# The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 27

CHAPTER XXVII.
RECOGNITIONS.
"There's a Divinity that shapes our ends."
"IT is enough: my son is yet alive; I shall see him before I die." These were the first words Madame de Talmont found voice to falter, as, leaning heavily on the arm of Clémence, she traversed the short distance between the hospital and the house where they dwelt.
The unutterable joy and thankfulness that filled the soul of Clémence was not unmixed with fear. With the speechless, agonizing dread of a loving heart, she trembled for the treasure left her still. If, after this re-awakening of their hopes, the only tidings that had to reach them were of a nameless grave at Vilna, how could her mother bear the blow? Surely, had he recovered, Henri would have written to them ere this. She could not help concluding, from the young Russian's narrative, that he had met with sufficient kindness in the house of his captivity to have rendered it easy for him to do so.
But she could not bear to communicate her misgivings. She led her mother to the pleasant room they shared together, and persuaded her to lie down and rest, taking upon herself the task of relating what they had heard to La Tante, as they both called Madame de Salgues.
During the long night that followed, bringing sleep to neither, mother and daughter had abundant leisure for the ​scattered, incoherent, "discursive talk" beneath which overwhelming emotions usually conceal, because they cannot adequately express, themselves. Morning had almost come when Madame de Talmont asked, suddenly raising her head from a hot, tear-stained pillow, "Clémence, what about a ransom? We have that to think of now."
"I have been thinking of it, mother," Clémence answered gently. "But peace will be made—must be made shortly. May we not conclude that something will be arranged in it about the prisoners?"
"If peace were to be made with any one save Napoleon, I should say yes. Some men would think of their followers, and try to make terms for them, were they themselves on the way to the scaffold. But this Corsican adventurer has as little idea of knightly honour as of Christian grace; while who can tell yet what is to come after him? No, Clémence; you may depend upon it those poor captives have no friends save God and their own kinsfolk.—What can we do? Not even a jewel of any value is left us now."
"But, mother, we have still our little pittance in the Rentes. Now that La Tante supplies all our real needs, we can sell what is there."
"Ah, that is not enough, I fear, since the Rentes have fallen so low. Yet it is all we have.—Clémence, I do not like Russians; in fact, as a general thing, I have quite a prejudice against them."
"Oh, mother, why?" asked Clémence, in tones rather more earnest than the case demanded. "They could not help killing our people; they were defending their native country," she added.
"Not for that, of course; but there are reasons which you do not know. I was about to say, however, that young Russian has interested and attracted me in spite of myself. He seems quite a 'preux chevalier;' and," she added more softly, " ​although he said nothing of it, I doubt not he showed kindness to our dear one when he met him in the hospital at Vilna. Besides, there is something in his face which I cannot describe, but which haunts and troubles while it touches me. It seems to remind me of some other face known long ago. We must go and see him again to-morrow, and bring him some little token of our gratitude. What do you think he would like, Clémence?"
But they did not see Ivan on the morrow; for Madame de Talmont was too ill to rise from her bed, and Clémence, even if she had been willing to leave her, could not go to the hospital alone. When, after an interval of three or four days, they made their appearance once more, the courteous Russian surgeon gave them quite a warm welcome.
"M. Pojarsky has been watching for you, mesdames," he said. "You will do him more good than any of our medicines."
"Pojarsky!" Madame de Talmont repeated, as one in a dream—"Pojarsky!"
Clémence was amazed to find her mother's ready and graceful courtesy fail her completely for once. By way of supplying her unaccountable omission she ventured upon an inquiry for the invalid.
"He has been very feverish, and has suffered a good deal since," the surgeon admitted. "But he is much better today. Will you come to him at once, mesdames?"
"Willingly, monsieur, if you will be kind enough to distribute these oranges amongst those who need them most," said Clémence, placing a large bag in the hands of the surgeon; for her mother's continued silence forced her to take the initiative. "Mother," she whispered, as they passed into the ward where Ivan lay—"dear mother, what ails you?"
"That name awakens old associations—not happy ones," Madame de Talmont answered.
