The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX.
IVAN'S DINNER PARTY, AND WHAT FOLLOWED.
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked."
THE day fixed upon for the expedition to Paris was bright and sunny, with that delicious and undefinable quality of exhilaration in the air which is nature's promise of summer hours to come. Such days often make sorrowing hearts yet more sorrowful, because the chords of hope and memory are intertwined, and no touch is light enough to stir the one without at the same time awakening the other. But the young and happy—those who are looking before them, not behind—find in the vague gladness of the world without the answer and the echo to voices equally glad and vague in the world within them. Earth, air, and sky alike seem to whisper, "Something good is coming. We know what it is, but we may not tell it yet."
Truly something good was coming to two young hearts that day; nay, it had come already, only they themselves were not quite conscious of it. The sharp eyes of the Polytechnic scholar discerned some things which were perhaps not equally clear to those more immediately concerned. Emile felt very angry with Ivan for what he chose to consider his presumption, and he vowed inwardly that, if he could, he would spoil his plans. It seemed a kind of propitiatory sacrifice to his fallen idol Napoleon to disappoint and humiliate one of his conquerors—"ce coquin russe," as he called him in his heart. But he allowed nothing of this to appear during the day; he was assiduous in performing his duty of cicerone to the party, and anxious that Ivan should miss no sight calculated to give him an exalted idea of the glories and resources of France—least of all the Louvre, then rich with the spoils of a vanquished continent.
He only permitted himself a slight touch of malice when Ivan met one of his friends, and was told by him that they could not see the Czar that day, as he had gone out to Malmaison. The evident disappointment of Clémence piqued him almost as much as it flattered Ivan.
"Never mind, ma cousine," he said. "We will show you the camp of the Cossacks in the Champs-Elysées—that is something really worth seeing. It is true they are perfect savages, ugly, uncouth, and unclean; but they are sufficiently amusing for all that."
Early in the day Ivan had observed the words, "Ici on dine à la Russe," on the window of a fashionable restaurant in the Rue St. Honoré. He took Emile privately into counsel, saying, "I should like to give our friends a genuine Russian dinner;" and the lad, notwithstanding his private feelings, was glad to assist in a plan that promised a little amusement to himself. Accordingly, when the day was nearing its close, and the eyes and limbs of the little party were thoroughly tired, no one was very sorry to hear Emile say to Ivan,—
"This is the place where you wished me to order dinner, Monsieur Posharky. I have carried out all your directions to the best of my ability."
But ere they could enter the glittering doors of the restaurant, their attention was attracted by a little scene which was passing on the crowded footpath of the fashionable street. A gentleman whom Emile would have called old, Ivan middle-aged, and Madame de Talmont in the prime of life, was bending in evident perplexity over a little girl, who was crying and stamping her small foot in a vehement passion.
"Ma petite, ma chère fillette," he was expostulating, "be wise, I pray thee. Bethink thyself; all the world is gazing at us. Come, come, my child, dry thine eyes. I will buy thee a far handsomer brooch at the first jeweller's shop I can find."
"But it will not have in it the hair of dear mamma," sobbed the child, a slight, black-eyed little girl of eleven or twelve.
Meanwhile Madame de Talmont recognized in the gentleman an old friend, a political exile, who had doubtless accompanied the stream of returning émigrés back to Paris.
"Can it be that I have the happiness of seeing once again my dear old friend Monsieur de Sartines?" she interposed, making a most welcome diversion; "and this—is this young lady the little Stéphanie we used to know, whom I have so often held in my arms? Monsieur de Sartines, here is my daughter Clémence," she added. "She too will have grown almost beyond your remembrance."
But Clémence was already making friends with the disconsolate Stéphanie, listening to the story of the lost brooch, and comforting her with a tact and gentleness which Ivan was watching with admiring and delighted eyes.
Madame de Talmont soon remembered him, and presented to M. de Sartines "Our young friend Monsieur Pojarsky, a Russian, an officer in his Imperial Majesty's Chevalier Guard."
