VIII
A dark form appeared at the entrance of our dug-out, through which the chilly morning air was now stealing.
“It’s five o’clock, sir.”
It was the soldier of the party whom I had told off to wake us without fail.
“We’ve half an hour before the attack,” said Vignerte. “Let’s go out. I’ll finish my story outside. I’m very near the end.”
The stars had all vanished. One alone still twinkled low down in the Eastern sky, waiting for daybreak to blot it out.
We sat down on a ledge projecting from the side of a ravine. It commanded an excellent view of the line held by our Company, and we couldn’t have had a better position to follow the course of the coming raid.
Close by us a soldier’s lowly grave, a shadowy rectangle of dead branches. On the little wooden cross I could read these words, already almost obliterated by rain:
“Mohammed Beggi ben Smaël, Private, 2nd Tirailleurs. He died for France, September 23rd, 1914. Pray for him.”
I have seldom seen anything more moving than that little cross pleading for a Christian prayer for the humble Mussulman soldier.
Vignerte, looking straight in front of him, was waiting for the moment when the growing light would reveal the lie of the land. But that hour was not yet come. Only the dark line of the heights occupied by the enemy could be distinguished on the horizon.
Over there is Hurtebise and Craonne, he said, and beyond it Laon, Saint Richaumont and Goise. Farther still is La Capelle and the forest of Nouvion, where we charged the White Cuirassiers. How often do my thoughts fly over them to the sandy plains of Hanover and Lautenburg where I have left Aurora? What is she doing in her room among her rugs and her jewels? What have they done to her, my God!
When we returned to the palace after the scene on the La Meilleraie bridge she said not a word to me. We had our breakfast together, then she began to arrange large purple iris and white nigella in vases.
About ten o’clock she summoned one of her waiting women.
“Is Mademoiselle Marthe there?” she asked. Receiving an affirmative reply the said:
“Show her in.”
Mlle. Marthe came every year about this time to show the Grand Duchess the last word in novelties from Paris. A delicate suggestion of the Boulevard de la Madeleine seemed to enter with this good-looking, dainty girl.
“Have you had a pleasant journey, child?” asked Aurora.
“I arrived last evening, madame,” replied the girl. “Please excuse me for intruding on your Highness so soon, but I have to go back this evening.”
“What have you got for me this year?”
Mlle. Marthe opened her boxes and revealed dainty jewellery, tulle fans, vanity bags in velvet and moiré, diminutive stamp boxes, powder boxes, patch-boxes—those Parisian fallals which make all others look cheap.
“Leave me these,” said Aurora. “Tell Duvelleroy it will be all right. In November I shall want a Watteau fan, or at any rate a Lancret. It must be ready when I arrive in Paris.”
“Your Highness shall have it,” replied the girl confidently.
“Good. You had better take the five o’clock express this evening. You will stay to lunch with me and tell me what the Rue de la Paix will be doing this winter.”
During the meal I admired the unaffected ease with which the little Parisian girl replied to the Grand Duchess’s questions. It made me proud of my pretty fellow-countrywoman to see Aurora, who had so little love for the women of Lautenburg, treat her as an equal. But how much greater was my admiration for the self-possession of this princess, who, after three days and nights such as would have broken a strong man, was able to carry on light conversation about the thousand and one little trifles of Paris fashions.
“You still recommend Cartier?”
“Yes, madame, they are still the best for hats.”
“Laurence has left the Rue des Pyramids; she has a big establishment in the Rue Auber. I shall probably give her a call.”
“I should suggest Your Highness going there. Laurence specializes in the export business. Most of her trade is with foreign houses.”
It was a pleasure to hear all this small talk, a refreshing, idle interlude in tragic events; it almost helped me to forget.
About three o’clock the Grand Duchess handed Marthe an envelope.
“This is for your journey, my dear. I don’t want you to miss your train. A car will take you back to your hotel, then on to the station. I am quite satisfied. Don’t forget my fan. Good-bye. I shall be calling on you in November.”
