The Eagle of the Empire: A Story of Waterloo, Cyrus Townsend Brady [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

its rights to any consideration at my hands. Your uncle is an emigr� who has never made his submission. I find you, a Frenchwoman, in the company of my enemies. Your estates are forfeited. Major Marteau, I make you Comte d'Aumenier. The domains are yours."

"I accept them, your Majesty."

"What! Is it possible——" cried the Countess Laure, her face flaming.

"Silence, mademoiselle. By the laws of war I could have you shot. It would be a fine example. No Frenchman, however high in rank and station, no Frenchwoman, however young or beautiful, can fight against me and France with impunity. Have you anything to say why I should not mete out to you this well-deserved punishment?"

"Nothing," said the young woman with proud disdain. "The revolution has taken the lives of many of my people. I am not better than they. You are the very spirit of the revolution incarnate, Sire, and——"

"Your Majesty," interposed General Maurice.

"Well, sir?" said Napoleon.

General Maurice, a famous light horseman, otherwise known as the Count de Vivonne, was an old friend and a devoted follower of the Emperor. He had interfered before on occasion between Napoleon and his victims. He knew the Emperor thoroughly and loved him. He realized that it was his time to interpose, or someone's, and he had intuition enough to suspect that his interposition would be most welcome, that indeed Napoleon was playing, as he sometimes loved to do, a little comedy. With a wave of his hand the general checked Marteau, whom he knew slightly, who had sprung forward to protest to the Emperor at the words of the woman he loved.

"Allow me a word, Sire," asked the General with that exquisite mixture of courtesy, deference and resolution which characterized his intercourse with the Emperor.

"I am always glad to hear from you, my good Maurice," said the Emperor familiarly. "What have you to say?"

"This young woman is no traitor to you or to France, Sire, however strange her position."

"How do you make that out?" asked the Emperor, the flickering of a smile playing about his lips.

"It was her hand that struck up the Russian's pistol so that the bullet went there," the General of cavalry pointed upward a moment and then his hand fell until his index finger was trained upon the Emperor's heart, "instead of there," he added meaningly.

"Very good," said the Emperor graciously. "But had she not struck up that hand it was in Marteau's heart that the bullet would have lodged, not in mine, if I remember rightly."

"And if that gives me a claim, Sire, to your consideration——"

"Have I not rewarded you enough," asked the Emperor, "in adding the official stamp of a patent to the nobility of heart which is already yours and by giving you the forfeited lands of Aumenier to boot?"

"And I would give them all for the safety of the lady yonder, whose family mine have served for eight hundred years, with whom I played when a boy, and be content to follow your Majesty as the simple soldier I have always been."

"Brave heart and true," said the Emperor, touched. "Mademoiselle, you cannot go back to Bl�cher. Within two days his army will be no more. I will give you a safe conduct. You can remain here for the night. Couriers will be dispatched to Troyes and to Paris under escort in the morning. They will take you there. You have friends there, I presume?"

"Many."

"You can remain there or, if opportunity arises, I will give orders to have you safely conducted so you can go back to England."

"And me, Sire?" growled out Sir Gervaise Yeovil.

The Emperor laughed.

"I am too good a soldier to fight with men of the law," he said. "You may go with your prot�g�e and share her fortunes."

"I thank your Majesty," said the Englishman, touched in his blunt nature by this extraordinary magnanimity. "I will report your consideration to my king and his people and——"

"And say to them that I long for the moment when I can measure swords with the Duke of Wellington."

"And may that moment come speedily," returned Sir Gervaise.

"As for the rest," said the Emperor, turning away in high good humor, "Marteau, you have been continuously on service for two days and two nights and you are wounded——"

"It is nothing."

"Remain here with old Bullet-Stopper, who, true to his name, has had another touch of the enemy's lead. General Maurice, detail a score of the weakest of your command, those slightly wounded, to whom a night's rest would be useful. They shall remain here until the courier stops for the lady and her English friend, and then under Marteau's command rejoin me in the morning."

"Very good, Sire," said General Maurice, turning away.

"I thank your Majesty," said Marteau, "for all you have done for me, and for the Comtesse d'Aumenier."

"And I thank the Emperor also," said the young woman, smiling at him. "Your Majesty's generosity almost wins me to an imperial allegiance."

Napoleon laughed.

"Not even the Emperor," he said proudly, "is as black as he is painted by traitors and the English, Mademoiselle!" he bowed abruptly but not ungracefully. "Come, gentlemen," he said, turning on his heel, "we must march."

CHAPTER XII AN ALLIANCE DECLINED

As the Emperor left the room, followed by the officers and men, a little silence fell over the three people remaining therein.

"Monsieur le Comte d'Aumenier!" exclaimed the Countess Laure, wonder, derision and disdain in her voice. "Your ch�teau, your domain!"

She looked about the great hall and laughed scornfully. Young Marteau turned crimson. He threw up his head proudly.

"Mademoiselle——" he began sternly, his voice full of indignant protest and resentment.

"Don't be too hard on the lad, Countess," interposed the Englishman, his interest aroused. "By gad, he saved your honor, your life, and——"

"And, if I mistake not, I repaid the obligation by saving his life also, sir."

"And I recognize it, and am grateful, mademoiselle."

"I am ordered to report to you, sir," said a young man, coming into the room followed by a file of dismounted soldiers, and relieving a situation growing most tense.