Ivan received his friends with a bright, glad smile of welcome. ​Since their last visit he had beguiled his hours of loneliness and pain by endeavouring to recall every word, every look of Henri's, as a drop to be added to the cup of comfort he was bearing to the lips of Henri's mother and sister. Very pleasant had the recognition been to him. Well could he imagine how the solitary invalid far away in the hospital at Vilna must have longed for those sweet faces, for the gentle touch of those kind hands. What would he give for such a mother, such a sister, to tend and care for him! But then his thoughts would revert once more, with a thrill of thankful joy, to the triumph of the Czar. How could he wish for anything else in the world when Alexander was in Paris, and the flames of Moscow were avenged?
At first Madame de Talmont seemed embarrassed, and a faint pink flush lent unwonted colour to her pale cheek. But Ivan's detailed description of his interview with Henri at Vilna arrested and held her with its absorbing interest.
"M. de Pojarsky," she said, uttering the name with a little hesitation, perhaps even reluctance, "if you have a mother living, I pray God to send some one to comfort her, as you have comforted me."
"Ah, madame," returned Ivan, "I have never known my mother; she died in my earliest infancy. I am tempted to envy M. de Talmont," he added with a smile.
Madame de Talmont looked at him with quickened interest. "May I ask," she said rather quickly, "does your father live? It is sad if one so young as you appear to be, stands alone in the world."
Ivan sighed. "I am alone in the world," he said. "But the strange thing is, that I cannot tell whether my father is living or dead."
"How is that?" pursued Madame de Talmont eagerly. But Clémence interposed, from a kindly desire to spare the young Russian a painful recital. "We can guess," she said—"we ​have heard, even in France, of exiles in Siberia. We have pitied their sufferings."
Ivan's white face flushed. "No one is sent to Siberia now, he said eagerly, "who would not in any other country than ours be far more severely punished. It was the Czarina who exiled my father," he continued with some excitement—"not my Czar."
"Do not think me unkind or discourteous," Madame de Talmont said gently, "if I venture to inquire what was the offence laid to his charge. I have a reason."
"I can answer without pain or reluctance," said Ivan. "My father's disgrace and banishment, and my mother's death, which quickly followed, took place in my infancy; and the kind but simple people who cared for me and brought me up could tell me very little. But from that little I have gathered that my father, being in Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution, became involved in the crimes of the Jacobins, rather from youthful thoughtlessness than from any deliberate evil intention."
"Ah!" said Madame de Talmont.
Something in her tone made Ivan raise himself to look at her. "Madame," he asked quickly, "did you know my father?"
"That is a question I shall be better able to answer if you on your part will tell me—was your mother a French woman?"
"Yes, madame," said Ivan, looking greatly agitated.
"Have you ever heard her name?"
"Not her family name, madame. Her Christian name I know—Victoire."
Madame de Talmont wrestled in silence with some emotion, and conquered it. Then taking Ivan's hand in hers, she said kindly, even with tenderness, "My dear boy, you must accept us as your cousins."
​"My cousins!" Ivan repeated. "Ah, madame, how gladly! But I must entreat of you to explain to me my good fortune. It quite bewilders me."
"I can explain very easily. Your mother, Victoire de Talmont, was my husband's much-loved cousin—nay, his sister rather, for he was early left an orphan, and her father was as a father to him. Her only brother, Louis de Talmont, was as his brother, until that hateful revolutionary madness seized upon him, bringing misery and disunion into the household. It was her brother's influence made Victoire give her hand to his friend, the fascinating young Russian, Prince Pojarsky. I cannot deny that this was a great sorrow to my husband, for Prince Pojarsky had embraced the same opinions as Louis de Talmont."
"And did you know him, madame?" Ivan asked eagerly. "Have you ever seen him?"
"I did not know him well. All this happened before my own marriage. But I have seen him more than once—a fine, brilliant young man, magnificent in dress and bearing, and very handsome. You are like him; yet I think I see in you a stronger resemblance to the features of Victoire."
