 
 making lively spots of blue or red, ploughed the 
 lake in all directions with the silvery furrows of
 
 1 86 Kings in Exile. 
 
 their oars, the white foam flashing into shoals of 
 little waves. Flocks of ducks swam quacking; 
 swans, with nobler mien, followed the long circuit 
 of the shore, their light plumes ruffled by the 
 breeze; while, in the distance, masked by the 
 green curtain of an isle, an orchestra sent through 
 the whole wood a joyous harmony, to which the 
 surface of the lake served as a sounding-board. 
 
 And with it all, a gay disorder, the sparkle of 
 breeze and wave, the flapping of banners, the calls 
 of boatmen, the circling banks with seated groups 
 and scampering children, and two little noisy cafes 
 built almost into the water, their wooden floors 
 sonorous as a deck, and their open walls present- 
 ing the idea of a bath-house or a ferry-boat. . . 
 Carriages were few around the lake. Every now 
 and then came a hackney-coach loaded, the day 
 after a wedding, . with a faubourg bridal party, 
 , easily recognized by the new cloth of the frock- 
 coats and the showy arabesques of the shawls ; or 
 else the char-a-bancs of business houses bearing 
 their signs in gilded letters, and filled with stout 
 women in flowery bonnets, who gazed with an air 
 of pity at the humbler pedestrians tramping the 
 sand. But what was chiefly noticeable were the 
 little baby-carriages, that first luxury of the work- 
 man with a home; those walking cradles, where 
 little heads in ruffled caps wabbled so blessedly, 
 preparing to sleep, their eyes uplifted to the 
 tracery of branches on the sky. 
 
 Amid this promenading of the people, the 
 equipage with the arms of Illyria, its horses and
 
 Popular Joys. 187 
 
 its liveries, did not pass without exciting a cer- 
 tain wonder, Frederica having never driven there 
 before except on a week-day. People nudged 
 one another. Families of workmen in bands, silent 
 in the embarrassment of Sunday-clothes, drew 
 aside at the sound of wheels, and then, turning 
 round, did not check their enthusiasm at the noble 
 beauty of the queen beside the aristocratic child- 
 hood of Zara; and sometimes a bold little face 
 peeped out from the bushes to say: " Bonjour, 
 madame. . ." Was it FJyseVs words, or the splen- 
 did weather, and the gayety of the whole scene 
 stretching to the horizon now left rural by the silent 
 manufactories, or was it the cordiality of these little 
 encounters? Frederica was conscious of a sort of 
 sympathy with this Sunday of workmen, nearly all 
 of them made spruce with a touching cleanliness, 
 considering the nature of their hard toil and the 
 shortness of their leisure. As for Zara, he would 
 not be quiet, quivering and stamping in the car- 
 riage ; he wanted to get out, to roll with the others 
 on the lawns, and to row in the boats. 
 
 Meantime the landau had reached less noisy 
 avenues, where people were reading, or sleeping 
 on the benches, or passing beneath the copses in 
 close-pressed couples. Here the shadows held a 
 little mystery, the cooling freshness of springs, 
 the true exhalations of a forest. Birds were 
 chirping in the branches. But the farther they 
 advanced from the lake, where noise had so far 
 concentrated, the echoes of another fete were 
 heard distinctly; the sound of firearms, the roll
 
 1 88 Kings in Exile. 
 
 of drums, the blare of trumpets, and the ringing of 
 bells, all detaching themselves from a great 
 clamour which suddenly passed athwart the sun 
 like a smoke. One might really have thought it 
 the sack of a city. 
 
 "What is that? What is it I hear?" cried the 
 little prince. 
 
 "The gingerbread fair, Monseigneur," said the 
 old coachman, turning round upon the box ; and 
 as the queen consented to go nearer to the merry- 
 making, the carriage left the park and threaded its 
 way through a crowd of narrow streets and roads 
 only half built-up, where new houses of six storeys 
 stood side by side with miserable huts, between 
 market-gardens and stable gutters. . . Everywhere 
 were drinking-shops and arbours, with their little 
 tables and their springboards, painted invariably 
 of the same vile green. All were overflowing with 
 people, the shakos of artillery-men, and the white- 
 gloved military in crowds. No noise. They lis- 
 tened to the wandering harpist or violinist who, 
 having permission to play among the tables, was 
 scraping out an air of the Favorita or the Trova- 
 tore ; for this scoffer of a people, this populace of 
 Paris adores the sentimental and pays liberally to 
 its music if amused. 
 
 Suddenly the landau stopped. Carriages can go 
 no farther than the entrance to the great public 
 promenade of Vincennes, along which the fair is 
 held, having at its end towards Paris the two 
 columns of the Barriere du Trone, which rise above 
 the dusty atmosphere of the suburb. What was
 
 Popular Joys. 189 
 
 seen from that point, namely, the swarming of a 
 great crowd in the midst of a veritable street of 
 enormous booths, lighted up the eyes of little Zara 
 with such an eager craving of childish curiosity 
 that the queen proposed to leave the carriage. 
 This desire of the proud Frederica to go on foot 
 in the dust of a Sunday was so extraordinary, and 
 Elysee was so amazed, that he hesitated. 
 
 " Is there any danger ? " 
 
 " Oh ! not the slightest, madame. . . Only, if 
 we go upon the fair ground it would be better that 
 no one accompanied us. The livery would make 
 you too noticeable." 
 
 At the queen's order, the tall footman, who was 
 preparing to follow them, resumed his place upon 
 the box, and it was arranged that the carriage 
 should wait where it was. Assuredly they did not 
 expect to make the round of the fair ; a few steps 
 in front of the first booths would be all. 
 
 Near the entrance were movable little benches 
 and a table covered with a white cloth, on which 
 were games, mechanical inventions. People passed 
 them disdainfully, without stopping. Next came 
 frying-stoves in full blast, surrounded by an acrid 
 smell of burning grease, with great flames rising 
 pink in the sunlight, around which scullions in white 
 aprons were busy behind mounds of sugared 
 fritters. Then came the makers of marsh-mallow 
 paste, twisting into gigantic rings the snow-white 
 compound that smells of almonds. . . The little 
 prince gazed at all this in stupor; it was so new to 
 him, the little caged birdling, bred in the lofty
 
 190 Kings in Exile. 
 
 chambers of a castle, behind the gilded railings of 
 a park, in the midst of alarms and terrors ; never 
 going out unless accompanied, and never seeing 
 the populace unless from a balcony or from a car- 
 riage surrounded by guards. Intimidated at first, 
 he pressed against his mother and held her tightly 
 by the hand ; but, little by little, he grew intoxi- 
 cated by the noise and the odour of the fete. The 
 tunes upon the barrel-organs excited him. A 
 wild desire to run, that made him drag Frederica 
 along, was checked only by the desire to stop 
 everywhere, and yet to go farther still " over 
 there," where the noise was loudest, and the 
 crowd more dense. 
 
 Thus, without perceiving it, they were soon 
 quite far from their point of departure, with a 
 swimmer's lack of sensation that the tide is carry- 
 ing him out, and all the more easily because no 
 one noticed them. Amid those gaudy costumes, 
 the simple toilet of the queen in shades of fawn, 
 gown, mantle, and hat in harmony, passed unper- 
 ceived, as did the quiet elegance of Zara, whose 
 great starched collar and short jacket and bare 
 legs only made a few good women turn and say: 
 "That's an English boy." He walked between his 
 mother and lys6e, who smiled to each other above 
 his joy. " Oh ! mother, see that ! . . Monsieur 
 filysee, what are they doing over there? Do let 
 us go and see ! " And from one side of the 
 road to the other in curious zigzags they plunged 
 farther and still farther into the crowd, following 
 its tidal way.
 
 Popular Joys. 191 
 
 " Suppose we go back," proposed filyse'e ; but 
 no, the child was beside himself. He entreated, 
 he pulled his mother's hand ; and she, so happy in 
 seeing her little torpid one alive, and herself ex- 
 cited by this popular fermentation, went on and 
 on still farther. . . 
 
 The day became warmer, as if the sun in going 
 down were gathering all its rays into a threat of 
 storm. As the skies changed, the fete with its 
 myriad colours took on a fairy aspect. T was the 
 hour for parading. All the employes of the cir- 
 cuses and the booths came out beneath the awn- 
 ings of their entrances, in front of those canvas 
 signs swelling in the breeze till the gigantic beasts 
 and gymnasts and hercules painted thereon ap- 
 peared to be alive. This was the parade of a 
 grand military show, displaying the costumes of 
 Charles IX. and Louis XV., arquebuses, rifles, wigs, 
 and plumes mingling together, the Marseillaise 
 sounding from a brass band, while the young 
 horses of the circus, held by white reins as in 
 a bridal procession, executed clever steps, calcu- 
 lated with their hoofs, and bowed to the company. 
 On the opposite side, a booth of regular mounte- 
 banks were exhibiting a clown in his checked 
 garments, with shrivelled little Aztecs in tights, 
 and a tall, swarthy girl, dressed as a danseuse, 
 who juggled with gold and silver balls, bottles, and 
 knives with shining pewter blades, all jingling and 
 crossing one another above the tall erection of her 
 hair, held up by glass-bead pins. 
 
 The little prince was lost in endless contempla-
 
 192 Kings in Exile. 
 
 tion before this beautiful being, when a queen, a 
 real queen, such as she appears in fairy-tales, with 
 a brilliant crown, a short tunic of silvered gauze, 
 her legs crossed one upon the other, suddenly 
 appeared leaning on the balustrade. Zara would 
 never have tired of looking at her if the orchestra 
 had not slightly distracted his attention, an ex- 
 traordinary orchestra, composed, not of French 
 guards, nor of gymnasts in flesh-coloured tights, 
 but of gentlemen, real gentlemen, with short 
 whiskers, shining skulls, and dress boots, who 
 deigned to play on horns and trumpets while a 
 lady, yes, a veritable lady, with a little of Mme. de 
 Silvis' solemnity, in a silk mantle and a bonnet 
 with nodding flowers, looked with an indifferent 
 air to right and left, her arms being tossed 
 about till the fringes of her mantle caught the 
 roses of her hat. Who knows ? Some other royal 
 family fallen into grief. . . But the fair-ground 
 presented many other things equally astonishing. 
 In a vast and perpetually varied panorama, bears 
 were dancing at the end of their chains, negroes 
 were running about in linen drawers, devils and 
 devilesses in crimson bandannas; the wrestlers 
 gesticulated ; famous tumblers, one hand on their 
 hip, waved above the heads of the crowd the 
 breeches destined for the amateur; a fencing- 
 mistress in coat-of-mail, red stockings with gold 
 clocks, her face covered by a mask, her hands in 
 leathern gauntlets, was there ; and a man dressed 
 in black velvet who resembled Columbus, or 
 Copernicus, describing magic circles with a dia-
 
 Popular Joys. 193 
 
 mond-handled whip ; while from behind the line 
 of booths came a sickly odour of hides and the 
 roaring of wild beasts in the Garel menagerie. 
 All these living curiosities were blended with the 
 pictured ones, gigantic women in ball costume, 
 their shoulders exposed, their arms in short eider- 
 down sleeves and gloves tightly buttoned ; sil- 
 houettes of seated somnambulists, looking with 
 bandaged eyes into the future ; a doctor near-by 
 with a black beard; abnormal beings, accidents of 
 nature, eccentricities, oddities of all kinds, some- 
 times sheltered by only two great sheets held 
 up by a rope, with the money-box for the receipts 
 on a chair at the entrance. 
 
 Everywhere, at every step, was the king of the 
 revels, Gingerbread, under every aspect, every 
 form, in scarlet boots with golden fringes, wrapped 
 in glossy painted papers, tied with favours, deco- 
 rated with sweetmeats and burnt almonds, Gin- 
 gerbread in flat, grotesque figures representing 
 the Parisian celebrities of the day, the lover of 
 Amanda, Prince Queue-de-Poule with his insep- 
 arable Rigolo, Gingerbread hawked in baskets 
 and on portable benches, diffusing also a good smell 
 of honey and cooked fruits through the crowds who 
 were slowly and tightly moving onward, circula- 
 tion being now very difficult. 
 
 Impossible to return upon their steps. They 
 were forced to follow that despotic current, to ad- 
 vance, to retreat; unconsciously impelled toward 
 this booth and then to that, because the living 
 flood which presses together in the middle of a 
 
 13
 
 194 Kings in Exile. 
 
 space is always seeking to flow away at the sides 
 without the possibility of issue. Laughter broke 
 forth and jokes in this continual and enforced 
 elbowing. The queen had never seen the People 
 so near. Encountering thus its very breath and 
 the rough contact of its shoulders, she was amazed 
 to find that she felt neither terror nor disgust. 
 She advanced like the others, with that hesitating 
 step of a crowd which seems like the murmur of a 
 march, and keeps, if carriages are absent, a sort of 
 rhythmic solemnity. The good-humour of all these 
 people reassured her, and also the exuberant gayety 
 of her son and the quantity of baby-carriages which 
 continued their way in the thick of it all. " Don't 
 push ! . . see, there's a child ! " Not one child, but 
 ten, twenty, hundreds, carried by mothers in their 
 arms, or by fathers on their backs ; and Frederica 
 turned a kindly smile when one of these little popu- 
 lace heads of her own boy's age went past.her. 
 
 filysee, however, began to be uneasy. He knew 
 what a crowd really is, however calm it may be 
 apparently, and the real danger of its eddies and 
 tides. If one of those big black clouds overhead 
 were to burst in rain, what a rush ! what a panic ! 
 His imagination, always at boiling point, represented 
 to his mind the scene, the horrible suffocation of 
 body to body, the crushing on the Place Louis XV., 
 that dangerous massing of a whole people in the 
 midst of a broad city, not two steps from immense 
 deserted avenues it is unable to reach. . . 
 
 Between his mother and his tutor who protected 
 him, the little prince became very hot. He com-
 
 Popular Joys. 195 
 
 plained that he could see nothing. Then, like the 
 workmen around them, Meraut lifted Zara to his 
 shoulder, which produced an explosion of joy, for 
 from that height, of course, the view of the fete was 
 splendid. On the western sky, rayed with jets of 
 light and great floating shadows, in the far per- 
 spective, between the two columns of the Barriere, 
 were lines of palpitating flags and oriflammes and 
 the flapping canvas of the booth fronts. The airy 
 wheels of gigantic merry-go-rounds lifted their 
 little cars, each filled with people; an immense 
 " chevaux-de-bois " in three stages, varnished and 
 coloured like a toy, turned mechanically, with its 
 lions, leopards, and fantastic tarasgues, on which 
 the children sat as stiff as puppets. Close by 
 were struggling clusters of little red balloons ; in- 
 numerable whirling mills of yellow paper, looking 
 like artificial suns; and above the crowd, gazing 
 down upon it, quantities of little heads like Zara's, 
 erect, in a cloud of golden vapour. The rays of 
 the setting sun, now paling, left upon the clouds 
 brilliant layers of reflections, which lighted all 
 objects and shaded them in turn, giving an added 
 movement to the scene. Here, they struck a Pier- 
 rot and a Columbine, two white spots fluttering be- 
 fore each other pantomime in chalk on the black 
 ground of a mountebank's platform there, a lank, 
 stooping harlequin, wearing the pointed hat of a 
 Greek shepherd and making believe to push into 
 his booth, like loaves into an oven, the crowd that 
 are flowing past the steps of it. He has a big, 
 wide-opened mouth, that harlequin, and he must
 
 196 Kings in Exile. 
 
 be shouting, roaring; but he is not heard any 
 more than the furious ringing of that bell at the 
 corner of a platform, or the discharge of muskets 
 of which the smoke and the muzzles can be seen. 
 All is lost in the stupendous clamour of the fair, 
 clamour of an element composed of the "tutti," 
 discordant and general, rattles, jew's-harps, gongs, 
 drums, speaking-trumpets, roars of wild-beasts, 
 Barbary barrel-organs, and the shrieking of steam- 
 whistles. The prize was to him who employed to 
 attract the crowd, as bees are caught by noise 
 the loudest and most persistent instrument ; while 
 from swings and merry-go-rounds fell other shrieks, 
 and over all this frantic racket rose, every fifteen 
 minutes, the whistle of the trams on the circuit 
 railway as they passed the fair. 
 
 Suddenly the fatigue, the stifling odour of this 
 human mass, the dazzle of that five o'clock sun, 
 oblique and hot, in which so many vibrating, glit- 
 tering things were twirling, turned the queen giddy 
 and made her stop, half-fainting. She had only 
 time to catch the arm of filys^e and save herself 
 from falling ; and as she leaned there, clinging to it, 
 erect and pale, she murmured very low : " Nothing, 
 nothing; this is nothing! . ." But her head, or 
 her nerves, beat painfully, and her body, losing the 
 sensation of existence, gave way for an instant . . . 
 Oh ! he will never forget it, that one instant ! . . 
 
 It was over. Frederica again was strong. A 
 breath of cool air upon her forehead quickly re- 
 vived her, but she did not relax her hold on his 
 protecting arm; and that queenly step conform-
 
 Popular Joys. 197 
 
 ing to his own, that glove resting warmly upon 
 him, caused an inexpressible trouble in filysee's 
 breast. The danger, the crowd, Paris, the fete, he 
 thought no more of them. He was in the land 
 impossible ; where dreams are realized with all their 
 magic, all their visionary extravagance. Buried 
 in that mass of the populace, he walked without 
 seeing it, without hearing it, borne by a vapour that 
 enveloped him to the eyes, impelled him, sustained 
 him and led him unconsciously from the fair to the 
 avenue. . . There at last he returned to earth and 
 knew himself. . . The queen's carriage was too far 
 off to be regained. They were forced to go on foot 
 to the chateau, following in the fading light the 
 wider paths and the streets lined with little cafes 
 full of a merry people making holiday. It was a 
 veritable escapade; but neither of them thought 
 much about the strangeness of their return. Little 
 Zara talked, and talked, as children do after a fete, 
 in haste to express with their little lips all they 
 have amassed by their eyes of images, ideas, events. 
 lys6e and the queen were silent, he quivering 
 still, seeking to recall and yet to escape that deli- 
 cious, penetrating moment which revealed to him 
 the secret, the sad secret of his life. Frederica 
 was thinking of all she had seen, so novel and 
 hitherto unknown to her. For the first time in her 
 life she had felt the beating of the heart of the 
 people; she had laid her head on the lion's 
 shoulder. An impression remained to her, both 
 strong and sweet, a clasp, as it were, of tenderness 
 and of protection.
 
 198 Kings in Exile. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE GRAND STROKE. 
 
 THE door shut brusquely, autocratically, send- 
 ing from one end to the other of the Agency a 
 puff of air which swelled the blue veils and the 
 mackintoshes, and waved the bills in the fingers 
 of the clerks, and the little feathers in the hats of 
 the tourist ladies. Hands were extended, heads 
 inclined ; J. Tom Levis had entered the establish- 
 ment. A circular smile, two or three very brief 
 orders to the accountant, the time to ask, in a loud, 
 exulting tone, whether " the package had been sent 
 to Monseigneur the Prince of Wales," and he was 
 already in his cabinet, while the clerks signalled to 
 one another with many winks the extraordinary 
 good-humour of their master. Undoubtedly some- 
 thing new was going on. The peaceful Se"phora 
 herself became aware of it behind her railings, and 
 asked gently, as Tom entered : 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Things ! " he replied with a great silent laugh, 
 and his roll of the eye on important occasions. 
 
 He made a sign to his wife : 
 
 " Come ! . ." 
 
 Together they descended the fifteen steep and 
 narrow stairs brass-bound which led to a little
 
 The Grand Stroke. 199 
 
 boudoir underground, very coquettishly carpeted 
 and hung, with a divan, a duchesse-dressing-table, 
 lighted constantly with gas, the little port-hole on 
 the Rue Royale being glazed with ground glass as 
 thick as a piece of horn. From there they could 
 communicate with the cellars and the courtyard, 
 an arrangement which enabled Tom to enter and 
 leave the Agency without being seen, and so avoid 
 bores and creditors, who are called in Paris " paves," 
 that is to say, persons or things that obstruct cir- 
 culation. With affairs as complicated as those of 
 the Agency, such Comanche craft was indispensa- 
 ble. Without it, life would be spent in quarrels 
 and lawsuits. 
 
 Tom's oldest employes, men who had served him 
 for five or six months, had never descended into 
 this mysterious sub-salon, where S6phora alone had 
 the right to enter. It was the private nook of the 
 agent, his interior, his conscience, the cocoon from 
 which he issued transformed, something like the 
 dressing-room of an actor, to which, indeed, the 
 boudoir at this moment bore a strong resemblance, 
 with its gas jets lighting the marble, the furbelowed 
 hangings, and the singular transformation which J. 
 Tom Levis was now accomplishing. With a twirl 
 of his hand he opened his long English frock- 
 coat and flung it away, then one waistcoat, then 
 another, the many-coloured waistcoats of a circus- 
 man ; he unwound the dozen yards of white muslin 
 that formed his cravat, the flannel bandages that 
 wrapped his waist and formed that majestic and 
 apoplectic rotundity which drove about Paris in the
 
 2OO Kings in Exile. 
 
 first and only hansom known there at that period, 
 and issued, all of a sudden, with an " ouf" of satis- 
 faction, a lean and wiry little man, looking like a 
 spool unwound, a frightful blackguard of quinqua- 
 genary Paris, who might have been saved from a 
 fire or dragged from a lime-kiln, with the scars, 
 seams, and baldness of his baking; and yet, in 
 spite of all, with an air of juvenility, of rollicking 
 boyhood, of the old mobile guard of '48, in short, 
 the true Tom Levis ; in other words, Narcisse 
 Poitou, son of an upholsterer in the Rue de 
 rOrillon. 
 
 Growing up among the shavings of the paternal 
 establishment until he was ten years old, from ten 
 to fifteen taught by the " Mutuelle " and the street, 
 that incomparable school under the open sky, 
 Narcisse very early felt within himself a horror 
 of the people and of manual employments, and 
 at the same time, a passionate imagination, which 
 the Parisian gutter with the anomalous masses it 
 sweeps along had fed better than no matter what 
 progression through the schools. While still a 
 child, he invented projects and planned business. 
 Later this faculty for dreaming hindered him in 
 fixing his powers and making them productive. 
 He travelled, and undertook all sorts of employ- 
 ments. Miner in Australia, squatter in America, 
 actor in Batavia, bailiff at Brussels, making debts 
 in both hemispheres, and leaving the stones that 
 pave hell in all four quarters of the universe. He 
 finally settled as broker in London, where he lived 
 for some time, and might have succeeded were it
 
 The Grand Stroke. 201 
 
 not for his terrible, insatiable imagination, always 
 in quest of something; the imagination of a volup- 
 tuary perpetually in advance of the coming pleas- 
 ure, which flung him at last into the blackest of 
 Britannic poverty. That time he rolled very low, 
 and was caught at night in Hyde Park, poaching 
 among the swans in the Serpentine. A few months 
 in prison completed his disgust for " free England," 
 and he returned to the condition of waif and stray 
 on the Paris pavements whence he had departed. 
 
 It was only another fantastic caprice, joined to 
 his instincts of clown and comedian, that made 
 him naturalize himself as an Englishman in Paris ; 
 which to him was easy, with his knowledge of the 
 habits and customs, the language and comicality of 
 Anglo-Saxons. The idea came to him suddenly, 
 as if by instinct, in his first affair, his first " grand 
 stroke," as go-between. 
 
 "Whom shall I announce?" asked a tall fellow 
 in livery, insolently. 
 
 Poitou felt himself so shabby, so down in his 
 luck, in that vast antechamber, fearing to be turned 
 away before he was heard, that he saw the need 
 of buoying things up by something abnormal and 
 singular. 
 
 "A oh ! . . announce Sir Tom Levis." 
 And suddenly he felt a self-assurance come to 
 him under that name, improvised on the spur of 
 the moment, and from that borrowed nationality. 
 Henceforth he amused himself by perfecting its 
 peculiarities, its hobbies, while the attentive watch- 
 fulness required for his accent and behaviour cor-
 
 202 Kings in Exile. 
 
 rected his exuberant fancy, and enabled him to 
 invent all sorts of dodges while seeming to be in 
 search of the French words. 
 
 Singular thing ! Of all the innumerable con- 
 trivances of that brain full of fanciful schemes, this, 
 the least sought of all, served him the best. To it, 
 he owed his intimacy with Sephora, who was then 
 keeping on the Champs Elysees a sort of family 
 hotel, a jaunty little place of three storeys, pink 
 curtains, and a portico on the Avenue d' Antin, 
 between wide asphalts made gay with greenery 
 and flowers. The mistress of the house, always 
 in proper dress, showed her calm, divine profile at 
 a window on the ground-floor, bending over her 
 work or else an account-book. Within, a society 
 queerly exotic clowns, book-makers, grooms, 
 horse-dealers, the Anglo-American bohemia (worst 
 of all), the scum of placers and of gambling resorts. 
 The female contingent was recruited from the 
 quadrilles at Mabille, the violins of which could be 
 heard of a summer's evening, mingling with the 
 noise of the "family" disputes and the rolling of 
 counters and louis ; for after dinner play ran high. 
 If at times a respectable foreign family, misled by 
 the lie on the sign, came to install themselves in 
 Sephora's house, the singularity of the guests, the 
 tone of the conversations drove them quickly 
 away on the first day, before their trunks were 
 unpacked. 
 
 In the midst of these adventurers and specu- 
 lators, Maitre Poitou, or rather Tom Levis, a little 
 fellow lodging under the roof, won a position very
 
 The Grand Stroke. 203 
 
 quickly by his gayety, his suppleness, his practical 
 knowledge of business, and of all business. He 
 invested the money of the servants, and gained 
 through them the confidence of their mistress. 
 How should he not gain it with that smiling open 
 face of his, and those unfailing good spirits which 
 made him a precious guest at the table d'hote, 
 enticing clients, baiting the cloth, the instigator of 
 bets and of extra " consumptions." Cold and re- 
 served to others, the beautiful mistress of the 
 " family hotel " was free with none but Monsieur 
 Tom. Often in the afternoon, when going out or 
 coming in, he would stop in the neat little office 
 of the hotel, all glass and mats. Sephora would 
 tell him her affairs, show him her jewels and her 
 books, consult him about the bill of fare, and the 
 proper care to be given to the white arum with 
 flowers like a cornucopia which lived beside her 
 in a Minton pot. They laughed together at the 
 love-letters and the protestations of all sorts that 
 she received, for hers was a beauty that sentiment 
 never defaced. Without passion, she kept her 
 coolness everywhere and at all times, and treated 
 love as a matter of business. It is said that a 
 woman's first lover is the only one who counts. 
 Sephora's first, the sexagenary lover chosen by old 
 Leemans, had frozen her blood forever and per- 
 verted her love. She now saw nothing but money 
 in it, also intrigue, schemes, and traffic, this adora- 
 ble creature being born among second-hand things 
 and for second-hand purposes only. Little by 
 little a tie was formed between herself and Tom,
 
 204 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the friendship of an uncle and ward. He advised 
 her, guided her, always cleverly and with a fertility 
 of imagination that delighted her sedate and me- 
 thodical nature, in which Jewish fatalism was 
 joined to a heavy Dutch temperament. Never 
 had she invented or imagined anything, living 
 wholly in the present moment; and Tom's brain, 
 that firework that was always going off, simply 
 dazzled her. The crowning point of all was when 
 she heard her lodger one evening, after he had 
 gabbled in his most comic fashion during dinner, 
 whisper in her ear as he took his key from the 
 "family" office: 
 
 " But, you know, not an Englishman at all." 
 From that day she fell in love, or rather for 
 sentiments are only what you ticket them she 
 became infatuated with him, just as a woman in 
 society is infatuated by an actor whom she alone 
 knows away from the foot-lights, the paint, and 
 the costume, such as he is and not such as he 
 seems to others ; love is always desirous of privi- 
 leges. Besides, the pair both came from the same 
 Parisian gutter. In it Sephora had soiled her 
 skirts, and Narcisse had rolled there; but they 
 kept the stain and a liking for the mire. The 
 stamp of the streets, the crapulous line which 
 serves as a clue to the leering physiognomy of a 
 blackguard, and which raised at times a corner of 
 Tom's mask, showed itself in Sephora by flashes 
 along the biblical lines of her face, and in the 
 irony and canaille laugh of her Salome-like mouth. 
 This singular love of beauty and the beast only
 
 The Grand Stroke. 205 
 
 grew the stronger as the woman entered more and 
 more into the life of the mountebank, into a knowl- 
 edge of his tricks and his contrivances, from the 
 invention of the hansom to that of the multiplied 
 waistcoats, by means of which J. Tom Levis, un- 
 able to make himself taller, endeavoured to at least 
 appear majestic ; and the more she herself was asso- 
 ciated with this unforeseeable, twirling existence of 
 projects, visions, great and little " strokes," the 
 more infatuated she became with him. And this 
 caricature of a man was really so strong that after 
 ten years of legitimate bourgeois marriage he still 
 amused her, still charmed her as in the early days 
 of their acquaintance. To be convinced of that, it 
 would suffice to have seen her on this particular 
 day, lying back on the divan of the little salon in 
 convulsions of laughter, saying with an enraptured 
 and delighted air : " Is n't he silly ! . . Oh ! is n't 
 he silly ! " . . . while Tom in a tight, coloured jersey, 
 reduced to his leanest, baldest, most angular and 
 bony expression, was performing before her a fren- 
 zied jig, with jerking gestures and frantic stamps. 
 When both were weary, she of laughing and he of 
 jigging, he threw himself beside her on the divan 
 and put his monkey face beside that angelic head, 
 puffing his joy into her face. 
 
 " Done for ! those Sprichts ! Ousted ! Spricht 
 and Sprichters ! I Ve found my stroke, the GRAND 
 STROKE." 
 
 " What, really? . . Who is it? " 
 
 The name which he said brought a pretty gri- 
 mace of disdain to Sephora's lips.
 
 206 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " That great gaby ! . . Why, he has n't a sou. . . 
 We have shorn him, skinned him, him and his Lion 
 of Illyria. . . He hasn't one atom of down left 
 upon his back." 
 
 " Don't scoff at the Lion of Illyria, my girl. . . 
 His skin alone is worth two hundred millions," 
 said Tom, recovering his composure. 
 
 The woman's eyes flamed. He repeated the 
 words, pausing on each syllable : 
 
 " Two hundred millions ! . ." 
 
 Then coolly, clearly, he explained the " stroke." 
 Christian II. must be induced to accept the prop- 
 ositions of the Diet, and cede his rights to the 
 crown for the fine price offered to him. After all, 
 what was it? a signature to give, that was all. 
 Christian himself would have done it long ago. 
 It was those around him, the queen especially, 
 who stopped him and prevented the signing of the 
 renunciation. He must come to it sooner or later. 
 Not a sou in the house. Debts all over Saint- 
 Mande"; to the butcher, to the grain-dealer for 
 in spite of the master's penury there were horses 
 still in the stable. The house was always kept up 
 and the table served with all the appearances of 
 luxury while disastrous privations lay beneath. 
 The royal linen, bearing the crown, was in holes in 
 the closet, with none to replace it. The stables 
 were empty, the largest pieces of plate in pawn; 
 the servants, scarcely sufficient in number, were 
 often for months unpaid. All these details Tom 
 had obtained from Lebeau, the valet, who had also 
 told him the tale of the two hundred millions
 
 The Grand Stroke. 207 
 
 offered by the Diet of Leybach and the scene 
 which had ensued thereon. 
 
 Ever since the king had been made aware that 
 two hundred millions were close beside him, against 
 a penful of ink, he was no longer the same man ; 
 never laughed, never talked, kept to this fixed 
 idea as a neuralgic pain always keeps to one side 
 of the forehead. He had the temper of a bull-dog, 
 sighed heavily and silently. And yet nothing 
 was changed in his personal attendance secre- 
 tary, valet, coachman, footmen, they were all there. 
 The same costly luxury in furniture and dress. 
 That haughty Frederica, crazy with pride, believing 
 she masked their poverty to the eye of all by 
 her loftiness, had never allowed the king to be de- 
 prived of anything. When by chance he dined at 
 Saint-Mande, the table must always be luxuriously 
 served. What he lacked, however, and what she 
 could not supply, was money in his pocket, for 
 the club, gambling, and women. Evidently, the 
 king would succumb in the end on that line. 
 Some fine morning, after a long night at baccarat, not 
 being able to pay and not daring to owe fancy 
 Christian II. posted at the Grand-Club ! he 
 would take his pen and sign his resignation of 
 monarchy in a flash. The thing would have hap- 
 pened already, if it were not for that old Rosen, 
 who secretly, in spite of the queen's order, had 
 begun again to pay for Monseigneur. So the 
 plan was made to entice him to pass the level of 
 small current debts and drag him into real ex- 
 penses, into multiplied obligations beyond the
 
 208 Kings in Exile. 
 
 resources of the old duke. All this required a 
 considerable advance of money. 
 
 " But," said Tom, " the affair is such a fine one 
 that funds will not be lacking. The best way will 
 be to speak to your father and do the business in 
 the family. The only thing that troubles me is the 
 mainspring the woman." 
 
 " What woman ? " asked Sephora, widening her 
 ingenuous eyes. 
 
 " She who is to pass the rope round the king's 
 neck. . . We must find a regular squanderer for 
 that ; a serious girl with a strong stomach, who '11 
 attack the big dishes at once." 
 
 " Amy Ferat, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Ho ! whisht ! . . used-up, done-with . . . besides, 
 not serious enough, sups, sings, makes love in 
 real youth . . . not the woman to worm out her 
 little million a month peacefully, without seeming 
 to touch it, holding her sugarplum high, balking 
 at details, haggling over every square inch, and 
 dearer than a bit of ground in the Rue de la Paix." 
 
 " Oh ! I know exactly how the thing should be 
 managed," said S6phora, thoughtfully. . . " But 
 who?" 
 
 "Ah! that 'sit. . . Who?" 
 
 And the silent laugh each sent the other was 
 as good as a bond of partnership. 
 
 " Go on ! inasmuch as you have already be- 
 gun. . ." 
 
 "What! you know? . . " 
 
 " Don't I see his game when he looks at you, 
 and his attendance at the rail as soon as he thinks I
 
 The Grand Stroke. 209 
 
 have departed? . . Besides, he makes no mystery 
 of his love, and tells it to anybody who listens . . . 
 why, he has even written and countersigned it on 
 the Club-Book." 
 
 When told the whole story of the bet, the tran- 
 quil Sephora was roused : 
 
 " Ha ! really. . . Two thousand louis that he 
 will sleep. . . Upon my word ! that 's too much ! " 
 
 She rose and walked about the room to shake off 
 her anger, then, returning to her husband, 
 
 " You know, Tom," she said, " that for more than 
 three months I have had that great fool hanging 
 behind my chair. . . Well, see ! . . not so much as 
 that ! " 
 
 And the snap of a little nail was heard against a 
 tooth which only sought to bite. 
 
 She told no lie. Ever since the king had been 
 in pursuit he had got no farther than touching the 
 tips of her ringers, nibbling her pens beside her, 
 and getting himself intoxicated with the rustle of 
 her gown. Never had such a thing happened 
 before to this Prince Charming, spoilt by women, 
 assailed by soliciting smiles and perfumed letters. 
 His handsome curly head, where the print of a 
 crown still lingered, the heroic legend of a kingly 
 conduct, carefully kept up by the queen, and 
 beyond all else that perfume of seduction which 
 hangs about a much-loved being, had won him in 
 society certain real successes. More than one 
 young woman could have shown, curled up on the 
 divan of an aristocratic boudoir, a little ouistiti 
 from the royal cage ; and in the world of green- 
 
 14
 
 2io Kings in Exile. 
 
 rooms, usually monarchical and " right-thinking," it 
 placed a young woman at once if she could show in 
 her album of souvenirs the portrait of Christian II. 
 That man, accustomed to feel all eyes and lips 
 and hearts press towards him, and never to cast his 
 own glance without a quiver from the spot where 
 it fell, had now for months been dancing a vain 
 attendance on the coldest and most peaceful of 
 natures. . She played the part of model cashier; 
 she counted, ciphered, turned heavy pages, show- 
 ing her admirer nothing more than the velvety 
 roundness of her profile, with the glimmer of a 
 smile that ended at the eye among the lashes. At 
 first, the caprice of the Slav was amused by this 
 struggle, but vanity soon had a part in it, the eyes 
 of the Grand-Club were fixed upon him, and the 
 matter ended in a real passion, fed by the void of 
 that unoccupied existence, in which the flame now 
 mounted straight without an obstacle. Every after- 
 noon he came at five o'clock, the gayest moment 
 of the Parisian day, the hour of visits when the 
 pleasures of the evening are selected. Little by 
 little, all the young men of the Club who lunched 
 at the Agency and circled round Sephora ceded 
 their places respectfully. This desertion, dimin- 
 ishing the current little gains of the Agency, in- 
 creased the lady's coldness; and as the Lion of 
 Illyria no longer brought in anything, she was 
 beginning to make Christian feel that he bored 
 her, and monopolized too royally the wicket of her 
 railing, when, all of a sudden, a change occurred 
 on the morrow of her talk with Tom.
 
 The Grand Stroke. 211 
 
 " They say your Majesty was seen, last night at 
 the Fantaisies? . . " 
 
 At this inquiry, accompanied by a sad and anx- 
 ious look, Christian II. felt delightfully troubled. 
 
 " Yes, certainly. . . I was there. . . " 
 
 "Not alone? . . " 
 
 " But. . . " 
 
 " Ah ! . . Some women are born to be happy." 
 
 Immediately, as if to lessen the instigation of her 
 speech, she added that she had long had a wild 
 desire to go to that little theatre " to see the 
 Swedish danseuse, you know. . . " But her hus- 
 band would never take her anywhere. 
 
 Christian at once proposed to take her. 
 
 " You ? Oh ! you are too well known." 
 
 " But we will sit quite hidden in a stage-box." 
 
 In short, the rendezvous was made for the next 
 evening; because it so happened that Tom was 
 to spend the evening out. What a delightful 
 escapade ! She, at the front of the box, in a 
 discreet and knowing toilet, beamed with child- 
 ish joy at the dancing of that foreigner who had 
 her hour of celebrity in Paris, a Swede with thin 
 face and angular gestures, showing beneath her 
 blonde bandeaux a pair of brilliant eyes, the black 
 pupils of which covered the whole iris, the eyes of 
 a rodent, and in her darts and silent springs with 
 her black garments the blind bewilderment of a 
 monstrous bat. 
 
 " Oh ! how it amuses me ! how amused I am ! " 
 cried S6phora. 
 
 And the dissipated king, motionless behind her,
 
 212 Kings in Exile. 
 
 a box of sweetmeats on his knee, could not remem- 
 ber a more voluptuous pleasure than the touch of 
 that bare arm beneath its laces and that fresh 
 breath as it turned upon him. He insisted on 
 taking her to the Saint-Lazare station when she 
 returned that night to Courbevoie ; and on the way, 
 in the carriage, a transport seized him and he drew 
 her with both arms to his heart. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, in a grieved voice, " you will 
 spoil all my pleasure." 
 
 The immense waiting-room at the station was 
 deserted and ill-lighted. They seated themselves 
 side by side on a bench, Sephora shivering, and 
 the king protecting her with his ample furs. Here 
 she was no longer timid, but let herselt go and 
 talked to the king with whispers in his ear. From 
 time to time some official passed them, swinging 
 his lantern, or a group of actors living in the 
 suburbs and returning home from the theatre. 
 Among them, came a couple with arms interlaced, 
 walking somewhat apart. 
 
 " How happy they are," she murmured. . . " No 
 ties, no duties. . . Following the impulse of the 
 heart ! All else is cheatery. . ." 
 
 She knew something of that, alas ! and suddenly, 
 as if impelled, she related her sad existence with 
 a sincerity that touched him ; the snares, the temp- 
 tations of the streets of Paris for a girl made poor 
 by her father's avarice ; and sold at sixteen, her 
 life ended ; the four years passed with that old 
 man, to whom she had been only a nurse ; then, 
 not willing to return to the traffic of her father,
 
 The Grand Stroke. 213 
 
 needing a guide, a supporter, she had married this 
 Tom Levis, a man of money. She had given her- 
 self, devoted herself, deprived herself of all pleas- 
 ures to be buried alive in the country, and now 
 put to toil as a clerk; and this without thanks, 
 without so much as a kindness from that ambi- 
 tious man, who cared for nothing but his business 
 and who, at the slightest sign of a revolt, at the 
 faintest desire to see life, held up to her invari- 
 ably that wretched past for which she was not 
 responsible. . . 
 
 " A past," she said, rising, " which brought me 
 that vile outrage signed by your name on the book 
 of the Grand-Club." 
 
