"Sire, you are unjust," exclaimed Duroc. "Madame de Walewska is an angel of virtue and purity; she would joyfully sacrifice her life to save your majesty a sigh!"

"But she is unwilling to sacrifice to me this chimera of virtue,"

exclaimed Napoleon, "although she has already disregarded it by loving me. She is not courageous enough to give up the semblance after having already parted with the substance. Like all women she is timid, and incapable of a great resolution! How many letters have I not written to her since I last saw her! After the battle of Eylau--like a miserable adventurer--a knight-errant--I went in disguise to the village where she had at length promised to meet me at her brother's house. What a wretched rendezvous it was! Nothing but a farewell scene! She desires to go into a convent, and give her heart to G.o.d, because she is not allowed to give it to me. I am no Abelard, however, and do not want her to become a Helose! If she goes into a convent, I shall have its walls torn down, and the order she has joined abolished."

"But she will not go into a convent, sire; love will at last triumph over her virtue, and she will finally declare herself vanquished. She promised your majesty to defer the execution of her purpose for a year, but, I am sure, she will not be strong enough to close her heart so long against the pa.s.sionate entreaties of a lover whom she adores. The letters which your majesty writes to her, and which she does not refuse to accept, are like hot sh.e.l.ls thrown into the fortress of her heart.

They do a great deal of mischief."

"Forsooth, it is a consolation that she does not refuse my notes. I have sent them almost every day during two months; every week I send a courier who meets her when, escaping from the Argus-eyes of her husband, she goes to the cathedral. But I receive only laconic replies. This woman is either incapable of genuine love, or she is a demon who delights in torturing me."

"Sire, does it please your majesty to partake of this fruit?" said a gentle voice behind him.

The emperor started. Absorbed in his pa.s.sion--filled with the idea now agitating his soul, he had not heard the door of the cabinet softly open, and was unaware that one of the imperial pages, holding a golden fruit-plate, had entered. Duroc also had not noticed that he was present while the emperor was still speaking, and that he must have overheard the last words of his majesty. The page leaned, pale and exhausted, against the wall near the door, and the golden plate was trembling in his hands.

Napoleon cast a glowing glance on him, and rushing toward him, s.n.a.t.c.hed the plate and threw it on the floor. As the peaches rolled across the room, he seized the page's arms, and drew him toward the window. "Who are you?" he asked, scarcely able to master his emotion. "Who are you?

Speak, that I may hear your voice!"

The page looked in his face, aglow with anger, and his large blue eyes filled with tears. "I am a demon who delights in torturing you," he said in a low voice.

Napoleon did not utter a word. He tore the velvet cap from the page's head, and when his long silken hair fell on his shoulders in heavy ma.s.ses, a smile of unutterable bliss overspread the emperor's face. He seized the fair ringlets with his hands and kissed them; he laid them on his own head, and they covered his face like a golden veil. He then shook them off with a merry laugh, and encircled the page so violently in his arms, that he uttered a cry. "Mary, Mary," he exclaimed pa.s.sionately, "you are in my arms at last--you are here! Duroc, just look at this wonderful page. Come here, and look at the angel I slandered just now!"

But Duroc did not appear. He preferred to move quietly out of the room and to lock the door after him. Napoleon, therefore, was alone with his mistress, and thanked Duroc in his heart for this discretion. He clasped the weeping and blushing lady in his arms, and tried with gentle force to remove her hands, in which she had buried her face. "Mary," he asked, in a tone of suppliant tenderness, "Mary, you weep, and yet you say you love me?"

"Yes, I do love you," she exclaimed, sinking on her knees. "I love you intensely! Ah, have mercy on me! Do not condemn me because I come hither in spite of my conscience and my honor! Napoleon, I have no longer any thing on earth but you! I have no longer a country, a family, a name! I gave up every thing for you--my life, my honor, my happiness, are yours!

Remember it, and do not despise me!"

He raised her from her knees and pressed a kiss on her quivering lips.

