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 -
 
 THE 
 
 MAN OF IRON 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD DEHAN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 BETWEEN TWO THIEVES, ONE BRAVER THING, 
 (THE DOP DOCTOR), ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROS5ET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Conrigkt, 1916, By 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 AU rigJUt weired, including that of tranttation 
 iniojortign langvagu 
 
 February, 1916
 
 PREFACE 
 
 For the second time, since this book's 'beginning, the rose 
 of July had flamed into splendid bloom. I drew breath, 
 for my task approached its ending, and looked up from 
 the yellowed newspaper records of a great War waged 
 forty-four years ago. 
 
 Perhaps I had grown negligent of modern signs and 
 portents, or the web of Diplomacy had veiled them from all 
 but privileged eyes. . . . Now I saw, looming on the 
 eastern horizon, a cloud in the shape of a man's clenched 
 fist in a gauntleted glove of mail. 
 
 For days previously the frames of the open windows that 
 look across the garden seaward, had leaped and rattled in 
 answer to the incessant thud-thudding of big naval guns at 
 sea. One opal dawn showed the grim shapes of super- 
 Dreadnoughts, Dreadnoughts, pre-Dreadnoughts and war- 
 cruisers, strung out in battle-line along the glittering-green 
 line of the horizon, escorted by a flotilla of destroyers and 
 a school of submarines. Night fell, and sea, land, and sky 
 alternately whitened and blotted in the wheeling ray of the 
 searchlights. Electric balls dumbly gibbered in Admiralty 
 Secret Code. Gulls cradled on the glassy waters of the 
 Channel must have been roused by outbursts of full- 
 throated British cheering, and the crash of the Fleet bands 
 striking into the National Anthem, as the sealed orders of 
 the Supreme Admiral were signalled from the Flagship 
 commanding the Southern Fleet. No sound reached us 
 ashore but the hush of the waves, the whisper of the night- 
 wind, and the plaintive ululation of the mousing owls on 
 Muttersmoor. Yet what we saw that night was the awaken- 
 ing of Great Britain to the knowledge that her greatness is 
 not past and gone. 
 
 Since then, the menacing cloud in the east has assumed 
 solidity. The mailed fist has fallen, imprinting Ruin on the 
 soti of a neutral country, demolishing the matchless heir- 
 
 vii 
 
 S135822
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 looms of Art and the priceless treasures of Literature, 
 bringing down in gray fragments the glories of Gothic 
 architecture, everywhere destroying the Temple of God and 
 shattering the House of Life. The galleries and cabinets 
 of noble and burgher, the treasure-houses of a nation are 
 plundered. 
 
 We have lived to see the War of Nations. We are in it: 
 fighting as our Allies of Belgium, France, and Russia are 
 fighting; for racial name, national existence, social inde- 
 pendence, and freedom of bodies and souls. And this being 
 so, I see no cause to blot a line that I have written. For 
 the Germany of 1870 was not the Germany of 1914. The 
 New Spirit of Teutonism had not shown itself in those dead 
 days I have tried to vivify. 
 
 The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was waged sternly 
 and mercilessly, but not in defiance of the Rules that gov- 
 ern the Great Game. Treaties were held as something more 
 sacred than scraps of paper. Blood was lavishly poured 
 out, gold relentlessly wrung from the coffers of a van- 
 quished and impoverished State. Things were done as in 
 the instances of Bazeilles and Chateaudun that made the 
 world shudder, but not with the sickness of mortal loathing. 
 Kings and nobles made War like noblemen and Kings. 
 
 Yet that great Minister whose prodigious labor reared up 
 stone by stone the German Empire was, unless biographers 
 have lied, haunted and obsessed in his declining days by 
 remorse of conscience and terrors of the soul. "But for 
 me," he is reported to have said, "three great wars would 
 not have been made, nor would eight hundred thousand of 
 my fellow men have died by violence. Now, for all that I 
 have to answer before Almighty God!" . . . Could the 
 relentless exponent of the fierce gospel of blood and iron 
 have foreseen the imminent, approaching disintegration of 
 his colossal life-work, under the hands of his successors 
 might he have known what Dead Sea fruit of ashes and 
 bitterness his fatal creed, grafted upon the oak of Ger- 
 many, was fated to bring forth he would have drunk ere 
 death of the crimson lees of the Cup of Judgment; he 
 would have seen in the shape of his pupil the grotesque, 
 distorted image of himself. 
 
 RICHARD DEHAN. 
 
 SOUTH DEVON, November, 1914.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 WHEN Patrick Carolan Breagh attained the age of six 
 years, the boy being tall enough to view his own topknot 
 of scarlet curls and freckled snub nose in the big shining 
 mirror of his stepmother's toilet-table, without standing on 
 the tin bonnet-box that was kept under the chintz cover, 
 or climbing on a chair, he was fated to acquire, during 
 one brief half-hour's concealment under a Pembroke table, 
 more knowledge of Life, Death, and the value of Money, 
 than would otherwise have come to him in the course of 
 half a dozen more years. 
 
 Upon this unf orgetable third of January, his plaid frock 
 had been taken off and, to his infinite delight, replaced by 
 a little pair of blue cloth breeches and a roundabout jacket. 
 Amateurish as to cut, the nether garments displaying so 
 little difference fore and aft that it did not matter in the 
 least which way you faced when you stepped into them, 
 they were yet splendid, not only in Carolan 's eyes. Alan, 
 his junior by three years, bellowed with envy on beholding 
 them; and four-year-old Monica sucked her finger and 
 stared with all her might. 
 
 It was plain to Carolan that, having once assumed the 
 manly garments, no boy could be expected to put on those 
 hateful petticoats again. In vain Nurse Povah, who had 
 been Carolan 's foster-mother, and Miss Josey, the gover- 
 ness, explained to him that the breeches were not com- 
 pleted, and directed his eyes to the mute evidence of pins, 
 chalk-marks, and yellow basting-threads. Their arguments 
 were vain, their entreaties addressed to deaf ears. An 
 attempt to remove the cause of contention by force resulted 
 in Nurse 's being butted, though not hard ! and Miss Josey 
 kicked with viciousness. In the confusion that ensued, the 
 rebel effected an escape from the scene of combat. And 
 the door of the sitting-room being open, Carolan trotted 
 across the Government cocoanut matting of the landing 
 
 1
 
 2 THE MAN OF IRONi 
 
 with the intention of confessing his own misdeeds, since 
 Miss Josey was quite certain to report him at headquarters, 
 had not this often-tested method of blunting the edge of 
 retributory justice failed, through his own fault. 
 
 For upon entering the large, shabbily furnished room, 
 situated on the second floor of a gaunt, gray stone building 
 known as Block D, Married Officers' Quarters the room 
 that served Captain Breagh and his second wife as sitting- 
 room, dining-room, smoking-room and boudoir Carolan 
 became aware that his stepmother, quite unconscious of 
 his intrusion, was dusting the china vases on the mantel- 
 shelf, and was instantly possessed by the conviction that 
 it would be huge fun to hide under the large round table 
 that occupied the middle of the worn Brussels carpet, and 
 bounce out upon the poor lady when she turned, making 
 her say "Owh!" 
 
 So the boy noiselessly dived under the deep, hanging, 
 silk-fringed border of the Indian shawl that covered the 
 circular Pembroke table, upon which were ranged, about a 
 central basket of wax fruit and flowers, gilt frames with 
 spotty daguerrotypes, albums of scraps, Books of Beauty 
 containing the loveliest specimens of Early Victorian female 
 aristocracy, and Garlands of Poetry reeking with the senti- 
 mental effusions of Eliza Cook and L. E. L., interspersed 
 with certain card-cases and paper-knives of Indian carved 
 ivory and sandal-wood, and other trifles of brass and 
 filigree ware. 
 
 The big, shabbily furnished second-floor room had three 
 windows looking out upon the graveled expanse of the 
 Parade-ground, and commanding a view of the flower- 
 bedded patch of sacred green turf, inclosed by posts and 
 chains, that graced the front of the pillared, pedimented, 
 and porticoed building that housed the Officers ' Mess. And 
 when the regiment got the route for another garrison town, 
 nearly everything the room contained from the Pem- 
 broke center-table and chintz-covered sofa, to the secre- 
 taire at which Captain Breagh penned his letters, the big 
 leather-covered arm-chair in which he sat, and the Bengal 
 tiger-skin hearthrug, would be packed, with the picture 
 of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Vimiera, and 
 the chimney-glass over which it always hung into wooden 
 cases, with the before-mentioned chimney -glass, curtains and 
 carpets, beds, baths, uniform-cases and a great number
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 3 
 
 of other things; and then after a period of rumbling con- 
 fusion there would be a new sitting-room looking on an- 
 other barrack-square, other bedrooms and a fresh nursery, 
 and Carolan would forget the old ones in something 
 under a week. As a matter of fact, the regiment had been 
 shifted four times since its return from India, when Caro- 
 lan was little more than a baby, and Monica and Alan and 
 Baba were nowhere at all. 
 
 Now either Mrs. Breagh occupied an unconscionable 
 time in dusting the vases and making up the fire for her 
 Captain, who by reason of long service with the regiment 
 in the East was susceptible to chill; or Carolan, with the 
 mental instability shared by the child and the savage, lost 
 interest in his new project and abandoned it. He was 
 squatting silently in his hiding-place when Miss Josey 
 entered; he heard her complaint, noted down two spiteful 
 exaggerations and one malicious falsehood,, and witnessed 
 the exhibition of a bulgy ankle in a badly-gartered white 
 cotton stocking surmounting an elastic-sided cloth boot. 
 When the governess withdrew, consoled by Mrs. Breagh 's 
 sympathy, Nurse Povah was summoned from the other 
 side of the landing by a tinkle of the hand-bell, and bore 
 stout witness on the culprit's side. 
 
 "Did ye see her leg, I'd make so bould as ask, or did 
 ye take her worrud for ut? And av there was anythin' 
 to show barrin ' a flaybite, is ut natheral a boy wud parrut 
 wid his furrst breches widout a kick? Sure, they're the 
 apple av his eye, and the joy av his harrut! And her 
 wid her talk av bendin' his will and breakin' his temper! 
 is ut like ye wud lay a finger on the Captain's eldest son, 
 to plaze the likes of her?" 
 
 "The Captain has said himself over and over that a 
 sound thrashing would be a capital thing for Carry, ' ' Mrs. 
 Breagh returned. 
 
 ' * He praiches ay v bedad ! but does he ever practuss ? ' ' 
 demanded Nurse, smoothing her apron with stout, matronly 
 hands, and getting very red in the cheeks. "Niver fear 
 but he'd be too wise to bring a curse upon himself by ill- 
 thrating a motherless child ! ' ' 
 
 "Motherless!" What did the word mean? Carolan won- 
 dered, recalling how Nurse would describe some particularly 
 down-hearted person as being as long in the jaw as a 
 motherless calf. And now Mrs. Breagh was saying, in the
 
 4 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 kind of voice some good people use for the purpose of 
 Scriptural quotation, and which is not in the least like 
 their accents of every day . . . 
 
 "Solomon said, 'He that spareth the rod' but you 
 Catholics never seem to read the Bible. And I always 
 treat Carolan as if he were my own child and you know 
 I do! 'Ssh! Here comes the Captain and I think I 
 hear Baba crying. ..." 
 
 And Nurse, with the honors of war, retired to the 
 nursery on the other side of the landing, as Captain 
 Breagh's hasty footsteps and the jingle of his scabbard 
 were heard on the stone stair. A minute later he entered 
 the room. But during the minute's interval Carolan had 
 had time to ponder, mentally digest and form a conclusion 
 from what he had just heard. 
 
 It had never previously occurred to him that the stout, 
 dark, beady-eyed, brightly dressed lady whom he had been 
 taught to call Mamma was not really his mother, but he 
 knew it -now. It was revealed to him in one lightning- 
 flash of comprehension that this was the reason why her 
 hands felt so like hands of wood whenever they touched 
 him, and why her kiss, religiously administered night and 
 morning was a thing he would much sooner have gone 
 without. He knew, and something inside him was glad 
 to know that it was not wicked of him not to love her as 
 he loved Nurse, or Monica, or Ponto the brown retriever. 
 And then his heart dropped like a leaden plummet to the 
 pit of his infant stomach. This was to be a day of dis- 
 coveries. He had discovered that by kicking out lustily it 
 had been possible to resist the forcible removal of his new 
 breeches. He had discovered that "Mamma" was not his 
 real, real mother ! Would Daddy turn out to be Monica 's 
 and Alan's and Baba's Daddy, and not Carolan 's, after 
 all? 
 
 A sob rose in his throat, and his hot, dry eyes began to 
 smart and water. But the manly trampling and clanking 
 came nearer. The door opened his father was in the room. 
 He could only see his shiny "Wellington boots, and the 
 bottoms of the red-striped dark blue breeches that were 
 strapped over them. But familiar knowledge built from 
 the boots the handsome manly figure in the light brick-red 
 coat with the Royal blue facings, the China and Punjab 
 war-medals, the crimson sash and the other martial ac-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 5 
 
 couterments topped by the stiff leather stock, and the head 
 whose wealth of jet-black curls and luxuriant bushy 
 whiskers might have been the glory of a fashionable hair- 
 dresser 's window ; in combination with the well-cut features, 
 light blue eyes, and fine rosy complexion, as yet scarcely 
 deteriorated by Mess port, whisky punch, and late 
 hours. 
 
 Captain Breagh kissed Mrs. Breagh with a hearty smack 
 that made Carolan start in his hiding-place, and said the 
 wind was enough to cut you in two, and that the fire 
 looked tempting; as he laid down his pipeclayed gloves 
 and dress-schako with the gilt grenade and white ball-tuft 
 on the aged and dilapidated sideboard, and permitted his 
 lady to relieve him of his sword. Then he rubbed his hands 
 and thrust them to the blaze enjoy ingly, and threw him- 
 self into the creaking leathern arm-chair. This, it sud- 
 denly occurred to Carclan, would be a favorable moment 
 for emerging from concealment. He had got on all-fours, 
 ready to appear in the character of a bear or tiger, when 
 Mrs. Breagh stopped him by beginning to tell tales. The 
 child was beyond control, she declared there was no end 
 to his naughtiness. For the sake of his immortal soul, 
 something would have to be done. . . . 
 
 "What's he been doing? For my own part, I wouldn't 
 give a brass farthing for a pup that wouldn't bite, or a 
 boy that wouldn't show fight when he was put to it!" 
 The arm-chair creaked suggestively as the Captain stretched 
 out his legs, and the firelight danced in the polish of his 
 boots, hardly dimmed by the dry gravel of the Parade- 
 ground. "And it's in the blood, that high spirit. Don't 
 suppose I'm bragging that the Breaghs are any great 
 shakes in the way of family ! though the name 's as decent 
 a one as you'll meet in a long day's march. But Carolan 's 
 a Fermeroy on the mother's side and they're a hot- 
 headed, high-handed breed," the Captain added, taking 
 the newspaper from the Pembroke table, "and have been 
 ever since the year One if you take the trouble to look 
 'em up in Irish History. Not that I've ever read any, 
 but my poor Milly used to say " 
 
 His wife's eyes snapped with irrepressible jealousy at 
 the reference to her predecessor. 
 
 ' ' And everything that came from her you took for Gospel, 
 I suppose?"
 
 6 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 "Pretty near!" said Captain Breagh, and began to 
 unfold his newspaper. 
 
 "I get little enough time for reading things that are 
 useful," said Mrs. Breagh, as the Captain dipped into the 
 crackling sheets. "It was my bounden duty to speak, 
 and I've done it! And if you think you are doing your 
 duty by the child let alone his mother " 
 
 She broke off, for the Captain bounced in his chair, and 
 dashed down the newspaper. 
 
 "Haven't I told you I won't have poor Milly's name 
 dragged into these discussions! She's dead! and so let 
 her be!" 
 
 If a lady can be said to snort, Mrs. Breagh gave utter- 
 ance to a sound of that nature. 
 
 "I'm willing, Alexander, I'm sure! But all things con- 
 sidered, I must say I think it's a pity her ladyship died 
 and left you a widower ! ' ' 
 
 "And you're right there, begad you are! And how 
 many times have I told you she was merely an Honor- 
 able, and not her ladyship!" He left the newspaper 
 sprawling on the hearthrug, and mechanically reaching 
 down his pipe and tobacco-pouch from the corner of the 
 mantelshelf, proceeded to fill the well-browned meer- 
 schaum, and when his wife lighted a spill and held it to 
 him as an olive-branch, he thanked her in an absent way. 
 What did the Captain see as he pulled at the gnawed, 
 amber mouthpiece and stared into the red-hot heart of 
 the fire, communing with that other self that dwells within 
 every man? 
 
 n 
 
 I THINK he saw young Alex Breagh, a junior Lieutenant 
 of the Grenadier company of the Royal Ennis Regiment 
 of Infantry, winning his spurs of manhood under Gough 
 and Hardinge and Gilbert on the plain beside the Sutlej, 
 where stands Ferozshahr. 
 
 "For I don't pretend to be a hero or anything of that 
 sort, but I've never shirked my share of fighting," said the 
 silent voice within him, and the Captain exhaled a spirt of 
 smoke and mumbled: "I believe you!" And the other 
 Breagh went on:
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 "Fair play and no favor won us our honors, mind you! 
 though the chance didn't come until later on. True, we 
 helped Sir Harry Smith to pound the Sikhs at Ferozshahr 
 and at Aliwal, when the cavalry of his Right had driven 
 the Khalsas back across the Bed Ford. Waiting for the 
 elephants with the heavy siege-guns and the ammunition 
 and stores to come up from Delhi, took a hell of a time. 
 Seven long weeks of broiling by day and freezing o ' nights, 
 while Tij Sinh and his thirty-five thousand Khalsas en- 
 trenched themselves, mounted their heavy artillery made 
 their bridge of boats, and encamped their cavalry up the 
 river. But the day came our day! and I don't forget 
 that foggy tenth of February while I 'm breathing. ' ' 
 
 Captain Breagh sucked at his pipe and reflectively pulled! 
 a whisker. And the silent voice went on : 
 
 "We were with the Left Division under General Dick, 
 and led the assault, while Gilbert and Smith feigned to 
 attack on the enemy 's left and center. And in that charge, 
 when the General got his death-wound from a swivel- 
 ball, I was the second red-coat to cross the ditch, and 
 scramble over the big mud rampart, and saber a Sikh 
 gunner with his linstock in his hand! ..." 
 
 Mrs. Breagh, chagrined at remaining so long the object 
 of her husband's inattention, picked up his fallen news- 
 paper and almost timidly laid it on his knee. And the 
 child under the table kept as quiet as a mouse, al- 
 most . . . 
 
 ' ' Thank ye, my dear ! ' ' said the Captain, while the other 
 Breagh went on : 
 
 "And when the Treaty was signed and the rumpus all 
 over for the time ! because Dalhousie 's bungling brought 
 the hornets about our ears again! we marched from 
 Lahore to Calcutta with Britain 's victorious army barring 
 the force we 'd left with Lawrence at Mian Mir. ' ' 
 
 The silence continuing, Mrs. Breagh drew her work- 
 table toward her, and began to look over a basket of little 
 toeless and heel-less stockings. As she did this she sighed. 
 The Captain smoked thoughtfully. And the inward voice 
 went on: 
 
 ' ' The Governor-General and his staff rode with Sir Harry 
 Smith and the Advance and between the Cavalry Brigade 
 that came after 'em for Sir Harry swore he 'd be damned 
 but since we'd seen the hottest of the fighting, we should
 
 8 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 have the post of honor! between the Cavalry and Ours 
 came the spoils of war, drawn by the Government elephants 
 two hundred and fifty Sikh guns we'd taken at Sobraon. 
 Hah!" 
 
 The Captain's eyes were fixed on the fire. He smoked 
 in quick, short puffs. 
 
 "Standards waving, bands blowing their heads off, and 
 a bit o ' loot in most men 's knapsacks. Glory for the dead, 
 and praise and promotion for the living begad! it was 
 worth while just then! to be a British soldier! And 
 I'd been wounded just enough to look interesting, and got 
 a Special Mention in Despatches and the women were 
 pulling caps for me, devil a lie in that! And I danced 
 with Milly at the Welcome Back Ball at Government 
 House, in March, 1846. And whether it was Fate or 
 that way she had of looking up under her eyelashes, and 
 showing a laughing mouth full of tiny pearly-white teeth 
 over the top of her fan, I've never been quite clear. But 
 even before the steward introduced Lieutenant Breagh to 
 the Hon. Millicent Fermeroy, I'd fallen head over ears in 
 love with Milly, and she was as mad for me ! ' ' 
 
 Still silence reigned in the room, only broken by the 
 cinders falling on the hearth, and the breathing of three 
 people. Mrs. Breagh still bent over her basket of little 
 worn socks, of which those in most crying need of darning 
 belonged to Carolan. Her lips were tightly closed, but as 
 the man within her husband talked to the man, the woman 
 within the woman talked to his wife. 
 
 "I wonder whether he knows I know he's thinking of 
 tier again ? I wonder whether she 'd have liked to sit and 
 toil and moil for a child of mine, and know that the other 
 woman held the first place in his heart? Ah, dear me !" 
 
 She glanced at her husband. He did not see her. He 
 was living in the Past. 
 
 "Nobody noticed how often we danced together. . . . 
 It had gone pretty far with us before Her Ladyship scented 
 what was in the wind, and sent an aide-de-camp to remind 
 Miss Fermeroy that the doctor had set down his foot against 
 her overheating herself with waltzing, and I found myself 
 staring after her with her bouquet in my hand. . . . And 
 I took it home to quarters and I've got it now, stowed 
 away with her letters and a lot of other things in a tin 
 uniform-case. . . . Fanny hasn 't an idea of that ! ' '
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 9 
 
 The smoke-puffs came more slowly, and the darning- 
 needle now worked busily. The voice of a sergeant who 
 was drilling a squad of recruits came in gruff barks from 
 the Parade. 
 
 "The Fermeroys were great folks. . . . Colonel Lord 
 Augustus Fermeroy Milly 's uncle, was a tremendous Light 
 Cavalry swell on the Commander-in- Chief's Staff. Of 
 course, I knew that he would never hear of an engagement 
 between his brother's orphan daughter (to do the old 
 man justice, he loved her as his own!) and a Lieutenant 
 of a marching regiment of infantry who 'd nothing but his 
 pay. So as Milly and me had made up our minds we 
 couldn 't live without each other, we were married secretly 
 first at a Protestant Mission Church, and then by a 
 French Franciscan padre and he made bones about spli- 
 cing us because I wasn't a Catholic, and if I hadn't 
 told a white lie or two about my intention of turning 
 Papist, I don't believe he'd have tied the knot. But all's 
 fair in love! and we were in love with a vengeance. I 
 suppose I was a selfish beggar to coax Milly into deceiving 
 her people, but " 
 
 A long ray of chilly January sunshine, full of dancing 
 dust-motes, came in at the window. Mrs. Breagh sneezed 
 as it fell across her face. 
 
 "A time came when I knew I had been as selfish as she 
 never would have called me. People had to be told ! so 
 we enlightened 'em by shooting the moon. The condition 
 of my war-chest wasn't over and above flourishing, but I 
 got a month 's leave for the Mofussil and secured a twenty- 
 rupee furnished bungalow at Titteghur and next morning 
 before the hue and cry had well begun, Lady Augustus 
 got a chit from Milly by harkdra I remember every word 
 of it. 'Dearest Aunt, I hope you have not been alarmed, 
 supposing me to have been murdered or carried off by 
 wicked persons. I am safe and happy with my own dear 
 husband, from whom I shall never be parted now.' ' 
 
 The pipe was nearly smoked out, but the Captain did 
 not appear aware of that. 
 
 " 'Never be parted,' and before three months were over 
 our heads ..." 
 
 Clash ! Mrs. Breagh had let her scissors fall. Her hus- 
 band made a long arm, picked them up, and gave them 
 back to her.
 
 10 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Thank you, Alex, love!" said Mrs. Breagh effusively. 
 But he went on sucking at the now empty pipe, and staring 
 at the waning fire. And the silent voice went on : 
 
 "The Fermeroys were furious. But there was no use in 
 making a fuss and a scandal, and I must say they took the 
 blow awfully well. Good haters both declared that under 
 no conceivable circumstances would they ever admit within 
 their doors an officer who had acted so dishonorably, but 
 they'd receive Milly whenever she liked to come. Nor 
 would they though her uncle was her guardian and trus- 
 tee deprive her of her fortune seven thousand pounds 
 in East India Stock, Home Rails, and Government Three 
 Per Cents. But they tied it up tight for the benefit of the 
 child that was coming, and others that might come in 
 what they called a Post-Matrimonial Settlement, and I 
 was agreeable; though, mind you! I had the law on my 
 side if I 'd chosen to make a fuss. And I was too much in 
 love to bother over money or to care a cowrie about being 
 cut by the Fermeroys' friends." 
 
 Nothing but gray ashes remained in the pipe-bowl. 
 
 "I don't know whether it wasn't to get me out of the 
 way that the regiment was ordered to Sikandarabad. 
 There 'd been a Sepoy rising at Haidarabad, six miles north 
 of the Subsidiary Force's cantonments and as the big 
 Mussulman city was swarming with all the blackguards 
 and budmashes in the Dekkan and bazar-gup had it that 
 another Rohilla riot was threatening Ours got the route 
 to go. And Milly God bless her ! wouldn 't hear of being 
 left behind. And we steamed down coast to Masulipatam, 
 and marched the two hundred miles; and though it was 
 early in January, the roads were confoundedly squashy and 
 the heat was like a vapor-bath there being no winter to 
 speak of in the South." 
 
 "He's in a regular brown study," said her unseen gossip 
 and confidante to the Captain's second wife. "Perhaps 
 his tailor has been dunning him, or he's been losing at 
 cards. When men are out of spirits, money's generally 
 at the bottom of it! Better get him to tell what's the 
 matter by-and-by not now!" 
 
 "And the long road ran like a brown snake between 
 mangrove-swamps and paddy-fields, where it wasn't coffee- 
 plantations and cotton-ground. And there were black- 
 buck and partridge for the shooting when you could get
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 11 
 
 away from the columns ; and duck and snipe when we were 
 hung up at the river-fords waiting for the elephants that 
 were to take over the baggage and guns." 
 
 The shouts of the drill-sergeant came more faintly from 
 the Parade-ground. The Captain seemed to doze as he 
 sucked at the empty pipe, but Memory's voice went 
 on: ' 
 
 "The women and children of the rank and file were 
 carried on the baggage- wagons, and the officers' wives 
 traveled by bullock-tfongra or palki-dak, under an escort of 
 good-conduct men of the Subsidiary Force the Brigadier 
 had sent down from cantonments. Milly laughed at their 
 oilskin-covered wickerwork chimney-pot hats and little old 
 red coatees, and black unmentionables and bare sandaled 
 feet. But they couldn't keep the beggars of bearers from 
 turning out of the road and taking short-cuts through 
 jungle-paths. Then they'd dump the palkis down in the 
 shade, and light a fire of sticks, and squat round and smoke 
 their hubble-bubbles or chew betel. . . . And Milly 's 
 blackguards had gone out of sight behind some trees, and 
 she was scared at finding herself alone and unprotected. 
 And she tried to be calm and plucky, thinking of what 
 she and me were looking for. . . . But something trotted 
 out of a cane-brake and snuffed at the palki curtains and 
 she went off in a dead faint and small blame to her ! For 
 there were the prints of a full-grown tiger's pugs in the 
 soft ground round the palanquin and the place where 
 his hind-claws had torn up the grass when he bounded 
 off. . . ." 
 
 The forgotten pipe was upside down in the smoker's 
 mouth now. A pinch of ashes had fallen upon the breast 
 of the unhooked scarlet coat. 
 
 "When I came up I made those coolie-brutes eat plenty 
 stick. But Milly poor girl ! had got her death-blow. And 
 the boy was born that night under canvas by the roadside. 
 An old Murderer Surgeon-Major Murdoch of Ours did 
 all man could do to save her. But just at dawn with 
 the eastern sky all lemon-yellow and pink and madder be- 
 hind a mango-tope, with a Hindu temple near it, and a 
 clump of mud huts and some old saint's shrine under a 
 sacred peepul-tree the boy was born and the mother 
 went out like a blown waxlight. Oh, my darling! . . . 
 And the Catholic chaplain who'd been fetched to give
 
 12 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Milly the Last Sacraments baptized the boy, for Milly 
 had made me swear all the children should be of her faith. 
 And the boy would have died, too, but that my company 
 Sergeant's wife she that is nurse to my youngest child 
 to-day happened to be able and willing to suckle him. 
 And we struck camp and set out on the last march, carry- 
 ing a corpse and a new-born baby. And that night we 
 buried my girl by torchlight in the cemetery belonging to 
 the European infantry-barracks. And it's six years ago 
 to-day and here I am married to another woman! Are 
 you happy with her, Alex Breagh? She's as unlike the 
 other as chalk's different from cheese and poor Milly 'ud 
 have called her a vulgar person! I know she would! 
 And yet Milly never gave me a decent meal, and the 
 servants did as they liked! and Fanny's a rare house- 
 keeper. I've been more comfortable since I married her 
 than I ever was in my life before. Yes, I'm a happy 
 man! . . ." 
 
 He told Himself this continually. And yet the knowl- 
 edge of material comfort could not long silence the crying 
 of his heart. 
 
 He took the smoked-out pipe from his mouth, and turned 
 to look at the plump, high-colored, personable woman who 
 was sitting darning his children's stockings with his wed- 
 ding-ring shining on her finger, and the present had its 
 value for him, and he ceased to company with the dead. 
 His regard, at first chill and gloomy, warmed: his good- 
 humored smile curled his full red lips again. . . . 
 
 ' ' Why, how you look, love ! ' ' said Mrs. Breagh, and she 
 rose and came to his side. Then she sat on his knee and 
 smoothed his hair from his forehead. And the Captain 
 returned her kiss, and told himself that true wisdom lay 
 in making the best of one's luck generally, and being 
 grateful for whatever good the gods chose to grant. 
 
 "No use crying over spilt milk! . . . Beg pardon, my 
 dear! but what were you asking me?" 
 
 "I was asking supposing Carolan had never been born 
 or had died whether you would have come into his 
 mother's money?" 
 
 ' ' Would I have inherited Milly 's seven thousand pounds ?, 
 Not a halfpenny of it, my dear! In the event of her de- 
 cease without, issue it would have gone back to her family. 
 And even during Milly 's lifetime she only had the half-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 13 
 
 yearly interest. Couldn't sell out stock, or raise a lump 
 sum for ahem! for the benefit of any person she'd a 
 mind to help. And husband and wife are one flesh, so the 
 Bible tells you!" 
 
 "The poor thing that's gone ought to have had more 
 spirit than to let you be treated so ! " said the second wife, 
 who had possessed no fortune beyond a hundred pounds 
 or so, bestowed as dowry on his younger daughter by the 
 hard- worked apothecary of an English country town; and 
 was conscious that in marrying her the Captain had not 
 aspired to a union above his social rank. 
 
 "Begad! my dear! I don't mind owning that Lord 
 Augustus hated me, from the top hair of my head to the 
 last peg in my boot-sole. And when he died and he 
 did go over to the majority not long after the Fermeroys 
 had sailed for England with Lord Hardinge when he died 
 it didn't make a pin's difference, for under that settlement 
 I 've told you of, the co-trustee, a solicitor Mr. Mustey, of 
 Furnival's Inn, Holborn, London took his son, who'd 
 been made partner in his business as his partner in the 
 trusteeship. And, of course, the money's the boy's! 
 though the two-hundred-and-twenty-odd annual interest is 
 paid to me the whole of it! until Carry's old enough to 
 go to school and college and when he reaches twenty- 
 three the whole lump of the principal will be his seven 
 thousand golden sovereigns to play ducks and drakes with 
 if he likes!" 
 
 "And my poor darlings will have nothing," Mrs. Breagh 
 bleated, "unless,- because I've treated Carolan in all 
 respects and more! as if he were my own child, and 
 that I would declare with my head upon my dying pillow ! 
 unless he has the gratitude and the decent feeling to do 
 something for Alan, if it 's only giving him a few hundreds 
 to start him properly in life. ..." 
 