After the usual compliments, Ivan presented a request, framed as gracefully as a Parisian could have done it, that monsieur and mademoiselle would do him the honour to join them at dinner. The proposal was found agreeable, and the whole party adjourned to a handsome dining-hall, where a table exquisitely adorned with baskets of rare fruit and vases of flowers fully satisfied Ivan's expectations. Nor did the repast that followed disappoint the young Russian, jealous in the lightest matters for the credit of his country. The enterprising Parisian restaurateur, having secured the services of a celebrated French chef de cuisine whom the war had deprived of his lucrative situation in the establishment of a Russian millionnaire, was able to set before his numerous Russian guests just such a banquet as would have awaited them at the table of a Tolstoi, a Narischkin, a Dolgorouki.
The dinner went merrily forward. The names of the dishes were strange, but their quality was unexceptionable. Amongst other specialties, a delicate fish soup gained the approbation of the party, although Ivan lamented that it could only be made in perfection of the sterlet, not to be found anywhere except in the waters of the Oka, the river near which he had spent his childhood. Emile devoted himself assiduously to certain delicious chicken cutlets called "Côtelettes à la Pojarsky" in honour of Ivan's heroic ancestor; although, when he heard the name, he somewhat ungallantly sought to dissuade Clémence from partaking of them. Rare wines, flavoured with peaches, apricots, and prunes, accompanied the little banquet; and the fruits, ices, and confectionery were voted perfectly "ravishing" by Emile and Stéphanie, nor did any one dispute their verdict.
It would have been well if Ivan's guests had been equally harmonious upon other subjects. But it was impossible, in a crisis like the present, not to talk of public events, and just as impossible to talk of them without differences of opinion. The party consisted of three ardent Legitimists, a Buonapartist, a Russian devoted to his Czar, and a clever, observant child, whose sole political creed as yet was that everything done in the world ought to contribute to the amusement and gratification of Stéphanie de Sartines.
Ivan's ideas of politeness, perhaps a little overstrained, led him to say everything he could think of in praise of Paris; and M. de Sartines replied by a tribute to the magnanimity of the conqueror, who spared the splendid city when it lay at his mercy. "Your Emperor," he said, "has shown himself generous to his fallen enemies."
"Monsieur," replied Ivan, "my Czar has no fallen enemies. With him the unfortunate ceases at once to be the enemy."[1]
"It has been a great disappointment to us," said Madame de Talmont, "that we failed to see him to-day."
Emile had one of his small sharp darts in readiness for his Royalist cousins. "It is not so easy to see the Emperor Alexander since the return of Louis Dix-huit," he said. "It is no secret that the Bourbon is jealous of the Czar. In order not to interfere with his most Christian Majesty's 'divine right' to be the admired of all admirers in his own capital, Alexander appears to efface himself. He even takes his daily walk at four in the morning, before the 'beau monde' is astir and ready to gaze at him."
"Papa," asked Stéphanie, "what is divine right?"
"Inhuman wrong," said Emile under his breath.
"Try this iced pine-apple, mademoiselle," interposed Ivan, afraid of an argument. "It goes very well with these almond biscuits."
"This is the third or fourth time, I believe, that the Emperor has gone to Malmaison," said M. de Sartines a little stiffly. "He is certainly very attentive to the ex-Empress Joséphine."
"Her health is failing," Ivan answered, "and no doubt her heart is broken. In my boyhood I believed, with almost every one about me, that Napoleon owed his successes to her. We thought she possessed magical powers, and used to transform herself into a white dove, that she might hear and impart to him the counsels of his enemies. How amazed I would have been had any one told me that Napoleon would abandon her; and that the Czar, finding her forlorn and sorrowful, would, out of chivalrous pity, plead for and comfort her!"
"Of all the bad actions of Napoleon's bad life," said M. de Sartines with emphasis, "I believe his treatment of that woman is the worst."
"Perhaps so, monsieur," said Ivan. "Still I can scarcely think it, because I have never seen the ex-Empress, while I have seen the miserable remains of the gallant army which he abandoned so cruelly in the frozen plains of Lithuania."
The next moment he was sorry for his words, for he caught the angry glare in the eyes of Emile. Either he had not heard or he had forgotten that the lad was an ardent admirer of Buonaparte.
