Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume Ii Part 22

"Most true, my dear friend," said d.u.c.h.esne, gayly, as he slipped into the room, and drew his Chair towards the fire. "A wise reflection, but most unwisely spoken. But there are men nothing can teach; not even the 'Temple' nor the 'Palais de Justice.'"

"How, then,--you know of my unhappy imprisonment?"

"Know of it? To be sure I do. Bless your sweet innocence! I have been told, a hundred times over, to make overtures to you from the Faubourg.

There are at least a dozen old ladies there who believe firmly you are a true Legitimist, and wear the white c.o.c.kade next your heart. I have had, over and over, the most tempting offers to make you. Faith, I 'm not quite certain if we are not believed to be, at this very moment, concocting how to smuggle over the frontier a bra.s.s carronade and a royal livery, two pounds of gunpowder and a court periwig, to restore the Bourbons!"

He burst into a fit of laughing as he concluded; and however little disposed to mirth at the moment, I could not refrain from joining in the emotion.

"But now for a moment of serious consideration, Burke; for I can be serious at times, at least when my friends are concerned. You and I must part here; it is all the better for you it should be so. I am what the world is pleased to call a 'dangerous companion;' and there's more truth in the epithet than they wot of who employ it. It is not because I am a man of pleasure, and occasionally a man of expensive habits and costly tastes, nor that I now and then play deep, or drink deep, or follow up with pa.s.sionate determination any ruling propensity of the moment; but because I am a discontented and unsettled man, who has a vague ambition of being something he knows not what, by means he knows not how,--ever willing to throw himself into an enterprise where the prize is great and the risk greater, and yet never able to warm his wishes into enthusiasm nor his belief into a conviction: in a word, a Frenchman, born a Legitimist, reared a Democrat, educated an Imperialist, and turned adrift upon the world a scoffer. Such men as I am are dangerous companions; and when they increase, as they are likely to do in our state of society, will be still more dangerous citizens. But come, my good friend, don't look dismayed, nor distend your nostrils as if you were on the scent for a smell of brimstone,--'Satan s'en va!'"

With these words he arose and held out his hand to me. "Don't let your Napoleonite ardor ooze out too rapidly, Burke, and you 'll be a marshal of France yet. There are great prizes in the wheel, to be had by those who strive for them. Adieu!"

"But we shall meet, d.u.c.h.esne?"

"I hope so. The time may come, perhaps, when we may be intimate without alarming the police of the department. But, for the present, I am about to leave Paris; some friends in the South have been kind enough to invite me to visit them, and I start this afternoon."

We shook hands once more, and d.u.c.h.esne moved towards the door; then, turning suddenly about, he said, "Apropos of another matter,--this Mademoiselle de Lacostellerie.

"What of her?" said I, with some curiosity in my tone.

"Why, I have a kind of half suspicion, ripening into something like an a.s.surance, that when we meet again she may be Madame Burke."

"What nonsense, my dear friend! the absurdity--"

"There is none whatever. An acquaintance begun like yours is very suggestive of such a termination. When the lady is saucy and the gentleman shy, the game stands usually thus: the one needs control and the other lacks courage. Let them change the cards, and see what comes of it."

"You are wrong, d.u.c.h.esne,--all wrong."

"Be it so. I have been so often right, I can afford a false prediction without losing all my character as prophet. Adieu!"

No sooner was I alone than I sat down to think over what he had said.

The improbability, nay, as it seemed to me, the all but impossibility, of such an event as he foretold, seemed not less now than when first I heard it; but somehow I felt a kind of internal satisfaction, a sense of gratified vanity, to think that to so acute an observer as d.u.c.h.esne such a circ.u.mstance did not appear even unreasonable. How hard it is to call in reason against the a.s.sault of flattery! How difficult to resist the force of an illusion by any appeal to our good sense and calmer judgment!

It must not be supposed from this that I seriously contemplated such a possible turn of fortune,--far less wished for it. No; my satisfaction had a different source. It lay in the thought that I, the humble captain of hussars, should ever be thought of as the suitor of the greatest beauty and the richest dowry of the day: here was the mainspring of my flattered pride. As to any other feeling, I had none. I admired Mademoiselle de Lacostellerie greatly; she was, perhaps, the very handsomest girl I ever saw; there was not one in the whole range of Parisian society so much sought after; and there was a degree of distinction in being accounted even among the number of her admirers.

Besides this, there lay a lurking desire in my heart that Marie de Meudon (for as such only could I think of her) should hear me thus spoken of. It seemed to me like a weak revenge on her own indifference to me; and I longed to make anything a cause of connecting my fate with the idea of her who yet held my whole heart.

Only men who live much to themselves and their own thoughts know the pleasure of thus linking their fortunes, by some imaginary chain, to that of those they love. They are the straws that drowning men catch at; but still, for the moment, they sustain the sinking courage, and nerve the heart where all is failing. I felt this acutely. I knew well that she was not, nor could be, anything to me; but I knew, also, that to divest my mind of her image was to live in darkness, and that the mere chance of being remembered by her was happiness itself. It was while hearing of her I first imbibed the soldier's ardor from her own brother.

