"Oh, no, Dagobert! do not leave us alone," cried the maidens; "we are too much afraid."
"Well, the dog is not likely to remain away much longer, and I am sure we shall soon hear him scratching at the door, so we will continue our story," said Dagobert, as he again seated himself near the head of the bed, but this time with his face towards the window.
"Now the general was prisoner at Warsaw," continued he, "and in love with your mother, whom they wished to marry to another. In 1814, we learned the finish of the war, the banishment of the Emperor to the Isle of Elba, and the return of the Bourbons. In concert with the Prussians and Russians, who had brought them back, they had exiled the Emperor.
Learning all this, your mother said to the general: "The war is finished; you are free, but your Emperor is in trouble. You owe everything to him; go and join him in his misfortunes. I know not when we shall meet again, but I shall never marry any one but you, I am yours till death!"--Before he set out the general called me to him, and said: "Dagobert, remain here; Mademoiselle Eva may have need of you to fly from her family, if they should press too hard upon her; our correspondence will have to pa.s.s through your hands; at Paris, I shall see your wife and son; I will comfort them, and tell them you are my friend.""
"Always the same," said Rose, with emotion, as she looked affectionately at Dagobert.
"As faithful to the father and mother as to their children," added Blanche.
"To love one was to love them all," replied the soldier. "Well, the general joined the Emperor at Elba; I remained at Warsaw, concealed in the neighborhood of your mother"s house; I received the letters, and conveyed them to her clandestinely. In one of those letters--I feel proud to tell you of it my children--the general informed me that the Emperor himself had remembered me."
"What, did he know you?"
"A little, I flatter myself--"Oh! Dagobert!" said he to your father, who was talking to him about me; "a horse-grenadier of my old guard--a soldier of Egypt and Italy, battered with wounds--an old dare-devil, whom I decorated with my own hand at Wagram--I have not forgotten him!"--I vow, children, when your mother read that to me, I cried like a fool."
"The Emperor--what a fine golden face he has on the silver cross with the red ribbon that you would sometimes show us when we behaved well."
"That cross--given by him--is my relic. It is there in my knapsack, with whatever we have of value--our little purse and papers. But, to return to your mother; it was a great consolation to her, when I took her letters from the general, or talked with her about him--for she suffered much--oh, so much! In vain her parents tormented and persecuted her; she always answered: "I will never marry any one but General Simon." A spirited woman, I can tell you--resigned, but wonderfully courageous.
One day she received a letter from the general; he had left the Isle of Elba with the Emperor; the war had again broken out, a short campaign, but as fierce as ever, and heightened by soldiers" devotion. In that campaign of France; my children, especially at Montmirail, your father fought like a lion, and his division followed his example it was no longer valor--it was frenzy. He told me that, in Champagne, the peasants killed so many of those Prussians, that their fields were manured with them for years. Men, women, children, all rushed upon them. Pitchforks, stones, mattocks, all served for the slaughter. It was a true wolf hunt!"
The veins swelled on the soldier"s forehead, and his cheeks flushed as he spoke, for this popular heroism recalled to his memory the sublime enthusiasm of the wars of the republic--those armed risings of a whole people, from which dated the first steps of his military career, as the triumphs of the Empire were the last days of his service.
The orphans, too, daughters of a soldier and a brave woman, did not shrink from the rough energy of these words, but felt their cheeks glow, and their hearts beat tumultuously.
"How happy we are to be the children of so brave a father!" cried Blanche.
"It is a happiness and an honor too, my children--for the evening of the battle of Montmirail, the Emperor, to the joy of the whole army, made your father Duke of Ligny and Marshal of France."
"Marshal of France!" said Rose in astonishment, without understanding the exact meaning of the words.
"Duke of Ligny!" added Blanche with equal surprise.