Madame de Talmont's estimate of the young Russian prince had not been very favourable, though she naturally and properly expressed herself as kindly as she could in speaking to his son. But Clémence had always beheld the half-mythical Victoire robed from head to foot in shining garments, woven in the loom of her own youthful romance. To see the son of Victoire in the flesh seemed to be part of "the stuff that dreams are made of" brought suddenly into the realities of waking life. Breaking silence for the first time, she asked,—
"Have you any portrait of your mother, monsieur?"
"I have never even seen one," Ivan answered. "My father's ruin robbed me of everything. The poor mujiks who sheltered me most kindly and most bravely—indeed at the peril of their ​own lives—were unable to keep for me, out of all my father's wealth, even the smallest heirloom."
"We have a likeness of our cousin Victoire, a pencil-sketch from the hand of my father," Clémence rejoined. "We must show it to you, monsieur."
Then Madame de Talmont made some inquiries about his early history; and he answered modestly and with feeling. He dwelt with much gratitude upon the kindness of his dear old friend Petrovitch, saying in conclusion, "He taught me what a good father might be like."
At last it was necessary to say farewell. The ladies withdrew, promising a speedy renewal of their intercourse.
"Would that I had a house of my own, even the humblest," said Madame de Talmont to Clémence, as they returned home; "the son of Victoire should not lie ill another day in a public hospital. Thy father loved her well, Clémence."
Perhaps there was a shade on the brow of the widow as she said this; but it was a tender shade—a long-past sorrow touched and softened into the calm of resignation.
When they reached the house of Madame de Salgues, they went at once to the parlour, where that lady always sat; for, kindly and tolerant though she was, she would not readily have forgiven them if a surprising piece of news had been kept from her a moment longer than was necessary. They found her, however, already engaged in hearing quite as much as was good for her, perhaps rather more.
A lad, dressed in the uniform of the Ecole Polytechnique, seemed to have brought a breath of modern air into the quaint parlour, furnished as "petits appartements" used to be in the days of Louis Quinze. Emile de Salgues was seated before a table laden with every good thing in the shape of food that the house contained. When the ladies entered he was dividing his attention between two occupations equally fascinating. He was exploring the depths of a Périgord pie, and driving his ​grandmother almost to distraction by a graphic account of the exploits and perils of the Polytechnic scholars during the defence of Paris.
Madame de Salgues was really slight and small, but enshrined in her own particular fauteuil, and arrayed with elaborate care in her antique brocades and laces, she looked dignified and even stately, while her manners exactly suited her surroundings, and seemed to lend them an added grace.
"Be seated, my dear Rose, and you too, Clémence," she said to her nieces as they entered. "You will both wish to hear what Emile has just been telling me."
Emile's narrative did not flow quite so easily in the presence of his cousins. He sometimes had a shrewd suspicion that Madame de Talmont criticised and Clémence laughed at him; though this was hardly correct, because Clémence in those days had little heart to laugh. However, he resumed, after due exchange of greetings:—
"I was just telling my grandmother how we manned the guns at the Barrière du Trône, and sent a point-blank discharge into the midst of Count Pahlen's hussars. Then they charged us in flank; and, outnumbered though we were, I think I may say we gave them enough to do. It was a glorious fight! But as for myself, I thought my last hour was come. I was knocked down in the mêlée, and flung into a ditch. A gigantic Cossack levelled his spear at my breast, and would have run me through with it; but another Russian turned it aside, and I heard him say, 'Pas tuez le jeune Français.'"
"May God's blessing rest upon that Russian, whoever he was!" sighed Madame de Salgues.
"How is the Queen of Cities bearing her reverse of fortune?" asked Madame de Talmont, after suitable comments upon Emile's perils and his gallantry.
"In no queenly fashion," returned Emile, with an air of ​mortification, which, however, did not appear to spoil his enjoyment of his grandmother's delicate preserves. "The truth is, I am ashamed of Paris. I am heartily glad I was born in the provinces. The Parisians have no faith, no constancy, no loyalty. Would you believe it?—nay, I suppose you have heard it already, for ill news travels fast—they have dragged down the Emperor's statue from the top of the column in the Place Vendôme; they have loaded it with the vilest of insults, covered it with a sheet, put a rope round its neck—I know not what besides."
