Henri sank into the chair. It had taken all his influence and the better part of a day to make it as far as he had through the confusion to find his brother, and then to sit before this exhausted man. No one had known anything about where the prisoners might have been taken. The attention of Paris was on other things. The boys hadn’t followed Jules, but had run straight to the château, Paul in bitter tears, Moussa breathless and afraid, where they told the story of what they had seen.
“He was a prisoner, Father,” Moussa told Henri. “He was in chains. I could read the sign he wore. It said he ran away.”
Paul was miserable. “We couldn’t get near him. They pushed us away.”
Henri set out immediately. He went first to the Tuileries, to the headquarters of the Imperial Guard, arguing his way through the chaos to the inner offices that had been his brother’s post in Paris. The place was deserted except for a soldier who wandered through the rubble that had been picked through by servants of the palace and by the crowds outside. Papers had been carted away, furniture stolen, wallpaper ripped from the walls. Henri told the soldier what he wanted. The man looked at him as if he were mad. “Imperial Guard? But there is no Imperial Guard anymore, monsieur. There is no emperor!”
He made his way through the crowded streets to the Hôtel de Ville, the unofficial headquarters of the new republic. Henri found rumors of a general amnesty for prisoners, but no prisoners. He was referred to the Chamber of Deputies, a teeming mass of confusion where no one knew anything. Finally a helpful officer of the National Guard suggested the École Militaire. Henri bribed his way inside and found his brother in a makeshift cell in a common yard, separated from the other prisoners only by wire.
Their meeting had been brief and painful. To the hooting of the other prisoners, the brothers clasped arms, Jules’s hands restrained by chains, and for several moments no words passed between them. Jules struggled to maintain his dignity as he stood unwashed in tattered clothing before his older brother and sought the words to explain. His story poured out but his voice cracked twice, betraying him.
Henri listened with a sense of unreality, his outrage tinged by the great sadness he felt, that such a proud man should be so humbled before the world. He knew how difficult it was for Jules even to speak. “You must not despair,” Henri said, his own voice thick and his words somehow hollow. “This cannot last for long. They will find the truth and set you free.” Jules nodded without conviction.
Before leaving the École, a furious Count deVries had sought out the commanding officer, ready to horsewhip the man for the extraordinarily harsh conditions of his brother’s confinement. But to his astonishment he found no one in command. “There was a major here,” one of the guards told him, “but he left.” Ordinarily, private quarters for an officer would have been automatic. Even captured Prussian officers were granted such amenities. But the soldiers guarding Jules were a rough and angry lot from Paris, radical patriots to the core who took delight in delivering small humiliations to any representative of the old order. Jules earned their special attention on three counts: as an officer, an imperialist, and a nobleman. They roasted him mercilessly. “Three roads to hell you’ve trod,” they taunted him. “The only thing you’ve gotten right was your desertion. And for that you’ll be shot,” they gloated. They shorted his food and made him dump his own slop.
So Henri had emptied his pockets to buy his brother better treatment from the mob. His thick wad of francs swiftly overcame their political and social concerns and their need for petty amusements, and they promised the count that the colonel would see better care.
Intending to return later with more money and fresh clothing for the colonel, Henri had gone at once to see Raspail at the general’s home.
“It is absurd,” Henri told him. “They have arrested him for desertion. He is being held like an animal.”
“Absurd? Today everything is absurd, Count. I heard of his arrest from a colleague in Châlons. A bad business. Madness heaped upon madness.”
“Then you must help him!”
“Help him! Help him!” His voice was mocking. “Count deVries, let me explain a few things. The reports I have say that our front-line forces who are not dead or wounded are being sent to Belgium. The emperor is prisoner of the Prussians. They say the empress has fledEngland. There is a mob at the Chamber of Deputies, everyone scrapping for control. For the moment everyone’s in charge and no one’s in charge. Ten pretty speeches for every empty thought. Bismarck’s armies are marching toward Paris. They’ll be here in a matter of weeks if not days. Who will defend Paris and the new republic? Marshal Bazaine is holed up in Metz, trapped like a rat.”
