The Eagle of the Empire: A Story of Waterloo by Cyrus Townsend Brady (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📖

the Marshal to use a boat we had found to cross over the Danube and escape. 'No,' he said, 'certainly not! I will not desert my brave comrades! I will save them or die with them.' Ah, he was a brave man that day."

"And that such a man could betray the Emperor!" exclaimed another.

"I never could understand it," said one of the soldiers.

"That was the day," said a third, "when our drums were shot to pieces and we had to beat the long roll on the iron cooking cans."

"You remember it well, comrade."

"I was a drummer there. I remember there were but two thousand of the six thousand in the division that answered roll call that day."

"I carried that Eagle into Moscow," said a scarred, one-armed veteran. "I would have carried it back, but I was wounded at Malojaroslavets and would have died but for you, my friend."

"And I carried it across the Niemen after that retreat was over," returned the other, acknowledging the generous tribute of his old fellow soldier.

"Sacre-bleu! How cold it was. Not many of you can remember that march because so few survived it. The battalions in Spain can thank God they escaped it," said another.

"It was hot enough there, and those English gave us plenty of fighting," added one of the veterans who had fought against Wellington.

"Aye, that they did, I'll warrant," continued the veteran of Russia. "The Emperor who marched on foot with the rest of us. Before crossing the Beresina—I shudder to think of the thousands drowned then. I dream about it sometimes at night—we were ordered to break up the Eagles and throw them into the river."

"And did you?"

"Not I. That is the only order I disobeyed. I carried it with me, wrapped in my own clothes. One night my fingers froze to it. See!" He lifted his maimed hands. "But I held on. I crossed the Nieman before Marshal Ney. He threw away his musket, but I kept the Eagle. He was the last man, I was just before him," said the man proudly.

"It was Marteau who saved it at Leipsic," said Lestoype, "and again after he had hurled it into the Aube at Arcis he found it and brought it back. And it is here."

Tears glistened in the eyes of the veterans and the youth alike. Hearts beat more rapidly, breaths came quicker, as these brave and fragmentary reminiscences of the part the Eagle had played in past glories were recited.

"What shall we do with it now?" asked Lestoype at last.

CHAPTER XX WHEN THE VIOLETS BLOOM AGAIN

Now there was not a man in the room who had not heard of the order to return the Eagles to Paris, where they were to be broken up and melted down, not a man in the army for that matter. Nor was there a man who had not heard some account of the resistance of other regiments to the order, which had been nevertheless enforced wherever possible, although in cases not a few Eagles had been hidden or disappeared mysteriously and had not been given up. There was scarcely a man in the regiment—unless some royalist officer or new recruit—who had not been glad that their own Eagle had been lost honorably in battle and buried, as they believed, in the river. It was more fitting that it should meet that end than be turned back to Paris to be broken up, melted down and cast into metal for ignoble use—and any other use would be ignoble in the estimation of the regiment.

"I would rather throw it into the Is�re," growled old Grenier, "than send it back."

"And I, and I, and I," came from different voices.

"Perhaps," said Lestoype, speaking slowly and with deep meaning, for he realized that his words were in the highest degree treasonable, "if we can preserve it by some means we may see it once again at the head of the regiment when——" he stopped. The silence was positively ghastly. He looked about him. The men thrilled to his glance. "——'when the violets bloom again,'" he said, using the mystic poetic phrase which had become so widely current.

"God speed the day!" burst out some deep voiced veteran.

"Amen, amen!"

"Vive l'Empereur!"

"Let us save the Eagle!"

The whole room was in tumult of nervous cries.

"Vive le brave Marteau!" finally said Drehon when he could get a hearing. "He has given us back our honor, our life."

The emotions of the moment were too much. Reckless of what might happen, the room instantly rang with loud acclaim in response to this appeal. The soldiers sprang to their feet, moved by irresistible emotion. Swords were drawn again.

The officers and men clustered around Lestoype and Marteau. The Eagle was lifted high, blades were upheaved threateningly again. Dangers were forgotten. Intoxicated with enthusiasm they gave free course to their emotions.

"Vive l'Empereur!" resounded through the hall, not whispered but shouted, not shouted but roared!

In their mad frenzy of excitement they did not, any of them, notice that the door into the hall had been thrown open and that a young officer of the regiment stood there, his face pale with amazement, his mouth open, staring. He could not take in the whole purport of the scene but he saw the Eagle, he heard the cries, the word "Vive" came to him out of the tumult, coupled with the name of Marteau and the Emperor.

"Gentlemen!" he finally shouted, raising his voice to its highest pitch and as the sound penetrated to the tumultuous mass the noise died away almost as suddenly as it had arisen.

Men faced about and stared toward the entrance. There stood young St. Laurent, one of the royalist officers, newly appointed to the regiment, who had been made aide to the Governor and commander.

"Major Lestoype," said the youth with great firmness, having recovered his presence of mind and realizing instantly the full purport and menace of the situation, "an order from the Governor requests your presence at once. I was sent to deliver it. The soldiers at the door strove vainly to stop me but I forced my way past them. I am an unwelcome guest, I perceive, being a loyal servant of the King, but I am here. What is the meaning of this gathering, the worship of this discarded emblem, these treasonable cries?"

"Am I, a veteran of the army of Italy, to be catechised and questioned by a boy?" growled Lestoype in mingled rage and astonishment.