 "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," 
 advised her lord. "My dear, if you'll get me the materials 
 from the sideboard, I'll wet my whistle. Talking 's dry 
 work!" 
 
 With wifely compliance Mrs. Breagh placed the whisky- 
 decanter and the Delhi clay-bottle of drinking-water near 
 her Alexander's elbow. You are to imagine the Captain 
 mixing a jorum on half-and-half principles, nodding to his 
 Fanny, and taking a refreshing swig of the cooling draft.
 
 14 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 And at this juncture a head of scarlet curls was poked out 
 from the covert of the Indian shawl tablecloth, and the 
 clear treble of his eldest son piped out : 
 
 "Dad a, how much money is seven fousand golding sov- 
 ereigns? And how long will it be before I get them to 
 make ducks and drakes?" 
 
 Ill 
 
 You are to suppose Captain Breagh, startled by the un- 
 expected apparition of his eldest son, swallowing the whole 
 jorum of whisky and water at a gulp, and his wife drop- 
 ping her darning into her lap with the very exclamation 
 Carolan had previously promised himself. Still as a mouse, 
 he had lain in ambush beneath the Pembroke table, with 
 the portrait of the Duke of Wellington on a gray charger 
 in the foreground of the highly varnished oil-painting 
 representing the Royal Ennis Regiment in the perform- 
 ance of prodigies of gallantry in conflict with the French 
 at Vimiera staring with bolting blue eyes, and pointing 
 at him with a Field-Marshal's baton whenever he had 
 peeped out. 
 
 Now, conscious of having made an impression, and with 
 a curious mixture of sensations, emotions, impulses, fer- 
 menting in a brain of six years, the boy stood upright 
 before his elders, his well-knit shoulders thrown back, his 
 sturdy legs, arrayed in their virile coverings of blue cloth 
 adorned with cat-stitches of yellow basting-thread, planted 
 wide apart upon the tiger-skin hearthrug, and his stomach 
 thrust forward with the arrogance characteristic of the 
 newly made capitalist. 
 
 ' ' Why the devil were you hiding there ? Eh, you young 
 Turk, you?" blustered the Captain. 
 
 "Eavesdroppers," said Mrs. Breagh acidly, "never go 
 to Heaven." 
 
 "Farver Haygarty " Carolan began. 
 
 ' ' We don 't want to know what Father Haygarty says ! ' ' 
 snapped Mrs. Breagh, whose Protestant gorge rose at the 
 Papistical teachings of the regimental chaplain. And then 
 she remembered that in a few years the worldly prospects 
 of her three children might depend on the good- will of this
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 15 
 
 chubby-faced, red-haired urchin who stood silently before 
 her, contemplating her with a new expression in a very 
 round pair of oddly amber-flecked gray eyes. And being 
 a weak, ill-balanced, underbred woman, and a mother into 
 the bargain, she truckled, as such women will, to the latent 
 potentialities vested in the stubborn wearer of the unfin- 
 ished suit of clothes. 
 
 "Not but what Father Haygarty is a good man and 
 much respected and I dare say you're sorry for having 
 kicked poor Josey. So, since it's your birthday we won't 
 say any more about it and Nurse shall pull out those 
 basting-threads and sew on the brace-buttons when you're 
 in bed to-night " 
 
 "There! you hear! Stop, you young rascal! Come 
 back and kiss your mother, and thank her, and run away 
 to Mrs. Povah ! ' ' bade the Captain, for Carolan, driving a 
 pair of grubby fists deep into the pockets of the new 
 breeches, had swung contemptuously upon his heel, and 
 made for the door. 
 
 "She's not my muwer!" said the son, pausing in his 
 struggle with the door-handle to turn a flushed and frown- 
 ing face upon his sire. "She said so just now and so did 
 you!" 
 
 "Then shut the door!" thundered the Captain, but it 
 had slammed before the words were fairly out. And 
 Carolan stamped across the landing whistling defiantly, 
 and burst into the nursery, where Baba for the moment 
 its sole occupant was asleep in her bassinette, Alan and 
 Monica having gone out to walk with Miss Josey, and 
 Nurse being busy in the adjoining room. 
 
 Carolan 's head was hot, and his heart felt big and 
 swollen. He was a person of consequence, and at the 
 same time a thing of no account. Thus the pride that 
 flamed in his gray eyes was presently quenched by scald- 
 ing salt drops of resentful indignation. He was sorrowful, 
 elated, angry, and complacent, all at once, as he stood by 
 Baba's crib. 
 
 He had never until now suspected Mrs. Breagh was not 
 his mother. He had called her "Mamma" ever since he 
 could speak. No question had ever risen in his mind as to 
 the existence of some secret reason for her dislike of him. 
 
 When she had seemed most hateful in his eyes, by reason 
 of her lacking reticence and absent sense of honor for
 
 16 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 she couldn't keep a secret if she promised you ever so, and 
 was always telling tales of you to Dada! Carolan had 
 frequently relieved his feelings by going into corners and 
 calling her "that woman" under his breath. The ap- 
 palling sense of crime, involved with the relief this process 
 brought for to call your real mother names would be a 
 sin of the first magnitude bad invested it with a dreadful 
 fascination. Now the glamour had vanished, together with 
 the wickedness. Mrs. Breagh was nothing to Carolan. He 
 was the son of another woman and she was dead in India. 
 Her name was Milly a gentle, prettily sounding name. 
 
 Only the day before, Carolan had found out what the 
 thing grown-up people called "death" and "dying" 
 meant. He had given a shiny sixpence that had lain 
 hidden for weeks at the bottom of the pocket in his old 
 plaid frock to Bugler Finnerty for a thrush he had limed, 
 a beautiful brown thrush with a splendidly dappled breast. 
 Only the bird's eyes looked like beads of dull jet glass 
 instead of round black blobs of diamond-bright bramble- 
 dew. And it had squatted on the foul floor of the little 
 wood and wire cage in which Finnerty had been keeping it, 
 panting, with ruffled feathers and open beak. 
 
 Finnerty had said that the bird would thrive on snails 
 and worms, and Carolan had promised it plenty of these 
 luxuries. He had meant to range for them through all 
 the soldiers' vegetable-allotments, and ransack the Parade- 
 ground flower-beds. But all at once the thrush had fallen 
 over on its side, fluttering and struggling and Carolan 
 had been so sorry for it that he had thrust his pudgy hand 
 into the cage, and taken the poor sufferer out with the 
 intention of nursing it in his pinafore for a little, and then 
 letting it go free, since it was so unhappy in captivity. 
 
 But when he had bidden it fly away it had had no 
 strength to do so. It had lain helpless in his hands, and 
 the strange quivering thrills that had passed through its 
 slender body had communicated themselves to the child. 
 Something was taking place some change was coming. 
 Without previous knowledge he had been sure of that. 
 
 And the change had come, with the drawing of the thin 
 gray membrane from the corners next the beak, over the 
 round yellow-rimmed eyes. Then the upper and under- 
 lids had sealed themselves over the veiled eyeballs the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 17] 
 
 quick panting had changed to long gasps, the head had 
 rolled to one side helplessly and with a long shuddering 
 convulsion the thing had taken place. The slender body 
 had stiffened in Carolan's hand, the glossy wings had closed 
 down tightly against its dappled sides, its scaly legs had 
 stretched out rigidly and not been drawn back again. And 
 a voice that seemed to speak inside Carolan had said to 
 him: "This is death!" 
 
 Now broke in upon his immature brain a flash of blind- 
 ing brilliancy. Milly, who had been his mother, was dead, 
 like the thrush. He shut his eyes, and saw her lying, very 
 pale and pretty and helpless, with ruffled brown hair the 
 exact color of the bird 's feathers, and beautiful brown eyes 
 why was he so certain that they had been brown ? all dun 
 and filmy, and her slender body and long graceful limbs 
 now quivering and convulsed, and now growing rigid and 
 stiff. And a lump rose in his throat, and a tear splashed 
 on the front of the brand-new blue jacket, and another that 
 would have fallen was dried by a glow of inspiration. For 
 he had dug a grave with a sherd of broken flower-pot in 
 the angle of one of the official flower-beds that decorated 
 the oblong patch of lawn before the Mess House, and buried 
 the dead thrush in the shelter of a clump of daffodils, and 
 said a ' ' Hail Mary ! ' ' for it, because, though Miss Josey and 
 Mrs. Breagh whom he would never call ' ' Mamma ' ' again ! 
 termed it a Popish practice, Father Haygarty said that 
 one ought to pray for the dead. . . . 
 
 Surely one ought to pray for the soul of Milly. She 
 would understand, it was to be hoped! why one had 
 never done it before. Somebody would tell her Carolan 
 hadn't known! Poor, poor Milly! He wished he had 
 been there with his new tin sword when that snuffing 
 Thing came out of the jungle and frightened her so that 
 she had died. . . . 
 
 He looked about the nursery. There stood Monica's 
 Indian-cane cot, and Alan's green-painted iron crib on 
 either side of Nurse's wooden four-poster. At the bed- 
 head above Nurse's pillow was nailed a little plaster Cal- 
 vary, and a miniature holy- water stoup, and over Carolan 's 
 little folding camp-bedstead hung a noble crucifix of ebony 
 and carved ivory, so large and so massive that two iron 
 staples held it in its place.
 
 18 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The Face of the pendent, tortured Figure there was 
 death in that also. It seemed to the child that the breast 
 beneath the drooped, thorn-encircled Head, heaved with 
 long sighs, that the lips gasped for breath that long 
 shuddering spasms rippled through the tortured Body, 
 bringing home, as nothing ever had before, the meaning of 
 the lines that the boy had learned as a parrot might. . . . 
 
 "He was crucified also for us . . . suffered . . . and was 
 buried. ..." 
 
 And that was why we prayed to Him for the dead and 
 buried people, because He had suffered death and gone 
 down into the dark grave, and He knew how to help souls. 
 . . . Carolan nailed his resolution to say a nightly "Our 
 Father" for poor Milly to the masthead of determination, 
 unaware that Father Haygarty had incurred the displeas- 
 ure of Mrs. Breagh by urging the necessary discharge of 
 this filial duty as a reason why the boy should be told about 
 his mother who was dead. 
 
 "We may guess that the influence of the second wife had 
 inspired the Captain to insist that the hour of enlighten- 
 ment should be deferred indefinitely. And if any one had 
 suggested to Mrs.. Breagh that she had been prompted by 
 a belated jealousy of her predecessor, she would have been 
 genuinely horrified at the idea. 
 
 Nurse came in as Carolan decided on his course of future 
 loyalty, and started at the sight of the sturdy little figure 
 standing, with legs planted wide apart, on the shabby 
 nursery drugget, its childish brows puckered with pro- 
 found thought. 
 
 "Now may the Saints stand between you and the mis- 
 chief I know you're plannin' ! ' ' said Nurse, who prided her- 
 self on reading thoughts in faces. " Is ut playin ' acreybats 
 on the windy-sill, or shavin' wid the Captain's razor? 
 Spake ut out ! ' ' 
 
 Carolan spoke. 
 
 "Mamma is not my muwer, an' I shall call her Mrs. 
 Breagh always!" 
 
 "God be good to me!" said Nurse, quite pale, and 
 putting her hand to her side. "An' who tould ye that, 
 an ' set the two eyes of ye blazin ' like coals of fire ? ' ' 
 
 "You saided it! and she saided it and Dada saided 
 it when I was playin' robber's cave under the sittin'- 
 woom table," Carolan proclaimed. "And I'm goin' to
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 19 
 
 pray for Milly that's my weal muwer because she's 
 dead even if they say I shan 't ! " 
 
 ''There'll none durst," said Nurse rather awfully, "wid 
 Bridget Povah to the fore ! And what else ? ' ' 
 
 Slightly damped by the prospect of being permitted to 
 carry out his shining new intention without interruption, 
 Carolan reflected. 
 
 "Nuffing," he said at last, " 'cept that I want to know 
 how much is seven fousand golding sovereigns? For I 
 am going to have them when I grow up. ' ' 
 
 "Sure!" said Nurse, slightly bewildered, "a sovereign 
 is the same as a wan-pound note ! Ye have seen thim things, 
 have ye not?" 
 
 Carolan had seen the soiled rags of Bank paper changing 
 hands on market-days, and the recollection wrinkled his 
 nose. 
 
 ' ' 'Tis quare talk ye have, ' ' said Nurse, ' ' about the sivin 
 thousand wan-pound notes. 'Tis a little haystack av them 
 ye would be gettin' from the gintleman at the Bank. 
 Where arr ye goin' now, ye onaisy wandherer? Wid your 
 hoop for a rowl in the Barrack-square ? Take your cap 
 an ' remember that wheniver ye 're clane out av sight, Biddy 
 Povah has her eye on you ! ' ' 
 
 But Carolan was already out of the room and half-way 
 down the stairs. 
 
 Outside under the blue sky, with its flocks of fleecy 
 white clouds all hurrying southward, it was easy to forget 
 the things that had hurt. The crackle of the sandy gravel 
 underfoot, the purr of the iron hoop in he metal driving- 
 hook soothed and stimulated ; the ringing clatter when one 
 got upon the cobblestones, and the echo when one came 
 under the archway of the Barrack-gate were familiar, 
 pleasant things. 
 
 Familiar, too, was the sentry on guard, great-coated 
 for at all times and seasons of the year a nipping wind 
 howled through the stony tunnel that ended in the arch of 
 the Barrack-gateway and pacing his official strip of pave- 
 ment, that began at the yellow-painted sentry-box with 
 the blunt lamp-post near it, and ended at the big spiked 
 gate. And the peep into the guardroom, with unbuttoned 
 privates in the familiar red coats with Royal blue facings 
 sprawling on plank beds reading thumbed newspapers,
 
 20 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 and the sergeant sitting on his cot stiffly stocked and fully 
 accoutered that had the charm of a well-known, never too 
 familiar sight. To other senses besides the eyes and ears 
 appealed the figure of Mary Daa, the apple, cake and 
 ginger-pop woman, sitting under a vast and oddly-patched 
 blue gingham umbrella at her stall, made of a short plank 
 mounted on two barrels, against the great bare wall on the 
 left of the Barrack- entrance, exercising a privilege per- 
 mitted to no other, because Mary 's stone ginger-pop bottles 
 might be relied upon as containing nothing else. . . . 
 
 It was market-day, and the great cobblestoned place, 
 bordered by a line of shops and houses, broken by the 
 bridge, under which flowed a famous salmon-river, was 
 seething with people out to buy and sell and enjoy them- 
 selves. On the right hand was the Catholic Church, a 
 modern building of no great design, animated bundles of 
 rags containing female penitents performing the devotions 
 of the Stations round it. While upreared upon the summit 
 of an isolated rock beyond the rushing river, perched the 
 ivy-mantled remnant of the ancient castle from which the 
 town derived its name; once held against the Common- 
 wealth by King James, and with Ireton's round-shot yet 
 bedded in the massive masonry. 
 
 The distracting grind-organ accompaniment of a round- 
 about blared on the ear from a field where some caravans 
 of strolling show-people had encamped themselves. Rows 
 of empty jaunting-cars, shafts down, waited their squir- 
 een owners in the bleakest angle of the market-place ; and 
 in the farm-carts with feather-beds in them, covered with 
 gay patchwork counterpanes, the strapping matrons and 
 buxom maids of the hill-farms or mountain-villages had 
 jolted and joggled from their distant homes, and 
 the last bargain made would jolt and joggle back 
 again. 
 
 Booths and stalls, presided over by them, exhibited cheese, 
 butter, and other dairy-produce. Crates were crammed 
 with quacking ducks and loudly cackling fowls. Strings 
 of shaggy-footed horses and knots of isolated cows were 
 ranged along the curbs to tempt the would-be purchaser; 
 hurdled pens of sheep waited to change owners; but the 
 staple article of commerce, in the active and the passive 
 mood, alive and squealing or dead and smoked, was pig.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 21 
 
 In reeking basements below the shops cellars where po- 
 tatoes, cabbages, and onions were peddled to the poorest, 
 and turf and firewood were sold in ha'p'orths piles of 
 pigs-tails, fresh and dried, rivaled the salted herring in 
 popularity, and were borne home, wrapped in red-spotted 
 handkerchiefs, and stowed away in the crowns of hats, to 
 be frizzled over turf-embers for supper. 
 
 A jig was being danced to the music of a fiddle and a 
 clarionet on a square of smooth flagstones in the middle of 
 the market-place. And for this was the West of Ireland 
 in the early fifties the bright red or dark blue cloaks and 
 white frilled caps of the matrons, the short stuff petticoats, 
 chintz jacket-bodices and bright handkerchief -shawls of 
 the unwedded women; the corduroy breeches, blue yarn 
 stockings and buckled brogues of the men, their long-tailed 
 gray or blue coats and high-crowned, narrow-brimmed 
 chimney-pots gave charm and variety to the shifting 
 scene. 
 
 Not for the first time observed, the half-dozen of coarse, 
 strapping, red-faced women who daily patroled the square 
 in the neighborhood of the Barracks; whisky-hardened 
 viragoes whose uncovered heads of greasy hair, thrust into 
 sagging nets of black chenille-velvet, and uniform attire of 
 clean starched cotton print, worn over a multiplicity of 
 whaleboned petticoats, bespoke them, as did their coarse 
 speech and loud laughter, members of the ancient sister- 
 hood of Kahab and Delilah, followers of the most ancient 
 profession in the world. 
 
 Prone at all times to hunt in pack or couples, the wearers 
 of the greasy hair-nets flauntingly displayed a pair of cap- 
 tive red-coats. One of them was fairly sober, and sulky 
 at being thus paraded under the eyes of his countrymen. 
 The other, a raw young recruit, half- fuddled with libations 
 of porter and whisky, staggeringly promenaded the pave- 
 ment with a siren on either elbow; and, being in the pug- 
 nacious stage of liquor, was stung by some sarcastic com- 
 ment from the crowd into shaking off the women who 
 supported, while they feigned to lean on him, and chal- 
 lenging the critic of morals, in broad Yorkshire, to a bout 
 at fisticuffs. 
 
 ' ' Leggo o ' me, tha ! " he hiccoughed to the Paphians. 
 
 "Cannowt a chap walk wi'out women-fowk hangin' on, an' 
 armin' him? As for tha!" he addressed the critic
 
 22 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Ah '11 teach tha to meddle wi' thy betters. If tha'rt a 
 mon coom on ! " 
 
 "Fight, is ut? Och, ye poor craythur, the wind av a 
 fist wud level ye," commented the censor, turning on his 
 heel contemptuously. Upon which, the belligerent, taking 
 the act as a confession of recreancy, wrenched himself from 
 the women, and, staggering forward, came into violent 
 contact with Mary Daa's plank-and-barrel stall; with the 
 result that certain apples, oranges, and cakes, displayed 
 to tempt customers, were scattered on the flagged side- 
 walk, or rolled gaily down the gutter; pursued with yells 
 of joy by certain ragged urchins who usually were to be 
 found in the vicinity of Mary's stall. 
 
 Carolan clapped his hands with a child 's delight in the up- 
 set and the subsequent fray, as Mary, vociferating maledic- 
 tions on the soldier 's drunken clumsiness and the predatory 
 activity of the raiders, shook her fists at their flying heels. 
 
 "Ah nivir meant t' dommage tha! Wull sixpence neet 
 maak guid thy loss t' tha?" stammered the Yorkshireman, 
 thrusting a hand into his trousers-pocket in search of the 
 coin. Then his flaming face darkened heavily, and he said, 
 withdrawing the hand, empty, ' ' Ah havena a brass f arden 
 t' pitch at dog or devil, let alone sixpence. Mak't oop to 
 her, Noorah lass, an' Ah '11 gie't thee back agean!" 
 
 And the woman he had called Norah said, linking her 
 arm in the soldier's and affectionately ogling him: 
 
 ' ' Sure, I '11 give the ould craythur a shillin ', asthore, and 
 a kiss av the handsome boy you are will pay me ! " 
 
 Then happened what Carolan, with a child's intuitive 
 sense of things that are incomprehensible, saw with a 
 strange shock and thrill that never quite passed away. 
 
 The bright new shilling tendered to Mary by the plump 
 clean fingers with the twinkling glass-and-pinchbeck rings 
 on them was dashed to the flags by a fierce blow of the old, 
 bony, wrinkled hand. . . . 
 
 "Take up yer money, ye livin' disgrace ! " Mary had said 
 sternly to the staring woman, "and thrapse upon your 
 way!" 
 
 And under the regard of many eyes, for nearly all the 
 faces in the crowded market-place seemed to be looking 
 that way, the woman had picked up the coin; and as her 
 comrades hurried on, had slunk after them, leaving the 
 tipsy soldier standing there.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 23 
 
 "Had ye no modher, ye fool-man?" Mary asked him, 
 "that ye are hastin' quick to hell, arrum-in-arrum wid 
 Thim Wans?" 
 
 And the tipsy young soldier had given a thick grunt that 
 might have meant anything, and hung his head sulkily, 
 and gone staggering upon his way, but in an opposite direc- 
 tion to that taken by the women. And Mary Daa looked 
 after him long and sorrowfully. 
 
 "Please tell me," asked Carolan, edging up to the apple- 
 woman, for Mary and he had struck up a friendship over 
 divers ha 'p 'orths of nuts and pink peppermint-candy sticks, 
 ' ' what are they, and why are they wicked ? ' ' 
 
 Mary brought round the weather-stained brown tunnel 
 of her huge and venerable bonnet, and became aware of 
 a small boy with a scarlet topknot and a pair of honest 
 gray eyes. 
 
 ' ' Who arr ye talkin ' of ? " she demanded, and there were 
 shining drops of water on her wrinkled cheeks, and the 
 cracked glasses of her huge iron-framed spectacles were 
 foggy. She took them off, and wiped them on her old green 
 plaid shawl, as Carolan explained that he had been refer- 
 ring to Thim Wans. 
 
 ' * What arr they ? Wandherin ' waves av the say, poison- 
 ous planets; thraps for the feet, fiery dhragons that ate 
 up the bodies an ' souls av men ! Look me in the face wid 
 your child's eyes, ye that will be a man wan day, an' get 
 by harrut the worruds I'm spakin' to you? An' when the 
 pith is set widin your bones, and the hair is thick upon 
 your lip, and the blood is hot widin the veins av you 
 kape them worruds in mind ! ' ' 
 
 Carolan thanked Mary Daa, and, having a stray half- 
 penny, purchased a cocked-hat of brown peppermint rock, 
 and went home crunching. He had learned a good deal 
 that day. The mystery of Death and the power of Money 
 had been revealed to him. Also, he had gained some slight 
 preliminary inkling of the forces that are arrayed against 
 the human soul in its march through this strange world of 
 ours, and of the strange and foul and ugly things that lie 
 hidden beneath the shining surface of Life.
 
 24 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 IV 
 
 FURNTVAL'S INN, Holborn, with its parallelogram of dusty 
 or rain-washed cobblestones unrelieved by any patch of 
 railed-in grass plot, where sooty lilacs and rusty hawthorns 
 make a show of putting forth green leaves in Spring, and 
 plane-trees shed their bark, as boa-constrictors doff their 
 skins, at the approach of Winter Furnival's Inn, even in 
 the year of stress of 1870, impressed itself upon the casual 
 visitor as a dismal spot in wet weather and a dusty one in 
 dry. But that an immortal genius wrote a deathless work 
 of humor in its cheerless precincts, one would have said 
 that nothing young or gay or natural could ever flourish 
 there. 
 
 At nine o'clock upon the morning of a day heavily 
 fraught with Fate for the protagonist of this unpretending 
 life-drama, recent puddles testified to overnight's rain, and 
 gray clouds rushing north-westward across a monochro- 
 matic parallelogram of sky, framed in by the bilious-hued, 
 grimy-windowed, decrepit-looking Inn buildings, predicted 
 more presently. 
 
 Punctually upon the stroke of the hour you might have 
 seen a shaggy young man in a red-hot hurry plunge under 
 the round-topped carriage archway, eschewing the smaller 
 side-entrance intended for pedestrians. Whereat the upper 
 half of a porter, crowned with a tarred chimney-pot hat, 
 and wearing a brown livery with copper-gilt buttons, ap- 
 peared at the wicket of his lodge-door, and the fresh-faced, 
 shaggy -haired boy in the battered felt wideawake and well- 
 worn frieze overcoat, had felt an eye boring hard into his 
 back, as, after one doubtful glance about him, he dived 
 between the gouty Corinthian columns of the fourth por- 
 tico on the left-hand side, and rang the first-floor bell. 
 
 "I'd ring if I was you!" the porter had soliloquized, 
 noting the masterful tug given by the early visitor to the 
 dingy brass bell-handle third of a row of six sticking out 
 like organ-stops on the right of the heavy, low-browed 
 outer door. "And again! . . . Don't be shy!" said the 
 porter, who was something of a cynic: "Break the bell- 
 wire, and then you won 't have done no good to yourself ! 
 supposing you to be a client or a creditor of Mustey and 
 Son though you're over-young to be the first and over-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 25 
 
 cheerful to be the second, it strikes me! Good-day, Mr. 
 Chown ! ' ' And the porter touched his hat to a lean, mild- 
 looking, elderly man in black, who turned in at that mo- 
 ment beneath the smaller archway. "You're not the first 
 this morning, early as you are. There's a young chap who 
 don 't seem in the mind to take no answer has been ringing 
 ten minutes without stopping at Mr. Mustey's bell." 
 
 "Pressing business, I suppose, to bring him out so 
 early ! ' ' said the person addressed. 
 
 A glance of intelligence may have been exchanged be- 
 tween Mr. Chown and the porter, but there were no further 
 words. Mr. Chown passed on, and joined the younger man 
 on the doorstep under the fourth portico on the left 
 side, as he prepared to fulfill the porter's prophecy 
 about breaking the bell-wire; and said, shifting his um- 
 brella to the hand that held a shiny bag of legal appear- 
 ance, and drawing a shabby latchkey from the pocket of 
 his vest: 
 
 "Excuse me, but if it is a business appointment with 
 Mr. Mustey Junior, ' ' he tapped the key upon the tarnished 
 brass door-handle as though to knock some grains of dust 
 out of the words, and went on, punctuating his utterances 
 with more tapping "I happen to know" tap-tap-tap 
 "that he won't be here to-day." He added, as he took a 
 brief, comprehensive survey of the healthy, square- 
 shouldered, well-built youngster of some five feet eight 
 (with a hopeful promise of more inches in the breadth of 
 the shoulders, and the depth of the chest), buttoned up in 
 the rough frieze garment that had seen hard wear. "But 
 possibly it is the head of the Firm" (tap-tap} "you want, 
 and not Son? ... In which case I'm afraid you'll have 
 to wait some time, as the old gentleman stayed very late 
 at work yesterday. I should mention that I am employed 
 in the capacity of head-clerk by" (tap] "a firm of solicitors 
 who have offices on the ground-floor immediately under- 
 neath Mustey and Son" (tap], "and " 
 
 Mr. Chown, still industriously tapping, nodded at the 
 lowest of a series of legends in letters of black paint, flank- 
 ing the right-hand row of bells, and setting forth the titles 
 of "Wotherspoon and Cadderby, Attorneys and Commis- 
 sioners of Oaths. ' ' He continued : ' ' And though I was 
 detained myself, and did not leave till eight-thirty, I 
 noticed particularly when I shut the front-door behind
 
 26 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 me, that the gas in Mr. Mustey Senior's private room was 
 burning still." 
 
 "For the matter of that, it's burning now!" said the 
 strange young man, whose head was plentifully covered 
 with a crop of decidedly red and obstinately curly hair, 
 crowned with the battered gray felt wideawake previously 
 mentioned ; and whose square, blunt-featured, fresh-colored, 
 rather freckled face was illuminated with a pair of very 
 clear and intelligent eyes of a good gray, curiously flecked 
 with yellow. He indicated with a knotty vine-stick he 
 carried two dingy, wire-blinded windows on the first floor, 
 and Messrs. Wotherspoon and Cadderby's head-clerk, with 
 an irrepressible start of consternation, saw that the dark- 
 ness of the room behind them was thrown into relief by a 
 greenish patch of radiance that indicated the position of 
 a paper-shaded gas reading-lamp which to his knowledge 
 hung over the heavy writing-table that occupied the middle 
 of the elder Mustey 's private room. 
 
 ' ' God bless my soul, so it is ! " 
 
 The speaker, with a tallowy change in his complexion, 
 stepped backward from the doorstep to the pavement, 
 conveyed himself in the same crab-like fashion to the 
 center of the quadrangle of ancient buildings constituting 
 the Inn, and so stood, staring up at the window with the 
 yellow-green flare behind the dusty brown wire-blinds, 
 and tapping his latchkey on his chin as he had tapped it 
 on the door-knob. Then he rejoined the other to say, with 
 rather a perturbed and dubious air: 
 
 ' ' If your business could wait half an hour or so, and you 
 being a stranger, as I take it ? and new to the sights of 
 London were to indulge in a little walk along Holborn 
 say as far as Bloomsbury Street and drop in at the 
 British Museum, and have a look at the Elgin Marbles or 
 the Assyrian Bulls, or the the Mummies in the Egyptian 
 Department, and then come back again, you might stand 
 a better chance of getting the bell answered. ' ' The speaker 
 added, meeting a look of decided obstinacy, quite in keep- 
 ing with the pouting, deeply-cut lips and the square chin 
 with a cleft in it: "Unless you can suggest a better idea, 
 you know. ..." 
 
 "My idea is to stop here and ring until the bell ts 
 answered. But I am obliged to you all the same!" said 
 the young man.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 27 
 
 "You've waited long enough, you think?" hesitated 
 Messrs. Wotherspoon and Cadderby's head-clerk. 
 
 The answer came with a flash of strong white teeth in the 
 fresh-colored countenance that was dusted with dark brown 
 freckles. 
 
 "Just twenty-three years," said the shaggy-haired young 
 man. 
 
 "Lord bless me!" said Mr. Chown, "you must have 
 begun waiting in your cradle ! But time flies and business 
 presses, and " 
 
 "My view exactly!" returned the freckled young man, 
 as the head-clerk inserted his latchkey into the heavy door 
 and it swung slowly backward, revealing a bare and 
 gloomy hall wainscoted with grimy oak and hung with mil- 
 dewed flock-paper. "Donner wetter! how you smell here!" 
 he commented, having taken in a chestful of the medium 
 that served the inhabitants of the Inn buildings for air. 
 "But I suppose you're used to it!" 
 
 "Comparing our atmosphere with that of other London 
 offices, I should be inclined to call us rather fresh than 
 otherwise, ' ' said Mr. Chown, who had dropped his latchkey 
 and was groping for it on the dirty floor by the oblong of 
 daylight admitted by the open hall-door. "But I suppose 
 as some of the gentlemen who rent chambers here are 
 still away on their vacations the place might seem to a 
 stranger from the country a trifle close." 
 
 "Stuffy!" corrected the young man, whose expression 
 of disgust was highly uncomplimentary. "Drainy, black- 
 beetly, mousey, dusty, cellary. With a tinge of escaped 
 
 gas and a something else that I " He sniffed and said, 
 
 puckering a sagacious nose : ' ' Why, it 's gunpowder ! The 
 place is chock-full of the fumes of burnt gunpowder. . . . 
 Here! Hallo! What the devil are you trying to do? 
 What do you mean ? ' ' 
 
 For the other, who had risen to his feet with a reversion 
 to the sallow change of countenance previously observed 
 in him, had caught him by the arm, as his eager foot had 
 touched a dilapidated mat that lay as a snare for the un- 
 wary at the foot of the uncarpeted staircase, and with un- 
 expected strength and quickness had swung him to the 
 hall-door, and was endeavoring to push him over the 
 threshold. 
 
 "I mean " Mr. Chown was of middle age and evi-
 
 28 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 dently quite unused to wrestling: and as he strove with 
 the shaggy young man upon the threshold of the dingy 
 hall, it was evident that he would very soon give in. "I 
 mean . . ."he panted, "... that you . . . can't you be 
 sensible ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' I should be a fool if I couldn 't see that you 're hiding 
 something. Let go!" said the red-haired young man, not 
 at all malevolently, "or I shall have to hurt you! I'm 
 going upstairs, and you can't stop me! What harm do 
 you think I am going to do to the white-haired old man 
 who's lying fast asleep across his table? I shan't go in 
 without knocking, if that 's what you 're thinking of ! And 
 what harm do you suppose he 's going to do to me ? ' ' 
 
 A sullen bang answered, for Mr. Chown had reached out 
 a wary hand behind his own respectable back, and grabbed 
 at the dim brass knob and slammed the heavy door upon 
 himself and his antagonist. There were circles round his 
 eyes, and he puffed and panted heavily. 
 
