The Wandering Jew — Complete
correspondence will have to pass 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 title 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 cuirassiers, 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?"