 The bell ringing for departure cut short at the 
 right moment this admirable theatrical effect. 
 She walked away with her gliding step, which the 
 folds of her black gown followed ; sending Chris- 
 tian a salute with eye and hand and leaving him 
 motionless, stupefied, bewildered by what he had 
 heard. . . So she knew it ! . . How could she 
 know it? . . Oh ! how he blamed himself for his 
 baseness, his bragging. . . He spent the whole 
 night in writing to her, imploring pardon in varie- 
 gated French, bestrewn with the flowers of his 
 national poesy, which compared his beloved to 
 a cooing dove, and the glowing fruit of the 
 pomegranate. 
 
 Marvellous invention of Sphora, that reproach 
 about the wager ! It gave her a barrier against 
 the king, and for some time to come. Also it 
 explained her long coldness, her almost inimical
 
 214 Kings in Exile. 
 
 greetings, and the clever bargaining she intended 
 to make of her person. A man ought to bear all 
 from a woman to whom he had offered such an 
 insult ! Christian became the timid, docile servant 
 of her caprices, the acknowledged sigisbeo in the 
 sight and hearing of all Paris. 
 
 If the beauty of the lady was able to excuse 
 him in the eyes of the world, certainly the friend- 
 ship, the familiarity of the husband had nothing 
 creditable. " My friend, Christian II." said J. Tom 
 Levis, drawing up his stocky figure. Once he 
 took a fancy to receive the king at Courbevoie, for 
 the sake of causing Spricht one of those jealous 
 furies which shortened the days of the illustrious 
 dress-maker. The king went over the house and 
 park, boarded the yacht, and consented to let him- 
 self be photographed on the portico of the man- 
 sion with its master and mistress, who desired to 
 eternalize the memory of this never-to-be-forgotten 
 day. And that evening, while fireworks were go- 
 ing up in honor of his Majesty, their rockets 
 doubled by reflections in the Seine, Sephora, 
 leaning on Christian's arm, said beside the horn- 
 beams, all white with the glare of the Bengal 
 lights : 
 
 " Oh ! how I would love you if you were not a 
 king. . ." 
 
 It was the first avowal, and very cleverly made. 
 All the mistresses Christian had had up to this 
 time adored him as the sovereign, the glorious 
 possessor of that title, and a line of ancestors. 
 This one loved him for himself. " If you were
 
 The Grand Stroke. 215 
 
 not a king," she said. He was so little of a king 
 that he would willingly have cast away at her wish 
 the rag of dynastic crimson which now scarcely 
 held upon his shoulders ! 
 
 Soon after, she explained herself more clearly 
 still. He was uneasy at rinding her, one after- 
 noon, pale and weeping. 
 
 " I am afraid we shall see each other no more 
 before long," she said. 
 
 "Why so? "he asked. 
 
 " He declared to me just now that business 
 affairs in France were doing so badly that he 
 should have to close up and go elsewhere. . ." 
 
 " And take you ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I am but a clog on .his ambition. . He 
 said to me: ' Come, if you like. . .' I must follow 
 him. . . What would become of me, left here all 
 alone." 
 
 " Naughty child, am I not here ? " 
 
 She looked him fixedly in the eye. 
 
 " Yes, it is true, you love me . . . and I love 
 you. . . I couLl be yours without shame. . . But 
 no, it is impossible. . ." 
 
 " Why impossible ? " he asked, breathless at the 
 thought of that paradise. 
 
 " You are too high for Sphora Levis, Mon- 
 seigneur. . ." 
 
 And he, with adorable fatuity : 
 
 " But I will raise you to myself. . . I will make 
 you countess, duchess. That is a right that still 
 remains to me. We will find somewhere in Paris 
 a lover's nest, where I will install you in a manner
 
 216 Kings in Exile. 
 
 worthy of your rank ; where we can live alone, 
 no one but ourselves. . ." 
 
 " Oh ! that would be too beautiful. . ." 
 
 She thought a little, lifting her candid, mois- 
 tened, childlike eyes. Then she said hastily: 
 
 " No, no ... you are a king. . . Some day, in 
 the midst of our happiness you will leave me. . ." 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " But if you are recalled?" 
 
 " Where? . . To Illyria? . . That is all over, for- 
 ever done with. . . I missed last year one of those 
 occasions that never return." 
 
 "Truly?" she said, with a joy that was not 
 feigned. " Oh ! if I could only be sure of it. . ." 
 
 He had a word upon his lips that convinced her, 
 though he did not say it ; but she understood it 
 well. That evening, Tom Levis, whom Sephora 
 kept informed of everything, declared solemnly 
 that " the thing was sure ; and that father Leemans 
 had better be informed." 
 
 Seduced, like his daughter, by the imagination, 
 the contagious ardour and inventive volubility of 
 his son-in-law, Leemans had several 1 times put 
 money into the Agency. After gaining, he had 
 lost ; following in that respect the luck of cards ; 
 but when he found himself " rolled," as he ex- 
 pressed it, two or three times the old fellow took 
 a stand. He did not recriminate, nor get angry, 
 for he knew business too well and detested useless 
 words; but when his son-in-law came to talk 
 about his being a sleeping-partner in one of those 
 marvellous castles in the air which Tom's eloquence
 
 The Grand Stroke. 217 
 
 raised to the skies, the old man smiled a significant 
 "n, o, no ... that 's over," in his beard, and lowered 
 his eyelids in a way that brought down to reason 
 and to the level of things feasible Tom 's wild 
 imaginations. The latter knew that; and as he 
 wisely desired that this Illyrian affair should not 
 go out of the family, he despatched Sephora to the 
 old man, who, as he aged, had been seized by a 
 sort of affection for his only child, in whom, more- 
 over, he felt that he lived again. 
 
 Since the death of his wife, Leemans had given 
 up his antiquity shop in the Rue de la Paix, con- 
 tenting himself with the old place in the Rue 
 Eginhard. It was there that Sephora went one 
 morning, very early, to be sure of finding him ; 
 for he was seldom at home, the old fellow. Im- 
 mensely rich and retired from trade, at least in 
 appearance, he continued to ferret about Paris 
 from morning till night, attending sales, seeking 
 the odour, the friction of business, and above all 
 watching with marvellous perspicacity the crowd 
 of little dealers, traders, sellers of bric-a-brac, to 
 whom he was sleeping partner, but without owning 
 that fact, for fear his wealth should be suspected. 
 
 Sephora, from a fancy, a memory of her youth, 
 went on foot from the Rue Royale to the Rue 
 Eginhard ; following almost the same way she 
 used to take in former days when returning from 
 the shop. It was not yet eight o'clock. The air 
 was keen, carriages were few, and towards the 
 Bastille there remained of the dawn an orange 
 glow, in which the gilded genius on the column
 
 218 Kings in Exile. 
 
 seemed to bathe his wings. From this direction, 
 through all the adjacent streets came a charming 
 population of the girls of the faubourg on their 
 way to work. If Prince d'Axel had risen early 
 enough to watch for that flood, his eyes would 
 have been well content that morning. By twos, 
 by threes, chattering, alert, and walking very fast, 
 they reached the swarming work-rooms of the 
 Rues Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Vieille-du-Temple ; 
 and some these were the few stylish ones 
 the shops on the boulevards, farther away, but 
 later to open. 
 
 The animation of the scene was not that of 
 evening, when, tasks finished and their heads full 
 of the day's events, they returned to their lodg- 
 ings with racket and laughter, and sometimes with 
 envy of the luxury encountered which made the 
 garret seem higher up and the stairway more 
 gloomy than before. But now, if sleep still clung 
 to these young heads, rest had adorned them with 
 a sort of freshness, completed by the careful dress- 
 ing of their hair, the knot of ribbon fastened to 
 the braid or beneath the chin, and the brushing 
 given before daylight to the black gowns. Here 
 and there a trumpery jewel at the tip of an ear 
 rosy with cold, a shining comb, the glitter of a 
 buckle at the waist, the white edge of a newspaper 
 folded into the pocket of a waterproof. And what 
 haste ! what courage ! light mantles, thin skirts, 
 unsteady steps on heels too high and worn-down 
 sideways by much tramping. Among them all, 
 the desire, the vocation for coquetry, a way of
 
 The Grand Stroke. 219 
 
 walking with their foreheads up, their eyes for- 
 ward, with an eager curiosity for what the day 
 may bring, natures all ready for whatever turns 
 up, just as their Parisian type, which is not one, is 
 ready for all transformations. 
 
 Se"phora was by no means sentimental, she saw 
 nothing beyond the present hour and its events ; 
 nevertheless this confused pattering, this hurried 
 bustle amused her. Her youth came back to her 
 on all these pretty faces, in that early morning 
 sky, in that curious old quarter, where each street 
 bears at its corner on a poster the names of its 
 noted merchants, names that had not changed in 
 fifteen years. In passing through the black arch- 
 way which serves as an entrance to the Rue Egin- 
 hard from the Rue Saint-Paul, she encountered 
 the long robe of a rabbi on his way to the neigh- 
 bouring synagogue; two steps farther on was a 
 rat-catcher with his pole and his plank, to which 
 hung the hairy corpses, a type of old Paris no 
 longer to be seen except in this tangle of mouldy 
 buildings, where all the rats in the city have their 
 headquarters ; farther on was the driver of a 
 rented carriage, whom she had seen every morn- 
 ing of her work-girl life walking just there, with 
 his big boots quite unfit for going afoot, and 
 holding preciously in his hand, as straight as the 
 taper of a communicant, that whip which is the 
 sword of a Jehu, the insignia of his order, and 
 never leaves him. At the door of two or three 
 shops, comprising the whole street, and where the 
 shutters were just being taken down, she saw the
 
 220 Kings in Exile. 
 
 same old garments hanging in a mass, and heard 
 the same Hebraic and Teutonic gabble, so that 
 when, having crossed the low porch of the paternal 
 domicile, the little courtyard, and the four steps 
 leading up to the shop, she pulled the string 
 of the cracked bell, it seemed to her that she had 
 fifteen years less upon her shoulders fifteen 
 years, however which did not weigh upon her. 
 
 As at that earlier period, the Darnet opened the 
 door to her, a robust Auvergnat creature, whose 
 shiny, high-coloured face with dark undertones, 
 tightly knotted shawl, and black cap edged with 
 white, seemed to wear the mourning of a coal- 
 dealer's shed. Her role in the house was made 
 visible by the manner in which she opened the 
 door to Se"phora, and by the stiff smile that the 
 two women exchanged as they looked at each 
 other. 
 
 "My father is in?" 
 
 " Yes, madame. . . In the workshop. . . I will 
 call him." 
 
 " Useless. . . I know the way." 
 
 She crossed the antechamber, the salon, and 
 the garden, a black pit between great walls 
 above which trees were growing, its narrow paths 
 encumbered with innumerable old articles, 
 iron-work, lead-work, wrought-iron railings, stout 
 chains, their oxidized, blackened metal harmon- 
 izing well with the melancholy box and the 
 greenish tones of an old fountain. On one side 
 was a shed overflowing with rubbish, carcasses 
 of furniture broken for years, piles of carpeting
 
 The Grand Stroke. 221 
 
 rolled into corners; on the other a workshop 
 almost wholly of ground-glass, to escape the curi- 
 osity of the neighbouring windows. There, piled 
 to the ceiling in apparent disorder, was an assem- 
 blage of treasures, their true value known only to 
 the old man himself, lanterns, lustres, torches, 
 panoplies, incense-burners, bronzes, antique or 
 foreign. At the lower end were two blacksmiths' 
 forges, with carpenters' and locksmiths' benches. 
 Here it was that the old antiquarian dealer 
 vamped up, copied, rejuvenated his old models 
 with amazing cleverness and the patience of a Ben- 
 edictine. Formerly the racket was great from 
 morning till night when five or six workmen sur- 
 rounded the master; but now nothing more was 
 heard than the click of a hammer on fine metal and 
 the nibbling of files, while at night the gleam of a 
 single lamp showed that the trade within was not 
 yet dead. 
 
 As his daughter entered, old Leemans, in a big 
 leather apron, his shirt-sleeves pushed up on his 
 hairy, light-skinned arms as if he had been carrying 
 copper to the benches, was in the act of hammer- 
 ing out the stem of a Louis XIII. chandelier, the 
 model of which stood before him. At the sound 
 of the opening door, he raised his rubicund face 
 lost in a mass of hair and beard of a reddish white, 
 and knitted his thick, shaggy eyebrows, from 
 which his glance issued as if from the long hairy 
 fur of a griphon. 
 
 " Morning, pa. . ." said Sephora, pretending not 
 to see the annoyed gesture of the old man as he
 
 222 Kings in Exile. 
 
 tried to conceal the hammer he was wielding ; for 
 he did not like to be disturbed or seen at his 
 work. 
 
 " It is you, is it, little girl?" 
 
 He rubbed his old muzzle to her delicate 
 cheek. 
 
 "What has happened to you?.." he asked, 
 pushing her into the garden. " Why did you get 
 up so early?" 
 
 " I have something very important to tell you." 
 
 " Come ! " 
 
 And he pulled her towards the house. 
 
 " Oh ! but you know, I don't want to have the 
 Darnet there . . ." 
 
 " Well, well . . ." said the old man, laughing in 
 his bristles ; and going in, he called to the woman 
 who was polishing a Venetian mirror : 
 
 " Darnet, you will go in the garden and see if 
 I am there." 
 
 And the tone in which this was said proved that 
 the old pacha had not yet abdicated into the hands 
 of his favourite slave. They remained, father and 
 daughter, alone in the neat bourgeois little salon, 
 the furniture of which, covered with white cloths, 
 and the little bits of woollen carpet before each 
 chair, contrasted with the chaos of dusty treasures 
 in the shed and shop. Like those fine cooks who 
 will eat none but the simplest dishes, Pere Lee- 
 mans, so expert and knowing in things of art, did 
 not possess in his own house a single specimen of 
 them. In that he showed the sort of merchant 
 that he was ; appraising, trading, exchanging, with-
 
 The Grand Stroke. 223 
 
 out feeling or regret ; unlike those artists in bric- 
 a-brac who before they part with a rare article 
 inquire anxiously how the amateur intends to sur- 
 round it and show its merits. There was nothing 
 on Pere Leemans' walls but his own full length 
 portrait by Wattelet, representing him at the forge 
 in the midst of his iron-work. It was he him- 
 self, not so white-haired, but quite unchanged ; 
 lean, bent, always the same dog-man head, with its 
 straight, reddish-white beard and long hair forming 
 a kind of helmet, and showing little more of the 
 face than a nose reddened by chronic inflamma- 
 tion, which gave to this sober tea-drinker the look 
 of a drunkard. This picture was the sole char- 
 acteristic thing in the room, together with a church 
 prayer-book, lying open and leaves down, on the 
 mantel-shelf. Leemans owed several good sales to 
 that book. It distinguished him from his rivals ; 
 from that old miscreant Schwalbach, from Mother 
 Esau and others with their Ghetto origin, whereas 
 he was, he, a Christian, married for love to a Jewess 
 who became a Christian and even a Catholic. This 
 served him well with his upper-class customers ; 
 he went to mass in the oratory of those ladies, in 
 that of the Comtesse Malet, for instance, and the 
 elder of the two Sismondos. On Sundays he 
 appeared at Saint-Thomas d'Aquin and at Sainte- 
 Clotilde, where his best clients went; while through 
 his wife he kept on the right side of the great Jew- 
 ish houses. As he grew older this religious sham 
 became a fixed habit, and often in the morning, on 
 starting out for his day's business, he would enter
 
 224 Kings in Exile. 
 
 St. Paul's " to get," as he said quite seriously, " a 
 little scrap of mass," having remarked that he 
 always succeeded better in business on those 
 days. 
 
 " Well? . ." he said, looking slyly at his 
 daughter. 
 
 " A great affair, pa. . ." 
 
 She took from her bag a bundle of drafts and 
 notes bearing Christian's signature. 
 
 " These have got to be cashed. . . Will you 
 do it?" 
 
 At the mere sight of that signature the old fel- 
 low made a grimace which puckered his whole 
 face and made it disappear into his beard with the 
 motion of a hedgehog at bay. 
 
 " Illyrian paper ! . . Thank you, I know it. . . 
 Your husband must be a fool to send you here on 
 such an errand. . . Come now, really, have you got 
 to that?" 
 
 Without being discomfited by this reception, 
 which, indeed, she expected, 
 
 " Listen . . ." she said, and in her composed way 
 she related the affair, the Grand Stroke, in de- 
 tail, giving proofs to support it, a copy of the 
 " Quernaro " in which the session of the Diet was 
 reported, and letters from Lebeau keeping them 
 informed of the situation . . . the king, madly in 
 love, bent on establishing his happiness. . . A 
 superb mansion, Avenue de Messine, servants, 
 equipages, he wanted them all for the lady, and 
 was ready to sign as many bills as they chose, at 
 any interest. . . Leemans now began to prick up
 
 The Grand Stroke. 225 
 
 his two ears, made objections, ferreting into all the 
 corners of the affair so knowingly contrived. 
 
 " How long, the notes? " 
 
 " Three months." 
 
 " Then in three months? . ." 
 
 She made the gesture of tightening a slip noose, 
 and her mouth, drawing in, thinned her calm lips. 
 
 "And the interest?" 
 
 " Whatever you like. . . The heavier the notes, 
 the better for us. . . He must have no other 
 resource than to sign the renunciation." 
 
 "And once signed? . ." 
 
 " That concerns the woman. . . She has before 
 her a man with two hundred millions to nibble at." 
 
 " And suppose she keeps it all for herself? . . 
 We ought to be devilishly sure of that woman. . ." 
 
 " We are sure. . ." 
 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 " You don't know her," said Sephora, without 
 blinking, putting the papers back in her little 
 bag. 
 
 " Let those be," said the old man, hastily. . . 
 " It takes a lot of money, you know. . . A large 
 investment. . . I '11 talk it over with Pichery." 
 
 " Take care, papa. . . We must n't let too 
 many on to it. . . There 's already ourselves, 
 Lebeau, and now you. . . If you go and let in 
 others ..." 
 
 "Only Pichery. . . You must see that I alone 
 could n't do it. . . It is a great deal of money . . . 
 great deal of money." 
 
 She answered coldly : 
 15
 
 226 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Oh ! we shall want more than this." 
 
 Silence. The old man reflected, sheltering his 
 thought behind his bristles. 
 
 " Well, come . . ." he said at last. " I '11 do the 
 thing ; but on one condition. That house on the 
 Avenue de Messine. . . It must be furnished of 
 course stylishly. . . Well, I am to furnish the 
 bric-a-brac. . ." 
 
 Into even his usurious traffic the second-hand 
 dealer must put his paw. Sephora's thirty-two 
 teeth burst into a laugh. 
 
 " Oh ! the old greedy ! the old greedy ! " she 
 cried, using a word that came to her suddenly in 
 that second-hand den, contrasting absurdly with 
 her air of distinction and her elegant attire. 
 "Come, that 's agreed to, pa. . . You shall furnish 
 the bric-a-brac . . . only, nothing from mamma's 
 collection, mind." 
 
 Under that humbugging title, "Mme. Leemans' 
 Collection," the old dealer had grouped a mass of 
 damaged, unsalable articles, which, thanks to this 
 sentimental title, he got rid of magnificently ; de- 
 taching from the precious lot, from the relics of 
 his dear deceased, only such things as were paid 
 for by their weight in gold. 
 
 " You understand me, old man ... no shams, 
 no rubbish. . . The lady knows what's what." 
 
 "You think so. . . Does she know? . ." said 
 the old dog in his beard. 
 
 " As well as you or I, I tell you." 
 
 " But just tell me. . ." 
 
 He put his muzzle to her dainty face; and on
 
 The Grand Stroke. 227 
 
 both of them the spirit of low traffic was written, 
 on the old parchment and the downy rose-leaf. 
 
 " Just tell me who she is, that woman. . . You 
 ought to tell me, now I am in it." 
 
 " She is . . ." 
 
 Se"phora stopped a moment to tie the broad 
 strings of her bonnet beneath the soft oval of her 
 face, casting into a mirror, as she did so, the satis- 
 fied look of a pretty woman, in which a certain 
 new pride appeared to mingle. 
 
 " She is the Comtesse de Spalato," she said 
 gravely.
 
 228 Kings in Exile. 
 
 IX. 
 
 AT THE ACADEMY. 
 
 THE classic palace which sleeps under the lead 
 of its cupola, at the end of the Pont des Arts and 
 the beginning of studious Paris, had, on this par- 
 ticular morning, an unusual air of life, and seemed 
 to be advancing to the line of the quay. In spite 
 of the rain, a pattering June rain, that came in 
 showers, a crowd was collecting at the steps of the 
 great entrance, and extending, like the queue at a 
 theatre, along the railings, the walls, and even to 
 the arches of the Rue du Seine ; a gloved crowd, 
 well-dressed, well-behaved, waiting patiently, know- 
 ing that it was certain of admittance in virtue of 
 little cards of different colours, brightened by the 
 shower, with which all were supplied. Carriages 
 were standing single file along the deserted Quai 
 de la Monnaie, the most luxurious carriages that 
 Paris contained, with coquettish or splendid liv- 
 eries, democratically sheltered by umbrellas and 
 water-proofs, showing, nevertheless, clubbed wigs 
 and gold lace, and on their panels the armorial 
 bearings and greatest blazons of France and Eu- 
 rope, even royal arms, like enlarged plates of a 
 Pierre d'Hozier, moving in line along the Seine. 
 When a ray escaped, a ray of that Parisian sunlight
 
 At the Academy. 229 
 
 which has the grace of a smile on a grave face, 
 everything sparkled with wet reflections, the har- 
 nesses, the helmets of the guards, the arch of the 
 dome, the cast-iron lions at the entrance, usually 
 dusty and shabby, but now of a rain-washed, beau- 
 tiful black. 
 
 At long intervals, on days of solemn reception, 
 the old Institute has these sudden and interesting 
 wakings-up of an afternoon. But this morning 
 the affair was not a reception. The season was 
 far too much advanced ; the new members, co- 
 quettish as comedians, would never have consented 
 to make their first appearance after the " Prix de 
 Paris " had been competed for, the Salon closed, 
 and trunks packed ready for departure. It was 
 simply a distribution of Academic prizes, a cere- 
 mony without much interest, which usually attracts 
 none but the families of the prize-winners. The 
 circumstance which now brought this exceptional 
 influx, this aristocratic crowd, to the doors of the 
 Institute was the fact that among the crowned 
 works was the " Memorial of the Siege of Ragusa " 
 by Prince Herbert de Rosen ; and the monarchical 
 coterie had profited by that event to organize, 
 under the protection of the police, a demonstration 
 against the government. 
 
 By an extraordinary chance, or by the act of one 
 of those intrigues which mysteriously work like 
 moles in official or academic soil, the Secretary 
 being ill, the report upon the crowned works was 
 to be read by the noble Due de Fitz-Roy, and it 
 was known that he, legitimist of the whitest and
 
 230 Kings in Exile. 
 
 most anaemic blood, would bring out with empha- 
 sis the ardent passages in Herbert's book, that 
 noble historical manifesto around which the devo- 
 tion and the fervour of the party had gathered. 
 In short, it was one of those malicious protestations 
 which the Academy occasionally ventured upon 
 even under the second Empire, and which the 
 good-natured indulgence of the Republic per- 
 mitted. 
 
 Mid-day. The twelve strokes ringing from the 
 old clock cause a stir and a murmur among the 
 crowd. The doors are opened. Those on foot 
 advance slowly, methodically, toward the en- 
 trances on the square and on the Rue Mazarine; 
 while the emblazoned carriages, turning into the 
 courtyard, deposit their masters, the bearers of 
 privileged tickets, beneath the portico, where, 
 among the ushers with their gold chains, bustled 
 the affable head of the secretariat, in silver lace, 
 smiling and polite as the majordomo of the Palace 
 of the Sleeping Beauty when, after a nap of a 
 hundred years, the princess awakes on her state 
 bed. Doors fly open, the sleepy footmen, in long 
 surtouts, spring from their seats; bows, long- 
 trained curtseys, smiles, whispers among the ha- 
 bituh y are exchanged as the arrivals pass with a 
 sound of rustling silks along the carpeted passage 
 leading to the reserved boxes, or through the nar- 
 row corridor sloping downward as if sunken by 
 the steps of centuries, which leads to the interior 
 of the palace. 
 
 The hall, an amphitheatre, soon filled up on the
 
 At the Academy. 231 
 
 sides reserved for the general public. The benches 
 were occupied one after another, and behind the 
 last row were persons standing, their silhouettes 
 denned against the glass of the windows. Not a 
 place empty. A swelling sea of heads as in the 
 half-light of a church, or a cold museum, made 
 colder by the polished yellow stucco of the walls 
 and the marble of the great meditative statues, 
 Descartes, Bossuet, Massillon, all the glory of the 
 great century congealed in one motionless attitude. 
 
 Facing the crowded semicircle were a few un- 
 occupied benches, and a small green table with 
 the traditional glass of water, awaiting the Acad- 
 emy and its committee, who would enter presently 
 through those tall doors surmounted by a gilded 
 and tomblike inscription : LETTERS, SCIENCES, 
 ARTS. All is ancient, cold, meagre ; contrasting 
 with the springlike toilets with which the hall is 
 actually blooming, light, delicate materials, fluffy 
 grays, auroral pinks, made in the new and rather 
 tight fashion of the day, and sparkling with jet 
 and steel; airy hats and bonnets, a medley of 
 mimosa and lace with flashes of tropic birds amid 
 knots of velvet and sun-coloured straw; and 
 around and above it all the regular, continuous 
 beat of those large fans, the scent of which made 
 the big eye of the great Meaux eagle wink. For 
 you know very well it is no reason, because you 
 belong to old France, that you should smell mil- 
 dewed and dress like a fright. 
 
 All that Paris could show of chic, well-born, 
 and "right-thinking" had rendezvoused here;
 
 232 Kings in Exile. 
 
 smiling and recognizing one another with little 
 masonic signs, the flower of the clubs, the cream 
 of the Faubourg, a society that never exhibits 
 itself, takes no part in anything, is never seen at 
 first representations, and only on certain days at 
 the Opera or the Conservatoire, a discreet and 
 muffled society; closing its salons with many 
 curtains from the noise and light of the street; 
 giving no occasion to be talked about, except now 
 and then by a death, a suit for separation, or an 
 eccentric adventure of one of its members, a hero 
 of the " Persil " or the Gomme. Among this 
 choice society were a few Illyrian nobles, who had 
 followed their princes into exile, splendid types 
 of men and women, a little too accentuated, too 
 exotic for this delicately refined company. And 
 also, grouped at certain very apparent points, were 
 the academic circles which prepare, beforehand, 
 the elections and direct the votes, the social cultiva- 
 tion of whom is worth more to a candidate than 
 his weight in genius. Illustrious losers in the 
 Empire lottery were also here, worming themselves 
 in among the " old party," whose sarcasms on their 
 parvenu condition they have long since exhausted ; 
 and even, select as the assembly may be, a few 
 questionables, celebrated for monarchical ties, have 
 managed to slip in, in simple toilets, with two or 
 three actresses then in vogue, faces known to all 
 Paris, visions the more commonplace and wearily 
 besetting because other women in all societies per- 
 sist in copying them. Besides these, journalists, 
 reporters of foreign newspapers, armed with blot-
 
 At the Academy. 233 
 
 ters, perfected pencil-cases, tools of their trade, as 
 if for a journey to Central Africa. 
 
 Lower down, in a little circle reserved at the foot 
 of the benches, was seen the Princesse Colette de 
 Rosen, wife of the laureate, delicious in a costume 
 of greenish blue, Indian cashmere, and moire 
 antique, wearing a triumphant, beaming look be- 
 neath the silky fluff of her flaxen hair. Near her 
 was a stout man with a common face, old Sauva- 
 don, very proud of accompanying his niece; but 
 having, in his ignorant zeal and his desire to do 
 honour to the ceremony, put himself into an even- 
 ing suit, he became extremely unhappy. Stiff in 
 his white cravat as if in the stocks, he watched the 
 men who entered, hoping to find a mate to his 
 dress-coat. Of course, not one. 
 
 From this flutter of colour and animated figures 
 came a murmur of voices, rhythmed, but distinct 
 and loud, which seemed to establish a magnetic 
 current from one end of the hall to the other. 
 The slightest laugh spread itself, was communi- 
 cated ; the slightest sign, the mute gesture of two 
 parted hands preparing to applaud was perceivable 
 from top to- bottom of the benches. It was emotion 
 and good-will, all prepared and ready for a first 
 representation of which the success was certain ; 
 and when, from time to time, the celebrities en- 
 tered and took their seats, the quivering excite- 
 ment of the crowded assembly turned towards 
 them, merely restraining as they passed its curious 
 or admiring murmurs. 
 
 Do you see, high up, above the Sully, the two
 
 234 Kings in Exile. 
 
 women who have just entered, accompanied by a 
 little boy, who fill the whole front of their box ? 
 They are the Queens of Illyria and Palermo ; two 
 cousins, their figures erect and proud, dressed in 
 the same mauve faille, with the same rare em- 
 broideries, and on the golden hair of one and the 
 dark braids of the other the same caress of sweep- 
 ing feathers around their hats, women of noble 
 types completely different. Frederica is paler, the 
 gentleness of her smile is saddened by an ageing 
 look; and the face of her darker cousin is also 
 stamped with the distresses, the anxieties of exile. 
 Between them the little Comte de Zara shakes the 
 blond curls of his hair, pushed back upon a pretty 
 head that is growing daily more erect, more vigor- 
 ous, while the glance of the eyes and the mouth 
 are gaining assurance. True seedling of kingship 
 beginning to bloom. 
 
 The old Due de Rosen stands at the back of the 
 box with another personage, not Christian II., 
 who avoids an ovation, but a tall fellow with a 
 bushy mane, an unknown man, whose name will 
 not be pronounced throughout this ceremony al- 
 though it ought to be on every lip. It is in his 
 honour that this fete takes place ; it is he who has 
 given cause for this glorious requiem of monarchy 
 in presence of the last gentlemen of France and of 
 the royal families exiled in Paris ; for they are all 
 there, those exiles, those dethroned ones, come to 
 do honour to their cousin Christian ; and it has not 
 been a small matter to place those crowns in their 
 due rank. Nowhere are questions of precedence
 
 At the Academy. 235 
 
 more difficult to solve than in exile, where vanities 
 are embittered, and susceptibilities may be enven- 
 omed into actual wounds. 
 
 In the box Descartes all the boxes bear the 
 names of the statues beneath them the king of 
 Westphalia maintains a haughty attitude, which 
 renders the more observable the fixity of his eyes, 
 eyes which look, but do not see. His constant 
 effort is to hide 'his irremediable blindness ; and 
 his daughter aids him in this with her devotion, 
 that tall, slender creature, whose head seems ever 
 bending beneath the weight of its golden hair, the 
 colour of which she so carefully conceals from her 
 father. The blind king likes brunettes only. " If 
 you had been a blonde," he says sometimes, strok- 
 ing his daughter's hair, " I think I should have loved 
 you less." A remarkable couple, walking their road 
 of exile with the dignity, the lofty calmness of a 
 promenade in a royal park. When Queen Frede- 
 rica in her hours of depression thought of that 
 helpless infirmity guided by that sweet innocence, 
 she was comforted and strengthened by the spell, 
 so pure, that issued from them. 
 
 Farther on, behold, in a turban of dazzling satin, 
 the solid Queen of Galicia, who resembles, with her 
 massive cheeks and high colour, a blood-orange 
 in its coarse skin. She enters with a great stir 
 about her, puffs, fans herself, laughs and talks with 
 a woman, still young, who wears a white mantilla 
 on her head, and has a sad, kind countenance, 
 furrowed by the track of tears from the rather 
 reddened eyes to the pallid mouth. This is the
 
 236 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Duchess of Palma. an excellent creature, little 
 fitted to bear the shocks and terrors to which the 
 adventurous highwayman of a sovereign to whom 
 her life is bound condemns her. He is there, he 
 too, the tall duke, sticking familiarly between the 
 two women his shiny black beard and his insolent 
 face, bronzed by his last expedition, as costly and 
 disastrous as those that preceded it. He has played 
 at being king, had a Court, fetes, women, Te Deums, 
 and paths strewn with flowers. He has caracoled, 
 decreed, danced, made ink and powder speak, shed 
 blood, sown hatreds. And the battle lost, the 
 sauve-qui-pent cried out by himself, he returns to 
 Paris to seek for new recruits to risk, more millions 
 to melt, wearing always a garb of travel and adven- 
 ture, a frock-coat tight to the figure, buttoned and 
 frogged in a way that makes him look like a vaga- 
 bond. A noisy youth clusters in this box, talking 
 loud with the freedom of the Court of Queen 
 Pomar6; and the national language, rough and 
 hoarse, bounds in Biscayan missiles from one to 
 another, accompanied with familiarities of speech, 
 the privacies of which are heard throughout the 
 hall. 
 
 Singular thing ! on a day when all the good 
 places are so hard to obtain that princes of the 
 blood are lost in the amphitheatre, a small box, 
 Bossuet's box, stands empty. Every one is asking 
 who can be coming there, what great dignitary, 
 what sovereign passing through Paris is so late in 
 arriving that the session is now to begin without 
 him. The old clock strikes the hour: One. A
 
 At the Academy. 237 
 
 curt voice calls without : " Present, arms ! " and 
 during the automatic rattle of the handled muskets, 
 through the tall doors, both wide open, LETTERS, 
 SCIENCES, and ARTS make their appearance. 
 
 What is most remarkable among these illustrious 
 beings, all alert and lively, preserved, as one might 
 say, by the principle, the will of tradition, is 
 that the older ones affect a juvenile bearing, a 
 frisky dash, whereas the younger ones endeavour 
 to appear more grave and solemn according as 
 they have fewer gray hairs upon their head. Their 
 general aspect lacks grandeur, owing perhaps to 
 our modern curtailment of locks and the black 
 cloth of the frock-coat. The wigs of Boileau and 
 of Racan (whose greyhound bitch ate up his 
 speech) must have had more authority, rising as 
 they did more worthily in keeping with the cupola. 
 In the matter of picturesqueness, however, two or 
 three frock-coats tinged with green installed them- 
 selves in the centre behind the table and the glass 
 of eau sucrte ; and it was one of these who pro- 
 nounced the hallowed words : " The session is 
 opened." But in vain does he say so; nobody 
 believes it; he does not believe it himself. He 
 knows very well that the true session is not for 
 the reception of this report on the Montyon prize, 
 which one of the most fluent of the Academy 
 proceeds to detail and modulate in fine rhythmic 
 accents. 
 
 Truly, a model of academic speech, written in 
 academic style, with " so-to-speaks " and " per- 
 hapses " that seem to make thought return upon
 
 238 Kings in Exile. 
 
 its steps like a pious woman forgetting her sins 
 at confession ; a style adorned with arabesques, 
 paraphrases, fine flourishes of a masterly pen at 
 writing running among the sentences to mask and 
 fill out the void, a style, in short, that ought to 
 be learned, for every one has to put it on with the 
 frock-coat webbed with green. Under all other 
 circumstances, the usual audience of this hall 
 would have been ecstatic over this homily; you 
 would have seen it pawing and neighing with 
 delight at the tortuous little phrases of which it 
 could guess the outcome. But to-day there is 
 haste to get through with such speeches ; the peo- 
 ple now assembled are not here for a literary fete. 
 It was worth seeing with what an air of contemp- 
 tuous ennui the aristocratic company listened to 
 the recital of humble devotions, fidelity under 
 all tests, obscure, jogging, bent-in-two existences, 
 as they passed before them in that finical superan- 
 nuated phraseology which resembled the narrow, 
 fireless, brick-paved passages of the provinces 
 where those lives evolved themselves. Plebeian 
 names, ragged cassocks, old blue smocks faded by 
 sun and water, scenes in distant villages, where for 
 an instant the pointed clock-tower and the walls of 
 hovels plastered with cow-dung are visible all of 
 which seems abashed and ill at ease when evoked 
 in the midst of this fine company, beneath the cold 
 light of an inconsiderate Academy as in the show 
 window of a photographer. The noble society is 
 surprised that there are so many worthy persons 
 among the populace. . . What, more ! . . Still
 
 At the Academy. 239 
 
 more? . . Will they never have done suffering, 
 devoting their lives, being heroic? . . So say the 
 clubs impatiently. Colette de Rosen smells her 
 salts; all these old people, these humble people 
 they are talking about, have, she thinks, " the 
 poor smell." Ennui is on all foreheads, it oozes 
 from the stuccoes of the wall. The speaker begins 
 to understand that he is boring his audience, and 
 he hurries to an end. 
 
 Ah ! poor Marie Chalaye of Amberieux-les- 
 Combes, you whom the people of your region call 
 the Saint, who for fifty years have taken care of 
 your old paralytic aunt, and washed, put to bed, 
 and blown the noses of eighteen little cousins; 
 and you, most worthy Abbe Bourrillon, minister 
 of Saint-Maximin-le-Haut, you who go in fiendish 
 weather to carry succour and consolation to the 
 cheese-makers on the mountain, you little think 
 that the Institute of France, after crowning your 
 deeds with public recompense, will be ashamed 
 of you, and that your names will be hurried over 
 and stuttered and scarcely distinct in the inatten 
 tive buzz of impatient or satirical conversations ! 
 The end of the speech was a complete rout. As 
 if to run faster, the fugitive cast away haversack 
 and weapons ; deeds of heroism, angelic abnega- 
 tions are abandoned in a ditch without the least 
 remorse, for the speaker knows that the news- 
 papers of the next day will report his speech in 
 full, and not one of those pretty sentences, as 
 twisted as curlpapers, will be lost. 
 
 At last, the end. A few " bravos " and com-
 
 240 Kings in Exile. 
 
 forted " Ahs ! " The unfortunate speaker sits 
 down, mops himself, receives the congratulations 
 of two or three of his associates last vestals of 
 the academic style. Then follows five minutes' 
 intermission, and a general rustling through the 
 hall, which stretches and readjusts itself. 
 
 Suddenly deep silence. Another green coat 
 rises. 
 
 It is the noble Fitz-Roy. Every one has per- 
 mission to admire, while he arranges his papers 
 on the cloth of the little table. Thin, bent, debili- 
 tated, narrow-shouldered, gesture cramped by 
 arms too long and all elbows, he is fifty years old, 
 but he looks seventy. On this worn-out, ill-built 
 body is a very small head with distorted features 
 of a boiled pallor, between scanty whiskers and a 
 few tufts of hair. Do you remember in " Lucrezia 
 Borgia " that Montefeltro who drank the poison 
 of Pope Alexander, and whom we see passing 
 across the stage, plucked, broken, shivering, 
 ashamed of living? Well, the noble Fitz-Roy 
 might figure as that personage. Not that he ever 
 drank anything, poor man, Borgia poison or any- 
 thing else ; but he is the heir of a horribly ancient 
 family, which never crosses itself in its descen- 
 dants ; the scion of a plant that has so lost its sap 
 that there is no longer any use in misallying it. 
 Uncle Sauvadon thinks him divine. " Such a fine 
 name, monsieur ! . ." Women think him distin- 
 guished : a Fitz-Roy ! . . 
 
 It is this privilege of name, this long genealogy 
 (in which fools and knaves have never been lack-
 
 At the Academy. 241 
 
 ing), that has won him his entrance to the Academy 
 far more than his "Historical Studies," a mere com- 
 pilation, the first volume of which alone showed its 
 value. It is true that another man wrote it for 
 him ; and if the noble Fitz-Roy had perceived up 
 there, in Queen Frederica's box, the luminous and 
 solid head from which his best work issued, per- 
 haps he would not have gathered up in his hand 
 the sheets of his speech with that air of supreme 
 and disdainful surliness, or begun his lecture with a 
 haughty circular glance that surveyed all and saw 
 nothing. To begin with, he adroitly and airily 
 clears away the petty works the Academy had just 
 crowned ; and to mark how completely such affairs 
 are Ipeneath him, he says little, and mutilates inten- 
 tionally the names and titles of the books. This 
 amuses the audience. . . He comes at last to the 
 " Roblot prize," given to the finest historical work 
 published during the five preceding years. " This 
 prize, gentlemen, as you know, has been awarded 
 to Prince Herbert de Rosen for his magnificent 
 ' Memorial of the Siege of Ragusa. . .'" A formi- 
 dable roar of applause saluted these simple words, 
 uttered in a resounding voice with the gesture of a 
 sower. The noble Fitz-Roy allowed this burst of 
 enthusiasm to pass off; then, using an effect of 
 contrast, artless but sure, he resumed, gently, com- 
 posedly : " Gentlemen ..." Then he stopped, 
 looked around upon that crowd which waited, 
 breathless, so wholly his that he held it as it were, 
 in his hand. He seemed to be saying, " Hein ! if I 
 said no more, how tricked you would be ! " And 
 
 16
 
 242 Kings in Exile. 
 
 it is he, he, who is tricked, for when he makes 
 ready to continue, not a person listens to him. 
 