 "You young puff idiot!" he gasped, "I'm not 
 whoof! considering you for a whuff! moment. It's 
 him," he pulled out a colored handkerchief and mopped 
 his face "him that I've known since I was first articled, 
 and had many a kindly word from, and many a liberal 
 present. And now that this has happened I may say 
 I've seen it coming, and many a night I've stayed here 
 knowing him busy over his accounts above, and many a 
 time I've been on the point of going up and knocking and 
 offering a word of sympathy. But it wasn 't to be done ! 
 . . . You could never take a liberty with him, alive and 
 no one shall if I can stop 'em now that he isn't!" 
 
 "Now that he why, man ! you don't mean to say 
 
 They confronted each other on the doorstep, and the 
 shaggy, obstinate young man had now flushed to ripe 
 tomato-color as he stammered: 
 
 ' ' You don 't mean he 's dead ? It isn 't possible ! ' ' 
 
 "I say nothing and I mean nothing. There's no third 
 party present," asserted Mr. Chown, with professional 
 caution, "to testify to what I said or didn't say. But his 
 son has to be looked for, and brought here if they can find 
 him and if Mr. William can't be found and without 
 prejudice I think that's more than likely! some one he 
 knew and trusted must be the first to go into that room. 
 His housekeeper I 've heard is a good creature. He 's often
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 29 
 
 dropped a word in praise of her to me, I know. . . . We 11 
 telegraph I know his address! Number Three " 
 
 The young man interrupted : ' ' Addington Square, Cam- 
 berwell. ' ' 
 
 "Send her a wire! I'll pay!" Mr. Chown plucked a 
 shilling from his waistcoat pocket and agitatedly pressed 
 it on the stranger. "There's a telegraph office at Sno\r 
 Hill!" 
 
 "Where is Snow Hill? I'm a stranger in London. As 
 it happens, I came from Schwarz-Brettingen it's a Uni- 
 versity town in North Germany to keep a business ap- 
 pointment with Messrs. Mustey and Son." The shaggy- 
 haired young man pointed to those first-floor windows. . . . 
 adding: "The elder gentleman is chief trustee of my 
 mother's fortune his son, who you say's missing, is the 
 other that is, he has been since the death of a great-uncle 
 of mine. . . . For I didn't come of age, according to my 
 mother's settlement, until my twenty-third birthday. And 
 as it happens, I 'm twenty-three to-day ! ' ' 
 
 "I see! *He was to have paid the money over! . . . 
 Good Lord! Good Lord!" groaned the head-clerk, "what 
 a world it is ! what a world it is ! " 
 
 "And all this while we're swopping talk, the old fellow 
 upstairs may be dying for help that we could give him!" 
 snarled the younger man, and caught the head-clerk by the 
 shoulder in a grip that struck him as unpleasantly power- 
 ful. ' ' Look here ! where is your key ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Just inside in the hall there. . . . I 'd dropped it, don 't 
 you remember I was looking for it when you when you 
 said you smelt gunpowder," explained the attorney's 
 clerk, "and then it all rushed on me." 
 
 "You did on me! and I thought you'd gone crazy. 
 Look here " the other began. 
 
 "To be at all effective I had to take you suddenly," 
 said Mr. Chown, adding, with a mild gleam of pride, ' ' and 
 you must add I was effective ! And if you 've got it into 
 your head that there 's life in the poor old man yet put it 
 out again! For he shot himself last night just on the 
 stroke of nine and I could take my oath of it! I heard 
 what must have been the the noise as I passed out at 
 the gate, and the porter he said to me : 'A gas explosion 
 somewhere in the neighborhood, Mr. Chown, or else it was 
 a thunderclap.' And I thought it might have been thun-
 
 30 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 der for the weather observations in the newspapers had 
 mentioned storms as prevailing in South and South-Eastern 
 England and the winds have been blowing from south and 
 south-east. And my wife has headaches when electricity's 
 in the atmosphere and she has been bad three days past. ' ' 
 
 "But let's do something not stand here with our hands 
 in our pockets!" urged the red-haired young man with 
 eagerness. "I'm a surgeon not diplomaed, worse luck! 
 but enough of a one to give aid in such a case as you've 
 hinted at." 
 
 "My key's inside the house as I've told you!" retorted 
 Mr. Chown, "and unless we were to break down the door 
 which would bring the police upon us before they 're wanted 
 or one of us could climb like a cat so as to look in at 
 that window and make certain " 
 
 "Donnerwetterl Good idea!" said the shaggy young 
 man, in whose conversation mingled interjectional scraps 
 and snatches of a language not comprehended by Mr. 
 Chown, but dimly conjectured to be German. In the same 
 instant he had pulled off his frieze overcoat, revealing the 
 unsuspected fact that he wore no jacket under it had 
 thrown it upon the area-railings close to the row of bells 
 that resembled organ-stops, and mounted upon it, shirt- 
 sleeved, vigorous, ready and purposeful. An iron torch- 
 extinguisher, a rusted relic of the days when respectable 
 citizens went forth o' nights attended by linkmen, jutted 
 from the wall immediately above his head. He made a 
 long arm and grasped it and to the dazzled observation of 
 the head-clerk appeared to walk up the wall like a house- 
 fly. But in reality he had wedged a toe in an ornamental 
 border of sooty masonry of the brick-in-and-brick-out de- 
 scription, that outlined the doors and windows of the Inn 
 buildings; and with a degree of skill and suppleness that 
 testified to no small degree of practice, hoisted himself up. 
 Directly afterward he was observed to be in the act of 
 getting over the sooty balustrading that edged a narrow 
 ledge of stone running before those first-floor windows, 
 and the head-clerk, holding his breath, saw him stoop and 
 peer in over a wire blind. 
 
 Directly afterward, as it seemed, he withdrew his head 
 and looked down into Mr. Chown 's pale face, and his own 
 had lost its ruddy color. Then, coming down as he had 
 gone up, much to the astonishment and curiosity of Mr.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 31 
 
 Chown 's two juniors and several legal-looking personages 
 who had arrived upon the scene and gathered in quite a 
 little crowd upon the cobblestones he said in a low tone, 
 as he drew the former gentleman apart : 
 
 "You were right. Whether it was done last night or 
 more recently, it has been done, and thoroughly. With a 
 new-looking revolver. He has it in his hand!" 
 
 "Poor old gentleman, I could swear that what he did 
 he has been driven to do, through despair and debt and 
 misery. . . . 'Mr. William will be my ruin, Chown!' he 
 said to me only three days ago. And he has been his ruin, 
 sir!" said Mr. Chown, blowing his nose with a flourish, 
 and wiping his eyes furtively. ' ' His ruin, Mr. William has 
 been. . . . You may depend upon that!" 
 
 Said the young man from North Germany, pulling on his 
 shabby overcoat: 
 
 "The table is covered with papers, and the safe facing 
 the window is open. . . . Do you think " 
 
 "I don't think I know! He had a kind of swooning 
 fit a week back, when the crash came, and a Receiving 
 Order in Bankruptcy was made against him on the petition 
 of his creditors. He was a long time coming round and 
 I stayed by him while the caretaker went to fetch a hack- 
 ney-cab for I'd been called, being a sort of favorite with 
 him, and having known him for years. He'd been robbed 
 and plundered then, because he groaned it out to me ; and 
 he pointed to that safe, and told me that it had been gutted 
 by means of false keys the Bramah he always wore on his 
 watch-riband having been got at and copied. 'All the 
 cash I had left in the world, Chown, besides seven thousand 
 in Trust Securities! . . . It's my punishment for having 
 been near and hard to others that I might be generous to 
 him!' Are you going?" 
 
 The shaggy young man, crimson to the lining-edge of the 
 old gray wideawake he had pulled over his brows after 
 buttoning his overcoat, made an incoherent sound in his 
 throat, and swung abruptly round upon his heel. The 
 reflection had occurred to him : ' ' He 'd have been generous 
 to me if he'd waited to have seen me and blown out my 
 brains before scattering his own; pfui! over that table 
 and all the papers ! ' ' But he did not voice it aloud. 
 
 "Leave me your address," said the kindly-hearted Mr. 
 .Chown, ' ' and it 's not business to say you may trust me !
 
 32 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 but I '11 undertake to bring your name before the Official 
 Receiver for you're one of the principal creditors pro- 
 vided what you've told me can be proved. ..." 
 
 "I suppose you know that dead man's writing when 
 you see it ? " said the other, swinging round on Mr. Chown 
 with no very pleasant look. 
 
 "As well as I know my own!" retorted Mr. Chown, 
 nodding back. 
 
 "If so and not because I admit you've any right! 
 but because I choose to show it you you may read this ! ' ' 
 went on the late Mr. Mustey's chief creditor, pulling a 
 rather worn and crumpled oblong envelope out of his 
 pocket and exhibiting the direction written on it in a 
 flowing, old-fashioned, legal hand. 
 
 " 'P. C. Breagh, Esq., care of Frau Busch, Jaeger 
 Strasse, Schwarz-Brettingen, N. Germany.' . . . But I 
 really shouldn't have dreamed " began Mr. Chown. 
 
 ' ' Read it ! " said the owner of the letter, savagely thrust- 
 ing it upon him, and the head-clerk with another protest, 
 nipped in mid-utterance by another order to read it, 
 mastered the contents. 
 
 The writer acknowledged the receipt of Mr. P. C. 
 Breagh 's letter, and begged to remind him that he was 
 quite well acquainted with the terms of his late mother's 
 Marriage Settlement. He congratulated" his young friend 
 on having so nearly attained the age of discretion decided 
 under the provisions of the instrument referred to; and 
 appointed the hour of nine o 'clock upon the morning of the 
 3d of January, to discharge his trust and hand over the 
 cash, deposit-notes, and securities. . . . 
 
 "While all the time he knew none better, except his 
 precious partner ! that I should leave his office as poor as 
 I'd come there. It would have been decent," snarled 
 Patrick Carolan Breagh, "to have owned the truth." 
 
 "And accused his own son! And now I look at the 
 date of this it was written on the day before that affair of 
 the false Bramah. . . . Do him justice, Mr. Breagh! . . . 
 Try to think he meant fair by you. Wherever he's gone 
 ..." Mr. Chown looked vaguely up at the monochromatic 
 sky now darkening as though it meant to rain in earnest 
 and then down at the cobblestones, "he'll be no worse for 
 that, and you'll be the better here, I dare to say! You'll 
 give me your address, sir? I don't know but that as you
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 33 
 
 were the first to discover the body, you'll be expected to 
 gire evidence before the Coroner." 
 
 "Damn the Coroner!" said P. C. Breagh. "Whether 
 he wants it or not I haven't an address to give. I paid my 
 bill at a thundering beastly cheap hotel in the Euston Road 
 by handing over my trunks of clothes, and books and in- 
 struments to the landlord. . . . He promised to keep them 
 for three weeks to give me a chance to redeem them! 
 and he grunted when I said I 'd be back with money enough 
 to buy his bug-ridden lodging-house before two days were 
 over his head. And I pawned my coat for dinner yester- 
 day and a coffee-house bed last night. . . . That's why you 
 saw shirt-sleeves when I pulled off this old wrap-rascal. 
 . . . But I'll look in here again to-morrow unless I 
 change my mind ! ' ' 
 
 He had passed under the archway and was gone before 
 Mr. Chown had recovered himself sufficiently to call after 
 him. To follow would have been no use. So the head-clerk 
 went sorrowfully back to write and dispatch those urgent 
 telegraphic messages. 
 
 And Carolan, shouldering through the double torrent of 
 pedestrian humanity rolling east and west along the worn 
 pavements of Holborn, plunged through the roaring traffic 
 of the cobblestoned roadway, and with his chin well down 
 upon his chest, and his hands rammed deep into his pockets, 
 turned down Fetter Lane, knowing that he, who had been 
 heir to a goodly sum in thousands, was, by this sudden 
 turn of Fortune's wheel, a beggar. 
 
 As a dog will skulk dejectedly from the spot where a bone 
 previously buried has failed to reward the snuffing nose 
 and the digging paw, so P. C. Breagh, on the long-expected 
 twenty -third birthday that was to have made him master 
 of dead Milly's' fortune, slouched down Fetter Lane, hum- 
 ming and vibrant with the vicinity of great printing-works, 
 and redolent of glue and treacle, tar, printers' ink, engine- 
 oil, and size. 
 
 A double stream of carts and trucks, heavily laden with 
 fire-mile rollers of yellow-white paper for the revolving
 
 34 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 vertical type-cylinders of the Applegarth steam printing- 
 machine then in its heyday bales of tow, forms of type 
 and piles of wood-blocks, choked the narrow thoroughfare. 
 The smells from the cheaper eating-houses where sausages 
 frizzled in metal trays, and tea and coffee steamed in huge 
 tapped boilers, and piles of doubtful-looking eggs, and 
 curly rashers of streaky bacon were to be had by people 
 with money to pay for breakfast even the sight of com- 
 positors in clean shirt-sleeves and machine-men steeped in 
 ink and oil to the eyebrows eating snacks of bread and 
 cheese and saveloy, and drinking porter out of pewter on 
 the doorsteps of great buildings roaring with machinery 
 sickened P. C. Breagh with vain desire. 
 
 His world was all in ruins about him. He was conscious 
 of a painful sense of stricture in the throat, and a tight 
 pain as though a knotted rope were bound about his 
 temples. His hand did not shake, though, when he thrust 
 it out under his eyes and looked at it curiously. I>ut he 
 shouldered his way so clumsily along the narrow, crowded 
 sidewalk that he found himself every now and then in col- 
 lision with some more or less incensed pedestrian, such as 
 the printer's devil, who cried, "Now then, Snobby, where 
 are yer a-comin' to?" or the stout red-faced matron in 
 black, displaying a row of bootlaces and a paper of small- 
 tooth combs for sale who emerged from the swing-doors 
 of a public-house as P. C. Breagh charged past them, and 
 wanted to know whether he called himself a young man or 
 a mad bull? A well-dressed, elderly gentleman, carrying 
 a calf-skin bag and a gold-mounted umbrella, confounded 
 him for a "bungling, blundering, blackguardly ! . . . and 
 was left reveling in alliteratives as the provoker of his 
 wrath swung out of the Lane and found himself upon the 
 reported Tom Tiddler's ground of Fleet Street. And 
 then a curious swirling giddiness overtook him, and he 
 dropped down upon some stone steps under the Gothic 
 doorway of a church with a lofty tower, and sat there with 
 hunched shoulders and drooped head, staring dully at the 
 pavement between his muddy boots. 
 
 He was conscious of a dull resentment at his lot, but no 
 base hatred of that old man with the shattered skull, lying 
 prone among the bloody litter of his office-table, mingled 
 with it. All his life, since that sixth birthday when he had 
 learned the meaning of Death, and the potential value of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 35 
 
 Money, the attainment of his twenty-third year had been 
 the goal toward which he had striven; and every third of 
 January crossed off the almanac "brings me nearer," he 
 had said to himself, "to the money that will be mine to 
 spend as I shall choose!" 
 
 And now . . . without a profession for he had failed 
 to obtain his degrees in Medicine and Surgery without 
 funds, for a reason that did him no dishonor without 
 books or belongings of any kind except the clothes upon 
 his back; without hope for who can be hopeful on an 
 empty and craving stomach? without work to occupy 
 those strong young hands and the sound, capable brain 
 behind those gray, amber-flecked eyes, the unlucky young 
 man who had been reared on expectations sat under St. 
 Dunstan's Tower; and heard St. Dunstan's clock and St. 
 Paul's, and all the other City churches answer the boom 
 of Big Ben of Westminster, solemnly striking the hour of 
 ten. 
 
 His prospects had been blighted and ruined, his young 
 hopes lay dead: he felt bruised and battered by the ex- 
 periences and discoveries of that birthday morning, as 
 though the pair of wooden clock-giants that some forty 
 years back had figured among the City sights from their 
 vantage in the ancient steeple of St. Dunstan 's, had beaten 
 out the hour with their mallets on his head. 
 
 His stepmother had always resented the monetary inde- 
 pendence of her husband 's son by Milly Fermeroy. Well ! 
 she and her vulgarities, her resentments and jealousies, had 
 long been laid to rest, poor soul! 
 
 In that bloody June of the Mutiny of '57 she and her 
 two youngest children had perished at Cawnpore. A fort- 
 night later Major Breagh, previously wounded in the 
 head by a shell-splinter in the defense of the entrench- 
 ments, was bayoneted by a Sepoy infantryman during a 
 desperate sortie. 
 
 Carolan had remained as a boarder at the Preparatory 
 School of the Marist Fathers at Rockhampton where he 
 had previously been placed, thanks to the "interference," 
 as Mrs. Breagh had phrased it, of the regimental chaplain, 
 Father Haygarty. And, owing to the same influence, Mon- 
 ica, Carolan 's junior by two years, had after the double 
 stroke of Fate that left the children orphaned been sent to
 
 36 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the Sisters of the Annunciation in London, the charges of 
 her support and education being defrayed out of the inter- 
 est of Carolan's seven thousand, and the compassionate 
 allowance of twenty-five pounds granted her by Govern- 
 ment as the orphan daughter of an officer killed in war. 
 
 VI 
 
 TO-DAY, as P. C. Breagh sat paupered on the doorstep of 
 St. Dunstan 's, he realized that, from childhood to this hour, 
 dead Milly's money had been his bane. 
 
 "When I was quite a little shaver I expected to be 
 knocked under to, and given the best of everything, because 
 I was going to be rich one day. ... I knew my money kept 
 my stepmother from grumbling and nagging at me. And 
 my first thrashing at Rockhampton was because I'd 
 bragged about it to a bigger boy. He said when he let 
 me get up that I should be obliged to him one day, if I 
 wasn 't at the moment ! And my first fight no, my second 
 because the first was over my Irish brogue! my second 
 fight came off because I'd forgotten my lesson, and talked 
 about being able to drive four-in-hand, and live up to a 
 Commission in the Household Cavalry when I should 
 come of age. . . . Silly young idiot! And when I was old 
 enough for a public school and passed I wonder, with 
 my luck, how I managed to pass? into Bradenbury Col- 
 lege I had mills, no end! with the fellows there, because 
 I couldn 't keep mum about my expectations. ' ' 
 
 He leaned his dusty elbows on his knees and went on 
 thinking, as a regular procession of legs of all sexes, ages, 
 and colors went past, and the muddy river of Fleet Street 
 traffic roared over the cobblestones, boiled in swirling 
 eddies where it received the stream flowing down Chancery 
 Lane, and choked and gurgled in and out of the squat 
 archways of Temple Bar. 
 
 " I 'd talked of Oxford as a preliminary to Sandhurst and 
 a Cavalry Commission and I went in for an Exhibition 
 Entrance but my classics queered me for the University. 
 Knock Number One! The Head put it on the Italianate 
 Latin I'd learned from the Marist Fathers and why old 
 Virgil, and Ovid, Horace, Caesar, and Livy, and the rest
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 3T 
 
 of 'em, should be supposed to have pronounced their 
 language with a British accent I've never been able to 
 understand ! . . . When I went up for the Woolwich Open 
 Competitive having altered my views about the Household 
 Cavalry ! my plane trigonometry dished me for the Royal 
 Horse Artillery. . . . Knock Number Two ! So I told my- 
 self that it wasn't as easy getting into a Queen's uniform 
 as it was in my father's time. . . . You were given the 
 Commission or you bought it and if you could drill, and 
 march, and fight, no more was asked of you. . . . And 
 I tried for the Royal Engineering College of India and 
 failed in dynamics and had a shot for the I.C.S. and 
 missed again! Oh, damn! And do I owe every one of 
 the whole string of failures to the belief that money makes 
 up for everything and buys anything ? I 'm half beginning 
 to believe I do! Even the kindness I have had from 
 people I'd no claim on and who is there alive I have a 
 claim on? Have I been cad enough ape enough worm 
 
 enough to put it down to Grrh! how I loathe 
 
 myself ! ' 
 
 He covered his reddened face with his hands and shud- 
 dered. It is horrible to have to go on living inside a fellow 
 you have begun to hate. 
 
 ' ' Even Father Haygarty 's untiring kindness, his interest 
 in all I did and thought and hoped for. . . . Weren 't there 
 times when I suspected that my in some degree repre- 
 senting property accounted for oh, Lord! And when 
 he was dying and his housekeeper sent for me for he'd 
 given up being an army chaplain and got a little living 
 in Gloucestershire did I realize even then what a friend 
 and father I was losing? I hope to God I did, but I'm 
 hardly sure of myself!" 
 
 He stubbed with the toe of his muddy boot the jutting 
 corner of a paving-stone, and scowled at the image of him- 
 self that was growing more and more distinct. He had 
 always thought P. C. Breagh rather a fine young fellow. 
 Now he knew him for what he had always been. 
 
 "When Father Haygarty was gone it wasn't long be- 
 fore Mustey and Son began to send explanations and 
 apologies, instead of the whole of the quarter's interest- 
 money. There had been a drop in securities of this kind 
 and the other, and Consols were down and at first I was 
 as pleased as a prize poodle at being made excuses to. . . .
 
 38 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 But the fact remained that where I'd been getting two 
 hundred and forty, I was only getting one hundred and 
 seventy-three. . . . And that if I really meant to go in 
 for my Degree in Surgery and Medicine, for I'd made up 
 my mind to be a medical swell I had if Monica was to 
 go on staying with the Sisters ! I 'd got to give up the idea 
 of Edinburgh, or the London University, and matriculate 
 somewhere abroad. So I went to Schwarz-Brettingen, 
 and shared rooms with another English chap. ... It was 
 admitted I had solid abilities the Professors whose lec- 
 tures I attended thought well of me. And I failed ! Failed 
 for the fourth time ! Have I the accursed money to thank 
 for that last blow?" 
 
 He perspired as though he had been running, and, 
 indeed, nothing takes it out of you like a sprint over the 
 course of the past with your conscience as pacer. 
 
 "I'd thought myself rather a fine fellow when, with my 
 student-card in my pocket and my Anmeldungsbuch in my 
 hand I called in company with a squad of other candi- 
 dates on the Rector Magnificus. "We had a punch after- 
 wards, and a drive and coffee at the Plesse and made a 
 night of it at Fritz's. I woke with a first-class student's 
 headache in the morning, and a hazy recollection that I'd 
 told one or two of the British colony in confidence and 
 several Germans about the money I was coming into 
 by-and-by. ..." 
 
 He ground his teeth and squeezed his eyelids together, 
 trying to shut out the picture of P. C. Breagh in the 
 character of a howling cad. 
 
 "But if I bragged and I did brag! I worked. . . . 
 The Marist Fathers had grounded me in French and Ger- 
 man in spite of myself, and my pride had been nicely stung 
 up by that failure for Sandhurst and the others. . . . 
 Men told me what I 'd got to grind at, and I ground ; filling 
 piles of lecture-pads with notes on all sorts of subjects. 
 Anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, botany, and zo- 
 ology. . . . My brain was a salad of 'em but I passed 
 the Abiturienteii-Examen at a classical gymnasium with a 
 better certificate than a lot of other Freshmen thanks to 
 the Marist Fathers, who'd pounded Latin and Greek into 
 me ! and then after two years of walking hospitals, at- 
 tending demonstrations and lectures, and doing laboratory- 
 work varied by beers and schldger and more beers and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 39 
 
 more schldger! and perhaps I took to sword-play all the 
 more kindly because of the soldier-blood in me ! came 
 the first regular examination. And I don't forget that 
 third of November not while I'm breathing!" 
 
 Donnerwetter! P. C. Breagh could see the cocked- 
 hatted and scarlet-gowned University beadle ushering a 
 pale young man, with saucers round his eyes, into the awful 
 presence of the Dean and Examiners in the Faculties of 
 Surgery and Medicine. . . . 
 
 The neophyte arrayed in the swallow-tail coat, low- 
 cut vest, black cloth inexpressibles, white cravat, and kid 
 gloves inseparable from an English dinner-party, or the 
 ordeal of examination at a German university, found his 
 inquisitors also in formal full dress, seated in a semicircle 
 facing the door, and looking singularly cheerful. 
 
 A solitary chair marked the middle of the chord of the 
 arc formed by the chairs of the examiners. Upon this stool 
 of judgment after bowing and shaking 'hands all round 
 and being bowed to and shaken the victim had been in- 
 vited to seat himself. The Dean opened the ball with 
 the Early Theorists. And he had seemed quite to cotton to 
 P. C. Breagh 's ideas on the subject of Egyptian Sacerdotal 
 Colleges, the preparation of Soma in the Vedas, the thera- 
 peutical formulas of Zoroaster, Chinese sympathetic medi- 
 cine the dietetic method of Hippocrates who invented 
 barley-water ! the observations of Diocles and Chrysippus 
 and the criticisms of Galen. At the expiration of half an 
 hour, when the Hofrath delivered him over to the next 
 examiner, P. C. Breagh had felt that, if the others were no 
 worse than the Dean, all might yet be well. 
 
 Professor Barselius, who followed the Dean, and was 
 reported to be a terror, when correctly replied to upon an 
 interrogation as to the chemical composition of the fatty 
 acids, vouchsafed a grunt of approbation. 
 
 Professor Troppenritt, who succeeded Barselius, was a 
 person with a reputation for amiability, and a mobility of 
 mental constitution which enabled him to flit like the 
 butterfly or leap like the grasshopper from subject to 
 subject, harking back to Number One, perhaps, when you 
 felt quite sure he had done with it for good. But on that 
 fateful third of November a tricksy demon seemed to pos- 
 sess Troppenritt. He no longer flitted like the butterfly,
 
 40 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 or hopped like the grasshopper he sported with the seven 
 great departments of Structural Anatomy, Physiology, 
 Pathological Anatomy, General Pathology, Ophthalmology, 
 Medicine, Hygiene and Midwifery as a fountain might 
 toss up glass balls, or a conjurer juggle with daggers. . . . 
 His victim after a while found himself breathlessly watch- 
 ing the hugh knobby rampart of forehead, behind which 
 the Professor's intentions were hiding, in the vain hope 
 that the next question might be foreshadowed on its shining 
 surface. A hope destined never to be fulfilled. . . . 
 
 The fact remains that P. C. Breagh, after some really 
 creditable answers, was beginning to recover the use of his 
 mental faculties, when the Dean prompted by the candi- 
 date's evil genius suggested a little pause for cake and 
 wine. It was awful to see how Hofrath and Professors 
 there were three of them besides the conjurer Troppenritt 
 enjoyed themselves at this sacrificial banquet, which had 
 been arranged upon a little table in a corner, waiting the 
 five-minute interval. And P. C. Breagh rejected cake, 
 which was of the gingerbread variety, garnished with 
 blanched almonds and sugar-plums. But the single glass 
 of Riidesheimer he accepted might have been the Brob- 
 dingnagian silver-mounted horn that hung within a garland 
 of frequently-renewed laurel leaves upon the walls of a 
 famous students' beer-hall or have been filled with raw 
 spirits above proof, the contents mounted so unerringly to 
 his head, and wreaked such havoc therein. 
 
 The three remaining Professors were almost tender with 
 the sufferer, but what Troppenritt had begun, the win:; 
 had completed. The nicht walir's had been succeeding 
 one another at marked intervals, like distress-signals or 
 funereal minute-guns, when the traditional three hours 
 expired. 
 
 P. C. Breagh removed to cold storage in the anteroom 
 was detained but five minutes longer. . . . His nervous 
 shiverings had reached a crescendo, when the beadle opened 
 the door. . . . And the Dean, stepping forward, in stac- 
 cato accents delivered himself: 
 
 "Candidate, from the quality of the dissertations in 
 writing previously submitted, we, the Faculty of Surgery 
 and Medicine of the University of Schwarz-Brettingeu 
 would a more satisfaction-imparting result have antici- 
 pated as the result of the just-concluded oral examination
 
 THE MAN OF IKON 41 
 
 undergone by you. . . . But although lacking in Gedacht- 
 niss has been manifested on your part a so-remarkable 
 degree of Eiiibildung and Begriff that the Faculty of-hesi- 
 tation-none-whatever have in the following-adviee-to-you- 
 imparting ; Yourself another semester give, or better still, 
 another twelvemonth! and try again, young man! try 
 again ! ' ' 
 
 Not bad advice, if the young man had chosen to follow 
 it. But January drew near, and the inheritor-expectant 
 of seven thousand pounds scorned to toil and moil over 
 intellectual ground already traversed. He had tried for 
 honors, and he had failed, thanks to the hypnotizing 
 methods of the too-agile Troppenritt. 
 
 So P. C. Breagh spent the money that would have kept 
 him, with economy, for six months, in giving a farewell 
 banquet to his friends ; called in his best attire, with kid 
 gloves and a buttonhole bouquet on his favorite lec- 
 turers; left cards on the wives of those who possessed 
 them; paid his landlady who had faithfully labored to 
 convert his formal, class-room German into a malleable, 
 useful tongue, kissed her round cheek tipped the civil 
 servant-maid five dollars, and turned his back for ever on 
 Schwarz-Brettingen, its Aula, Collegien-Haus, Theatrum 
 Anatomicum, Botanical Garden, Library and Career (a 
 correctional edifice the interior accommodations of which 
 were only known to him by hearsay), its restaurants, 
 beer-saloons, coffee-gardens, and fencing-halls; its chilly 
 wood-stoves, its glowing enthusiasms; its pleasant compan- 
 ionships, its passing flirtations with schoppen -bearing 
 Hebes, and nymphs of the coffee-garden, restaurant, or 
 ninepin alley. One cannot say its love-affairs, because in 
 the esteem of P. C. Breagh though Passion might bloom 
 red by the wayside at every mile of a man's journey 
 Love was a rare blossom found once in a lifetime, too often 
 never found at all. 
 
 P. C. Breagh 's idea of Love was that it should be spelt 
 with a capital, and spoken of in whispers. Nor, let us hint, 
 was the ideal Woman at whose feet, he promised himself, he 
 would one day pour forth all the gold and jewels of his 
 heart and intellect, a being to be lightly trifled with. 
 
 To commence with, she would have to be six feet high or 
 thereabouts. . . . Blue-eyed, blonde-haired, of classical
 
 42 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 features, cream-and-rose complexion, powerful intellect 
 and thews matching, the ideal woman of P. C. Breagh must 
 have weighed about fourteen stone. He imagined her a 
 kind of Britomart-Krimhilde-Briinhilde-Isolde with a 
 dash of Mary Queen of Scots, Kingsley's Hypatia, and a 
 spice of Edith Dombey and the beautiful shrewish Roman 
 Princess out of "The Cloister and the Hearth" though 
 these heroines were jetty-locked, and for this reason fell 
 short of P. C. Breagh 's ideal of female loveliness. Fair and 
 colossal, he had seen her over and over again, though a 
 little too roseate and pulpy in texture to come up to his 
 ideal in the vast canvases of Kaulbach and in the over- 
 whelming frescoes of the Bavarian Spiess. But he had 
 never yet encountered her in the flesh. One day they 
 would meet and she would be scornful of the young, ob- 
 scure, unknown man who looked at her she felt it from 
 the first, and that made her quite furious! with the eye 
 of a consciously superior being a master in posse. 
 
 All the masculine world would bow down before the in- 
 tellect combined with the beauty of Britomart-Kriemhilde- 
 Briinhilde-Isolde and so on, for he amalgamated new hero- 
 ines with the others, in the course of his reading. But one 
 man lived who would not bow down. She would taunt him 
 with this stiff-necked pride of his, in the course of an in- 
 terview on the terrace of a castle, whose moat he had swum 
 and whose guarded ramparts he had scaled in order to 
 be discovered, scorning her, and communing with the 
 moon. And he would quell her tempestuous wrath, and si- 
 lence her reproaches, by telling her that it was for her to 
 pay homage and court smiles. Then she would summon her 
 vassals and lovers, and half a dozen of them would set upon 
 P. C. Breagh, who would strangle one with his naked hands, 
 run another through with his own sword and provide 
 materials, broadly speaking, for half a dozen first-class 
 funerals before he leapt into the moat, carrying a rose 
 that she had dropped between his teeth and "gained the 
 distant bank in safety," or "dripping and bloody, emerged 
 from the dark water, gripped an iron chain, eaten urith the 
 rust of centuries, and, painfully scaling the frowning ma- 
 sonry, disappeared into the . . ." etc. 
 
