"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on."
And it must be remembered to his credit that he asked no man"s pity--a request as foolish to make for a fallen emperor as for the ordinary man who has, for instance, married in haste, and is given the leisure of a whole lifetime in which to repent. For the human heart is incapable of bestowing unadulterated pity: there must be some contempt in it. If the fall of Napoleon III was great, let it be remembered that few place themselves by their own exertions in a position to fall at all.
The declaration of war was, on the whole, acclaimed in France; for Frenchmen are, above all men, soldiers. Does not the whole world use French terms in the technicalities of warfare? The majority received the news as Lory de Va.s.selot received it. For a time he could only think that this was a great and glorious moment in his life. He hurried in to tell his father, but the count failed to rise to the occasion.
"War!" he said. "Yes; there have been many in my time. They have not affected me--or my carnations."
"And I go to it to-night," announced Lory, watching his father with eyes suddenly grave and anxious.
"Ah!" said the count, and made no farther comment.
Then, without pausing to consider his own motives, Lory hurried up to the Casa Perucca to tell the ladies there his great news. He must, it seemed, tell somebody, and he knew no one else within reach, except perhaps the Abbe Susini, who did not pretend to be a Frenchman.
"Is it peace?" asked Mademoiselle Brun, who, having seen him climbing the steep slope in the glaring sunshine, was waiting for him by the open side-door when he arrived there.
He took her withered hand, and bowed over it as gallantly as if it had been soft and young.
"What do you mean?" he asked, looking at her curiously.
"Well, it seems that the Casa Perucca and the Chateau de Va.s.selot are not on visiting terms. We only call on each other with a gun."
"It is odd that you should have asked me that," said Lory, "for it is not peace, but war."
And as he looked at her, her face hardened, her steady eyes wavered for once.
"Ah!" she said, her hands dropping sharply against her dingy black dress in a gesture of despair. "Again!"
"Yes, mademoiselle," answered Lory, gently; for he had a quick intuition, and knew at a glance that war must have hurt this woman at one time of her life.
She stood for a moment tapping the ground with her foot, looking reflectively across the valley.
"a.s.suredly," she said, "Frenchwomen must be the bravest women in the world, or else there would never be a light heart in the whole country.
Come, let us go in and tell Denise. It is Germany, I suppose?"
"Yes, mademoiselle. They have long wanted it, and we are obliging them at last. You look grave. It is not bad news I bring you, but good."
"Women like soldiers, but they hate war," said mademoiselle, and walked on slowly in silence.
After a pause, she turned and looked at him as if she were going to ask him a question, but checked herself.
"I almost did a foolish thing," she explained, seeing his glance of surprise. "I was going to ask you if you were going?"
"Ah, yes, I am going," he answered, with a laugh and a keen glance of excitement. "War is a necessary evil, mademoiselle, and a.s.sists promotion. Why should you hate it?"
"Because we cannot interfere in it," replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a snap of the lips. "We shall find Denise in the garden to the north of the house, picking green beans, Monsieur le Comte," continued Mademoiselle Brun, with a glance in his direction.
"Then I shall have time to help with the beans before I go to the war,"
answered Lory; and they walked on in silence.
The garden was but half cultivated--a luxuriant thicket of fruit and weed, of trailing vine and wild clematis. The air of it was heavy with a hundred scents, and, in the shade, was cool, and of a mossy odour rarely found in Southern seas.
They did not see Denise at first, and then suddenly she emerged at the other end of the weed-grown path where they stood. Lory hurried forward, hat in hand, and perceived that Denise made a movement, as if to go back into the shadow, which was immediately restrained.
Mademoiselle Brun did not follow Lory, but turned back towards the house.
"If they must quarrel," she said to herself, "they may do it without my a.s.sistance."
And Denise seemed, indeed, ready to fall out with her neighbour, for she came towards him with heightened colour and a flash of annoyance in her eyes.
"I am sorry they put you to the trouble of coming out here," she said.
"Why, mademoiselle? Because I find you picking green beans?"
"No; not that. But one has one"s pride. This is my garden. I keep it!
Look at it!" And she waved her hand with a gesture of contempt.
De Va.s.selot looked gravely round him. Then, after a pause, he made a movement of the deepest despair.
"Yes, mademoiselle," he said, with a great sigh, "it is a wilderness."
"And now you are laughing at me."
"I, mademoiselle?" And he faced her tragic eyes.
"You think I am a woman."
De Va.s.selot spread out his hands in deprecation, as if, this time, she had hit the mark.
"Yes," he said slowly.
"I mean you think we are only capable of wearing pretty clothes and listening to pretty speeches, and that anything else is beyond our grasp altogether."
"Nothing in the world, mademoiselle, is beyond your grasp, except"--he paused, and looked round him--"except a spade, perhaps, and that is what this garden wants."
They were very grave about it, and sat down on a rough seat built by Mattei Perucca, who had come there in the hot weather.
"Then what is to be done?" said Denise, simply.
For the French--the most intellectually subtle people of the world--have a certain odd simplicity which seems to have survived all the changes and chances of monarchy, republic, and empire.
"I do not quite know. Have you not a man?"
"I have n.o.body, except a decrepit old man, who is half an imbecile," said Denise, with a short laugh. "I get my provisions surrept.i.tiously by the hand of Madame Andrei. No one else comes near the Casa. We are in a state of siege. I dare not go into Olmeta; but I am holding on because you advised me not to sell."
"I, mademoiselle?"
"Yes; in Paris. Have you forgotten?"