 A door has slammed above, in the box left 
 empty until now. A woman has entered; she 
 takes her seat without embarrassment, but in so 
 doing forces herself instantly on the attention of 
 every one. The dark costume, cut by the great 
 maker, trimmed with embroidered peacock's-eyes, 
 the hat with a fall of gold-edged lace, set off deli- 
 ciously that supple figure and the oval face, white 
 and rosy, of an Esther sure of her Ahasuerus. The 
 name is muttered. All Paris knows her ; for the 
 last three months nothing has been talked of but 
 her loves and her luxury. Her house in the 
 Avenue de Messine recalls the splendours of the 
 fine days of the second Empire^ The newspapers 
 have given the details of this fashionable scandal, 
 the height of the stables, the cost of the pictures in 
 the dining-room, the number of equipages, the dis- 
 appearance of the husband, who, more virtuous than 
 another celebrated Menelaus, would not live on his 
 dishonour, but had gone to sulk in foreign parts, a 
 victim to the great century. Nothing was lacking 
 to these chronicles but the name of the purchaser, 
 which was left in blank. At the theatres .the lady 
 was always alone in the front of her box, escorted 
 by a pair of pointed moustaches, barely visible in 
 the shadow. At the races, in the Bois, still alone, 
 the empty place beside her occupied by an 
 enormous bouquet; while on the panels of her 
 carriage around a mysterious blazon, was the 
 silly device, mon droit, mon roy, with which her
 
 At the Academy. 243 
 
 lover had endowed her together with the title of 
 countess. . . 
 
 On this occasion, the favourite was proclaimed. 
 To place her there, on such a day, in these seats of 
 honour reserved for Majesties, giving her for escort 
 Wattelet, Christian's henchman, and the Prince 
 d'Axel, always ready when a compromising folly 
 was to be committed, meant acknowledging her be- 
 fore the eyes of all and stamping her with the arms 
 of Illyria. And yet her presence excited no out- 
 raged feeling. All sorts of immunities are granted 
 to kings ; their pleasures are as sacred as their per- 
 sons ; especially in the aristocratic world of Old 
 France, where the tradition of Louis XIV. 's and 
 Louis XV. 's mistresses, driving in the Queen's car- 
 riage and supplanting her in the great hunts, is still 
 preserved. A few little sham prudes like Colette 
 de Rosen took virtuous airs and wondered that the 
 Institute should admit such creatures ; but you 
 may be sure that each of these ladies had a pretty 
 little ouistiti at home that was dying of consump- 
 tion. In point of fact, the impression made was 
 excellent. The clubs said : " Very chic." The 
 journalists : " That 's pluck ! . ." They all smiled 
 benevolently ; and the immortals themselves turned 
 their opera-glasses complacently on the fascinating 
 young woman, who sat unaffectedly at the edge of 
 her box, merely showing in her velvet eyes that 
 resolute fixity assumed by women when besieged 
 by the attention of opera-glasses. 
 
 People turned with curiosity toward the Queen 
 of Illyria to see how she took the thing. Oh !
 
 244 Kings in Exile. 
 
 extremely well. Not a feature of her face, not a 
 feather in her bonnet quivered. Never mingling 
 in current amusements, Frederica did not, of course, 
 know this woman ; she had never seen her, and 
 merely looked at her, at first, as one toilet looks 
 at another. "Who is she?" she asked of the 
 Queen of Palermo, who hastened to answer : " I 
 don't know. . ." But in the next box a name 
 loudly uttered and repeated struck her to the 
 heart : " Spalato . . . Comtesse de Spalato." 
 
 For some months, that name of Spalato had 
 haunted her like an evil dream. She knew it was 
 borne by the new mistress of her husband, who 
 remembered he was king only to decorate with one 
 of the noblest titles of his absent country the 
 creature of his pleasure. That thought had ren- 
 dered this infidelity more bitter to her than others. 
 But this present act overflowed the cup. There, 
 in her presence and that of the royal heir, that 
 woman installed in the rank of a queen what out- 
 rage ! Almost without being conscious of it, the 
 grave and intelligent beauty of the woman made 
 Frederica feel the gross insult more keenly. 
 Defiance was clear in those fine eyes, the brow was 
 insolent in its composure, the brilliancy of those 
 lips braved her. . . A thousand thoughts jostled 
 in her brain . . . their great poverty . . . her daily 
 humiliations . . . yesterday that carriage-builder 
 who shouted beneath her windows, and whom 
 Rosen had paid for she had had to come to 
 that. . . Where did Christian get the money that 
 he gave to this woman ? . . Ever since the affair of
 
 At the Academy. 245 
 
 the false jewels she knew of what he was capable; 
 and something told her that this Spalato would 
 lead to the dishonour of the king, and of his race. 
 For an instant, a second, through that intense 
 nature there passed the temptation to rise, to leave 
 the hall, leading her child by the hand, to escape 
 openly from a neighbourhood so infamous, a 
 rivalry so degrading. But she remembered she 
 was queen, wife and daughter of kings, that Zara 
 would be a king also ; and she would not give their 
 enemies the joy of such a scandal. A dignity, 
 higher than her dignity of womanhood, a dignity 
 which she had made the proud, despairing rule of 
 her life, maintained her in her rank here in public 
 as in the secrecy of her desolated home. O cruel 
 fate of queens who are so envied ! The effort that 
 she made was so violent that the tears started to 
 her eyes as the still water of a pond leaps under 
 the blow of an oar. Quickly, that no one may 
 see them, she seizes her opera-glass and looks 
 obstinately, fixedly, beyond the misty mirrors to 
 that gilded and reposeful inscription : LETTERS, 
 SCIENCES, ARTS, iridescent through her tears 
 above the head of the orator. 
 
 The noble Fitz-Roy is continuing his speech. 
 It is in a style as gray as a prison coat that 
 pompous eulogy of the " Memorial," of the elo- 
 quent and forceful historical volume written by 
 Prince Herbert de Rosen " who wields a pen as he 
 does a sword." It is a eulogy above all of the 
 hero who inspired that Memorial, " that chivalrous 
 Christian II. in whom were centred all the grace,
 
 246 Kings in Exile. 
 
 nobility, strength, seduction, and fine temper 
 which we are ever certain to find on the steps of 
 a throne." [Applause, and little cries of ecstasy.] 
 Evidently a good audience, sensible, alert, seizing 
 all illusions on the fly, even the most feeling, and 
 comprehending them. . . Sometimes, in the midst 
 of those mealy sentences, a note would ring true 
 and convincing, a passage quoted from the " Me- 
 morial," for which the queen had furnished all 
 the documents, substituting everywhere the king's 
 name for hers, annihilating herself to the profit 
 of Christian II. .. O God of justice ! this was his 
 return ! . . The crowd cheered loudly at those 
 quoted words of haughty, careless courage, of acts 
 heroic, simply performed, told by the writer in 
 graphic prose, in which they stood revealed like 
 epic tales of ancient times ; and, i' faith ! before 
 the enthusiastic greeting given to these quotations, 
 the noble Fitz-Roy, who is no fool, renounced his 
 own literature, and contented himself with reading 
 aloud the finest pages of the book. 
 
 In that narrow classic building 'twas like a 
 lifting, vivifying wing ; the very walls seemed to 
 widen, and through the rising cupola a fresh breeze 
 entered from an outer world. People drew breath ; 
 fans no longer beat a rhythmic time to indifferent 
 attention. No, the whole audience are standing, 
 all heads turned to Frederica's box ; they acclaim, 
 they salute the vanquished but glorious monarchy 
 in the wife and son of Christian II., the last king, 
 the last knight. And little Zara, whom the noise, 
 the bravos intoxicated, as they do all children,
 
 At the Academy. 247 
 
 applauded naively with his little gloved hands, 
 tossing his golden curls, while the queen, retreat- 
 ing slightly backward, affected herself by this con- 
 tagious enthusiasm, tasted, for a minute, the joy, 
 the illusion that it gave her. Thus it was that she 
 could still surround with a halo that puppet of a 
 king behind whom she effaced herself, and enrich 
 with a fresh glory the Illyrian crown that her son 
 would one day wear, a glory that no one could 
 ever traffic with. When that day came, what of 
 exile, treachery, poverty? and even now these 
 dazzling moments drown all present shadow. . . 
 Suddenly she turned, thinking to pay the homage 
 of her joy to him who, there, behind her, his head 
 against the wall, his eyes lost in the cupola, 
 listened to those magic phrases in pure forget- 
 fulness that they came from him ; assisting at this 
 triumph without regret, without bitterness, without 
 for one instant saying to himself that all this fame 
 was stolen from him. Like the monks of the mid- 
 dle ages growing old anonymously in the building 
 of cathedrals, the weaver's son was content to have 
 done the work, to see it rise, solid, in the sun- 
 shine. And for that abnegation, that aloofness of 
 his seer's smile, for that which she felt in him was 
 like unto herself, the queen stretched out her hand 
 to him with a soft " Thank you . . . thank you. . ." 
 Rosen, who stood nearest to her, thought she was 
 congratulating him on the success of his son. He 
 caught the grateful gesture as it passed him and 
 rubbed his rough moustache on her glove ; and 
 the two victims, happy in the triumph, were re-
 
 248 Kings in Exile. 
 
 duced to exchange at a distance in a look the 
 unuttered thoughts that unite two souls in bonds 
 mysterious and durable. 
 
 'T is over. The session ends. The noble Fitz- 
 Roy, applauded, complimented, disappears, as if 
 through a trap-door ; the LETTERS, SCIENCES, and 
 ARTS follow him, leaving the platform empty. By 
 all the issues the crowd makes haste to spread 
 about, as at the close of an assembly or the opera, 
 those rumours which, on the following day are to 
 form the opinion of all Paris. Among the worthy 
 people thus departing, some, pursuing their retro- 
 grade dreaming, might well expect to find their 
 sedan chairs waiting before the doors of the Insti- 
 tute. It was rain that awaited them, streaming 
 down on the hurly-burly of omnibuses and the 
 carnival-like butting of street cars. The privi- 
 leged alone, in their well-appointed carriages were 
 able to still nurse their fond royalistic illusions. 
 
 Under the great colonnaded portico, while a 
 crier called up the royal equipages through the 
 wet and shining courtyard, 't was a pleasure to 
 hear the animated cackle of that aristocratic 
 world while awaiting the issue of the Majesties: 
 What a session ! . . What a success ! . . Could 
 the Republic ever recover from it? . . The Prin- 
 cesse de Rosen is surrounded : " You must be 
 very happy ! " " Oh, yes ! very happy." And 
 the pretty creature ambled and bowed to right 
 and left like a trained filly in a circus. Uncle 
 Sauvadon did his best beside her though still 
 embarrassed by his white cravat and his butler's
 
 At the Academy. 249 
 
 shirt-front, which he strove to conceal behind his 
 hat, but very proud all the same of his nephew's 
 success. Certainly no one knew better than he 
 what was the true texture of that success, and that 
 Prince Herbert had not written a single line of the 
 crowned work; but at that moment he never so 
 much as thought of this. Nor Colette either, I 
 do assure you. True Sauvadon in vanity, ap- 
 pearances sufficed her ; and when she saw, prick- 
 ing forward through the group of gommeux who 
 were congratulating her, the waxed points of her 
 Herbert's enormous moustache coming to meet 
 her, it was all she could do not to throw herself 
 upon his breast before the assembled company, so 
 convinced was she that he had managed the siege 
 of Ragusa, and written the Memorial, and that his 
 splendid moustache did not conceal the jaws of a 
 gaby. If the kind, good fellow was delighted and 
 overcome by the ovation made to him and the 
 glances flung in his direction (the noble Fitz-Roy 
 had said to him, solemnly : " Whenever you wish 
 it, prince, you can be one of us"), nothing was to 
 him more precious than this unexpected greeting 
 of his Colette, the almost loverlike manner in 
 which she hung upon his arm, a thing that had 
 not happened to him since the day of their mar- 
 riage, when they walked down the nave to the 
 grand roll of the organ in the choir of Saint- 
 Thomas d'Aquin. 
 
 But see, the crowd makes way ; respectfully, the 
 hats come off. The guests in the boxes are com- 
 ing down ; all those fallen Majesties, who are now
 
 250 Kings in Exile. 
 
 to return into darkness after this brief resurrection. 
 A regular defile of royal shadows, the old blind 
 man leaning on his daughter, the Galician queen 
 with her handsome nephew, a rustling of stiff stuffs 
 as at the passage of a Peruvian Madonna. Lastly, 
 the Queen of Illyria, her cousin, and her son. The 
 royal landau is driven to the portico ; she enters 
 it, amid an admiring but restrained murmur, beau- 
 tiful, her brow lofty, radiant. The queen of the 
 left hand and secret stairways has already departed 
 with d'Axel and Wattelet, so that nothing mars the 
 full glory of this exit. . . 
 
 Nothing further was now to be seen, or said. 
 The tall footmen rushed forward with their um- 
 brellas. For an hour it was nothing but pawing, 
 stamping, the rolling of wheels, the slamming of 
 carriage doors, mingled with dripping water, and 
 names shouted and repeated by the stony echoes 
 which haunt old buildings and are seldom disturbed 
 in the ancient Institute of France. 
 
 That evening, the coquettish allegories of Bou- 
 cher painted on the panels of Herbert de Rosen's 
 bed-chamber were roused from their languM atti- 
 tudes and rather faded colours by the warbling of 
 a little voice : "It is I ... it is Colette." It was 
 indeed Colette, wrapped in a mantle of floating 
 mechlin, who had come to say good-night to her 
 hero, her knight, her man of genius. 
 
 At almost the same moment FJyse'e was walking 
 alone in the garden at Saint-Mand^ beneath the rain- 
 washed verdure, lighted now by a clear heaven, one
 
 At the Academy. 251 
 
 of those June heavens in which the ecliptic light of 
 a long day lingers, defining very sharply the leafy 
 shadows on the wan circle of the roadway, and 
 making the house, with all its blinds fast-closed, 
 look white and dead. On the upper story alone 
 the king's light was still burning. No sound but 
 the trickling of water in the fountains and the faint 
 trill of a nightingale, to which its mate responded. 
 Floating in the atmosphere were the penetrating 
 effluences of magnolias, roses, and southern-wood 
 set free by the rain. The fever that for two 
 months, ever since the fair at Vincennes, had never 
 left filysee's bosom, which burned his hands and 
 brow, instead of growing calmer in this harmony 
 of scents and sounds, was beating, vibrating the 
 more, and sending its waves to his heart. 
 
 "Ah ! old fool ! . . old madman ! . . " said a voice 
 quite close to him under the trees. He stopped, 
 confounded. It was so true, so just, so exactly what 
 he had been saying to himself for the last hour. 
 
 " Madman, miserable maniac. . . You ought to 
 be burned you and your herbal." 
 
 " Is that you, monsieur le conseiller? " 
 
 " Don't call me councillor. . . I am no longer 
 one. . . Nothing, nothing . . . neither honour, nor 
 intelligence. . . Ah ! porco. . . " 
 
 And Boscovich, sobbing with a passion that was 
 truly Italian, shook his ridiculous head which shone 
 fantastically in the light that fell between the 
 branches of the lindens. The poor man had been 
 for some time past a little off the track. Some- 
 times very gay and gabbling, he bored them with
 
 252 Kings in Exile. 
 
 his herbal, the famous Leybach herbarium, posses- 
 sion of which he expected very soon to recover ; 
 then suddenly, in the midst of a delirium of words, 
 he would interrupt himself, give a sort of sidelong, 
 underhand look, and not a word more could be 
 got out of him. This time Elysee thought he had 
 gone absolutely crazy, especially when, after this 
 childish explosion, he bounded forward and seized 
 him by the arm, shouting as one who cries for 
 help : 
 
 " Impossible, Meraut ! . . We must prevent it." 
 "Prevent what?" said the other, endeavouring 
 to loosen his arm from that nervous grip. 
 
 Boscovich, in a low voice, breathless, answered : 
 " The act of renunciation is ready . . . drawn by 
 me. . . His Majesty is now signing it. . . I never 
 ought to have. . . Ma che ! . . ma che ! . . He is 
 the king. . . And then my herbal, my Leybach 
 herbal he promised to recover for me. . . Such 
 magnificent specimens ! . . " 
 
 The maniac was off upon his topic, but Elysee 
 did not listen to him ; he was stunned by the ter- 
 rible blow. His (first, his only thought was for the 
 queen. This, then, was the reward of her devo- 
 tion, her abnegation, the end of this day of sacri- 
 fice ! . . What nothingness was that glory wreathed 
 about a head that did not like a crown of any 
 kind ! . . In the suddenly darkened garden he saw 
 nothing but that one light up there, lighting the 
 commission of a crime. What must be done? 
 How prevent it? . . The queen, she alone. . . But 
 how could he reach her? .
 
 At the Academy. 253 
 
 The maid on duty, Mme. de Silvis dreaming of 
 fairies, the queen herself, every one believed that 
 the sleeping house was on fire when filysee de- 
 manded to see her Majesty at once. A cackle of 
 fluttered women was heard through the rooms like 
 a dovecote awakened too early. At last Frederica 
 appeared in the little salon where the tutor awaited 
 her, wrapped in a long blue peignoir which moulded 
 finely her arms and shoulders. Never had filys^e 
 felt so near to the woman herself. 
 
 "What is it?" she asked very low, very quickly, 
 with that flicker of the eyelids which expects and 
 sees the coming blow. At the first word she 
 bounded. 
 
 " It cannot be. . . It shall not be, I living ! . . " 
 
 The violence of her movement loosened the 
 phosphorescent masses of her hair, and she caught 
 them up by a turn of her arm with a free and 
 tragic gesture that threw her sleeve back to the 
 elbow. 
 
 " Waken his Highness," she said in a low voice 
 into the curtained darkness of her son's room ; then, 
 without adding a word, she went up to the king.
 
 254 Kings in Exile. 
 
 X. 
 
 FAMILY SCENE. 
 
 ALL the magic of that June night was enter- 
 ing through the wide-opened window portal of the 
 large upper hall, where a single lighted candela- 
 brum left enough of mystery for the moonlight to 
 lie upon the walls in a milky way, and glitter on the 
 polished bar of a trapeze, on the bow, shaped like 
 an arch, of a guzla hanging to the wall, and on the 
 glass doors of a rather scantily furnished book-case, 
 which the brown-paper cahiers of the herbalist had 
 filled with the sickly and fetid odour of a cemetery 
 of dried plants. On the table, lying upon a pile 
 of dusty papers, was a crucifix of tarnished silver ; 
 for though Christian II. did not write much in this 
 sanctum, he remembered his Catholic education 
 and surrounded himself with pious objects ; and 
 sometimes, when " making fete " with courtesans, 
 the trumpets of pleasure blowing breathlessly 
 around him, he would finger in his pocket, with 
 a moist, half-drunken hand the coral rosary he was 
 never without. Beside the Christ lay a large and 
 heavy sheet of parchment, closely written over in 
 a rather trembling hand. This was the act of re- 
 nunciation of the kingdom, properly drawn up. 
 Nothing was lacking to it but the signature, a
 
 Family Scene. 255 
 
 stroke of a pen, a violent effort of will ; and that 
 was why the feeble Christian still delayed, his 
 elbows on the table, motionless beneath the light 
 of the wax candles waiting to melt the wax for the 
 royal seal. 
 
 Near him, uneasy, ferreting, softly silent as a 
 hawk-moth or the swifts in a ruin, Lebeau, his 
 confidential valet, watched him, spurred him 
 mutely, having brought him at last to the de- 
 cisive moment which the band had been awaiting 
 for months, with ups and downs and beating hearts 
 and all the uncertainties of a game that had to 
 depend on that rag of a king. Notwithstanding 
 the magnetism of this oppressing desire, Christian, 
 with the pen in his fingers, did not sign. Plunged, 
 almost sunken in his arm-chair, he gazed at the 
 parchment and dreamed. It was not that he clung 
 to the crown he had never desired or loved, which, 
 even as a child, he found too heavy, feeling later 
 its irritating bonds, its crushing responsibilities. 
 To be rid of it, to put it in the corner of a salon 
 he would never enter, to forget it as much as he 
 could that much was done already ; but this 
 determination, this extreme decision to make, was 
 what frightened him. In no other way, however, 
 could he procure the money that was indispen- 
 sable to his new existence ; three millions in notes 
 signed by him were in circulation and about to fall 
 due, which the usurer, a certain Pichery, refused 
 to renew. Could he allow everything to be seized 
 atSaint-Mande? The queen, the royal child, what 
 would become of them ? Scene for scene for he
 
 256 Kings in Exile. 
 
 foresaw the fearful echoes of his baseness was it 
 not better to have it over at once, to face at one 
 stroke both anger and recriminations? And then 
 and then, all that, even, was not the determin- 
 ing reason. 
 
 He had promised the countess to sign the re- 
 nunciation ; and in view of that promise, Se"phora 
 had consented to let her husband go alone to 
 London, and to accept the mansion in the Avenue 
 de Messine and the name and title which pro- 
 claimed her as belonging to Christian, reserving 
 other compliances until the day when the king 
 should bring her the act itself, signed by his hand. 
 For this she gave the reasons of a loving woman : 
 perhaps he would, later, return to Illyria, abandon 
 her for throne and power; she would not be the 
 first whom those terrible reasons of State had 
 driven to despair and weeping. D'Axel and 
 Wattelet and all the young gommeux of the 
 Grand-Club little knew that when the king, 
 leaving the Avenue de Messine, joined them at 
 the club, his eyes worn-out and feverish, that he 
 had spent his evening on a sofa alternately re- 
 pulsed and attracted, strung and vibrating like 
 a bow, rolling at the feet of an implacable will, 
 a supple resistance, which left in his passionate 
 clasp the ice of two little Parisian hands, clever at 
 freeing and defending themselves, and on his lips 
 the burn of a delirious promise* " Oh ! when you 
 are no longer a king, all all ! " She made him 
 pass through the intermittences, dangerous in- 
 deed, from passion to coldness. Sometimes, at
 
 Family Scene. 257 
 
 the theatre, after a frigid greeting, a stately smile, 
 she had a certain slow way of taking off her glove 
 as she looked at him and giving her bare hand an 
 offering to his kisses 
 
 " So you say, Lebeau, that Pichery will do 
 nothing?" 
 
 " Nothing, sire. . . If the notes are not paid he 
 will put them at once into the sheriff's hands." 
 
 It was needful to have heard the despairing 
 whine which emphasized that word " sheriff" in 
 order to understand the dangerous formalities that 
 Christian was dragging after him : stamped paper ; 
 execution ; the royal mansion invaded ; the home 
 turned out of doors. But Christian saw nothing of 
 all that. He saw himself arriving in the Avenue 
 de Messine, anxious, trembling, going up that 
 mysteriously draped staircase stealthily, entering 
 that room where the lamp shone dim beneath its 
 laces : " 'T is done, 't is done ! I am a king no 
 longer. . . To me, all ... all ! " 
 
 " Come ! " he said with a start, as the vision 
 fled before him. And he signed the deed. 
 
 The door opened. The queen entered. Her 
 presence in Christian's apartment at this hour was 
 so novel, so unexpected, they had so long lived 
 apart from each other, that neither the king who 
 was signing his infamy, nor Lebeau who was 
 watching him, turned at the sound. They thought 
 it was Boscovich coming back from the garden. 
 Gliding and light as a shadow she was almost 
 beside the table and the two accomplices before 
 Lebeau saw her. By a finger on her lips she
 
 258 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ordered him to be silent as she still advanced, 
 meaning to seize the king in the act of treachery, 
 and so avoid subterfuges and useless deceptions. 
 But the valet defied her order and gave the alarm : 
 " Sire, the queen ! . . " Furious, the Dalmatian 
 struck out before her, with her firm, horsewoman's 
 hand, directly on the mouth of the evil-minded 
 wretch; then, standing erect, she waited till the 
 valet had disappeared before she addressed the 
 king. 
 
 " What has happened to you, my dear Fre- 
 derica? Why have you come to me? " 
 
 He was standing now, half leaning on the table, 
 which he tried to conceal, in a supple attitude that 
 showed to advantage his foulard jacket embroidered 
 in rose, and speaking with pale lips but a calm 
 voice and that grace of politeness which he never 
 omitted towards his wife, putting between them a 
 certain something like the flowery and complicated 
 arabesques on the hard, polished lacquer of a 
 casket. With a word, a gesture, she brushed away 
 that barrier, behind which he was trying to shelter 
 himself. 
 
 " Oh ! no speeches ... no pretences ... I know 
 what you are writing there ! . . do not try to de- 
 ceive me. . ." 
 
 Then coming nearer, and dominating with her 
 proud form that cringing figure, 
 
 " Listen, Christian ..." she said, and in her 
 tone there was something grave and solemn. 
 " Listen . . . you have made me suffer much since 
 I have been your wife. . . I have said nothing
 
 Family Scene. 259 
 
 but once, that first time, you remember? . . After 
 that, when I saw that you loved me no longer, I 
 allowed you to do as you pleased; but I was 
 ignorant of nothing, nothing . . . not one of your 
 infidelities, your mad follies. For surely you are 
 mad . . . mad as your father, who exhausted him- 
 self with his love for Lola; mad as your grand- 
 father John, who died in a shameful delirium, 
 foaming, and with his very death-rattle uttering 
 words that turned the nursing Sisters white. Yes ! 
 it is the same mad blood, the same hellish lava that 
 consumes you. At Ragusa, the nights of the 
 sorties, they had to fetch you from Fedora's. . . I 
 knew that; I knew she had left her theatre to 
 follow you. . . I have never reproached you. 
 The honour of the name was safe with me. . . 
 And when the king was missing on the ramparts, I 
 took good care that his place was not empty. . . 
 But in Paris ... in Paris ..." 
 
 Up to this point she had spoken slowly, coldly, 
 keeping to the end of each sentence an intonation 
 of pity, of maternal reproach which accorded well 
 with the dropped eyes of the king and his sulky 
 look, as of a naughty child who was being lectured. 
 But the name of Paris put her beside herself. City 
 without faith, accursed and scoffing city, bloody 
 pavements, torn up perpetually for riots and barri- 
 cades ! What madness possessed them all, those 
 poor exiled kings, to take refuge in that Gomorrah? 
 It is Paris, Paris, with its foul air reeking with 
 vice and gunpowder, which has finished the ruin of 
 the great races ; Paris which has torn from Chris-
 
 260 Kings in Exile. 
 
 tian what the maddest of his ancestors had kept in 
 safety, respect, and pride for the blazon. Oh ! from 
 that first day of arrival, from that first night of 
 exile, seeing him so gay, so excited while those 
 about him wept in secret, Frederica had foreseen 
 the humiliations, the shame, that she would have 
 to endure. . . And now, in one breath, without a 
 pause, with stinging words that marbled with red 
 the pallid face of that royal libertine, lashing it as 
 with a whip, she recalled to him all his deeds, 
 his rapid gliding from pleasure to vice, and from 
 vice to crime. 
 
 "You betrayed me before my eyes, in my 
 household . . . adultery at my table, touching my 
 very gown. . . And when you had had enough of 
 that curled doll, who did not even hide her tears 
 before me, you went to the gutter, to the mud of 
 the streets, shamelessly wallowing there in idleness, 
 bringing back to us your morrows of orgy, your 
 sated remorse, the filth of that mire. . . Remem- 
 ber how I saw you, stumbling, stammering, that 
 morning when for the second time you lost your 
 throne. . . What have you not done ? oh ! Holy 
 Mother of angels ! . . what have you not done ? . . 
 you have trafficked with the royal Seal, you have 
 sold your crosses, your titles ..." 
 
 Then, in a lowered voice as if she dreaded lest 
 the silence and the darkness should overhear her : 
 
 " And you stole . . . you stole ! . . Those dia- 
 monds, those stones ... it was you. . . And I let 
 my old Greb be suspected and sent away. . . I was 
 forced to it ... the theft was known, a false crimi-
 
 Family Scene. 261 
 
 nal was found lest the true one be suspected. . . 
 For that has been my sole and constant thought 
 to maintain the king erect, intact, to accept all, all, 
 for that one purpose, even the shame which to the 
 eyes of the world soils me myself. I gave to 
 my own soul a word of command which spurred 
 me, which upheld me in hours of trial : For the 
 Crown ! . . And now you wish to sell it, that 
 crown which has cost me such tears, such agony ; 
 you mean to barter it for gold to lavish on that 
 foul Jewish image, whom you had the indecency to 
 put before me to-day, face to face. . ." 
 
 He had listened without a word, cowed, his 
 head drawn in. The insult to the woman he loved 
 roused him. Looking fixedly at the queen, with 
 her stinging blows still cutting his face, he said, 
 politely as ever, but very firmly : 
 
 "You are mistaken. . . The woman of whom 
 you speak has nothing to do with the resolution 
 I have taken. . . What I do is done for you, for 
 me, for the peace of all. . . Come, are you not 
 yourself weary of this life of expedients, of priva- 
 tions? . . Do you think I am ignorant of what is 
 going on here, that I do not suffer at seeing that 
 pack of tradesmen and creditors at your heels ? . . 
 The other day when that man was shouting in the 
 courtyard, I drove in, and heard him ... if it had 
 not been for Rosen, I 'd have crushed him under 
 the wheels of my phaeton. And you, you were 
 watching for his departure behind the curtain of 
 your chamber. A pretty business for a queen ! . . 
 We owe everybody. There is but one cry against
 
 262 Kings in Exile. 
 
 us. Half your servants are unpaid. . . That tutor, 
 it is ten months since he has had a penny. . . 
 Mme. de Silvis pays herself by wearing majesti- 
 cally your old gowns; and there are days when 
 M. le conseiller, Keeper of the Seals of the Crown, 
 borrows from my valet the money to buy his 
 snuff. . . You see I know what is going on. . . 
 But you do not know my debts. I am riddled 
 with them. . . Everything will blow up soon. 
 That will be a pretty sight ! You will see it sold, 
 that crown of yours, with the old silver forks and 
 spoons and knives, under a doorway. . ." 
 
 Little by little, carried away by his satirical 
 nature and the scoffing habits of his set, he aban- 
 doned the reserved tone of his first words, and in 
 his insolent, nasal little voice he rattled off sar- 
 casms, some of which must have come from 
 Sephora, who never lost a chance to demolish 
 with mockery her lover's last scruples. 
 
 " You accuse me of talking for effect, my dear, 
 but it is you who bewilder yourself with words. 
 What, after all, is that crown of Illyria that you 
 are always talking to me about? It is worth 
 nothing unless it is on the head of a king ; other- 
 wise it is a cumbersome, useless article, which is 
 hidden in a bandbox when one has to run away, 
 and kept under a glass globe like the laurels 
 of an actor or the orange-flowers of a porter's 
 bride. . . You ought to be convinced of this, Fre- 
 derica. A king is not a king unless he is on the 
 throne, power in hand ; fallen, he is less than 
 nothing a rag. . . It is nonsense to keep to
 
 Family Scene. 263 
 
 etiquette, and titles, and put Majesty everywhere, 
 on the panels of the carriages, on our sleeve- 
 buttons; hampering ourselves with a worn-out 
 ceremonial. It is all hypocrisy on our part, 
 and politeness and pity in those who surround us, 
 both friends and servants. Here, in this house, 
 I am Christian II. to you and Rosen and two 
 or three faithful. The moment I am out of it 
 I become a man like the rest. Mr. Christian 
 Second. . . Not even a surname . . . just a given 
 name, Christian, like any strolling player at the 
 Gaiete. .'." 
 
 He stopped, out of breath ; it is doubtful if he 
 had ever spoken so long standing up. . . Sharp 
 notes of the fern-owl, hasty trills of the night- 
 ingale pricked through the silence of the night. 
 A great moth, which had shortened its wings 
 in the candles, was knocking itself everywhere. 
 Nothing was heard within the room but that 
 fluttering distress and the smothered sobs of 
 the queen, who knew well how to hold her own 
 against anger and violence, but whom sarcasm, 
 taking her sincere nature falsely, deprived of 
 weapons; just as a valiant soldier expecting 
 honest blows is helpless under pin-pricks. See- 
 ing her so feeble, Christian thought she was van- 
 quished, and to complete the work he put a last 
 touch to his burlesque picture of monarchs in 
 exile. What a pitiful figure they cut, those poor 
 princes in partibus, figurantes of royalty, draped 
 in its frippery, and continuing to declaim before
 
 264 Kings in Exile. 
 
 empty benches, and not a penny of receipts ! 
 Was n't it far better to be silent and come down 
 to common life and obscurity? Those who had 
 money might keep it up ; 'twas a luxury like any 
 other, this passion for grandeurs. . . But as for 
 others, their poor cousins of Palermo, for instance, 
 piled into a house too small for them with their 
 cursed Italian cooking ! always smelling of onions 
 whenever you went there. . . Worthy, oh yes ! but 
 what an existence ! And they were not the most 
 wretched either. . . The other day a Bourbon, a 
 real Bourbon, ran after an omnibus. . . " Full, 
 monsieur." But still he ran. " Don't I tell you it 
 is full, old fellow?" And he was very angry, be- 
 cause they did not call him Monseigneur ! As if 
 it was visible on his cravat ! . . " Operetta kings, 
 I tell you, my dear. And it is to get out of 
 this ridiculous situation, and to put ourselves in 
 safety under the shelter of an assured and 
 dignified position that I have decided to sign 
 this act. . . And remark," he added, suddenly 
 revealing the tortuous Slav brought up by Jesuits, 
 " that it is only an expedient, this signature. . . 
 They simply return us our property, and I do 
 not consider myself in any way bound. . . Who 
 knows? These millions may enable us to recover 
 the throne." 
 
 The queen raised her head impetuously, held 
 him by the eye for a minute till his own blinked, 
 and said, shrugging her shoulders : 
 
 " Do not make yourself more vile than you
 
 Family Scene. 265 
 
 are. . . You know well that once signed. . . But 
 no ! The truth is that strength is lacking to you. 
 You desert your post of king at the perilous 
 moment, when the new social order, which wants 
 neither God nor master, pursues with hatred the 
 representatives of divine right, making heaven 
 tremble above their heads and the soil beneath 
 their feet. Knife, bombs, balls, all are good . . . 
 for treachery, for murder. . . In the great pro- 
 cessions or at fetes not one of us but trembles 
 when a man advances from the crowd. . . Every 
 petition hides a dagger. . . Leaving our palaces, 
 which of us can be sure of returning to them? . . 
 And this is the moment that you choose, you, to 
 leave the battle ! . ." 
 
 "Ah! if it were fighting!" cried Christian II., 
 hastily. . . " But to struggle as we do against 
 ridicule, poverty, all the ordures of life, and 
 to feel we get deeper and deeper into them 
 daily. . ." 
 
 A flame of hope flashed in her eyes. 
 
 " Truly? Would you fight? . . Then, listen. . ." 
 
 Breathless, she unfolded to him in a few brief 
 words an expedition which filysee and herself had 
 been preparing for three months ; sending letters 
 upon letters, speeches, despatches, Pere Alphee 
 forever on the road among the villages and 
 mountains ; for this time it was not to the nobility 
 they addressed themselves, but to the people, the 
 muleteers, the porters of Ragusa, the market- 
 gardeners of the Breno and the Brazza, the men of
 
 266 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the Isles, who came to the markets in their feluc- 
 cas, the primitive and traditional nation, ready to 
 rise, to die for their king, but on condition that 
 they should see him at their head. . . The com- 
 panies were formed, the word of command already 
 circulating, the signal alone was awaited. And the 
 queen, rushing her words in a vigorous charge 
 on the feeble Christian, felt a cruel shock as she 
 beheld him shake his head with more indifference 
 than discouragement. Perhaps in his heart he felt 
 provoked that all this had been planned without 
 him. But he did not believe the project feasible. 
 They could never advance inland ; they must 
 hold the Isles and devastate a noble country with 
 little or no chance of succeeding; 'twould be the 
 Duke of Palma over again ; an effusion of useless 
 blood. 
 
 " No, don't you see, my dear, that the fanat- 
 icism of your chaplain and the enthusiasm of 
 that Gascon are misleading you? . . I have my 
 reports just as you have yours. . . The truth 
 is that in Dalmatia, as elsewhere, monarchy 
 has had its day. . . They have had enough 
 of it down there. . . They don't want any 
 more. . ." 
 
 " Ah ! I know, I know the coward who wants 
 no more . . ." said the queen. 
 
 Then she left the room hastily, leaving Christian 
 much astonished that the scene had ended so 
 rapidly. He crumpled up the deed, put it 
 hastily into his pocket, and was preparing to go
 
 Family Scene. 267 
 
 out, when Frederica returned, accompanied this 
 time by the little prince. 
 
 Caught up from his sleep, and dressed in haste, 
 Zara who had passed from the hands of the 
 maid to those of his mother without a word being 
 uttered opened his great eyes beneath his 
 auburn locks, but asked no questions, remembering 
 confusedly in his little head, still humming with 
 sleep, certain other wakings for hasty flight amid 
 pallid faces and panting exclamations. It was 
 then that he had taken a habit of giving himself 
 up, of letting himself be led, provided his mother 
 called him in her grave and resolute voice and he 
 could feel the tender folding of her arm about 
 him, and her shoulder all ready for his infant weari- 
 ness. She had said to him : " Come ! " and he 
 came with confidence, surprised by the calmness 
 of this night's waking compared with the tumult of 
 others, when flames and the noises of musketry 
 and cannon surrounded him. 
 
 He saw the king standing up ; not the kind and 
 careless father who sometimes surprised him in 
 bed or crossed his schoolroom with a smile of 
 encouragement, but a man annoyed and angry, 
 whose face grew harder at their entrance. 
 
 Frederica, without a word, led the child to 
 Christian's feet and kneeling down herself with an 
 abrupt motion she placed him standing before her 
 and joined his little fingers within her own clasped 
 hands. 
 
 " The king will not listen to me," she said ;
 
 268 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " perhaps he may listen to you, my Zara. . . Say 
 with me : 'My father 
 
 The timid voice repeated : " My father. . ." 
 
 " My father, my king, I conjure you ... do not 
 despoil your child; do not take from him the 
 crown he ought to wear some day. . . Remember 
 that it is not yours only; it comes from afar; 
 it comes from God, who gave it, six hundred 
 years ago, to the House of Illyria. . . God 
 wills that I be king, my father. . . It is my 
 heritage, mine own ; you have no right to take it 
 from me." 
 
 The little prince followed his mother's words, 
 with the fervent murmur, the imploring eyes of 
 prayer; but Christian turned away his head; 
 shrugging his shoulders and furious, though 
 always polite, he muttered a few words between 
 his teeth. . . " Excitement . . . improper scene . . . 
 turn the child's head." Then he freed himself and 
 moved to the door. With a bound the queen was 
 on her feet ; she looked at the table now empty 
 of the parchment, and, comprehending that the 
 infamous act was signed and that he held it, she 
 uttered what was truly a roar ! 
 
 " Christian ! . ." 
 
 He continued his way. 
 
 She made one step and the gesture of gathering 
 her gown to pursue him; then she said, suddenly: 
 
 " So be it ! " 
 
 He stopped, and saw her, erect before the open 
 window, her foot upon the narrow stone cop-
 
 Family Scene. 269 
 
 ing, with one arm bearing her son to death, with 
 the other threatening the escaping coward. The 
 glimmer of the sky lighted this strange group from 
 without. 
 
 " To the operetta king, a tragic queen ! " she 
 said, grave and terrible. " If you do not instantly 
 burn that which you have just signed, with an oath 
 upon that cross that you will not sign again . . . 
 your race is ended, crushed . . . wife . . . child . . . 
 there, upon those stones. . ." 
 
 And in her words, in her beautiful body leaning 
 to the void, there was such impulse to the spring 
 that the king, terrified, rushed forward to grasp 
 her. 
 
 " Frederica ! . . " 
 
 At his father's cry, at the quivering of the arm 
 that bore him, the child now entirely outside the 
 window believed that all was over and that death 
 had come. He said not a word, not a plaint, for 
 was he not going with his mother? But his little 
 hands clung to the queen's neck tightly, and throw- 
 ing back his head from which those victim locks 
 streamed down, he closed his sweet eyes to the 
 horror of the fall. 
 
 Christian resisted no longer . . . that courage, 
 that resignation of the child-king, who already 
 knew this much of his royal business how to die 
 well ! . . The king's heart burst in his bosom. 
 He flung upon the table the crumpled deed he 
 had been twisting in his fingers for the last few 
 minutes, and fell, sobbing, into a chair. Frederica,
 
 2 70 Kings in Exile. 
 
 still distrustful, read through the paper from the 
 first line to the signature; then, putting it to a 
 candle, she burned it to her fingers' ends and 
 scattered the black fragments on the table. 
 That done, she carried away her child, who was 
 beginning to drop asleep in his heroic attitude 
 of suicide.
 