When the little ray of sunshine had vanished the Grand Duchess remained a moment in thought, fingering the trifles that lay scattered about the room. Then she said:
“Monsieur Vignerte, I have an important piece of news for you.”
My reply was a look of hungry questioning.
“I have the honour to inform you,” she continued, “that I have just received a letter—a letter from Baron von Boose.”
I showed my astonishment.
“Do you imagine,” she said, “that dear little Marthe has come from Paris solely to bring me Duvelleroy’s baubles, charming though they are?”
Friday evening. Eight o’clock. We had just finished dinner. A footman entered with the evening post—a dozen letters—which he handed to the Grand Duchess.
“Will you excuse me?” she said.
She looked at the seals of all the envelopes, then she opened one.
“That’s it,” she said when she’d read it.
She handed me the letter. It was a request for a subscription from some philanthropical society in Hambourg. It informed the Grand Duchess that there was to be a bazaar the following Monday for the benefit of working class crèches.
“We will go,” said Aurora quietly. “This is the signal I arranged with Boose.”
I had known everything for two days. She had told me that when I gave her the document I had found in Petermann’s Mittheilungen she had written to Baron von Boose in the Congo. I have never known what kind of force she had brought to bear upon the man, but the fact remains that the letter Marthe had brought told the Grand Duchess that he had just left Africa. He was now at Hambourg. It could hardly be doubted that he had important revelations to make.
“I’ve made it worth his while,” she murmured with her wan smile.
“We will go tomorrow,” she said.
She looked at me, reflected a moment and then said:
“’Tis a little late in the day perhaps, my friend, but I begin to have scruples. I’m abusing your devotion. Do you realize that you have embarked upon a dangerous undertaking?”
“And you?” I said.
“Oh, it’s different with me. I am fighting for my liberty, which is more to me than life. Besides, whatever happens, I am the Grand Duchess of Lautenburg, and, more than that, a Tumene Princess. Behind me there is the Czar and all the Russias. They would think twice in my case; but you, dear friend! Think of Cyrus Beck. Think of Melusine. Why, for what would you sacrifice yourself?”
There was such intensity of reproach in the look I gave her that proud and haughty sovereign though she was, she hung her head.
“Forgive me,” she murmured.
Then she added:
“Very well, we’re agreed. We will start tomorrow. Ring. I must give the necessary orders.”
I pressed an electric bell. We heard steps. There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Aurora.
The door opened.
“Oh!” was all the Grand Duchess said.
Lieutenant von Hagen had just appeared in the doorway. He was rather pale and stood stiffly at attention, his right hand to his Kolbach, the burnished chin-strap of which encircled his clenched jaw.
“Lieutenant von Hagen!” said Aurora when she had recovered from her surprise. “Since when have officers under arrest acquired the habit of leaving the citadel?”
Hagen stood like a rock and said nothing.
“Will you be kind enough to explain?... Your sentence has not been remitted, so far as I know.”
“It has, Your Highness!” murmured Hagen.
“It has!” cried the Grand Duchess. “Herr von Hagen, are you mad?”
“No, Your Highness,” replied the little officer, in a low, insistent voice. “My detention ceased this evening.”
“Ceased!” exclaimed Aurora, beside herself. “Do you realize, Lieutenant, how far this jesting may carry you? Do you know that one thing, and one thing only, can remit a sentence of detention ordered by me?”
“I know it, Your Highness,” said Hagen.
“And that one thing is...”
“—WAR.” The officer completed her sentence. It may strike you as highly improbable, but the fact is that in the midst of the series of tragedies which had just taken place at the Court of Lautenburg the great events of the last week of July had passed almost unnoticed. We knew all about the note to Serbia, of course, but since the night in the armoury nothing had existed for us but the events I have described to you, not even the Austrian Ultimatum, or the German “Kriegzustand.” Nothing, absolutely nothing. And now that one little word—War.
