The French Prisoners of Norman Cross Part 10

"I will prove it to you. G.o.d says, 'Vengeance is mine: I will repay'; and you say, 'Not so, I will avenge myself.' And whenever we contradict G.o.d, we take up with the devil."

Then Cosin sat down again, and in his old gentle tone of voice, said,--

"Which do you think has sinned most against the other: Fontenoy against you, or you against G.o.d?"

Tournier was silent. He was thinking of all the misery _that_ man had brought upon him. How happy he might have been, if he had not come between him and his love. He thought of his future, and how, even if ever he were set at liberty again, life would be a blank to him. And he ground his teeth with rage.

And then he heard his friend Cosin saying with quiet voice, like the voice of conscience,--

"When once you had given up G.o.d, in years gone by, and you scouted Him who had given you every comfort and blessing you possessed, who had preserved you every day and night, so that you would have dropped down dead had He withheld His hand any moment, and who had covered your head in the day of battle--did He take vengeance on you? or did He open your eyes and make you see some glimpse of His goodness?"

Then, after a pause, he went on in the same quiet way,--

"And when, in the madness of your distress, you tried again and again to drown yourself, as if there were no G.o.d, no life after death, no power to help in the Almighty; whose voice was it in your heart that bade you stop each time, and bade you hope?

"And, as you lay on that sick bed, and your life trembled in the balance, whose power was it that gave the turn to your distempered mind, instead of dealing with you after your sin, and rewarding you after your iniquity?"

Once more he paused. Then said in a yet lower tone of voice, almost in a whisper, but with perfect naturalness, "And far, far above all, when we were yet without strength, unG.o.dly sinners, who was it signalized His love towards us by dying for us on the cross?"

More pa.s.sed between the two friends that night. But Cosin could elicit no definite promise from the other. He only said, with great emotion, as they parted,--

"Truest and best of friends, I shall think all night of these things."

And he did turn and twist about for hours in his berth, so that more than once his fellow prisoners cried out angrily, "What _is_ the matter with you, Tournier?" But he fell asleep towards morning, as soon as he had at last made up his mind that Fontenoy might kill _him_ if he could, but he himself would fire into the ground.

As he went out in the morning he met the chaplain. He stopped him and said, "You are going, I see, to keep your appointment. Spare yourself the trouble. Your enemy has been struck down by another hand than yours.

The Almighty has smitten him with paralysis. He is never likely to recover."

But he _did_ recover; and so we take our leave of him with the greatest possible pleasure.

CHAPTER IX.--PRISONERS EMANc.i.p.aTED.

The retreat of Napoleon, after the battle of Leipsic, was as disastrous to him as his retreat from Moscow. On the 9th of November, 1813, he reached Paris, and on the 21st of the following month the allied armies crossed the Rhine, and carried the war into France. Soon after, the English, under Wellington, defeated the French, under Soult--"the bravest of the brave," in several engagements in the South of France, until the knell of Napoleon's arms was sounded in the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of Toulouse, fought on Easter Sunday, the 11th of April, 1814. Six days before the battle, Napoleon had abdicated at Fontainebleau. If the electric telegraph had been known in those days, all the lives lost in that fearful fight might have been saved. But that would have been a small matter to Napoleon.

The war was ended. That long, weary war--so wanton, so unnecessary, save for Europe's liberty, and England's existence--that had left its trail of blood almost everywhere, and desolated so many thousands of homes, was ended.

To many and many a poor prisoner, the year 1814 must have been like the blessed year of jubilee. Two hundred thousand Frenchmen were set free in Russia alone: but they had not been in confinement for very long. In continental countries there must have been many more. Some fifty thousand were located in various parts of England and Scotland, of whom a large number had been imprisoned for several years, and they were no doubt the most joyous of all.

But it must have been anything but an easy matter even to get rid of such numbers of men, all in a state of more or less excitement, intoxicated with a sense of newly gained liberty. Without proper precautions an emanc.i.p.ation on so large a scale would have led to much disorder, at least in the neighbourhood where prisoners had been confined. To avoid this they were marched off in detachments to the sea-coast, where ships were ordered to attend and embark them for conveyance to their own dear France.

Such necessary arrangements of course took time, and it was not until August that the last batch of prisoners left Norman Cross.

Of course, the poor fellows were aware of the great change in their condition that was coming by what they gathered from the current news of the day; yet, whenever the actual proclamation of liberty reached them, we can but faintly imagine the delirium of excitement that followed.

Then, in the place where for so many years the sighing of the prisoners had been heard, mingled, it might be, with the sound of revelry, in which the wretched tried to drown their misery, pealed forth the shouts of those who sang for very joy and gladness of heart.