 The Watchers. 271 
 
 XL 
 
 THE WATCHERS. 
 
 IT was the end of an amicable meal in the 
 parlour of the second-hand establishment in the 
 Rue Eginhard. Old Leemans when he is alone 
 munches his crust at the kitchen table, opposite to 
 the Darnet, without cloth or napkin ; but when he 
 has company the careful housekeeper takes off, 
 grumbling, the white covers to the furniture, hides 
 away the little mats before the chairs, and sets the 
 table before the portrait of " monsieur," in the 
 neat and peaceful salon, worthy of a priest, which 
 is for several hours delivered over to smells of fry 
 and garlic, and to discussions, highly seasoned 
 also, in the argot of low money-dealing. 
 
 Ever since the " Grand Stroke " had been pre- 
 paring, these dinners were frequent. It is well for 
 all such affairs with mixed accounts to meet often 
 and concert together ; and nowhere could this be 
 done so safely as in the depths of the little Rue 
 Eginhard, lost in the past of ancient Paris. There, 
 at any rate, they could talk aloud, discuss, and 
 plot. . . And now the end was near. In a few 
 days, what am I saying? in a few hours the renun-
 
 272 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ciation would be signed and the " affair " which 
 had already swallowed up so much money would 
 begin to be profitable. The certainty of success 
 illumined the eyes and voices of the guests with a 
 sort of gilded gayety, made the table linen whiter, 
 the wine better. It was a true wedding-feast, pre- 
 sided over by old Leemans and Pichery, his in- 
 separable, a wooden head, stiff and pomatumed 
 Hungarian fashion, above a stiff stock ; something 
 military but not frank, the aspect of a cashiered 
 officer. Present profession : usurer in pictures, a 
 new and complicated trade well versed in bur pres- 
 ent art manias and adapted to them. When the 
 son of a family is high and dry, shorn and raked, 
 he goes to Pichery, picture-dealer, sumptuously 
 installed in the Rue Lafitte. 
 
 " Have you a Corot, a treasure of a Corot? . . I 
 am so in love with that painter." 
 
 " Ah ! Corot ! . . " says Pichery, closing his dead 
 fish-eyes with beatific admiration ; then, changing 
 his tone: "Yes, I have just what you want ..." 
 and then, on a great easel, rolled in front of them, 
 he shows a pretty Corot, a morning scene all 
 quivering with silvery mists and nymphs dancing 
 beneath the willows. The spendthrift dandy puts 
 up his monocle and pretends to admire it. 
 
 " Chic ! . . very chic ! . . How much? " 
 
 " Fifty thousand francs," says Pichery without 
 blinking. The other does not blink either. 
 
 "Three months? . ." 
 
 " Three months, with security." 
 
 The dandy gives his note and carries away the
 
 The Watchers. 273 
 
 picture to his own house or his mistress's, and for a 
 whole day he allows himself the joy of saying at 
 the club and on the boulevard : " I have just bought 
 a stunning Corot." The next day he sends his 
 Corot to the auction rooms where Pichery de- 
 spatches old Leemans to buy it back for ten or 
 twelve thousand francs, its proper price. This is 
 usury at exorbitant interest, but legal, without 
 risk. Pichery himself is not expected to know 
 whether or not the amateur buys in good faith. 
 He sells his Corot very dear, cuir et poils, as they 
 say in that pretty business, but he is strictly 
 within his rights, for the value of an art object is 
 conventional. Moreover he is very careful not to 
 sell any but authentic merchandise, passed upon 
 by old Leemans, who, by the way, has taught him 
 his artistic vocabulary, very surprising in the 
 mouth of that shady veteran, who is intimate how- 
 ever with the young Gomme and the cocottes of 
 the Opera quarter, both of whom are very nec- 
 essary to his traffic. 
 
 On the other side of Patriarch Leemans, sat 
 Sephora and her husband, playing lovers ; their 
 chairs and their glasses touching one another. 
 They had met so seldom since the beginning of this 
 affair ! J. Tom Levis, who, for the world at large, 
 was in London, was really living shut up in his 
 castellated abode at Courbevoie, fishing with a line 
 all day for want of dupes to bait, and much occu- 
 pied in worrying the Sprichts with his tomfoolery. 
 S6phora, more restrained than a Spanish queen, 
 awaiting the king at any hour, and always cere- 
 
 18
 
 274 Kings in Exile. 
 
 monious and under arms, was forced to lead the 
 life of an upper-class demi-mondaine ; a life so 
 empty and so little amusing that such ladies nearly 
 always live in couples in order to endure their long, 
 weary drives and heart-breaking leisure. But the 
 Comtesse de Spalato had no double in all the town. 
 She could not visit courtesans, nor the other 
 dfrlass/es of the questionable world ; honest women 
 would not receive her; and Christian II. would 
 not have tolerated around her that whirl of idlers 
 who fill the salons frequented by men only. Con- 
 sequently, she was absolutely alone in her boudoirs 
 with their painted ceilings, and their mirrors gar- 
 landed with cupids and roses, but reflecting nought 
 except her indolent image, bored by the king's 
 insipid incense, burned at her feet like those head- 
 ache perfumes that smoke in a golden cup. Ah ! 
 she would give quickly enough that melancholy 
 princely life for the little cellar salon in the Rue 
 Royale, with her mountebank before her executing 
 his jig of the Grand Stroke ! Scarcely could she 
 even write to him to keep him informed of what 
 was going on. 
 
 Consequently, how happy she is to-night ; how 
 she snuggles to Tom, excites him, stirs him up. 
 " Come, make me laugh." And Tom bestirs him- 
 self, but his liveliness is not quite frank, and it 
 drops after each outburst into a troublesome 
 thought which he does not utter, and about which 
 I will give you a thousand guesses. . . 
 
 Tom Levis is jealous. He knows that there can 
 be nothing as yet between Christian and S6phora ;
 
 The Watchers. 275 
 
 that she is much too clever to give herself without 
 proper security; but the psychologic moment is 
 approaching; that paper once signed, the agree- 
 ment must be kept; and i' faith, my friend Tom 
 felt troubles, uneasinesses, that were very strange 
 in a man devoid of all superstitions and childish 
 notions. Little feverish, terrified, cold chills ran 
 over him as he looked at his wife, who had never 
 seemed to him so pretty as she did now in her 
 toilet elegance and the title of countess, which 
 seemed to polish her features, brighten her eyes, 
 and raise her hair beneath a coronet with pearls 
 upon its spikes. Evidently J. Tom Levis is not up to 
 the level of his part ; he has not the solid shoulders 
 of his trade. A mere nothing would decide him 
 to take back his wife and let everything go. But a 
 sort of shame restrains him, the fear of ridicule ; 
 and then, such sums of money spent on the affair. 
 The unfortunate fellow argued the matter with him- 
 self and was torn by these various scruples, which 
 the countess would never have supposed him capa- 
 ble of feeling. He affected great gayety, gesticu- 
 lating with the dagger in his heart, enlivening the 
 company with a choice relation of his Agency 
 tricks, and ended by so exhilarating old Leemans 
 and the glacial Pichery himself that they pulled 
 their choicest tricks from their bags and told their 
 best hoaxes on amateurs. 
 
 They get to that point, don't they, these part- 
 ners, these cronies, their elbows on the table? 
 Yes, they told all; the underside of auctions; 
 their trap-doors and pitfalls ; the coalition of big
 
 276 Kings in Exile. 
 
 dealers, rivals apparently ; their dodges ; their 
 traffic with porters, that mysterious free-masonry 
 which puts a real barrier of greasy collars and 
 ragged coats between a rare object and the caprice 
 of a purchaser, and forces the latter at last to a 
 folly at some great price. It was a tournament 
 of cynical tales, a joust to the cleverest, the most 
 rascally sharper. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you that about my Egyptian 
 lantern and Mora?" asked Pere Leemans, sipping 
 his coffee. Then he told for the hundredth time 
 - as an old soldier tells of his favourite campaign 
 the tale of the lantern which a distressed Levan- 
 tine had let him have for two thousand francs, 
 and which he resold the same day to the president 
 of the council for forty thousand, with a double 
 commission, five hundred from the Levantine and 
 five thousand from the duke. But what made 
 the charm of the tale was the account given of the 
 sly twists and turns, the shrewd art of exciting and 
 leading on a rich and conceited customer. " Yes, 
 no doubt, a fine thing, but dear, too dear. . . I 
 advise you, Monsieur le due, to let some one else 
 commit that folly. . . I am pretty sure the Sis- 
 mondos. . . Ah ! yes, yes, a pretty bit of work . . . 
 this framework of little bars . . . that embossed 
 chain . . ." And the old fellow, stimulated by the 
 laughter that shook the table, fingered a shabby 
 little note-book worn at the edges that lay on the 
 table-cloth, and from which his memory refreshed 
 itself now and then as to a date, a figure, an ad- 
 dress. All the famous amateurs were classed and
 
 The Watchers. 
 
 77 
 
 noted in that book, like the marriageable girls 
 with large dots on the grand livre of M. de. Foy, 
 with their peculiarities, their hobbies, their com- 
 plexions brown or fair; those who must be bul- 
 lied ; those who only value an object if it costs 
 very dear; the sceptical amateur; the artless 
 amateur, to whom you can say when you sell him a 
 fraud : " You know . . . don't let any one get that 
 away from you." To old Leemans personally the 
 note-book was worth a fortune. 
 
 " Look here, Tom," said S^phora, who wanted 
 to make her husband shine, " suppose you tell them 
 tJiat about your arrival in Paris . . . you know, your 
 first affair, Rue Soufflot." 
 
 Tom did not need to be urged ; he poured him- 
 self out a little brandy to strengthen his voice, and 
 related how, about a dozen years before, returning 
 from London, cleaned out and shabby, with his last 
 five francs in his pocket, he heard from an old 
 comrade, whom he met in an English tavern near 
 the station, that the Agencies were just then 
 engaged in a big affair, the marriage of Mile. 
 Beaugars, daughter of a contractor, who had twelve 
 millions of dot and had taken it into her head to 
 marry a great seigneur, a real one. A magnificent 
 commission was offered, and the hounds were 
 numerous. Tom was not hindered by that. He 
 went to a reading-room and turned over all the 
 genealogical books of France, the Gotha and 
 Bottin, and finally discovered an ancient, a very 
 ancient family ramifying into all that were most 
 celebrated, and living at that time in the Rue
 
 278 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Soufflot. The incongruity between the title and 
 the name of the street informed him plainly of 
 either a downfall or a vice. " On what floor does 
 M. le Marquis de X live? " He sacrificed his last 
 bit of silver and obtained from the concierge a few 
 scraps of information. . . Great nobility indeed . . . 
 widower, son just leaving Saint-Cyr and a daughter 
 of eighteen, very well brought-up. . . " Rent two 
 thousand francs, including gas, water, and carpet," 
 added the concierge, for whom that last detail in- 
 creased the dignity of his lodger. . . " Exactly 
 what I want," thought Tom ; and he went up, rather 
 dashed, it must be said, by the respectable air of the 
 staircase, statue at the bottom, arm-chairs at each 
 landing, the luxury of a modern house, not much 
 in keeping with his threadbare coat, his boots that 
 let in water, and his very delicate errand. 
 
 " Part way up," related the agent, " I had half a 
 mind to go down again. Then, F faith, I thought 
 it plucky to risk the stroke. I said to myself: 
 ' You have wits, and cheek, and your living to 
 make . . . honour to intellect ! . .' And up I went, 
 four steps at a time. They ushered me into a great 
 salon, of which I soon made the inventory. Two 
 or three fine antiquities, pompous relics, a portrait 
 by Largilliere, much poverty underneath, sofa 
 rickety, chairs without horsehair, chimney as cold 
 as its marble mantelpiece. Enter the master of the 
 house; majestic old man, very chic, Samson in 
 ' Mademoiselle de la Seigliere.' ' You have a son, 
 Monsieur le marquis?' At the first words Samson 
 rose, indignant; I uttered the sum . . . twelve mil-
 
 The Watchers. 2 79 
 
 lions . . . that made him sit down again, and we 
 talked. . . He began by owning that he had not a 
 fortune equal to his name, twenty thousand francs 
 a year at the most, and that he would not be sorry 
 to regild his blazon. The son would have one 
 hundred thousand francs for a portion. ' Oh ! 
 Monsieur le marquis, the name suffices. . .' Then 
 we settled the amount of my commission, and I got 
 away, in a great hurry, being wanted at my place 
 of business. . . Place of business, indeed! when I 
 did n't know where to sleep. . . But at the door 
 the old gentleman stopped me, and said, in a kindly 
 way : ' Look here, you seem to me a lively fel- 
 low. . . I have a mind to propose to you. . . You 
 might marry my daughter also. . . She has n't a 
 dot. For to tell you the truth, I exaggerated just 
 now about the twenty thousand francs a year. 
 There 's not the half. . . But I can dispose of the 
 title of a Roman count for my son-in-law . . . and 
 what is more, if he is in the army, my relationship 
 to the minister of war will secure him advance- 
 ment.' I took notes : ' Rely upon me, M. le 
 marquis,' and I was going out ... A hand was 
 laid flat upon my shoulder. . . I turned round. 
 Samson looked at me, and laughed, with such a 
 droll air. . . ' And then, there 's myself,' he said. . . 
 'What, M. le marquis?' 'Yes, I'm not too far 
 gone, and if I found an opportunity . . .' He ended 
 by admitting that he was rotten with debts, and not 
 a penny to pay them. ' Pardieu, my dear Mon- 
 sieur Tom/ he said, ' if you could ferret out for me 
 some good business-woman with serious savings,
 
 2 So Kings in Exile. 
 
 old maid or widow, send her this way with her 
 purse ... I '11 make her a marquise.' When I left 
 that house my education was complete. I under- 
 stood the whole of what there was to do in 
 Parisian society; the Levis Agency was morally 
 founded. . . " 
 
 This tale was marvellous as narrated, or rather 
 as acted by Tom Levis. He rose, sat down, imi- 
 tated the majesty of the old noble quickly degen- 
 erating into the cynicism of bohemia, and his way 
 of spreading his handkerchief between his knees 
 when he wanted to cross his legs, and the three 
 corrections as to the nothingness of his actual 
 resources. One might have thought it a scene 
 from the " Neveu de Rameau," but Rameau's 
 nephew in the nineteenth century, without powder, 
 without grace, without violin, and with something 
 hard, ferocious, the fierceness of an English bull- 
 dog in the satirical intonation of the former sub- 
 urban blackguard. The others laughed and were 
 mightily amused, deducing from Tom's narrative 
 reflections philosophical and cynical. 
 
 " Don't you see, my children," said old Leemans, 
 " that if we second-hand brokers combined together 
 we should be masters of the world? . . People 
 traffic with everything in these days, and every- 
 thing passes through our hands, leaving a bit of 
 its skin behind it. . . When I think of all the 
 business that has been done for the last forty years 
 in this hole of the Rue Iiginhard, all that I have 
 sold, vamped-up, exchanged ! I lacked nothing 
 but a crown to sell ; and here it is ... in the bag."
 
 The Watchers. 281 
 
 He rose, glass in hand, his eyes brilliant and 
 ferocious. 
 
 V 
 
 " A la Brocante, mes enfants ! " 
 
 At the lower end of the room la Darnet, on the 
 watch behind her black peasant's-cap, heard all 
 and learned much about the business, in which 
 she hoped to establish herself at " monsieur's " 
 death, and sell on her own account. 
 
 Suddenly the little bell at the entrance door 
 rang violently in a strangled way, like an old 
 catarrh. They all quivered. Who could be com- 
 ing at such an hour? 
 
 " It must be Lebeau," said old Leemans. " None 
 but he would . . ." 
 
 Loud shouts welcomed the valet, whom they had 
 not seen for some time, and who now made his 
 entrance, pale, haggard, his teeth clenched, utterly 
 prostrate in manner and out of temper. 
 
 " Sit down, my old rascal," said Leemans, mak- 
 ing room between himself and his daughter. 
 
 " The devil ! " said the other, looking round 
 upon their jovial faces, the table and the remains 
 of the feast. " You seem to be amusing yourselves 
 here. . ." 
 
 At that observation and the funereal tone in 
 which it was made, they looked at one another, 
 rather uneasy. . . Parblcu ! yes, they were amus- 
 ing themselves, they were gay. Why should they 
 be 'sad ? 
 
 1 No English word for brocante, nor any term that gives an idea 
 of it : brokerage in old things, from clothes to rare pictures, fur- 
 niture, and bric-a-brac.
 
 282 Kings in Exile. 
 
 M. Lebeau seemed stupefied. 
 
 "What!.. You don't know?.. When did 
 you see the king, countess?" 
 
 " Why, this morning . . . yesterday . . . every 
 day." 
 
 " And he told you nothing of the terrible 
 quarrel? . ." 
 
 In two words he related the scene with the 
 queen, the burned deed, their whole affair burned 
 up with it, apparently. 
 
 " Ah ! the sneak ! " cried Sephora. " I 'm sold ! " 
 
 Tom, very uneasy, looked his wife in the eye. 
 Could she, by chance, have had a moment of impru- 
 dent weakness ? . . But milady was in no humour 
 to explain herself, being full of her rage and indig- 
 nation against Christian, who, for more than a 
 week had been floundering in a series of lies to 
 explain to her how it was that the deed of renun- 
 ciation was not yet signed. . . Oh ! the coward, 
 the base coward and liar ! . . But why had not 
 Lebeau warned them earlier? 
 
 " Ah ! yes, why indeed? " said the valet, with his 
 hideous smile. . . "I should have had fine trouble 
 to do that. . . For the last ten days I 've roamed 
 the highways. . . Five hundred leagues without 
 taking breath, without halting. . . Not even the 
 chance to write a letter, watched as I was by a 
 cursed monk, a Franciscan Father who smells like 
 a wild beast and twirls his knife like a bandit. . . 
 He watched my every movement; never let me 
 out of his sight one second, under pretence that he 
 did not know enough French to make himself
 
 The Watchers. 283 
 
 understood. . . The truth is, they distrust me at 
 Saint-Mande, and they have 'taken advantage of 
 my absence to get a great affair under way. 
 
 " What affair? " asked all their eyes. 
 
 " Something, I think, about an expedition to 
 Dalmatia. . . It is that devil of a Gascon who has 
 turned their heads. . . Oh ! I said from the first 
 we ought to get rid of that fellow. . ." 
 
 But in vain did they try to hide things from 
 him ; he, the valet, had scented preparations in the 
 air for some time past ; letters departing at all 
 hours ; mysterious consultations. One day, open- 
 ing a water-colour album which that little fool of 
 a Rosen had left about, he had seen designs for 
 uniforms, costumes drawn by her : " Illyrian volun- 
 teers, dragoons of the Faith, blue shirts, cuirassiers 
 of the true Right." Another day he had overheard 
 the princess and Mme. de Silvis in a grave dis- 
 cussion concerning the shape and size of the cock- 
 ades. From all of which, and from scraps of 
 remarks gathered here and there, he suspected a 
 great expedition; and the journey he had just 
 made was probably concerning it. The little dark 
 man, a sort of hunchback, whom they had gone 
 to find among the mountains of Navarre, must be 
 some great general charged with leading the army 
 under the orders of the king. 
 
 " What ! the king going too ! . ." cried old Lee- 
 mans, casting a contemptuous look at his daughter. 
 
 A tumult of words followed the old man's 
 exclamation. 
 
 " And our money ? "
 
 284 Kings in Exile. 
 
 "And the notes?" 
 
 " 'T is an infamy ! " 
 
 " A theft ! " 
 
 And as, in these days, politics, like ^Esop's dish 
 is served up everywhere, Pichery, who is an im- 
 perialist, apostrophized the Republic stiff in his 
 horse-hair stock : 
 
 " Never under the Empire would such a thing 
 have been allowed ! to endanger the tranquillity 
 of a neighbouring State ! . ." 
 
 " It is very certain," said Tom, gravely, " that if 
 it were known to our authorities they would never 
 permit it. . . They ought to be warned, stirred 
 up. . ." 
 
 " Yes, I have thought of that," replied Lebeau. 
 " Unluckily, I don't know anything positive, pre- 
 cise. They would not listen to me. Besides, our 
 people are very distrustful ... all their precautions 
 are taken to mislead suspicions. . . This very 
 evening, the queen's birthday, there is a great fete 
 at the hotel de Rosen. . . What good would it 
 do to tell the authorities that those dancers are 
 conspiring and preparing for battles? . . And yet 
 there certainly is something out of the common 
 going on at that ball. . ." 
 
 Then for the first time it was noticed that the 
 valet was in evening dress, thin shoes, white cravat ; 
 yes, he is in charge of the buffets, and he must get 
 back as fast as he can to the lie Saint-Louis. 
 Suddenly Sephora, who had been reflecting for a 
 few moments, said : 
 
 " Listen, Lebeau ... if the king starts, you will
 
 The Watchers. 285 
 
 know it, will you not? . . They will tell you, if 
 only to pack his trunks. . . Well, if I am warned 
 only one hour in advance I swear to you the 
 expedition shall not take place." 
 
 She said this in her tranquil voice with slow but 
 firm decision. And while Tom Levis was asking 
 himself by what means his wife could prevent the 
 king from starting, and the other conspirators, much 
 dejected, were calculating what the non-success of 
 the grand stroke would cost them, Maitre Lebeau, 
 returning to the ball, hurries along on the tips of his 
 pumps through a labyrinth of dark little streets, old 
 roofs, old balconies, scutcheoned portals, through 
 all that aristocratic quarter of the last century now 
 turned into workshops and manufactories, which, 
 shaken by day with the rolling of heavy carts and 
 the swarming of a poor population, resumes at 
 night its character of a strange dead city. 
 
 The fete was seen and heard afar, a summer 
 fete, a midnight fete, sending along the two banks 
 of the river its scattered echoes and its lights in a 
 ruddy mist of flame from the extremity of the 
 Island, which looks, as it projects into the flowing 
 water, like the high and rounded poop of some 
 gigantic vessel riding at anchor. Come nearer; 
 tall and brilliantly lighted windows can be distin- 
 guished ; a thousand coloured fires in glass globes 
 are fastened among the copses, to the single trees 
 of the garden ; and along the Quay d'Anjou, 
 usually asleep at that hour, the lanterns of the 
 waiting carriages are making holes in the darkness
 
 286 Kings in Exile. 
 
 with their motionless little lights. Since Herbert's 
 marriage the hotel Rosen had seen no fete like 
 this ; in fact, the present one was finer, more vast, 
 more crowded, with all its doors and windows open 
 to the splendour of a starlit night. 
 
 The ground-floor apartments formed one long 
 gallery of salons, lofty as a cathedral, decorated 
 with paintings, ancient gilding, Dutch or Venetian 
 lustres lighting a strange decoration, hangings 
 shimmering with gold reflections upon green or 
 red, heavy shrines of massive silver, ivories, framed 
 in a medley, old mirrors with blackened quick- 
 silver, reliquaries, banners, treasures of Monte- 
 negro and Herzegovina, which Parisian taste had 
 known how to group and to display, with nothing 
 discordant, nothing too exotic about them. The 
 orchestra, stationed in the gallery of an ancient 
 oratory recalling that of Chenonceaux, was sur- 
 rounded with oriflammes, which sheltered also the 
 chairs of the king and queen. In contrast to all 
 this past, to these rich reflections from antiquity 
 which would put old Leemans beside himself, came 
 the waltzes of the day, languorous or whirling ; 
 the waltzers with long embroidered trains, with 
 fixed and brilliant eyes in a mist of flurry hair, 
 passing like a defiance of abounding youth; fair 
 young visions, slender, floating, and brunette ap- 
 paritions of a moist white pallor. From time to 
 time, from this tangle of dancers moving in a 
 circle, from this medley of silken stuffs which 
 added to the music a sound of coquettish and 
 mysterious rippling, couples would detach them-
 
 The Watchers. 287 
 
 selves and waltz through the tall glass door, receiv- 
 ing on their heads, inclined in opposite directions, 
 the white reflections of the illuminated frontal 
 where the queen's monogram was glittering, and 
 continue through the garden paths the rhythm of 
 their dance, with some hesitation and little pauses 
 caused by the distance of the music, making the 
 waltz at last a cadenced march, a tuneful prome- 
 nade, skirting the balmy groups of roses and mag- 
 nolias. In short, apart from the rarity and the 
 curiosity of the decorations and the presence of a 
 few types of foreign women with the tawny hair 
 and the languid suppleness of their Slav nature, 
 there was nothing here, at first sight, but one cf 
 those fashionable kermesses such as the Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Germain (represented at the hotel 
 Rosen by its most ancient and imposing names) 
 was in the habit of giving in its old gardens of the 
 Rue de 1'Universite, where the dancers often 
 passed from the waxed floors to the lawns, the 
 black coats being suffered to redeem themselves 
 with light-coloured trousers, summer fetes in the 
 open air, freer and more exuberant than others. 
 
 From his bedroom on the second floor the old 
 duke, crippled for the last week by an acute attack 
 of sciatica, listened to the echoes of his ball, smoth- 
 ering beneath the bedclothes his moans of pain, 
 and his barrack-room maledictions on the ironical 
 cruelty of the disease which nailed him to his bed 
 on such a day, making it impossible that he 
 should himself join that band of noble youth which 
 was destined to start on the morrow.
 
 288 Kings in Exile. 
 
 The decree had gone forth, the posts for the 
 struggle chosen, and this ball was a farewell, a sort 
 of defiance to war's mischances, and, at the same 
 time, a protection against the suspicions of the 
 French police. Though the duke could not ac- 
 company the volunteers, he consoled himself with 
 the thought that his son Herbert would take part 
 in the affair, and his money too, for their Majes- 
 ties had kindly permitted him to assume all the 
 costs of the expedition. On his bed, mingled 
 with maps for the staff and strategic plans, lay 
 bills for the outfit: such as cases of muskets, 
 shoes, blankets, victuals ; all of which he carefully 
 verified, with a terrible bristling of his moustache 
 heroic grimace of the royalist striving to get 
 the better of his parsimonious instincts. Now 
 and then, he lacked a figure or a fact, and then he 
 sent for Herbert, a pretext to keep for a few 
 moments near him, there under his curtains, the tall 
 son who was to leave him on the morrow for the 
 first time, whom he might never see again perhaps, 
 and for whom he felt an infinite tenderness, ill- 
 concealed by his stiff manner and majestic silences. 
 But the prince when he came would not stay long, 
 being in haste to do the honours of the house, and, 
 above all, unwilling to lose a moment of the short 
 hours he had still to spend with his dear Colette. 
 
 Standing with him in the first salon, she helped 
 him to receive his father's guests ; looking prettier 
 and more dainty than ever in her narrow tunic of 
 old lace, made of the alb of a Greek bishop, the 
 dull white reflections of which set off her fragile
 
 The Watchers. 289 
 
 beauty, that wore an impress of almost solemn 
 mystery on this last evening. It gave repose to 
 her features, it darkened the blue of her eyes, the 
 same blue as that pretty little cockade fluttering 
 among her curls beneath a diamond aigrette. . . 
 Hush ! the cockade of an Illyrian volunteer, the 
 model designed by herself and adopted by the 
 expedition. . . Ah ! for three months she had not 
 been idle, the pretty little thing ! Copying procla- 
 mations, carrying them secretly to the convent of 
 the Franciscans, designing costumes, banners, foil- 
 ing the police whom she always believed were at 
 her heels ; it was thus she played her part as a 
 royalist great lady, inspired by her former studies 
 at the Sacre-Cceur. One only detail was lacking to 
 her programme of Vendean guerilla warfare ; she 
 could not go, she could not follow her Herbert. 
 For now it was Herbert, Herbert only ; by some 
 blessing of nature, the other was no more thought 
 of than the poor ouistiti so cruelly crushed and 
 mangled on the pavement of the quay. This de- 
 light of sporting a man's costume and of putting her 
 feet into stout little boots was denied to Colette for 
 two reasons : one, her service near the queen ; the 
 other, very private, whispered only the night before 
 into Herbert's ear. Yes, if she were not mistaken, 
 after a lapse of time easy to calculate by taking 
 the day of the session of the Academy as the point 
 of departure, the race of Rosen would be blessed 
 with one representative the more ; and it was quite 
 impossible to expose a hope so dear, so precious, 
 to the fatigues of an expedition which could not 
 
 19
 
 290 Kings in Exile. 
 
 terminate without some rough and bloody thrusts ; 
 quite as impossible as it was to accept an invitation 
 for a waltz in those splendid salons. What secrets 
 the little woman was now obliged to keep ; and in 
 spite of her mysterious lips, her eyes, adorably tell- 
 tale, and the languid way in which she hung on 
 Herbert's arm had a fancy to tell all. 
 
 Suddenly the music was hushed, the dancers 
 stopped ; every one stood up to await the entrance 
 of Christian and Frederica. They crossed the 
 three salons resplendent in national treasures, 
 where the queen could see her monogram em- 
 broidered everywhere in flowers, lights, and jewels ; 
 where all things spoke to them of their country, of 
 its glories ; and now they stood upon the threshold 
 of the garden. . . Never was monarchy represented 
 in a loftier and more brilliant fashion ; a perfect 
 couple to engrave upon the coins of a people, on 
 the frontal of a dynasty. The queen, especially, 
 was admirable ; younger by ten years in a splendid 
 white attire, and on her neck, for all jewels, a heavy 
 amber collar from which hung a cross. Given and 
 blessed by the Pope, this collar has its legend, which 
 the faithful relate to one another in whispers. Fre- 
 derica wore it during the whole period of the siege 
 of Ragusa, where it was twice lost in the sorties, 
 and twice miraculously recovered under fire of the 
 battle. She attaches a sort of superstition to it, 
 fastens a queen's vow upon it, without one thought 
 of the charming effect of its gold pearls close be- 
 side the golden hair of which they seem, as it were, 
 to scatter the reflections.
 
 The Watchers. 291 
 
 While the sovereigns stood there, radiant, admir- 
 ing the fete and the garden and its fairy illumina- 
 tion, suddenly three strokes of a bow, fantastic, 
 rasping, energetic, were given from the middle of 
 a clump of rhododendrons. Every Slav in the 
 assembly quivered, recognizing the notes of guzlas, 
 whose long-stemmed mandolins could be seen amid 
 the dark-green foliage. The notes began with a 
 humming prelude, an overflowing of distant and 
 sonorous waves, advancing, rising, increasing, shed- 
 ding themselves around. 'Twas like a heavy cloud, 
 charged with electricity, from which, now and 
 again, a sharper bow struck lightnings, whence 
 there presently gushed forth, stormy and voluptu- 
 ous, the heroic rhythm of the national air, hymn 
 and dance in one, that air of RodoTtza which " down 
 there " takes part in all the fetes and all the battles, 
 presenting finely the double character of its antique 
 legend : The soldier Rodoi'tza, fallen into the 
 hands of the Turks, pretends death to escape them. 
 They light a fire on his breast; the soldier does 
 not flinch. They slip a snake, roused by the sun, 
 into his bosom ; they drive a score of nails beneath 
 his nails : he maintains his stony stillness. Then, 
 they bring to him Hafkouna, the tallest and love- 
 liest of the daughters of Zara, who dances as she 
 sings to him the air of Illyria. At the first notes, 
 as Rodo'ftza heard the tinkle of the sequins of her 
 necklet, the quiver of the fringes of her belt, he 
 smiled, his eyes opened and he would have been 
 lost, if the dancer in a whirling step had not flung 
 upon his face the silken scarf with which she timed
 
 292 Kings in Exile. 
 
 and crowned her dance. Thus was the soldier 
 saved, and this is why for two hundred years the 
 national air of Illyria is called the " air of Rodoi'tza." 
 
 Hearing it ring now beneath the sky of exile, 
 all the Illyrians, men and women, turned pale. 
 This call of the guzlas, which the orchestra at 
 the farther end of the salon accompanies in 
 undertones, like a murmHr of waves above which 
 rises the cry of the stormy petrel, this is the cry of 
 the nation itself, swollen with memories, with tears, 
 regrets, and hopes inexpressible. The huge bows, 
 heavy, shaped like the bows of archers, did not 
 vibrate upon common strings, but on nerves 
 strained to the breaking point, on fibres delicately 
 resonant. These young men, bold and proud, of 
 martial cut, felt within them, all, the indomitable 
 courage of Rodoi'tza, so well repaid by woman's 
 love ; and these beautiful Dalmatians, tall as Hai'- 
 kouna, have in their hearts her tenderness for 
 heroes. And the old men, thinking of their dis- 
 tant country, the mothers looking at their sons, 
 crave all to sob, all, all were it not for the pres- 
 ence of the king and queen uniting their voices 
 to the strident cry which the guzla players, their 
 playing ended, fling to the stars in a last rushing 
 firework of chords. 
 
 Immediately after, the dances were resumed, with 
 a spring, a dash, surprising in a society where 
 we may amuse ourselves only in conventional 
 ways. Certainly there was, as Lebeau had said, 
 something in this fete that was out of the common, 
 something ardent, feverish, passionate, which was
 
 The Watchers. 293 
 
 felt in the clasp of the arms around the waists, in 
 the spring of the dancers, in certain glittering 
 looks that crossed each other, even in the 
 cadence of the waltzes, the mazurkas, which rang 
 at times with the clanking of swords and spurs. 
 Toward the end of balls, when morning pales the 
 windows, the last hour of pleasure has a hurried 
 ardour, a tired intoxication. But on this occasion 
 the ball had hardly begun before the hands of all 
 were burning in their gloves, hearts were beating 
 beneath the corsage bouquets or the diamond 
 orders, and as each couple passed, lost in a 
 cadenced love, eyes rested long and tenderly 
 upon them, smiling. All present knew that those 
 handsome youths, the nobles of Illyria exiled with 
 their princes, and the nobles of France ever ready 
 to give their blood to the good cause, were to start 
 at dawn of day on a bold and perilous expedition. 
 Even in case of victory, how many would return of 
 those high-spirited young men who now enrolled 
 themselves without a count of cost? How many, 
 within a week, would bite the earth, lying on 
 mountain slopes, the sound of that mazurka still 
 humming in their ears to the beat of their ebbing 
 life-blood? T was the nearness of danger, min- 
 gling with the joy of a ball the anxiety of a night- 
 watch, that made those young eyes glitter with 
 tears and flashes, audacity and surrender, for 
 what could be denied to him who goes, who goes 
 to death, it may be? That death which hovered 
 in the air, whose wing swept round them in the 
 cadence of the violins, how it tightened the em-
 
 294 Kings in Exile. 
 
 brace, and hastened the avowal ! Fugitive loves ! 
 meeting of ephemera in a single ray of sunshine ! 
 They had hardly seen each other, they might never 
 meet again, but here were two hearts chained. 
 Some, the more haughty of the women, tried to 
 smile in spite of their emotion ; but what gentle- 
 ness beneath that pride ! And all this as they 
 danced with heads thrown back and locks floating, 
 each couple fancying themselves alone, hid, lost in 
 the twining magic whirl of a waltz of Brahms or a 
 mazurka of Chopin. 
 
 One was there, vibrating too, and deeply moved. 
 It was Meraut, in whom the notes of the guzlas, 
 soft and savagely energetic in turn, had awakened 
 the adventurous, bohemian spirit which lies at the 
 bottom of all the sun-temperaments, with a mad 
 desire to rush afar through unknown paths to the 
 Light, to adventure, to battle, to do some bold 
 and valiant action for which women would admire 
 him. Meraut, who did not dance, who had never 
 fought, the intoxication of this ball of heroism 
 attained him ; and to think that all this youth was 
 departing, to give its blood, to do great deeds and 
 dangerous emprises, while he remained behind 
 with old men, children ! To think that, having 
 organized the enterprise, he must leave it to be 
 carried on without him ! All this was sadness, 
 hardship inexpressible. The idea, the ideal, was 
 put to shame before action ! It may be that this 
 wringing of the heart, this desire to die, poured 
 into him by the songs and the Slavic dances, was 
 not disconnected with the radiant pride of Fre-
 
 The Watchers. 295 
 
 derica on the arm of Christian II. How happy he 
 felt her to be in beholding, at last, the king, the 
 warrior in her husband ! . . Hai'kouna, Hai'kouna, 
 in the clash of arms thou canst all forget and all 
 forgive, - betrayal, lies : what thou lovest above all 
 things is personal valour ; on that thy handkerchief, 
 \varm with thy tears, with the faint fragrance of 
 thy face, is cast. . . And while he thus bemoaned 
 himself, Hai'kouna, who saw, in the corner of the 
 salon, that broad poetic brow where the thick 
 rebellious locks, so little in the fashion, massed 
 themselves, Hai'kouna smiled, and made him a sign 
 to come to her. It seemed as though she had 
 divined the reason of his sadness. 
 
 " What a beautiful fete, Monsieur Meraut ! " 
 
 Then, lowering her voice : 
 
 " I owe this, too, to you. . . But we owe you so 
 much ... we know not how to thank you." 
 
 It was he, indeed, whose robust faith had 
 breathed upon the dying flames, given hope to 
 despair, and prepared the rising which on the 
 morrow was to turn to action. The queen did 
 not forget him, she ; there was not a person in 
 that illustrious assembly to whom she would 
 have spoken with that deferent kindness, that 
 glance of gratitude and sweetness, there, before 
 them all, in the midst of the respectful circle 
 ranged around the sovereigns. But Christian II. 
 turned towards him, again taking Frederica's arm. 
 
 " The Marquis de Hezeta is here," he said to 
 Elysee. "Have you seen him?" 
 
 " I do not know him, Sire. . ."
 
 296 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " But Re says that you and he are old friends. . . 
 See, there he is." 
 
 The Marquis de Hezeta was the leader who, in 
 the absence of old General Rosen, was to com- 
 mand the expedition. In the last attempt of the 
 Duke of Palma he had shown astonishing qualities 
 as a corps commander, and never, had he been 
 listened to, would the affair have ended as it did. 
 When he saw his efforts wasted, and the Pre- 
 tender himself giving the signal and the example 
 of flight, the cabecilla, seized with lassitude and mis- 
 anthropy, flung himself into the Basque mountains, 
 and lived there, safe from childish conspiracies, 
 false hopes, sword-thrusts into water, which ex- 
 hausted his moral forces. He wished to die ob- 
 scurely in his own country, but was now once more 
 tempted forth to adventure by the seductive roy- 
 alism of Pere Alphee and the renown for bravery 
 of Christian II. The ancient nobility of the parti- 
 san, his romantic life of exile, persecution, grand 
 and dashing strokes, and fanatical cruelty, all this 
 surrounded the Marquis Don Jose Maria de 
 Hezeta with an almost legendary interest, and 
 made him now the personage of the ball. 
 
 " Good-evening, lily . . ." he said, coming up to 
 Elysee with extended hand, and calling him by his 
 child's name in the old days of the Enclos de 
 Rey. . . " Yes, yes, it is I ... your old master . . . 
 Monsieur Papel." 
 
 The black coat, laden with crosses and orders, 
 the white cravat had not changed him, nor yet the 
 additional score of years that lay upon that huge
 
 The Watchers. 297 
 
 dwarfs-head, so swarthy with powder and the tan 
 of the mountain air that his frontal vein, terrible 
 and characteristic, was scarcely seen. With its 
 disappearance his royalist infatuation seemed atten- 
 uated, as if the cabecilla had left in his Basque 
 beretta, which he flung into a torrent at the end of 
 his last campaign, a part of his old beliefs, his early 
 illusions. 
 
 Elysee was strangely surprised to hear the talk 
 of his old master, of the man who had made him 
 what he was. 
 
 " You see, my little E"ly . . ." 
 
 The little fily was two feet taller than himself, 
 and not lacking in gray hairs. 
 
 "... it is all .over, there are no kings now. . . 
 The principle is alive, but the men are wanting. 
 Not one of these unhorsed ones is capable of get- 
 ting back into the saddle . . . and not one of them 
 really wishes to. . . Ha ! what I Ve seen, what I Ve 
 seen, during this last war ! . ." 
 
 A bloody mist seemed to cross his brow and 
 inject his eyes, fixed and as if enlarged by a vision 
 of shame, cowardice, treachery. . . 
 
 " But all kings are not alike," protested Me'raut, 
 " and I am sure that Christian . . ." 
 
 " Yours is worth no more than ours. . . A child, 
 a mere enjoyer. . . Not an idea, no will in those 
 eyes of pleasure. . . Look at him now ! " 
 
 He pointed to the king, who was waltzing past 
 them, his eyes vague, his forehead moist, his 
 small head bending to the bared shoulder of his 
 partner, inhaling it with his open mouth as if he
 
 298 Kings in Exile. 
 
 would fain have rolled there. In the rising intoxi- 
 cation of the ball, the pair passed on, touching them 
 with their panting breaths but without seeing them ; 
 and as the company crowded into the gallery to 
 see Christian II., the finest waltzer in his kingdom, 
 dance, Hezeta and Meraut took refuge in the deep 
 embrasure of an open window looking on the Quai 
 d'Anjou. They stayed there a long time, half 
 within the whirl and tumult of the ball and half in 
 the cool fresh shadow, the stilling silence of the 
 night. 
 