I looked at Hagen in stupefaction. He had exchanged his red cloak for the grey-green field tunic.
Checking her surprise and trying to look as unconcerned as possible, Aurora asked:
“War! Herr von Hagen? And against whom?”
“Russia, probably tonight, Your Highness,” said the little officer. “France, tomorrow, almost certainly. The Grand Duke arrived from Berlin an hour ago, bringing with him the mobilization order for the Army Corps.”
Aurora went to the window and threw it wide open. It was stiflingly hot.
“I suppose, Lieutenant, that the Grand Duke commissioned you to convey this important piece of news to me.... In that case I don’t see why you needed the escort of the four hussars I see down there at the door.”
Hagen blushed violently, then turned pale. “Your Highness!” he murmured.
“What?” she said, with cold dignity.
“I have another duty to perform. Will you excuse me...”
“Come, come, Lieutenant, don’t be so nervous. If you are not even capable of telling me your mission you’ll never have the strength of mind to carry it out. Tell me I’m a prisoner in my own palace. That is so, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Your Highness!” cried Hagen. “How could you think such a thing.... I, to accept such a...”
“Then what is the trouble?”
The officer did not reply, but looked in my direction.
“Madam,” I said, stepping forward, “please do not torture yourself thus. Really, Herr von Hagen, it’s so easy to say that you have been sent to arrest me.”
There was a pause.
“Is that true, sir?” said the Grand Duchess. Hagen hung his head.
“Can you explain the reason for this arrest?”
“Madam,” said Hagen, recovering himself a little, “I am a soldier and can only carry out my orders without questioning them. But it is not difficult to understand. Monsieur Vignerte is French, and moreover, an officer. France is mobilizing against us. We are told that French aviators have already bombed...”
“You are a soldier, sir, and obey the orders you receive,” the Grand Duchess interrupted. “That is as it should be, but are you quite sure that you didn’t suggest this particular order yourself?”
Hagen didn’t answer, but the look of hatred he gave me was eloquent enough.
The Grand Duchess turned to me sharply and said:
“Go and get dressed!”
She herself put on a long dark cloak. Then she went to her bureau. I saw her rummage in it and bring out several objects which she slipped into the roomy packets of the cloak.
“Herr von Hagen,” she said, coming back, “are you to take Monsieur Vignette to the citadel? At what time?”
“He must be there at ten o’clock, Your Highness.”
With a smile of infinite scorn she put her hand on his shoulder.
“And so you actually thought,” she said, “that I would let you lock him up?”
There was overwhelming majesty in her look, her pose, her words. I saw the officer hang his head. He trembled in every limb.
“Ludwig von Hagen,” she continued, “a certain day, four years ago, I learned that an officer of the 7th Hussars had cheated at cards. It meant death and dishonour to him. The next day that officer’s debts were paid, the affair was hushed up and he himself, selected by me for my orderly officer, astonished the whole garrison by his strange and rapid change of fortune. Remarks were passed to which I paid no attention. You know yourself that the sole motive of my action was my wish to rescue from infamy a brave young man, who bore a great name and in whom I believed.
“He, on the other hand,” she said, pointing to me, “not only owes me nothing, but indeed suffered at first from my indifference, nay, scorn, the result of unworthy suspicions. He never showed any resentment. Quietly, secretly he has been working for me. Perhaps he himself does not know the full meaning of what he has done. But he certainly knew he was risking his life. And now the man who owes me everything has come to arrest the man to whom I owe everything!”
Tears ran down the face of the little hussar.
“What do you wish me to do?” he murmured in a tremulous, hoarse voice.
“I want you to pay the debt you owe me,” replied Aurora. “The time has come and you cannot complain, for you have brought it on yourself.”
“Give your orders,” he said. “I will obey.”
“Go downstairs and begin by sending your men away. Find some pretext which won’t be awkward for you later on.