Poivre was still among them. That man of the revolution, like many others of the older prisoners, had learned something by his captivity. He used to think, and with too much reason, that the rich and high-born were the vultures that preyed on the poor; but now he had discovered that one risen from the ranks might be as heartless and oppressive as "Monsieur"

of old, and be utterly indifferent how many lives were lost, and how many imprisoned for years, to gain his own selfish ends.

They were sitting together at supper, some of them, a few evenings before their turn came to leave, when the remark was made that "the little corporal" would never have another chance, but was driven into a hole at last.

"Think you so?" replied Poivre; "I am not so sure of that. It must be a curious hole that man cannot get out of sooner or later. He has the cleverness of the devil, if there be one."

"Would you fight again for him, Poivre, if he did come out of his hole?"

"Not I," said he, "if I could help it. Some of us have had enough of him. We begin to think we have not been fighting for "France and glory,"

but for him, and he does not care two pins for us. But there are thousands of fellows who are such fools that, if the emperor were only able to shew himself again, they would flock to him, and be ready to become food for powder the next moment. I am going to prophecy, my friends. Mark what I say. When all our countrymen have been set free, Napoleon will have an army, a grand army, ready to hand. Depend on it, he has his eye on this, and will make use of the opportunity; but he will not find Marc Poivre in the ranks!"

Human prophecies are acute guesses, and when they come true, correct guesses. Such was Poivre's prophecy. But was it not a fatal mistake, though, perhaps, one that could not be avoided, to place an army within Napoleon's grasp, even as we had given him back the sailors that manned his navy by the bogus peace of Amiens?

This at least is certain, that the volcano which had desolated Europe for so many years but had become quiescent when Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau, burst forth again with an awful blaze in 1815, and was only extinguished for ever at Waterloo. So, some at least of the prisoners at Norman Cross may again have fought gallantly against us.

Captain Tournier, like the rest, was longing to see once more his old home, but had first to pay a farewell visit to his friends at the Manor House. He was with them only a couple of nights, and Villemet was invited to stay also. The meeting could not be otherwise than mingled with sadness to each of them. They had known each other now for nearly six years, and those years had been made interesting by intercourse of no ordinary kind.

At dinner, Cosin was the most cheerful of them all. He was really very sorry to part with his friends, especially with Tournier, whom he loved as a brother; but he could not for the life of him make out why two men who had just obtained the freedom they had so long pined for, and were on the point of starting for the homes they had dreamt of every night for years, should be so awfully down. And least of all, like a stupid fellow that he was, and as most men are in such matters, could he imagine why Alice should take upon herself to look so supremely wretched, and hardly open her mouth all dinner time.

Nothing could exceed the minute attention which Villemet paid to her, though all in good taste, but with an anxious, if not mournful air, as if he were appointed to watch over her health, and was not quite happy about it.

Alice received his attentions with perfect politeness, but her ears were evidently occupied with something else.

Tournier took no more notice of her than any gentleman would naturally do to the lady of the house at a party of four. Almost all his conversation was addressed to Cosin, and consisted chiefly of references to happy days gone by, during their intercourse with each other. Each allusion ended with a sort of sigh, as if to say, "Ah, there will be no more of that now!"

"Upon my word, Cosin," he cried, "if it were not for my sweet old mother, I would almost be a prisoner again to live near you."

The blue eyes brightened a little. And there was someone who noticed it, and, oh! how he wished he had made the same remark.

To understand Tournier's enthusiasm, we must know something of how a deeply sensitive nature is drawn toward the one who has saved his soul from death.

"Come, my friends," said Cosin, "let us be merry while we can, which to my thinking is always, if we cast our future upon G.o.d. There is no happiness unalloyed with sorrow in this world. We must wait for that. I drink to the perpetual amity of our two countries. G.o.d has made us neighbours: why should we quarrel? We have been fighting, but we have not been quarrelling. Let French and English be better friends than ever. And when the devil of ambition next arises in either country, and tempts us to disagree, let us bid him leave his foul work alone, for we, the people, are fast friends for ever."

Next morning, the four went out for their last ride together. Alice and Villemet went first, and the others followed. As they pa.s.sed the familiar spot where Villemet had spent so many weary days and nights, Alice remarked, how glad he must be that he was a free man once more.

"Yes, Miss Cosin," he replied in a very dissatisfied tone; "yet I am not free altogether, my body is, but I shall leave my heart behind me."

"Oh, that will never do," said Alice, with more vivacity than he quite liked: "you will want your heart. You could never be a heartless man I am quite sure," and she looked archly at the handsome young fellow as she said it, and smiled so provokingly.

"It is true however," he said, but in such a melancholy way, that Alice felt sure something serious was coming.

"If I might only leave my heart with you," he added, "I should be quite content to go away without it."

"But what on earth should I do with it?" she said, purposely disregarding the sentimental, and sticking to the literal meaning of his words.

"Keep it close to your own," was his reply.

"Then should I be queen of hearts indeed!"