 " Kings believe no longer . . . they will no 
 longer. Why should we strive for them?" said 
 the Spaniard, with a sullen air. 
 
 " You believe in them no longer. , . And yet 
 you go to-morrow?" 
 
 " Yes, I go." 
 
 "Without hope?" 
 
 " One only. . . That of getting my head broke ; 
 my poor head, which I know not where to lay." 
 
 "And the king?" 
 
 " Oh ! as for him, I am easy enough. . ." 
 
 Did he mean to say that Christian II. was not 
 yet gone, or that, like his cousin the Duke of 
 Palma, he would always know how to get safely 
 back from a battle ? Hezeta did not explain him- 
 self further. 
 
 Around them the ball continued its giddy whirl, 
 but lilysee saw it now through the discouraged 
 eyes of his old master and his own disillusions. 
 He felt an immense pity for that valiant youth 
 which so gayly was preparing to fight beneath
 
 T/te Watchers. 299 
 
 leaders whose faith was gone ; already the fete, its 
 scene confused, its lights veiled, disappeared to his 
 eyes in the smoke of a battlefield, in a great melee 
 of disaster, from which the unknown dead were 
 gathered up. For an instant, in order to shake off 
 that threatening vision, he leaned upon the window- 
 sill above the deserted quay, on which the palace 
 shed great squares of light that reached beyond it 
 to the Seine. And the water to which he listened, 
 always tossing and tumultuous at this angle of the 
 Isle, mingled the noises of its current and its 
 furious dash against the arches of the bridge with 
 the sighs of the violins and the rasping plaints of 
 the guzlas, leaping in short gasps like the sobs of 
 a heart oppressed or spreading itself in weltering - 
 waves like the blood of an open wound.
 
 3oo Kings in Exile. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE NIGHT-TRAIN. 
 
 " WE leave to-night, eleven o'clock, Lyons Sta- 
 tion. Destination unknown. Probably Cette, Nice, 
 or Marseilles. Take warning." 
 
 When this note, hastily scratched off by Lebeau, 
 reached the Avenue de Messine, the Comtesse de 
 Spalato had just left her bath, all fresh, fragrant, 
 and supple, and was moving about her boudoir, 
 watering and taking care of her flowers and her 
 green plants, gloved to the elbows in Swedish kid 
 for this excursion through the artificial garden. 
 She showed no emotion, but stopped a moment to 
 reflect in the calm half-light of the closed blinds ; 
 then she made a little resolute gesture and shrugged 
 her shoulders as if to say : " Bah ! who wants the 
 end must take the means. . ." After which she 
 rang for her maid, to be put under arms to receive 
 the king. 
 
 " What will madame put on? " 
 " Nothing. . . I shall stay as I am. . ." 
 And certainly nothing could be more becoming 
 to her than that long garment of pale blue flannel, 
 in soft, clinging folds, a great fichu tied, childlike, 
 behind her waist, and her black hair, twisted, 
 curled and raised very high, showing the nape of
 
 The Night-Train. 301 
 
 the neck, and the starting line of the shoulders, 
 which could easily be imagined of a brighter tone 
 than the face, the brightness of warm and polished 
 amber. 
 
 She thought, with reason, that no formal toilet 
 could equal this dishabille, which enhanced the 
 simple, girlish air the king so delighted in ; but 
 this decision obliged her to breakfast in her 
 chamber, for she could not, of course, go down- 
 stairs in such attire. She had organized her 
 household on a grave and serious footing ; there 
 was nothing here of the fantastic and bohemian 
 allurements of Courbevoie. After breakfast she 
 installed herself in her boudoir, from which a wide 
 veranda projected over the avenue, and there, 
 peacefully seated and rosy in the reflection of the 
 window shades, she watched for the king. Chris- 
 tian never came before two o'clock ; but from that 
 hour an altogether novel emotion began in her 
 placid nature, namely : expectant waiting at first 
 quivering slightly like a ripple in the water, then 
 agitated, feverish, humming. Carriages were rare 
 at that hour on the tranquil avenue, now bathed in 
 sunshine between its double rows of plane-trees 
 and new hotels, ending in the gilded railings and 
 lamp-posts of the Pare Monceaux. At the faintest 
 roll of wheels Sephora drew aside the blind to see 
 who was coming, and her expectation, each time 
 balked, was irritated by that exterior quietude, 
 that rural calmness. 
 
 What had happened ? Would he really go with- 
 4 ut seeing her?
 
 302 Kings in Exile. 
 
 She sought for reasons, pretexts ; but when we 
 are waiting, all else waits ; the whole being remains 
 in suspense, and ideas, floating, disconnected, are 
 'no more completed than words that are stammered 
 by the lips. Sephora felt this torture, this swoon- 
 ing, in the tips of her fingers where all nerves 
 reach and quiver. Again she raised the rose- 
 coloured linen of the shade. A warm breeze 
 stirred the branches like green feathers, a cool 
 breath rose from the roadway, which the water- 
 carts were bathing in spasmodic jets, stopped for 
 the passing of carriages, now more numerous, on 
 their way at five in the afternoon to the Bois. By 
 this time she was seriously afraid that the king had 
 abandoned her, and she hastily despatched two 
 letters to him, one addressed to the house of 
 Prince d'Axel, the other to the club. Then she 
 dressed, not being able with propriety to remain 
 till evening as a young girl fresh from her bath ; 
 after which she wandered, first from her chamber 
 to her boudoir and her dressing-room, and finally 
 over all the house, striving to allay her expecta- 
 tion by restless motion. 
 
 It was not a little cocotte's cage that la Spalato 
 had purchased, nor one of those stupendous houses 
 with which a thousand contractors have encum- 
 bered the new quarters of western Paris, but an artis- 
 tic mansion, worthy of the names of its surrounding 
 streets : Murillo, Velasquez, Van Dyck ; a house 
 distinguished from all its neighbours, from the 
 pediment of its frontal to the knocker on its door. 
 Built by Count Ponicki for his mistress, an ugly
 
 The Night-Train. 303 
 
 woman, whom he paid every morning with a thou- 
 sand-franc note folded in four and laid upon the 
 marble of her toilet-table, this marvellous dwelling 
 had been sold hap-hazard, with all its art-furniture, 
 for two millions on the death of the rich Polish 
 nobleman, who left no will, and Sephora had ob- 
 tained at one stroke these treasures. 
 
 By the solid carved wooden staircase, capable 
 of bearing the weight of a carriage and four, which 
 gave to the serious beauty of its present mistress 
 the sombre background of a Dutch picture, the 
 Comtesse de Spalato descended to her three salons 
 on the ground-floor: the Dresden salon, a small 
 room all Louis XV., containing a ravishing collec- 
 tion of vases, statuettes, enamels, in that fragile art 
 of the eighteenth century which seems to have 
 been moulded by the rosy fingers of favourites 
 and animated by the roguery of their smile. Next 
 was the salon of the ivories, where, in glass cases 
 lined with flame-colour were Chinese ivories in a 
 medley of little personages, trees with fruits of 
 precious stones, fishes with jade eyes, and certain 
 other ivories of the middle ages, dolorous and im- 
 passioned in expression, on which the blood in red 
 wax of the crucifixes made stains as on the pallor 
 of human flesh. The third room, lighted from 
 above, and hung in Cordova leather, was awaiting 
 the time when Pere Leemans should complete its 
 furnishing. Usually the soul of the daughter of the 
 " brocante " exulted amid these lovely things em- 
 bellished by the bargain she had made of them ; 
 but to-day she comes and goes without looking,
 
 304 Kings in Exile. 
 
 without seeing, her thought afar, lost in irritating 
 arguments. . . What ! would he really go in this 
 way? . . Then he did not love her ! . . And she 
 had felt so sure that he was captured, netted ! . . 
 
 The servant whom she had despatched with her 
 letters returned. No news of the king. He had 
 not been seen anywhere. . . Ah ! that was Chris- 
 tian indeed ! . . Knowing himself weak, he was 
 fleeing, hiding, escaping her. . . A rush of furious 
 anger swept for an instant from her natural calm- 
 ness the woman who possessed herself so well. 
 She would have torn, broken, everything about 
 her were it not for her long habit of sale, which 
 put a ticket of the price, as one might say, visibly 
 on every object. Flinging herself at last into an 
 arm-chair as the twilight deepened on her treasures, 
 she saw them fleeing, disappearing in the dusk 
 together with her dream of a colossal fortune* 
 The door opened violently. 
 
 " Madame la Comtesse is served." 
 
 She was forced to sit down to table alone, in the 
 majestic dining-room, adorned on its eight panels 
 with grand portraits by Franz Hals, valued at eight 
 hundred thousand francs, stern, strong faces, stiff 
 and solemn in their ruffs, but less solemn than the 
 white-cravatted butler who is carving on a side- 
 table the dishes which a pair of impassible flunkeys 
 dressed in nankeen are to serve to their mistress. 
 The irony of this pompous attendance, contrasting 
 with the desertion that threatened her, made her 
 heart wince with vexation ; one might almost have 
 thought that the kitchen department suspected her
 
 The Night-Train. 305 
 
 trouble, so stiffly did the footmen enforce their cere- 
 monious disdain as she ate, and waited till she had 
 finished, motionless and grave as a photographer's 
 assistant who has fixed a client before the lens. 
 
 Little by little, however, the abandoned one re- 
 turned to her true self, and recovered her nerve. . . 
 No ! she would not allow herself to be cast off in 
 this way. . . It was not that she cared for the 
 king, but the affair, the grand stroke, all her self- 
 loves at stake before the eyes of her associates. . . 
 Come ! her plan is made. . . Going up to her 
 room she wrote a line to Tom ; then, while the 
 servants were dining and gossiping in the lower 
 regions about the solitary and restless day of their 
 mistress, Madame la comtesse, with her little hands, 
 that were far from awkward, packed a valise which 
 had often made its trip from Courbevoie to the 
 Agency, threw around her shoulders a gray 
 woollen cloak for the chilly night, and furtively 
 left her palace on foot, going straight to a stand 
 of street carriages, valise in hand, like a lady- 
 companion who has just received her pay. 
 
 Christian II., on his side, had passed his day not 
 less uneasily. Remaining late at the ball with the 
 queen, he woke in the morning with head and 
 heart both full of those heroic strains of faeguzlas. 
 Preparations for his journey, arms to examine, 
 also that uniform of lieutenant-general, not worn 
 since the days of Ragusa, all this kept him busy 
 till eleven o'clock, surrounded and watched by 
 Lebeau, much perplexed, and not daring to push 
 too far his insinuating questions. At eleven o'clock 
 20
 
 306 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the little Court assembled around a low mass said 
 by Pere Alphee in the salon, transformed into an 
 oratory, the mantelpiece serving as altar, its velvet 
 lambrequin covered by an embroidered cloth. 
 The Rosens were not present, the old man being 
 in his bed, and the princess having gone to the 
 station with Herbert, who had already started with 
 a party of young men. Hezeta was to leave by 
 the following train, the little band scattering itself 
 thus along the day to cause no suspicion. This 
 secret mass, which recalled the times of trouble, 
 the exultant head of the monk, the military energy 
 of his gesture and his voice, made the very air 
 itself seem full of incense and of gunpowder, and 
 the religious ceremony the more solemn through 
 the sense of a coming battle. 
 
 The breakfast was oppressed by these mingled 
 emotions, though the king put a certain coquetry 
 into leaving behind him none but agreeable memo- 
 ries ; affecting towards the queen a tenderly re- 
 spectful attitude, the affectionateness of which was 
 dashed by the rather distrustful coldness of Fre- 
 derica. The eyes of the child watched them timidly, 
 for the horrible scene of the other night haunted 
 his young memory, leaving nervous intuitions within 
 it beyond his years. The Marquise de Silvis was 
 exhaling in advance heavy sighs of farewell. As 
 for Elysee, to whose breast confidence had re- 
 turned, he could scarcely contain his joy, as he 
 thought of this counter-revolution of the People 
 of which he had dreamed so long, this popular 
 uprising to force the doors of a palace and restore
 
 The Night-Train. 307 
 
 a king. To his mind, success was not doubtful. 
 Christian had by no means the same certainty; 
 but beyond this trifling discomfort of departure 
 when it seems as though solitude were suddenly 
 made by the receding of objects or beings who 
 have hitherto surrounded us beyond this feeling 
 he had no unpleasant apprehension, but rather a 
 relief in escaping from a false position, threatened 
 as he was by notes falling due and debts of honour. 
 In case of victory, the civil-list would settle all. 
 Defeat would bring with it, on the contrary, a 
 general and total ruin . . . death, a ball in the fore- 
 head, straight between the eyes. . . He thought 
 of that as a final solution to all his troubles of 
 money and of heart. So thinking, his indifference 
 made no bad figure between the queen's absorbed 
 reflections and Elysee's enthusiasm. But as the 
 three were talking together in the garden a groom 
 went by. 
 
 " Tell Samy to put the horses in," ordered 
 Christian. Frederica shuddered. 
 
 " Are you going out? " she said. 
 
 " Yes, for prudence' sake. . . The ball last night 
 will make all Paris talk. . . I ought to show my- 
 self ... let people see me, on the boulevard, at the 
 club. . . Oh ! I '11 return to dine with you." 
 
 He sprang up the portico at a bound, joyous and 
 free as a boy out of school. 
 
 " I shall fear to the very end ! " said the queen ; 
 and Meraut, doubtful like herself, could say no 
 word to encourage her. 
 
 The king, however, had really made strong reso-
 
 308 Kings in Exile. 
 
 lutions. During the mass he had sworn not to see 
 Sephora, knowing well that if she tried to retain 
 him, if she wound her arms about his neck, he 
 would not have strength to leave her. In all sin- 
 cerity, therefore, he went to his club, where he found 
 a few bald-heads absorbed in silent whist, or in 
 majestic slumber around the tables in the reading- 
 room. The place was all the more lifeless and 
 deserted because they had played very high the 
 night before. In the early morning, as the party of 
 players left the club, Prince d'Axel at their head, 
 it appeared that they met a troop of she-asses 
 ambling past the door, their bells jingling . . . and 
 Monseigneur and the rest called to the donkey- 
 boy. . . They drank warm milk in champagne- 
 glasses, and then these gentlemen, all rather high, 
 jumped astride of the poor little beasts, in spite of 
 their kicks and the cries of the boy, and they ran 
 the most amusing steeple-chase ever seen, the 
 whole length of the Rue de la Paix ! . . It was 
 worth hearing, this majestically excited account of 
 M. Bonceil, steward of the Grand-Club : " Ah ! it 
 was so droll ! . . Monseigneur on that little don- 
 key, obliged to curl up his long legs for Mon- 
 seigneur is admirably made in the legs. . . And 
 that imperturbable phlegm of his ! . . Ah ! if his 
 Majesty had only been there ! . ." 
 
 His Majesty sincerely regretted having missed 
 that fine show of fools. . . Lucky Prince d'Axel ! 
 At open quarrel with the king, his uncle, turned 
 out of his own country for all sorts of Court 
 intrigues, he may never come to the throne, be-
 
 The Night-Train. 309 
 
 cause the old monarch now talks of remarrying 
 with a young woman and begetting a crowd of little 
 presumptives. But all that does not disturb him 
 the least in the world. To " make fete " in Paris 
 seems to him far more interesting than to make 
 politics " down there ". . . Little by little, the 
 spirit of blague, of sceptical satire, returned to 
 Christian as he lay extended on the divan, where 
 the prince-royal had left the effluence of his con- 
 tagious laxity. In the aimless atmosphere of the 
 club, everything the heroic ardour of the night 
 before, the great attempt of the morrow seemed 
 to the young king worthless, without glory, with- 
 out magic, without grandeur. Positively, as one 
 might say, he decomposed as he lay there ; and to 
 escape the torpor which was overcoming him like 
 a stupefying poison in all his veins, he rose, and 
 went out into the open air of living, active, circu- 
 lating humanity. 
 
 Three o'clock. The hour at which he usually 
 turned in the direction of the Avenue de Messine, 
 after breakfasting at the club, or at Mignon's. 
 Mechanically his steps took their habitual way 
 through this summer Paris, always a little larger 
 and a little less heady than the winter Paris, but 
 offering charming aspects, prolonged vistas with 
 its verdure massed against stonework, and the 
 shadows of its foliage on the whiteness of the 
 asphalt. 
 
 What pretty women were gliding there half- 
 screened by sunshades, with a grace, a seductive 
 charm, a sweet good-humour ! What other women
 
 310 Kings in Exile. 
 
 could walk as these did, or drape themselves with 
 motion, or talk, or dress, or do the opposite, like 
 them ? Ah ! Paris, Paris, city of facile pleasures 
 and brief hours ! To think that in quitting all that 
 he was going, perhaps, to get his head broke. But 
 at any rate, what good moments he had had there ! 
 what intelligent and complete enjoyment! 
 
 In the fervour of his gratitude the Slav had a 
 sparkle in his eye for all the passing dames who 
 attracted him by a glance or the twirl of a lace 
 skirt spreading fan-like. The knightly king of the 
 morning between wife and son, kneeling in the 
 oratory before departing to recover his kingdom, 
 was far indeed from this pretty flusher of women, 
 his nose on the alert, his conquering hat on his 
 curled little head, with a rosy glow of the fever of 
 pleasure on his cheeks. Frederica was not wrong 
 in cursing the ferment of Paris, and dreading it for 
 this fickle brain, frothy as a wine that will not 
 keep. 
 
 At the forking of the Boulevard Hausmann with 
 the Avenue de Messine Christian stopped and let 
 several carriages pass him. This recalled him 
 to reason. How had he come there, and so 
 quickly? . . The hotel Potnicki rose in the vapor- 
 ous light of the western sun with its two little tur- 
 rets, a Parisian castle, and its alcoved balcony. . . 
 What temptation ! Why should he not go there ? 
 Why not see for the last time that woman who 
 would remain forever in his life with the dry and 
 thirsty memory of an unsatisfied desire? 
 
 At last, after a terrible momentary debate, his
 
 The Night- Train. 311 
 
 uncertainty plainly visible in the reed-like swaying 
 of that faltering body, he took an heroic decision, 
 jumped into an open cab that was then passing, 
 and was driven to the club. Never would he have 
 had the courage to do this without his oath made 
 to God in the morning during mass. To that 
 pusillanimous soul, the soul of a Catholic woman, 
 that oath carried all before it. 
 
 At the club he found a letter from S6phora 
 which, merely by the perfume of its paper, com- 
 municated to him the fever in which it was written. 
 Prince d'Axel brought him the second letter, a few 
 hasty, imploring phrases in a writing that the books 
 of J. Tom Levis had never witnessed. But here 
 Christian II., surrounded, sustained, watched, felt 
 himself stronger, being of those to whom the gal- 
 lery imparts an attitude. He crumpled the letters 
 into his pocket. The gay youth of the club was 
 now arriving, still under the excitement of the tale 
 of the donkey race, related at full length in a 
 morning paper. The sheet was passed from hand 
 to hand, and all as they read it gave that exhausted 
 laugh, that stomach laugh of men worn-out. 
 
 "Do we make fete to-night?" asked these 
 young noblemen, absorbing sodas and other 
 hygienic waters, of which the club had an un- 
 limited supply. 
 
 Enticed by them, the king went off to dinner 
 at the Cafe de Londres ; not in one of those salons 
 where the well-known hangings had danced a dozen 
 times before their drunkenness, and the mir/ors 
 bore their names written and scratched like a
 
 512 Kings in Exile. 
 
 wintry frost upon the panes, but in the cellars, 
 those wonderful catacombs of barrels and bottles 
 drawn up in regular lines, bearing white porcelain 
 tickets and extending as far as beneath the theatre 
 of the Opera-Comique. Every vintage of France 
 lay sleeping there. The table was laid at the 
 farther end, among the Chateau-Yquems, which 
 softly beamed, their prostrate, glaucous bottles 
 spangled with reflections from the gas and the 
 coloured-glass chandeliers. This dinner was an 
 idea of Wattelet, who wished to mark the king's 
 departure (known only to himself and Prince 
 d'Axel) by a wholly original repast. But the 
 effect was spoiled by the dampness of the walls 
 and ceilings, which penetrated those present, al- 
 ready worn-out with the fatigues of the night 
 before. Queue-de-Poule went to sleep and only 
 woke by shivering starts. Rigolo said little; he 
 laughed, or pretended to do so, and looked at his 
 watch every five minutes. Was he thinking of the 
 queen, whom this delay in his return would terrify? 
 At the dessert a few women arrived, diners 
 at the Caf6 de Londres, who, knowing that the 
 princes were below, left their tables, and, guided 
 by the waiters with candelabra, slipped down into 
 the cellars, their trains over their arms, with little 
 cries and pretences of fright. Nearly all were 
 in low gowns. At the end of five minutes they 
 began to cough and grow pale, shivering on the 
 knees of " these gentlemen," who themselves were 
 protected by the upturned collars of their coats. 
 " A pretty joke," said one of them, more chilly, or
 
 The Night-Train. 313 
 
 less madcap than the rest, " to make us all split 
 our lungs." It was soon decided to take coffee in 
 the salons, and during the removal thither the 
 king disappeared. It was just nine o'clock. His 
 coupe was at the door. 
 
 " Avenue de Messine . . ." he said in a low voice, 
 his teeth clenched. 
 
 The thought had seized him like a madness. 
 Throughout the dinner he had seen but her, her, 
 breathing of her alone from the bare skins that 
 surrounded him. Oh ! to seize her in his arms 
 and be no longer the dupe of her tears, of her 
 prayers ! . . 
 
 " Madame is out." 
 
 It was a dash of cold water in a furnace. Ma- 
 dame was out. He could not doubt it, on behold- 
 ing the license of the household, delivered over to 
 a crowd of servants, whose coloured ribbons and 
 striped waistcoats Christian saw fleeing in all direc- 
 tions at his entrance. He asked no questions ; sud- 
 denly sobered, he measured the bottomless abyss 
 into which he had been about to fall. Perjured to 
 God, a traitor to the crown ! . . The chaplet was 
 in his burning fingers ; he told its beads in aves, 
 in thanksgivings, as the carriage rolled to Saint- 
 Mande" through the fantastic aspects and the 
 nocturnal terrors of the night. 
 
 " The king ! " said Elyse"e, on the watch at the 
 window, as soon as he saw the lamps of the coup6 
 turning brightly into the courtyard. The king ! 
 It was the first word any one had spoken since 
 dinner. As if by magic, faces were illuminated,
 
 314 Kings in Exile. 
 
 tongues were loosened at once. The queen her- 
 self, in spite of her apparent calmness, her force 
 of will, could not restrain a cry of joy. She had 
 thought all lost, Christian kept by that woman, 
 abandoning his friends, and forever dishonoured. 
 Not a person about her, during those three mortal 
 hours of expectant waiting, but thought the same, 
 with the same uneasiness ; even poor little Zara, 
 whom the queen had kept up, and who, under- 
 standing the anguish, the drama of that silence, 
 and without asking one of those questions often 
 so cruel, so oracular in a child's shrill voice, had 
 sheltered himself behind the covers of a large 
 portfolio, whence his pretty face reappeared of 
 a sudden when the king was announced, bathed 
 in tears, which had flowed silently for more than 
 an hour. When asked, later, why he had felt 
 such grief, he owned he was unhappy because 
 he feared the king had gone without kissing him. 
 Loving little soul, to whom this young and lively, 
 smiling father was like an elder brother full of 
 pranks and frolics, a most attractive elder brother, 
 though he made their mother wretched. 
 
 Christian's quick, curt voice was heard giving 
 orders. Then he went to his chamber, and five 
 minutes later appeared all equipped for his journey 
 in a little hat with a coquettish buckle and blue 
 band, and dainty gaiters, like a tourist on a beach 
 in one of Wattelet's pictures. The monarch how- 
 ever, was visible beneath the dandy; authority, 
 the grand air, the ease of appearing nobly, no 
 matter under what circumstances. He approached
 
 The Night-Train. 315 
 
 the queen and murmured a few excuses for being 
 late. Still pale with emotion she said to him, very 
 low : " If you had not come, I should have gone 
 with Zara to take your place." And he knew very 
 well she spoke the truth ; he saw her for an instant, 
 her child in her arms amid the balls, as on the 
 balcony of his window that terrible night, and the 
 child closing his beautiful, resigned eyes in face 
 of death. Without replying, he raised Frederica's 
 hand to his lips with fervour ; then, with an im- 
 petuous, youthful movement he drew her to him 
 and whispered : " Forgive ! . . forgive ! . ." 
 
 Forgiveness ! she was still capable of it; but at 
 that instant she saw at the door of the salon, 
 ready to accompany his master, Lebeau, that 
 shuffling valet, the confidant of pleasures and 
 treachery, and the dreadful thought came to 
 her, as she gently disengaged herself: "What if 
 he is lying? . . what if he does not go?" Christian 
 divined it. Turning to M6raut he said : " You 
 will accompany me to the station. . . Samy will 
 bring you back." Then, as time was short, he 
 hurried his farewells, said an amiable word to 
 each, to Boscovich, to the marquise, took Zara 
 on his knee and spoke to him of the expedition he 
 was about to undertake to recover his kingdom ; 
 told him never to cause grief to the queen ; and if 
 he did not see his father again to remember that 
 he died for the country, doing his duty as a king. 
 A little speech a la Louis XIV., really not ill- 
 timed and to which the little prince listened 
 gravely, somewhat disconcerted by the gravity
 
 316 Kings in Exile. 
 
 of the words from lips he had always seen smil- 
 ing. But Christian was ever the man of the 
 moment, all mobility, and excessive volatility, now 
 wholly occupied with his departure, the chances 
 of the expedition, and more touched than he was 
 willing to show ; a feeling which made him shorten 
 the tenderness of the last minute. " Adieu ! . . 
 Adieu ! . ." he said, as, with a wave of the hand to 
 them all, and a profound bow to the queen, he 
 departed. 
 
 Truly, if Elyse*e M6raut had not for three whole 
 years seen the interior of the royal household 
 troubled by the weaknesses, the shameful frailties 
 of Christian II., he could never have recognized 
 the Rigolo of the Grand Club in the lofty, heroic 
 prince who explained to him his plans, his proj- 
 ects, his political views, so broad, so wise, as they 
 drove at a rapid pace to the Lyon station. 
 
 The royalist faith of the tutor, always a little 
 superstitious, beheld in this a divine intervention, a 
 privilege of caste, the king recovering himself, as 
 he should, at a vital moment, by grace of con- 
 secration and heredity; and, without explaining 
 to himself exactly why, this moral rebirth of 
 Christian, foreshadowing, foretelling his restora- 
 tion, caused him an inexpressible distress, a sin- 
 gular jealousy of which he would not analyze the 
 cause. While Lebeau was engaged in buying 
 tickets and registering the luggage, they walked 
 together up and down the long waiting-room, and 
 in the solitude of this night departure the king 
 could not keep himself from thinking of S^phora
 
 The Night-Train. 317 
 
 and his tender escortings of her to the Saint- 
 Lazare station. While under the influence of this 
 memory a woman who passed them attracted his 
 eye ; the same height, a certain something of that 
 virtuous yet coquettish step. .- . 
 
 Poor Christian ! poor unwilling king ! 
 
 At last, however, he was in a carriage, the door 
 of which Lebeau opened to him, one of the usual 
 carriages for all travellers, so as not to attract 
 attention. He flung himself into a corner, in haste 
 to be done with departure, to be off. . . This 
 slow tearing himself away was painful to him. A 
 whistle, the train moves, draws out, leaps noisily 
 over the bridges that crossed the sleeping suburbs 
 with their rows of lamps, and reached the open 
 country. Christian II. breathed freely; he felt 
 himself strong, saved, out of danger ; he would 
 almost have sung were he alone in the carriage. 
 But at the farther end, by the other window, a 
 little figure, sunk in the dark corner seemed to 
 shrink with the desire to escape attention. 'Twas 
 a woman. Young, old, ugly, pretty? The king 
 mere habit cast a look that way. Nothing 
 stirred but the two feathers of a little hat, which 
 seemed to droop and fold as if to rest. " She 
 sleeps," he thought, " and so will I. . ." He 
 stretched himself out, wrapped a rug about him, 
 and looked vaguely for a time at the silhouettes 
 of the trees and bushes confused and softened by 
 the darkness and seeming to fall one upon another 
 as the train went by, at the mile-posts, at the 
 clouds errant on the midnight sky. His eyelids,
 
 Kings m Exile. 
 
 growing heavy, were about to close when he felt 
 upon his cheek the caress of a soft curl and low- 
 ered eyelids, a violet breath, and two lips murmur- 
 ing upon his lips : " Cruel ! . . without bidding me 
 farewell ! " . . . 
 
 Ten hours later, Christian II. awoke to a sound 
 of cannon, to the blinding light of a country 
 sun checkered with murmuring foliage. He had 
 dreamed that he was mounting at the head of 
 his troops beneath a hail of fire the steep ascent 
 from the port of Ragusa to the citadel. But in- 
 stead of that he awoke to find himself motionless 
 in a vast bed, his eyes and brain blurred, his limbs 
 resting in a delightful lassitude. What had hap- 
 pened ? Little by little he saw more clearly ; he 
 gathered himself together. He was at Fontaine- 
 bleau, in the hotel du Faisan, opposite to the 
 forest, where the green and close-pressed tree- 
 tops rose in the blue of ether, while the cannon 
 of the neighbouring camp was being exercised. 
 And the living reality, the visible link of his 
 ideas, Se"phora, was seated before that eternal 
 secretary (seen nowhere now but in hotels) writ- 
 ing actively with a pen that spluttered. 
 
 She saw in a mirror before her the admiring, 
 grateful glance of the king, and replied, without 
 turning round, by a tender kiss from her eyes and 
 the tip of her pen, after which she continued to 
 write placidly, showing the glimmer of a smile at 
 the corner of 'those seraphic lips. " A telegram 
 that I am sending just to reassure my people," 
 she said, as she rose to ring the bell. The de-
 
 The Night-Train. 319 
 
 spatch given, and the waiter gone, she opened 
 the window, relieved of a great anxiety, to let in 
 the golden sunshine, which entered in floods, like 
 the waters of a sluice. " Heavens ! how lovely it 
 is ! . ." she said. Then she went to the bed and 
 sat down upon the edge of it near her lover. She 
 laughed, she was wild with delight at being in the 
 country, at the prospect of wandering in the woods 
 on this exquisite day. They had plenty of time 
 before the midnight train that brought them 
 should carry Christian on his way; for Lebeau, 
 who had continued his journey, was to notify 
 Ilezeta and his gentlemen that the embarcation 
 of the king, and consequently their own, was de- 
 layed for a day. The amorous Slav himself would 
 have preferred to draw the curtains on his happi- 
 ness till the very last hour. But women are more 
 ideal ; and directly after breakfast a hired landau 
 took them through the splendid avenues, bordered 
 with lawns and groups of trees, which open into 
 the forest, like the park at Versailles, before the 
 great rocks break it up into superb and natural 
 sites. It was the first time Sephora and the king 
 had ever driven out together, and Christian enjoyed 
 the brief pleasure on the terrible eve of battle and 
 disaster. 
 
 They rolled along under the vast arcades of 
 greenery where the foliage of the beeches drooped 
 in slender branches, motionless, threaded by a 
 distant sunshine which seemed to find it hard to 
 pierce this verdure of primeval development. 
 Beneath that shade, with no other horizon than
 
 320 Kings in Exile. 
 
 the profile of a beloved woman, without other 
 hope, other memory, other desire than her ca- 
 resses, the poetic nature of the Slav poured itself 
 out. Oh ! to live there, both of them, they alone, 
 in the little house of a keeper, moss and thatch 
 without, a soft, luxurious nest within ! . . He 
 wanted to know when she had begun to love him ; 
 what impression had he made on her at first? He 
 translated for her the love-songs of his native 
 land, with kisses on her throat and on her eyes ; 
 and she listened, feigning to comprehend, to reply, 
 her eyelids closing, heavy from want of sleep. 
 
 Eternal discord in the duets of love ! Christian 
 wished that they should bury themselves in soli- 
 tary, unexplored places ; Sephora sought the cele- 
 brated points, the curiosities of the forest, the 
 places shown where boulders trembled, and rocks 
 wept, and trees were blasted, and the people shel- 
 tered in huts and caves, from which they ran at the 
 slightest sound of wheels. She hoped to escape in 
 this way the wearisome and monotonous canticle 
 of love, while Christian was admiring her touching 
 patience in listening to the interminable talk of 
 the worthy country-people, who have time and to 
 spare for all they do. 
 
 At Franchart she insisted on drawing water 
 from the famous well of the old monks, so deep 
 that it takes the bucket twenty minutes to come 
 up. Fancy how amusing to Christian ! . . Next 
 was a woman medalled like an old gendarme, 
 who showed them the beauties of the site, the 
 ancient pond on the banks of which the stag was
 
 The Night- Train. 321 
 
 always taken, an old story told in the same lan- 
 guage for so many years that she fancied she had 
 belonged to the convent, and, three centuries later, 
 had been present in person at the sumptuous 
 country pleasure-parties of the first Empire. " It 
 was here, monsieur, madame, that the great 
 emperor sat down with all his Court; " and she 
 showed among the bushes a granite bench long 
 enough for three or four persons at most. Then 
 in a lofty tone : " Opposite, the empress, with her 
 ladies of honour. . ." It was sinister, this evoca- 
 tion of imperial pomp amid the fallen rocks and 
 gnarled and twisted trees, and arid gorse. " Come, 
 Sephora ! . ." said Christian. But Sephora was 
 looking at an esplanade where, according to the 
 guide, they were taking the little King of Rome 
 when he saw in the distance his august parents 
 and stretched his arms to them. This vision of 
 the child-prince reminded the King of Illyria of 
 his little Zara. The child rose up before him, 
 held by Frederica, and looked at him with his 
 great sad eyes as if asking him what he was doing 
 there. But it was only a vague reminiscence 
 quickly smothered, and they continued their way 
 beneath those oaks of all sizes, the meeting- 
 places of famous hunts, through the slopes of 
 green valleys and along the crest of hills over- 
 looking the amphitheatres of crumbling granite 
 or gravel-pits where fir-trees ploughed the red 
 and sandy soil with their strong projecting roots. 
 
 Presently they were following a dark path im- 
 penetrably shady, with deep, damp ruts. On either 
 
 2i
 
 322 Kings in Exile. 
 
 side a line of great tree-trunks, like the columns of 
 a cathedral formed silent naves, where the patter 
 of a squirrel or the fall of a detached leaf like a bit 
 of gold was heard. An immense sadness seemed 
 to fall from those tree-tops, those branches with- 
 out birds, sonorous and empty as deserted houses. 
 Christian, full of his love, deepened its passion as 
 the day advanced with a note of melancholy and 
 mourning. He told how before departing he had 
 made his will, and dwelt on the emotion those 
 words from beyond the grave, written when full 
 of life, had caused him. 
 
 "Yes, very annoying . . ." said S6phora, like 
 one who is thinking of something else. But he 
 believed himself so loved, he was so accustomed 
 to be loved, that he paid no heed to her absent- 
 mindedness. He even consoled her in advance in 
 case of misfortune ; he traced her a plan of exist- 
 ence; she must sell the house in the Avenue de 
 Messine, retire to the country, and live with her 
 memories. It was all adorably conceited, naive, 
 and sincere ; he felt in his heart a sadness of fare- 
 well which he mistook for presentiments. And 
 then in a lowered voice, their hands clasped, he 
 spoke of the other world. Round his neck was a 
 medal of the Virgin, which never left him ; he now 
 took it off for her. You can imagine S^phora's 
 happiness ! . . 
 
 After a while an artillery encampment, the gray 
 tents of which became visible through the branches, 
 the light smoke, the unbridled horses, tethered for 
 the night, turned the king's thoughts to another
 
 The Night- Train. 323 
 
 channel. The coming and going of uniforms, of 
 convoys, all that camp activity in the open air and 
 the setting sun, that fortifying sight of soldiers in 
 the field, roused his nomad and warrior-race in- 
 stincts. The carriage, rolling along the mossy 
 green carpet of the wide avenue, caused all the 
 soldiers, busy in pitching tents or in making soup, 
 to lift their heads, and watch the smiling civilian 
 and his pretty companion pass. Christian would 
 fain have spoken to them, harangued them, plung- 
 ing his eyes beneath the copses to the very 
 extremity of the camp. In front of a command- 
 ing officer's tent standing a little apart on a level 
 piece of ground, a beautiful Arab horse was rear- 
 ing, nostril expanded, mane to the breeze, and 
 neighing for the warrior summons. The Slav's 
 eyes sparkled. Ah ! the fine life a few days hence ! 
 the good solid blows he was soon to give ! But 
 what a pity that Lebeau in going on to Mar- 
 seilles had taken the luggage with him ! How he 
 wished that she might see him in his lieutenant- 
 general's uniform ! Thus exciting himself, he fan- 
 cied the gates of the towns all forced, the republi- 
 cans put to flight, and he pictured his triumphal 
 entry into Leybach, the streets gay with banners. 
 She would be there, thank God ! He would send 
 for her and install her in a splendid palace at the 
 gates of the town. There they would continue to 
 see each other as freely as in Paris. To these fine 
 projects Sephora did not answer very much. No 
 doubt she would have preferred to keep him for 
 herself, wholly her own; and Christian admired
 
 324 Kings in Exile. 
 
 that silent abnegation which placed her so truly 
 in her station as mistress of the king. 
 
 Ah! how he loved her, and how quickly that 
 evening at the hotel des Faisans went by in their 
 red room ; the great light curtains dropped before 
 the summer evening of a little town with its few 
 lights, humming with the talk of promenaders or 
 of persons before their doors, soon dispersed, 
 however, by the " taps " of drum and bugle. What 
 kisses, what follies, what passionate promises, going 
 to rejoin the kisses and oaths of the night before ! 
 Delightfully weary, pressing against each other, 
 they listened to their hearts beating with great 
 throbs, while the warm wind shook their curtains, 
 after murmuring in the trees and scattering the 
 drops of a fountain in the little garden of the 
 hotel, that resembled an Arab patio, into which 
 gleamed the red and flickering lamp of the office. 
 
 One o'clock. It was time to go. Christian 
 dreaded this wrench at the last moment, believing 
 that he should have to struggle against prayers and 
 appeals that would summon all his courage to with- 
 stand. On the contrary, S6phora was ready first, 
 determined to accompany him to the station, less 
 anxious for her love than for the honour of her 
 royal lover. . . Ah ! if he could only have heard 
 the " ouf! " of relief she gave, cruel creature, when, 
 standing alone upon the platform she saw the two 
 green eyes of the train wind away in the distance ! 
 If he could but have known how glad she was to 
 return to the hotel alone for a night's rest, saying 
 to herself as the empty omnibus jolted over the
 
 The Night-Train. 325 
 
 old paved streets of Fontainebleau, in a composed 
 tone, utterly without any loverlike emotion : " Now, 
 if Tom has only done what is necessary ! . ." 
 
 Most assuredly Tom had done what was neces- 
 sary ; for on the arrival of the train at Marseilles, 
 Christian II., getting out of his carriage, valise in 
 hand, was much astonished to see a flat cap with 
 silver lace approach him and request, very politely, 
 that he would enter the office for a moment. 
 
 "Why?.. Who are you?" asked the king, 
 very haughtily. 
 
 " Commissary of inspection," the flat cap replied, 
 bowing. 
 
 In the office, Christian found the prefect of 
 Marseilles, a former journalist, with a red beard 
 and a shrewd and lively face. 
 
 " I regret to inform your Majesty that your jour- 
 ney ends here," he said with exquisite politeness. 
 " My government cannot allow a prince to whom 
 France has given hospitality to profit by that 
 privilege to conspire and arm against a friendly 
 nation." 
 
 The king attempted to protest. But every detail 
 of the expedition was known to the prefect. 
 
 " You intended to embark at Marseilles ; your 
 companions at Cette, on a steamer from Jersey . . . 
 the landing to be made on the beach at Gravosa ; 
 the signal two rockets, one on board, the other on 
 shore. . . You see we are thoroughly informed. . . 
 So they are at Ragusa ; and I am saving you from 
 a veritable ambuscade."
 
 326 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Christian II., thunderstruck, asked himself who 
 could possibly have revealed information known 
 only to himself, the queen, de Hezeta, and one 
 other, whom he was far indeed from suspecting. 
 The prefect smiled in his blond beard. 
 