"The Emperor is fallen," said Emile, "therefore, of course, every one finds a stone to fling at him. He was not faultless,—I grant it. You cannot expect real greatness to bind itself down to the rules of a timid conventional morality. But at least he was entirely free from petty vanities and small affectations. You would never find him laying himself out to gain the cheap praise of a magnanimous conqueror from the lips of the vulgar."
"Never, indeed," assented Madame de Talmont.
"True, undoubtedly," said M. de Sartines.
No one noticed Stéphanie's aside: "I see; very clever people need not care about being good. I shall tell my governess that."
But every one looked at Ivan. For a moment he grew perfectly white with anger; then his face resumed its natural colour, and a smile played about his lips. He said nothing, however, and Emile went on: "Consequently he never overshot the mark and made himself ridiculous, as I must say the Emperor Alexander did the other day, when he actually admitted to his own table, and spent hours in conversation with—whom do you think, ladies?"
As neither Madame de Talmont nor Clémence replied, Stéphanie felt herself called upon. "Perhaps the Director of the Ecole Polytechnique, or—could it possibly have been one of the boys?—students, I beg your pardon," said she with a saucy glance at Emile.
"My dear child," said her father in a grieved and reproving aside, "do not, I pray thee, try to act l'enfant terrible."
Emile did not condescend to notice her, "No one greater," he resumed, "than the Abbé Sicard."
"Who is he?" asked M. de Sartines.
Madame de Talmont and Clémence knew very well, and looked interested.
"An old fool of a priest who spends his life picking up deaf and dumb children out of the streets, and teaching them to read and to say their prayers," replied Emile.
"How can they say their prayers if they are dumb?" queried Stéphanie.
"They speak with their fingers, dear," Clémence explained in a lower tone. "I will tell you all about it another time. I have seen a poor boy examined who was taught by the Abbé Sicard. It was wonderful and beautiful. He knew far more than many a child who could hear, and he felt what he knew."
"His Imperial Majesty," Emile was saying meanwhile, "who has all the affairs of the world on his shoulders, and can scarcely find time to be commonly courteous to the fair ladies who adore him, found time enough to hear all the 'methods,' as they call them, of this fanatical priest; and has given him the Order of St. Ladislaus, or St. Laocoon, or something."
"The Order of St. Wladamir, you mean," said Ivan very quietly. "When the Czar returns home, he will probably establish a school for the deaf and dumb in St. Petersburg, like that of the Abbé Sicard here.[2] I thank you for telling us all this, M. Emile. Do you take liqueur? I can recommend this curaçoa."
"Curse his effrontery!" thought Emile. "Will nothing disconcert him? I will take another way with him, however."
After the party rose from table, the De Talmonts had a short walk to the place where the carriage was to meet them; and their friends accompanied them. M. de Sartines gave his arm to Madame de Talmont, and Stéphanie clung to Clémence, so that Emile and Ivan were obliged to bring up the rear together, not greatly to the satisfaction of the latter. To the former, however, it was a precious and longed-for opportunity.
"M. de Sartines is a very well-bred sort of man," he explained to Ivan,—"though I, of course, am not fond of Legitimists and believers in 'divine right.' It may be four or five years now since he gave offence, in some way or other, to Savary, the late superintendent of police, and was requested to quit the Empire. He has just come back in the train of Louis Dix-huit, with a great many more who are less wanted.—Peste! the whole city is full of these white cockades; one would think there was snow in May time.—I suppose that by this time you know all the family affairs, M. Posharky, and they have told you that long ago, before he left Paris, M. de Sartines was betrothed to my cousin Clémence."
Ivan's sudden, irrepressible start, and the deadly paleness that overspread his face, gave the keenest gratification to Emile. "But he is so old, he might be her father," he said at last.
"That does not matter in the least," returned the spiteful Emile. "He is an excellent parti—has a good property, settled principles, and all that. Do you not see how devoted Clémence is to that amiable and precocious young lady, Mademoiselle Stéphanie? She will make an admirable step-mother; though I cannot say I envy her the charge."
"But, at the time you say it was arranged, Mademoiselle Clémence must have been only a child."
Emile looked at him keenly. "I fear your wound is sometimes painful, even yet," he said.
"Yes, it hurts occasionally.—Is it then your custom here to betroth children?"