 Absurd, if you will, and bombastic and impossibly high- 
 flown. Yet such boyish dreams keep the soul clean and 
 the body from grosser stain. Walking with your head
 
 43 
 
 erect you may stub your toe, and come a cropper on the 
 stones occasionally. But you pick yourself up again and 
 proceed more warily none the less rejoicing, seeing the 
 splendor of the sunset, or braving the blaze of noonday, 
 or drinking in the delicate spring-like hues of dawn. . . . 
 
 One does not know how long P. C. Breagh might have 
 remained upon the steps of St. Dunstan's, had not the 
 hour of twelve sounded from the new clock a youngster 
 barely forty years old that had replaced the gong-ham- 
 mering wooden giants, now on view outside the Marquis of 
 Hertford's villa in Regent's Park. A constable civilly 
 asked him to move on. He got up, heavily, and mechan- 
 ically felt for his watch that was in keeping of the landlord 
 of the fourth-rate hostelry in the Euston Road. And it oc- 
 curred to him as a pin-prick among innumerable stiletto 
 strokes that the watch alone, being a heavy silver one 
 attached to a slender gold snake-chain once the property 
 of dead Milly would have satisfied the man 's claim, which, 
 exorbitant as it was for the accommodation afforded, was 
 considerably under three pounds. You are to understand 
 that P. C. Breagh had been so certain of returning in a 
 few hours, heavy with ready money, that he had treated 
 the landlord's detention of his luggage as a joke. 
 
 The present situation was no joke. But Youth preserves 
 above all the property of rising unbruised and elastic from 
 a tumble, and of healing readily when it has sustained men- 
 tal or physical wounds ! 
 
 The blood in the veins of P. C. Breagh was mingled with 
 the finer strain that came from the breed of Fermeroy. 
 He had no idea of finding a craven's refuge in suicide. The 
 single shilling remaining to him might purchase sufficient 
 strychnine for a painful, unheroic exit, but P. C. Breagh 
 was not disposed to invest his remaining capital in that 
 unpleasant alkaloid. And neither did it occur to him then 
 to test the depth and drowning-capacity of the muddy 
 liquid running under any one of London's bridges, from 
 Westminster to the Tower. For by the contradictory law 
 of Nature, reversing scientific fact, a helpless weight that 
 hung about his strong young neck kept his moral head 
 above the turbid waters of Despondency. 
 
 He was not alone in the world. There was Monica. 
 With the remembrance of that frail link, binding him to
 
 44, THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the rest of humanity, awakened in him the desire to see her. 
 He turned his face Westward and stepped into the mov- 
 ing throng. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE Great Class fermented in irrepressible excitement. 
 Subsequently to the arrival of a foreign mail, Juliette 
 Bayard had been summoned by an attendant lay-sister to 
 the presence of Mere M. Catherine-Rose. 
 
 She had remained nearly half an hour in the Parlor of 
 Cold Feet so called in recognition of the fact that the 
 apartment contained no fireplace, and that even in the 
 hottest weather cool draughts played hide-and-seek across 
 the polished parquet from circular brazen gratings inserted 
 in the wainscot, which ancient legend connected with the 
 presence of a French calorifere. 
 
 "When the door opened and Juliette emerged, somewhere 
 about the middle of the noon recreation, an advance-patrol 
 in the shape of a pupil of the Little Class, by name Laura 
 Foljambe happened to be buttoning a shoe-strap at the 
 end of the corridor. The apoplectic attitude inseparable 
 from this particular employment would have rendered 
 observation impossible in the case of an adult. But 
 Laura, under the cover of a luxuriant head of yellow ring- 
 lets, unconfined by any comb or ribbon, observed, firstly, 
 that Juliette had been crying, and secondly, that Mere M. 
 Catherine-Rose had tears in her own eyes. More, she had 
 called Juliette back, embraced her affectionately, and said : 
 "We shall miss you, my dear!" "You .will be brave, I 
 know!" and "Remember to write!" Packed with news, 
 Laura rushed into the Lesser Hall, where the seniors were 
 gathered round the stove, the raw chill of the January 
 weather rendering the garden a place of penitence, and 
 emptied her budget of intelligence upon the spot. 
 
 Juliette must be going away! The forty girls of the 
 Great Class had unanimously arrived at this conclusion 
 when Juliette herself arrived upon the scene. It needed 
 but a glance to assure her of the treachery of Laura; it 
 needed but a moment, and the spy, blubbering and pro- 
 testing, was seized, shaken, and forced upon her 
 knees. .
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 45 
 
 You are to understand that when Juliette Bayard was 
 angry, she was so with a vengeance. Heroic by tempera- 
 ment, her wrath smacked of the superhuman. A demi- 
 goddess enraged might have manifested as semi-divine a 
 frenzy. Ordinary prose seemed too poor a vehicle to 
 convey such indignation. You expected hexameters or 
 Alexandrines. . . . 
 
 ''That you listened I would stake my honor! I would 
 pledge my life ! I would put the hand in the fire ! Mean ! 
 Base! Despicable! Ah, you look simple, little thing, but 
 you are cunning as a mouse fine as amber! No! I 
 do not pinch, I would scorn it you know that perfectly! 
 Yes! I will permit you to go when you confess who set 
 you on!" 
 
 Laura, unwilling to incur the resentment of forty grown- 
 ups, undesirous of forfeiting the saccharine reward of 
 treachery, boohooed in a whisper, for class-hour was ap- 
 proaching. The wrathful goddess towered over her, eyed 
 with blue lightning, crowned with dusky clouds of thunder, 
 flushed like the sunset that comes after the day of storm. 
 
 Had Arthur Hughes or Fred Walker been privileged to 
 peep one painter at least would have armed her uplifted 
 hand with a bulrush-spear, helmeted her with a curled 
 water-lily leaf, and given the smiling world Titania in the 
 character of Pallas Athene, or Queen Mab as an Amazon. 
 And Juliette would never have pardoned the painter. 
 For despite the testimony of her tale of inches she 
 would have it that she was tall, even above the average 
 height of woman. 
 
 ' ' I shall not be beautiful, no ! but I shall be command- 
 ing!" she had assured those favored girls on whom she 
 deigned to bestow her imperial confidence. This select 
 number in turn possessing a circle of confidantes, the drop 
 of a secret meant a series of widening rings, extending to 
 the circle of the day scholars, reaching the Orphanage by- 
 and-by, and trickling at length into the basement, where 
 the Poor School assembled on "Wednesdays and Fridays, 
 to gather up the crumbs of knowledge that fell from the 
 tables of the daughters of the great and rich. 
 
 You may imagine the scene in Lesser Hall upon this 
 chilly day in January. Excitement was much more warm- 
 ing than crowding round the smoky stoves. Of the semi- 
 circle of great girls in their black school-dresses, enlivened
 
 46 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 only by the red or white class-rosettes, or the pale blue 
 ribbons of the Children of Mary, all the heads, adorned 
 with every shade of feminine tresses, all the eyes of all 
 colors, set in faces plain or pretty were turned toward 
 the tragic figure of Juliette. 
 
 Once kindled, such violet fires of wrath blazed in those 
 implacable eyes, one would have supposed nothing could 
 ever quench them. But when she was sorrowful, they 
 were bottomless lakes of misery. Despair lay drowned and 
 wan amid the long black sedges drooping at their bor- 
 ders. Under the dark, hollowed precipices that shadowed 
 them it seemed as though no sun could ever shine. But 
 when the laugh was born, it leaped to the surface with a 
 quiver that caught the light and flashed it back pure sap- 
 phire or loveliest Persian turquoise. No face ever framed 
 of earthly clay had more of the mirth of Heaven in it, 
 then. Her long upper lip, the elastic, mobile feature that 
 could draw out to so portentous a length, would be haunted 
 by flying smiles, and the deep-cut corners of her short 
 scarlet under lip would quiver. To inventory the beauties 
 of a young lady and omit the nose would suggest cause 
 for reticence on the writer's part. Juliette's nose was not 
 of Greek or Roman type, but neither was it snubbed or 
 tip-tilted. It had a rounded end, and deep, curved, pas- 
 sionate nostrils. It pertained to no known order of nasal 
 architecture. It was Juliette's nose, and could never have 
 belonged to anybody else. 
 
 If you would more of her, and after the first encounter 
 you either sought or shunned loved or loathed as she 
 would have had you do who was in all things sincere and 
 candid, you are to understand that her cloud of dusky 
 hair framed a small oval face that made no show of carna- 
 tion or vaunt of rose. Her clear fine skin was almost always 
 pale. She would have laughed you to scorn had you 
 likened those colorless cheeks of hers to lilies. She prided 
 herself upon a frame of mind eminently commonplace, 
 antipodean to the romantic. "I am sensible, me!" you 
 often heard her say. 
 
 In form though as you know she believed herself to be 
 a giantess she was small and slight, and not at all re- 
 markable. A framework of slender bones, frugally covered 
 with tender, healthful flesh. Her shoulders sloped so 
 much that in her loose-bodied, full-sleeved, black merino
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 47 
 
 school uniform she seemed about to vanish. Her hips were 
 narrow, without the voluptuous curves that belong to 
 heroines. But a Divine jest had added to her little high- 
 arched head a tiny pair of rosy shells for hearing, and the 
 palms and nails and finger-tips of her narrow hands, and 
 feet I have heard it said by some who loved her were 
 roseate also. The younger children liked to pretend that 
 this was a judgment on Juliette for stealing strawberries 
 in the early June season, but she only joined in that one 
 raid on the Sisters' kitchen-garden "To be a good com- 
 rade!" . . . and as it happened, all the strawberries were 
 slug-eaten. And where are there strawberries worth the 
 stealing, unless it be in France? 
 
 F'or next to God and Our Lady, and her father M. le 
 Colonel, Juliette Bayard loved her country. Paradise was 
 but an improvement on France, to hear her describe it to 
 the little ones. Further, though she had a perfect taste in 
 dress, when released from the school uniform; though an 
 ordinary hat under her deft transforming fingers would 
 become a miracle of exquisite millinery; her groups of 
 flowers, and landscapes, in water-color, her crayon Jog's 
 heads, were mercifully hidden from the drawing-master's 
 eye. She sang out of tune, but in time ; played correctly, 
 but hated the piano; danced like an air- wafted tuft of 
 dandelion-down or a gnat upon a summer evening, and 
 had a Heaven-born gift for housekeeping and cookery. 
 
 Of this last gift more anon. Meanwhile Laura writhed, 
 or seemed to writhe, under the torrent of passionate re- 
 proaches, culminating in another shake, and a slap which 
 might have damaged a kitten newly-born. Laura fell 
 prone, moaning and gurgling. And Juliette, pierced by 
 remorse at her own ruthlessness, sank, pale as ashes, beside 
 the victim's corse. 
 
 "Darling Laura! sweetest Laura! tell me I have not 
 hurt you! Just Heaven! how could I strike you? I, 
 who am so strong ! Indeed, I might have killed you ! . . . 
 Pray for me, my little angel! It will need a miracle to 
 cure my temper, as Mother Veronica constantly says. 
 Cannot you get up ? Do try, to please me ! Tell me 
 where you feel most injured ? Quick, or I know I shall be 
 angry again ! . . . Show me the bruise ! Pouf ! that is a 
 mere nothing! I will kiss it and make it well, and you 
 shall have the blue bead Rosary. ' '
 
 48 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The mention of the blue beads palpably restored vitality. 
 The sufferer was understood to intimate that a chocolate 
 elephant would absolutely complete the cure. 
 
 "The elephant to-morrow when the Great Class return 
 from the promenade. The Rosary before Benediction. 
 Away with you ! ' ' 
 
 Laura scuttled. Juliette blew her a parting kiss, and 
 said, with a comprehensive glance of scorn at the faces of 
 her classmates: 
 
 "It was not she who deserved the I have not the 
 
 expression ! ... It is one of your English words that mean 
 many things together ... a kiss ... a blow . . . the boat 
 of a sailor who catches fishes and crabs. ... I have seen 
 such boats at Havre and Weymouth, and they are very 
 pretty. . . . Ah! Now I remember. You call them fish- 
 ing-spanks ! ' ' 
 
 The Class shrieked. Juliette stood calmly while the 
 tumult of laughter and exclamations raged about her. 
 Her long upper lip shut down upon its scarlet neighbor, 
 her brows frowned a little; her slender arms, lost in their 
 loose sleeves, hung straightly by her narrow sides. Miilais 
 would, seeing her, have painted a maiden martyr. Watts 
 might have limned her as Persephone new-loosed from the 
 dark embrace of Dis, her wooer, taking her first timid steps 
 upon the glowing floor of Hell. 
 
 "When you have finished making so much noise pen 
 importe but I have a piece of news to tell you. You are 
 none of you inquisitive that goes without saying! or 
 you would not have dispatched that poor infant to play 
 the spy outside the parlor door. Bridget-Mary and 
 Alethea Bawne, I do not mean you you are souls of honor 
 incapable of curiosity! . . . Also, Monica Breagh, c'est 
 la son moindre defaut! But there are others yet my 
 friends who are not so delicate, and to these I address 
 myself. You do not deserve to hear and yet I cannot be 
 unkind to you; I, who have such joy of the heart in the 
 knowledge that I am to return to my dear father! such 
 grief ah! but such grief of the soul in bidding adieu to 
 the School!" 
 
 "Not for good?" 
 
 "You are going to leave the School?" 
 
 "Dear, darling Juliette, say you're only joking!" 
 
 "She is in earnest. Look at her upper lip!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 49 
 
 "Vous moquez-vous du monde de parler ainsi!" 
 
 Throbbed out a Spanish voice, husky and passionate : 
 
 "Que vergiienza! No, no, es imposible!" 
 
 ''Sure, dear, you'd not be so cruel as to make game 
 of us?" 
 
 She stood her ground, firm, but no longer frowning. 
 Her heart swelled, her eyes were heavy with the promise of 
 rain. Her slender arms went out as though she would have 
 embraced them all. 
 
 ''My dears, it is true! I go to Versailles to rejoin my 
 father. He says to me also I have his letter here ! " . . . 
 
 Silence fell upon the turbulent crowd as she laid a slen- 
 der hand on the place where her heart could be seen 
 throbbing. The paper rustled, but she did not draw it 
 forth. ' 
 
 "He says, in this I am to be married . . . soon, very 
 quickly ! ' ' 
 
 A Babel of cries, ejaculations, and exclamations broke 
 out about her. A girl's voice, more strident than the rest, 
 shrieked : 
 
 "I hate your father! Beast!" and broke down in hys- 
 terical sobbing. Juliette replied, those about her hushed 
 to hear; and in the oasis of silence her tender, silvery 
 voice rose like a fountain springing from the heart of 
 purity. 
 
 "My father is not what you say, but the Emperor's 
 brave soldier and a noble gentleman. I am proud to obey 
 wHen lie commands! He has said to me that I am to be 
 married, and does he not know what is best for me? 
 Would he wish to bring unhappiness upon his Juliette ? ' ' 
 
 She was not so much loyal as Loyalty personified, stand- 
 ing there defending him ; with her little hand keeping down 
 her bursting 'heart of anguish, and salt lakes of unshed 
 tears pent up behind her sorrowful sapphire eyes. . . . 
 Her voice broke as she said "his Juliette," and one of the 
 Bawnes, a stately, black-browed girl, answered, speaking 
 in French: 
 
 "He would not if he is what you have described 
 him! . . . But unless you knew of this before it is so 
 sudden. ... It would seem to argue that M. le Colonel 
 was thinking more you will not be offended! of the 
 happiness of his future son-in-law than of his daugh- 
 ter's "
 
 50 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Non, non, non!" She made an emphatic gesture with 
 her little hand, and shook her head so that a tear fell from 
 her lashes on the bosom of her black school-dress, "Dear 
 Lady Biddy you are mistaken. For comprehend you? 
 my happiness is in obeying that beloved father, always. 
 For me, there is no greater joy. . . . And his letter bears 
 date of the New Year three days since behold the post- 
 mark. It is the custom to give young people etrenncs at 
 that season my father bestows on me a husband, and I 
 am content! See you well?" 
 
 It was faulty English, yet Juliette's "See you well?" 
 haunted the music-loving ear. 
 
 And now even the reserved began to question, while the 
 frankly curious waxed importunate concerning the date of 
 Mademoiselle Bayard's impending departure, the name, 
 rank and personal appearance of the mysterious husband- 
 elect, the number and uniform of his regiment. For, of 
 course, he was certain to be an officer of Cavalry, Dragoons, 
 Lancers, or Cuirassiers. That he must be handsome went 
 without saying; but were his eyes dark or light, and did he 
 wear a moustache only, or sport the hirsute ornament in 
 conjunction with an imperial? Beset from all quar- 
 ters, Juliette was beginning to lose command of her- 
 self, when the hour of two struck from the great clock in 
 the corridor. 
 
 The clang-clang of an iron bell succeeded, the double 
 doors at the upper end of the Hall rolled backward, 
 uniting the Great and the Middle Classes in the religious 
 exercise that opened afternoon School. The hymn sung, 
 the brief litany chanted to an accompaniment played on 
 the harmonium by a mistress in the purple habit and 
 creamy veil of the choir-sisters, another nun approached 
 Juliette and whispered in her ear. 
 
 She was to go to the dormitory and pack her trunk, 
 which would presently be brought her by one of the lay- 
 sisters. And this done, she was free to spend the half- 
 hour previous to Benediction in the parlor with 
 
 The name was lost in Juliette's embrace and kiss of 
 gratitude. She was usually chary of caresses, perhaps she 
 wished to hide her eyes. 
 
 They were fairly overflowing, poor eyes! when their 
 owner gained the solitude of her white-draped cubicle in
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 51 
 
 the Greats' dormitory. Once the curtains fell behind her 
 she was free to fall upon her knees beside the bed and sob 
 there, to call upon Our Lady for succor and pity, to rock 
 herself and hug her bleeding heart. And all these things 
 Juliette did, until the dull thump of felt shoes upon the 
 shining boards betokened the arrival of the lay-sister, 
 bearing the oilskin-covered dress-basket, disinterred from 
 some below-stairs repository, which had to be filled from 
 the locker, dress-hooks, and drawers. 
 
 Ten minutes had been devoured in grief, forty yet re- 
 mained for packing. A lover of method in all things, 
 frugal and prudent in the expenditure of resources ("I am 
 sensible, me!"}, Juliette was economical of time. Tea 
 minutes might be spared to re-perusal of the letter that 
 had set her faith in that dearest father rocking like a palm 
 in tempest, and wrung such tears of anguish from the heart 
 that worshiped him. 
 
 She drew the bulky envelope from its pure hiding-place, 
 kissed it, and moaned a little. There were three sheets of 
 thin foreign note, flourished over in a big, bold, soldierly 
 hand. The date bore evidence that the letter had been 
 penned on the Eve of Saint Sylvestre, answering to our 
 New Year 's Eve. The address was : 
 
 "Barracks of the lllth Regiment, 
 "Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard, 
 
 "Versailles. 
 "My Daughter, 
 
 "Of news thy father has not much to tell thee that thou 
 wouldst find of the most interesting, save that of the fash- 
 ions prevailing in Paris at the moment, the most daring and 
 eccentric is the little hat or miniature bonnet, tilted for* 
 ward upon the forehead ~by the chignon, and spangled with 
 beetles, dragon-flies, and other brilliant insects. Jeweled 
 birds, yachts in full sail, or baskets of flowers, dangle from 
 the ears of all the feminine world! 
 
 "The Empress is as beautiful as even she could wish to 
 be. I saw her driving a pair of little thoroughbred mares 
 in the low park-phceton yesterday in the Bois, near the 
 Rond des Cascades. She was so gracious as to recognize me 
 though I was in civilian riding-dress and beckoned me 
 with her parasol-whip from the line of equestrians respect-
 
 52 
 
 fully mustered on the left side of the road. She patted the 
 gray Mustapha thou wilt be glad thy> horse was so hon- 
 ored! and asked if I was quite recovered of the wound 
 I received at Solferino, proving that an Imperial memory 
 can be conferred with the hand that raises to Imperial' 
 rank. Later on I met Dumas, and at the corner of the 
 Rue Laffitte Baron Rothschild and Cham, the caricatur- 
 ist and there thou hast a resume of the encounters of the 
 day. 
 
 "Do political matters really interest theef Learn, then, 
 a new Ministry is in formation by M. Emile Ollivier a 
 'homogeneous cabinet,' is to be drawn chiefly from the Left 
 Center in the Corps Legislatif. My father's friend, M. le 
 General Lebceuf, Minister of War, retains the post he held 
 in the expired Administration. M. le Marechal Vaillant 
 continues as Minister of the Emperor's Household. Hauss- 
 mann has fallen! his ten thousand hands will no longer 
 scatter gold from the Imperial Treasury. The last an- 
 nouncement emanating from the Prefecture of the Seine 
 gave notice that the cemeteries of Mont-Parnasse, Mont- 
 martre, Ivry, and others are to be seized by\ the munici- 
 pality in 1871. All the private monuments are to be with- 
 drawn before the first of April. . . . With what sorrow of 
 heart these tragic removals will be effected thou ivilt realize, 
 who hast so often accompanied thy father, bearing wreaths 
 to lay upon thy grandmother's tomb at Pcre Lachaise. 
 Pray that the necessity to find a home for those sacred, 
 beloved ashes may not devolve upon us. 
 
 "Thou must know that in October, during the man- 
 euvers at the camp of Chalons, a new and terrible weapon 
 was placed in the hands of the Imperial army of France. 
 It is the Mitrailleuse, conceived by the brain of De Reffye 
 an invention worthy* to rank with that of the Chassepot 
 rifle, which fulfilled such great expectations the first time 
 the weapon was used in action, at Mentana, against the! 
 Garibaldians. How shall I describe it? I will say, briefly, 
 that it is a rifled, breech-loading gun of from fourteen to 
 twenty-nine barrels; that it has as many locks as barrels; 
 that it can be transported from place to place by two men, 
 and fired by one, who manipulates a lever, sitting upon a 
 saddle attached to the gun-carriage. And that it is a mill 
 that grinds a machine that hails death upon an enemy.
 
 THE MAN OF IROX 53 
 
 Armed with batteries of these invincible weapons, the march 
 of an invading army would be irresistible! 
 
 "Two of these marvelous guns have been by the Imperial 
 favor bestowed upon our regiment. The men baptized 
 them in wine by the names of Didi and Bibi. They are 
 treated as regimental infants, and thrive exceedingly 
 well. 
 
 "My child, whether this news will make thee sad or joy- 
 ful it must be that Juliette joins her father here at Ver- 
 sailles not later than on the twentieth of the month of 
 January. Madame la Superieure will supply thee with 
 funds in exchange for the enclosed note of credit furnished 
 me by my bankers. Purchase thyself on arriving in 
 Paris for certainly the modes of London will never con- 
 tent a taste so fastidious some fresh and charming toilettes 
 of the evening, costumes for the house, theater or prom- 
 enade, and suitable lingerie. Last, but not least, bring a 
 marriage-robe, crown and veil. I am not joking, I assure 
 thee! For my daughter I have found a husband. A 
 yaung man, sincere, upright, honorable, and a good Cath- 
 olic, whom I have known from boyhood, whom my child 
 will love as a wife should; and by whom she will be adored 
 and cherished. Thou knoivest Charles Tes'sier, the son of 
 my mother's widowed friend, the estimable Madame Tes- 
 sier, whom we have visited in the Rue de Provence, Ver- 
 sailles! Charles has succeeded to his father's large busi- 
 nesses at Paris, Lyons, and in Belgium, as a manufacturer 
 of woolen dress-materials, the pattern Ecossais, so much 
 in favor with 8.M. the Empress and the belles of the Im- 
 perial Court, having been imported, woven and supplied 
 by this wise, enterprising and energetic young man. Who 
 but it will be for his wife to perceive and praise his 
 many excellencies. I leave thee to the pleasant task of 
 discovering them. 
 
 "My Juliette, if so much of thy father mingles in thy 
 nature that of all careers this of a soldier seems to thee the 
 noblest if the pursuit and attainment of military' glory 
 distinctions won upon the field of War, appeal to thee as 
 Heaven knows they have to me! since my blood first 
 learned to thrill at the roll of the drum and leap at the 
 sound of the trumpet if thou hast pictured in thy inno- 
 cent mind loved in thy spotless dreams some brave and
 
 54 THE MAX OF IRON 
 
 noble officer chosen for thee by him who now writes tear 
 the picture! forget the dream! For when such dreams 
 "become realities they are how often rudely shattered by 
 the rush and shock of armies meeting in the blood-stained 
 field of War! 
 
 "My dear, War is a monster composed of flesh, and iron, 
 and steel, that like the dragon or chimera of classical my- 
 thology devours the hopes of virgins and the happiness 
 of matrons, and leaves children orphans and homes heaps 
 of dust. Thou rememberest thy\ grandmother? She had 
 been married just five years when my father reddened)' 
 with his heart's blood the soil of Algeria. Yet when T 
 wished to follow the profession of arms she did not en~ 
 deavor to dissuade me. She hid her anguish as only 
 mothers can, but her beloved life was shortened by anxiety 
 undergone during the terrible war of the Crimea; that war 
 so protracted, so disastrous to our brave ally of England 
 so fraught with loss and suffering to the more fortunate 
 army of France. And that was not the only blow Fate 
 dealt me while I served as aide-de-camp upon the staff of 
 M. le Marechal Grand guerrier. Thou dost not know as 
 yet! one day I may find courage to tell thee. . . . Even 
 a soldier may\ shrink from baring wounds that are of the 
 soul. 
 
 "My daughter, I have never spoken to thee of thy 
 mother. . . . The time has arrived when " 
 
 The sixteen words were lined out by a heavy stroke of 
 the quill. The closing sentences were 
 
 "In the event of War abroad taking thy father from 
 thee perhaps to lay his bones in a trench hastily dug by 
 peasants in some foreign province! or in the event of War 
 at home, sudden, unexpected sweeping as a cataclysm 
 over thy native soil, thou wilt believe me, my Juliette, when 
 I tell thee this marriage would be absolutely for the best! 
 Living or dead, for me to know thee safe and cherished, 
 here at Versailles with thy husband Charles and his esti- 
 mable mother, would be happiness. . . . Wilt thou con- 
 sent to the union f Wilt thou obey thy father, who loves 
 thee as his soul? One finds this a scrawl which will prove 
 difficult to decipher. As thou knowest, I am a better 
 artist with the sword than with the pen. 
 
 "Written here at my new quarters, which comprise a 
 sleeping chamber and boudoir elegantly furnished, suit-
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 55 
 
 able for a young lady of refinement; and a little kitchen, 
 full of pots and bright pans. 
 
 "Thy father, 
 
 " HENRI- ANTOINE- ALBERT DE BAYAED, 
 "Colonel Commandant." 
 
 VIII 
 
 WILL it not be admitted that a letter such as this was 
 calculated to cause a flutter of agitation in the meekest 
 feminine bosom? To be recalled from School before the 
 completion of the tiresome process technically known as 
 "finishing," that was matter for rejoicing. The little bed- 
 room-boudoir in the Colonel's quarters at the Cavalry 
 Barracks, "elegantly furnished, suitable for a young lady 
 of refinement," presented an alluring picture, the tiny 
 kitchen, "full of pots and bright pans," charmed. . . . 
 
 For Mademoiselle de Bayard, going back to her Colonel 
 after two years' absence, laden as the working-bee with 
 the honey of accomplishments and the well-kneaded wax 
 of useful knowledge, promised herself that it should not 
 be long before her idol should be convinced by practical 
 demonstration that his Juliette had not forgotten how to 
 cook. Irish stew, saddle-of-mutton with onion-sauce, pan- 
 cakes, Scotch collops, English plum-pudding and mince- 
 pies had been added to her lengthy list of recipes, by grace 
 of the Convent cook, Sister Boniface, who had permitted 
 the ardent amateur to experiment in a second kitchen, 
 used in hot weather, abutting on the garden, and not 
 regarded as a portion of the nuns' enclosure. 
 
 To return, and resume the old dear life of companion- 
 ship, how sweetly welcome had been the summons. But 
 nothing could disguise the taste of the powder that came 
 after the jam. 
 
 You are to conceive the struggle in Juliette's faithful 
 heart between obedience and anger. Marry, my faith! 
 yes! Every sensible young girl naturally expected to be 
 married ; but a husband approved of by oneself, if selected 
 by one's father that was what one had had reason to 
 expect. 
 
 And this Charles, eulogized as wise, sensible, far-seeing,
 
 56 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 and business-like. Were these qualities, though naturally 
 desirable in the estimation of a father-in-law, attributes 
 that weighed down the scale in the opinion of a bride? 
 Had one ever beheld him? She shut her eyes and sum- 
 moned up all the masculine faces in her gallery of mental 
 portraits, dismissing one after the other with no's, and 
 no 's, and no 's ! . . . Was it not horrible to have to admit 
 even to oneself that one had not the faintest recollection 
 of ever having seen or spoken to him? Madame Tessier 
 she remembered well as a little, stout, very gentille and 
 amiable, elderly lady, whom she had visited with M. le 
 Colonel, who had embraced one cordially, and insisted on 
 one's partaking immediately and at great length of a 
 collation of sandwiches, fruit, cakes, and syrups; excellent 
 and to a hungry school-girl, welcome at any hour of the 
 day. What more ? . . . Ah, yes ! Madame had much de- 
 plored Charles's absence, possibly at Lyons or in Belgium. 
 Further, Madame had remarked to M. le Colonel: 
 
 "My friend, your Juliette is the image of her belored 
 grandmother ! ' ' 
 
 "Will nobody ever say that I am like my mother?" 
 Juliette had gaily cried. And with a strange stiff smile, 
 the Colonel had answered for Madame Tessier, who at 
 that juncture had opportunely upset a dish of little sugar- 
 cakes. 
 
 "There have been moments, my child, when I have" 
 he coughed rather awkwardly for M. le Colonel "antici- 
 pated that a resemblance might exist." 
 
 Could he have been on the verge of saying "feared," 
 and substituted the other word at the last moment ? Such 
 an idea was ridiculous, yet it had occurred to Juliette. 
 
 To questions on the subject of the faintly remembered 
 mother the grandmother had been impervious. The Colo- 
 nel had always answered yet with palpable reti- 
 cence. ... 
 
 "You have no mother, my little Juliette; she was taken 
 from us, my child, while I was absent with the Army in the 
 Crimea," or "She left us, while yet I was detained in 
 Eastern Russia, serving as aide upon the staff of M. le 
 Marechal Grandguerrier. ... It is true, she was both 
 good and beautiful when I married her! Now run and 
 play ! ' ' Or, in later years : ' ' Now come and read to me ! " 
 or "Walk with me," or "Ride with me," or "Now
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 57 
 
 tell me how and where thou didst learn to turn out such 
 savory dishes with those tiny pattes de mouche of thine? 
 Nowhere is there a chef whose choicest efforts can com- 
 pare with my Juliette's. And I have dined with the Em- 
 peror and with Milord Hertford at Bagatelle and with 
 Consul-General Baron Rothschild and parole d'hon- 
 neur! I have told them so!" 
 
 And all the time M. le Colonel had been keeping back 
 something. . . . "Was it not strange, thought Juliette, that, 
 while upon the anniversary of the Jour des Mort Mass had 
 invariably been offered for all deceased relatives of the 
 De Bayard family, the actual date of the death of one so 
 young and beautiful had never been marked with special 
 solemnity. 
 
 Could it be that the lost mother was not dead, but 
 living ! Oh, but impossible ! . . . And yet once awak- 
 ened, the doubt would never sleep again. . . . 
 