"Mary," he said, "this kiss shall have the same effect upon you as of old the gift of knighthood had on the warrior--it will impart to you a higher and more sacred life, and confer the highest honor on you!

Henceforth you are mine, and shall be as immortal as myself; and when posterity mentions the name of the Emperor Napoleon, it shall at the same time remember his beautiful mistress, and repeat the name of Mary Walewska together with that of Josephine!"

"Oh," murmured Mary, "you mention the n.o.ble and generous Empress Josephine, whom I worship, and against whom I am committing a crime! May fate enable me to atone for my guilt one day by sacrificing my life for you, and proving to you and to the world that I loved you truly and faithfully."

"No, you shall live--live for me," said Napoleon, ardently; "do not complain any more, Mary; dry your beautiful eyes. Come, sit down with me and tell me how it happened that you conquered your heart, and why I see you in this disguise?" He drew her to the divan and wound his arm around her waist. She laid her head on his shoulder, and gazed up to him with dreamy eyes.

"How it happened?" she asked. "I cannot find words to tell you. I reenacted the part of Penelope. Every night I tried to fasten a coat of mail around my heart--to protect it as with a net-work of virtue and duty. But your letters were the wooers that destroyed in the day the resolutions of the night. Your complaints rent my heart; your reproaches tortured my soul. I felt at last that I was irretrievably lost--that I loved you boundlessly, and that I was anxious to prove it to you. But my husband watched me with lynx-eyed vigilance; he was constantly at my side, now threatening, in the fury of his jealousy, to a.s.sa.s.sinate me should I leave him, and now imploring me with tearful eyes to spare his honor and pity his love. I felt that I would have either to die, or renounce my married life, and enter upon a new existence--an existence of true happiness if you love me, but of suffering and self-reproach if you despise, me!"

"I love you," said Napoleon, with a proud and confident air. "Proceed."

"I have finished," she said. "My trusty lady's maid prepared every thing for my escape, and four days ago, when my husband believed me at church, I and my maid entered a travelling-coach and continued our journey day and night until we arrived at Castle Finkenstein."

"And this disguise?" asked Napoleon, pointing at the costume she was wearing.

Mary blushed and smiled. "I had it made by a tailor at Warsaw, who prepared the suits the imperial pages wore at that ball. I had not sufficient courage to enter this castle as a lady, only men living in it at the present time. I desired to enter your room without recognition or insult. I left my carriage at the neighboring village, and walked hither on foot. At the castle-gate, I inquired for Constant, your _valet de chambre_, and requested the servants to call him. I confided my secret to him, and he conducted me to this room. And thus, my beloved friend, I am here; I am lying at your feet, and imploring you to kill me if you do not love me, for I cannot live without your love!" She glided from the divan to the floor, and looked up to the emperor with clasped hands and imploring eyes.

Napoleon bent over her and drew her smilingly into his arms. "You shall live," he said, "for I love you and pledge you my imperial word that I will never desert you!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE DANTZIC CHOCOLATE.

On the following day the emperor's face did not retain a trace of the gloom which had filled his marshals with so much uneasiness. His features were radiant with happiness, and a strange fire was burning in his dark-blue eyes. He ordered his guard to be drawn up in line in the castle-yard, and to the delight of the soldiers it was announced that Napoleon himself would command at the parade. Loud cheers and the constantly-repeated shout of "_Vive l'empereur_!" received him when, surrounded by his marshals, and with a smiling face, he walked down the broad steps of the palace.

"These soldiers are foolish children," said he, turning to Marshal Lannes. "Why are they cheering incessantly, as if they had not seen me for a year? Have I not been among them every day?"

"No, sire," said the marshal, who had regained his former good-humor and merry face, "no, sire; those brave boys really have not seen your majesty for a long while, and they are perfectly right to manifest their joy. The great Napoleon, whose face was our sun in so many battles and in so many countries, and whose smile, when we were hungry and thirsty, often satisfied our hunger and quenched our thirst, really was not here.

In his place we have had during the last few weeks a grave and taciturn emperor, whom every one feared."

Napoleon laughed. "Were you also afraid, my old comrade?" he asked.