"Very good," said Marteau, devoutly thankful for the interruption. "You will dispose your men so as to guard the approaches of the ch�teau at every hand. You will keep a strict lookout, and you will awaken me at dawn. I think there is nothing to be apprehended from the enemy. The advance of the Emperor will have cleared all this section of even wandering troops of Cossacks by this time, but there are masterless men abroad."

"I shall know how to deal with them," said the young officer, saluting.

"You will also send men to remove these dead bodies and clear up this room. Take this poor lad"—pointing to Pierre—"and see that he is cared for. You will find a place for him upstairs. Your regimental surgeon——"

"Is attending to the wounded. I will see that the boy gets every care, sir."

"And Bal-Arr�t?"

"His arm is dressed, and he is the admiration of the camp-fire."

"I suppose so."

"Any other orders, Major?"

"None; you may go."

"Mademoiselle," said Marteau, facing the Countess as the officer turned away, his men taking the dead bodies and the wounded peasant with them, "you wrong me terribly."

"By saving your life, pray?" she asked contemptuously.

"By—by—your——" he faltered and stopped.

"In what way, Monsieur le Comte?" interrupted the young woman, who knew very well what the young man meant.

In her irritating use of his new-found title, and in the way in which it fell from her lips, she cut him like a whip-lash, and she did it deliberately, too—he, the Count, forsooth!

"Call me Marteau," he protested, stepping toward her, at which she fell back a little. "Or, better still, as when I was a boy, your faithful follower, Jean."

"If the Emperor has the power, he has made you a Count; if he has not, you are not."

"What the Emperor makes me is of little consequence between us, mademoiselle. It is what I am that counts."

"And you remain, then, just Jean Marteau, of the loyal Marteaux?"

"One does not wipe out the devotion of years in a moment. My father served yours, your grandfather, your uncle, your father. I am still"—he threw up his head proudly as he made the confession—"your man."

"But the title——"

"What is a title? Your uncle is in England. He does not purpose to come back to France unless he whom he calls his rightful king again rules the land. Should that come to be, my poor patent of nobility would not be worth the parchment upon which it was engrossed."

"And the lands?"

"In any case I would but hold them in trust for the Marquis——"

"My uncle is old, childless. I am the last of the long line."

"Then I will hold them for you, mademoiselle. They are yours. When this war is over, and France is at peace once more, I will take my father's place and keep them for you."

"I could not accept such a sacrifice."

"It would be no sacrifice."

"I repeat, I cannot consent to be under such obligation, even to you."

"There is a way——" began the young Frenchman softly, shooting a meaning glance at the young woman.

"I do not understand," she faltered.

"I am peasant born," admitted Marteau, "but, though no gentle blood flows through my veins, my family, I think, is as old as your own."

"It is so," agreed the Countess, trembling as she began to catch the meaning. "Oh, monsieur, stop."

"As there has never a d'Aumenier failed to hold the ch�teau so there has never failed a Marteau to follow him," went on the young man, unheeding her protest.

"I care as little for distinctions of rank as any demoiselle of old France, perhaps, but——"

"Mademoiselle is right. As for myself, I am a republican at heart, although I follow the Emperor. I, too, care little for the distinctions of rank, for titles, yet I have earned a title in the service of the Emperor. Through him, even humble men rise high and go far. Will you——"

"Monsieur, you must not go on!" cried the girl, "thrusting out her hand, as if to check him.

"Pardon," said the young Frenchman resolutely. "Having gone thus far I must go further. Humble as I am, obscure though I be, I have dared to raise my eyes to heaven—to you, mademoiselle. In my boyhood days you honored me with your friendship, your companionship. I have made something of myself. If mademoiselle would only deign to—— It is impossible that she should love me—it would be an ineffable condescension—but is there not some merit in the thought that the last survivors of the two lines should unite to——"

"Impossible!" cried the Countess, her face flushing. "My uncle would never consent. In my veins is the oldest, the noblest blood of France. Even I could not——"

"Be it so," said Marteau, paling, but standing very erect. "It is, of course, impossible. There is not honor enough or merit enough in the world," he went on bitterly, "to obliterate the difference in station between us. The revolution, after all, changed little. Keep the title, keep the estates, mademoiselle, I want them not," continued the young soldier bitterly. "Having aspired to you, do you think these are compensations?"

"You saved my life," said the girl falteringly.

"It was nothing. You did as much for me."

"And my honor," she added.

"I ask no reward."

"By gad!" said Yeovil at this juncture, "I'm damned if I see how you can withstand him. He is a gallant lad. He has fought bravely and he has pleaded nobly. You may not win the Countess—as a matter of fact she is pledged to my son—but you deserve her. I've never been able to understand any kind of women, much less Frenchwomen, saving your presence, mademoiselle. Base-born you may be, Major Marteau, but I know a gentleman when I see him, I flatter myself, and, damme, young man, here's my hand. I can understand your Emperor better since he can inspire the devotion of men like you."

The two men clasped hands. The Countess looked on. She stepped softly nearer to them. She laid her hand on Marteau's shoulder.

"Monsieur—Jean," she said, and there was a long pause between the two words, "I would that I could grant your request, but it is—you see—you know I cannot. I am betrothed to Captain Yeovil, with my uncle's consent, of course. I am a very unhappy woman," she ended, although just what she meant by that last sentence she hardly knew.

"And this