"It is the custom for parents to arrange all these little matters as they think best, and sometimes they arrange them very early. Madame de Talmont, though she looks so gentle, is a woman of most decided will, quite capable of settling the destinies of all belonging to her. Ah, here is the carriage! I am glad I have made your acquaintance, M. Posharky, and I thank you for a very pleasant day."
Ivan could not certainly return the compliment. The homeward drive was rather silent; only a few remarks passed between Madame de Talmont and her daughter. Ivan looked, and was, exceedingly tired. Madame de Talmont observed this, and kindly, even tenderly, expressed a hope that the fatigues of the day had not been too much for him; nor did the eyes of Clémence fail to express her concern, though her lips were silent.
But all the time his resolve was taking shape and strengthening. Emile's tidings, while they touched him to the quick, had also revealed him to himself. His path lay straight before him now; he could do no less than
"Put his fortune to the touch,
And gain or lose it all."
But the gain was so inconceivably precious, the loss so unutterably terrible! A brave man may have the courage to risk his all; yet he knows the extent of the risk, and it is no disgrace to him if his heart trembles. That evening Ivan's heart trembled sorely; nay, it almost sank within him.
But a powerful ally was at hand. The door was opened for the returning party by a young soldier in undress uniform. There was a startled cry, an instant's hesitation, and in another moment Madame de Talmont was weeping in the arms of her son, and Clémence standing beside them with a radiant face. Ivan silently sought his lonely chamber; "for," said he, "this joy is one in which a stranger may not intermeddle."
An hour later Henri bounded up the stairs, and knocked at his door. "Supper is ready," he said; "come, my friend, and join us." As they went down together he added, "It is one joy the more for me to find you here, M. Pojarsky."
While the happy family party sat together over the repast—almost as unable now to eat for joy as they had been for sorrow on the evening of Henri's departure—their talk strayed lightly over the surface of the eventful histories that had yet to be told and heard.
"I must congratulate you upon your recovery, M. de Talmont," said Ivan.—"If you had seen him in the hospital at Vilna, madame," he added, turning to Madame de Talmont, "you would rejoice and wonder at the change."
"Ah, that well-remembered visit of yours!" returned Henri. "In every way it was a happy one for me. Do you know it has saved me a tedious and fruitless journey to Brie, and a long delay in finding my mother and sister?"
"How could that be?"
"I arrived in Paris last night, very late. This morning I chanced to see a young Russian gentleman in a uniform like yours; so I accosted him, and asked for news of you."
"How did you know my name?"
Henri smiled. "Naturally I wished to know to whom I was indebted for so much kindness. So that day, after you left the hospital, I asked those about me, and easily found out who you were. Your comrade in the Chevalier Guard, whom I met this morning, informed me that you had been wounded, and were now at Versailles. Shall I tell you what he said besides?" he added with a comical air of hesitation. "Just this—'He is a fortunate lad, born under a lucky star, and always sure to fall upon his feet. At present he is the guest of a perfectly charming family of the old noblesse, named De Talmont.'"
"O Henri!" cried the half-blushing, half-laughing Clémence. "I fear your residence abroad has not advanced you in the grace of modesty."
"I shall punish you for that speech by deepening your blushes, sister mine," returned Henri, laughing merrily. "For my informant, M. Tolstoi, was good enough to add, 'There are two elder ladies of the most perfect grace and breeding; and a demoiselle with a face beautiful as the Madonna's, and no doubt a soul that answers to her face.' Of course after that I hastened to inform him that the young lady was my sister, and to beg for the address. So here I am."
"But why did you not write to us during all this long weary time?" asked his mother. "Why did you allow us to fear, nay, to believe the worst?"
"I did write, dearest mother, from Vilna, no less than four times; and you can imagine how I longed for one word in reply, and how my heart sank as days and weeks and months passed in silence. Of course I sent all my letters to Brie."
"Then the lazy, dishonest, incompetent postmaster of Brie ought to be ignominiously dismissed from his office, as no doubt he would have been under the old régime," said Madame de Salgues, breaking silence almost for the first time. That night she was taking, gladly and contentedly, the place of an interested spectator of the drama of life, in which her own part had been played long ago. If in the thankful little household there still was one anxious and desponding heart, it was that of Ivan—"the young heart hot and restless," not "the old subdued and slow."