 Did ever a girl receive such a letter? It was fuller of 
 darts than even the fabled porcupine. It awakened sting- 
 ing doubts of the kindness of the gentlest and tenderest of 
 fathers. "Tear the picture! forget the dream!" he had 
 said. Ah, my Heaven ! what young girl cherishes not such 
 images such visions! . . . Juliette wondered sorrow- 
 fully. Sitting on her school locker, lost in thought, her 
 elbows on her knees, her little pointed chin cupped in the 
 slender hands, you saw her as a haggard, weary little 
 creature. For while joy made of Juliette a living rainbow, 
 grief transformed her to the wan and rigid nymph that 
 droops above a classic urn upon a mourning cameo; and 
 anxiety or suspense or remorse of soul set a changeling in 
 her place, wizened her, pinched her, struck her prema- 
 turely old. 
 
 She might to employ hyperbole have been sitting on 
 her locker until the present hour, had not her sad eyes 
 lighted upon a colored photograph of M. le Colonel in full 
 military harness and equipment, contained in a little ivory 
 frame fastened by a safety-pin to one of the starched white 
 dimity curtains that imparted an air of select privacy to 
 the little white-covered dormitory bed. 
 
 You are to behold Juliette's father per medium of this 
 pen-portrait and would that you might have heard his 
 cordial voice, and pressed his living hand. . . . Con-
 
 58 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ceive him as a little man; and somewhat stout and 
 paunchy; you would never have dared to term him so in 
 the presence of Juliette. And yet so manly, soldierlike and 
 ingratiating was the boldly-featured face, with its brave 
 eyes, curled moustache and imperial; the fur talpack with 
 the green and scarlet plume and the red Hussar bag, was 
 worn with such an air; the dolman of fine green cloth, laced 
 and corded with heavy galons of silver and faced with the 
 brilliant red of his silver-striped pantaloons, fitted his com- 
 pact round person with such creaseless tightness ; his silver- 
 striped ceinture, belts and buckles were so point-device; 
 his spurred Hessian boots graced such neat small feet ; his 
 right hand rested on his hip, his left upon the hilt of his 
 long saber, with so pleasant a grace, that you could not 
 but warm to this picture of a cavalry commander. 
 
 His daughter melted even as she gazed. The generous 
 soul, once wrought to the pitch of heroism, piles sacrifice 
 on sacrifice. She had meant to temporize, but she would 
 not do so now. She began to comprehend, as stray sen- 
 tences of the father's letter floated back, that his mood had 
 been sorrowful when he wrote it; and that those wounds 
 of the soul he spoke of had been bleeding, though hidden 
 from his daughter, many a year. . . . He was never senti- 
 mental; that sentence about laying his bones in a trench 
 hastily dug by peasants in a foreign province had been 
 struck from the steel of his nature by some flint hurled 
 from the sling of Fate. The words that followed, picturing 
 War, sudden, unexpected, sweeping as a cataclysm over 
 the country, had the solemnity of deep organ-notes. And 
 the rushing tenderness in the words, "Living or dead, to 
 know thee safe and cherished!" thrilled, and the dignity 
 of the entreaty touched and conquered: "Wilt thou obey 
 thy father, who loves thee as his soul? . . ." 
 
 You saw light and warmth and youth and loveliness vis- 
 ibly flowing back into her as she looked at the picture. The 
 witches' changeling fled, a christened maiden remained 
 in her place. Words came to the lips that had been dumb, 
 dews of tenderness bathed the eyes that had been dry as 
 those of a sandstone statue in the Theban desert. . . . 
 
 "Dearest beloved best! . . . Oh ! shame that I should 
 have dreamed of doubting you ! . . . There is some great 
 reason for this decision something terrible behind this 
 haste of yours. What, I may not know now! one day
 
 59 
 
 all will be explained to me! ... Until then" she rose 
 and kissed the portrait "until then I will trust you 
 who have never deceived me. ... I will write to you as 
 you would wish me to this very night. Now I must pack, 
 and then go down to Monica. . . . How to answer if she 
 should question! . . . but no, she never will!" 
 
 Dismissing the phantom of Charles, faceless and bodiless, 
 but none the less terrible, she flew at the locker pulled 
 out the three drawers stripped the row of regulation 
 dress-pegs. Brushing, smoothing, and folding, she even 
 sang as she worked. . . . Presently a bell rang twice. It 
 was yet vibrating where it hung, on the passage-landing 
 at the dormitory stair-head, when Juliette passed on her 
 way to the guest-parlor. Monica was waiting there. 
 
 IX 
 
 A TALL slight figure in the plain black, tight-fitting gown 
 of a novice, made with a little cape covering the upper arm. 
 A sweet plain face with eyes of hazel brown, framed in a 
 close white cap with three rows of gophered frills, and 
 there you have Monica, the chosen friend of the fiery 
 Juliette. 
 
 ' ' She has not three ideas ! How can you think so much 
 of her ? " a jealous rival is reported to have said. 
 
 Juliette retorted with a lightning riposte: 
 
 ' ' Possibly no more than three, but they are good ones ! ' ' 
 She marked them off on her tiny fingers. "First, to serve 
 God. . . . Again, to serve her friends. . . . Once more 
 to help her enemies ! . . . If not, how is it that she spent 
 two hours yesterday, working with you at that F major 
 fugue in Bach's Book of Forty-eight? . . . Has not 
 that stopped you the whistle? ... I have eyes in my 
 head, see you well? Pour tout dire you are an ingrate, 
 you!" 
 
 "See you well!" could be a slogan on occasion, a blood- 
 chilling note heralding the shock of battle. But it came 
 now in the softest of dove-notes, as they hurried to meet 
 each other, clasped hands, and kissed. 
 
 ' ' Dear one, I am so glad ! See you well, we have a whole 
 half-hour to spend together. . . . And there is so much
 
 60 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 to tell you that I know not where to begin." . . . She 
 drew back frowning a little, vexed that Monica was not 
 alone. ' ' I entreat your pardon ! . . . I did not know you 
 entertained a visitor. ... It is best that I retire. . . . 
 I fear I am. . . . how do you say? . . . very much in the 
 road!" 
 
 Monica explained, holding the big red hand of an 
 awkward young man in a shaggy greatcoat. 
 
 ' ' You are not in the way, dear and this is not a visitor ! 
 Let me introduce my brother, of whom you have heard. 
 Caro, this is my friend, Mademoiselle de Bayard." 
 
 The shaggy young man, blushing savagely to the tips of 
 his ears and the roots of his flaming hair, made a clumsy 
 inclination, and offered the large red paw to Mademoiselle, 
 who gravely inspected it, drawing down her upper lip, 
 folding her own infinitesimal hands before her narrow 
 waist, but made no movement to take it. 
 
 "He has angry eyes, with curious amber taches in 
 them, ..." she thought. "And he looks dusty as a voy- 
 ager after a long travel. . . . Not bien tenu as a gentle- 
 man should be. ... Living with Germans in Germany 
 he has become indifferent to the petits soins of the toilet. 
 I would put the hand in the fire rather than tell Monica ! 
 but, for me, I find him horrible. What is he saying? One 
 would expect from a being so clumsy and so shaggy, not 
 merely speech, but a roar!" 
 
 Yet the voice was fresh and rather pleasant, as he re- 
 plied to Monica's interested questions. Had he had a good 
 journey? . . . How long had he been in London? . . . 
 Three days, and never let her know? . . . Why not? . . . 
 Had he dined early, or lunched, and if not he had been 
 understood to mumble a negative, would he not have 
 something now? Tea and sandwiches Sister Boniface 
 would cut the latter in a minute. It was only three o 'clock. 
 Benediction wasn't until four there would be heaps of 
 time. . . . 
 
 The mumbled refusals grew faint. Monica smiled her 
 triumph. Intent on hospitality she hurried out of the 
 parlor, saying with a backward glance, and a smile halved 
 between sulky Carolan and somber Juliette: "Sit down! 
 talk to each other ... I '11 soon be back again ! . . . " 
 
 But the sound of the closing door smote the shaggy 
 youth with a dumb palsy and transformed Mademoiselle
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 61 
 
 de Bayard into the semblance of a large mechanical doll 
 in black merino. 
 
 "Stiff, pale, proud little creature!" Carolan mentally 
 termed her. It occurred to him that, attired in a brocade 
 Court dress over a hooped farthingale, crowned with a wig 
 of stiffened ringlets adorned with lace and ribbons and 
 diamond powder, with a fan in one of those rigid little 
 hands, she might have sat to Velasquez as a child Infanta. 
 Or, upholstered and decked in Moorish finery, posed as 
 one of the female midgets in the royal group of the Fam- 
 ilia. Whatever Velasquez might have thought, she was 
 priggish, prudish, dull, doltish. . . . Obstinate, too, with 
 that long, deeply-channeled upper lip. And how persist- 
 ently she kept those long, thick, uncurling lashes down. 
 One wondered rather what might be the color of the eyes 
 so concealed ? Black or brown ? Or one had had a gleam 
 of blue when for an instant she had looked at one. Nobody 
 cared but perhaps they were blue? 
 
 She made no movement to sit down, nor did she indicate 
 a desire that he should seat himself. She flickered her 
 somber eyelids for an instant, and the eyes seemed inky- 
 black. Burnt holes in a blanket, the observer brutally 
 termed them, lifting his mental gaze to the china-blue 
 orbs of his ideal, the colossal Britomart-Kriemhilde-Briin- 
 hilde-Isolde. 
 
 In contempt of the prim puppet in the black merino 
 he found himself adding inches to his loved one's height. 
 Or perhaps it was to keep himself from madly shouting to 
 Monica to tell them to hurry up with that tray. . . . 
 
 When you have pawned your jacket and waistcoat for 
 two-and-eightpence early on Wednesday, and have dined 
 on a sausage and mashed for threepence, supped on a 
 drink of water from a pump in a livery -stable yard. . . . 
 When the bed at a coffee-house has cost you a shilling, 
 breakfast of burned-bread coffee and roll, threepence, 
 and you have spent twopence on a paper collar, your 
 remaining capital stands at a shilling, and by three o'clock 
 on Thursday, if you have not ventured to break into this, 
 you are beginning to return to the savage of the Earlier 
 Stone Age. Who, supposing his neighbor to be gnawing 
 a lump of gristle w r hen his own stomach was clamorous, 
 dropped in upon the banquet armed with a flint axe, and 
 possessed himself of the coveted bonne-douche.
 
 62 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 P. C. Breagh was frankly astonished at the savage 
 voracity of his own impulses. It did not occur to him 
 that his nerves he had always jeered at men who had 
 talked of their nerves had sustained a tremendous shock, 
 and that this was the inevitable reaction. His laboriously 
 crammed scientific knowledge had never yet been called 
 upon to account for his own bodily sensations unless in 
 the case of a jammer headache diagnosed as the result of 
 too many beers overnight. At any rate he was not hungry 
 now, and the room with its stiff row of chairs, its high- 
 molded ceiling, its dingy blue distempered walls, hung 
 with engravings of Popes and Cardinals, Roman views, 
 and Scriptural oil-paintings, began to heave and surge 
 like the decks of the evil-smelling, second-rate passenger- 
 steamer that had brought him third-class from Ostend. 
 He thought of that old man with the shattered skull 
 sprawling among his bloody papers, and knew that in 
 another moment he should horror of horrors ! despite the 
 presence of yonder speechless Immobility in the fiddle- 
 bodied black frock and medaled blue neck ribbon either 
 faint or be violently sick. 
 
 He chose the first alternative, for the whole room, with 
 its faded gilt mirrors, its album-laden tables, its formal 
 rows of chairs skirting the wainscot, the little mats in 
 front of them, and the beeswaxed floor on which with 
 growing difficulty he maintained a perpendicular position, 
 melted away from about and from under him, letting him 
 sink down, down . . . into bottomless, boundless abysses 
 of intangible gray mist. . . . 
 
 Out of which, after an interval of a hundred years or 
 three minutes, he emerged sufficiently to say in a husky 
 whisper : 
 
 " It 's nothing ! I 'm all ' ' 
 
 And then be swallowed up again. Coming to the surface 
 in another jeon or so to ask, with a wince of pain : 
 
 "Did the old fellow shoot me in the head? It hurts 
 like the dickens!" 
 
 And to receive the answer in a cool little silvery voice 
 like the playing of a fountain in a mossy basin at the end 
 of a green alley, or the trickle of a brook through lush 
 grasses and forget-me-not beds. 
 
 "You knocked the floor with it when you made to fall 
 .so suddenly!" Something cool and light touched his
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 63 
 
 aching forehead, and the voice went on again: "It does 
 not bleed, no ! but there will certainly be one big bump 
 there!" 
 
 "One bump. . . . Feels like one-and-twenty ! " P. C. 
 Breagh muttered, adding, with a heave and struggle that 
 brought him into a sitting posture: "Help me up, who- 
 ever you are ! . . . Not all at once. . . . Donnerwetter! 
 how giddy I am! Try again in a minute! . . . Here! 
 . . . Give me hold of your fist ! ' ' 
 
 The silvery voice said, with a liquid tremble in it that 
 might have been laughter or shyness : 
 
 "But I do not comprehend feesth! Permit that I 
 offer you the hand. ... I am so very strong, me ! ' ' 
 
 "Strong, eh?" P. C. Breagh said vacantly, being still 
 absorbed in the effort to remember where he was. He was 
 certainly sitting up on a shiny, cold and slippery floor, 
 leaning back against something warm and fragrant and 
 soft, but he had not the least notion as to the nature of the 
 support afforded him, nor did he associate the ownership 
 of the voice with any person previously met. 
 
 "Strong! . . ."he repeated, and yawned, and could not 
 leave off yawning. "Physical exhaustion, fatigue, and 
 lack of food," he mentally diagnosed, and found that, when 
 his eyes had left off blinking and watering, the room was 
 coming back. There were the Popes, Cardinals, and views 
 of Roman Basilicas ; there the oil-paintings of sacred sub- 
 jects there the dingy gilt mirrors, the round center- 
 table with books upon it, the oval one with an inkstand 
 and nothing more, the formal rows of chairs, instantly 
 reviving the impression of a Convent parlor . . . and 
 stimulating him to rise, after some slips and sprawls and 
 flounders, and stand upright on the beeswaxed boards, 
 smiling rather stupidly and clutching something small and 
 soft and sentient, for it fluttered in his big inclosing palm 
 as a captive titmouse or robin might have done. . . . 
 Donnerwetter! it was the hand whose aid he had asked a 
 moment before in his extremity. ... A child's. . . 
 No! a girl's. . . . Who was the girl? . . . 
 
 The truth burst on him then that it was to the mechanical 
 doll, the stiff, pale, proud, absurd little creature, the In- 
 fanta of the drooping eyelids, the Moorish pigmy, he owed 
 the help the little hand had given. The silvery, sweet voice 
 was hers, and against her he had leaned as he sat on the
 
 64 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 floor gathering in his scattered faculties. . . . The light 
 touch that had visited his aching forehead, when she had 
 said it did not bleed, had soothed him like the contact of 
 a flower. The sweetness of the voice was in his ears 
 again. . . . 
 
 ' ' Will you not sit down ? You are not strong, and should 
 manage your forces. A gentleman to faint like that I have 
 never before seen! Your sister will be grieved that 
 you " 
 
 "You are not to tell her!" He dropped heavily into 
 the chair she had brought, and made a feebly-emphatic 
 blow at the table near which she had set it. "Promise 
 me ! . . . I I must ask you to be good enough. . . . Who 
 has gone and unbuttoned my coat?" 
 
 THE pitiable secret the shaggy garment had concealed, the 
 absence of jacket and waistcoat, bringing his hidden 
 poverty into horrible relief, the dinginess of the shirt of 
 two days' wear, the deceptive nature of the paper collar 
 purchased at an outlay of twopence, had been revealed 
 by some traitorous hand during his unguarded weakness 
 of a moment back. The color rushed back to his haggard 
 young face in flood, as with shaky fingers he wedded the 
 big horn buttons to their buttonholes, and felt about his 
 neck to find it wet. . . . Juliette had said to herself that 
 he had angry eyes. They were tigerish as they flamed at 
 her. Then the yellow flame died out of them and they 
 were nothing but gray and miserable. He said brokenly: 
 
 "I beg your pardon! I must seem the last thing out 
 in the way of a brute to you. I had fainted or some- 
 thing! I've been through a lot of late! And you meant 
 to be kind, I'm sure. ..." 
 
 He had thought her a mere child in size, but her personal 
 dignity lent her height and presence. Her great eyes met 
 his full, and they were deeply blue as scillas in May, with 
 great black pupils and velvety-black bands about the irises. 
 She said in an icy little voice: 
 
 "Sir, it is customary in these days to instruct young 
 ladies in the knowledge of imparting medical aid to the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 65 
 
 sick or wounded. A moment since I saw you fall to the 
 floor! I lanced myself to your side! I debuttoned your 
 paletot sprinkled on your forehead water from that vase 
 upon the table," she indicated the ornament with an in- 
 finitesimal forefinger, "and in a few minutes I have the 
 relief to behold you sufficiently recovered to demand if a 
 man has shooted you? . . . Naturally, I do not mean to 
 be unkind ! But the promise not to speak of this to Made- 
 moiselle, your sister, see you well? I cannot give it! 
 Young ladies" there was an appalling stateliness about 
 the tone and manner of this delivery, worthy of a mistress 
 of deportment "young ladies do not have secrets with 
 strange young gentlemen ! And Monica is my dear friend, 
 not you!" 
 
 "Then if she is so much a friend of yours, you would 
 wish to spare her knowledge of things certain to shock 
 and grieve her. You would not like to have her anxious 
 and worried about what she couldn't help, would you?" 
 His eyes constrained and besought. His voice was humbly 
 entreating. . . . 
 
 Juliette recognized the cunning in this appeal. She 
 lowered her little pointed chin and leveled her thick 
 straight eyelashes at the speaker. "Yes!" the chin said: 
 "No!" the eyelashes replied. Thus encouraged, P. C. 
 Breagh had an inspiration. 
 
 "But if I trust you! you look as if you could be 
 trusted. ..." 
 
 From her little neck in its plain white frill to the cloud 
 of dusky hair that crowned her, she flushed rosy as Alpine 
 snows at sunset. Did he mean to insult, or ingratiate, this 
 overbearing, shaggy youth? She said, with delicate re- 
 proof, completely lost upon his bluntness : 
 
 "My father has honored me with his confidence, as long 
 as I can remember, sir. ' ' 
 
 "Then I'll risk mine with you!" said P. C. Breagh. 
 
 "Not risk!" She had lost her glow, the sapphires of 
 her eyes were shadowed by the blackness of the lowered 
 lashes. "Do not say risk, for that is to gamble. See 
 you I will be trusted absolutely, or I will not be trusted 
 at all!" 
 
 He understood, in part, that he had wounded, and awk- 
 wardly begged her pardon, ending: "And show that you 
 forgive me by letting me tell you that I wouldn't have my
 
 66 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sister know, for the world!" He got up and went to one 
 of the white-curtained, ground-glass-filled windows, that 
 masked the outlook upon Kensington Square, and said still 
 more awkwardly: 
 
 "You see you must have already seen from my togs 
 that I am a beggar. I came back from Germany three 
 days ago to find myself one. I was to receive a fortune 
 from the hands of trustees, and I found that their firm 
 had gone bankrupt. The elder partner had committed sui- 
 cide the younger had shot the moon. My thousands in 
 his pockets ! ' ' He ground his teeth. ' ' And if I live and 
 ever meet that fellow ! he '11 pay me in inches of skin ! ' ' 
 
 She said, and the silvern voice had the sweetness of 
 Cordelia 's : 
 
 "I am so very sorry! Could you not prevail upon this 
 dishonest gentleman to restore to you your property?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, with a flash of white teeth in his blunt- 
 featured freckled face: 
 
 "I might, if he had been considerate enough to mention 
 where I could find him! . . . Meanwhile ..." He 
 shrugged his strong young shoulders in rather a despon- 
 dent way. 
 
 "Meanwhile you are without a home . . . and without 
 money ? ' ' 
 
 He nodded, biting fiercely on his jutting underlip. 
 "Just now! But by-and-by " 
 
 She persisted. 
 
 "Without money and starving! Surely, starving! and 
 that was why you fainted! . . . And I, mon Dieu! I 
 have been blind and stupid. ... Je ne me doutais de rien! 
 Forgive me, I beg of you ! ' ' 
 
 Her small face was all white and pinched and working. 
 Sobs choked her voice; she struck her little bosom she 
 wrung the tiny hands in anguish. . . . And it was all 
 real. You could not doubt Juliette's sincerity. And 
 though his manhood was sufficiently new to revolt at com- 
 miseration, still, it was not unpleasant to know that one's 
 misfortunes had pierced the bucklered pride of the little 
 Infanta, and wrung tears from the most wonderful eyes 
 he had ever seen. And what was she saying? 
 
 ' ' Monsieur Breagh, it is a misfortune of the most grand 
 that you are a man and I a woman ! Otherwise it would be 
 so easy to say to you this. . . . Me, I am for the moment
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 67 
 
 rich. I could if you would accord me the permission? 
 relieve these pressing necessities. . . . Let me know where 
 a letter will readily find you. . . . Do not, I entreat you, 
 be angry that I ask this!" 
 
 But he was angry. His broad stripe of meeting red 
 eyebrows came loweringly down over eyes that had the 
 tigerish flame in them. His face burned and he clenched 
 his hands until the knuckles showed out white upon their 
 sunburned backs. He tried to speak and could not, so 
 choking was his indignation. To be asked to borrow from 
 a girl his sister's schoolmate, added one last dash of 
 wormwood to the brimming cup of bitterness. Unlucky P. 
 C. Breagh! 
 
 "I'm uncommonly obliged, but decent men in this 
 country don't do that sort of thing! Even Frenchmen 
 might call it caddish ! " he choked out at last. 
 
 Her eyes blazed murderously, a savage dusky crimson 
 dyed the small white face that had looked at him with 
 such pitiful entreaty. She did not tower, she contracted 
 she crouched like a savage little cat ready to spring and 
 rend him ; her muscles grew visibly tense under her trans- 
 parent skin. He could hear the sharp hiss of her intaken 
 breath, and see her lips writhe in the struggle to control 
 utterance that seemed on the point of breaking from them. 
 When she spoke, it was in a low clear whisper, more 
 piercing, it seemed to her unlucky auditor, than any 
 shriek. 
 
 ' ' Sir, when you say to me that even a Frenchman might 
 find despicable the deed an Englishman would shrink from 
 as a stain upon his honor, you insult my country of 
 Prance, and my brave father; and the noble gentleman 
 Who will be my husband soon ! . . . It is fortunate for you 
 that M. Charles is not here, see you well? Brave as a 
 lion, he is a master of the sword. But enough! I was 
 mistaken and I have been justly humiliated. . . . Permit 
 that I wish you a very good afternoon!" 
 
 She curtsied to the miserable P. C. Breagh with crushing 
 ceremony, turned, and had swept from the room before he 
 could even reach the door. It shut in his face with a 
 deliberate gentleness that was more final than a slam 
 Would have been. . . . 
 
 " I 've done it, by golly ! ' ' said P. C. Breagh. 
 
 Just after this lofty, dignified fashion had Britomart-
 
 68 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Krimhilde-Brunhilde-Isolde quitted the scene of many an 
 imaginary interview. That a being so small and frail 
 should assume the airs of these heroines tickled even while 
 it angered him. A moment more he glowered and fumed, 
 cursing the Fate that had dealt him another set-back, and 
 then . . . the tinkle of crockery heralded the return of 
 Monica with Sister Boniface and a tray, satisfactorily 
 laden with a stout brown teapot, bread and butter, home- 
 made preserves, and a dish of somewhat solid ham-sand- 
 wiches, the welcome sight of which drove away the dark 
 blue devils and restored his cheeriness again. He could go 
 a long time on one full meal, he told himself, as he per- 
 petrated a surprising onslaught on the eatables and thirst- 
 ily swallowed cup after cup of convent tea. 
 
 Replete at length, he leaned back in his chair, conscious 
 so overwhelming was the sensation of fullness after his 
 protracted fast of feeling like a boa-constrictor who had 
 swallowed his blanket. He longed to sleep, the continual 
 battle with recurrent yawns was becoming painful; and 
 yet you are mistaken if you suppose that this young man 
 did not love his gentle step-sister, and was not glad at 
 heart to be once more in Monica's company. But Brother 
 Ass, the body, ridden fast and far by the turbulent spirit 
 and the eager mind, belabored by the cudgel of Fate until 
 his solid ribs were cracking within his shaggy hide, wanted 
 repose more than social converse. Carolan's eyelids were 
 closing under the stream of Monica's eager talk. His head 
 was nodding his mouth had fallen ajar a faint snore 
 was on the point of issuing from the organ immediately 
 above it when he started as broad awake as though a 
 wasp had stung him. . . . Monica was speaking of 
 Juliette. . . . 
 
 "I am so glad that you have met her! yet sorry, too, 
 because she is leaving us so soon now. Is she not sweet? 
 with those grave airs, and those angelic eyes under deter- 
 mined eyebrows, and that shy wild smile ..." thus Monica 
 prattled on. To stop her or to prevent himself from 
 giving her his candid opinion of her lauded idol, he in- 
 quired whether she did not find him handsome, and had 
 her reply : 
 
 1 ' Not a bit ! rather ugly than otherwise ; but I love your 
 face, and always shall, Carol Why, you have a mustache 
 already ! ' ' she cried.
 
 69 
 
 He blushed as Monica jumped up for a nearer inspec- 
 tion, to discover that the close sprinkling of dark-brown 
 freckles on the egg-smooth young surface of his upper lip 
 had deceived the sisterly observation. 
 
 "The mustache will come," Monica said with a smile, 
 "and then you will begin to be more of a dandy." 
 
 He fancied that her look betrayed a shade of disap- 
 pointment. "No wonder! such a beast as I must look!" 
 he thought. But he said with rather a clumsy air of 
 indifference : 
 
 "I daresay my clothes are a bit shabby, perhaps more 
 than a bit ! But, you see, I 've been knocking about on the 
 rail and aboard steamers and so on." 
 
 "Still, you could be what Juliette would call more 
 soigne." There was a little accent of sisterly rebuke in the 
 words. "And I have talked to her so much about 
 you " 
 
 ' ' That you 're afraid she '11 chaff you, now she has beheld 
 the wonder! If she did I shouldn't be surprised! . . . 
 And if I 'd known you wanted me to turn up a thundering 
 swell, I'd have polished myself up a bit. My hair is too 
 long, of course. . . . But most British fellows run shaggy 
 after a year or two at a German University." 
 
 He spoke as easily and naturally as was possible, with a 
 lump in the throat embraced by the paper collar, and a 
 savage pain tearing at his heart. 
 
 She said: 
 
 " It is a bargain then, and I shall see my old Caro looking 
 as he ought to look, next time he comes here ! . . . Tell me, 
 when will next time be ? " 
 
 He stuttered, inwardly writhing : 
 
 "I had no idea you'd mind the sort of togs a fellow 
 went about in ! You, who are going you told me in your 
 last letter ! to take a vow of poverty and all the rest ! . . . ' ' 
 
 She laughed and patted the brown hand. 
 
 "But you aren't going to take a vow of poverty. . . . 
 You will be independent. . . . You will have everything I 
 hope you will have everything; that goes to make Life 
 pleasant, and all the other things that make it precious. 
 ... I am very ambitious for you, Carolan ! ' ' 
 
 He laughed rather roughly. 
 
 "Ambition in the cap and cape of a postulant! What 
 would the Mistress of the Novices say to that?"
 
 70 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The face framed in the triple row of white frills was very 
 pure and tender. 
 
 "She would say that there are more kinds of ambition 
 than one. I am ambitious that my brother should be 
 spoken of among men as a man who in the whole course 
 of his career was never once ashamed to own himself a 
 Catholic, and to prove not only in words, but in deeds 
 his loyalty to his Master in the face of the world! You 
 understand me, don't you?" 
 
 He answered her in an embarrassed, awkward way, and 
 with a look that evaded hers. 
 
 "Of course! You mean you'd like me to be the kind 
 of fellow who goes regularly to Mass, and receives the 
 Blessed Sacrament on all the Feasts of Obligation ! Well, 
 I can't boast of being quite as scrupulous as that! But 
 at any rate I have ringed in with the late-comers at 
 Christmas and Easter and Whitsuntide. ..." He added, 
 "Not that I should have been thought priggish if I'd 
 gone oftener. ... Of course the bulk of the students at 
 Schwarz-Brettingen were Lutheran Protesants. But about 
 one-third were Catholics, I should think." 
 
 "And were all of them late-comers ringing in at the 
 last minute?" 
 
 "I can't say that. When one did turn out for early 
 Mass one found the churches there were three of 'em 
 packed full." 
 
 "Ah! . . . Where are you staying?" she asked him in 
 a changed tone. 
 
 He faltered, sick at heart at having to lie to her. 
 
 XI 
 
 "I I HAVEN'T got the address on me just now! By 
 George, that's just . . . Ha, ha, ha!" 
 
 "What is the joke? Do tell me!" she urged, puzzled 
 by the mirthless bark of laughter. 
 
 He could not have explained. His Irish sense of humor 
 had been tickled to realize that in actual fact he did carry 
 his address about him. Did not the shabby old frieze 
 greatcoat constitute his hotel, chambers and club? To 
 change the subject he began to question her experiences
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 71 
 
 in the Novitiate. She looked happy, he admitted. He 
 did not hide that her decision to take the Veil had been a 
 surprise. 
 
 "You see, you'd always been such a jolly girl," he told 
 her. "Such a stunning companion I'd never have ex- 
 pected it of you." 
 
 Her bright laugh rang through the room. 
 
 "Dear boy, do you suppose that nuns are dismal things, 
 or indifferent to pleasant companionship? You should 
 hear us laugh and chatter at Recreation. Perhaps because 
 the time for fun is limited, as the time for other things 
 we enjoy that half-hour's freedom all the more. Not" 
 her smile did not leave her, but it changed in expression, 
 "not that I did not have my miserable hours. For the 
 matter of that I have them still!" 
 
 He got up and went over to the hearth-side, where a tiny 
 gas-fire made pretense of cheerfulness. 
 
 "I never thought it was all jam in the Novitiate. A 1 
 fellow I knew who had wanted to be a Carthusian monk 
 and found it impossible to stick out the preliminaries! 
 hinted as much to me." 
 
 "I suppose," she said calmly, "that he could not sub- 
 mit to the necessary experiences that lead to the final 
 breaking of the will." 
 
 "Breaking of the will!" He kicked the old-fashioned 
 fender savagely. "What do they do to break yours, in 
 Heaven's name?" 
 
 "What is done is done in Heaven's name," she said, 
 "and that is why one can submit cheerfully. But my 
 first weeks in the noviceship were cloudlessly happy." 
 She laughed a little. "I thought it was always going to 
 be like that!" 
 
 "I see! . . . I twig! . . . They made much of you in 
 the beginning. ..." He gritted his teeth and turned his 
 face away. 
 
 "Perhaps they did! ... I remember I had all the 
 nicest things to do, and nobody minded. ... I was 
 allowed to dust the High Altar, change the flowers in the 
 vases, and help the Sister-Sacristan brush and fold the 
 vestments away. And one day I was permitted to wash 
 the lunette of the monstrance. It was a wonderful ex- 
 perience. One could understand how the Magdalene must 
 have felt when she wiped the Sacred Feet."
 
 72 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 He was silent, for she had soared to heights beyond 
 him. 
 
 "Perhaps it made me proud, for next day I was set to 
 tidy the linen-room presses. I worked for some weeks 
 there, darning and mending and folding. Then I was sent 
 to the Refectory." The smile was only in her eyes now. 
 "I liked laying the long tables, but I hated washing dirty 
 plates and dishes, and I simply loathed cleaning knives 
 and forks." 
 
 "I should think so! Housemaid's duty! I understand 
 now what you meant a minute back ! . . . By George ! . . . 
 'Miserable hours!' ..." 
 
 Her deep eyes rested on him calmly: 
 
 "And after I am clothed after I have received the 
 habit I shall most likely go on having them! I daresay 
 I shall have them after I have taken the Veil." 
 
 He kicked the fender again, his hands shoved deep into 
 his empty pockets, and felt the shilling, sole coin remaining 
 to him, burn against his" aching ribs. He would have 
 given ten years of life to have been able to tell her that a 
 home with him was ready and waiting, in case she shrank 
 from the final plunge. He made a great effort and groaned 
 out: 
 
 ' ' But that won 't be for two years to come. And things 
 may happen who knows!" 
 