"Yes; Peter Simon, the son of a workman, became duke and marshal--there is nothing higher except a king!" resumed Dagobert, proudly. "That"s how the Emperor treated the sons of the people, and, therefore, the people were devoted to him. It was all very fine to tell them "Your Emperor makes you food for cannon." "Stuff!" replied the people, who are no fools, "another would make us food for misery. We prefer the cannon, with the chance of becoming captain or colonel, marshal, king--or invalid; that"s better than to perish with hunger, cold, and age, on straw in a garret, after toiling forty years for others.""
"Even in France--even in Paris, that beautiful city--do you mean to say there are poor people who die of hunger and misery, Dagobert?"
"Even in Paris? Yes, my children; therefore, I come back to the point, the cannon is better. With it, one has the chance of becoming, like your father, duke and marshal: when I say duke and marshal, I am partly right and partly wrong, for the t.i.tle and the rank were not recognized in the end; because, after Montmirail, came a day of gloom, a day of great mourning, when, as the general has told me, old soldiers like myself wept--yes, wept!--on the evening of a battle. That day, my children, was Waterloo!"
There was in these simple words of Dagobert an expression of such deep sorrow, that it thrilled the hearts of the orphans.
"Alas!" resumed the soldier, with a sigh, "there are days which seem to have a curse on them. That same day, at Waterloo, the general fell, covered with wounds, at the head of a division of the Guards. When he was nearly cured, which was not for a long time, he solicited permission to go to St. Helena--another island at the far end of the world, to which the English had carried the Emperor, to torture him at their leisure; for if he was very fortunate in the first instance, he had to go through a deal of hard rubs at last, my poor children."
"If you talk in that way, you will make us cry, Dagobert."
"There is cause enough for it--the Emperor suffered so much! He bled cruelly at the heart believe me. Unfortunately, the general was not with him at St. Helena; he would have been one more to console him; but they would not allow him to go. Then, exasperated, like so many others, against the Bourbons, the general engaged in a conspiracy to recall the son of the Emperor. He relied especially on one regiment, nearly all composed of his old soldiers, and he went down to a place in Picardy, where they were then in garrison; but the conspiracy had already been divulged. Arrested the moment of his arrival, the general was taken before the colonel of the regiment. And this colonel," said the soldier, after a brief pause, "who do you think it was again? Bah! it would be too long to tell you all, and would only make you more sad; but it was a man whom your father had many reasons to hate. When he found himself face to face with him, he said: "if you are not a coward, you will give me one hour"s liberty, and we will fight to the death; I hate you for this, I despise you for that"--and so on. The colonel accepted the challenge, and gave your father his liberty till the morrow. The duel was a desperate one; the colonel was left for dead on the spot."
"Merciful heaven!"
"The general was yet wiping his sword, when a faithful friend came to him, and told him he had only just time to save himself. In fact, he happily succeeded in leaving France--yes, happily--for a fortnight after, he was condemned to death as a conspirator."
"What misfortunes, good heaven!"
"There was some luck, however, in the midst of his troubles. Your mother had kept her promise bravely, and was still waiting for him. She had written to him: "The Emperor first, and me next!" both unable to do anything more for the Emperor, nor even for his son, the general, banished from France, set out for Warsaw. Your mother had lost her parents, and was now free; they were married--and I am one of the witnesses to the marriage."
"You are right, Dagobert; that was great happiness in the midst of great misfortunes!"
"Yes, they were very happy; but, as it happened with all good hearts, the happier they were themselves, the more they felt for the sorrows of others--and there was quite enough to grieve them at Warsaw. The Russians had again begun to treat the Poles as their slaves; your brave mother, though of French origin, was a Pole in heart and soul; she spoke out boldly what others did not dare speak in a whisper, and all the unfortunate called her their protecting angel. That was enough to excite the suspicions of the Russian governor. One day, a friend of the general"s, formerly a colonel in the lancers, a brave and worthy man, was condemned to be exiled to Siberia for a military plot against the Russians. He took refuge in your father"s house, and lay hid there; but his retreat was discovered. During the next night, a party of Cossacks, commanded by an officer, and followed by a travelling-carriage, arrive at our door; they rouse the general from his sleep and take him away with them."