"Perhaps the conquerors desired its removal," suggested Madame de Talmont.
"Quite the reverse. The whole column would have shared the fate of the statue, but for a placard announcing that the Allies had taken it under their protection. The conduct of the mob has been unutterably base; and no whit better are the fine gentlemen of Paris, while the fine ladies are infinitely worse."
"Take care what you say, my dear grandson," spoke Madame de Salgues' correct, quiet voice. "I could wish to see you more chivalrous."
"Chivalry would be wasted upon ladies who demean themselves so far as to beg the gentlemen of the Emperor of Russia's suite to take them up on their horses, only that they may catch a glimpse of him!"
Here Clémence interposed. "The ladies of Paris may not be very dignified," she said, "but at least they have not, like the mob, incurred the reproach of inconstancy. Perhaps we women are not always wise in our choice of an idol, or self-respecting in the incense we burn before it; but at least we seldom choose as the object of our idolatry a man capable of leaving those who fought and bled for him to perish unpitied in the snow, while he warmed himself at his fire in the Tuileries, saying, in the satisfaction of his heart, 'This is better than Moscow.'"
​Such an outburst from Clémence was rare indeed. It would not have been possible, had not the newly-found balm of hope taken the sting out of the old wound, and brought the Moscow retreat within the category of things that could be spoken about.
"These are not the grounds upon which ladies form their estimates of character," Emile returned, a little superciliously. "Oh no! When Napoleon wished to see a lady, he simply ordered her to come to him. This Russian autocrat, in the like case, sends his aide-de-camp to inquire whether madame proposes remaining at home this afternoon, as, if so, he hopes to have the pleasure of waiting upon her. After that, what fair lady could suspend her judgment for a moment? Trust the dear creatures, one and all, to prefer the finely-polished pebble to the diamond in the rough."
"Does the polish prove the pebble, or the roughness the diamond?" asked Clémence demurely.
"The polish, at all events, takes with the multitude," resumed the indignant Emile. "High and low alike have gone out of their senses about this Alexander. The canaille of St. Antoine are as bad as the habitués of St. Germain. Every word he utters flies from lip to lip, as if it were inspired. 'Ah, sire, why did you not come to us before?' ask the deputies of the municipality. 'It was the valour of your armies that detained me,' says Alexander; and all Paris is delighted. I am bound to own he has kind words for all, and kind deeds as well—so far."
"There is but one question of absorbing interest for us, and for France," said Madame de Talmont. "Does he—do the Allies intend to use their influence for the restoration of our rightful king?"
"That I scarcely know," said Emile. "I do know, however, that the streets are full of white cockades; every hour one sees more of them. And I hear that the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia have been deep in consultation with that ​old schemer Talleyrand, who, of course, is turning his coat again. So, my dear grandmother, and you too, my cousins, I think you may indulge a hope that the reign of the antediluvians is about to recommence, and that Moses and Abraham and all the rest of them may be shortly expected in Paris."
Evidently Scripture history was not taught carefully at the Ecole Polytechnique; still there was a strain of reason in the boy's random talk. It was as true of the men before the Revolution as of those before the Flood, that "they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded," heedless of the rising tide of divine and human wrath, until the torrent overflowed its bounds and swept them all away. Would their successors do the same?
"As for me, I am not one of your slight, inconstant time-servers, ever ready to swim with the current and to turn towards the rising sun," Emile pursued, with a tragic air and a sublime confusion of metaphors. "I can tell you, very little more would make me go to Fontainebleau and lay my sword and my life at the feet of the Emperor, the great Napoleon, never more truly great than now, in the hour of his overthrow!"
"My dear boy!" Madame de Salgues interposed, in a voice of agony.
"Let us suppose you do it," said Clémence very quietly. "Even such assistance would scarcely, at this stage, restore his fallen fortunes; while you, on your part, would lose that mathematical prize for which you have been trying so hard."