She herself had placed before me the glorious triumphs of that career in words that never ceased to ring in my ears. All my hopes of distinction, my aspirations for success, were a.s.sociated with the half prediction she had uttered; and I burned for an occasion by which I could signalize myself,--that she might read my name, perchance might say, "And _he_ loved me!"

In such a world of dreamy thought I pa.s.sed day after day. d.u.c.h.esne was gone, and I had no intimate companion to share my hours with, nor with whom I could expand in social freedom. Meanwhile, the gay life of the capital continued its onward course; fetes and b.a.l.l.s succeeded each other; and each night I found myself a guest at some splendid entertainment, but where I neither knew nor was known to any one.

It was on one morning, after a very magnificent fete at the Arch-Chancellor's, that I remembered, for the first time, I had not seen my poor friend Pioche since his arrival at Paris. A thrill of shame ran through me at the thought of having neglected to ask after my old comrade of the march, and I ordered my horse at once, to set out for the Hotel-Dieu, which had now been in great part devoted to the wounded soldiers.

The day was a fine one for the season; and as I entered the large courtyard I perceived numbers of the invalids moving about in groups, to enjoy the air and the sun of a budding spring. Poor fellows! they were but the mere remnants of humanity. Several had lost both legs, and few were there without an empty sleeve to their loose blue coats. In a large hall, where three long tables were being laid for dinner, many were seated around the ample fireplaces; and at one of these a larger group than ordinary attracted my attention. They were not chatting and laughing, like the rest, but apparently in deep silence. I approached, curious to know the reason; and then perceived that they were all listening attentively to some one reading aloud. The tones of the voice were familiar to me; I stopped to hear them more plainly.

It was Minette herself--the vivandiere--who sat there in the midst; beside her, half reclining in a deep, old-fashioned armchair, was "le gros Pioche," his huge beard descending midway on his chest, and his great mustache curling below his upper lip. He had greatly rallied since I saw him last, but still showed signs of debility and feebleness by the very att.i.tude in which he lay.

[Ill.u.s.tration 194]

Mingling unperceived with the crowd, who were far too highly interested in the recital to pay any attention to my approach, I listened patiently, and soon perceived that mademoiselle was reading some incident of the Egyptian campaign from one of those innumerable volumes which then formed the sole literature of the garrison.

"The redoubt," continued Minette, "was strongly defended in front by stockades and a ditch, while twelve pieces of artillery and a force of seven hundred Mamelukes were within the works. Suddenly an aide-de-camp arrived at full gallop, with orders for the Thirty-second to attack the redoubt with the bayonet, and carry it. The major of the regiment (the colonel had been killed that morning at the ford) cried out,--

"'Grenadiers, you hear the order,--Forward!' But the same instant a terrible discharge of grape tore through the ranks, killing three and wounding eight others. 'Forward, men! forward!' shouted the major. But no one stirred."

"_Tete d'enfer_," growled out Pioche, "where was the tambour?"

"You shall hear," said Minette, and resumed.

"'Do you hear me?' cried the major, 'or am I to be disgraced forever?

Advance--quick time--march!'

"'But, Major,' said a sergeant, aloud, 'they are not roasted apples those fellows yonder are pelting.'

"'Silence!' called out the major; 'not a word! Tambour, beat the charge!'

"Suddenly a man sprang up to his knees from the ground where he had been lying, and began to beat the drum with all his might. Poor fellow! his leg was smashed with a shot, but he obeyed his orders in the midst of all his suffering.

"'Forward, men! forward!' cried the major, waving his cap above his head. 'Fix bayonets--charge!' And on they dashed after him.

"'Halloo, comrades!' shouted the tambour; 'don't leave me behind you.'

And in an instant two grenadiers stooped down and hoisted him on their shoulders, and then rushed forward through the smoke and flame. Crashing and smashing went the shot through the leading files; but on they went, leaping over the dead and dying."

"With the tambour still?" asked Pioche.

"To be sure," said Minette; "there he was. But listen:--

"Just as they reached the breach a shot above their heads came whizzing past, and a terrible bang rang out as it went.

"'He is killed,' said one of the grenadiers, preparing to lower the body; 'I heard his cry.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: BrowneDrummerBoy121]

"'Not yet, Comrade,' cried the tambour; 'it is the drum-head they have carried away, that's all;' and he beat away on the wooden sides harder than ever. And thus they bore him over the glacis, and up the rampart, and never stopped till they placed him, sitting, on one of the guns on the wall."

"Hurrah! well done!" cried Pioche; while every throat around him re-echoed the cry, "Hurrah!"

"What was his name, Mademoiselle?" cried several voices. "Tell us the name of the tambour!"

"_Ma foi, Messieurs!_they have not given it."

"Not given his name," growled they out. "_Ventrebleu!_ that is too bad!"

"An he had been an officer of the Guard they would have told us his whole birth and parentage," said a wrinkled, sour-looking old fellow, with one eye.

"Or a lieutenant of hussars, Mademoiselle!" said Pioche, looking fixedly at the vivandiere, who held the book close to her face to conceal a deep blush that covered it.

"But, halloo, there! Qui vive?" The cuira.s.sier had just caught a glimpse of me at the moment, and every eye was turned at once to where I was standing. "Ah, Lieutenant, you here! Not invalided, I hope?"