 "Oh! I pray," she said with a sudden flush, "that I 
 need not wait two years ! ' ' 
 
 Her eagerness lifted a load that had been crushing him. 
 In sheer relief he began to stammer: 
 
 "What a blessed idiot I am! I didn't understand ... 
 I thought you ... I believed you. ... Of course you 
 don 't do the dirty work now. That was only for a time, at 
 the beginning. Well, I'm glad! I'd hate to think of my 
 sister tackling servants ' duties, anyway ! All right ! Well, 
 what are you on to now, eh? Back at dusting the Altar 
 and doing the flowers?" 
 
 "No. That is for others. There are many others, and 
 each of them must have a turn at the pleasant things. 
 When you have lived in the community only a short time, 
 you begin to understand that. . . . And when you have 
 lived in it only a little longer you learn that between the 
 pleasant duties and the unpleasant duties there is no 
 difference, whatever. Nothing being done that is not done
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 73 
 
 for God. "When I was scrubbing the desks in the Little 
 Class to-day, there are seventy children, and the tiny 
 ones come in with muddy boots from the garden in wet 
 weather, and splash the ink over everything, I was dust- 
 ing the Altar. . . . "When I was washing the slates I was 
 washing the Feet of Christ. It is no matter what we do as 
 long as it is nothing to be ashamed of and is done with a 
 right intention! . . . The lowest service counts as the 
 highest in the sight of Almighty God. It is one of the great 
 mysteries of Faith that this should be so. But it is so ! . . . 
 There 's the first bell for Benediction ! ' ' 
 
 It was too late now. But even as she rose with that 
 wonderful look in the calm face framed in by the triple 
 row of little starched frills, and took his hand and led him 
 to the door, P. C. Breagh realized that he ought from the 
 first to have told the truth to her. 
 
 The parlor door led them into the corridor upon the 
 boarders' side. She guided him along it, left him at the 
 entrance of the chapel, pressed his hand, whispered ' ' Good- 
 bye for now ! ' ' and vanished through a curtained archway 
 on the right hand, communicating with the cloister, pos- 
 sibly. 
 
 He entered the chapel. A small portion of the nave, 
 near the west door, was open to the public. Some dozen 
 worshipers, chiefly elderly ladies, knelt or sat upon the 
 rush-bottomed chairs. Beyond, a high, wrought-iron grille 
 partitioned off the capacious choir, separated from the 
 cloisters upon either hand by the tall carved screen that 
 backed the rows of stalls. And the dying daylight of the 
 January afternoon shone through high windows, stained in 
 hues tender as flower-petals or brilliant as jewels, depicting 
 the various scenes in the life of the Virgin Mother of 
 Christ. 
 
 The second bell had not yet rung for Benediction as 
 Carolan bent the knee and slipped into a chair near the 
 central gate of the grille. The place was full of the pres- 
 ence and perfume of flowers, and th'e spice of incense burned 
 at the morning Mass. Tapers tall and short blazed on the 
 High Altar, and a nun in purple habit and creamy veil 
 knelt at a faldstool, absorbed in adoration of the Throned 
 Mystery of Faith. Within the space of a Paternoster the 
 second bell rang. The choir-sister rose, knelt in adoration, 
 moved her stool carefully aside, and went out by a side-'
 
 74 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 door in the sanctuary. And a sound as of many moving 
 waters began to grow upon the ear. A curtain was drawn 
 that masked an archway upon the farther side of the 
 grille upon the right side : there was the invariable convent 
 signal of a hand-clap, and two girlish shapes, in long white 
 muslin veils over dark uniform dresses, entered together; 
 and went to the bottom of the broad aisle between the rows 
 of benches, moving sedately side by side. One wore a pale 
 blue, the other a crimson ribbon supporting a silver medal. 
 One was of solid Teutonic build, with magnificent plaits of 
 golden hair, vivid red and white coloring, and rather 
 stiff, if dignified, bearing. The other a slender creature 
 of stature almost childlike, yet with womanly coils of duski- 
 ness shot through with a tortoiseshell arrow, seemed insig- 
 nificant as she walked beside her stately white-veiled mate. 
 And yet, it was not walking, 4 but gliding, hovering, float- 
 ing . . . such airy grace of movement as P. C. Breagh had 
 never dreamed of, Britomart-Krimhilde-Briinhilde hav- 
 ing covered the ground with the magnificent indolence of a 
 glacier, or traversed it. with the overwhelming rush of an 
 avalanche, when the exigencies of some imaginary scene of 
 passion had compelled her to "fly from her conqueror's 
 presence," or "impetuously gain his side." Now for the 
 first time her inventor found himself wavering. . . . Was 
 his heroic ideal too Titanic, too colossal, too big and too 
 clumsy? Would it not be just as well to shorten her by 
 half a dozen superfluous inches reduce her superabundant 
 flesh? And if at the same time one were to darken her 
 dandelion tresses? tone down the staring china-blue of 
 her eyes into 
 
 What was the color? The blue of the spring flower or 
 the blue of the sapphire? . . . You never knew until she 
 looked at you . . . and then you weren't certain . . . you 
 kept wanting her to look again! Meek or tigress-like, in 
 whatever mood you found her, you would always be want- 
 ing Juliette to look, and look again. 
 
 The revelation of his monstrous folly, the knowledge of 
 his faithlessness came in the instant of recognition, hit him 
 like a seventh wave and bowled him off his mental legs. 
 
 Before he had recovered, the white-veiled hovering figure 
 had vanished. The aisle had noiselessly filled with a great
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 75 
 
 procession of similar figures, standing motionless, waiting, 
 two by two. There was a second clap of hands, and the 
 white- veiled column knelt in adoration. At a third signal 
 they rose and slowly filed into their seats. And a second 
 double line of younger girls, the Middle Class, also white- 
 veiled and white-gloved, formed in the place of them, and 
 the orderly, impressive maneuver was repeated by these. 
 Little children took their places, and did as their seniors. 
 A noble voluntary burst from the organ in the high-placed 
 loft, and the purple-habited, creamy-veiled choir-sisters 
 poured in and took their stalls, and the lay-sisters and 
 novices followed, filling the great choir to overflowing, as 
 the door of the vestry was opened by a sweet-faced child 
 in a red cassock and white cotta, and the vested priest, a 
 scholarly-looking, gray-haired man, came in and went to 
 his place. And the strains from the organ changed, and a 
 voice fresh and sweet as a thrush's, passionless-pure as an 
 angel's, began to chant Salutaris, and something like a 
 sob broke from P. C. Breagh's throat, and hot tears came 
 crowding, and one at least fell. 
 
 He had been shipwrecked, and here was a little green- 
 palmed islet of peace to rest on his only for a moment, 
 but a moment in which to gather strength, and breath to 
 face the raging seas again. His mood changed. He was 
 glad he had not told Monica that he was homeless, half- 
 clothed, and all but penniless in big, black, brutal, noisy 
 London, and would have to water cab-horses, or sweep a 
 crossing, or clean boots to keep alive. 
 
 Ah, what was it Monica had said? Without her know- 
 ing it those words had been somehow meant for Carolan. 
 Let's see how did they go? ... Something this way. . . . 
 
 "It is no matter what we do, as long as it is nothing to ~be 
 ashamed of, and is done with a right intention. The lowest 
 service counts as the highest in the sight of Almighty God. 
 It is one of the great mysteries of Faith that this should ~be 
 so. But it is so!" 
 
 "I see!" 
 
 He had sheltered his shamed and burning face in his big 
 hands. But with that ray of inward light had come 
 courage and resourcefulness. He lifted his head bravely 
 now and drew in a deep chestful of the sweet, warm, 
 pleasant air. 
 
 "Perhaps the money was spoiling me! making me
 
 76 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 look to it instead of to myself and I 've been stripped and 
 pitched into deep water as the big fellows used to do to us 
 little chaps, when we funked. Perhaps this is for the 
 best and I'll find it so one day. Perhaps I can make up 
 for some of the caddish things I've done refusing that 
 girl's offered help so savagely among 'em by taking this 
 thing well! Facing what there is to face and putting 
 up with what I've got to. Well, I'll have a shot at it!" 
 said P. C. Breagh to P. C. Breagh. "I'll do nothing that 
 I 'm ashamed of and be ashamed of nothing that 's honest ; 
 I'll labor for my daily bread and for my nightly bed, 
 with these hands and shoulders, if nobody will pay me 
 for my brains ! And what I do I '11 do cheerfully. Shall 
 I kick at sweeping a crossing, when He was a carpenter?" 
 It seemed to him that he had not prayed, and yet he had 
 without knowing it. The Benediction seemed to fall on 
 him like dew. He went out by the west door with the 
 small congregation, and found himself in the foggy London 
 square within sound of the roaring traffic of the London 
 streets, with a return of the old hideous shrinking. A 
 sensation paralleled by that of the shipwrecked castaway 
 who has found brief resting-place upon the tiny coral atoll 
 and must perforce commit himself, upon his crazy raft of 
 planks and hencoops, to the shark-infested, treacherous 
 Pacific seas again. 
 
 XII 
 
 HE strolled up a short street, and looked for and found a 
 roomy, double bow-fronted house of warm old red brick, 
 with huge capacious areas. ' ' Vanity Fair ' ' had been writ- 
 ten there, he knew, perhaps "Esmond" too, though he 
 was not sure. He took off fiis hat to the memory of the 
 magician, and wondered where his other idol, the still 
 living author of the ' ' Cloister and the Hearth, "and ' ' Never 
 Too Late to Mend" might be run to earth, and made up 
 his mind to see Dickens 's grave in Westminster Abbey on 
 the morrow, whether it cost sixpence, or whether it did not. 
 . . . And then he wavered, sixpence, as we know, being the 
 moiety of his capital; and then he remembered that to- 
 morrow could only be reached by the bridge of to-night. 
 He walked very fast for some distance, trying to exorcise
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 77 
 
 the demons that this thought evoked, and, blinded by 
 their buzzing and stinging was in Piccadilly before he 
 knew. The high railings of the Green Park, and the foggy 
 solitude of the gravel-walks between the wintry lawns, 
 tempted him to turn in and rest upon a seat a while, for he 
 was still somewhat giddy and shaky, and the bump so 
 confidently prophesied by the Infanta had appeared upon 
 his brow. 
 
 He took off the old felt wideawake and stared at Picca- 
 dilly, brilliant with the paroquet-colors of passing omni- 
 buses, green and royal blue, chocolate and white-and-gold. 
 Behind the shining windows of the great Clubs, the mem- 
 bers ' heads, gleamingly bald, or affluent of hair and whisk- 
 ers, alternately appeared and vanished. He caught tirief 
 passing glimpses of white-bosomed waiters, . . . the twinkle 
 of gilt buttons on livery coats. . . . Beer-drays, driven by 
 burly red- faced men, frequently in shirt-sleeves, went by 
 with a whiff of malt, and the thunder of heavy hoofs. 
 Vans of business-houses passed with a clang of bells. Vic- 
 torias and landaus with muffled, and furred, and veiled 
 ladies in them; shut-up broughams, madly-daring veloci- 
 pedists on the machine of the era, a giant wheel followed 
 by a pigmy one, made fleeting pictures on the retina of 
 P. C. Breagh. And the double river of traffic, and the east- 
 ward and westward-flowing stream of pedestrians went by 
 without a break in them. Gas-lamps began to make 
 islands of yellow light upon the fog, but showed no dwin- 
 dling in their numbers. H*e wondered if they would go on 
 like this all night? And then some one came up and sat 
 down on the other end of the seat rather heavily, and the 
 slight resultant shock and jar brought round P. C. Breagh 's 
 head. 
 
 He saw the thick-set, rather lax and round-shouldered 
 figure of a man of middle age, dressed in a suit of tweeds 
 patterned in giant checks of black and white and gray, the 
 dernier cri in masculine morning-wear, had the observer 
 but known it. His hat, a low-crowned chimney-pot in 
 hard gray felt, was tilted backward, his hair, of a pale tow- 
 color, tufted out from beneath the hat in a way that cried 
 for the attention of the barber; his whiskers, and mus- 
 tache, of the same shade as the hair, were raggedly in need 
 of the shears. He wore a buttonhole-bouquet composed 
 of a pink camellia with Neapolitan violets, and pale lemon
 
 78 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 kid gloves, and sucked the carved ivory knob of an ebony 
 stick he carried, until, upon his neighbor's looking round 
 as above recorded, he took it from a somewhat lax and 
 swollen mouth, and observed that it was a nice afternoon. 
 Adding, as P. C. Breagh made a sound which might have 
 been assent or denial: 
 
 ' ' If it is aff ernoon ? Without my fellow to post me, I 'm 
 apt to be wrong about time. Not that that's remarable. 
 Lots of people the same, don't you know? Nothing extra 
 nothing ex oh, damn ! ' ' 
 
 A covert anxiety and a very visible tremulousness were 
 combined in the speaker's manner. His large watery blue 
 eyes were painfully vague and blurred, with distended 
 pupils that looked uneven; his gestures were uncertain, 
 and his words, well chosen enough, and uttered with the 
 tone and accent usually distinctive of a gentleman, came 
 haltingly from a tongue that seemed to be too large for its 
 owner's mouth: 
 
 "You don't regard it as extra . . . Stop a minute!" 
 A pause ensued, during which the vague-eyed gentleman 
 waited, clutching his stick with both hands, and holding 
 his swollen mouth ajar. And when he shut the moutfi. to 
 shake his head, and looked at P. C. Breagh in the act of 
 doing this, the perspiration shone upon his puffy cheeks 
 and -stood in beads upon his reddened forehead, as though 
 it had been July instead of a foggy afternoon in January, 
 and the pink-bordered cambric handkerchief with which 
 he wiped his worried face became, after this usage, a very 
 rag. And a queer, unwillingly-yielded-to sense of com- 
 miseration prompted Carolan to suggest : 
 
 " 'Extraordinary' was the word you wanted, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 "Much obliged! The word, unnoutedly! 'Stror'nary 
 how words do dodge one on occasion!" returned the un- 
 certain gentleman in the large-patterned tweeds. He 
 added, pulling at the ragged light mustache, with a gloved 
 hand that was decidedly shaky: "I don't know that it 
 matters parricurarly but I 'd prefer you to know that I 'm 
 not runk!" 
 
 "Not what? . . ." 
 
 "Not runk!" repeated the vague-eyed gentleman em- 
 phatically. "Not cut, foozled, miffed, fizzed, screwed! 
 Not that it's oblig that's another of the words that
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 79 
 
 perretually queer me! or incumment on me to isplain, 
 but I regard it as due to myself, by Gad ! that you should 
 clearly unnerstand the case. As I said to the manuscript 
 upon the Bench when the bobby ran me in on Thursday 
 or was it Friray? . . . Appearances are sally against me, 
 but I have never been a rinking man ! The doctors have 
 a crajjaw name for my connition, which under the ex- 
 issing circ and that's another of the words that play the 
 deuce and all with me ! ... Look at my westick, buttoned 
 all wrong!" 
 
 He slewed round upon the seat, and throwing back the 
 large-patterned, fashionably cut-away coat, exhibited the 
 garment mentioned, every buttonhole of which afforded 
 hospitality to a button not its own. His necktie, the ample, 
 sailor-knotted necktie of the period, was under his left ear, 
 and his shirt had come unstudded. Being appealed to, 
 P. C. Breagh admitted that the existing condition of things 
 left something to be desired! 
 
 "When a man entirely ripends on valets and domes- 
 sicks," explained his incoherent neighbor, "a man is apt 
 to be neglected and so on. As a marrer of fact I live in 
 that little joppa cottisit!" He waveringly pointed to a 
 large, handsome private dwelling wifh an ornate portico, 
 situated nearly opposite, and sandwiched between two 
 Clubs. "An' as a narrural conquicense of my temorrary 
 irrability to pronounce words of the most orinary nature, 
 I am ' He drew an aimless figure in the muddy gravel 
 with his ivory-topped, ebony stick, and went on with a 
 weak laugh, "I am absoluly neglected by my own house- 
 hoi'. My own children seem ashamed or afray of me all 
 but Little Foxhall splendid little chap is Little Foxhall! 
 
 But his mother my wife " He broke off to say 
 
 "You will escuse my touching on these priva' matters in 
 conversation with a perf ec ' stranger. I am quite conscience 
 I trepsass against the orinary usages of propriety, espe- 
 cially in speaking of my wife ! . . . But the fact is, sir ! 
 I am most desperately wretched. Six people imagine me 
 runk out of every half-dozen. While' the other six the 
 irriots whisser it when they think I'm out of earshock 
 suppose me to be suff rig from Sof rig of the Bray ! ' ' 
 
 He began to tremble and shake, and put his stick be- 
 tween his knees to hold on to the edge of the seat with his 
 lemon-kidded hands and couldn't hold the stick in that
 
 80 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 position, and it fell, and P. C. Breagh picked it up and put 
 it back. 
 
 "I am murrabliged, " said the owner of the stick, "by 
 your kind attention!" Something struggled and fought in 
 the vague blue eyes that he turned upon Carolan, it 
 seemed as though in another moment Fear and Terror 
 might have leaped glaring into sight. "And while I am 
 boun' to ajopolize for thrussing my privarrafairs upon a 
 stranger I feel bound to put the quession; Why should 
 thissorathing happen to ME ? Goolor ' ! I 've been no 
 worse than lossa urra fellers!" He rose up shaking, and 
 shakily sat down again, nearly missing the bench. 
 
 "Bessaran loss of 'em if you come to that!" He 
 turned to Carolan, and the vague eyes were piteous and 
 desperate. . . . "You see the sort of chap my luck my 
 damble luck has made o ' me ! Yet I used to be envied 
 envied . . . you unnerstand! I have belonged to the 
 best regiment in the Brigade of Guards the devil another ! 
 I have played the bes' cards, driven the bes' turnouts, 
 smoked the bes' cigars and had the most stunnin' women! 
 Do you unnerstand me? Have!" He brought down the 
 uncertain hand in an attempt to strike his knee emphati- 
 cally, and missed it ; and tried to look as though he had not, 
 and went on: "And I have belonged to the best gloves, 
 by Gad! an' put on the clubs with the most celebrarred li'- 
 weights! And I rode my steeplechase at York, and 
 romped in first, and they toasted and speechified me at the 
 Gimcrack dinner. And I won my Oaks and my Derby 
 and led in the winner, with all the cheeple reering; the 
 seeple peering the Goolor'! Goolor'! And the horse 
 was Gladianor and the victory was a popular one and 
 my name was a household word through the Unirred King- 
 om. A household word! ..." He broke off, trembling 
 and sweating, as the horse might have done after the race, 
 and put the wavering hand to his head, and turned his 
 empty blue eyes from Carolan 's as though they hurt. 
 "What was my name?" he asked himself in a dull, thick, 
 shaky whisper, "Goolor'! Goolor'! What was my name? 
 . . . That you, Murchison ? ' ' 
 
 For a decent figure in the irreproachable dark clothing of 
 a. servant out of livery had passed and turned back, and 
 now approached the bench, eyeing Carolan suspiciously
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 81 
 
 even in the act of uncovering its well-brushed head, and 
 saying in the smooth accents of servility : 
 
 "It is Murchison, your Grace. It's cold, your Grace, 
 and you've not got on an overcoat. Your Grace had best 
 come home now, before your Grace is missed ! . . . " 
 
 "Home?" His Grace looked mildly from the authori- 
 tative Murchison to the stately "cottage opposite," and 
 one of the uncertain hands in the pale lemon kid gloves, 
 making as though to pluck at an untrimmed whisker, found 
 itself imprisoned in a deferential but vigorous grip. 
 
 ' ' Home, your Grace ! ' ' said Murchison, applying mus- 
 cular leverage to raise the inert figure. 
 
 "All right. Prass I better, Murchison!" He rose to 
 the perpendicular. . . . "Wish you a very good evening, 
 sir ! " With a faded reminiscence of what might have been 
 a courtly manner, he touched his hat to P. C. Breagh, who 
 returned the farewell greeting, avoiding the sharp glance 
 of Murchison. Then valet and master moved off, leaving 
 a little trail of dialogue behind them : 
 
 ' ' You give us the fair slip that time, your Grace ! . . . ' ' 
 
 "Perhass I did, Murchison now you happen to mention 
 it." 
 
 "Might have been killed crossing Piccadilly, your Grace, 
 and none of us the wiser. ' ' 
 
 "GoolorM I'd wish I had, Murchison if it wasn't for 
 Little Foxhall!" . . . Then in a high, quavering note of 
 eagerness, the plea, pitiable and ridiculous and pathetic: 
 "I I say! . . . Tell me the boy'd have minded, Murchi- 
 son whass a lie to you, you dam' smoo'-runged Ananias! 
 and I'll give you my nex' week's sovereign I'm. dead 
 broke now ! ' ' 
 
 And Murchison and His Grace went away together, the 
 man steering, with deft guiding touches of the master's 
 elbow, the latter stepping high and bringing his feet down 
 with a peculiar thump that threw a light upon the situation 
 in the eyes of P. C. Breagh. Not softening of the brain. 
 . . . Donnerwetter! what were the London doctors think- 
 ing of ? Had none of them read the ' ' Dissertation on Tabes 
 Dorsalis" of the Herr Doctor Max Baumgarten, published 
 in Berlin only a twelvemonth previously, and dealing 
 fully with that rare and curious disease of the nervous 
 system? . . . Fibrous degeneration of the posterior col-
 
 82 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 limns of the spinal cord, affecting the patient's sight, gait, 
 and in isolated cases speech and memory. 
 
 "I'd like to have got him to let me rap his shins! Bet 
 you anything there 'd have been total absence of reflex 
 action! Remember that peddler in the Nervous Ward of 
 the Augusta Hospital at Schwarz-Brettingen ! . . . They 
 cured that chap with spinal injections and regular mas- 
 sage. And this man being a thundering swell and having 
 the best advice possible is naturally being treated all 
 wrong! Hang it! how cold I am! Better be moving!" 
 He got up and stamped some warmth into his cold feet and 
 nailed his cold ribs with his elbows until they tingled 
 again. He had learned something of the wretchedness that 
 may sometimes dwell in princely homes, yet be homeless; 
 and fare delicately from plate of gold and silver, and yet 
 go hungry, and lie down to toss and stare through dread- 
 ful sleepless nights on soft luxurious beds. Therefore the 
 bright reflections of great fires dancing on the plate-glass 
 windows of the "cottage opposite" stung him to no com- 
 parisons. "Is it base in me that the knowledge of the 
 misery of this wealthy nobleman makes me more contented 
 with my own obscure poverty?" he asked himself, and the 
 answer was: "Not if your content does not make you cal- 
 lous to his woe!" 
 
 "I hope that Little Foxhall would have minded!" he 
 found himself saying ; ' ' and I wish to Heaven Baumgarten 
 could get a chance of doing something for his father ! I Ve 
 half a mind to drop a postcard to him or write a line to 
 the Herr Professor ! . . . Stop, though ! ' ' 
 
 He remembered that he must break into his last remain- 
 ing shilling to buy the postcard and pay for the stamps. 
 Then he swung out through the Park side-gates, and now 
 he was one of the crowd rolling Circus-wards, and all the 
 street gas-lamps had been lighted by certain officials with 
 poles, furnished with hooks for keying the gas on, and 
 perforated iron sockets filled with blazing tow that had 
 been soaked in naphtha; thus every shop or restaurant 
 became an Aladdin's cave of brilliancy, and the down-drawn 
 blinds of the houses and clubs hid splendor unspeakable 
 if only one had been able to pull them up. . . . 
 
 Alas ! to us who live in these pushful days of Electrical 
 Power Supply, the glories of the illuminated capital in the 
 year of grace 1870 would appear murky enough. We should
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 83 
 
 sneer at the stumpy iron lamp-posts and the chandeliers yet 
 adorned with Early Victorian crystal glass lusters. The 
 wood pavement, an invention de luxe economically confined 
 to the West End, and upon the greasy surface of which 
 bus-horses broke legs as easily as the most aristocratic 
 thoroughbreds the loose iron gratings covering basement- 
 lights, and incidentally presenting man-traps for unwary 
 pedestrians, as receptacles for stray umbrellas, dead cats, 
 wisps of packing straw, discarded newspapers and orange- 
 peel the untrapped gutter-drains and sewer-vents would 
 awaken our ridicule and evoke our indignation, even as the 
 displays in the shop windows, especially those of modistes, 
 couturieres, and tailors, would provoke us to mirth. 
 
 The extraordinary little hats, pot-shaped or plate-shaped, 
 worn upon huge chignons, surmounting cascades of ring- 
 lets, couleur Imperatrice. The preposterous frilled paniers, 
 the bustles, the jupes of velvet or plush, flounced to the 
 waist or kilted sometimes to mid-leg, displaying boots 
 such as are worn to this hour by Principal Boys in Christ- 
 mas Pantomimes and serio-comic ladies of the Varsity 
 Stage, who are, we know, Principal Boys in the pupa, or 
 chrysalis-state. All these things compel us to hold our 
 sides when we review them in the illustrated papers of the 
 Ladies' Mentor, which illuminating periodical, in the 
 dearth of Fashionable Intelligence from Paris, the hub and 
 center of the modish world, came to a sudden end in the 
 October of that year, and has defied all efforts at resuscita- 
 tion. 
 
 Though it is possible that the wearers of these long- 
 vanished modes surveying the belles of Belgravia, with 
 their humbler followers of Brompton and Bayswater, in 
 the present year of progress, might be moved to laughter 
 or provoked to wrath. To-day, when the ambition of 
 every properly constituted woman is to be shaped like a 
 golliwog and dressed like a pen-wiper, or to acquire the 
 sinuosities of a Bayadere and drape the same in cobwebs 
 calculated to conceal nothing and suggest everything 
 can we honestly enlarge upon the bygone improprieties of 
 our aunts, and moan over our mothers' taste in toilettes? 
 
 It was just six when P. C. Breagh crossed Piccadilly 
 Circus and turned down toward the Haymarket. Why 
 hurry, he asked himself, when you have nowhere to go?
 
 84 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The restaurants were filling with diners who were going to 
 the theaters, the smell of cooked meats made savory the 
 fogginess. He shrugged his shoulders, dug his hands deep 
 into his empty pockets, and tried to whistle as he loafed 
 along. 
 
 Misery stalked these West End streets, rampant and 
 clamorous. A burly man devoid of legs, shuffling along 
 with his hands in a pair of woman's clogs, entreated 
 P. C. Breagh in stentorian tones to buy a tin nutmeg-grater. 
 A miserable creature, whose sole garment appeared to be 
 the upper portion of an adult pair of trousers, begged him, 
 in the professional whine, to spare a penny for the pore 
 orphan boy ! A dank female, in rusty weeds, stationary 
 by the curb, displaying a baby and a row of ballads, be- 
 sought of him, for the love of Gawd ! to pity the unfortu- 
 nate widow and her starving orphans. 
 
 "Buy a ballad, kind genl'man! On'y a penny goes to 
 a lovelly choone!" 
 
 "Ho! Dermot, you look 'ealthy now, 
 
 Your does is neat an' clean, 
 Hi never sees you drunk about, 
 Werehever 'ave you been?" 
 
 The stave chanted as an appetizer for the music-lover, 
 she wiped the baby's nose with her ostentatiously white 
 apron, and protested it to be the image of its father 
 blowed up in a Mind. 
 
 "You mean a mine, don't you?" P. C. Breagh was 
 beginning, when the widow once more burst into song. 
 
 "Your wife and Fam'ly Har they well? 
 
 You once did use them strynge! 
 
 Ho! Har you kinder to them now? 
 
 And wence this 'appy chynge?" 
 
 Reverting to prose, as P. C. Breagh lounged listlessly on, 
 she demanded why, if he wasn't going to buy, he had 
 stopped and given a respectable female Tongue. 
 
 "And not even fork out a copper, you blistered swin- 
 dler ! You blindin ', blazin ' ' ' 
 
 "Come now, Chanting Poll, what's all this here row 
 about?" 
 
 The gruff, not unkindly voice of a policeman broke in
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 85 
 
 upon the rusty widow's eloquence. P. C. Breagh, yielding 
 to a sudden impulse, wheeled and swung back again. 
 
 "It's all right, constable, the lady was only having a bit 
 of chaff with me!" 
 
 "I know her!" said P. C. 999, C. Division, removing a 
 heavy but not brutal hand from the lady in question, ' ' and 
 the kind o' chaff she slings. Done Time for it, too, she 
 'as before now!" 
 
 But he moved on, huge in his belted greatcoat, walking 
 with the elephantine, clumping step begotten of boots with 
 iron toe-caps, and iron-nailed soles at least two inches 
 in thickness; and the dank widow cocked a knowing eye 
 at his retreating back, and the other at her unexpected 
 champion. 
 
 "Good for you, my dear! Stand us a drain for luck, 
 since you're so civil!" 
 
 He returned: 
 
 "I would if I'd got the tin! I believe I'm poorer than 
 you are ! ' ' 
 
 "S'welp me bob! wot 'ave we 'ere? A haristocrat in 
 distress, har yer ? ' ' she demanded. 
 
 "Not quite," he told her, as she turned the ponderous 
 batteries of her raillery upon him. " I 've seen an aristocrat 
 in distress to-day, and he was worse than me. I'd not 
 change ! ' ' 
 
 "Fer ten thousand jimmies hannual hincome, an' a 'ouse 
 at Number One 'Yde Park Corner!" she jeered. " 'Ow 
 did yer lose the I 'm-so-f unny ? for if you 'aven't it now, 
 you 'ave 'ad it, I '11 tyke me Davy ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' It 's a long story ! Good-bye ! ' ' 
 
 He nodded and was moving on, when she shot out a 
 gaunt hand and clutched him by the sleeve, crying: 
 
 ' ' 'Old 'ard, Mister ! 'Ang on till I give this 'ere squealer 
 to its mammy. About due now, she ought to be ! " 
 
 "Isn't it . . ." His surprised look tickled the relict of 
 the blown-up husband into a chuckle. 
 
 "Mine? Not by 'arf ! A tizzy per workin'-day is wot 
 I pays for the loan of 'er. Nothin ' like a babby specially 
 in narsty weather like this 'ere to touch the people's 
 'arts! Lil's mine, though, ain't you, deary?" 
 
 A preternaturally bright-eyed, white-faced, wizened little 
 creature peeped out from the shelter of the ostentatiously 
 clean apron, making a sound as of assent.
 
 86 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Is she ill?" asked P. C. Breagh commiseratingly. 
 
 "Not 'er, that's her color!" 
 
 "Hungry, perhaps?" he asked. 
 
 ' ' Why should she be ? ... Wot did yer 'ave f er dinner, 
 Lil? Speak up like a good gal an' tell the gen'lman!" 
 
 The small, grimy finger came out of the wide mouth. 
 She lisped confidingly: 
 
 "Ay'po'rth o' gin 'ot, an' a stit o' totlit!" 
 
 "My God!" gasped P. C. Breagh in horror, "does that 
 baby drink hot gin ? ' ' 
 
 "When she can get it! an' so does Hi!" explained the 
 lady of the ballads, whom a short female in a plaid shawl 
 and a battered brown bonnet had now relieved of the baby. 
 She added hospitably: "Come an' 'ave two-pennorth o' 
 comfort along o' me now! It's meat and drink both! as 
 you '11 find afore long ! I '11 stand treat no blarney ! ' ' 
 
 But he groaned and fled from the tragic pair, seeing the 
 blazing eyes of the drunkard, set in the small white childish 
 face, staring at him from the gas-lamps and the hoardings, 
 from the paving-stones beneath his hurrying feet, and 
 from under the hats of passing strangers; and peering be- 
 tween the slowly-moving shoals of sooty smoke and muddy 
 vapor, streaking the livid grayness overhead. 
 
 XIII 
 
 PALL MALL was some relief. He looked for the Junior 
 United Service Club, and found it ; for the Rag, and for a 
 time walked up and down in the vicinity of both of these 
 stately institutions, heartened by the memory that his 
 father had been a member of the former listening with 
 eager ears to scraps of conversation between soldierly, 
 well-groomed, clear-voiced men in evening dress, lingering 
 on the wide doorsteps to finish some animated discussion, 
 or waiting for cabs and hansoms, the common hack, or the 
 smart private vehicle, low on the wheels at that date, and 
 more heavily built than the later S. and T. 
 