"I cannot say that I was," said Lannes, gayly, "but, nevertheless, I feel to-day as though a heavy burden had been removed from my heart. I can breathe more freely, inasmuch as I have back my excellent Napoleon in place of that morose emperor. The sun has risen once more for all of us!"

"Was I really as you pretend?" asked Napoleon, who was always delighted at the unceremonious words of his old comrade, and who permitted to Lannes that bluntness which he would not have tolerated in another.

The marshal bent closer to the emperor's ear. "Sire, your majesty will permit me to tell you that you were shockingly morose and surly. We were beginning to feel anxious and weary. But it is all over now, and when I look at you to-day my heart is as glad as that of a lover who sees his sweetheart after a long separation. I should like to know what miracle has happened since yesterday, and what magician has arrived to dispel your discontent. I should be exceedingly grateful to your majesty if you would show him to me!"

"What an inquisitive fellow!" said the emperor, turning his eyes involuntarily to the window of the castle. He nodded almost imperceptibly, and laid his hand on his heart for a moment. The marshal's eyes had followed the glances of his master, and he beheld a strange object at one of the windows of the emperor's rooms. The curtain was cautiously drawn aside, and the beautiful head of a young lady was seen behind it.

"_Mort de ma vie_!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lannes, loudly and impetuously.

"Well, what is the matter?" asked Napoleon, turning hastily to him.

Lannes was still staring up at the window; but the charming person had already disappeared, and the curtains were closed again.

"Sire," faltered Lannes, in confusion, "sire, I believe I myself am bewitched; I beheld an apparition just now."

"Did your good wife appear to you?" asked Napoleon, laughing.

"Would she were such a fair-haired angel!" exclaimed Lannes, heaving a sigh. "But in that case, sire, I should very earnestly oppose her appearance at the windows of the imperial rooms--"

"Hush, you old babbler!" said Napoleon, laughing; "is it necessary, then, to confess every thing one has dreamed?" And, as he liked to do when in good-humor, he pulled the marshal's ear so violently that Lannes made a very wry face.

The emperor turned with a grave bearing to his soldiers, and the parade commenced. After it was over, he repaired to the castle, to work with his adjutant-general in his cabinet. Before doing so, however, he said to Marshal Lannes: "I wish you to dine with me to-day, and to-night I will play a game of _vingt-et-un_ with you, Talleyrand, and Duroc; I must get even with you for yesterday. Do not forget, marshal--we shall dine together to-day!"

"Sire," said Lannes, joyfully, "were you to place a dish of the boiled ears of the Russians before me, I would eat them with great relish if you look at me as kindly as you are doing now!"

Napoleon laughed and ascended the palace staircase. An hour later a dusty carriage rolled into the yard of Castle Finkenstein. It was Marshal Lefebvre, who, agreeably to the emperor's invitation, had arrived. The marshal felt somewhat embarra.s.sed and anxious. This order of Napoleon to set out immediately on receipt of the dispatch, and repair to his headquarters at Finkenstein, had filled the conqueror of Dantzic with some apprehension, lest the emperor had summoned him to rebuke him for having granted such honorable terms to the Prussian garrison, and for permitting them to march out with their arms, instead of making them prisoners of war. The marshal therefore entered the anteroom with a face somewhat pale, and requested the officer in waiting to announce him.

"His majesty is at work in his cabinet," said the officer. "On such occasions no one is permitted to disturb him, unless he be a bearer of important dispatches."

"The emperor ordered me to report to him immediately on my arrival. Go, therefore, and announce me." The officer obeyed hesitatingly.

Napoleon was seated at a desk covered with maps and papers. Pointing at a map spread out on the table, he was just turning eagerly to his adjutant-general, Marshal Berthier. "Here--this is the point whither we have to drive the Russians; and there, on the banks of the Alle, they shall fearfully atone for the battle of Eylau. Well," he said, turning to the officer who had just entered, "what do you want?"

"Sire, Marshal Lefebvre asks your majesty to grant him an audience. He says your majesty summoned him here from Dantzic."