“Now go to the garage,” she said, when he came back. “There are still some chauffeurs about. Make them get out the big grey with a full supply of petrol. Don’t light the lamps. Bring it down below yourself. It is now twenty minutes to nine. Be there at ten to.”
Aurora laid a map out on the table and studied it. “It’s obviously shorter by Aix-la-Chapelle and Belgium,” she murmured, “but I know the Wiesbaden-Thionville route better.”
“Are you ready?” she said.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Take you back to France, of course.”
She added:
“I have put some money and a revolver in the pocket of your coat. You can get anywhere with those.”
Aurora was just beauty itself then, my friend. If you’d only seen her at that moment you’d understand why I can’t control my voice at this point.
There was a dull roar under the window. The Benz was there.
“Come,” said Aurora.
At that moment Hagen came in. His air of sullen annoyance had deserted him now, I can tell you. He fell at the Grand Duchess’s feet.
“You are going! You are going with him, for ever!” he murmured with a sob in his voice.
She looked at him more kindly.
“If that is your idea, Herr von Hagen, it is all the more praiseworthy of you to have obeyed. You may know, however, that I’m not going. I’m bound to this place which I loathe by the task that still lies before me. But for the moment my duty is to save him who has given up everything for me.”
“Oh, thank you! thank you!” said the young man.
“You had better wait a bit before thanking me,” she said. “I presume, Herr von Hagen, that you have your identity card and mobilization orders on you?”
He rose, quivering with horror.
“My mobilization orders?” he repeated, deadly pale.
“Yes,” she said calmly. “Oblige me by handing them over to Monsieur Vignerte. We might be stopped between here and the frontier. Of course I know that in all probability I shall only have to mention my name to get through. But we might come across some stupid sentry. We must not lose any time. Lieutenant von Hagen will be able to get anywhere. Come. Quick!”
The officer was white as death. A terrible conflict was raging within him.
“You are now taking my honour from me, Madam!” he blurted out at length.
“I should only be taking back what I gave you myself, Herr von Hagen,” said Aurora, pitilessly. “But you mustn’t exaggerate. It will be your own fault if you are compromised. I ask but two things of you. First that you wait until ten o’clock to give the alarm that we have gone. Secondly, that you arrange matters so that they shall think we have taken the Aix-la-Chapelle route. If the Grand Duke is shameless enough to telegraph or telephone it must not be in our direction. Come. Good-bye. I shall be back by this time tomorrow.”
She held out a hand which he bathed with his tears.
“I may count on you, friend, mayn’t I?”
Choking with emotion, he nodded.
I myself was utterly overcome and went forward to offer my hand to the man who was risking everything for me at that moment. But he started back and replied with a look of unutterable hatred.
“Monsieur, I pray God that we may meet again elsewhere—and soon.”
Aurora shrugged her shoulders, and I heard her murmur something about the stupidity of men. But she was already on the stairs. I followed her, but not before I had had one last look at her room with its rugs, its jewels, and its glorious, fading flowers.
“Get in,” she said in a low voice.
I climbed into the great car and we started off.
As we sped over the La Meilleraie bridge the clocks of Lautenburg and in the old tower of the castle were just striking nine.
The road, an endless white ribbon, sparkled softly in the light of the moon. It slipped beneath our wheels as the car whirled along at a giddy pace. And every time we turned a corner I learned how amazingly sure were the hands of the woman who was driving me.
The whole thing had happened so quickly that when I was once more in a condition to take things in we had already done quite sixty miles. Then Aurora’s expression, “I shall be back by this time tomorrow,” came to mind, and I realized in a flash that in a few short hours I should be separated from the Grand Duchess.
I did not rebel. The prodigious speed at which we were going lulled me into a kind of helpless torpor which soon developed a curious bliss of its own. Dark clumps of trees and funny little switchback bridges over silvery rivers fled behind us. We passed a cart laden high with hay: a few inches more to the left would have meant death. Death. I uttered that word and glanced at Aurora’s set face. Her gauntleted fingers looked like thin, white bars on the steering wheel.