Raspail paced back and forth across the little room, pausing to look out the window upon the courtyard. His voice was laced with scorn.
“The streets out there are running wild with rabble calling themselves the National Guard. Most of them are drunk. They cannot shoot straight or march in a line. They cannot wipe themselves! And then after all that I have an officer under arrest for desertion. Under the circumstances, Count, you’ll forgive me if the colonel’s troubles have not received my utmost attention!”
“I understand the magnitude of the trouble at our gates, General. But Jules is an officer of the Guard, unjustly charged. He could never be guilty of this!”
“Guilty! You misunderstand me, Count. I have known the colonel for a long time. I was in Italy when he was decorated. He is a solid officer. He lacks the brilliance of your father, to be sure, but he is no coward. But it doesn’t matter just now whether he is guilty or not.”
“How can you say that?”
Raspail looked at Henri as though he were a particularly stupid schoolboy.
“You don’t seem to grasp what is happening here! This morning I was in my carriage and a woman – a woman! – stopped me on the street and accused me of cowardice. Me! Of treason, for remaining at my post in Paris while our armies were slaughtered in the field!” Raspail’s voice rose shrilly. He slammed the table with his fist, and a carafe of water crashed to the floor. “For thirty years I have served France. I wear the uniform of its emperor’s guard! And now that he is disgraced, so are we all in the eyes of France. A Frenchman has no pity for failure. There will be retribution. There will be punishment for the defeat. People will have to be found to be responsible. Many people. Jules is in a bad position, Count. He is a good place for the mobs to begin.”
“But the mobs won’t be trying him.”
“Won’t they? I wouldn’t be so certain. I don’t know anymore. I have lost my command. There is nothing to command anymore. It is why you found me here, in my home. I have no office, no post. I will offer my services to the National Guard. I don’t know whether they’ll have me. Whether they do or not, I have no authority to deal with Jules. I don’t know who does. I suspect no one else knows either. It will take some time to sort out.”
“Then we must fill that time finding the people who could help him. Jules told me there was a man named Dupree serving under him. A major who saw what happened. He could clear this up.”
Raspail snorted. “If Dupree is even alive after the massacre at Sedan, he is probably in a prisoner of war camp in Belgium. Or, very well, let us suppose he escaped. If so he’ll hardly be headed for Paris, knowing we’ll be the next target of the Prussians. He’ll look to join other units still operating in the provinces. I remind you that we are not yet defeated by the Hun. Until we are – God forbid – there will be other armies. He would try to join them.” Raspail shook his head. “Long odds for finding him, I’d say.”
As the general spoke Henri knew what he said was true. Raspail was hammering away at his hope, relentlessly shattering his illusions that this outrage might be resolved easily. Henri had another thought.
“There is his accuser. Delescluze.”
“Oui, le Franc-tireur. A drop of dirtwater in a big sea, I’m afraid. A guerilla, waging war by stealth, using treachery against the Hun. Unlikely his unit was inv
olved at Sedan. Even if he weren’t the coward the colonel makes him out to be, his unit would be in hiding. If the Prussians caught him he’d be shot, not taken prisoner. The Hun will have no more patience for his ilk than would I. You’ll never find him. And it is certain he won’t show up for the trial.”
Henri shrugged. “Then we should be able to have the charges dismissed! Surely a letter isn’t enough to support formal charges. And without testimony there could never be a trial.”
“Have you read the letter?”
“No.”
“It is specific. Signed by a French officer. And it is accompanied by a second charge, from a sergeant the colonel encountered while he was under arrest and being escorted back to Paris. The sergeant’s charge of attempted escape makes Delescluze’s look stronger. It is not enough, I agree, to make a perfect case against the colonel, or maybe even a good one. But it is too much to ignore. There will be a court-martial. It may come down to nothing more than the word of Colonel deVries against two letters. If that is so, then his fate will depend entirely upon who sits in judgment upon him. If these were normal times, then I would call his chances good. The military takes care of its officers. But these are not normal times. The revenge seekers may carry the day.” For a while both men were silent.