"You forget yourself, monsieur. I regret to fail in any military duty or in respect to my seniors, but in this I represent the Marquis d'Aumenier, the Governor, aye, even the King, my master. Whence came this Eagle?"

There was a dead silence.

"I brought it, monsieur, to my old comrades, to my old regiment," coolly said Marteau, stepping forward.

"Traitor!" exclaimed St. Laurent, confronting him boldly.

"Not so, for I have taken no oath to King Louis."

"Ah, you still wear the insignia of the Corsican, I see," continued the young aide, looking more closely. "But how about these gentlemen?"

Again the question was met by silence.

"Messieurs," said St. Laurent, "you are old soldiers of the former Emperor. I see. I understand. You love him as I and mine the King. It is as much as my life is worth, as much as my honor, to condone it. Yet I would not be a tale-bearer, but this cannot pass unless——"

"Shall I cut him down where he stands, Mon Commandant?" growled the old port-aigle, presenting his weapon.

"And add murder to treason!" exclaimed St. Laurent, his face flushing a little but not giving back an inch before the threatening approach of the veteran.

There was good stuff in him, evidently, and even those who foresaw terrible consequences to themselves in his unexpected presence could not but admire him. They were even proud that he was a Frenchman, even though he served the King they hated.

"By no means," said Lestoype, motioning the color-bearer back. "You shall go as freely as you came."

"And if you do as I suggest I shall go and forget all I have seen, messieurs."

"Impossible!"

"Upon my honor I shall do it but on one condition."

"Ah! and that is?"

"That you give me the Eagle."

"Give you the Eagle!" exclaimed old Captain Grenier.

"The Eagle for which our brave comrades died," said Drehon.

"The Eagle which has been carried in triumph in every capital in Europe!" added Suraif.

The whole room was filled with cries again.

"Never! Never!"

The whole mass surged forward, including Marteau.

"Was it to give it up to any servant of King Louis that I brought it back?" the latter shouted threateningly.

"Gentlemen," said the young aide so soon as he could make himself heard in the tumult, "the choice is yours, not mine. I am a soldier of the King, aide-de-camp to the Governor of this place, an officer under the Marquis d'Aumenier. You have your ideas of duty, I have mine. I have already stretched my conscience to the limit in offering to be silent about this under any conditions. I am doing wrong in concealing it but I do not wish to doom so many brave men to disgrace, to death. You, monsieur"—he pointed toward Marteau—"refused a commission in this regiment. You wear the insignia of Bonaparte. You have no place here. Withdraw. Your arrival has disturbed the orderly course of events. These gentlemen were doing their duty contentedly——"

"No, by God, never," roared out a veteran. "Contentedly! We will never be content until——"

"Until what, monsieur?"

"Until the violets bloom again," came the answer, accompanied by a burst of sardonic laughter.

"Your interest in the flowers of spring does not concern me, gentlemen," returned the young aide, affecting not to understand, and perhaps he did not. "If you will give me the Eagle——"

"And what will you do with it if we should do so?"

"I will be silent as to this."

"And how will you explain your possession of it?"

"I will say that I got it from Monsieur Marteau, who has gone."

"And what will you do with it?"

"That shall be as the Marquis d'Aumenier directs."

"And he?"

"I think he will undoubtedly obey the orders of the Minister of War and send it to Paris to be broken up."

"Gentlemen," said Major Lestoype, endeavoring to quiet and repress the growls of antagonism that arose on every hand, "you hear the proposition of Monsieur St. Laurent. Seeing his duty as he does, I am forced to admit," continued the veteran with great magnanimity, "that it does credit to his heart. What shall we do?"

"Purchase our freedom, purchase our rank, purchase our lives by giving up our Eagle!" said old Captain Grenier. "Never!"

"I vote NO to that proposition," said Drehon.

"And I, and I, and I," acclaimed the soldiers.

"You hear, Monsieur St. Laurent?" said the Major. "These gentlemen have signified their will unmistakably."

"I hear," said the young aide. "Major Lestoype, forgive me if I have failed in respect or soldierly deference to my superior officer, but I, too, have my duty to perform. I warn you all that when I pass from this room I shall go directly to the Marquis d'Aumenier and report what I have seen."

"When he passes," cried some of the soldiers of lower rank ominously, emphasizing the adverb and rudely thrusting themselves between St. Laurent and the door.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," said the young aide quite coolly. "It seems that I spoke unadvisedly in one particular."

"You retract?" said a voice.

"Never. I should have said 'if I pass.'"

Swords were still out, hands were clenched, arms were raised.

"Say the word and he dies where he stands," cried one.

"Gentlemen," said Lestoype sternly, "back, all of you. Free passage for Monsieur St. Laurent. Back, I say. Let him go unharmed, as he came."

"My orders were to request your presence before the Governor of the town immediately," said the aide.

"I attend him at once, young gentleman," returned the old soldier, seizing his cloak and covering his head with his chapeau. "Gentlemen," he added, turning to the rest, "I leave the Eagle in your hands. Before he departs let me say that Monsieur St. Laurent has borne himself like a brave man, a gallant officer, and a true gentleman. Monsieur, you will not take amiss this heartfelt tribute from so old a soldier as I."

"I thank you, sir, and you, gentlemen," said the young aide, surveying the men, their sudden temper abated, now looking at him with admiration, some of them with hands raised in salute. "The duty