Emile looked angry, and the heart of Clémence smote her. She thought of the glow of enthusiasm with which the young Russian said "My Czar!" and, after all, Emile's hero-worship too was sincere in its way.
"I think," she resumed, "you have already discharged your debt of honour to Napoleon. If all who swore allegiance to him fought as you seem to have done at the Barrière du Trône, the Allies would not be in Paris now."
​The concession soothed his wounded vanity, and he started a fresh subject.
"You have no idea what the city looks like," he said. "To walk down the Rue St. Honoré or along the Champs-Elysées is as good an amusement as going to the play. All sorts of strange beings, out of all nations under heaven, are riding about. Cossacks in sheep-skin jackets, with sandy-coloured, shaggy hair and beards, long lances, and queer little whips with plaited thongs hanging on their necks; Calmuck Tartars, with flat noses and little eyes; Bashkirs and Tungusians from Siberia, carrying bows and arrows. Strangest of all and best worth seeing are the Circassian nobles, in complete hauberks of steel and bright conical helmets. Then there are countless uniforms of a kind to which we are better accustomed, and some of them very splendid,—jewelled orders glittering on the breasts of the officers. All the Allies wear sprigs of box or elm in their caps to distinguish them.—Clémence, you should come into Paris and see the show. You really must do it. I will take care of you," he added magnanimously, and not perhaps averse to the prestige it would give him amongst his school-fellows to be seen escorting his beautiful cousin.
"My dear, you must not dream of such a thing!" cried Madame de Salgues in great alarm. "A young lady to venture into the midst of a city occupied by a hostile army! Who ever heard of such a piece of insanity?"
"Grandmamma, the city is as quiet as if the allied sovereigns had only come to pay us a visit of ceremony," said Emile. "The shops are driving a splendid trade; only I am afraid our clever Parisians contrive to cheat the strangers outrageously. The Rentes have risen already since the Occupation from forty-five to seventy." (Madame de Talmont and Clémence exchanged glances of satisfaction.) "You could run no risk in Paris, Clémence, unless it should come into your head to say a word against the Emperor of Russia; and of that there is no ​danger, because ladies always take care to be in the fashion. Dame Fashion herself has become a Russian just now. We have bonbons à la Cosaque, bonnets à la Rostopchine, dinner services adorned with pictures of the entry of the Allies, and I know not what follies besides. But it is the most wonderful triumph of Alexander that he is actually bringing into fashion the very thing most scorned and laughed at in the Paris of our days. Can you guess what I mean?"
"Good manners and decorum," said Madame de Salgues.
"Religion," said Madame de Talmont.
"You are right, ma cousine," answered Emile. "Alexander ascribes all his victories, not to his own skill or prowess, nor to that of his army, but to Providence. Strange to say, his followers do the same. Veteran officers scarred with wounds and decorated with orders, and brilliant young guardsmen evidently of the first fashion, hold the same language. They tell you, apparently with the most naïve simplicity, that God, not themselves, has done it all. Our Parisians, who for years have scarcely uttered the name of God except to scoff at it, find this piety delightful—for a change. But the clear-sighted understand that this sort of language is dictated, if not by policy, at least by a refined and delicate courtesy. They are gentlemen, these Russians, and they adopt this tone to avoid wounding our sensitive pride."
"Do you then find it so much easier to believe in chivalrous courtesy towards man than in piety towards God?" asked Clémence.
Emile did not answer; and, after a pause, Madame de Talmont observed,—
"But you said there were generous deeds as well as gracious words. Those, after all, are the most reliable; and at least it is pleasant to hear of them."
"Then I have one to tell of, certainly upon a scale of ​imperial magnificence. Alexander has just restored to freedom—without ransom and without conditions—all the Frenchmen who are prisoners in Russia. It is said they number one hundred and fifty thousand. They are to return immediately to France.—How?—what is it, my cousins?—what has happened?" It was no wonder he asked, for at his words Madame de Talmont had fainted.
* ↑ A fact.
* ↑ Englishmen who were in Paris during 1814 bear testimony to this interesting fact.