“You are not a man to give up easily, General. Surely you will not leave him to the wolves.”
Exasperated, Raspail threw his hands up.
“Do you not hear me, Count? The wolves pay me no heed! I have no influence! What I have not told you is that yesterday I tried to see the colonel. I was denied entry to the stockade. By a corporal. He looked at my uniform and told me I had no right! A corporal! Me! No right!” The indignity thundered from him. Abruptly he stood and went to the window, his back to Henri. For days his moods had swung wildly. One moment he was the fighter, ready to take up a rifle himself and find the bastard Bismarck. The next he was ready to retire, discouraged and outraged by those who questioned his fitness. He had never known such a time. It was one thing to suffer at the hands of one’s enemies. It was another to do so at the hands of one’s countrymen.
He paced and fumed and finally assented. “I will try to help, deVries,” he said. “I doubt whether I will be of much use. But I will try.”
* * *
Count Otto von Bismarck rode in the carriage along the dirt path. He loved this part of France, with its charming valleys and picturesque towns. The woods were fragrant and still. A kingfisher hunted above a quiet rivulet. Beyond, in the lovely river, a lone heron diverted its attention from the muddy waters to watch the chancellor pass. Bismarck was on his way to meet General von Moltke, whose armies had been so superb and whose successes had so astonished the world, bringing Bismarck so deliciously near to realizing the grand schemes that raced in his brain.
Behind him lay the smoking ruin of an iron tempest. He had mounted the hilltop overlooking the little fortress town of Sedan in the valley where the French army and its emperor were trapped. There he had stood throughout the long day, next to King Wilhelm and the American general Sheridan, who had come to observe. From their camp above the river they watched the methodical slaughter unfold. The French armies were surrounded and outmaneuvered, defeated before the battle began, yet unwilling to yield. The carnage had been horrible, even for the victor to behold, beginning in the morning mists that rose from the Meuse. Deadly fire rained onto the French cavalry from the hills of Floing to the north. Down into the valley and across the river, the German artillery screamed death through the day, butchering everything in its path, scorching the forests of the Ardennes with powder and iron. King Wilhelm had been much moved by it, and had shaken his head in pity for the enemy. “Gallant lads,” he said, watching as they threw themselves in waves on the long knives of Prussia until their blood ran to the Meuse and flowed red to the sea.
After the battle, in which twenty thousand had died, Bismarck had greeted Louis Napoléon, the pathetic husk of an emperor, ravaged by the pain of his kidney stones, nearly unable to move. He had tried hard and unsuccessfully to die among his troops. But the fates had been unkind and the bullets had flown around him, and he had lived to shoulder the awful burden of the white flag of surrender. They had met at a little weaver’s cottage at Donchery, the emperor in his general’s dress, polite and solicitous. He had not desired war, he wanted the chancellor to know, but had been forced into it by public opinion. He apologized that he could not surrender for his nation, since Eugénie was regent and the legal government was in Paris. But he placed himself and his army at the unconditional disposal of the king. Afterward he had met briefly with Wilhelm. And then in the heavy rains of dawn he had climbed painfully into a brougham and ridden under escort into captivity.
Now that business was done. Before Bismarck lay all of France, and beyond her a continent cowering at the might of the German war machine. The rout was almost complete, but Bismarck knew it was not over. The French were beaten but would not yet admit it. Their pride would raise another army and their honor would defend Paris to the death. That was all right, he thought. The new army would be unworthy, and he had already decided not to invade Paris. It would be a shame to destroy such a beautiful city, and he respected the ability of the Parisians to fight in the streets. There was no need to shed so much German blood. Instead, his armies would surround the city and place her under siege. She would strangle, cut off from the world. Her residents would quarrel among themselves in a slow rot. He would plunge the City of Light into darkness as the rest of France watched helplessly. He would settle himself and the king into – into where? Versailles! Yes, perfect! What luxurious irony, to sit in the palace of French kings and wait for the pearl of France to die!