Suddenly my thoughts turned to the war. Was it really a fact? How should I find my country? I confess to my shame that such was the intoxication of speed, so great its power of tearing me from myself that I could not concentrate my mind on that dreadful thought. At that hour I was wholly indifferent to what the future might have in store for me.
A shaded electric lamp showed up every detail of the map, but Aurora hardly looked at it once. She knew the way by heart I remember her telling me that she had passed that way many a time when going to take the waters.
She knew exactly at what point to make a detour round the towns whose red halo emerged from the darkness to right and left, grew before our eyes, was overtaken and disappeared in the night. Three or four times she muttered: Cassel, Giessen, Wetzlar!
Cassel, Giessen, Wetzlar! What did I care?
The light from the lamp lit up a clock near the speedometer. But I could not see the time. Thought had deserted me....
Without slowing down we went through a hilly town with houses hidden among dark clumps of trees.
“Wiesbaden,” murmured Aurora. “My villa,” she remarked as we passed one of these houses. “It’s not yet one o’clock. We have come very well.”
She turned to the right where the road forked. Far away on the left the lights of a big city glowed in the night sky.
“That’s Mainz,” she said, “and here’s the Rhine.”
At top speed we crossed the sacred river by a suspension bridge. A dull roar came up from below. Here and there, where the darkness was less intense, we could see its green waters.
At the far end of the bridge we thought we heard an order. A hoarse, “Who goes there!” Then, unmistakably, the sharp sound of a shot.
“They fired at us,” said Aurora. “We must be getting near the frontier. We must be a little more careful now.”
I looked at the compass. We were going due west. The speedometer registered 70. For the first time I had a real shock.
Aurora saw it and smiled.
“We were going 90 between Wetzlar and Wiesbaden,” was all she said.
Soon another red glow appeared in the west.
“Thionville,” said Aurora. “It must be crammed with troops.”
To my great surprise I observed that she made no attempt to avoid this town, as she had avoided the others. Our lamps were now lit and we were making straight for the fortress, whose walls mounted higher and higher into the sky.
The car slowed down. We passed houses, suburbs. Then came an imperious, “Who goes there!” We stopped.
A dozen soldiers surrounded us. All of them were wearing the grey-green uniform and covered helmet.
“Your papers,” said the rough voice of a non-commissioned officer.
“I will show them to your officer,” replied Aurora. “Please go and fetch him.”
He arrived in due course. He was a kind of blonde giant, very angry at being disturbed in his sleep. When he saw we were civilians, politeness vanished from his questions.
“Lieutenant,” said the Grand Duchess dryly, “I must first ask you to stop your men from breaking up my car with their rifle butts. Then perhaps you will be good enough to look at this.”
So saying she flashed the lamp upon the Lautenburg arms painted on the door.
The officer started.
“Have I the honour of addressing Her Highness the Grand Duchess of Lautenburg?” he said, stiffening to attention.
“You have, lieutenant,” replied Aurora.
“I must ask Your Highness to excuse me,” the man said in dismay. “Back there!” he bawled to his men, thrusting back the foremost. “How can I serve Your Highness?”
“Very easily,” said the Grand Duchess. “I presume General von Offenburg is still commanding at Thionville? I suspect His Excellency is not asleep on a night like this. Be so good as to take me to him. Lend me one of your men to come with us and show us the way.”
The officer at once did what was required. He bowed very low, expressing his regret that his duties did not permit him to conduct us himself.
The General in command of the fortress was not at headquarters, but in the end we found him at the station with his staff. He was watching the detraining of the troops at the platforms, which were literally black with them. In the great square an enormous mass of guns projected their antediluvian silhouettes on the night. I received an impression of sheer numbers and brute force which made me shudder.
