The Great White Army Part 3

There were half a dozen of them atop of me before I could lift a hand to save myself. In vain the girl pleaded with them. They discovered immediately that the palace was on fire, and, mad with rage and fury, they fell upon me like wild beasts. The French had done this thing, they cried; then let the Frenchmen pay the price. I knew now that they meant to kill me. Their very gestures would have told me as much. "A spy!" they shouted--to Janil de Constant!

Well, there it was, and that is the simple truth of the story.

I remember that they pushed me headlong from the room, then down a steep flight of stairs, and so to a garden at the foot of it. There one of them cried for a sergeant to come to him. After that my memory is chiefly of the glitter of bayonets and of a man who called to his fellow to bind my hands with cord. It came to me as in a dream that they were about to shoot me, and that this was the hour of my death. I recollect that I was thrust up against a rough stone wall, and that the sergeant asked me a question in Russian of which I could make nothing.

From the room there now came the loud shouts of the officers, who had discovered that the palace was on fire, and were leading some of the troopers to attack the flames. Their voices and that of the sergeant mingled oddly in my ears; but presently I began to perceive that the man wished to bandage my eyes, and as this promised an instant of grace, I a.s.sented willingly. To say that I was afraid is to give but a child's idea of the circ.u.mstances. It had all come upon me so swiftly--the discovery of the fire and of the a.s.sa.s.sins, the pa.s.sing of hope and the coming of despair, that this new turn found my wits paralysed and all resources gone from me. In my head there were buzzing sounds as of a man stricken suddenly by sickness. I thought of nothing except of the wall against which I stood, of the man who bandaged my eyes and of the bayonets which had glittered in the ruddy glow of flames. That I should be dead when ten seconds were counted I could not believe, and then as swiftly the truth must be heard. "You are about to die," said the secret voice in my ear. "You will never see the day. This is night; you will sleep."

An intolerable interval of silence followed upon this. I heard the shuffling of feet and the sound of voices as though from the far distance. Men were speaking in whispers, and these whispers grew in volume until they were like a hoa.r.s.e murmur of winds about me. I was tempted to cry, "Fire, for G.o.d's sake!" and yet I could not utter the words. Indeed, a faintness had come upon me, and I swayed to and fro until the volley rang out with a crash of thunder and lights danced fantastically before my eyes. Then I think that I must have fallen p.r.o.ne upon the gra.s.s. If this were death, it had come without pain, and men had laughed because it came. G.o.d! Was there ever such laughter heard by a man so situated? Peal upon peal of it--and a woman's laughter!

Someone loosed the bands which held my hands, and another forced a little brandy between my clenched lips. I raised myself up, s.h.i.+vering as though with an ague.

All about me it was as light and bright as though the sun had risen.

The great palace flamed with a thunder of sounds and a crash of beams most dreadful to hear. But otherwise the scene was as I had known it before they bandaged me, save that Valerie stood at the stairs' head swaying in an outburst of mad laughter which fear and pity had provoked, while my nephew Leon watched her as she laughed. A moment later and a man appeared and caught her in his arms. It was the Russian, Prince Nicholas, who pa.s.sed down the steps and was gone from the garden before any man could draw upon him.

VIII

Leon told me that he thought I must be in the house all the while, but that he had hesitated to break in until the a.s.sa.s.sins had fired it.

When he found me, I stood alone by the wall, blinded and helpless, but not a Russian to be seen. Who could wonder when the whole garden was full of French bayonets.

I left the house with him and we went together to the governor's palace. None knew what had become of my horse, nor did I care overmuch. The Place du Gouvernement itself was alive with our soldiers called to put out the fire if they could. By these we went quickly, Leon asking me a hundred questions which I could not answer yet.

"There was a woman there," said I.

He interrupted me with a laugh.

"You think that I did not see her!" he asked.

It being Leon, I thought no such thing.

"We will hunt her out to-morrow," said he, and then we turned about and together watched the burning palace.

"A welcome to Moscow!" he cried sardonically.

Ah, if we had known how this welcome was to be repeated in the days to come!

CHAPTER II

THE GUILLOTINE

I

My nephew, Leon, had sworn to seek out the beautiful young Frenchwoman, Valerie, whom we had last seen in the gardens of the burning house; but many days elapsed before that came to be, as you shall presently learn.

In the first place, there was far too much to do in Moscow for the army to think about women at all.

We had arrived at the end of our journey, and the twelve hundred leagues of marching had tired the strongest of us. Now we would rest at the heart of Russia, while the Emperor dictated peace to the Tsar and his army made good its losses. We never so much as dreamed that we had pursued a phantom, and that it would lead the Grand Army to its destruction.

So you must behold us for many days in Moscow enjoying the fruits of our labours and yet finding plenty of work to do. I have told you already that the Guards were quartered in the Palace of the Kremlin, whither the Emperor had repaired; and there I took up my residence with my nephew Leon, and was occupied for some days in attending to the sick who had accompanied us on our long journey from Smolensk. Though many rumours came to me of the strange things that were happening in the city beyond the palace, I paid little heed to them. His Majesty the Emperor had set out to conquer Russia, and here he was at the heart of their empire. What remained, then, but to sign a splendid peace and to return in triumph to Paris?