"Oh, heaven! what did they mean to do with him?"
"Conduct him out of the Russian dominions, with a charge never to return, on pain of perpetual imprisonment. His last words were: "Dagobert, I entrust to thee my wife and child!"--for it wanted yet some months of the time when you were to be born. Well, notwithstanding that, they exiled your mother to Siberia; it was an opportunity to get rid of her; she did too much good at Warsaw, and they feared her accordingly.
Not content with banishing her, they confiscated all her property; the only favor she could obtain was, that I should accompany her, and, had it not been for Jovial, whom the general had given to me, she would have had to make the journey on foot. It was thus, with her on horseback, and I leading her as I lead you, my children, that we arrived at the poverty-stricken village, where, three months after, you poor little things were born!"
"And our father?"
"It was impossible for him to return to Russia; impossible for your mother to think of flight, with two children; impossible for the general to write to her, as he knew not where she was."
"So, since that time, you have had no news of him?"
"Yes, my children--once we had news."
"And by whom?"
After a moment"s silence, Dagobert resumed with a singular expression of countenance: "By whom?--by one who is not like other men. Yes--that you may understand me better, I will relate to you an extraordinary adventure, which happened to your father during his last French campaign. He had been ordered by the Emperor to carry a battery, which was playing heavily on our army; after several unsuccessful efforts, the general put himself at the head of a regiment of cuira.s.siers, and charged the battery, intending, as was his custom, to cut down the men at their guns. He was on horseback, just before the mouth of a cannon, where all the artillerymen had been either killed or wounded, when one of them still found strength to raise himself upon one knee, and to apply the lighted match to the touchhole--and that when your father was about ten paces in front of the loaded piece."
"Oh! what a peril for our father!"
"Never, he told me, had he run such imminent danger for he saw the artilleryman apply the match, and the gun go off--but, at the very nick, a man of tall stature, dressed as a peasant, and whom he had not before remarked, threw himself in front of the cannon."
"Unfortunate creature! what a horrible death!"
"Yes," said Dagobert, thoughtfully; "it should have been so. He ought by rights to have been blown into a thousand pieces. But no--nothing of the kind!"
"What do you tell us?"
"What the general told me. "At the moment when the gun went off," as he often repeated to me, "I shut my eyes by an involuntary movement, that I might not see the mutilated body of the poor wretch who had sacrificed himself in my place. When I again opened them, the first thing I saw in the midst of the smoke, was the tall figure of this man, standing erect and calm on the same spot, and casting a sad mild look on the artilleryman, who, with one knee on the ground, and his body thrown backward, gazed on him in as much terror as if he had been the devil.
Afterwards, I lost sight of this man in the tumult," added your father."
"Bless me Dagobert! how can this be possible?"
"That is just what I said to the general. He answered me that he had never been able to explain to himself this event, which seemed as incredible as it was true. Moreover, your father must have been greatly struck with the countenance of this man, who appeared, he said, about thirty years of age--for he remarked, that his extremely black eyebrows were joined together, and formed, as it were, one line from temple to temple, so that he seemed to have a black streak across his forehead.
Remember this, my children; you will soon see why."
"Oh, Dagobert! we shall not forget it," said the orphans, growing more and more astonished as he proceeded.
"Is it not strange--this man with a black seam on his forehead?"
"Well, you shall hear. The general had, as I told you, been left for dead at Waterloo. During the night which he pa.s.sed on the field of battle, in a sort of delirium brought on by the fever of his wounds, he saw, or fancied he saw, this same man bending over him, with a look of great mildness and deep melancholy, stanching his wounds, and using every effort to revive him. But as your father, whose senses were still wandering, repulsed his kindness saying, that after such a defeat, it only remained to die--it appeared as if this man replied to him; "You must live for Eva!" meaning your mother, whom the general had left at Warsaw, to join the Emperor, and make this campaign of France."