 " Come, monsieur," he said, " you must make up 
 your mind to it. The affair is a failure. You may 
 be more lucky another time and more prudent 
 also. . . At present I entreat your Majesty to 
 accept the shelter which I offer at the prefecture. 
 Elsewhere you will be at the mercy of annoying 
 curiosity. The affair is known in the town. . . " 
 
 Christian made no immediate reply. He looked 
 round at the little office with its green arm-chair, 
 green boxes, porcelain stove, and the huge cards 
 marked with train departures, the miserably bour- 
 geois corner where his heroic dream had come to 
 nought and the last echoes of RodoYtza died away. 
 He was like a traveller in a balloon, starting for 
 heights above all summits and coming down almost 
 at the same place in a peasant's hovel with his poor 
 collapsed aerostat, a bundle of gummed cloth, under 
 the roof of a stable. 
 
 He ended however, by accepting the invitation, 
 and found in the prefect's apartments a really 
 Parisian interior, a charming wife, very good 
 musician, who after dinner and a general conversa- 
 tion, in which were reviewed all the topics of the 
 day, sat down to the piano and turned over the 
 score of a recent opera. The lady had a very 
 pretty voice and sang agreeably; little by little, 
 Christian approached her and talked music and
 
 The Night-Train. 327 
 
 opera. The " Echos of Illyria " was lying on the 
 piano between the " Reine de Saba " and the 
 " Jolie Parfumeuse." Madame requested the king 
 to show her the time and tone of his native songs. 
 Christian II. sang several of the popular airs : 
 " Sweet eyes, blue as summer skies," and " Young 
 girls, listen as you braid your hair. . . " 
 
 And while he thus leaned, pale and seductive, 
 on the piano, taking the intonations and the mel- 
 ancholy attitude of an exile, afar on the Illyrian 
 seas, where the " Echos " sang of waves snow- 
 tipped and shores of bristling cactus, a fine enthu- 
 siastic band of youth and hope, whom Lebeau 
 had neglected to delay, was sailing joyously to 
 death, with wind abaft and cries of " Long live 
 Christian II.!"
 
 o 
 
 28 Kings in Exile. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 IN THE CHAPEL. 
 
 " MY dear love, we have just been brought back 
 to the citadel of Ragusa, M. de Hezeta and I, after 
 a session of ten hours in the Corso theatre, where 
 the council of war appointed to try us was sitting. 
 We are unanimously condemned to death. 
 
 " I must tell you that I like it better so. At least 
 one now knows what to expect, and we shall be no 
 longer in solitary confinement. I may read your 
 dear letters, and I can write to you. Silence was 
 choking me. To know nothing of you, my Colette, 
 of my father, of the king, whom I thought killed, 
 the victim of an ambush ! Happily his Majesty 
 escapes with a sad disappointment and the loss of 
 a few loyal servants. Things might have been 
 worse. 
 
 " The newspapers must have told you have 
 they not? how matters turned out. The counter- 
 order of the king by some incredible fatality never 
 reached us. At seven in the evening, as agreed 
 upon we were to leeward of the islands, which was 
 the rendezvous : Hezeta and I on deck, the others 
 below, all armed, equipped, with your pretty 
 cockade in their hats. We cruised about for two 
 hours, three hours. Nothing in sight but fisher-
 
 In the Chapel. 2 29 
 
 men's boats or those great feluccas of the coast- 
 guard service. Night came on and with it a 
 sea-fog very hindering to our meeting with the 
 king. After long waiting, we ended by thinking 
 that his Majesty's steamer must have passed ours 
 without seeing us, and that he himself might have 
 landed. And sure enough, from the shore where 
 we were told to expect our signal, a rocket went 
 up. That signified : ' Disembark ! ' No longer 
 any doubt, the king was there ; we started to join 
 him. 
 
 "In virtue of my knowledge of the country 
 many a time I have shot wild.-duck along this coast 
 - 1 commanded the first boat, Hezeta the second, 
 M. de Miremont the third with the Parisians. We 
 were all Illyrians in my boat and our hearts beat 
 high. The country was before us! that black 
 shore rising in the fog and ending in a small red 
 speck, the revolving light of Gravosa; still, the 
 silence on the shore surprised me. Nothing but 
 the sound of receding waves, like the clapping 
 of wet cloths ; not that murmur which the most 
 silent of crowds must make, the clicking of arms, 
 the panting of restrained breaths. 
 
 " ' I see our men ! . .' said San Giorgio, in a low 
 voice close beside me. 
 
 " We discovered, the moment we sprang ashore, 
 that what we had taken for the king's volunteers 
 were clumps of cactus and Barbary figs behind the 
 beech. I advanced. No one. But the sands 
 were trampled and cut up. I said to the marquis : 
 ' It is suspicious. . . Let us re-embark.' Un-
 
 330 Kings in Exile. 
 
 fortunately the Parisians arrived just then. There 
 was no restraining them. Away they went, scatter- 
 ing along the shore, examining the bushes, the 
 copses. All of a sudden, a line of fire, the crackle 
 of a volley. They shouted : ' Treachery ! . . treach- 
 ery ! . . get back ! ' and rushed for the boats. A 
 regular helter-skelter like sheep, maddened, jost- 
 ling, into the sea. A moment of wild panic, 
 lighted by the moon, just risen, which showed us 
 our English sailors escaping with all oars to the 
 ship. . . But it did not last long. Hezeta was 
 the first to spring forward, revolver in hand. 
 ' Avanti ! . . avanti ! . .' What a voice ! The 
 whole shore resounded with it. We flung our- 
 selves behind him. . . Fifty against an army ! . . 
 There was nothing to do but die. That is what 
 they all did, with a grand courage : Pozzo, de 
 Melida, the little de Soris, your lover of last year, 
 Henri de Trebigne calling out to me in the 
 melee : ' Look here, Herbert, we miss the guz- 
 las. . .' and Jean de Veliko, who sang 'La Ro- 
 do'ftza' as he sabred his way, all all fell; I 
 saw them on the shore, lying on the sand, looking 
 up to the sky. The rising tide came up and 
 buried them, the dancers at our ball ! . . Less 
 fortunate than our comrades, the marquis and I, 
 sole survivors of that hail-storm, were taken pris- 
 oners, bound, and ridden into Ragusa on mule- 
 back, your Herbert roaring with impotent rage, 
 while Hezeta, very calm, said merely : ' It is 
 fate. . . I expected it ! . .' Strange man ! How 
 could he know that we should be betrayed, sacri-
 
 In the Chapel. 331 
 
 ficed, received on landing with pointed guns and 
 volleys of bullets? And if he knew it, why did 
 he lead us ? However, the stroke has missed ; 
 the game is still to play again with more pre- 
 cautions. 
 
 " I now understand from your dear letters, which 
 I never tire of reading and rereading, why the 
 settlement of our case has hung on so long, why 
 these sessions of black robes in the citadel, these 
 negotiations about our two lives, these ups and 
 downs and long delays. So it seems that the 
 wretches are treating us as hostages, hoping that 
 the king, who would not renounce his rights for 
 hundreds of millions, would yield at last, rather 
 than sacrifice two of his faithful servants. And 
 you are angry, dear, that he does not; you are 
 amazed, blinded by your tenderness, that my 
 father does not urge him in favour of his son. 
 But a Rosen could a Rosen do so base a 
 thing? . . He does not love me less, the poor old 
 man, and my death will be to him an awful blow. 
 As for our sovereigns, whom you accuse of cruelty, 
 we do not have, in judging them, the lofty point of 
 view from which they govern men. They have 
 duties, rights, outside of common rules. Ah ! 
 what things could M^raut tell you about that. I 
 feel them, but I cannot express them. Thoughts 
 stay within, they will not come out ; my jaws are 
 too heavy. How many a time has this hampered 
 me with you, whom I love so much, but to whom 
 I could never tell it ! Even here, separated by so 
 many leagues and those thick iron bars, the thought
 
 33 2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 of your sweet gray eyes, so Parisian, those mis- 
 chievous lips beneath the pretty little nose that 
 wrinkles to deride me, still intimidates, still para- 
 lyzes me. 
 
 " And yet, before I leave you forever, I must 
 indeed strive to make you understand for once, 
 that I have loved but you in this world, and that 
 my life began the day when I first saw you. Do 
 you remember it, Colette? It was in those shops 
 in the Rue Royale, that agency of Levis. We were 
 there, my father and I, by chance, so-called. You 
 were trying a piano ; you played, you sang some- 
 thing so gay, so gay, and it made me long, I knew 
 not why, to weep. Ah ! I had fallen in love. . . 
 Who would have thought it ! A marriage a la 
 Parisienne, a marriage through an agency, to turn 
 into a marriage of love ! And since then, in society, 
 in any society, I have seen no woman so delightful 
 as my Colette. You may rest easy, you were 
 always with me, even absent ; the thought of your 
 pretty little visage kept me forever in good- 
 humour; I laughed to myself all alone when I 
 thought of it. It is true that you have always 
 inspired me to that to laughing tenderly. . . 
 Why, even now, when our fate is terrible, especially 
 the way in which they present it to us Hezeta 
 and I are moved into the chapel, that is to say, into 
 a little cell with plastered walls, where they have 
 raised an altar for our last mass and placed a 
 coffin before each bed and on the walls placards 
 on which is written ' Death . . . Death. . .' Well, 
 in spite of all that, the room seems gay. I escape
 
 In the Chapel. 333 
 
 these funereal threats by thinking of my Colette ; 
 and when I climb to the barred loop-hole, the 
 lovely landscape, the road which descends from 
 Ragusa to Gravosa, the aloes, the cactus against 
 the sky or the blue sea, remind me of our wedding 
 journey, the Corniche from Monaco to Monte 
 Carlo, and the bells of our mules, carrying a joy as 
 gay and ringing as their own. Oh ! my little wife, 
 how sweet you were, dear traveller, with whom I 
 would fain have journeyed longer. . . 
 
 " You see now that your image lives and triumphs 
 ever, even on the threshold of death, nay, in death, 
 fjr I will carry it as a scapulary on my breast, 
 down there, by the Sea-gate, where they will take 
 us in a few hours; it will enable me to fall smil- 
 ing. And so, dear love, do not grieve too much. 
 Think of the little one, the child that is to be. 
 Keep well for him, and when he is able to under- 
 stand it, tell him I died like a soldier, standing, 
 with two names upon my lips my wife's name 
 and my king's. 
 
 " I would have liked to leave you a souvenir at my 
 last moment ; but they have stripped me of every- 
 thing, watch, wedding-ring, cravat-pin. I have 
 nothing left but a pair of white gloves, which I 
 meant to wear on our entrance to Ragusa. I will 
 wear them now to do honour to my death, and the 
 prison chaplain has promised me to send them to 
 you. 
 
 " And now adieu, my Colette, darling. Do not 
 weep. I say that to you and I, my tears are 
 blinding me. Console my father. Poor man!
 
 334 Kings in Exile. 
 
 He, who always scolded me for coming late on duty. 
 I shall come no more. . . Adieu. . . adieu. . . And 
 yet I had so many things to say to you. . . But 
 no ! I have to die. . . Ah ! what a fate ! . . Adieu, 
 Colette. 
 
 " HERBERT DE ROSEN."
 
 A Solution. 335 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A SOLUTION. 
 
 " ONE way is left to you, sire." 
 
 " Speak out, my dear M6raut ; I am prepared for 
 everything." 
 
 M6raut hesitated to answer. What he was about 
 to say seemed to him too serious, too completely 
 out of place in that billiard-room, where the king 
 had dragged him to play a game after breakfast. 
 But the strange irony which presides over the fate 
 of dethroned sovereigns willed that it should be 
 before that green table, where the balls were 
 rattling with a hollow, sinister sound in the silence 
 and mourning of the house at Saint-Mand6, that 
 the fate of the royal race of Illyria should be 
 decided. 
 
 "Well?.." asked Christian II., stretching for- 
 ward to touch his ball. 
 
 " Well, monseigneur. . . ." 
 
 He waited till the king had made his shot and 
 Councillor Boscovich had devoutly marked it, be- 
 fore he continued, with a shade of embarrassment : 
 
 " The people of Illyria are like all the other 
 peoples, sire. They like success, strength ; and I 
 fear that the fatal issue of our enterprise. . ." 
 
 The king turned round, the colour in his cheeks.
 
 33^ Kings in Exile. 
 
 '' I asked you for the truth, my dear fellow. 
 Useless to wrap it up in all these curl-papers." 
 
 " Sire, you must abdicate," said the Gascon, 
 harshly. 
 
 Christian looked at him in amazement. 
 
 "Abdicate what?" he asked. "I have noth- 
 ing ... a fine present to make my son ! . . I think 
 he would rather have a new velocipede than that 
 vague promise of a crown at his majority." 
 
 M6raut quoted the case of the Queen of Galicia. 
 She had abdicated for her son during exile ; and 
 if Don Leo was now upon the throne it was to 
 that abdication that he owed it. 
 
 " Eighteen to twelve ! . ." said Christian, ab- 
 ruptly ... " Monsieur le conseiller, you are not 
 marking." 
 
 Boscovich started like a frightened hare and 
 sprang to the board, while the king, his body and 
 his mind on the stretch, was completely absorbed 
 in making a wonderful " four-cushioned " stroke, 
 filysee gazed at him, and his royalist faith was 
 once more put to a rough test before that type of 
 spineless dandy, vanquished without honour, his 
 thin throat wholly exposed by a loose flannel 
 jacket, his eyes, mouth, and the sides of his nostrils 
 still yellow with a jaundice from which he was 
 scarcely recovered after keeping to his bed for a 
 month. The disaster at Gravosa, the cruel end of 
 those fine young men, the terrible scenes to which 
 the trial of Herbert and Hezeta had given rise in 
 the little Court at Saint-Mande, Colette flinging 
 herself on her knees before her former lover to
 
 A Solution. 337 
 
 obtain her husband's pardon, the slow agony, the 
 waiting with strained ears for that horrible shot 
 which he seemed himself to have commanded, and, 
 above all, his money troubles, the notes to Pichery, 
 falling due all this savage rancour of an evil 
 fate, though it had not conquered the careless in- 
 difference of the Slav, had physically broken him 
 clown. 
 
 After making his cannon he stood still and, 
 chalking his cue with the utmost care, he asked 
 Meraut, without looking at him : 
 
 " What does the queen think of this project of 
 abdication? Have you spoken to her about it? " 
 
 " The queen thinks as I do, Sire." 
 
 " Ah ! " he exclaimed dryly, with a slight quaver. 
 
 Contradiction of human nature ! This woman 
 whom he did not love, whose distrustful coldness 
 and clear-sightedness he feared, this woman whom 
 he blamed for having treated him too much as a 
 king and harassed him by a perpetual recall to his 
 duties and prerogatives, he was now angry with 
 her for no longer believing in him and being 
 ready to abandon him for the profit of their child. 
 He felt it, not as a wound to love, one of those 
 blows upon the heart that make us cry aloud, but 
 as the treachery of a friend, a confidence forever 
 lost. 
 
 " And you, Boscovich, what do you think? " he 
 said, suddenly turning to his councillor, whose 
 smooth anxious face was convulsively mimicking 
 the expressions on that of his master. 
 
 The botanist made a slight gesture of Italian
 
 338 Kings in Exile. 
 
 pantomime, arms wide open, head in his shoulders, 
 a mute " chi lo sa?" so timid, so little compro- 
 mising that the king could not keep himself from 
 laughing. 
 
 " By advice of our council be it understood," he 
 said through his nose, sarcastically, " we will abdi- 
 cate whenever they like." 
 
 Thereupon his Majesty began once more to 
 push about the balls with interest, to the despair of 
 Elysee, who was burning to go and tell the queen 
 of the result of a negotiation she did not wish to 
 take upon herself; for that phantom of a king still 
 awed her, and it was only in trembling that she laid 
 her hand upon the crown which he wanted to be 
 rid of. 
 
 The abdication took place soon after. Stoically, 
 the head of the civil and military household pro- 
 posed his splendid galleries in the hotel Rosen for 
 the ceremony, to which it is customary to give as 
 much solemnity and authenticity as possible. But 
 the disaster of Gravosa was too recent to use those 
 salons still echoing with memories of the fete ; it 
 would indeed have been too sad, too full of evil 
 omen for the reign that was beginning. They con- 
 tented themselves therefore by inviting to Saint- 
 Mande certain noble Illyrian and French person- 
 ages whose signatures were necessary at the 
 bottom of a deed of such importance. 
 
 At two o'clock the carriages began to arrive, 
 and the guests, ascending slowly on the carpets 
 laid from the threshold to the bottom of the steps 
 of the portico, were received at the door of the
 
 A Solution. 339 
 
 salon by the Due de Rosen, tightly buttoned into 
 his general's uniform, and wearing around his neck 
 and above his crosses the grand cordon of Illyria, 
 which he had laid aside without a word when he 
 learned the scandal of the barber Biscarat sporting 
 the same insignia on his Figaro jacket. On his 
 arm and on his sword-hilt the general bore a long 
 black crape ; but more significant than even that 
 sign of mourning, was the senile shaking of his 
 head, an unconscious way of ever saying : " No . . . 
 no ..." which continued with him after the ter- 
 rible debate in his presence about Herbert's par- 
 don, a debate in which he positively refused to 
 take part, in spite of Colette's prayers and the 
 revolt of his paternal tenderness. It seemed as 
 though that small hawk's-head of his, forever shak- 
 ing, bore the penalty of his anti-human refusal, and 
 that henceforth he was sentenced to say " No " to 
 all impressions, all feelings, to life itself all things 
 becoming nought to him, and nothing being able 
 to interest his mind since the tragic end of his 
 son. 
 
 Princesse Colette was present, wearing with much 
 taste a mourning garb that went well with her fair 
 complexion, a widowhood relieved by a hope 
 already visible in her heavier figure and slower 
 step. Even in the midst of a grief that was really 
 sincere, that little soul of a milliner, choked with 
 futilities, to which the severities of fate brought no 
 improvement, found something to satisfy it, thanks 
 to the coming infant, in a crowd of coquettish and 
 trumpery vanities. Ribbons, laces, the superb
 
 34O Kings in Exile. 
 
 baby's-outfit which she was having embroidered 
 with an initial beneath a prince's coronet, served to 
 divert her grief. The baby should be named 
 Wenceslas or Witold Wilhelmina if a girl; but 
 very certainly the name should begin with W, 
 because that was a very aristocratic letter, and 
 charming to embroider upon linen. 
 
 She was explaining her projects to Mme. de 
 Silvis when the doors were thrown wide open to 
 announce, preceded by a rattle of halberds, the 
 Prince and Princesse de Trebigne, de Soris, the 
 Due de San-Giorgio, the Duchesse de Melida, 
 Comtes Pozzo, de Miremont, de Veliko. . . Those 
 names, proclaimed aloud, seemed a sonorous echo 
 from the bloody shore where the young victims fell 
 who bore them. And, terrible to see ! a circum- 
 stance which was to give to the coming ceremony, 
 in spite of all precautions, a fatal and funereal 
 aspect, those who came were in the deepest mourn- 
 ing, clothed in black, gloved in black, swathed in 
 those black woollen stuffs so gloomy to the eye, 
 which imprison, as it were, the free motion and the 
 gestures of women : the mourning of old people, 
 of fathers, mothers, more mournful, more heart- 
 breaking, more cruel to bear than that of others. 
 Many of these unhappy persons left their homes 
 that day for the first time since the catastrophe ; 
 torn from their solitude, their seclusion, by devotion 
 to the dynasty. They drew themselves erect to 
 enter, summoning all their courage ; but, as they 
 looked on one another each a dreadful mirror of 
 a common sorrow standing, with lowered heads
 
 A Solution. 34! 
 
 and shuddering shoulders, they felt the tears they 
 saw rise in their eyes, the sighs that could not be 
 restrained beside them on their lips ; and soon this 
 nervous contagion seized them all and filled the 
 salon with one long sob of choking moans. Old 
 Rosen alone did not weep : stiffening his tall, 
 inflexible figure he continued to make that pitiless 
 sign : " No ! . . no ! . . he must die ! . . " 
 
 That evening, at the Cafe de Londres, H. R. H. 
 Prince d'Axel, invited with the rest to witness the 
 abdication, related how he had been to a funeral of 
 the first class, with all the family assembled to see 
 the corpse removed. It is true that his Highness 
 himself cut a sorry figure as he entered. He felt 
 frozen, hampered by such silence, such despair; 
 and he was looking about with terror at these old 
 Parcae when he spied the Princesse Colette. He 
 hastened to seat himself beside her, curious to 
 study the heroine of the famous breakfast on the 
 Quai d'Orsay; and while Colette, at heart much 
 flattered by this attention, greeted his Highness 
 with a doleful and sentimental smile, she little 
 thought that the veiled and glaucous glance he 
 cast upon her was taking mental measure of how 
 the cook-boy's costume had fitted her appetizing 
 person. 
 
 " The king, messieurs ! " 
 
 Christian II., very pale, with a visibly perturbed 
 air, entered the room, leading his son by the hand. 
 
 The little prince showed a gravity enjoined 
 upon him, which became him well, increased as 
 it was by the black jacket and the trousers that
 
 34 2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 he wore for the first time with a certain pride and 
 the serious grace of adolescence. 
 
 The queen came next, very beautiful, in a sump- 
 tuous mauve gown covered with lace ; too sincere 
 to conceal her joy, which shone amid the environ- 
 ing sadness like the glow of her robe beside the 
 mourning garments. She was so happy, so ego- 
 tistically happy, that she did not bend, even for 
 a moment, to the terrible sorrows that surrounded 
 her, any more than she saw the shivering garden, 
 the fog at the windows, the blackness of an All- 
 Saints' season wandering in a low, dull sky full of 
 mists and torpor. 
 
 This day was to stay in her memory, luminous 
 and comforting. So true is it that all is within 
 us ; and that the external world is transformed 
 and coloured by the thousand tints of our own 
 passions. 
 
 Christian II. placed himself in front of the fire- 
 place at the centre of the salon, having the Comte 
 de Zara on his right, the queen on his left, while 
 a little farther off sat Boscovich, in his ermine as 
 Aulic councillor, at a small clerk's-table. When 
 all were placed, the king, speaking very low, said 
 that he was now prepared to sign his abdication 
 and to make known the reasons for it to his 
 subjects. Then Boscovich rose, and in his sharp, 
 stuttering little voice proceeded to read Christian's 
 manifesto to the nation, a rapid historical review 
 of the early hopes of the reign, the deceptions, the 
 misunderstandings that soon followed, and finally 
 the resolution of the king to retire from public
 
 A Solution. 343 
 
 affairs and confide his son to the generosity of the 
 Illyrian people. 
 
 This short epistle, in which the hand of filyse"e 
 Meraut had left its mark, was so ill-read, like a 
 wearisome botanical nomenclature, that it gave 
 reflection time to see all there was of futile and 
 derisory in this abdication of an exiled prince, this 
 transmission of powers that did not exist, of rights 
 denied and ignored. The act of abdication, read 
 by the king himself, was as follows : 
 
 " I, Christian II., King of Illyria and Dalmatia, 
 Grand-duke of Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc. . . 
 etc. . . declare that of my own will, and without 
 yielding to any foreign influence, I leave and 
 convey to my son, Charles-Alexis-Leopold, Comte 
 de Goetz and de Zara, all my political rights, 
 meaning thereby to retain none but my civil 
 rights as father and guardian over him." 
 
 Immediately, at a sign from the Due de Rosen, 
 all present approached the table to affix their sig- 
 natures. For a few moments there was move- 
 ment, the rustling of stuffs, pauses caused by the 
 ceremonial, and the scratching of pens, firm or 
 trembling. Then the homage, the kissing of the 
 new king's hand began. 
 
 Christian II. led the way, and acquitted himself 
 of that difficult thing, the homage of a father to 
 his child, by kissing the tips of the fragile fingers 
 with more of airy grace than of respect. The 
 queen, on the contrary, showed a passionate effu- 
 sion almost religious ; the protectress, the brood- 
 ing mother, became the humble subject. After
 
 344 Kings in Exile. 
 
 her came the turn of Prince d'Axel, and then, all 
 the great seigneurs defiled in hierarchical order, 
 which the little king was beginning to think very 
 long, in spite of the charming dignity of his inno- 
 cent eyes and of his outstretched hand, that little 
 hand, so white and veined, with the square nails 
 of a child who still plays about, and with wrists 
 that were rather strong and disproportioned to his 
 growth. All these nobles, solemn as this moment 
 seemed to them, and in spite of the sad preoccu- 
 pations of their personal sorrow, were not men to 
 allow their precedence, according to title and the 
 number of leaves on their coronet, to be taken 
 from them ; and Meraut, who was rushing towards 
 his pupil, was suddenly stopped by a " Monsieur, 
 by your leave . . ." which made him step back and 
 brought him face to face with the indignant coun- 
 tenance of the Prince de Trebigne, a terribly asth- 
 matic old gentleman, puffing with difficulty, his 
 dilated eyes protruding as if he was unable to 
 breathe except through them, filysee, the devotee 
 of tradition, drew respectfully back to allow this 
 relic from the tombs to pass, and went himself 
 the last man to do homage. As he retired, Fre- 
 derica, standing beside her son, like the mothers of 
 young brides in the sacristies, to receive the after 
 smiles and homage, said to him in a low voice, but 
 exultant and vigorous, as he passed : 
 
 " It is done ! " 
 
 There was in her intonation a plenitude of joy 
 that was almost ferocious, a relief and comfort 
 unspeakable.
 
 A Solution. 345 
 
 It is done ! . . That is, the crown is safe at last 
 from traffic and degradation ; she could sleep, and 
 breathe, and live, delivered from continual terrors 
 which warned her of catastrophes and might have 
 made her say, like Hezeta, at each fatal result : 
 " I expected it. . ." Her son would not be de- 
 throned ; her son would be king. . . Why, he was 
 so already in his majestic little attitude, his cour- 
 teous yet lofty greeting. . . 
 
 However, no sooner was the ceremony over 
 than the nature of a child came uppermost, and 
 Leopold V. darted joyfully to old Comte Jean de 
 Veliko to announce to him a great piece of news : 
 " Do you know, godpapa, I have a pony ... a 
 pretty little pony, all for myself. . . The general 
 is to teach me to ride, and mamma, too." Around 
 him the Court pressed and bowed with looks of 
 adoration, while Christian, left rather alone and 
 abandoned, felt a singular, indefinable sensation 
 like the taking of something from his skull, the 
 chill of an absent crown. Positively his head was 
 swimming, and yet he had certainly desired this 
 hour, and cursed, above all, the responsibilities of 
 his position. Then why this uncomfortable feel- 
 ing, this sadness, now that he saw the shore he 
 hated disappear, and the way at last open to 
 other prospects? 
 
 " Well, my poor Christian, I think they have 
 given you your ouistiti. . ." 
 
 This from Prince d'Axel, who, in a whisper, con- 
 soled him after his fashion. 
 
 " You have the luck of it," he went on. . . "I
 
 346 Kings in Exile. 
 
 wish it were I. . . How happy I should be if some 
 one released me from leaving this charming Paris 
 and going to reign over those walruses of mine, 
 with their white stomachs ! . ." 
 
 He continued in the same tone for a few mo- 
 ments and then the pair, profiting by the tumult 
 and the inattention of the company, disappeared. 
 The queen saw them go ; she heard in the court- 
 yard the roll of the king's phaeton, the light wheels 
 of which had never before departed without pass- 
 ing over her heart. . . What mattered it now? 
 It was no longer the King of Illyria that those 
 women of Paris were taking from her. . . 
 
 On the morrow of Gravosa, in the first mo- 
 ments of his shame, Christian had sworn to him- 
 self that he would never see Sephora again. As 
 long as he was in bed, frightened by illness like 
 every Southerner, he thought of his mistress only 
 to curse her, to charge her morally with his own 
 misdeeds; but convalescence, the quickening of 
 his blood, the complete idleness in which memo- 
 ries mingled with dreams have so much power, 
 changed before long these dispositions. At first 
 he excused the woman timidly ; he began to look 
 on what had happened as fatality, one of the 
 myriad designs of Providence on whom Catholics 
 are prone to lay all oppressive responsibility. 
 
 At last, one day he ventured to ask Lebeau if 
 there was any news of the countess. For all an- 
 swer the valet brought him a quantity of little 
 notes, which had arrived during his illness, tender,
 
 A Solution. 347 
 
 passionate, timid notes, a flock of white turtle- 
 doves warbling love. 
 
 Christian's senses were at once inflamed ; he 
 answered from his bed immediately, impatient 
 to resume, the instant he was cured, the romance 
 begun at Fontainebleau. 
 
 Meanwhile J. Tom Levis and his wife were 
 spending a delightful holiday in their mansion 
 on the Avenue de Messine. Tom had been un- 
 able to bear any longer the weary dulness of his 
 retreat to Courbevoie. He missed his business 
 life, but, above all, he missed Sephora's admira- 
 tion. Moreover he was jealous, with a stupid, 
 obstinate, lancinating jealousy, like a fish-bone in 
 one's throat, which we think gone and lo, we sud- 
 denly feel its prick. And no means of complain- 
 ing to any one and saying: "Just see what I 
 have got in my throat." Unfortunate Tom Levis, 
 caught in his own trap, inventor and victim of the 
 Grand-Stroke. . . Sephora's journey to Fontaine- 
 bleau made him specially uneasy. Several times 
 he tried to recur to the subject, but she always 
 stopped him with such a natural peal of laughter. 
 " What 's the matter with you, my poor Tom? . . 
 Where '$ your head-piece ? . ." On which he was 
 obliged to laugh, he too ; understanding per- 
 fectly well that there was nothing between them 
 but drollery and blague, and that Sephora's fancy 
 for her merry-andrew would quickly cease if she 
 thought him jealous, sentimental, "a nuisance," 
 like others. 
 
 But at heart he suffered, and wearied of living
 
 34-8 Kings in Exile. 
 
 away from her; he even wrote verses to her. 
 Yes, the man of the cab, the imaginative Nar- 
 cisse, had found that vent for his uneasiness, a 
 poem to Sephora ! one of those whimsical lucu- 
 brations composed by pretentious ignorance, such 
 as are confiscated at Mazas in the cells of the 
 prisoners. Truly, if Christian II. had not fallen ill, 
 J. Tom Levis would certainly have become so. 
 
 I leave you to think of the joy with which the 
 buffoon and his wife met again and lived together 
 for several weeks. Tom danced crazy jigs and cut 
 pigeon-wings on the carpet, like a monkey in good 
 humour or an Auriol let loose to caper through the 
 house. Sephora was contorted with laughter, and 
 yet a little troubled by the kitchen department, 
 where the "husband of madame" enjoyed the 
 most thorough discredit. The butler declared 
 that if the " husband of madame " dined at table 
 he would never consent to wait upon him ; and as 
 the man was an exceptional butler, chosen by the 
 king, she did not insist, but had the meals taken up 
 to her boudoir by a maid. In like manner, when 
 a visitor arrived, Wattelet or Prince d'Axel, J. Tom 
 disappeared into the dressing-room. Never was 
 husband seen in such a case ; but Tom adored his 
 wife ; he had her for himself alone, and in a frame 
 which made her seem to him infinitely handsomer. 
 He was in fact the happiest of that band of rascals, 
 among whom delays and postponements were be- 
 ginning to cast a certain anxiety. 
 
 A knot was felt, a stoppage in an affair well 
 launched. The king did not pay a penny on the
 
 A Solution. 349 
 
 notes already due, but was making more inces- 
 santly, to the great terror of Pichery and Pere 
 Leemans. Lebeau endeavoured to encourage them. 
 " Patience, patience ... it will all come right. . . 
 It is on the cards. . ." But he was paying nothing, 
 while the other two were piling up in their desks 
 reams of Illyrian paper. The poor " pere," no 
 longer possessed of his sturdy composure, came 
 every morning to the Avenue de Messine to ob- 
 tain reassurance from his daughter and son-in-law. 
 " Then you really think we shall succeed ? . ." And 
 he resigned himself to discount again, to discount 
 continually, inasmuch as the only way to run after 
 his money was to send more in pursuit. 
 
 One afternoon the countess, making ready to go 
 to the Bois, was flitting from her chamber to her 
 dressing-room beneath the paternal eye of J. Tom, 
 who was sprawling on a chaise-longue, a cigar be- 
 tween his teeth, his fingers in the armholes of his 
 waistcoat, enjoying the pretty sight of a woman 
 dressing herself, slipping on her gloves before the 
 psyche, and practising her attitudes. She was 
 ravishing. Her hat was put on, the veil just reach- 
 ing the eyes, her costume, that of the late autumn, 
 warm and a trifle wadded ; while the tinkling of 
 her bracelets and the shimmering jet of her mantle 
 responded to the luxurious sounds of the carriage 
 waiting beneath the windows, to the rattle of its 
 harness, the pawing of its horses, the whole 
 together forming an equipment under the arms of 
 Illyria. 
 
 Sephora was going out with Tom ; she was tak-
 
 350 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ing him for a drive on this first day of the Parisian 
 season, round the lake, under a low sky which 
 gives full value to the new fashions and the pretty 
 faces, rested by country sojourns. Tom, very 
 elegant, of a true British chic, was enchanted 
 with this prospect of a drive in a coupe, effaced 
 behind his charming countess, on secret pleasure 
 bent. 
 
 Madame was ready; they were just about to 
 start. A last look in the glass. . . Come ! . . 
 Suddenly the entrance gate opened below, and 
 the bell rang hurriedly. . . " The king ! . ." And 
 while the husband rushed into the dressing-room, 
 with a terrible squinting of his eyes, Sephora ran to 
 the window just in time to see Christian II. mount- 
 ing the portico with a conquering air. He flew, 
 wings expanded. " How happy she will be ! " he 
 thought as he mounted. 
 
 Sephora comprehended that something new had 
 happened, and prepared herself. To begin with, 
 she gave a little cry of surprise, of joyful emotion 
 on seeing him, fell into his arms, and made him 
 carry her to a sofa, before which he knelt. 
 
 " Yes, Li. Really I ... and forever ! " 
 
 She looked at him with wide-opened eyes, wild 
 with love and hope. And he, plunged in that look, 
 replied to it : 
 
 " Yes, 't is done. . . I am no longer King of 
 Illyria. . . Only a man who will spend his life in 
 loving you." 
 
 " It is too good. . . I dare not believe it." 
 
 " Here, read. . ."
 
 A Solution. 
 
 351 
 
 She took a parchment from his hand, and slowly 
 unfolded it. 
 
 " And so, is it really true, my Christian, that you 
 have renounced " 
 
 " Better than that. . ." 
 
 And while she read through the words of the act, 
 he, standing before her, twirled his moustache and 
 gazed at her triumphantly. Then, thinking she did 
 not understand, or at least not quickly enough, he 
 explained the difference between renunciation and 
 abdication; he would be just as free, he told her, 
 as much relieved of duties and responsibilities, 
 without doing injury to the interests of his son. 
 Only the money. . . But they did not need so 
 many millions to make them happy. 
 
 She read no more ; she listened, her mouth half- 
 opened, her pretty teeth exposed in a fixed smile 
 as if she wanted them to seize what he was saying. 
 She had fully understood, however ; oh ! yes, she 
 saw plainly enough the crumbling away of their 
 ambitions and of the piles of gold already spent 
 on the affair; she saw the fury of Leemans, of 
 Pichery, of all that band robbed by the false 
 manoeuvre of this ninny. She thought of the use- 
 less sacrifices, of her six months' wearisome life, 
 sickened with insipidity and perpetual dissimula- 
 tion, of her poor Tom, now engaged in holding his 
 breath in the next room, while the other before 
 her was expecting an explosion of tenderness, sure 
 of being loved, a conqueror, irresistible, all-power- 
 ful. . . It was so droll, the irony was so complete, 
 so fierce ! She rose, seized with a frantic laugh,
 
 352 Kings in Exile. 
 
 an insolent, scoffing laugh, which brought into her 
 face a sudden redness, the stirred-up lees of her 
 coarse nature, and passing in front of the stupefied 
 Christian, " Idiot, begone ! " she cried to him 
 before she bolted herself into her chamber. 
 
 Without a sou, without crown, without wife, 
 without mistress, he cut a sorry figure as he went 
 down that staircase.
 
 The Little King. 353 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE LITTLE KING. 
 
 OH, magic of words ! As if in those four letters 
 of the word " king " lay a force cabalistic, he 
 no sooner ceased to be called the Comte de Zara 
 and bore the name of King Leopold V. than 
 Meraut's pupil was transformed. The patient little 
 boy, pleased in doing well, easy to handle as a bit 
 of soft wax, but without any striking intelligence, 
 came suddenly out of his limbo, awakened by a 
 strange and excessive excitement, and his body 
 was strengthened by the inward flame. His indo- 
 lence of nature, that desire to lie down or to loll in 
 an arm-chair while they read to him or told him 
 stories, that need to listen, to live by the thoughts 
 of others, changed suddenly into an activity that 
 was not satisfied with the ordinary amusements of 
 his years. Old General de Rosen, now becoming 
 bent and infirm, was forced to recover strength 
 enough to give him his first fencing and shooting 
 and riding lessons. Nothing could be more touch- 
 ing than to see, every morning at nine o'clock, in 
 a clearing of the park enlarged to an arena, the 
 old pandour, in a blue coat, whip in hand, per- 
 forming his functions of equerry with the air of an 
 old Franconi ; .always respectful to his king while 
 
 2 3
 
 354 Kings in Exile. 
 
 correcting the blunders of the pupil. The little 
 monarch trotted and galloped, grave and proud, 
 attentive to the slightest order, while the queen 
 looked on and made observations or gave her 
 advice : " Sit straight, Sire . . . easy on the bit." 
 Sometimes, to make him understand her better, 
 she would spring into the circle and add gesture 
 to words. Ah ! how happy she was on the day 
 when, regulating the step of her mare to that of 
 the king's pony, the pair rode together through 
 the wood, the child's silhouette against the dark 
 habit of the horsewoman, who, far from feeling a 
 mother's fears, started the two animals in a vigor- 
 ous gallop, and showing the way to her son, went 
 as far as Joinville without drawing rein. 
 
 And in her also a great change had taken place 
 since the abdication. For a woman superstitious 
 of divine right the title of king henceforth pro- 
 tected the child, defended him. Her tenderness, 
 always strong and deep, no longer had outward 
 manifestations, explosions of caresses; and when 
 at night she went, as she always did, to his room, 
 it was not " to see Zara put to bed." A valet had 
 charge of such matters now, as if Frederica feared 
 to enervate her son, to retard the coming of a manly 
 will by keeping him longer in her too gentle hands. 
 She came solely to hear him say that beautiful 
 prayer from the " Book of Kings " which Pere 
 Alphee had taught him : 
 
 " O Lord, who art my God, thou hast placed thy 
 servant on a throne ; but I am a child who knows 
 not how to act, and yet I am intrusted with the
 
 The Little King. 355 
 
 people thou hast chosen. Give me therefore wis- 
 dom and intelligence. . . " 
 
 The little voice rose firm and clear, toned with 
 authority, with a conviction most affecting if one 
 thinks of the exile in this poor suburb, and the 
 distance, far over sea and land, of this hypothetic 
 throne. But for Frederica her Leopold now 
 reigned, and she put into her good-night kiss a 
 proud subjection, an adoration, an indefinable 
 respect, which recalled to Elysee, when he saw this 
 mixture of maternal sentiments, the Christmas 
 carols of his native country in which the Virgin 
 sings as she rocks her infant in the stable : " I am 
 thy servant, and thou art my God." 
 
 Some months went by in this way, a whole 
 winter season, during which the queen was con- 
 scious of one shadow only on her joy, on her 
 heaven, now so clear. And it was Meraut who, 
 most unconsciously, was the cause of it. In 
 dreaming both of them the same dream, in min- 
 gling their glances and their souls, in walking 
 together closely bound to the same single end, a 
 familiarity was established between them, a com- 
 munity of thought and life which suddenly became 
 embarrassing to Frederica without her being able 
 to say why. When alone with him she ceased to 
 give expression to herself as before ; she grew to 
 be afraid of the place this stranger was taking in 
 her most private decisions. Did she divine the 
 feelings in his breast, that brooding ardour so near 
 to her, closer and more dangerous from day to 
 day? A woman never mistakes such feelings.
 
 356 Kings in Exile. 
 
 She wanted to protect herself, to change her 
 course ; but how? In her trouble she had recourse 
 to the guide, the adviser of the Catholic wife, to her 
 confessor. 
 