When an orderly officer had informed General von Offenburg of the Grand Duchess’s presence he came forward at once. He was a fine figure of a man, in his long grey cloak with the scarlet collar. He bowed to Aurora and reminded her that he had once had the honour of dancing with her in Berlin. But with all his efforts he could barely conceal his astonishment at our presence at that hour and in such a guise.
“Don’t be too much surprised, General,” said Aurora, with a smile. “As soon as I heard of the great events in prospect in this quarter I felt I could not remain at Lautenburg. I wanted to see and admire our men at the frontier, and here I am, with my orderly officer Lieutenant von Hagen, of the 7th Hussars,” she said, presenting me.
I saluted as stiffly and punctiliously as I possibly could.
“Then why, Your Highness,” exclaimed von Offenburg, “have you come this way? There is nothing very interesting here. The 16th Corps is a rock which nothing can move. Why did you not go round by Aachen?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was suggested. Round by Aix-la-Chapelle...?”
“Hadn’t you heard that the whole army is being concentrated there?” the General whispered.
“That’s true,” said Aurora. “But the Belgian frontier doesn’t interest me. I should never have forgiven myself if I had not seen the French frontier at the very outbreak of war.”
“I greet you as the intrepid colonel of the brave 7th Hussars,” said von Orenburg, kissing her hand. “Can I assist you in any way?”
“Most certainly you can,” said Aurora. “Do you realize your sentries arrested me off-hand just now? I ought really to ask you for an escort, but I’m afraid my Benz would be hard put to it to keep up with your dragoons. May they take me as far as the outposts, and please give me some kind of permit to save me from any more little accidents when I come back. We must hurry on. It will soon be dawn, and I want to see the first rays of sunlight on the frontier-posts.”
The General had a permit brought. “There,” he said, initialling it with a flourish. “You’ve just got time. Villerupt, in France, is a mile and a quarter from the frontier, and barely thirteen from here. You will be there in less than half an hour. But don’t expect to see any French soldiers. Their Government has ordered them to withdraw two leagues from the frontier, to avoid any accident likely to precipitate war,” he concluded with a coarse laugh.
Escorted by a half-troop of dragoons we made an impressive exit from Thionville. When we had covered rather more than a mile on the Audun-le-Roman road the Grand Duchess whispered in my ear:
“They are very kind, but I’m afraid we would find them a nuisance in the long run.”
And she let the car out to its top speed. Behind us, in the first faint light of day, the dragoons were soon strung out, and, a moment later, out of sight on the dark road.
The chilly breeze of dawn fanned my temples. My emotions now began to overwhelm me. Indeed, at that moment I had not even a thought for her for whom I would have sacrificed everything, the woman I was about to leave for ever. I gazed before me at the little hills, which now began to emerge, one by one, out of the yielding darkness. The amazing originality of the manner of my return was forgotten, and I was possessed by another sentiment, far stronger and more poignant.
I was wholly under its influence when the car stopped so suddenly as almost to throw me on to the wind-screen. Without a word the Grand Duchess pointed to a frontier post ten paces away on the right of the road.
The spectacle of that six-foot post, one side white and black, the other blue, white and red, was extraordinarily moving.
I looked at the Grand Duchess and a great joy filled me as I saw the emotion in her set face.
It was not yet quite light. The car was now going very slowly. It was as if Aurora wanted me to notice the little night flowers which trembled in the wind on the sides of the banks.
Suddenly I caught hold of my companion’s arm. The car stopped. Less than two hundred yards away, at the top of a hill above the road, a motionless horseman had just appeared, a dark silhouette against the sky.
It was a French dragoon. We could see the buff cover of his helmet and the red and white pennon on his lance. Then two more appeared, then ten, then twenty, and they came forward at a canter to meet us.
“It is your turn to do the talking this time,” said Aurora, with a smile.
An officer came first. He was a tall young man, dark and rather pale. His chin-strap drew a shining line across his black moustache. He saluted us with his sabre and asked to see our permits.