He ordered his driver to pull over. Across the river he could see wagons and artillery of the army of the crown prince of Saxony. They were rumbling toward Paris, to make his vision of a Second Reich come true.
* * *
“Maman? Maman, listen to me. Maman, are you there?”
Paul shook his mother. Elisabeth sat in the darkened room, the shades drawn. Paul wanted her to turn and look at him, to acknowledge him in some direct way, but she only sat there, listening to other voices inside, voices that were louder than his, voices that for days had kept her sitting alone, unable to comfort her son, unable to leave the room. She nodded dumbly, so he knew she could hear him, and once she squeezed his hand, but she said nothing and wouldn’t look at him. She had not eaten or slept since the boys brought the news. All the color had left her face and there was no life in her eyes. The room was black with her despair. For two months she had been talking to the portrait of Jules on the wall. Now her chair faced away from it, and she was silent.
When Henri came to tell her that he had seen Jules, and that Jules had asked about her, she could not respond. She could not respond when Paul came. She didn’t know whether she could ever respond again. She wanted to say something to Paul, to comfort him, but she couldn’t look him in the eye, couldn’t face the humiliation she felt, not even with her ten-year-old son. There was nothing to say.
It is so unfair! How could they do this to me?
She had never known defeat or failure, or anything but the gay certainty of a woman whose husband was a man of destiny. Now the dream was shattered; only a nightmare remained. She sat in the gloom and rocked in her chair, wrapped in rage and covered with helplessness, her soul as cold and dark as a crypt. She could not imagine the emptiness of life without position. She was obsessed by thoughts of the social snubs she would receive, of the drying up of invitations to important social events. Never once in those first few days did her thoughts turn to what Jules might be going through, or to imagining the hardships of his confinement. Never once did she wonder about the charges against him. The charges didn’t matter; she blacked them out. What mattered was that the war had turned personal, that it had turned personal against her.
Now Paul was desperately worried for her, even more so than for his father. Somehow he kne
w that his father was made of iron and would be all right. But he had never seen his mother this way, just sitting and rocking in silence. She was always so cheerful, so full of energy, so alive; but now his father was locked away and his mother seemed all used up. Paul was afraid. He wondered if it was all his fault. Nothing had been the same since he’d seen his mother with the general at the party when they were – what, he didn’t know for sure, except that he shouldn’t have seen it, shouldn’t have been spying, and now he felt so distant from her. He moped around the château, shaking his head when Moussa asked if he wanted to go to the river, paying no attention to his lessons with Gascon. Serena tried to comfort him.
“Your father is a strong man, Paul. I do not know the French way in these things, but they will see it is a mistake. They will let him go, I am certain of it. He is a good soldier. You must be a brave boy. Your uncle Henri is doing everything possible. He will get him out.”
Paul nodded. There was a painful lump in his throat. Tears welled in his eyes and he tried to hide them, but she brushed his cheek with the back of her hand and it was too much for him. He collapsed in sobs and buried his face in her chest. She rocked him and stroked his hair.
Later she went into Elisabeth’s room. Elisabeth sat in her chair and ignored her. A bowl of soup, now cold, sat on a nightstand. Serena was a practical woman of the desert who had no patience for self-inflicted frailty. She ripped open the curtains and the dying sun of the September afternoon streamed into the room. Elisabeth blinked and turned away, but Serena took her by the chin and made her respond. Elisabeth pulled away, but Serena pulled back harder.
“Elisabeth, stop this! Your son needs a mother,” she said angrily.
“He needs a father,” Elisabeth sniffed.
“Quit sniveling! Wake up! You must come out of this room!”
“Stay out of it. It is not your affair. Leave me alone. Go read your books.”
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