 When he was not roaming the country on his 
 royalist propaganda it was Pere Alphee who 
 directed the queen. Merely to look at the man 
 was to know him. In this Illyrian priest with the 
 face of a pirate could be seen the blood, the gait, 
 the facial lines of one of those Uscoques, birds of 
 rapine and of storms, the former rovers of the 
 Latin seas. Son of a fisherman in the port of 
 Zara, brought up on the Marina amid trawls and 
 tar, he was picked up on a certain day by the 
 Franciscans on account of his pretty voice ; from 
 house-boy he became a choir-boy, grew up in the 
 convent, and was finally one of the heads of the 
 brotherhood ; but there always remained to him 
 the passions of a sailor, and on his epidermis the 
 tan of the sea, which the coolness of cloistral stones 
 could never whiten. For, the rest, not the least 
 bigoted or scrupulous; able on occasion to play 
 his knife {cotellata) for the good motive ; a monk 
 who, when State affairs pressed, would despatch in 
 a bunch in early morning all the prayers of the 
 day, and even those of the morrow, " in order to 
 get on," as he said seriously. Thorough in his 
 affections as in his hatreds, he had vowed an un- 
 bounded admiration to the tutor introduced by 
 him into the household of the king. Therefore at 
 the first avowal that the queen made of her trouble, 
 her scruples, he pretended not to understand her ;
 
 The Little King. 357 
 
 then, as she insisted, he grew angry, spoke harshly 
 to her as to an ordinary penitent, or some rich 
 milliner of Ragusa. 
 
 Was she not ashamed to bring such nonsense 
 into a noble cause? What was she complaining 
 of? Had he ever failed in respect to her? Just 
 see how for such ticklish piety, or for the coquetry 
 of a woman who thinks herself irresistible, they 
 were to deprive themselves of a man whom God 
 had certainly put in their path for the triumph 
 of monarchy ! . . And in his sailor language, his 
 Italian vehemence, tempered by the sly smile of a 
 priest, he added that people should n't cavil with 
 the good wind sent by heaven, but " spread all sail 
 and take advantage of it." The most upright of 
 women are ever feeble before specious reasoning. 
 Conquered by the monk's casuistry, Frederica told 
 herself that indeed she ought not to deprive her 
 son's cause of such an auxiliary. It was for her to 
 protect herself, to be strong. After all, what did 
 she risk? She even ended by persuading herself 
 that she had been mistaken as to filysee's devotion 
 and his enthusiastic friendship. . . 
 
 The truth was that he loved her passionately. A 
 strange, deep love ; driven out again and yet again, 
 but returning slowly along by-ways, until finally it 
 became installed with the invading despotism of 
 conquest. Until then Elyse"e Meraut had believed 
 himself incapable of a tender sentiment. Some- 
 times, during his royalist propaganda through " the 
 Quarter," some daughter of bohemia, without 
 understanding a word that he said, had fallen in
 
 358 Kings in Exile. 
 
 love with him for the music of his voice and that 
 which shone in his glowing eyes and his ideal brow, 
 the magnetic attraction of Magdalens towards 
 apostles. He, bending with a smile, gathered 
 what was offered, enveloping in gentleness and 
 surface affability that incorrigible contempt for 
 womanhood which lies at the bottom of every 
 Meridional. In order for love to enter his heart it 
 had to pass through his powerful brain ; and it was 
 in this way that his admiration for the lofty type of 
 Frederica, for that patrician adversity so proudly 
 borne, became at last through the narrowed life 
 of exile, communion at all hours, at all instants, so 
 many sorrows shared a true passion, but a hum- 
 ble, discreet passion, without hope, content to burn 
 at a distance, like the tapers of the poor on the 
 lowest step of the altar. 
 
 Existence went on, however, always the same 
 in appearance, indifferent to these mute dramas, 
 until the beginning of the month of Septem- 
 ber. One day the queen, bathed in a beautiful 
 sunshine, that was brightly in keeping with her 
 happy disposition of mind, was taking her walk 
 after breakfast, followed by the duke, filys6e, and 
 Mme. de Silvis, to whom a leave of absence granted 
 to Princesse Colette had given the duties of lady 
 of honour. Frederica led her little Court through 
 the shady paths, draped with ivy, of the English 
 park, turning constantly as she walked along to 
 say some word or some remark with that decided 
 manner which did not lessen in any way her femi- 
 nine charm. On this occasion she was particu-
 
 The Little King. 359 
 
 larly gay and animated. News had come that 
 morning from Illyria relating the excellent effect 
 produced by the abdication, the name of Leopold 
 V. being already popular in the country-places. 
 Elysee Meraut was triumphant. 
 
 " Did not I tell you, Monsieur le due, that they 
 would actually dote on their little king? . . Child- 
 hood, don't you see, regenerates tenderness. It is 
 something like a new religion that we have infused 
 down there, with its naivetes, its fervours. . ." 
 
 And lifting his mass of hair with a violent 
 gesture of both hands that was all his own, he 
 launched into one of those eloquent improvisations 
 which transfigured him, just as the sluggish Arab 
 squatting in rags upon the ground becomes unrec- 
 ognizable on horseback. 
 
 " We are in for it . . ." said the marquise in a low 
 voice with a weary air, while the queen, in order to 
 hear better, sat down on a bench beside the path 
 under the shadow of a drooping ash. The others 
 stood respectfully around her; but little by little 
 the audience evaporated. Mme. de Silvis was the 
 first to retire, to protest visibly, as she never failed 
 to do when occasion offered ; and the duke was 
 sent for, to attend to some duty. The queen and 
 Elysee were left alone, but the latter did not per- 
 ceive it. He continued his discourse, standing in 
 the sunshine which glided across his noble, inspired 
 face, as if on the surface of a smooth stone. At 
 that moment he was beautiful, with the beauty of 
 intellect, grasping, irresistible ; it struck Frederica 
 too suddenly to allow her to hide her admiration.
 
 360 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Did he see it in her green-gray eyes? Received 
 he in return that inward concussion which too keen 
 a sentiment and very near us makes us feel ? He 
 stammered, stopped short, panting, and laid upon 
 the queen, on her hair, all spangled with the 
 trembling light, a slow look, burning as a confes- 
 sion. . , Frederica felt the flame of it run through 
 her like a sun, more blinding than that in the 
 heavens, but she had no strength to turn away. 
 And when Elysee, terrified at the words that were 
 rising to his lips, tore himself from her brusquely, 
 it seemed to her, all penetrated as she was with 
 that man, with his magnetic power, as if life itself 
 had left her. A sort of moral swoon overcame 
 her, and she sat there, on that bench, half-fainting, 
 prostrate. . . Lilac shadows flitted on the gravel 
 of the path. Water was rippling in the fountains 
 like a refreshment to the summer afternoon. 
 Nothing was heard in the garden, all blossoms, but 
 a murmur of insects' wings above the fragrant beds, 
 and the sharp sound of a rifle, that of the little 
 king, whose shooting-ground was not far off, at the 
 end of the park, near the wood. 
 
 Amid this calmness the queen recovered herself, 
 at first with an impulse of anger, of revolt. She 
 felt insulted, outraged by that look. . . Was it 
 possible? Had she not dreamed it? . . She, the 
 proud Frederica, who, in the dazzle of court-fetes 
 disdained all homage at her feet, that of the 
 noblest, that of the- most illustrious, she who held/ 
 so high her lofty heart, had she abandoned it to a 
 man who was nothing, to a son of the people?
 
 The Little King. 361 
 
 Tears of pride burned in her eyes. And in the 
 tumult of her ideas a prophetic word of old Rosen 
 sounded again, quite low, in her ears : " The 
 bohemia of exile. . ." Yes, exile alone with its 
 dishonouring promiscuousness could have enabled 
 this subaltern . . . But, as she loaded him with her 
 contempt, her disdain, the memory of his services 
 assailed her. What would have become of them 
 without him? She recalled the emotion of their 
 first meeting, and how she had felt herself live 
 again as she listened to his cry. Since then, while 
 the king pursued his pleasures, who had taken 
 thought for their fate, repaired wrong-doing, de- 
 feated crime? And this unwearying devotion of 
 day by day, so much talent, such fire and spirit, all 
 that noble genius applied to a task of abnegation, 
 without profit, without glory! The result? was it 
 not the king, the little king, truly a king, of whom 
 she was so proud, the future master of Illyria? . . 
 Then, seized with an unconquerable rush of ten- 
 derness, of gratitude, recalling from the past that 
 minute at the fair at Vincennes when she had 
 leaned upon Elysee's strength, the queen again, as 
 on that day, closed her eyes and gave herself 
 delightfully in thought to that grand devoted heart 
 that seemed to beat beside her. 
 
 Suddenly a shot rang out which startled the 
 birds in the foliage ; and a great cry, one of those 
 piercing child-cries that mothers hear in dreams on 
 troubled, anxious nights, a terrible appeal of an- 
 guish, darkened the sky, enlarged, transformed the 
 garden to the measure of some vast sorrow. Hur-
 
 362 Kings in Exile. 
 
 ried steps were heard in the paths ; the voice of 
 the tutor, hoarse, changed, called from the target. 
 Frederica was there at a bound. 
 
 It stood in a green dusk of hornbeam at a corner 
 of the park carpeted with hops and gourds and 
 rather rank grass. Boards were hanging on a 
 trellis pierced with little holes in regular lines. 
 She saw her child on the ground, on his back, 
 motionless, his face white, but red around the right 
 eye, wounded and closed, from which a few drops 
 of blood were falling, like tears, filysee, on his 
 knees beside him, was wringing his arms and cry- 
 ing: "I did it. . . I did it! . ." He was passing; 
 Monseigneur asked him to try his gun, and, by 
 some awful fatality, the bullet, ricochetting on the 
 iron of the trellis .... But the queen was not 
 listening to him. Without a cry, without a groan, 
 wholly absorbed in the mother's instinct, the sav- 
 ing instinct, she caught up the child and carried 
 him in her gown to the nearest fountain; then, 
 repelling with a gesture the servants of the house- 
 hold, who were hurrying to help her, she rested on 
 the stone coping the knee on which the little body 
 lay, and dipped that pale, adored face beneath the 
 rippling water, letting it flow across the livid eyelid 
 and that sinister red stain, which the water washed 
 away, while there filtered still a thin line, redder 
 and redder, between the lids. She did not speak, 
 she did not even think. In her muslin dress, 
 stained and soaked, clinging to her body like the 
 drapery of a marble naiad, she bent above her 
 little one and watched.
 
 The Little King. 363 
 
 What a moment ! what suspense ! Little by 
 little revived by the immersion, the wounded child 
 first quivered, and stretched his limbs as if awak- 
 ing ; then suddenly he moaned. 
 
 " He lives ! " she said with a delirious cry. 
 
 Lifting her head, she saw Meraut before her, his 
 pallor, his despair seeming to ask pardon. The 
 memory of what had passed through her mind on 
 that bench came back to her, mingled with the 
 terrible shock of the catastrophe, and her weakness 
 so rapidly chastised upon her child. A fury seized 
 her against that man, against herself. . . 
 
 " Begone ! . . begone ! . . Let me never see you 
 more . . ." she cried to him, with a dreadful look. 
 It was her love that, to punish herself, to cure her- 
 self, she thus flung as an insult into his face.
 
 64 Kings in Exile. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE DARK ROOM. 
 
 " THERE was, once upon a time, in the country of 
 Oldenburg, a lady Countess of Ponikau, to whom 
 the dwarfs had given, on the day of her wedding, 
 three little loaves of gold. . ." 
 
 It is Mme. de Silvis who is relating this tale, in 
 the obscurity of a dark room, the windows hermet- 
 ically closed, the curtains hanging to the floor. 
 The little king is lying on his bed ; the queen be- 
 side him, like a phantom, is applying ice upon his 
 forehead covered with a bandage, ice which she 
 has renewed every two minutes, night and day, for 
 a whole long week. How did she live without 
 sleep, almost without food, seated by that narrow 
 pillow, her hands holding those of her son in the 
 intervals of applying the ice, passing from its cool- 
 ness to the fever she watched and dreaded in the 
 pulse of that feeble life? 
 
 The little king wanted his mother there, there, 
 always there. This darkness of the great room 
 was peopled to him with dangerous sliadt>ws7 ter- 
 rifying apparitions. And the impossibility of read- 
 ing, of touching a single plaything, held him in a 
 torpor which alarmed Frederica. 
 
 " Do you feel pain ? " she asked him constantly.
 
 The Dark Room. 365 
 
 " No . . I feel so dull . . ." the child would an- 
 swer in a weary voice ; and it was to drive away 
 this dulness, to people the sad precincts of the 
 chamber with brilliant visions, that Mme. de Silvis 
 reopened her budget of fantastic fable, full of old 
 German castles, imps and gnomes dancing on the 
 floor of a dungeon, where the princess is expect- 
 ing a blue bird and spinning her glass threads. 
 
 Listening to these interminable tales, the queen 
 felt despair in her heart. It seemed to her that 
 the work she had accomplished with so much 
 pains was being undone, and that she was wit- 
 nessing the destruction, stone by stone, of a lofty 
 triumphal column. It was that which she saw in 
 the darkness before her, during those long hours 
 of seclusion, far more preoccupied by the thought 
 that her child had fallen back into the hands of 
 women, into the feebleness of the little Zara, than 
 by the wound itself, the true gravity of which she 
 did not yet know. When the doctor, lamp in 
 hand, put aside for a moment the accumulated 
 shades and raised the bandage, trying to revive the 
 sensitiveness of the injured eye by a drop of atro- 
 pine, the mother was comforted because the little 
 patient did not cry or try to defend himself with his 
 arms. No one dared to tell her that such insensi- 
 bility, such stillness of the nerves showed, on the 
 contrary, the death of the organ. The ball, in 
 ricochetting, although it had spent its force, had 
 struck and loosened the retina. The right eye was 
 irrevocably gone. All the precautions taken were 
 solely to save the other, threatened by that organic
 
 366 Kings in Exile. 
 
 affinity which makes our sight a single tool with a 
 double handle. Ah ! when the queen should know 
 the extent of her misfortune ! she who so firmly 
 believed that, thanks to her care, to her vigilant ten- 
 derness, the accident would leave no trace, she 
 who was already talking to the child of going out ! 
 
 " Leopold, shall you not be glad to have a beau- 
 tiful drive in the forest?" 
 
 Yes, Leopold would be very glad. He wished 
 they would take him where they did before, to that 
 fete, where he went with his mother and tutor. 
 Then suddenly interrupting himself, 
 
 " Where is he, M. Elysee? Why does he never 
 come here? " 
 
 They told him that his master was on a journey. 
 That explanation satisfied him. To think fatigued 
 him ; so did speaking. He dropped back into his 
 dull indifference ; returning to the hazy regions 
 evoked by invalids, whose dreams are mingled with 
 the scene around them and the fixed appearances 
 of things, the movement and sound of which their 
 nurses fear. People came in and went out ; whis- 
 pers crossed each other and discreet steps ; but the 
 queen heard nothing, solely occupied in applying 
 that ice. Sometimes Christian would push open 
 the door, always ajar on account of the heat of the 
 closed room, and come in to say, in a voice that he 
 strove to render joyous and careless, some pleasant 
 'drollery to make the boy laugh or talk. But his 
 voice sounded false in presence of the catastrophe, 
 and the father intimidated the child. That little 
 sunken memory, which the shot had filled with the
 
 The Dark Room. 367 
 
 cloud of its smoke, retained a few impressions of 
 past scenes, the anxious waitings of his mother, her 
 revolt that night when she almost dragged him to 
 a fall of three storeys. He answered his father in a 
 low voice, his teeth closed. Then Christian would 
 address his wife : " You ought to rest, Frederica, 
 you will kill yourself. . . For the child's sake, 
 even. . ." Urgent, imploring, the hand of the little 
 prince would clasp that of his mother, which re- 
 assured him in the same mute, eloquent manner : 
 "No, no, do not be afraid ... I will not leave 
 you. . ." She exchanged a few words coldly with 
 her husband and left him to his gloomy thoughts. 
 The accident to his son completed for Christian 
 a true series of black disasters. He felt himself 
 alone in the world, stunned, despairing. Ah ! if 
 his wife would only take him back. . . He felt the 
 need of all weak natures to draw near to some one, 
 to lay his head upon a friendly bosom, and comfort 
 himself with tears, confessions ; after which he 
 could return with a lighter heart to new enjoy- 
 ments and fresh betrayals. But Frederica's heart 
 is forever lost to him ; and now the child also 
 turns away from his caresses. He told himself all 
 this, standing at the foot of the bed in the dimness 
 of that dark room, while the queen, attentive to 
 the minutes, took the ice from the bowl, applied it 
 to the moistened bandage, lifting and kissing the 
 little forehead to feel the heat of it, and while 
 Mme. de Silvis related gravely the story of the 
 three little loaves of gold to the legitimate sov- 
 ereign of the kingdoms of Illyria and Dalmatia.
 
 368 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Christian left the room, his exit as little noticed 
 as his entrance, and wandered sadly through the 
 silent, well-ordered house which old Rosen kept up 
 in all its customary ceremonial, he himself coming 
 and going from the mansion to the offices, his 
 figure stiff, but his head shaking. The hot-houses, 
 the garden continued to bloom ; the ouistitis, re- 
 viving in the balmier weather, filled their cages 
 with cries and skips. The prince's pony, led out 
 daily by the groom, made his rounds of the court- 
 yard, littered now in straw, and stopping before the 
 portico turned his nut-brown eyes to the steps 
 down which the little king was wont to come to 
 him. The aspect of the house is always elegant 
 and comfortable ; but every one expects, awaits ; 
 suspense is in the ambient air, and a silence like 
 that which follows a great thunder-clap. The most 
 marked circumstance is the sight of those three 
 blinds hermetically closed while all the rest are 
 open to the light and air, shrouding that mystery 
 of sorrow and of pain. 
 
 Me>aut, who, though driven from the royal house, 
 is lodging near it and roams incessantly around it, 
 Meraut gazes despairingly at those closed win- 
 dows. He returns each day in terror lest he find 
 them open, the smoke of an extinguished taper 
 exhaling from them. The inhabitants of that sec- 
 tion of Saint-Mande are beginning to recognize 
 him.. The seller of cakes stops the rattle of her 
 castanets when the tall fellow with the mournful 
 air goes by ; the players at bowls and the guard at 
 the railway station imprisoned in his little wooden
 
 The Dark Room. 369 
 
 box, think him crazy ; and indeed his despair is 
 turning into mania. The queen did right to drive 
 him away; he deserved it; and his passion dis- 
 appeared before the great destruction of his hopes. 
 To have dreamed of making a king, to have given 
 himself that splendid task, and then to have 
 destroyed, annihilated all with his own hands ! 
 The father and mother, more cruelly struck in 
 their affections, were not more despairing than he. 
 He had not even the consolation of giving assist- 
 ance, watchfulness at all hours ; scarcely could he 
 get any news of what was happening; the servants 
 treating him with a black rancour as the cause of 
 the disaster. Sometimes, however, a forest watch- 
 man, who had access to the house, brought him 
 the news of the servant's hall, exaggerated by that 
 craving for the worst which characterizes the popu- 
 lace. Now the little king was blind ; then his 
 brain was attacked and weakened ; the queen was 
 declared to be letting herself die of hunger ; and 
 the unhappy Elysee lived a whole day on these 
 dreadful rumours, wandering in the forest as long 
 as his legs could carry him, then returning to watch 
 at the edge of the wood in the tall, flowery grass, 
 trampled of a Sunday by the holiday-makers, but 
 deserted of a week-day, a truly rural bit of ground. 
 Once, towards evening, he was lying at full length 
 in the cool grass, his eyes fixed upon the house, 
 from which the light through the interlacing 
 branches was fading. The players at bowls were 
 departing, the forest watchmen were beginning 
 their nightly rounds, the swallows were navigating 
 
 24
 
 37 Kings in Exile. 
 
 in great circles above the tallest shrubs in pursuit 
 of gnats, which were dropping down with the setting 
 sun. The time of day was melancholy, filysee 
 sank into its sadness, weary in mind as in body, 
 letting his memories, his anxieties, speak within 
 him, as often happens amid these silences of nature 
 in which our inward struggles seem to make them- 
 selves heard. Suddenly, his glance, which was seek- 
 ing nothing, fell upon the ambling, unsteady gait, 
 the quaker hat, the white waistcoat, and the gaiters 
 of Boscovich. M. le conseiller was walking rapidly, 
 holding cautiously in his hand some object that 
 was wrapped in his handkerchief. He did not 
 seem surprised to see Elysee, and .came up to him 
 as if nothing had happened, saying in the easiest 
 and most natural tone in the world : 
 
 " My dear Me>aut, you see before you a most 
 happy man." 
 
 "Ah! my God! What? . . Is Monseigneur's 
 condition . . ." 
 
 The botanist assumed at once the proper air of 
 grief with which to answer that Monseigneur con- 
 tinued just the same, always kept quiet, the room 
 darkened ; painful uncertainty, oh ! yes, very pain- 
 ful. . . Then abruptly: " Guess what I have 
 here. . . Take care, it is very fragile. . . You 
 are loosening some of the earth. . . A root of 
 clematis . . . but not the common clematis of your 
 gardens . . . Clematis Dalmatica ... a dwarf 
 species, quite peculiar, only found among us, 
 down there. . . I doubted at first, I hesitated ; I 
 have been watching it since last spring. . . And
 
 The Dark Room. 371 
 
 now see, stalk, corollas . . . and that fragrance of 
 peeled almonds. . ." 
 
 Unfolding his handkerchief with infinite precau- 
 tions, he revealed a frail, contorted plant, with a 
 milk-white flower and pale-green leaves that seemed 
 blending together. Meraut tried to question him, 
 but the monomaniac was wholly absorbed in his 
 passion, his discovery. It certainly was a very 
 strange fact that this little plant should, alone of 
 its race, have grown there, six hundred leagues 
 from its native home. Flowers have their history, 
 and also their romances ; and here was a probable 
 romance which the good man repeated to himself, 
 believing that he told it to Meraut. 
 
 " By what caprice of the soil, by what geologi- 
 cal mystery can this little travelling seed have been 
 brought to germinate at the foot of an oak in 
 Saint-Mande? Such cases do sometimes appear. 
 A botanist of my acquaintance found a Lapland 
 flower in the Pyrenees. It must happen through cur- 
 rents of atmosphere, and threads of the soil wander- 
 ing from place to place. . . But the miracle here 
 is, that this scrap of a plant has germinated pre- 
 cisely in the neighbourhood of its regal compatriots, 
 exiles themselves. . . See how vigorous it is ... 
 a trifle paler perhaps through exile, but all its 
 tendrils out, prepared to climb. . ." 
 
 He stood there, in the setting sunlight, clematis 
 in hand, motionless in happy contemplation. Then 
 suddenly he cried out : 
 
 " The devil ! it is getting late ... I must go 
 in . , Adieu."
 
 37 2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " I am coming with you," said filysee. 
 
 Boscovich stopped, stupefied. He had been 
 present at the scene, and knew the manner in 
 which the tutor had been dismissed, attributing his 
 dismissal solely to the accident. . . What would 
 be thought of his return ? What would the queen 
 say? 
 
 " No one will see me, Monsieur le conseiller. . . 
 You must take me in by the avenue, and I will slip 
 furtively to the door of the room. . ." 
 
 " What ! you wish . . ." 
 
 " To go near to Monseigneur, to hear him 
 speak for a moment, without his knowing I am 
 there. . ." 
 
 The feeble Boscovich exclaimed, objected, but 
 he walked on all the same, driven by the will of 
 the stronger man, who followed him without pay- 
 ing the least heed to his protestations. 
 
 Oh ! what emotion when the little gate on the 
 avenue turned amid its ivy and Meraut found him- 
 self once more at the very spot in the garden where 
 his life was blasted. 
 
 " Wait for me," said Boscovich, trembling all 
 over ; " I will come and tell you when the servants 
 are at dinner. . . In that way you will meet no 
 one on the staircase. . ." 
 
 No one had come to the shooting-ground since 
 that fatal day. In the crushed flower-borders, in 
 the gravel torn up by frantic steps, the scene 
 was still visible. The same boards with shot-holes 
 hung to the trellises, the water flowing from the 
 fountain as from a spring of tears, all things were
 
 The Dark Room. 373 
 
 gray in the gloom of the twilight; it seemed to 
 Elys^e as though again he heard the queen's voice 
 saying : " Begone ! . . begone ! . ." in tones which 
 gave him now, as he listened to them in memory, 
 the sensation of a wound and a caress. 
 
 Boscovich returned, and together they glided 
 past the trees to the house. In the glass gallery 
 opening on the garden which served as the school- 
 room, the books were on the table, the two chairs 
 stood ready for master and pupil, awaiting the 
 next lesson with the cruel inertia of Things. It was 
 agonizing ; and so was the silence of these places, 
 where the child, singing, running, making his little 
 orbit a dozen times a day with songs and laughter, 
 was missing. 
 
 From the brilliantly lighted staircase, Boscovich, 
 who walked in front, took him into the room that 
 preceded that of the king, also kept dark to pre- 
 vent the slightest ray of light from entering the 
 room beyond. A night-lamp alone burned in an 
 alcove, where, too, were phials and potions. 
 
 " The queen and Mme. de Silvis are with him. . . 
 Be sure you do not speak. . . And come away 
 quickly. . ." 
 
 Elyse"e heard no more; his foot was on the 
 threshold, his heart beating and striving to com- 
 mand itself. The heavy shadows at first prevented 
 his unaccustomed eyes from distinguishing any- 
 thing; but he heard, coming as it were from a 
 depth, a childish voice reciting in a sort of sing- 
 song, its evening prayers, a voice scarcely to be 
 recognized as that of the little king, so weary,
 
 374 Kings in Exile. 
 
 gloomy, dull, it was. Stopping short, after one of 
 the numerous " amens," the child said : 
 
 " Mother, must I say the king's prayer?" 
 
 " Why, yes, my darling," replied the beautiful 
 grave voice, the cadence of which had also changed, 
 wavering a little in its fall, like a metal worn by a 
 corrosive water falling drop by drop. 
 
 The king hesitated. 
 
 " I thought ... It seemed to me that now it 
 was not worth while. . ." 
 
 " Why not? " the queen asked quickly. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the child-king, in an elderly, reflec- 
 tive tone, " I think I have many other things to 
 ask of God than those in that prayer. . ." Then 
 correcting himself, from the impulse of his good 
 little nature, he added : " In a minute, mamma, in 
 a minute ; as you wish it. . ." 
 
 And slowly he began in a tremulous, resigned 
 voice : 
 
 " O Lord ! who art my God ; thou hast placed 
 upon the throne thy servant; but I am a child, 
 who knows not how to act, though I am trusted 
 with the people thou hast chosen. . ." 
 
 A smothered sob was heard at the farther end of 
 the room. The queen quivered. 
 
 "Who is there? . . Is that you, Christian?" 
 she added, as the door closed hastily. 
 
 At the end of a week the doctor declared that 
 he would not condemn the little patient to the 
 torture of a dark room any longer, and that it was 
 now time to let him have a little light.
 
 The Dark Room. 375 
 
 " Already ! " said Frederica ; " they assured me it 
 would last at least a month." 
 
 The physician was unable to tell her that, the 
 eye being dead, completely dead, without hope of 
 recovery, the imprisonment was useless. He evaded 
 the truth by vague phrases, of which the pity of 
 such men have the secret. The queen did not 
 understand him, and no one about her had the 
 strength to enlighten her. They waited for Pere 
 Alphee; religion having the right of way to all 
 wounds even to those she cannot cure. With his 
 natural brutality, his roughness of tone, the monk, 
 who used the word of God as a club, delivered the 
 frightful blow which brought down every pride 
 in the breast of Frederica. The mother had suf- 
 fered on the day of the accident, struck on all her 
 tenderest fibres by the cries, the swoon, the blood 
 of her little one. This second shock fell more 
 directly on the queen. Her son maimed, dis- 
 figured ! She, who wanted him so beautiful for 
 the triumph ! Must she take to the Illyrians this 
 poor infirm child? Frederica never forgave the 
 physician for having deceived her. Thus, even in 
 exile, kings are always victims to their grandeur 
 and to human cowardice. 
 
 At first, in order to avoid too sudden a transition 
 from darkness to light, green serge curtains were 
 drawn across the panes ; but when, finally, all the 
 windows were frankly opened and the actors in this 
 sad drama were able to look at one another by 
 daylight, it was only to perceive the changes that 
 had taken place during that seclusion. Frederica
 
 376 Kings in Exile. 
 
 had grown old ; she had changed the fashion of 
 her hair to hide the whitening locks about the 
 temples. The little prince, quite wan, wore a 
 bandage over his eye, and all his little face, 
 puckered with grimaces and precocious wrinkles, 
 seemed to feel the burden of that bandage. What 
 a new life for him, this maimed existence ! At 
 table he had to learn to eat ; his spoon and fork, 
 misguided, struck his forehead or his ear with that 
 curious awkwardness of one lost sense upsetting all 
 the others. He laughed his little laugh of a sickly 
 child, and the mother turned aside as she heard 
 it to hide her tears. As soon as he could go into 
 the garden other distresses came. He tottered, 
 stumbled at every step, took sideways for straight 
 before him ; or else, fearful of everything, he shrank 
 at the slightest obstacle, clinging to the hands and 
 the skirts of his mother, and turning each well- 
 known corner of the park as if an ambush lay 
 behind it. The queen endeavoured to arouse at 
 least his mind ; but the shock had no doubt been 
 too great ; it seemed as if with the visual ray, a ray 
 of intellect had also been extinguished. He fully 
 understood, poor little boy, the grief his condition 
 caused his mother; in speaking to her he made 
 an effort to raise his head and give her a timid, 
 one-sided glance as if to ask pardon for his weak- 
 ness. But he could not conquer certain physical 
 and unreasonable terrors. The sound of a shot 
 at the edge of the wood, the first he had heard 
 since the accident, caused him almost a fit of 
 epilepsy. The first time also that they spoke
 
 The Dark Room. 377 
 
 to him of mounting his pony, his whole body 
 trembled. 
 
 " No ... no ... I beg of you," he said, pressing 
 close to Frederica. . . " Take me in the landau . . . 
 I am afraid. . ." 
 
 "Afraid of what?" 
 
 " I am afraid ... I am so afraid. . ." 
 
 Neither arguments nor entreaties availed. 
 
 " Well, then," commanded the queen, in a tone of 
 inward anger, " bring the landau." 
 
 This was on a fine Sunday at the close of autumn, 
 recalling that Sunday in May when they had gone 
 to the fair at Vincennes. Unlike her feelings on 
 that day, Frederica was now annoyed by the com- 
 mon crowd that filled the walks and lawns. This 
 gayety in the open air, this smell of their pro- 
 visions on the grass sickened her. Now she saw 
 poverty and sadness in all those groups, despite 
 their laughter and their Sunday clothes. The 
 child, trying to smooth that beautiful face, whose 
 expression of disenchantment he attributed to him- 
 self, clung to his mother with passionate and timid 
 caresses. 
 
 " Are you angry with me, mamma, because I 
 would not take the pony?" 
 
 No ; she was not angry. But how would it be on 
 the day of his coronation, when his subjects recalled 
 him? A king must know how to ride on horseback. 
 
 The wrinkled little head turned to gaze at the 
 queen with its solitary eye. 
 
 " Do you really think, really, that they will want 
 me still, as I am now ? "
 
 378 Kings in Exile. 
 
 He looked indeed so frail, so old. But Frederica, 
 indignant at the doubt, told him of the king of 
 Westphalia who was quite blind, of both eyes. 
 
 " Oh ! a sham king, he ! They turned him 
 out." 
 
 Then she told him the tale of John of Bohemia 
 at the battle of Crecy, requesting his knights to 
 lead him forward far enough to deal blows with his 
 sword, and so far did they lead him that they were 
 all found dead the next day, their bodies stretched 
 out, they and their horses in a mass together. 
 
 " That was terrible . . . terrible ! " replied Leo- 
 pold. 
 
 And he sat there, shuddering, lost in that heroic 
 history as in the fairy tales of Mme. de Silvis ; so 
 small, so puny, so little a king ! At that moment 
 the carriage left the borders of the lake to enter a 
 narrow roadway where there was room for scarcely 
 more than the wheels. Some one stepped hastily 
 aside, a man whom the child, impeded by his 
 bandage, could not see, but whom the queen 
 knew instantly. Gravely, with a hard look, she 
 showed him by a motion of her head the poor 
 maimed boy, cowering in the folds of her gown, 
 their masterpiece destroyed, the wreck, the relic 
 of a once great race. It was their last meeting ; 
 and Meraut left Saint-Mand6 forever.
 
 Fides, Spes. 379 
 
 xvii. 
 
 FIDES, SPES. 
 
 THE Due de Rosen entered first. 
 
 " It is rather damp," he said gravely. " The 
 rooms have not been opened since the death of 
 my son." 
 
 And in truth a great chill, like that of a sepul- 
 chral cave, filled the splendid suite of apartments, 
 where the guzlas had so proudly sounded, and 
 where all remained as it was on the night' of the 
 ball. The two carved chairs of the king and queen, 
 close to the gallery of the musicians, still presided. 
 Arm-chairs in a circle marked an aristocratic 
 " aside " of the greater personages. Ribbons, 
 fragments of flowers, atoms of gauze, a sort of dust 
 of the dance, lay scattered on the floor. Evi- 
 dently, the decorators had rapidly pulled down the 
 hangings, the garlands of foliage, in haste to close 
 doors and windows on those salons which told of 
 festal joy in that house of mourning. The same 
 abandonment was visible in the garden, heaped 
 with dead leaves, over which a whole winter had 
 passed and then a spring without cultivation, so 
 that a wealth of wild vegetation had now invaded 
 it. By one of those strange whims of sorrow 
 which desires that all about it shall suffer and be
 
 380 Kings in Exile. 
 
 barren, the duke had not allowed a single touch to 
 be given to the grounds, nor had he entered even 
 once his magnificent apartments. 
 
 After the affair of Gravosa, as Colette, very deli- 
 cate since the birth of her child, had gone to Nice 
 with the little W to recruit her health, the duke 
 renounced his nightly returns to the lie Saint-Louis, 
 and ordered a bed put up for him in the adminis- 
 tration building at Saint-Mande. Evidently, he 
 would sooner or later sell the great mansion ; and 
 he now began to part with the sumptuous anti- 
 quities that filled it. This was why the Venetian 
 mirrors that went to sleep reflecting the amorous 
 couples of Hungarian mazurkas, the sparkling of 
 eyes and lustres, were now, in the gray, cold light 
 of a Parisian day, giving back the uncouth silhou- 
 ettes, the greedy lips of Pere Leemans and the 
 Sieur Pichery, his acolyte, livid he, with his 
 hooked moustache, stiff with cosmetics. 
 
 It needed all Pere Leemans' life-long habits, his 
 experience in bargaining and in those comedies 
 which bring into play every facial grimace of 
 humanity, to prevent the old man from uttering a 
 cry of joy and admiration when the duke's servant, 
 as old and erect as himself, opened and threw 
 back noisily the outer blinds against the wall of the 
 house, and he could see, shimmering discreetly and 
 blending their splendid tones of wood and bronze 
 and ivory, the precious treasures of a collection, 
 not ticketed and cared for like those of Mme. de 
 Spalato but of a more superb luxury, more bar- 
 barous, more novel. And without a dent, without
 
 Fides, Spes. 381 
 
 a defacement ! . . Old Rosen had not pillaged 
 ignorantly, as the generals who rush through a 
 summer palace like a waterspout, carrying off with 
 equal ardour rubbish and treasures. Nothing here 
 but choice marvels. It was curious to watch the 
 pauses of the old dealer, his snout projecting 
 through his beard, fixing his magnifier, scratching 
 the enamels gently, ringing the bronzes, all with 
 an air of indifference, even contempt; while from 
 head to foot, from the tips of his nails to the hair 
 of his beard his whole being quivered and sparkled 
 as if he had been put into contact with an electric 
 current. Pichery was likewise not less amusing to 
 observe. Having no notion whatever of art, no 
 personal taste, he formed his impressions on those 
 of his partner, assuming the same contemptuous 
 air, quickly changed, however, into stupefaction 
 when Leemans said to him in a low voice about 
 some treasure, as he bent over a little book in 
 which he never stopped taking notes: "Worth a 
 hundred thousand francs, if a sou. . ." Here was 
 a rare, unique opportunity to recoup themselves 
 for their losses on the " Grand Stroke," by which 
 they had allowed themselves to be so supremely 
 fooled. But they had to be cautious how they 
 behaved ; for the old general of pandours, as dis- 
 trustful and impenetrable as the whole " brocante " 
 trade put together, followed them step by step, 
 planted himself behind them, and was not in the 
 least the dupe of their grimaces. 
 
 Proceeding thus they came at last, at the end of 
 the reception salons, to a little room raised two
 
 382 Kings in Exile. 
 
 steps above the others, delightfully decorated in 
 Moorish style with low divans, rugs, and authentic 
 cabinets. 
 
 " Is this included ? " asked Leemans. / 
 
 The general hesitated imperceptibly for a mo- 
 ment before replying. It was Colette's haven in 
 that vast mansion, her favourite boudoir, in which 
 she took refuge at her rare leisure moments and 
 wrote her correspondence. . . The thought came 
 to him to reserve this Moorish furniture which she 
 liked . . . but no, he would stop at nothing; all 
 must be sold. 
 
 " Yes, this is included," he said coldly. 
 
 Leemans, attracted at once by the rarity of a 
 piece of Arabian furniture, carved and gilded, with 
 arcades and miniature galleries, began to examine 
 the multifarious drawers, some secret, opening one 
 into the other by hidden springs, slender, delicate 
 little drawers exhaling the orange and sandal-wood 
 of their satiny linings. Putting his hand into one 
 of them he felt something rustle. 
 
 " Here are papers," he said. 
 
 The inventory taken and the two dealers ushered 
 out, the duke bethought him of the papers forgot- 
 ten and left behind in the drawer. Sure enough, a 
 whole packet of letters, tied with a crumpled rib- 
 bon and redolent of the subdued fragrance of the 
 drawer. He looked at it mechanically, and recog- 
 nized the handwriting, Christian's large, straggling, 
 fantastic writing, which for many months had 
 reached him on notes and drafts requiring money. 
 No doubt these were letters from the king to Her-
 
 Fides, Spes. 383 
 
 bert. But no : " Colette, my dear love. . . " With 
 a brusque gesture he pulled off the ribbon and 
 scattered the bundle on a divan, some thirty notes, 
 giving rendezvous, thanks, bestowing gifts, in 
 short the whole adulterous correspondence in all 
 its melancholy commonplace ; ending with excuses 
 for missing assignations, missives growing colder 
 and colder, like the last floaters at the tail of a kite. 
 In nearly all there was some reference to an annoy- 
 ing and persecuting personage whom Christian 
 scoffingly called : the " Demon of Ill-luck," or 
 simply : " D. of Ill-luck," on whom the duke 
 was trying to put a name, when at the end of one 
 of those satirical pages far more licentious than 
 sentimental he suddenly saw his own image, his 
 own little pointed head on his long stilted legs. It 
 was he himself, his wrinkles, his eagle beak, his 
 blinking eyes ; and beneath, to leave no manner of 
 doubt, was written : " Demon of Ill-luck mounting 
 guard on the Quai d'Orsay." 
 
 The first surprise over, the outrage fully com- 
 prehended in all its baseness, the old man uttered : 
 " Oh ! " and stopped, confounded and ashamed. 
 
 That his son had been betrayed did not surprise 
 him; he had known it all along. But by Chris- 
 tian ! to whom they had sacrificed all, for whom 
 Herbert died at twenty-eight, and for whom he 
 himself was now in the act of ruining his property 
 and selling everything, even to his trophies of 
 victory, that the king's signature might not be pro- 
 tested. . . Ah ! if he could only avenge himself! 
 if he could only unhook from those panoplies two
 
 384 Kings in Exile. 
 
 weapons, no matter which. . . But it was the 
 king ! satisfaction cannot be asked of kings. And 
 suddenly the magic of that consecrated word ap- 
 peased his anger ; and he ended by telling himself 
 that, after all, Monseigneur trifling with that young 
 woman was not so guilty as he, Due de Rosen, in 
 marrying his son for money to that little Sauvadon. 
 He bore the penalty of his own cupidity. . . These 
 reflections scarcely lasted a minute. The letters 
 safely under lock and key, he left the house, re- 
 turning to his post at Saint-Mand6, to the desk 
 in his office where piles of bills and documents 
 awaited him, among which he noticed more than 
 once the big and straggling writing of those love- 
 letters; and Christian, as he passed through the 
 courtyard and saw behind the window, erect, de- 
 voted, vigilant, the long outline of the Demon of 
 Ill-luck, never once supposed that he was well- 
 informed of everything. 
 