“I must confess, monsieur,” replied the Grand Duchess, “that I do not possess anything of the kind, for I don’t suppose you will be satisfied with this which was given me by the German general in command at Thionville,” she said, showing von Offenburg’s permit.
The young officer assumed an expression denoting that the occasion was hardly suitable for trifling.
“Monsieur,” continued Aurora, when she had satisfied herself at a glance that for the moment I was completely unable to say a word, “there are some things it would take too long to explain from a car to a horse in the middle of the road. These are the facts. I am the Grand Duchess of Lautenburg-Detmold. Monsieur Vignerte, my companion, is a French officer, a lieutenant like yourself. I don’t know whether in France you have already taken the precaution of arresting Germans. But in Germany we have been arresting Frenchmen since yesterday. This gentleman was about to be arrested; I have brought him to you. That is all.”
And, moved apparently by the look of amazement which had spread over the dragoon’s face, she added:
“I should, perhaps, say, monsieur, that I am Russian by birth, so you need no longer doubt either myself or my immediate purpose.”
The officer had dismounted. He bowed respectfully to Aurora, who had, like myself, just stepped out of the car.
“Lieutenant de Coigny, 11th Dragoons, of Longwy,” he said.
I introduced myself. We shook hands.
“You have come a long way, comrade. What shall we do with you?”
“You have a spare horse to lend him?” said the Grand Duchess. “Now, if I may offer a little advice, take him at once to your civil or military authorities. He has come straight from Germany, and knows much that may be valuable to this country, where the flowers are lovely, but which is never sufficiently on its guard, I think.”
As she spoke she was looking at some wild roses hanging over the edge of the bank. Lieutenant de Coigny plundered the thickest tufts and collected a pink bunch which he handed to the Grand Duchess.
“Thank you, monsieur,” she said, with a charming smile to the young man, who was under the spell of her wondrous beauty. “Would you be good enough to make your horses stand aside? The road is narrow, and I must turn my car.”
Then I utterly broke down.
Gone were my indifference of the night, my sudden emotion on entering France once more. They were things of the past. One thought alone obsessed me: in a quarter of an hour I should have lost her for ever.
Lieutenant de Coigny had made his men stand back. I heard the Grand Duchess say to him in her soft, tender voice:
“Excuse him, monsieur, he has just suffered greater shocks than the war will ever bring him.”
And now I felt her hand on my brow.
“Courage, ami,” she said, in low but firm tones. “You are going back to your own home, your own fair land, a land I love. It will need you, for the coming struggle will be terrible, much more terrible than you can imagine. But you will know many glorious emotions, horses galloping in the August sun; heaven-sent transports in which reason forsakes one, everything, indeed, which could make a woman like myself regret I am not a man.
“It will be terrible, very terrible. But over there, beyond the frontiers, other horsemen are springing into the saddle, horsemen called ‘Big Heads’, with astrakhan caps, curving sabres and leaden whips, who charge with their terrible cry of ‘Huâ! huâ! huâ!’ so that the stoutest hearts fail and the strongest arms fling away their weapons the better to flee the Cossacks of Tumene.
“Remember you have no cause for grief. And if you would have proof, think of the fate in store for her who is returning to Lautenburg without you.”
“Alas!” I murmured through my tears. “Stay with us. Don’t go back. Think of what may happen to you there!”
I heard her voice and it was almost a hiss.
“Child, child, I thought that after knowing me so well you would have learned a little of what hate can mean. Boose has come back. Have you really forgotten the fireplace in the armoury, the letters from the Congo, the whole treacherous mystery? Do you really think that just at the moment when I am about to unravel the secret of the crime I shall let the criminal go?”
My tears fell uncontrolled. Then suddenly a sensation of extreme relief exalted my despair, as for one second I felt the touch of her lips upon my forehead....
I started up with a terrible cry. Like one possessed I began to run after her down the road till I stumbled and fell full length in the ditch.