This is how things should have been, yet how different they were!

We had been prepared to find the Russian n.o.bles fled from Moscow, but the absolute desertion of the city by its people astonished us beyond compare.

Often would I go forth into these magnificent streets, to find the great houses all shut up, their gardens a solitude, the cafes closed, and none but our own soldiers abroad.

Deserted houses everywhere! The hotels shut up and boarded against the stranger. All the shops denuded of their goods and shuttered and barred as though they were prisons.

Such Russians as we met had the most revolting aspect and were clad in the coa.r.s.est sheepskins. We knew that the best of them were convicts who had been released by the governor on our advent, and now they skulked like wolves to do us a mischief in every alley or by-street which sheltered them.

For the rest, Moscow might have been a mausoleum. We danced to the music of our own voices; the cheers that were raised were the cheers from French throats which heralded only a hollow victory.

The plunder that we seized came to our hands undisputed. No man contended with us save the brigands, and they were like jackals, whose howls were chiefly heard by night.

I have often wondered at the sang-froid with which all this was received at head-quarters. None of the staff appeared aware of the perils of our situation, nor did the fact that we were already running short of provisions alarm our leaders. Many things we had in abundance, and they should have provoked our irony. It was ridiculous to see whole companies of the Guard making merry over casks of French liqueur or wallowing like schoolgirls in boxes of sweetmeats. Yet such was the case, and nothing but the actual riches of the city blinded the rank and file to the truth.

Oh, what days of plunder they were, and how our good fellows revelled in them!

A man had but to sally forth with an axe in his hand to reach the riches of a Croesus. I have seen the veriest Gascons so laden with furs and jewels and the wealth of n.o.bles that they themselves, could they have conveyed their burdens to Paris, might never have had an anxiety about their bread to the end of their days. It was the commonest thing to discover carts and wagons in Moscow piled high with the treasures of centuries and led uncontested to the camps of an enemy which had found the gates open and the ramparts undefended. Even the Imperial edict against pillage and rapine was useless to prevent this spoliation. The men had suffered much to reach the Holy City, and His Majesty the Emperor was wise enough to reward them according to their hopes.

Here I must tell you that the common troopers were by no means the only offenders in this respect. There was not an officer in or out of the Guards who did not claim his share of the plunder, while he shut his eyes to the doings of those under him. If I myself forbore to take a hand in this profitable amus.e.m.e.nt, it was because my burdens were heavy and owed not a little to the state of Moscow even in the early days of our occupation.

Then, as afterwards, fire was our almost daily enemy. One day it would be in the bazaars; the next in the poorest quarters of the city; again in the houses of the rich, which our troopers had pillaged. We were told the convicts fired the buildings by the governor's orders. We could not believe it, and yet we hunted the rascals down as though they were vermin.

I have often wondered what His Majesty the Emperor would have done had he known the true state of affairs in Moscow. He did not know them, however, and he was still anxious to propitiate those whom he believed to be its people. Every day we heard the story of the peace which was to be signed, and of the profit which was to come to our arms thereby; and every day we who served were abroad in street or alley wrestling with the flames and smoke of the burning houses, or hanging and shooting the incendiaries who had become the enemy.

Little wonder that my nephew Leon had no time for love-making. Often would I ask him if he had heard of or seen the beautiful Valerie again.

The rascal pretended that he had forgotten her very existence, and yet I knew in my heart that he had remembered her. It was no surprise to me when, at the end of the third week, I heard from his servant, Gascogne, that he had received a letter from Valerie herself, and that it had contained an invitation to dinner in a house beyond the suburbs of the city. When I charged Leon with it he shook his head and smiled in his boyish way.

"Oh, mon oncle," he protested, "what time have I for anything like that?"

I rejoined that a man has always time for a pretty woman, and at that he laughed loudly.

"She asked me to dinner," says he, "but, of course, I shall not go.

Why, my dear uncle, it would be very dangerous to do so. Do you not know that her friend is Prince Nicholas, who has sworn a vendetta against every Frenchman in Moscow? I should be a fool to do anything of the kind."

I agreed that he would be, and really I was not a little astonished at his common sense.

Captains of the Guard are rarely prudent where a pretty face is concerned, and Valerie St. Antoine was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in all my life. It was amazing to me that Leon should have learned so much wisdom in so short a s.p.a.ce of time, and I plumed myself upon his sagacity. Oh, how easily do we old fogeys deceive ourselves! Not three days had elapsed before I learned that he had written to the lady, and on the fourth I heard with some regret that he had gone to dine with her.

II

Now, I do not know why it was, but this affair had caused me much uneasiness from the beginning, and when I heard, upon the evening of September 28, that my nephew had left the palace and gone to dine with Valerie, a disquietude quite beyond ordinary attended the discovery.