 Certain bald, mustached, and red-faced veterans, scrup- 
 ulously attired for the evening delighted him extremely. 
 
 "By George, General!" he heard one of them say, as he 
 went by, his slouch forgotten, his shoulders squared, his
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 87 
 
 head held up, "look at that seedy-looking chap there! 
 Twelve to one in sixpences he's one of the 'supererogatory 
 useless infantrymen/ kicked out by Cardwell, after twelve 
 years ' Service. D 'ye take the bet or no ? " 
 
 The reference 'to the unpopular War Secretary under 
 whose effacing hand infantry regiments had not only lost 
 their numbers, but in many cases vanished from the rolls 
 of the Army, swallowed up in the New System of Amalga- 
 mation had, as was intended, the effect of the red rag on 
 the bull. The General bellowed : 
 
 "Confound me if I don't! Pay the cabman, Mclntosh, 
 while I put the fellow through his paces! Hi! Hi! 
 Come here, you, sir!" 
 
 Then, as P. C. Breagh, summoned by an imperious wave 
 of the umbrella, stepped out of the fogginess into the 
 mellow circle of light streaming through the glass doors of 
 the brilliant vestibule : 
 
 "What's your regiment? . . . Give me the old designa- 
 tion ! . . . I know nothing of new-fangled names ; . . . All 
 my eye and Betty Martin ! and I don 't care a dee who hears 
 me say it! ... What is your rank, name and battalion- 
 number? When were you discharged? . . . Where's your 
 small-book and certificate? . . . Got 'em about you? . . . 
 Every soldier has 'em about him! And why don't you 
 answer, dee you! why don't you answer, man?" 
 
 The volley of interrogations left no room for reply. A 
 second might have followed had not the General 's crony, in 
 unconcealed ecstasies at the sulky embarrassment of the 
 victim and the determined attitude of the inquisitor, inter- 
 vened : 
 
 "Dashed sorry! My mistake! Believe you've landed 
 a civilian, after all, General!" 
 
 ' ' Be dee 'd ! and so I have ! ' ' the General, after a raking 
 stare, admitted. Then he took his crony's arm, they 
 wheeled, and marched into the Club together. From whence 
 issued, a moment later, a small boy in buttons, who, after a 
 look up and a look down the street, pursued the retreating 
 figure of the stalwart young man in the gray felt wide- 
 awake and shaggy greatcoat, and arrested it with the words : 
 
 " 'Arf a jiff, my covey!" He added, as the retreating 
 figure wheeled and surveyed him in hard-eyed silence: 
 "Wasn't it you what Old Fireworks went for just now on 
 the 'Rag and Famish' steps?"
 
 88 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "The General called to me mistaking me for " 
 
 "I know!" The boy in buttons winked. "He's always 
 a-pitching into somebody in mistake for somebody else! 
 Catch hold ! This is for you ! " 
 
 This was a warm half-crown, thrust upon P. C. Breagh, 
 without further ceremony. He flushed a murky, savage 
 red, and shouted: 
 
 "What is this for? . . . Who had the infernal inso- 
 lence ' ' 
 
 He choked. Buttons, plainly regarding the tramp who 
 could be insulted by half-a-crown as a new species, stared 
 at him with circular orbs of astonishment, retorting: 
 
 "What's it for? How do I know, stoopid? He told 
 me to catch you and give it you. . . . Cool that! Well, 
 blow me! ..." 
 
 These expressions being evoked by the swift, supple 
 movement of arm and wrist that had sent the half-crown 
 flying into the midst of the Pall Mall traffic. A sharp ring 
 on the wood-pavement, a yell, and a flourish of naked heels, 
 and a street Arab had seized the treasure. As the fog 
 swallowed the wealthy imp, said Buttons icily : 
 
 "That's your game, is it? pavin' Pall Mall with 'arf 
 bulls for gutter-pads to pick up. Better ha' tipped it to 
 me! or sent it back to Old Fireworks. He ain't got too 
 many of 'em. Signs too many toast-and-water tickets to 
 be flush!" 
 
 Perhaps P. C. Breagh, scalding with wrath as he was, 
 would have dived in among the traffic to recover the coin 
 had it been recoverable. But the snows of yester-year 
 were not more irretrievably gone. He realized it, hung his 
 head and hunched his shoulders, and moved away from 
 the region of clubs, where officers of the twin Services talked 
 shop in sublime indifference to other subjects, as white- 
 chokered attendants supplied them with savory meats 
 and cheering drinks. 
 
 Be sorry for the boy with the gaunt wolf Hunger at his 
 heels, and the black demon of Despair sitting on his shoul- 
 ders. That determination of his to face what might come, 
 and take his luck in a cheerful spirit, was to be put to a 
 yet fiercer test before the dawn of a new day. 
 
 He was hungry and thirsty, and sorely tempted to break
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 89 
 
 into his solitary shilling. But that silver barrier between 
 himself and pennilessness was not to be lightly changed. 
 He wondered, as he recalled to mind the many occasions 
 upon which he had wantonly squandered and wasted 
 money, whether an experience such as this, previously 
 undergone, would not have been a valuable lesson in thrift ? 
 
 He presently came by a well-known theater. It was too 
 early for the frequenters of the Stalls and Boxes and Grand 
 Circle. But playgoers of the humbler kind were pouring in 
 to fill the unnumbered seats in the upper tiers, and a crowd 
 composed of the usual elements had gathered at the doors 
 of the Pit and Gallery, and filled the narrow side-alley in 
 which these were situated, and overflowed into the Strand. 
 
 Queues not being officially recognized and regulated, 
 there was a good deal of obstruction and pushing and persi- 
 flage. Pausing a moment under the gas-jet bordered, 
 glazed shelter ornamenting the box-office entrance, his un- 
 seasoned eyes winced as they took in a sad, sad sight. 
 
 You saw her as a woman not past early middle-age, nobly 
 proportioned, and even in her dreadful degradation, im- 
 perially beautiful. An old velvet mantle covered her, from 
 which the torn and moth-eaten fur-trimming hung in 
 draggled festoons. A trained silk gown, stained and torn 
 and flounced with mud of many thicknesses, trailed upon 
 the slushy Strand pavement; a broken bonnet perched on 
 a palpably false and inconceivably dirty chignon, the false 
 curls that cascaded from beneath it, hid a workhouse-crop 
 of rusty gray. . . . And she lifted her skirts aside, dis- 
 closing muddy bare feet shod with a trodden-down, elastic- 
 sided boot and a ragged slipper; and stepped across the 
 threshold of the gilt and mirrored vestibule with a grace- 
 ful, royal air. . . . 
 
 ' ' Now then, missus ! Out of this, will you ! ' ' 
 
 A uniformed theater-attendant had advanced toward the 
 intruder. But she did not retreat in terror at his trucu- 
 lence. She drew herself up, and folded her arms upon her 
 bosom, and confronted the menial with a haughty, quelling 
 stare. 
 
 "Man! who are you to drive me from this threshold! 
 Out of the way ! Clear ! and let me look at her. Do you 
 ask whom? She! that woman who stands behind you 
 smiling, with the white dove perched upon her whiter
 
 90 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 hand. Times have changed, my girl, since you and I last 
 saw each other! Well, well! You are the same, whatever 
 I may be!" 
 
 She laughed, a deep, melodious ha, ha, ha! not at all 
 like the laughter of everyday people. Even P. C. Breagh, 
 inexperienced as he was in such matters, recognized it as 
 the artificial laughter of the stage. And, profiting by the 
 momentary confusion of the functionary, she swept in 
 her silken rags toward the person indicated; who looked 
 back at her with beautiful stagey eyes from a life-sized 
 canvas, wearing a stage costume ; standing in a pose of the 
 theater ; fondling the bird that was palpably a property of 
 the scene. 
 
 A long gilt-framed mirror hung beside the portrait, and 
 to this she pointed with the tattered remnants of her the- 
 atrical manner, exclaiming with another of the stage 
 laughs : 
 
 "Look upon this picture and on that! Ye gods! . . ." 
 Adding, as the guardian of the vestibule, now wroth, ad- 
 vanced upon her: "No! Don't you hustle me. I'm off, 
 governor! Farewell. Ta-ta! until we meet again!" 
 
 She was gone, but she must have noted the boy who 
 stared, fascinated by her haggard beauty and her dreadful 
 misery. In fact, P. C. Breagh, passing on, had barely 
 traversed a dozen yards of slushy pavement, before, with 
 a bound and rush, a supple movement, predatory and feline, 
 the woman emerged from an alley, and was by his side. 
 
 "Who are you? A waif, like me? Where do you come 
 from ? I saw you looking at me with all your eyes and your 
 heart in them! I played that scene with the picture and 
 
 the mirror for you! You know She took P. C. 
 
 Breagh 's reluctant arm and leaned to his ear, being taller 
 than he was, "There's always one person in the house you 
 play to and when that person 's not there the inspiration 
 doesn't come. When it won't, you shall I tell you what 
 you do if God hasn't made you able to say 'No' to them? 
 you send out the devils to fetch you brandy and cham- 
 pagne!" 
 
 She laughed wildly and looked round suspiciously. 
 
 "Walk fast! A policeman's behind us, shadowing us. 
 I'll tell you my story as we go. Did you ever hear of 
 Anabel Foltringham? You must have! Everybody has! 
 I drew crowds to that theater you 've seen me kicked out of !
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 91 
 
 I was beautiful great famous! Men gloated over my 
 beauty they hung upon my every word. That made the 
 devils jealous the smooth, servile, obsequious devils in 
 white aprons, that you find behind the scenes at every 
 theater. They call them dressers, but I know better, you 
 can't deceive me! You boy, I like your face! You look 
 at me as if I were a Christian, and a man I knew had eyes 
 like yours ! . . . Don 't leave me ! I '11 make it worth 
 your while to stay, only listen! ... I'll teach you all I 
 know, make you a greater artist than any of them. For 
 the things that you shall learn from me I learned myself 
 in Hell!" 
 
 She hung upon the boy 's wincing arm, her terrible breath 
 scorched him, her burned-out eyes appalled her greedy, 
 long-nailed clutch found his flesh through his sleeve like 
 the talons of a beast of prey. And he wrenched himself 
 free, and fled, sick at heart ; fancying that the old boot and 
 shoe were running after him, and that the mud-trimmed 
 silk gown flapped at his hurrying heels like leathery wings. 
 
 He broke into his shilling to pass the turnstile of Water- 
 loo Bridge, stowed himself in a corner of one of the seated 
 niches, and found relief in the presence of a stray kitten, 
 sore-footed, hungry-eyed, ginger-haired, that rubbed against 
 his legs and responded with appreciative purrs to his ten- 
 tative back-strokings and ear-rubbings, administered half- 
 unconsciously, as he wondered why human beings under 
 certain given circumstances, should be so much more 
 beastly than the brutes ? 
 
 The kitten jumped on his knee. He saw that its fur had 
 been torn probably by a dog and shuddered at the re- 
 membrance of having more than once set a rough-haired 
 terrier a companion of his early boyhood to worry stray 
 cats and enjoyed the carnage resulting. Why did he 
 shudder now? Because by a feat of imagination only 
 possible to one who was beginning to learn what it is to be 
 homeless and hunted and desperate, he had got inside the 
 ginger kitten's ragged skin, and established between him- 
 self and what we are content to call inferior creatures a 
 bond of brotherhood. 
 
 "Don't you go, Kitty! though I can't make it much 
 worth your while to stop," he muttered. "If I'd got the 
 things a scrap of lint and a saucer of clean water, a 
 needleful of silk and a dab of carbolic ointment I could
 
 92 
 
 patch up that tear you'd be as good as new inside of a 
 week. ' ' 
 
 He yawned, and the tramp of booted feet and the shuffle 
 of naked ones grew faint in his ears ; and presently the rush 
 and roar of the Bridge roadway-traffic dulled to a hum 
 and he was deadly sleepy. "With blundering fingers he 
 undid two buttons of the frieze greatcoat and tucked the 
 kitten inside and after turning round three times, and 
 making a great parade of clawing the surface soft enough 
 for comfort, it curled up and fell asleep, and its host not 
 only slept, but snored. 
 
 Even in sleep he was dogged and haunted by those three 
 tragic figures; the broken-down vivcur, the child dying 
 on gin, the lost creature who had once been Anabel Fol- 
 tringham they cropped up in his troubled dreams, over 
 and over again. And he woke up, and it was dark, and a 
 sleety rain was stinging him, and even the kitten in his 
 breast was cold and cried. 
 
 He got up, aching and stiff, hungry and thirsty, realizing 
 that he must have slept for hours. Big Ben boomed 
 twelve. A midnight express from Charing Cross dragged 
 its chain of yellow lights across the railway bridge with 
 a hollow roar and rattle. One or two shapes passed, 
 vaguely human in the wintry darkness; a Post Office van 
 or so, with an official inside sorting bags by the light of a 
 swinging lantern, three or four crawling cabs, a trolley 
 with a formless mass upon it, pushed by two indistinct, 
 slow-moving figures, coming from the Surrey side. 
 
 Toward the Strandward end of the Bridge there was 
 a light, with murky figures moving about it. Revealed 
 by its two flaring naphtha-lamps, the characteristic hostelry 
 of the London gutters, with its gaudy paint and patriotic 
 decorations, its clean shelves piled up with homely food, 
 and hung with common crockery, its steaming urns of hot 
 and comforting drink, proved a Godsend to one more 
 hungry and homeless vagrant. 
 
 The shipwrecked mariner of his analogy might have 
 known the same sense of relief, seeing his signal answered 
 and some stout vessel, flying the red ensign of the British 
 Mercantile Marine, bearing down upon his tiny, wave- 
 washed raft. . . . P. C. Breagh was guilty of prodigality 
 at that coffee-stall. A penny cup of coffee, weak, but hot, 
 and a twopenny sandwich, consisting of two slices of bread
 
 93 
 
 smeared with mustard and inclosing something by courtesy 
 called ham, but really pertaining to that less stylish part 
 of the pig known as "gammon," took the edge off his 
 savage appetite. A ha'porth of milk for the kitten, and 
 another ha 'porth of ham-trimmings, left him lord of seven- 
 pence halfpenny cash. 
 
 Thus, warmed and cheered, he went back to his seat in 
 the niche again, noting that every stone bench he passed 
 had now its seated group, or prone extended figures. His 
 recently vacated place had its occupant, a thin, barefooted 
 young man, indescribably ragged ; who slept with his fam- 
 ished face sharp and yellow as a wedge of cheese turned 
 to the sky, and the Adam's apple of his lean throat jerking, 
 as though something alive, swallowed inadvertently, was 
 madly struggling to get out. 
 
 And as he leaned upon the eastward parapet of the 
 Bridge with the ginger kitten, now replete and happy, 
 purring on his shoulder, and watched the wild welter of 
 black water, pale-patched with foam and spume, rushing 
 away beneath him, to plunge growling through the arches 
 of Blackfriars Bridge, and speed away under Southwark 
 and London Bridges, past the Custom House, Traitor's Gate 
 and the Docks, between Wapping and Rotherhithe on its 
 way to Greenwich and Poplar and Blackwell; and thence, 
 by the verdant heights of Charlton to Woolwich, widening 
 to a mile here; and so on past Gravesend and the Nore 
 Light to where it flows between Whitstable and Foulness 
 Point eighteen miles broad ; a kingly river, carrying on its 
 back the commerce of the world. 
 
 The wind blew bitter cold from the heights of Hamp- 
 stead. A livid moon blinked through rifts in ink-black 
 cloud-wrack above the Shot Towers and a huge mass of 
 brewery-buildings on the right. On the left, revealed in 
 glimpses and suggestions by stray moonbeams and wind- 
 blown lamp-flares, was a great confusion of trucks and 
 trolleys; huge cranes rearing skeleton arms aloft, colossal 
 cauldrons, heaps of clay beside yawning trenches, winking 
 red eyes of warning for belated wanderers. All this be- 
 yond a banking-face of stone masonry with completed piers, 
 showed where the Victoria Embankment would be by-and- 
 by. Meanwhile chaos reigned; the area would have been 
 an appropriate playground for the inhabitants of Bethlem 
 Hospital, in hours of relaxation, or on national holidays.
 
 94 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 P. C. Breagh laughed gallantly at his own conceit, and 
 his chapped lips cracked and hurt him. He staunched the 
 bleeding with his handkerchief, conscious that a day might 
 come when he should cease to have any use for such an 
 article. Habits die hard with us, but the cleanly ones go 
 first, being acquired. We continue to desire food and 
 drink long after we have left off caring about the color of 
 our linen nay! long after we have become indifferent to 
 the fact that we wear no linen at all. 
 
 He was bone-weary; his thigh-bones seemed wearing 
 through their sockets. His knees ached, his feet were 
 heavy as solid lumps of lead. It occurred to him that the 
 two things most desirable on earth were an arm-chair and 
 a roasting fire to toast before. Failing that, a seat on a 
 stone bench, with a north wind gnawing you was better 
 than nothing. . . . He thought that by now one of the 
 sleepers in the niches would have wakened up and moved 
 on. 
 
 Vain hope. "Where one had withdrawn, his place had 
 been filled by three newcomers. Misery, Dirt, Drunken- 
 ness, Disease, and Wretchedness herded in those stony 
 refuges, mercifully winked at by the patroling policeman 
 with the unsavory-smelling bull's-eye. And strange be- 
 ings perambulated or crept the pavement; 2 a. m. is the 
 time when you may see them! emerging from the foul 
 hiding-places where they pass the daylight hours, to wan- 
 der forth unseen. . . . 
 
 Such goblin forms, such Gorgon faces, revealed by some 
 fitful ray of watery moonlight, or the lamp of a languid, 
 belated cab. ... It was a waking nightmare, a Dantesque 
 vision realized, inconceivably hideous to nerves already 
 weakening. The Celtic strain derived from his father, in 
 conjunction with the sensitive romantic nature bequeathed 
 by Milly Fermeroy, might have urged their son to end 
 things that bleak January night, with a leap from the 
 parapet and a plunge into the wild black welter tumbling 
 under the Bridge arches. But P. C. Breagh was not fated 
 to join the procession of grim, unconscious voyagers, that 
 wallow in the tides and circle in the eddies, flounder under 
 the sides of barges, beat upon the piles and bridge-piers, 
 and sink to slumber in the river-sludge a while, before they 
 rise, more dreadful than before, to journey on again. . . . 
 
 His mother's faith plucked him as before, from the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 95 
 
 desperate brink of the temptation ; and he had worked in 
 the dissecting-rooms and walked the hospitals, toward that 
 end of failure previously recorded, and the hardening did 
 yeoman 's service now. But it went badly with him at one 
 period of that week-long night particularly. . . . He never 
 liked to speak of that experience. . . . But long, long 
 afterward he said to one who loved him: 
 
 ' ' I held on to my reason, and prayed Our Lord for day- 
 light. And I don't know how I managed but somehow, I 
 got through ! ' ' 
 
 He found a seat at length, not knowing by whom or how 
 it had been vacated, and dropped into it and slept like the 
 dead. And he awoke in a windless lull, to a strange 
 bluish-yellow radiance in the sky beyond the great squat 
 dome of St. Paul 's and the crowding chimneys of the City : 
 and felt the stir and thrill and quiver that is the sign of 
 this sad world's waking to yet another day. 
 
 Three homeless women shared the seat with him. Two 
 were awake, watching him not unkindly. A third slept, 
 leaning forward in a huddled attitude, propped by the 
 handle of a basket she held upon her knees. She breathed 
 in whistling squeals, a night on Waterloo Bridge in Janu- 
 ary encourages bronchitis. . . . He listened for a moment, 
 then with a prodigal impulse, dropped twopence of his 
 eightpence into the basket on her lap. And she woke, and 
 said with an Irish accent: 
 
 "May the heavens be yer bed!" and slept again, heav- 
 
 fly. 
 
 The second woman snuffled out in the accents of the East 
 End: 
 
 "Gawd bless you, good gen'leman!" 
 
 The third lifted a tattered scarlet head-shawl, and flashed 
 a pair of jet-black Oriental eyes upon him: 
 
 "Fortune and Life!" 
 
 To her he said, with a creditable effort at cheeriness : 
 
 "I've lost the fortune, mother! the life's about all I've 
 got that's left to me!" 
 
 "And a good thing too, my gorgious! Don't yer com- 
 plain of it! Come, tip us yer vast!" She added, as he 
 stared uncomprehending "Right or left-hand dook 
 whichever the Line's brightest in. Have yer a No! I'll 
 give yer of my jinnepen for naught!" 
 
 He held out the broad, strong palm, grimy enough by;
 
 96 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 dawn-light. She peered, spat on the chilly gray pavement 
 and said : 
 
 "You keep up heart there's a change a-coming soon!" 
 
 ' ' Can 't come too soon for me ! " His smile was rueful. 
 
 "Keep up heart, I tell yer!" she bade him. "Yer '11 
 travel a long road and a bloody road, and yer'll tramp it 
 with the one yer love, and never know it. Until the end, 
 that is, when tute is jasing. And there's a finer fortune 
 than I meant yer to get o ' me ! Shake her up, Bet ! ' ' She 
 explained, as the other woman turned to rouse the sleeper, 
 "Taken a great cold, she has! We're fetching her to the 
 Hospital. Tholomewses in Smithell, for the gorgio doc- 
 tors to make her well. Though that's not where I would 
 lie, my rye, and my pipes playing the death-tune. Shoon 
 tu, dilya ! Better shake her again ! ' ' 
 
 "Wake up, deer! There's a good soul!" 
 
 They stood up, supporting the bronchial Irishwoman 
 between them, shaking and straightening their frowsy 
 garments tidying themselves as the poorest women wilL 
 Then with, a. farewell word they moved on, northward. 
 And P. C. Breagh, following them with reddened, night- 
 weary eyes, saw his Fate coming, though he did not 
 know it, in the person of a small and shabbily-attired 
 elderly man. 
 
 XIY 
 
 HE came striding from the Strand side, in a red-hot hurry, 
 making as much noise with his boots as three ordinary 
 pedestrians. He wore no overcoat, but was buttoned up 
 in a decent black serge frock, having his throat protected 
 by a large white cashmere wrapper. Also he wore gray 
 mixture trousers, rather baggy at the knees, and shiny, 
 and was crowned with a well-worn silk top-hat. 
 
 He walked at a great pace, swinging his arms, which were 
 inordinately lengthy, and finished with hands of extra size, 
 encased in white knitted woolen bags not distantly re- 
 sembling boxing-gloves. When he reached the middle of 
 the Bridge, he stopped and backed against the west parapet, 
 folded his arms, and, or so it seemed to P. C. Breagh, who 
 was watching him for the sole reason that he happened to
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 97 
 
 be the only cheerful-looking, decently-clad human being 
 within his range of vision snuffed the breeze, and con- 
 sidered the prospect with a consciously-possessive air. In 
 moving his head sideways, so as to extend his view, his 
 sharp black glance encountered that of his neighbor, and 
 he nodded, and thus their acquaintance began. 
 
 "I'm glad to see, young gentleman," said the little man 
 and "My eye! Do I still look like anything of that sort?" 
 was the young gentleman 's unvoiced aside : " I 'm glad to 
 see that you don 't number one among the many thousands 
 if I was to say Millions I shouldn't be guilty of exag- 
 geration who under-estimate the value of fresh morning 
 air. For my part, without boasting, I may call myself a 
 walking Monument to its healthiness, or as you can't put 
 up a monument to a live man I'll say, a Living Testi- 
 monial. ' ' 
 
 He had a yellow, tight-drawn, wearied skin, with a patch 
 of rather hectic red on either cheekbone, and his bright 
 black eyes twinkled at the bottom of hollow orbits, over- 
 shadowed by shaggy eyebrows of the deepest black. When 
 he took off his hat to cool his head, from which quite a 
 cloud of steam arose, you could perceive that he was 
 baldish, and that his bristly hair and large mutton-chop 
 side-whiskers owed, like his shaggy eyebrows, their intense 
 and aggressive blackness to a conscientious but unskillful 
 dyer, for by the cold and searching light of morning, deli- 
 cate nuances of green and purple were seen to mingle with 
 their youthful sable, and here and there the roots showed 
 grayish-white. 
 
 ' ' I was given up by the Doctors at the age of twenty, ' * 
 said the little man, "as I had been previously give up by 
 'em at eleven and fifteen. 'The boy's in Rapid Decline,' 
 says one, 'keep him out o' drafts and give him boiled 
 snails and asses' milk.' My poor mother did her best, 
 stopping up window-cracks with paste and paper, and 
 stuffing chimneys with old carpets. And living as we was 
 at Hampstead Village, and the Heath being productive in 
 snails and donkeys, the rest o' the prescription was easy 
 to carry out. Still I got lankier and went on coughing o' 
 nights. Says Doctor Number Two, 'It's a case of Gallop- 
 ing Consumption. Feed him up, clothe him warmly, en- 
 courage him to take gentle exercise, and avoid chills what-
 
 98 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ever yon do!' So my mother swadged me up in flannel, 
 made me eat a mutton chop every two hours, and trot up 
 and down the front-garden for exercise between chops; 
 and she'd pour half-a-pint o' porter down me whenever I 
 stood still. And in spite of all her affectionate solicitude," 
 said the little man with a twinkle, ' ' I kep ' on wasting, and 
 coughing and spitting, and doing everything that a young 
 fellow in a galloping consumption could do, short of gal- 
 loping out o ' this world into another. And Doctor Number 
 Three says, being called in when I was twenty: 'It's 
 phthisis pulmonalis in the advanced and incurable stage. 
 You can do nothing at all for this young man but get him 
 into an Institute for Incurables. Codliver Oil, Care, and 
 Kindness,' so says he, 'may prolong his miserable ex- 
 istence a month or two. For the rest, there 's nothing to be 
 done!' If you'll believe me, that news was the death of 
 my poor mother. She'd expected nothing else for years 
 and yet it killed her at the end! And I acted as Chief 
 Mourner at her funeral," ended the little man with a 
 queer twist of his lean, sharp jaws and a momentary 
 dimming of his keen black eyes, "in the pouring rain, 
 and walked home without an overcoat and got wet to the 
 skin, and stripped, and rubbed myself dry, and made a 
 rough supper of scalding oatmeal porridge, and went to 
 bed and slep' with the windows open top and bottom. 
 And that was over thirty years ago, and I 've never missed 
 my morning sponge-over with cold water since ; nor never 
 shut a window night or day, nor never run up a doctor's 
 bill, and don't mean to! I left off coddling once the 
 blessed old soul was gone ! Got better better still always 
 expected to die by those who'd knowed mother. I trav- 
 eled and saw Foreign Parts, not specially going about 
 to pick the 'ealthiest climates, knocked about abroad 
 came home and took to Business, and have taken to it ever 
 since, as you may see. My health is robust," he made a 
 show of hitting his chest again, but thought better of it. 
 "I live plain, and make a point of getting Fresh Air into 
 my system whenever possible. This is the place I come to, 
 as a rule, for the morning's supply. I take it on Black- 
 friars Bridge after the dinner-hour, the eating-house I 
 patronize being on Ludgate Hill," he added. "And I 
 don't know whether you happen to be a student of old 
 Bill Shakespeare, but there are some lines of his which
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 99 
 
 might be twisted into applying to me." He drew a deep 
 breath and delivered himself as follows: 
 
 "Some are born Tough, some achieve Toughness others 
 have Toughness thrust upon them." 
 
 He smote his chest hard with a muffled hand, and coughed 
 in that rather hollow fashion, adding: "Without vanity, 
 I may consider myself as belonging to the latter class! 
 Eh?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh agreed that the speaker might be consid- 
 ered as belonging to the latter class. 
 
 "For at this moment I am as fresh as paint," said the 
 little man proudly, "and as lively as a kitten, yet I have 
 been up and about and on my legs all night! I left 
 our place of business at 3.20 a. m., readied Charing Cross 
 by 3.30, was on the platform when the Dover Boat Train 
 steamed in bringing mails and passengers that have 
 crossed in the Night Boat from Cally took over a short- 
 hand report from a Special Correspondent who has been 
 to Paris to gather details of a political murder, ' ' he tapped 
 the breast of his black frock-coat, which showed the bulging 
 outline of a thick notebook. "And in the absence of our 
 News Editor who's been sent to Brummagem to report 
 Mr. Bright 's speech on Popular Education, Irish Ameliora- 
 tion, and Free Trade, Parliamentary affairs being at a 
 standstill this holiday season, I shall hand 'em to the 
 Senior Sub., who'll distribute the stuff and have it set up 
 by the time the Chief drops in from Putney at eleven. It's 
 for to-morrow's issue, following the ten-line telegram we 
 publish this morning. A colurnn-and-a-half of Latest In- 
 telligence ! ' ' the little man screwed up his eyes and licked 
 his lips as though reveling in the flavor of some rare 
 gastronomic delicacy. "And if I had the say as to the 
 setting of it which I haven't! and was free to indulge 
 my predilection for showy printing which I never shall 
 be ! it should be headed with caps an inch high and 
 spaced and leaded all the way down." 
 
 His black eyes snapped : his hectic cheeks grew fiery. 
 
 ' ' Headed with inch-high caps, ah ! and spaced and leaded 
 from the top to the bottom. Fancy how it 'ud lay siege 
 to the Public Eye, and draw the Public's coppers! When 
 I shut my eyes I can fair see the editions running out." 
 
 He recited, marking out the lines and spaces with a 
 finger encased in white woolen :
 
 100 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 'A PRINCE MURDERS 
 
 ONE MAN AND 
 
 FIRES AT ANOTHER 
 
 IN HIS OWN 
 
 GILDED DRAWING-ROOM. 
 PARIS SENSATION. 
 
 COUSIN OP 
 
 THE FRENCH EMPEROR KILLS 
 A JOURNALIST 
 
 ON THE VERT DAY WHEN 
 
 THE FRENCH LEGISLATIVE 
 BODY 
 
 MEET TO INAUGURATE THE NEW ERA 
 OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 UNDER NAPOLEON III. 
 
 His eyes snapped, his hectic cheeks flamed, he was evi- 
 dently launched on a subject that was near the heart 
 beating beneath the bulgy pocket-book. He talked fast; 
 and as b,e talked he waved his arms, and gesticulated with 
 the large hands encased in the woolly boxing-gloves. 
 
 "I cherish ambitions, perhaps you'll say, above my 
 calling, which I don't mind owning is that of Newspaper 
 Publishers' "Warehouseman. Perhaps I do perhaps I 
 don't! My own opinion is I'm before my time, a kind of 
 Anachronism the wrong way round," said the little man 
 rather ruefully, "and rightly belong to say forty years 
 hence. As the poet Shakespeare says, and if it wasn 't him 
 it ought to have been! 'Sweet are the uses of Advertise- 
 ment. ' I 'm a believer in Advertisement, always have been 
 and always shall be ! "
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 101 
 
 His garrulity was an individual and not unpleasant trait, 
 implying confidence in others ' sympathy. He went on : 
 
 ' ' Being Nobody in particular, my views have never been 
 took up and acted on. Though I enjoy a good deal of 
 confidence and am I hope I am! respected in my place. 
 For as Solomon said, somewhere in Proverbs 'Designs 
 are strengthened by counsels, ' and our Chief himself hasn 't 
 been too proud to say, on occasion : ' Knewbit, what would 
 you do in this or that case?' Such as you see me, I am 
 often at the 'Ouse of Commons, when sittings are late and 
 speeches have to be jotted down in mouthfuls and carried 
 away and set up in snacks. . . . For my constitution is of 
 that degree of toughness sleep or no sleep matters little 
 to me, and that I am as fresh at this moment as you are, ' ' 
 he bit off the end of a yawn, "I wouldn't mind betting a 
 sixpence now!" 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh, at last getting in a word edge- 
 ways : 
 
 ' ' If you lost and you would lose ! and paid and I ex- 
 pect you 'd pay ! my capital would be doubled. I 'm not a 
 young swell who has got up early to look at London. I'm 
 a vagrant on the streets and it strikes me I must look 
 like it. To-day I've got to find work of some kind. Can 
 you give me a job in your warehouse? I'm strong and 
 willing and honest up to now! But by G ! if stealing 
 a bunch of turnips off a costermonger 's barrow will get me 
 a full belly and a clean bed in prison, I expect I shall have 
 to do it before long, if I can 't find work anywhere ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Bless my soul ! ' ' said the garrulous little man ex- 
 citedly. "And I thought you were a Medical Student or 
 an artist (some of 'em aren't over-given to clothes-brushes 
 and soap-and-water), and here I stood a-jawing and you 
 starving all the time ! . . . Work of course you shall have 
 work, though I can't promise it'll be the kind o' work that's 
 fit for an educated young gentleman " 
 
 "Any work is fit for a gentleman," snarled P. C. Breagh, 
 "that a decent man can do! What I want is " 
 
 "What you want is Breakfast and a wash and brush- 
 up!" cried the little man excitedly. "And that you must 
 go to Miss Ling and get. Say Mr. Knewbit sent you I 'm 
 Knewbit, Christian name Solomon. It's No. 288 Great 
 Coram Street second turn to your right above Russell
 
 102 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Square. Cross the Strand and go up Wellington Street and 
 Bow Street, cross Long Acre and . . . but you 're too dead- 
 beat to walk it. Take a growler it'll be eighteenpence 
 from here unless the cabby 's lost to every sense of decency. 
 Borrow the money from me here it is! I give you my 
 word you shall be able to pay me back to-morrow. Here 
 is a cab ! Hi ! Phew 'w ! " Mr. Knewbit whistled scientifi- 
 cally, and the preternaturally red-nosed driver of an old 
 and jingling four-wheeler pulled up beside the curb as 
 P. C. Breagh stammered out: 
 
 "I I can't thank! . . . You're too confoundedly 
 kind ! . . . and I 'd begun to think that all men were thieves 
 or scoundrels except a poor, sick beggar of a swell I met 
 yesterday, whose wife and children shun him and whose 
 valet bullies him! I can't refuse, you know! . . . Things 
 are too ..." 
 