 None but kings with all the national and super- 
 stitious traditions attaching to their persons, can 
 inspire such devotions as these, but they inspire 
 them even though they themselves be completely 
 unworthy. This king, now that the boy was out of 
 danger, " made fete " with greater vehemence than 
 ever. At first, he endeavoured to return to Sephora. 
 Yes, even after he had been so brutally and cyni- 
 cally dismissed ; after he had had the proof, and 
 every proof of her treachery, he still loved her 
 enough to rush to her feet at the slightest sign. 
 She was now in all the joy of a renewed honey- 
 moon. Cured of her ambitions, restored to her
 
 Fides, Spes. 385 
 
 tranquil nature, from which the bait of millions 
 had drawn her, Sephora would have preferred to 
 sell the house in the Avenue de Messine, realize its 
 value, live at Courbevoie with J. Tom, like a pair of 
 rich retired merchants, and crush the Sprichts with 
 their comfort. J. Tom Levis, on the contrary, 
 dreamed of new strokes ; and the grandiose sur- 
 roundings in which his wife was installed gave him, 
 little by little, the idea of another Agency, in a 
 more luxurious, more fashionable form; a gloved 
 traffic, doing business amid the flowers and music 
 of fetes, around the lake, on the long scent, replac- 
 ing the played-out cab (now numbered and rele- 
 gated to a street-cab company) with a gorgeous 
 cvlhhe and liveries, bearing the arms of Madame 
 la comtesse. He had not much difficulty in con- 
 vincing Sephora, with whom he now definitively 
 lived ; and the salons of the Avenue de Messine 
 were lighted up for a series of dinners and balls, 
 the invitations for which were sent out in the name 
 of the Comte and Comtesse de Spalato. At first 
 the company was rather sparse. Then the femi- 
 nine element, rebellious in the beginning, took to 
 treating J. Tom Levis and wife as rich foreign per- 
 sonages coming from a great distance, whose 
 luxury made their exoticism correct. All the 
 young Gomme crowded around Sephora, now 
 much the fashion through her adventures, and M. 
 12 Comte, as soon as the winter season had fairly 
 begun, had several very good affairs on hand. 
 
 They could not, of course, refuse to Christian 
 an entrance into salons that had cost him so dear. 
 
 25
 
 386 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Besides, the title of king made the house noted 
 and guaranteed it. So he went there, basely, with 
 the vague hope of a return to the heart of his mis- 
 tress, not indeed by the grand portico, but by some 
 back-stairs entrance. Er.t after trying for a time 
 this role of dupe or victim, and showing himself 
 weekly, as white in face as in linen, in those gilded 
 salons, where the glaring eyes of Tom Levis watched 
 and pinned him, he grew discouraged, came no 
 more, and went among prostitutes, to divert his 
 mind. Like all men .in search of a type once lost, 
 he wandered everywhere and fell low, very low, 
 guided by Lebeau, well used to all forms of Parisian 
 vice, who often brought his master's valise of a 
 morning to strange lairs. A low downfall, becom- 
 ing easier day by day to the flaccid soul of that vo- 
 luptuary, whose sad, calm home was not of a kind 
 to keep him from it. There was little amusement at 
 Saint-Mande now that Me"raut and the princess 
 were no longer there. Leopold V. was slowly 
 recovering, confided, for the period of convales- 
 cence to Mme. fileonore de Silvis, who at last was 
 able to apply the precepts of the Abbe Diguet on 
 the six methods of knowing men, and the seven 
 means of avoiding flattery; lessons hindered by 
 the bandage round the head of the little patient, 
 and presided over, as before, by the queen, with 
 many an agonized glance at her Clematis Dalma- 
 tica, the little flower of exile now in process of 
 etiolation before her eyes. For some time past 
 the Franciscans had been in search of a tutor ; but 
 an Elyse"e Me"raut is not easy to find among the
 
 Fides, Spes. 387 
 
 youth of these times. Pere Alphee had his own 
 ideas on the subject, which he kept himself from 
 uttering, because the queen would not allow even 
 the name of the former tutor to be spoken before 
 her. Once only, under special circumstances, did 
 the monk dare to speak of his friend. 
 
 " Madame, Elysee Meraut is about to die," he 
 said to abruptly her as they left the table one day 
 after grace. 
 
 During all the time of his stay at Saint-Maude 
 Meraut had kept his chamber in the Rue Monsieur- 
 le-Prince from a sort of superstition, like that 
 which induces us to keep on the shelf of a closet 
 some old-fashioned garment of our youth which 
 we shall never again put on. He never went there, 
 letting forgetfulness and dust heap itself on the 
 papers, the books, the mystery of that silent re- 
 treat amid the noisy life of the lodging-house. 
 But one day he returned to it, aged, weary, his 
 hair almost white. The stout landlady, roused 
 from her torpor by hearing some one fumbling 
 among the keys hanging to their nails, had diffi- 
 culty in recognizing her lodger. 
 
 " Why, what tricks have you been playing with 
 yourself, my poor Monsieur Meraut?" she cried. 
 " It is n't right to ruin your health in that way." 
 
 " True, I am rather battered. . ." replied filysee, 
 smiling; and he mounted the five stories, round- 
 shouldered, stooping, crushed. The room was 
 just the same, with the melancholy outlook from its 
 dusty windows over square monastic roofs, the
 
 3<3S Kings in Exile. 
 
 E!cole de Medicine, the Amphitheatre ; cold, irre- 
 sponsive buildings exhaling the sadness of their 
 purpose ; and on the right, toward the Rue Racine, 
 the two great tanks of the city water, shining in 
 their reservoirs and reflecting the wan sky and the 
 smoking chimneys. Nothing was changed ; but in 
 him there was no longer that glorious ardour of 
 youth which colours and warms all about it, rising 
 enthusiastic amid difficulties and gloom. He tried 
 to settle himself to read, to shake the dust from 
 work he had left unfinished. Between his thoughts 
 and the page before him glided that reproachful 
 glance of the queen, and at the other end of the 
 table he fancied he saw his pupil, awaiting his 
 lesson and listening to him. He felt himself too 
 heart-broken, too desolate, and hurriedly he went 
 down again and put back his key on its nail. 
 
 Thenceforth, he was seen as before, a tall, loose- 
 jointed figure with his hat on the back of his head, 
 a package of books or reviews under his arm, 
 wandering through the Quarter, under the arcades 
 of the Odeon, or along the Quai Voltaire ; bending 
 over the odour of new editions, or the coarse piles 
 of refuse literature ; reading in the street, in the 
 alleys of the Luxembourg, or gesticulating as he 
 leaned of a cold winter's day against some statue 
 in the garden and stared at a frozen fountain. In 
 this atmosphere of study and of intelligent youth, 
 which no march of improvement has been able to 
 demolish or to drive altogether away, he recovered 
 something of his inspiration and his fire. But no 
 longer did he have the same auditors, for the flood
 
 Fides, Spes. 389 
 
 of students is ever changing and renewing itself in 
 this Quarter of birds of passage. The places of 
 meeting were also changed ; the political cafes 
 were deserted now for those breweries where the 
 waiting is done by girls in costumes, Swiss, Italian, 
 Swedish, draped by some artist in vogue, and 
 decked in jaunty tinsel. Of Elysee's former rivals, 
 the fine orators of his day, Pesquidoux of the 
 " Voltaire " and Larminat of the " Procope," noth- 
 ing remained except a vague recollection in the 
 memory of the waiters, like that of actors gone 
 from the footlights. Some had mounted high, very 
 high, to power, to public life ; and occasionally when 
 Elysee was wandering along the shop-fronts, read- 
 ing, his hair flying in the wind, from a passing 
 carriage some noted personage of the Chamber or 
 the Senate would call to him : " Meraut ! Meraut ! " 
 They talked together. . . " What have you been 
 doing? . . are you working at anything? . ." And 
 Meraut, his forehead wrinkling, would speak vaguely 
 of a great enterprise "which had not succeeded." 
 Never a word more. They tried to drag him forth, 
 to utilize those lost powers. But no, he was faith- 
 ful to his monarchical ideas and his hatred to the 
 Revolution. He asked nothing; he needed no 
 one; nearly all the money he had earned in his 
 post remained to him, so that he did not even seek 
 for pupils. He shut himself up in a disdainful 
 sorrow, too great, too deep to be understood by 
 others, and wholly without distraction beyond 
 a few visits to the convent of the Franciscans, not 
 merely to obtain news of Saint-Mande, but be-
 
 390 Kings in Exile. 
 
 cause he loved the fantastic chapel with its cave of 
 Jerusalem and the coloured, bleeding Jesus. That 
 artless mythology, those almost pagan representa- 
 tions, were the joy of Christians in the earlier cen- 
 turies. " Philosophers have placed God too high," 
 he said sometimes. "We cannot see him any 
 longer." But he, he saw Him in the twilight of 
 that crypt, where amid the images of barbarous 
 punishment, beside the Marguerite d'Ossuna flag- 
 ellating the marble of her shoulders, he beheld 
 again that vision of a Christmas night, a queen, 
 her arms extended, imploring yet protecting, folded 
 with clasped hands around her son, before the 
 manger. . . 
 
 One night Elysee was awakened with a start, by 
 a singular sensation of heat rising in his breast 
 slowly as if by a surge ; and without pain, without 
 shock, but with a sense of final annihilation, his 
 mouth w T as filled with a sickening mass of blood. 
 It was mysterious and sinister, disease coming 
 suddenly like an assassin who opens the doors 
 without noise in the darkness. He was not 
 alarmed, and merely consulted some medical stu- 
 dents at the place where he dined. They told him 
 he was very ill. "What is it?" "Everything," 
 they answered. He had reached the climacteric 
 forty years of bohemia, where infirmity lies in 
 wait, watching for man and making him pay dear 
 for the excesses or the privations of his youth ; 
 terrible age ; above all, when the moral spring is 
 broken, when the will to live is gone. 
 
 Elysee continued to lead the same existence ;
 
 Fides, Spes. 391 
 
 always out of doors, in the rain, in the wind ; pass- 
 ing from overheated rooms, stifling with gas, to the 
 cold of the streets in winter, continuing to ramble 
 along the sidewalks when the cafes were closed 
 for the greater part of the night. The haemoptyses 
 became more frequent, frightful lassitude succeed- 
 ing them. In order not to stay in bed, for the 
 desolate melancholy of his chamber weighed upon 
 him, he installed himself in the " Rialto," a brewery 
 close to the lodging-house, where he read the 
 newspapers and dreamed in a corner. The place 
 was quiet until evening, gay with its light oak fur- 
 niture, and its walls daubed with frescos, repre- 
 senting Venice, its bridges, its cupolas in vistas on 
 a rainbow sky. Venetian girls themselves, lively 
 enough when evening came and they flitted about 
 with their leather pouches between the tables, their 
 coral necklaces reflected in the beer-glasses, slept 
 by day with their heads on their arms, crumpling 
 their lace caps and the puffs of their muslin 
 sleeves ; or else were employed beside the stove 
 in needle-work, which at times they laid aside to 
 drink at a table with a stray student. One of 
 them, a tall strong girl, with fine, thick, tawny 
 hair rolled high, and grave, slow movements, 
 would pause now and then at her embroidery to 
 listen. . . At this one Meraut gazed for hours, 
 until she spoke to him; and then the rough and 
 vulgar voice put his dream to flight. 
 
 Soon, however, his strength failed him for even 
 these quiet sittings behind the curtain of the 
 brewery. He could no longer come down the
 
 392 Kings in Exile. 
 
 stairs, and was forced to stay in bed, surrounded by 
 books and newspapers; leaving his door ajar that 
 the life and rumble of the house might reach him. 
 He was not allowed to talk. It was then that he 
 resigned himself to write; he resumed his book, 
 his famous book on monarchy, and continued it 
 feverishly with a trembling hand, shaken by a 
 cough that scattered the pages on his bed. He 
 now feared but one thing: to die before he fin- 
 ished it ; to go as he had lived, hidden, unknown, 
 unuttered. 
 
 Sauvadon, the Bercy uncle, whose enormous, 
 turbulent vanity suffered in seeing his master in 
 this miserable lodging, came often to visit him. 
 Directly after the catastrophe he had rushed, purse 
 open, to obtain, as before, " ideas about things." 
 " Uncle, I have no more," replied Me"raut, despond- 
 ently. And then, to draw him from his apathy, 
 old Sauvadon talked of sending him to the South, 
 to Nice, to share in the sumptuous establishment 
 of Colette and her little W. 
 
 " It won't cost me any more," he said naYvely, 
 " and you '11 get cured." 
 
 But filys6e did not care to be cured ; he wanted 
 to finish his book in the place of its birth, among 
 those deep Parisian rumblings, where each man 
 hears the dominating sound that suits him. Even 
 while he wrote, Sauvadon, sitting at the foot of the 
 bed, would gossip about his pretty niece and work 
 himself into a rage against that old idiot of a 
 general who was selling his house on the lie Saint- 
 Louis.
 
 Fides, Spes. 393 
 
 " I ask you now what he can do with all that 
 money. He must heap it in holes, in hiding- 
 places. . . But after all, that 's his affair. . . Colette 
 is rich enough to do without him. . ." 
 
 And the wine-merchant tapped his stomach, 
 tight as a drum, on the side of his fob. 
 
 Another time, flinging on the bed a bundle of 
 newspapers which he had brought to filysee, he 
 burst out with : " They say there 's something go- 
 ing on in Illyria. . . They have just sent a royal- 
 ist majority to the Diet. . . Ah ! if there was only 
 a man there ! . . But that little Leopold is still too 
 young, and Christian is degrading himself lower 
 and lower every day. . . He is frequenting all the 
 lairs and the dance-halls with that valet of his. . ." 
 
 FJysee listened, shuddering from head to foot. 
 Poor queen ! . . The other continued, without per- 
 ceiving the harm he was doing : 
 
 " Fine goings-on among those exiles ! . . There 's 
 Prince d'Axel compromised in a filthy affair in the 
 Avenue d'Antin. . . You know, that family hotel 
 with its patriarchal name which serves as a refuge 
 for 'emancipated girls. . . What a scandal ! an 
 heir-apparent ! . . One thing, however, puzzles 
 me. . . At the very time the thing happened, 
 Colette wrote me that Prince d'Axel was in Nice, 
 and she had been to a regatta in a yacht hired for 
 her by his Highness. . . Certainly there must be 
 some mistake. And I hope there is ... because, 
 between ourselves, my dear Meraut . . ." 
 
 And here the old fellow confided very mysteri- 
 ously to his friend that the prince-royal appeared
 
 394 Kings in Exile. 
 
 to be extremely assiduous to Colette ; and as she 
 was not a woman to ... you understand ... it 
 might be that before long . . . 
 
 The big workman's face of the parvenu lighted 
 up with a smile : 
 
 " Think of that ! Colette Queen of Finland ! . . 
 and Sauvadon of Bercy the uncle of a king ! . . 
 But I am tiring you." 
 
 " Yes, I want to go to sleep . . ." said filys6e, 
 who had closed his eyes as a civil means of getting 
 rid of the kindly, conceited old fellow. 
 
 Sauvadon gone, he gathered up his papers 
 and tried to write, but not a word would come to 
 him ; he was seized with disgust and utter lassi- 
 tude. The hideous tales had sickened him. . . 
 Before those pages scattered on his bed, that 
 plea for royalty on which he was spending the 
 little that remained to him of blood, seeing him- 
 self, there, in that sordid chamber, with the gray 
 hairs of an old student, so much passion spent and 
 strength squandered, he doubted for the first time, 
 he asked himself if indeed he had been a dupe all 
 his life. . . A defender, an apostle? . .of kings 
 who degraded themselves in pleasures, and deserted 
 their own cause ! . . And while his eyes roved 
 sadly along those naked walls, where the sun only 
 came by reflection from the roofs, he saw, in its 
 dusty frame, the old relic, the red seal, Fides, 
 Spes, which he had taken from the pillow of his 
 dead father. All at once the noble Bourbonian 
 face of old Meraut rose up before him, such as he 
 had seen it, rigid on the death bed, asleep in his
 
 Fides, Spes. 
 
 confidence and his sublime fidelity, the looms 
 stopped, the windmills on the horizon between the 
 arid rocks of the coast and the pitiless blue of the 
 Southern sky. It was a moment of hallucination, 
 the Enclos de Rey, all his youth floating in a 
 memory which was now failing. . . 
 
 Suddenly the door opened softly with a murmur 
 of drapery and voices. He thought it was a 
 neighbour, some kind girl of the Rialto who had 
 brought him a drink for his fever. Quickly he 
 closed his eyes; for sleep dismissed the unwel- 
 come. But no ; a hesitating little step came 
 towards him on the cold brick floor of the cham- 
 ber. " Bonjour, Monsieur filysee ". . . His pupil 
 is before him, timid, a little grown, and looking 
 with the shyness of his infirmity at the master so 
 changed, so pale, in that poor bed. Beyond, by 
 the door, a woman waited, erect and proud beneath 
 her veil. She has come herself, she has climbed the 
 five storeys of that staircase filled with the noises of 
 debauchery, brushing with her immaculate robe 
 the doors that bear the tickets " Alice . . . Cle"m- 
 ence. . ." She would not let him die without see- 
 ing once more his little Zara ; not entering 
 herself, she sent him her forgiveness by the hand 
 of her child. That hand, Iilyse'e Me"raut took it, 
 and pressed it to his lips ; then, turning to the 
 apparition that he divined to be there on the 
 threshold of his door, with his last breath, with his 
 last effort of life and speech, he said in a low 
 voice, and forever : " Vive le roi ! "
 
 396 Kings in Exile. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE END OF A RACE. 
 
 A ROUGH game was being played at the Tennis 
 club. Around the immense field of beaten ground, 
 trampled like an arena, a great netting protected 
 with its close meshes the evolutions of six players 
 in white jackets and fencing shoes, who were 
 bounding, shouting, and waving their heavy rackets. 
 The light in the amphitheatre coming from high 
 windows, the hoarse cries, the springs, the darts of 
 those white beings, the impassible correctness of 
 the attendants of the hall (all Englishmen) walking 
 with measured step around the outer gallery, 
 might have made an onlooker believe he was at 
 some circus during a rehearsal of gymnasts and 
 clowns. Among the clowns, Monseigneur the 
 Prince d'Axel, to whom the noble game of tennis 
 had been ordered as hygienic for his coma, could 
 be reckoned as one of the noisiest. Arriving the 
 night before from Nice, where he had spent a 
 month at Colette's feet, this game was his re- 
 entrance into Parisian life, and he was sending his 
 ball with the " haw ! " of a butcher's boy and a 
 swing of the arm that was worthy of admiration at 
 the shambles, when they came to inform him at the 
 height of the game that some one wanted him.
 
 The End of a Race. 397 
 
 " Zut ! " responded the heir presumptive, with- 
 out turning his head. 
 
 The servant insisted, and whispered a name in 
 Monseigneur's ear which calmed him and ap- 
 peared to surprise him. 
 
 " Very good : beg him to wait. . . I '11 come . . . 
 as soon as I have made this stroke." 
 
 Entering one of the bathrooms opening from the 
 gallery round the tennis-court and coquettishly 
 hung with Japanese mattings and furnished in 
 bamboo, he found his friend Rigolo, crouching on 
 a divan, his head down. 
 
 " Oh ! prince, such an adventure ! " exclaimed 
 the ex-king of Illyria, raising a troubled face. 
 
 He stopped short on seeing an attendant with 
 napkins and woollen and horsehair gloves to 
 sponge and rub down Monseigneur, who was 
 sweating and smoking like a Mecklenburger climb- 
 ing a hill. The operation over, Christian con- 
 tinued, his lips quite white and shuddering. 
 
 " Something has happened to me. . . You must 
 have heard down in Nice of the affair in the 
 family hotel?" . . 
 
 His Highness turned his dull glance upon his 
 friend. 
 
 "Caught?" he said. 
 
 The king nodded, turning away his pretty, irres- 
 olute eyes. Then, after a silence : 
 
 " You can imagine the scene. . . The police in 
 the middle of the night . . . the little girl crying, 
 struggling with the agents . . . clinging to my 
 knees, ' Monseigneur . . . Monseigneur . . . save
 
 398 Kings in Exile. 
 
 me ! ' I tried to hush her. . . Too late. . . When 
 I gave a name, I don't know what, the commis- 
 sary laughed. ' Useless,' he said, ' my men know 
 you. . . You are Prince d'Axel. . .' " 
 
 " Very good of him ! " growled the prince, his 
 head in a basin of water. . . " And then? " 
 
 " Well, then, my dear fellow, I was taken so 
 short, I was so dashed . . . and other reasons that 
 I '11 tell you later. . . In short, I let the man 
 think I was you, being quite convinced at the 
 time that the affair would have no consequences. . . 
 I was mistaken. They have brought it up again, 
 and as you are likely to be summoned before 
 the examining judge, I have come to entreat 
 you . . ." 
 
 " To go to prison in your place? . ." 
 
 " Oh ! things won't come to that. Only the 
 newspapers will get hold of it, names will be 
 given. . . And just at this moment . . . when mat- 
 ters are going right in Illyria, a royalist movement 
 started, our restoration almost certain, the scandal 
 would have the very worst effect. . ." 
 
 What a pitiable air he had, that unfortunate 
 Rigolo, awaiting the decision of his cousin d'Axel, 
 who was silently combing his three yellow hairs 
 before the glass. At last the prince-royal decided 
 to answer. 
 
 " So you think that the newspapers . . ." Then 
 suddenly, in his weak, sleepy, ventriloqual voice, 
 he cried : " Chic ! . . very chic ! It will put my 
 uncle into a fury." 
 
 Being now dressed, he took his stick, planted
 
 The End of a Race. 399 
 
 his hat on one ear, and said : " Come, let 's go to 
 breakfast." Arm-in-arm along the terrace of the 
 Feuillants they proceeded to Christian's phaeton, 
 which was waiting at the gate of the Tuileries, and 
 both got into it, wrapped in their furs, the day 
 being fine with a cold, rosy light, and the slender 
 equipage started like the wind for the Cafe de 
 Londres bearing the two inseparables : Rigolo, 
 much comforted, and Queue-de-Poule less som- 
 nolent than usual, being spurred by his tennis 
 game and the thought of the villany of which all 
 Paris would believe him the hero. 
 
 As they drove through the Place Vendome, 
 always very nearly deserted at this hour, a woman 
 of elegant appearance and young, leading a child 
 by the hand, was standing on the sidewalk, look- 
 ing up at the numbers on the houses. His High- 
 ness, who from his lofty seat was looking at all the 
 pretty faces with the avidity of a boulevardicr 
 who has been fasting for a month, saw her, and 
 quivered. " Look, look, Christian. . . One might 
 almost think . . ." But Christian did not listen ; he 
 was busy looking after his horse, which happened 
 to be lively that morning ; and when he did turn 
 round in the narrow carriage to look at the hand- 
 some woman, she and the child had just entered 
 the archway of the house that stands next to the 
 Ministry of Justice. 
 
 She walked quickly, her veil down, rather hesi- 
 tating and anxious, as if uncertain of the locality; 
 and though her mysterious manner and dark, over- 
 rich attire might make her for an instant seem
 
 400 Kings in Exile. 
 
 doubtful, the name she asked of the porter, the 
 tone of deep sadness with which she uttered that 
 name (one of the most famous in the annals of 
 science) removed far away from her all idea of 
 gallantry. 
 
 "Doctor Bouchereau? . . First floor, door in 
 front of you. . . But if you have no ticket it is 
 useless to go up." 
 
 She made no answer, but sprang up the stair- 
 case, dragging the child after her, as if afraid of 
 being recalled. At the first floor she was told the 
 same thing. 
 
 " If Madame has not put down her name . . ." 
 
 " I will wait," she said. 
 
 The servant, without insisting, led them across a 
 first antechamber where persons were seated on 
 wooden benches, and then through a second 
 equally full ; after which he opened with solemnity 
 the door of the grand salon and shut it again the 
 instant the mother and child had passed through, 
 as if to say: "You wanted to wait . . . now wait." 
 
 It was a vast room, very lofty like all the first 
 floors of the Place Vendome, sumptuously deco- 
 rated with painted ceilings and pannelled wain- 
 scots. Scattered around, and quite out of keeping 
 with the room and with each other, were articles 
 of furniture in garnet velvet, provincial in shape, 
 curtains and portieres of the same material, with 
 chairs and cushions in worsted-work. The Louis 
 XVI. lustre above an Empire round table, the 
 clock, with mythological figures between its two 
 candelabra, the absence of all signs of art, revealed
 
 The End of a Race. 401 
 
 the modest, hard-working physician to whom his 
 vogue has come unexpectedly and without his 
 taking any pains to await or receive it. And what 
 a vogue ! Such as Paris alone can give when it 
 chooses, extending to all classes, the upper and 
 lower of social life, overflowing to the provinces, to 
 foreign parts, to all Europe in fact; and this for 
 the last ten years without relaxing or diminishing, 
 and with the unanimous approbation of the medi- 
 cal brotherhood, who owned that for once at least 
 success had gone to a true man of science and not 
 to a disguised charlatan. That which had won 
 such fame for Bouchereau, such extraordinary 
 following, was less his marvellous skill as an opera- 
 tor, his admirable lessons on anatomy, his knowl- 
 edge of the human being, than the light, the 
 divination which guided him, clearer, firmer than 
 the steel of his instruments, that genial eye of the 
 great thinkers and poets, which does magic with 
 science, and sees to the depths, and beyond them. 
 He was consulted like a Pythoness, with blind, un- 
 reasoning faith. When he said : " This is nothing 
 at all . . ." the lame walked, and the dying were 
 cured ; hence his popularity, urgent, suffocating, 
 tyrannical, denying to the man himself the time 
 to live, to breathe. Head of the staff of a great 
 hospital, he made his rounds every morning, 
 slowly, with minute care, followed by attentive 
 students who regarded the master as a god, es- 
 corted him, and handed him their instruments 
 for Bouchereau never had a case with him, and 
 borrowed from the nearest person the tool he 
 
 26
 
 4O2 Kings in Exile. 
 
 needed, which he regularly forgot to return. 
 When he left the hospital he paid a few visits, 
 but was soon back in his own study, and, often 
 without taking time to eat, he began his consulta- 
 tions, which were frequently prolonged very late 
 into the evening. 
 
 On this occasion, though it was scarcely more 
 than midday, the salon was already full of gloomy, 
 anxious faces, ranged in a line around the walls, or 
 grouped near the round table ; some bending over 
 the books and the illustrated papers, scarcely turn- 
 ing to look at the new arrivals, each preoccupied 
 by himself, shut up in his own ailment, absorbed in 
 anxiety as to what doom the oracle might pro- 
 nounce. It was sinister, the silence of these pa- 
 tients with their hollow features furrowed by pain, 
 their languid glance burning occasionally with cruel 
 fire. The women still retained a certain coquetry, 
 some of them the mask of a haughty superiority to 
 suffering; whereas the men, snatched from their 
 work, from the physical activity of life, seemed to 
 be more affected, more completely beaten down. 
 Among these self-absorbed distresses the mother 
 and her little companion formed a touching group ; 
 he so frail, so pallid, with a tiny face dull in 
 feature and in colour, in which there was but 
 one eye left she motionless, as if congealed into 
 some great and dreadful anxiety. Once, tired of 
 waiting, the child went awkwardly, timidly, to fetch 
 a picture from the table. Moving in his maimed 
 way his arm struck a patient, and he received 
 in return so surly and frowning a glance that
 
 The End of a Race. 403 
 
 he returned to his seat with empty hands and sat 
 there, motionless, his head on one side in that 
 attitude of a roosting bird which is common to 
 blind children. 
 
 A true suspension of life, this waiting at the door 
 of a great physician; a hypnotism, broken only 
 by a sigh, a cough, a skirt gathered in, a smothered 
 moan, or the tinkle of the bell, announcing the 
 arrival of another patient. Sometimes the new- 
 comer, seeing the room so full, would close the 
 door quickly; then, after a colloquy, a short dis- 
 pute, would enter again, resigned to wait. With 
 Bouchereau there was no favouritism, each had his 
 turn ; he made no exception, beyond the members 
 of his own profession in Paris or the provinces if 
 they brought him one of their clients. They alone 
 had the right to send in their cards and were al- 
 lowed to enter out of turn. These men could be 
 distinguished by their familiar, authoritative air, 
 and the vigorous step with which they trod the 
 salon, looking at their watches and wondering, as 
 it was past mid-day, that nothing seemed stirring 
 in the consulting-room. People, more people, and 
 of all kinds, from the heavy, obese banker, who 
 had had a servant in the salon since morning 
 keeping two chairs for him, down to the little 
 clerk who had said to himself: " Cost what it 
 may, I '11 consult Bouchereau." All sorts of toilets, 
 all kinds of deportment, bonnets of ceremony and 
 muslin caps, black, threadbare gowns beside bril- 
 liant satins ; but equality was there in the eyes red 
 with tears, the anxious brows, the terrors and the
 
 404 Kings in Exile. 
 
 sorrows that haunted that salon of the great 
 physician of Paris. 
 
 Among the last comers was a peasant, fair- 
 haired, tanned, broad of face and of build, accom- 
 panied by a small rickety being who leaned on 
 one side upon him, on the other upon a crutch. 
 The father is taking the most touching precau- 
 tions ; he bends beneath his new blouse a back 
 already bent by labour, he unlimbers his coarse 
 fingers to seat the child carefully. " Comfortable, 
 so? sit easy? . . Wait till I put this cushion under 
 you. . ." He speaks in a loud voice, not embar- 
 rassed himself, but disturbing everybody to get 
 chairs and a stool. The child, intimidated and 
 refined by suffering, was silent, his body drooping, 
 his crutches between his legs. As soon as they 
 were fairly settled the peasant began to laugh, 
 with tears in his eyes : " Hey ! here we are ! . . 
 He 's a famous one, he is ! . . He '11 cure you." 
 Then he smiled all round him on the assemblage, 
 a smile that came into collision with the hard 
 coldness of the faces present. The lady in black, 
 she, too, accompanied by a child, alone looked 
 kindly at him; and although she seemed rather 
 proud, he talked to her, told her his history : his 
 name was Raizou, market-gardener at Valenton; 
 his wife was almost always ill ; unfortunately, their 
 children took after her instead of him, so vigorous 
 and strong. The three eldest were dead of some 
 disease they had in the bones. . . The last one 
 seemed as if they could bring him up. . . but for 
 some months now it had caught him in the hip,
 
 The End of a Race. 405 
 
 like the others. . . So he had just thrown a mat- 
 tress on the bottom of the carryall, and brought 
 him to see Bouchereau. 
 
 All this was said sedately, in the slow, drawling 
 way of the country-folk ; and while his neighbour 
 listened to him with sympathy, the two little 
 maimed ones examined each other curiously, 
 drawn together by a common infirmity which 
 gave them both, the child in a blouse and woollen 
 muffler, and the child wrapped in velvet and costly 
 furs, a melancholy resemblance. . . 
 
 But a quiver ran through the room, colour flew 
 up into pallid faces, and all heads turned to the 
 lofty door behind which steps were heard and seats 
 were moved. He is there ; he has come. In the 
 frame of the door, now opened brusquely, a man 
 appears, of medium height, stocky, square-shoul- 
 dered, his forehead bald, his features hard. With 
 a glance that crosses many an anxious look, his 
 eyes go round the salon and scrutinize those suf- 
 ferings, old or recent. . . Then one of them 
 passes into the room and the door closes. " He 
 is n't good-natured," said Raizou, half aloud ; and 
 to give himself courage he began to watch the 
 people who went before him to the consultation. 
 A crowd they were, and hours of waiting followed, 
 marked only by the dragging, echoing strokes of the 
 old provincial clock surmounted by a Polyhymnia, 
 and the rare apparitions of the doctor. Each time, 
 however, one place was gained, and a little stir, a 
 little life appeared in the salon ; falling back almost 
 immediately into gloom and immobility.
 
 406 Kings in Exile. 
 
 Since her entrance, the mother has not said a 
 word nor raised her veil ; and from her silence, 
 perhaps from her mental prayer, something issues, 
 something so imposing that the peasant dares no 
 longer talk to her, and is mute himself, heaving 
 great sighs. Once he draws from his pocket, 
 from one of his many pockets, a little bottle, a 
 goblet, and a biscuit in paper which he unfolds 
 slowly, carefully, that he may give his boy " a 
 sop." The child just moistens his lips, then he 
 pushes away the glass and the biscuit. " No . . . 
 no ... I am not hungry. . ." And before that 
 poor contorted figure, so weary, the father thinks 
 of his three elder ones who never were hungry 
 either. His eyes swell, his cheeks tremble at the 
 thought, and suddenly : " Don't stir, my boy. . . 
 I '11 just go see if the carryall is all right." Several 
 times already has be been down to see if that 
 carryall is still by the sidewalk, at the same 
 place ; and each time he comes back smiling, 
 his face beaming; and he fancies that no one 
 will see his reddened eyes, or his cheeks purple 
 from being rubbed by those great fists to stanch 
 his tears. 
 
 The slow, sad hours pass. In the salon, now 
 darkening, the faces seem more pale, more ner- 
 vous; they turn in supplication to the unmoved 
 Bouchereau as he makes his appearance periodi- 
 cally. The man from Valenton is grieving now 
 that their long drive home must be at night; the 
 wife will be so anxious, the little one will surely 
 take cold. His grief is keen, expressed aloud with
 
 The End of a Race. 4.07 
 
 a naivete so touching that when, after five mortal 
 hours of waiting, the mother and child see their 
 turn at last come round they yield it to Raizou. 
 " Oh ! thank you, madame. . . " His effusion of 
 gratitude is not oppressive, for the door is open for 
 him. Quick he lifts his child, gives him his crutch, 
 so troubled, so agitated, that he does not see what 
 the lady puts into the hand of the poor little crip- 
 ple. " For you ... for you. . . " 
 
 Oh ! how long to the mother and child is that 
 last waiting, increased by the night now falling, 
 and the deepening apprehension that chills their 
 hearts ! At length their turn has come ; they 
 enter a vast cabinet, vast in length, lighted by one 
 broad, high window, which opens on the Place 
 Vendome, and through which the daylight enters 
 although the hour is late. Bouchereau's table is 
 there before them, very simple, the table of a 
 country doctor or a receiver of registrations. He 
 sits down at it, his back to the light, which strikes 
 full upon the new-comers, on that woman, whose 
 raised veil shows a young, energetic face, with a 
 dazzling complexion and eyes that are weary with 
 sorrowful vigils, and on the child, lowering his 
 head as if the strong light hurt him. 
 
 " What is the matter with him ? " said Bouche- 
 reau in a kindly tone, drawing the boy to him with 
 a fatherly gesture ; for beneath the hardness of his 
 face lay an exquisite sensibility which the forty 
 years of his profession had never blunted. Before 
 the mother answered she made a sign to the child 
 that sent him to the end of the room. Then in a
 
 408 Kings in Exile. 
 
 beautiful grave voice, with a foreign accent, she 
 told how her son had lost his right eye by an ac- 
 cident a year ago. Now some trouble had 
 appeared in the left eye, cloudiness, dazzlings, a 
 decided alteration in the sight. To avoid com- 
 plete blindness, she was advised to have the right 
 eye removed entirely. Could that be done ? Was 
 the child in a fit state to bear it? 
 
 Bouchereau listened with attention, leaning over 
 the arm of his chair, his small Touranian eyes fixed 
 on that proud mouth, with the red lips, never 
 touched by paint, which told of the pure blood in 
 them. Then, when the mother had finished speak- 
 ing, he said : 
 
 "The operation suggested to you, madame, is 
 done daily and without danger, unless under cer- 
 tain very exceptional circumstances. . . Once only 
 in twenty years have I had in my practice at 
 Lariboisiere a poor devil who could not stand 
 it. . . It is true he was an old man, a rag-picker, 
 alcoholized and ill-fed. . . Here the case, of 
 course, is not the same. . . Your son does not 
 look strong, but he comes of a beautiful and 
 healthy mamma, who has put into his veins. . . 
 But we will see about it, at any rate." 
 
 He called the child, put him between his legs, 
 and in order to distract his mind while he examined 
 him he asked him with a kindly smile : 
 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 " Leopold, monsieur." 
 
 "Leopold what?" 
 
 The boy looked at his mother without answering.
 
 The End of a Race. 409 
 
 " Well, Leopold, you must take off your jacket 
 and your waistcoat. . . So that I may feel every- 
 where, and listen." 
 
 The child slowly and awkwardly unfastened his 
 clothes, aided by his mother, whose hands trem- 
 bled, and by the fatherly Bouchereau, more skilful 
 than either. Oh ! that poor little puny, rickety 
 body, the shoulders sinking into narrow chest, like 
 the wings of a bird folded before it flies, and the 
 skin so livid that the scapulary and the medals 
 scarcely showed upon it, or the plaster of an ex- 
 voto. The mother lowered her head, almost 
 ashamed of her work, while the doctor kneaded 
 and auscultated the poor body, stopping now and 
 then to ask questions. 
 
 " The father is an old man, is he not? " 
 
 " No, monsieur. . . Barely thirty-five." 
 
 "Often ill?" 
 
 " No, hardly ever." 
 
 " That will do ... you can dress yourself, my 
 little man." 
 
 He threw himself back in his great arm-chair, 
 silent, pensive, while the child, after putting on 
 his blue velvet jacket and his furs, went back to 
 the end of the room though no one had told him 
 to do so. He was now so accustomed to these 
 mysteries, these whisperings about his infirmity, 
 that he took no notice of them, did not try to 
 understand them, and cared no longer. But the 
 mother, what agony was in the look she gave the 
 doctor ! 
 
 "Well?"
 
 410 Kings in Exile. 
 
 " Madame," said Bouchereau, in a low voice, 
 measuring every word, " it is true that your child 
 is threatened with loss of sight. And yet ... if 
 he were my son I should not operate. . . With- 
 out entirely explaining to myself that little nature, 
 I perceive strange disorders in it, a disturbance of 
 the whole system, and, above all, a most vitiated, 
 exhausted blood " 
 
 " The blood of kings ! " groaned Frederica, 
 rising abruptly in a fierce revolt. Before her, sud- 
 denly, she saw, in its little coffin filled with roses, 
 the pallid face of her first-born. Bouchereau, 
 rising also, enlightened by those words, recognized 
 the Queen of Illyria, whom he had never seen, for 
 she went nowhere, but whose portraits were in 
 everybody's album. 
 
 " Oh ! madame ... If I had known . . ." 
 
 " Do not excuse yourself," said Frederica, already 
 more calm. " I came here to know the truth, that 
 truth which is never told us, even in exile. . . Ah ! 
 Monsieur Bouchereau, queens are indeed unfortu- 
 nate ! To think that every one is urging me, per- 
 secuting me to let my child be operated on ! And 
 yet they know well that it would kill him. . . But 
 reasons of State ! . . In a month, in two weeks, 
 less perhaps, the Diet of Illyria will send to us. . . 
 They want to have a king to show them. . . Such 
 as he is now, it might be done ; but blind ! Who 
 would have him? . . So, at the risk of killing him, 
 I must allow the operation ! . . Reign or die. . . 
 And I was about to make myself the accomplice 
 of that crime. . . Poor little Zara ! . . What matter
 
 The End of a Race. 411 
 
 if he reign, O my God ! . . let him live ! let him 
 
 live !. . ." 
 
 Five o'clock. Daylight is fading. In the Rue 
 de Rivoli, crowded with equipages returning from 
 the Bois, the carriages are driven at a foot-pace, 
 following the railings of the Tuileries gardens, 
 which seem, as they are struck by the setting sun, 
 to lie in long bars upon the occupants. The sky, 
 in the direction of the Arc de Triomphe is still 
 suffused with a ruddy boreal glow; on the other 
 side, already a mournful violet is deepening into 
 night the shadows. To that side rolls the heavy 
 landau that bears the Illyrian arms. At the turn- 
 ing to the Rue Castiglione the queen can see once 
 more that balcony of the hotel des Pyramides, she 
 remembers the illusions of her first day in Paris, 
 singing to her as she stood there, like the music 
 of the band as it played among the trees. What 
 deceptions since ! What struggles ! Now, all is 
 ended, ended. The race is extinct. . . A chill, as 
 of death, falls upon her shoulders while the landau 
 moves onward to the shadows, always to the 
 shadows, and she does not see the tender, timid, 
 imploring glance that the child at her side turns 
 towards her. 
 
 " Mamma, if I am no longer a king, will you love 
 me all the same ? " 
 
 " Oh, my treasure ! . ." 
 
 Passionately she presses the little hand put 
 out to meet hers. . . Yes, the sacrifice is made. 
 Warmed, comforted by that clasp, Frederica is a
 
 412 Kings in Exile. 
 
 mother only; and when the Tuileries, their ashes 
 gilded by a departing ray, rise up before her to 
 recall the past, she gazes at them without emotion, 
 without memory, as though she looked upon some 
 ancient ruin of Assyria or of Egypt, the witness 
 of manners and of morals and of peoples vanished ; 
 a grand old dead past gone. 
 
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