When I picked myself up, breathless and desperate, the car was nothing but a tiny grey speck in the east.
Thanks to the horse which one of Lieutenant de Coigny’s dragoons had given up to me I reached Audun-le-Roman about seven o’clock. There a car was immediately requisitioned, and I was taken to Nancy.
I had expected that mobilization would already have been ordered in France. But nothing had been done, and my mind became obsessed by the memory of the tremendous preparations I had witnessed that night, preparations which removed any lingering doubt.
We went straight to the Prefecture, and I was taken before the Prefect. I told him as fully as possible everything I had seen and heard. He listened to me with the closest attention, taking notes. When I left him he was already telephoning to Paris the information I had given him.
I wandered about in the streets of Nancy, as my train was not leaving until twelve midday.
Too harassed and excited to rest, I went into a café in the Place Stanislas. When I put my hand in my pocket to pay I drew out the note-case which Aurora had put there. I had never felt so well off as at that moment when money, once the most coveted of possessions, seemed to have lost all value for me.
I walked in a main street and stopped, all unconsciously, at a shop. I went in and bought the clothes you see me in now. I was so stupefied that I didn’t even notice that for field service the blue tunic had taken the place of the old black tunic with red collar.
At midday the train started for Paris. For the first time I saw all those places that the retreat has engraved on our minds: Dormans, with its bridge that we crossed on September 2nd in the added gloom of the anniversary of Sedan; the lovely Jaulgonne road down which we chased the enemy; Château-Thierry on the Marne, with its ruined castle perched up on high, where we slept in a bed for the first time.
It was twenty minutes past five when the train drew up in Château-Thierry station. There I learned the news of the general mobilization. The wall of fire and steel which separated me from my beloved sovereign of Lautenburg had at last been raised.
The atmosphere was heavy and thunderous when I got out at the Gare de l’Est, but the great city of Paris was calm. Oh, Paris, once I had feared so much for you when this terrible moment should come; your excitability, your fits of passion, your very ardour, which might be treason’s opportunity. And now the hour had come and not even assassination had shaken your quiet resolution, the assassination of the man who had boasted that he could start or stop revolution at his will.
My mobilization orders had disappeared in the fire at the castle of Lautenburg, but that didn’t worry me much. I knew them by heart and decided to leave next morning to rejoin the 18th Infantry at Pau.
I put on my uniform in a hotel bedroom and then, walking through the Rue Lafayette, I made for the centre of the city.
People were much more excited than noisy. There were a good many soldiers about, already officers like myself, but all of them had on their arms mothers or wives who looked into their eyes with an indescribable expression of pride and tenderness. But I was lonely and alone on that tragic evening, even more lonely in that city than on the night when I had left it.
I hadn’t as yet any notion whither I was wending my way. But I began to have some inkling when I had reached the Rue Royale with its brilliantly lit terraces swarming with people. As I passed Weber’s I thought of Clotilde. “It’s August. She hasn’t got her white fox now. She must be wearing a light silk blouse....” Then memories of the girl filled me with loathing.
A pall of shadow was beginning to settle on the trees of the Champs-Elysées under the darkening sky. I turned to the right and chose the little alleys which remind you of a watering-place with their trees and casinos. Cars stopped with a jerk before well-lit restaurants. Commissionaires opened their doors.
I had reached the Avenue Gabriel, a dark tunnel of foliage. I walked up it slowly. A feeling of unutterable anguish invaded my whole being. Soon I saw lights in a restaurant window. On the door of that restaurant I read the word “Laurent.”
I sat down opposite that door, on the bench I knew I should find there. My fingers groped over the rough surface of the back, striking here and there the round, flat heads of the big nails.
At last they stopped. They had found what they wanted. I leaned down and had no difficulty, though it was now quite dark, in deciphering the three marks, those three letters “A. A. E.” which the little Tumene princess had once carved there.