Lazarre Part 71

I saw, as one sees from the side of the eye, the scarlet rush of blood and the snow-white rush of pallor which covered her one after the other.

The moment was too strenuous. I could not spare her. She had to bear it with me.

She set her clenched hands on her knees.

"Sire!"

I faced her. The coldest look I ever saw in her gray eyes repelled me, as she deliberately said--

"You are not such a fool!"

I stared back as coldly and sternly, and deliberately answered--

"I am--just--such a fool!"

"Consider how any person who might be to blame for your decision, would despise you for it afterwards!"

"A boy in the first flush of his youth," Abbe Edgeworth said, his fine jaws squared with a grin, "might throw away a kingdom for some woman who took his fancy, and whom he could not have perhaps, unless he did throw his kingdom away. And after he had done it he would hate the woman. But a young man in his strength doesn't do such things!"

"A king who hasn't spirit to be a king!" Madame de Ferrier mocked.

I mercilessly faced her down.

"What is there about me? Sum me up. I am robbed on every side by any one who cares to fleece me. Whenever I am about to accomplish anything I fall down as if knocked on the head!"

She rose from her seat.

"You let yourself be robbed because you are princely! You have plainly left behind you every weakness of your childhood. Look at him in his strength, Monsieur Abbe! He has sucked in the vigor of a new country!

The failing power of an old line of kings is renewed in him! You could not have nourished such a dauphin for France in your exiled court!

Burying in the American soil has developed what you see for yourself--the king!"

"He is a handsome man," Abbe Edgeworth quietly admitted.

"Oh, let his beauty alone! Look at his manhood--his kinghood!"

"Of what use is his kinghood if he will not exercise it?"

"He must!"

She turned upon me fiercely.

"Have you no ambition?"

"Yes, madame. But there are several kinds of ambition, as there are several kinds of success. You have to knock people down with each kind, if you want it acknowledged. As I told you awhile ago, I am tenacious beyond belief, and shall succeed in what I undertake."

"What are you undertaking?"

"I am not undertaking to mount a throne."

"I cannot believe it! Where is there a man who would turn from what is offered you? Consider the life before you in this country. Compare it with the life you are throwing away." She joined her hands. "Sire, the men of my house who fought for the kings of yours, plead through me that you will take your inheritance."

I kept my eyes on Abbe Edgeworth. He considered the padlocked book as an object directly in his line of vision. Its wooden covers and small metal padlock attracted the secondary attention we bestow on trifles when we are at great issues.

I answered her,

"The men of your house--and the women of your house, madame--cannot dictate what kings of my house should do in this day."

"Well as you appear to know him, madame," said Abbe Edgeworth, "and loyally as you urge him, your efforts are wasted."

She next accused me--

"You hesitate on account of the Indians!"

"If there were no Indians in America, I should do just as I am doing."

"All men," the abbe noted, "hold in contempt a man who will not grasp power when he can."

"Why should I grasp power? I have it in myself. I am using it."

"Using it to ruin yourself!" she cried.

"Monseigneur!" The abbe rose. We stood eye to eye. "I was at the side of the king your father upon the scaffold. My hand held to his lips the crucifix of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his death no word of bitterness escaped him. True son of St. Louis, he supremely loved France. Upon you he laid injunction to leave to G.o.d alone the punishment of regicides, and to devote your life to the welfare of all Frenchmen. Monseigneur!

are you deaf to this call of sacred duty? The voice of your father from the scaffold, in this hour when the fortunes of your house are lowest, bids you take your rightful place and rid your people of the usurper who grinds France and Europe into the blood-stained earth!"

I wheeled and walked across the floor from Abbe Edgeworth, and turned again and faced him.

"Monsieur, you have put a dart through me. If anything in the universe could move me from my position, what you have said would do it. But my father's blood cries through me to-day--'Shall the son of Louis XVI be forced down the unwilling throats of his countrymen by foreign bayonets?--Russians--Germans--English!--Shall the dauphin of France be hoisted to place by the alien?'--My father would forbid it! . . . You appeal to my family love. I bear about with me everywhere the pictured faces of my family. The father whose name you invoke, is always close to my heart. That royal d.u.c.h.ess, whom you are privileged to see daily, monsieur, and I--never--is so dear and sacred to me that I think of her with a prayer. . . . But my life is here. . . . Monsieur, in this new world, no man can say to me--'Come,' or 'Go.' I am as free as the Indian.

But the pretender to the throne of France, the puppet of Russia, of England, of the enemies of my country,--a slave to policy and intrigue--a chained wanderer about Europe--O my G.o.d! to be such a pretender--gasping for air--for light--as I gasped in Ste. Pelagie!--O let me be a free man--a free man!"

The old churchman whispered over and over--

"My royal son!"

My arms dropped relaxed.

There was another reason. I did not give it. I would not give it.

We heard the spring wind following the river channel--and a far faint call that I knew so well--the triangular wild flock in the upper air, flying north.

"Honk! honk!" It was the jubilant cry of freedom!

"Madame," said Abbe Edgeworth, resting his head on his hands, "I have seen many stubborn Bourbons, but he is the most obstinate of them all.

We do not make as much impression on him as that little padlocked book."

Her terrified eyes darted at him--and hid their panic.

"Monsieur Abbe," she exclaimed piercingly, "tell him no woman will love him for throwing away a kingdom!"

The priest began once more.