 "The fare will be two shillings if you talk one minute 
 longer!" warned Mr. Knewbit, opening the door of the 
 straw-carpeted, moldy-smelling vehicle. "I can see ex- 
 tortion in that man's eye. I'm a judge of character, that's 
 what I am. Bless my soul ! Is that kitten yours ? ' ' 
 
 For the ginger Tom, with arched back and erect tail, was 
 walking round P. C. Breagh 's legs, purring insinuatingly, 
 and his companion of the night's vigil said hesitatingly, 
 looking at the meager, homeless mite : 
 
 ' ' He seems to think so ! And he helped me through 
 last night. Would you mind if I took him? I'll pay for 
 his keep as soon as ever I " 
 
 Mr. Knewbit shouted in a violent hurry : 
 
 "In with you! Cat and all! Don't apologize! Miss 
 Ling adores 'em! Three in the house already waste bits 
 left on the dustbin for needy strangers. Don't forget! 
 288 Great Coram Street, Russell Square. Drive on, 
 cabby!" 
 
 He added, dancing up and down excitedly on the pave- 
 ment, as the jingling four-wheeler rolled on, with the pair 
 of castaways : 
 
 "Lord! if I only had the setting up of that young fel- 
 low's story, how I would give it 'em in leaded capitals!" 
 
 He closed his eyes in ecstasy and saw, in large black 
 letters standing out across the clear horizon of the new 
 day to which London was waking :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 103 
 
 LONDON DRAMA. 
 
 BEGGARED HEIR TO WEALTH 
 
 ROBBED. 
 
 CAST ON THE STREETS! 
 SOLE COMPANION A KITTEN! 
 
 PATHETIC STORY. 
 
 "Not that I know he is the heir to wealth, but it looks 
 well, uncommon! Uncommon well, it looks!" said Mr. 
 Knewbit. 
 
 XV 
 
 WHEN the Editorial Staff of the Early Wire had gone 
 home, or to the Club, by cab or private brougham or on 
 foot, in the blackest hours of the night or the smallest 
 hours of the morning; when the Printing Staff had filed 
 out, pale and respectably attired, or thundered down the 
 iron-shod staircases in grimy, inky, oily deshabille, then the 
 Publishing Staff trooped in and took possession. And, as 
 the lines of carts backed up to the curb, and were filled by 
 brawny shirt-sleeved men, who tossed the huge bales of 
 newspapers from hand to hand with the nonchalant skill 
 of jugglers doing tricks with willow-pattern plates and 
 oranges, the Business Department began to empty so much 
 that you could see the eyebrows of clerks behind the iron- 
 nailed unplaned deal counters; and Mr. Knewbit, slacken- 
 ing in his terrific energy, would cease keeping count, and 
 tallying, and writing cabalistic signs on huge packages with 
 the stump of blue pencil that never was used up. And he 
 would mop his face and say in the same invariable for- 
 mula: 
 
 "Well! we've broke the back of the day's work, and 
 lucky if no one can say no worse of us ! " 
 
 Later on, when the last newspaper-cart had been gorged 
 and rattled away, and the last newspaper-boy had darted 
 out with his armful, and his mouth open for the yell that 
 would issue from it the moment his bare feet hit the pave-
 
 104 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ment of Fleet Street, and the office of the Early Wire and 
 all the other offices that had got off the Morning Issue had 
 an air of dozing with blinking eyes and mouths half open 
 when the Evening Papers were at the height of strenuous 
 effort, Mr. Knewbit would arrange the limited supply 
 of hair remaining on his cranium with a pocket-comb, 
 titivate his whiskers by the aid of a tiny scrap of looking- 
 glass nailed inside his desk-lid, dust the blacks off his 
 collar, straighten his cravat which boasted a breastpin 
 that was an oval plaque of china, painted with a miniature 
 of a young lady with flowing ringlets, rosy cheeks, white 
 arms and shoulders, pink legs and a diaphanous tutu, 
 dancing, crowned with roses in front of a sylvan waterfall, 
 and betake himself out to dine. 
 
 Sometimes he would patronize the "Old Cheshire 
 Cheese" chop-house, where they gave you beefsteak pud- 
 dings on Saturdays. Or "The Cock" would have his cus- 
 tom, or he would drop in at an eating-house in St. Paul's 
 Churchyard, where Irish stew, boiled beef with dumplings 
 and carrots, or tripe and onions were the staple dishes in 
 winter months. In summer you got roast mutton and 
 green peas and gooseberry tart with custard; but what- 
 ever the season or the dish, it was always washed down 
 with whisky-and-water, or gin-and-lemonade, or the strong- 
 est of strong beer. 
 
 For this particular tavern was patronized by the penny- 
 a-liners of Paternoster Row and the vicinity ; out-at-elbows, 
 and generally seedy-looking literary free-lances, who picked 
 up a living by inditing touching tracts and poignant 
 pamphlets for religious Societies bearing arresting titles, 
 such as: 
 
 "STOP! You ARE OUT AT THE GATHERS! Or, The 
 Tale of a Skirt, ' ' and ' ' DEAD LOCKS FOR LIVE HEADS ! By 
 A Converted Hairdresser." Or biographical accounts of 
 
 the brief lives and protracted deaths of Little E , aged 
 
 seven, or Miss Madeline P of X . 
 
 Bearded men these, with bulbous noses, studded with 
 ruby pimples; full of strange oaths, reveling in profane 
 jest and scurrilous talk. Lanky youths with hollow eyes, 
 uncut hair and crimson neckties, who boasted of having 
 cast off all shackles, bonds and fetters, civil, social, moral 
 and religious, and dreamed in their wilder moments of 
 the inauguration of a second British Commonwealth, and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 105 
 
 the reign of a New Era of Socialism, and the planting of 
 the Tree of Liberty in Buckingham Palace Courtyard. . . . 
 
 And over their strong meats, and the stronger liquors 
 with which they moistened them, these would discuss the 
 plots of tracts, and so forth, seasoning their discourse with 
 highly-spiced pleasantries and salacious witticisms, jesting 
 in ribald sort at all things upon earth and elsewhere ; until 
 as Mr. Knewbit frequently said you expected the ceiling 
 to come down and strike 'em speechless, and fancied you 
 saw wicked little hellish names playing about the cutlery. 
 
 "Not that I ever read any of their stuff, you know!" 
 he explained to P. C. Breagh, "though I am a man that, 
 to a certain extent, might be considered a reader. You've 
 seen my library on the shelf by my bed-head, and though 
 three books might be held in the opinion of some people 
 to constitute rather a limited library, they're the three 
 best books that ever were written or ever will be. Bar 
 none ! ' ' 
 
 He was a Christian believer himself; of the easy-going, 
 undenominational, non- Church-going kind. And when 
 Sunday came round, Miss Ling, after seeing the beef and 
 potatoes and Yorkshire-pudding safely into the oven, would 
 charge him to watch over the same and guard them from 
 burning; and put on her best bonnet and pop over to the 
 Christian Mission Army Hall that used to be in Judd 
 Street, W.C., for a supply of red-hot doctrine sufficient to 
 stand her in a week of working-days, while Mr. Knewbit 
 smoked, kept an eye on the cooking, and occasionally 
 dipped into his library. 
 
 A popular edition of the Plays and Poems by one Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare, together with a stout and bulky volume, 
 "Gallowglass's Encyclopedia of Literary and Typograph- 
 ical Anecdote," and a worm-eaten, black-leather-bound 
 copy of the Bible as translated from the Latin Vulgate 
 and published by the English College at Douay A.D. 1609, 
 formed Mr. Knewbit 's library. In the pages of these, their 
 owner frequently stated it as his opinion, might be found 
 the finest literature in the world. He always ended : 
 
 "And I bought Gallowglass for half-a-crown off a bar- 
 row in Camberwell, and Shakespeare was give me by a 
 young fellow who found him dullish reading and the 
 Book that beats 'em both I picked up in the fourpenny 
 box at a second-hand bookseller's in Clement's Inn!"
 
 106 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 King Solomon and the son of Sirach of Jerusalem, with 
 the Prophets Isaiah and Hosea, were Mr. Knewbit 's favorite 
 Old Testament authors. Of the Books of Wisdom and 
 Ecclesiasticus he never wearied. One wonders how much 
 he understood, but he quarried diligently in their pages, 
 and sometimes emerged into the light figuratively laden 
 with jewels. Marvelous passages would drive home to the 
 brain of the man in blinding flashes of illumination, and 
 he would lose the place in his excitement, being an un- 
 methodical if omnivorous reader, and never be able to 
 find them again. ... So he quoted his Prophets from 
 memory and generally inaccurately, yet seldom without 
 point or inappropriately. At other times, wearied with 
 their glorious obscurity, he reverted to the plainest and 
 simplest of all the stories ever written, and the sweetest 
 and the saddest too. . . . 
 
 He spoke of the Saviour as though he had known 
 Him. . . . 
 
 "I never could forgive them fellers" I conceive he 
 meant the Disciples "for cutting off and leaving Him to 
 be pinched by that gang in the Garden. It was mean, 
 that's what I call it. Mean! But I will say they owned 
 up their shabbiness in their writings afterward. Though 
 you notice they hurry over that part. And I'm not sur- 
 prised ! That young feller downstairs yet, Maria ? ' ' 
 
 This was at eight o 'clock on the Sunday morning follow- 
 ing Mr. Knewbit 's meeting with Carolan on Waterloo 
 Bridge. Miss Ling, stepping nimbly about the big front 
 kitchen in the basement, busy with her task of getting 
 breakfast, returned that ' ' Mr. Breagh had got up and gone 
 out at half-past six." 
 
 "For a shave?" 
 
 Mr. Knewbit rubbed his own bristly chin rather dubi- 
 ously as he asked the question. Miss Ling, impaling a 
 round of stale loaf upon a tin toasting-fork, shook her 
 neat head and answered in the negative. Mr. Breagh had 
 mentioned that he was going to church. 
 
 "To church. . . . We'll hope he has gone," said Mr. 
 Knewbit still more dubiously, "though between me and 
 you and the toasting-fork it sounds too good to be true. . . . 
 And 'The Brunswick Arms' is handy round the corner. 
 If the young man don 't rattle at the area-gate by the time
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 107 
 
 you've finished your toasting, I shall made bold to go and 
 look for him at the Bar. Hulloa! Here he is! Now, 
 that's what you might call a pleasant disappointment!" 
 
 For he had glanced up at the strip of area-railings com- 
 manded by the upper panes of the kitchen window, and 
 seen the legs of P. C. Breagh stride by at a great rate, stop, 
 turn back, and descend the area-steps. 
 
 You are to see Miss Ling receiving his morning greeting 
 with the wide smile that revealed an unbroken row of 
 sound white teeth ("every one her own," as Mr. Knewbit 
 would say) and made her thin, triangular face so pleasant. 
 She was a staid spinster, owning to forty-nine, who would 
 have died rather than confess to being fifty. Her magnifi- 
 cent hair, genuinely black and shining like ebony, was 
 coiled upon the top of her head too tightly for beauty. 
 Her well-marked eyebrows and candid brown eyes slanted 
 a little upward at the temples, and her skin was rather 
 yellowish than olive. She was of a flat and bony figure, 
 active and sound and tough, and, in a plain way, a first- 
 rate cook and caterer. 
 
 "Though when I left her Ladyship the Countess of 
 Crowmarsh," said Miss Ling, "after fourteen years spent 
 in the Castle nurseries, gradually rising from nursery-maid 
 to under-nurse, and then becoming what his Lordship was 
 pleased to call Head of the Bottle Department a very 
 humorous nobleman his Lordship was at times! I had 
 forgotten all I ever knew of my dear mother's kitchen- 
 teaching she was a cook, Mr. Breagh, who had lived with 
 the first in the land! and when being pensioned by the 
 family I decided to risk the step of taking this house, 
 and letting it out to lodgers, preferring single gentlemen 
 I was forced to engage a widowed person to prepare 
 their meals at first." 
 
 "I remember her," said Mr. Knewbit, with his mouth 
 full of poached eggs and bacon. "She could under-boil a 
 pertater and calcine a chop with any elderly female I ever 
 yet come across. Here, pussy! if you ain't too proud for 
 rasher-rinds? And not you!" He leaned to the hearth 
 he was sitting with his back to the glowing range, and 
 dropped his offering under the nose of the ginger kitten, 
 which, having already disposed of a saucer of bread-and- 
 milk, instantly grabbed. 
 
 "To-morrow," said P. C. Breagh, looking up from his
 
 108 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 rapidly-emptying plate with the smile which Miss Ling 
 had already decided was pleasant, ' ' I hope to prove to you 
 that, like the kitten, I am not too proud for anything that 
 comes in my way. ' ' 
 
 "Presently, presently!" said Mr. Knewbit sharply. 
 "Everything in good time ! . . . I don't like to be hurried. 
 And what did you say was the property you'd left with 
 the the Greedy Guts who runs that Euston Road hotel ? ' ' 
 
 "There were three boxes of books chiefly works on 
 medicine and surgery." Carolan reflected a moment, stir- 
 ring his coffee with one of Miss Ling's Britannia-metal 
 spoons. "And two trunks, with clothes and all that. 
 Things I valued. My student's cap and schlager, and the 
 silver-mounted beer-horn the English Colony gave me, and 
 a Crucifix that was my mother 's. ' ' The speaker blinked 
 and spoke a little huskily: "Used to hang over my bed 
 when I was a little chap in frocks." 
 
 "Don't be cast down. Some wave o' luck may wash 
 your property ashore at your feet one of these days. "What 
 I will say is I wish I had the setting-up of that story for 
 the paper!" said Mr. Knewbit, handing in his plate for 
 fried bread. "Supposing -you," he jerked his eyes at 
 Carolan "had any talent in the literary line, it 'ud be 
 worth your while to throw off a quarter-col, of descriptive 
 stuff." 
 
 "Relating to my experiences in that fellow's bug-ridden 
 lodging-house? Why, I don't doubt I could after a 
 fashion," said P. C. Breagh. 
 
 ' ' After a fashion won 't do. Write it the best you know ! 
 Sit down at the kitchen-table here, when Maria's gone to 
 her prayer-meeting and I've got my pipe and Solomon to 
 keep me quiet, and blacken half a quire o ' paper there 's 
 plenty in the drawer there! with the story told short, 
 crisp and plain, and with a dash o' humor, and within 
 four hundred words. It would space out lovely!" said 
 Mr. Knewbit, arranging imaginary head-lines on the clean 
 coarse tablecloth. 
 
 LONDON SHARK 
 
 VICTIMIZES STUDENT ! 
 
 HE GRABS HIS GOODS 
 
 AND LETS HIM GO !
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 109 
 
 Ah, dear me! If I had had your education. But it's too 
 late to alter that. "What were you saying, Maria?" 
 
 Miss Ling was hoping that Mr. Breagh had passed a 
 comfortable night? , 
 
 ''First rate, ma'am, many thanks to you!" returned the 
 object of her solicitude. 
 
 "For," said Miss Ling, with a homely kind of dignity, 
 * ' if anything was wanting, Mr. Breagh must make excuses. 
 The arrival being unlooked-for and the notice very short. ' ' 
 
 "Dropped on you out of the skies, didn't he, Maria?" 
 chuckled Mr. Knewbit. "And you've put him, for the 
 present, in Mr. Ticking 's bed ! ' ' 
 
 "In Mr. Ticking's bed! Mr. Ticking," explained Miss 
 Ling, turning to the new arrival, "who rents our third- 
 floor front, being in the country for his holidays. ' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh expressed the hope that Mr. Ticking would 
 not be offended. 
 
 ' ' Lord bless you, no ! " responded Mr. Knewbit. ' ' Tick- 
 ing 's an agreeable feller. He'd take you rather as a Boon 
 than otherwise. Contributes a column of cheerful, gossipy 
 items weekly to half-a-dozen of the suburban and district 
 newspapers that are springing up around us like like 
 mushrooms. Always on the look-out for copy Ticking is ! 
 Now Mounteney " 
 
 "Mr. Mounteney who is also away on his vacation, and 
 rents the front sitting-room on our ground-floor, and the 
 bedroom behind it," said Miss Ling, "is a gentleman who 
 owing to the nature of his professional employment is 
 very refined and sensitive." 
 
 "Edits the Health and Beauty column of the Ladies' 
 Mentor," said Mr. Knewbit, crunching fried bread noisily, 
 "and is altogether too ladylike a gentleman to take a 
 liberty with. For the rest, we are Full Up. To begin 
 with, I occupy a combined bed-and-sitting room behind 
 this kitchen, and Miss Ling occupies the large front garret 
 bedroom; the back one being partitioned off as a Box and 
 Lumber room, and a bedroom for the servant gal, who is 
 now having her breakfast in the scullery, as me and Miss 
 Ling agreed would be more considerate toward you. . . . 
 Coming down again to the first-floor, the front parlor and 
 back bedroom are rented by a German gentleman, Mr. Van 
 Something ' ' 
 
 "Herr von Kosius," interpolated Miss Ling, "who is a
 
 110 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 teacher at the Institute of Languages in Berners Street. 
 . . . Second-floor front, another combined bed-and-sitting 
 . . . Monsieur Meguet, a French gentleman who is study- 
 ing Prints at the British Museum. Second-floor back, Miss 
 Kindell, who is a copier of Pictures at the National Gallery, 
 and a sweet artist. Third-floor, Mr. Ticking 
 
 "You represent him for the present," said Mr. Knewbit, 
 nodding at Carolan. 
 
 "The trouble is, and I hope Mr. Breagh will forgive me 
 for mentioning it," hesitated Miss Ling, "that Mr. Tick- 
 ing comes back to-morrow night. ..." 
 
 "And when does Miss Morency go? ... Miss Mor- 
 ency," explained Mr. Knewbit without waiting for an an- 
 swer, "is a young person who don't give satisfaction, re- 
 garded as a lodger, and there you have the truth in a nut- 
 shell Brazil for choice! And Miss Ling's good-nature 
 has led her, before now, to take in such people, and be 
 taken in by 'em too, I 'm bound to say ! ' ' 
 
 The little man broke off as Miss Ling, mindful of P. C. 
 Breagh 's flushed and uneasy countenance, coughed warn- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Miss Morency has been brought up very well, and is 
 she has told me, the daughter of a clergyman in Hertford- 
 shire," she explained as Mr. Knewbit buried his confusion 
 in his coffee-cup. "I cannot but think it right under the 
 circumstances to give Miss Morency a little time to turn 
 round. ' ' 
 
 "She's been turning round for eight weeks," said Mr. 
 Knewbit, rubbing his nose irritably. "And if I was you, 
 I'd have my latchkey back." 
 
 "To ask it would be a want of confidence, which would 
 wound Miss Morency, and upset her," returned Miss Ling, 
 who had risen and was gathering the breakfast things 
 together in rather an agitated way. She added: "And 
 willfully to hurt a person's feelings is a thing I could not 
 bring myself to do, Solomon. And she goes out, evening 
 after evening, poor thing, to call on relatives who live in 
 distant parts of London, and is hardly ever back until very 
 late indeed ! ' ' 
 
 "She come in at two o'clock this morning," said Mr. 
 Knewbit, screwing up his eyes meaningly at Carolan. 
 "And being comparatively early myself on Saturdays 
 I heard her just as I was getting between the sheets.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 111 
 
 And being anxious to solve the problem as to Why a young 
 creature like that should go out walking on two feet and 
 them remarkably small and pretty ones! and come back 
 with Four and two of 'em uncommon big and heavy 
 ones, I slipped up the kitchen-stairs and looked round the 
 corner-post. 'The seeing eye and the hearing ear,' said my 
 namesake, 'the Lord hath made them both' . . . and then, 
 just as I was a-going to ring the garret-bell and bring you 
 down out of bed in your curl-papers, Maria, I remembered, 
 'Lie not in wait for wickedness in the house of the just, nor 
 spoil his rest,' 'him' being understood as 'her,' for you're 
 a just woman ! But judgment must be executed upon the 
 daughter of Kahab, whether it's Sunday or whether it 
 ain't!" 
 
 "When you begin quoting from the prophets, it takes a 
 cleverer than me to understand you," said Miss Ling, 
 flushed to the top of her high cheekbones. "But as a 
 woman that's her elder, I will stand up for that poor un- 
 protected young creature against any man that tries to 
 take her character away ! ' ' 
 
 "It's nearly time for the Prayer Meeting at the Head- 
 quarters Branch Hall of your Christian Mission Army," 
 said Mr. Knewbit, looking at an enormous silver watch he 
 wore, and always set by the Tower clock at Westminster, 
 and calmly taking the poker from the rail above the 
 kitchen-range. "If you'll put on your bonnet and go, 
 what I have made up my mind to do will be comfortably 
 over before the General, or the Colonel, or whichever of 'em 
 is set down to give you Blood and Fire this morning, has 
 fairly warmed to the fight. But if you want to be upset 
 and made uncomfortable in your mind for a week after- 
 wards you '11 stop ! You will ? Very well, and why not 
 in your own house? Mr. Breagh, will you kindly follow 
 with Miss Ling and act as Reserve Force in this emer- 
 gency ? I thank you, young gentleman ! ' ' 
 
 And armed with the poker, Mr. Knewbit left the kitchen, 
 followed by Carolan and the landlady, closely attended 
 by the ginger kitten, and mounted the stairs to the third- 
 floor back.
 
 112 THE MAN OE IRON 
 
 XVI 
 
 IT was a sordid little scene that followed, but for the 
 sake of the good woman whose unaffected charity and 
 kindly feeling illumined its murky darkness, it shall be 
 recorded here. . . . 
 
 Mr. Knewbit, arriving at Miss Morency's door, thumped 
 on it, receiving no answer beyond the hurried shooting of 
 the bolt, and the scuffling of slippered feet across the car- 
 pet. Roused by the meaningful silence to indignation, he 
 delivered himself in the following terms : 
 
 ''You inside there and you're aware why I don't ad- 
 dress you as a young lady! I'm going to trouble you to 
 unfasten that door ! ' ' 
 
 "No, you ain't!" said a feminine voice from within, 
 defiantly. "Go downstairs and shave yourself, you silly 
 old man ! ' ' 
 
 A thickish masculine chuckle greeted this sally. 
 
 "When we have got you and your companion out of 
 this respectable house," quoth the wrathful Mr. Knewbit, 
 "I may have time to attend to my Sunday twylett. Not 
 before! Are you a-going to undo this door? Because, H 
 you won 't, I am a-going to bust it with the poker ! Once ! ' ' 
 He applied the end of the weapon named to a panel with 
 a crack in it. ' ' Twice ! " 
 
 ' ' Stop ! ' ' cried Miss Ling, and Mr. Knewbit lowered the 
 poker. "One moment, Solomon! I want to speak to 
 her!" 
 
 Forgetful of her neat Sabbath attire, she went down 
 upon her knees before the door, as Mr. Knewbit joined P. 
 C. Breagh upon the staircase, and laid her work-worn hand 
 as gently and persuasively upon the threatened panel, as 
 if it had been a human bosom housing an obdurate heart. 
 
 "Miss Morency! Don't be afraid, my dear! Maria 
 Ling it is a-speaking to you ! ' ' She waited an instant, and 
 receiving no response, went on. 
 
 "Mr. Knewbit has got it in his head he best knows 
 why! that you're not Alone in that room, in a manner 
 of speaking. . . . Open the door and prove to him he's 
 wrong; or tell me on your solemn honor before the God 
 who made you and me both women! that he's mistaken,
 
 THE MAN, OE IRON 113 
 
 and I'll believe you and ask your pardon and we'll all 
 go downstairs again!" 
 
 There was a silence within the room, and then a thick 
 whispering voice and a thin whispering voice held indis- 
 tinct colloquy. P. C. Breagh and Mr. Knewbit exchanged 
 looks, Miss Ling grew pale, rose, and withdrew from the 
 door. Her clean Sunday handkerchief was in her hand and 
 the hand shook, and her mouth was shut tightly, as, with 
 much shuffling, an obstacle probably a chest of drawers 
 was removed from the other side, the key was turned, 
 and the bolt withdrawn. 
 
 The door opened. The defiant figure and the angry 
 painted face of a good-looking young woman were revealed 
 beyond the threshold. She wore a gaudy dressing-gown 
 trimmed with cheap lace, and a butterfly cap in the pre- 
 vailing mode was set upon her mound of dyed hair. Her 
 companion might have been the manager of a restaurant, 
 or a West End shopwalker. His face was sallow with 
 debauch, and his eyes were red from liquor or sleeplessness. 
 With the rosebud of the previous night still drooping in 
 the buttonhole of his fashionably cut frock-coat, and the 
 mud of the previous night soiling his trouser-ends and his 
 shiny boots and drab spats, and his silk hat fixed firmly 
 on his head as though in anticipation of a scuffle, he stood 
 behind the woman; maintaining a sulky silence, gripping 
 his cane in a hand that was mottled and shaky. And the 
 roll of his eyes said "Two of 'em!" as his glance took in 
 Mr. Knewbit and P. C. Breagh. 
 
 Said the rouged, defiant young woman in the flyaway 
 cap, turning a glare of defiance upon her landlady : 
 
 "You see now whether that" she employed a term 
 reflecting on the moral character of her assailant "was 
 mistaken, or whether he wasn 't, I hope ? ' ' 
 
 Returned Miss Ling, looking mildly at the brazen coun- 
 tenance : 
 
 "I see! May the Lord forgive you, poor ruined young 
 creature. But for Him having given me a good, good 
 mother, I might be standing where you are now ! ' ' 
 
 "Never!" said Mr. Knewbit under his breath. The 
 kind soul went on without heeding him: 
 
 "Were you led away? . . . Was it the first time? . . . 
 Whether or no, it's not too late to change, and lead a life 
 of decency. As for this man. . . ."*
 
 114 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The young woman interrupted, with lowered eyes shun- 
 ning her: 
 
 "We're to be married! He's promised me upon his 
 oath!" 
 
 Her companion purpled furiously, and broke out: 
 
 "You're lying, you ! I picked you up in the Hay- 
 market ! Do you think I 'm afraid of you and your bullies 
 there? Stand back!" 
 
 Fulminating threats, he thrust roughly past Miss I -ing, 
 driving her, possibly not with intention, against the land- 
 ing wall. She gave a little cry, and the poker fell. . . . He 
 bellowed : 
 
 " you! You've broken my arm, you blackguard! 
 
 Where 's the police ? ' ' 
 
 A grip of steel shut upon his scruff, and the voice be- 
 longing to the grip said cheerfully : 
 
 "In the street. Come down and look for 'em, my 
 man!" 
 
 His protests were drowned in the rattling of his boot- 
 heels on the oil-cloth-covered staircase, in the violence of 
 'his transit to the ground-floor. There, as Mr. Knewbit, 
 dodging past, opened the hall door, he was shot from its 
 threshold as a human bullet from a spring-cannon, even 
 then supplying a sensational turn at the Royal Alhambra 
 Theater rolled down the steps, gathering momentum, 
 and colliding with a late milk-truck that happened to be 
 passing, suffered abrasions and the ruin of his smart frock- 
 coat. Leaving the victim of righteous judgment to appease 
 the justly-indignant milkman with some of the silver shed 
 from his trousers-pockets in the transit, Mr. Knewbit 
 slammed the door, and crowed, slapping P. C. Breagh 
 heartily upon the back. 
 
 "Neatly done! You could get a well-paid job as pitcher- 
 out at a West End bar, if you'd nothing better than your 
 muscles to rely upon. . . . Wait a bit!" He vanished 
 upstairs, walking as softly as a cat does, to return and 
 explain : 
 
 4 ' The pumps are at work up there ! Both of 'em crying 
 Rahab's Daughter and Solomon's Virtuous Woman, I 
 mean. . . . You remember the text? 'Her price is above 
 rubies.' I remembered it when I saw her sitting dropping 
 tears upon that trollop 's head, that was a-lying in her lap. 
 Well, well!" He led the way down into the kitchen,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 115 
 
 muttering, " 'As golden pillars upon bases of silver, so are 
 the firm feet upon the soles of a steady woman. . . .' and 
 'Her husband's heart delighteth in her!' Sit down, you 
 must want a breather . . . ' Delighteth in her' or would 
 have if she'd married one capable of appreciating a char- 
 acter like hers. ' ' 
 
 Seeing that the mind of Mr. Knewbit was still running 
 upon Miss Ling, P. C. Breagh ventured to ask : 
 
 "And has she never entertained any intention of " 
 
 Mr. Knewbit nodded sagely. 
 
 "Once. You might say there has been a Romance in 
 her life, without exaggeration. When in service with that 
 family of Nobs you've heard her mention, about twenty- 
 four years ago, when she was a strapping young woman of 
 twenty-six she got engaged to an underbutler a young 
 man with an affectionate nature and a changeable disposi- 
 tion, in conjunction with weak lungs. Weak lungs " 
 
 Mr. Knewbit opened the oven-door and looked in to ascer- 
 tain how the mutton and Yorkshire pudding were getting 
 on. "I've had weak lungs myself, but never found 'em 
 an excuse for villainy ! Mph ! . . . Don 't smell like burn- 
 ing pretty right, it seems to me!" 
 
 He sat down in his Windsor arm-chair near the hearth, 
 stretched out his carpet-slippered feet, and broke out: 
 
 "So in the interests o' them weak lungs of his, his 
 master's son, Lord Wallingbrook to whom he sometimes 
 acted as valet, took him in that capacity on a steam-yacht- 
 trip from Plymouth, via Trinidad to the Southern Seas. 
 And they cruised among the Islands of the Pacific for 
 months a gay party of bachelors amusing themselves! 
 and in the Paumotu Group this precious young man 
 of Maria 's up-stick and took French leave. . . . And that 's 
 all. And whether his master knew more than he'd tell 
 that's uncertain. Anyhow, a letter arrived six months 
 after the steam-yacht dropped anchor at Plymouth, to 
 say that he was safe and well and happy but was never 
 coming Home any more. And she believes . . . 'Ssh! 
 Here she is!" 
 
 It was Miss Ling, who had been crying, undoubtedly, for 
 her Sunday bonnet-strings were spotted as with rain, and 
 her clean handkerchief was reduced to a damp wad. Said 
 she: 
 
 "I have talked to that poor thing upstairs, as a woman
 
 116 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 of my age is privileged to do. And she has softened 
 wonderful, Solomon, and from what she has owned has 
 seen the shame and wickedness of her life clear, and longed 
 to be delivered from it this many and many a day, I'm 
 sure! So if you'll kindly whistle up a four-wheeler, I'll 
 make bold being late for the speaking at the Judd Street 
 Branch Hall! to take her down to the Christian Mission 
 Army Headquarters in the Whitechapel Road. Where I 
 shall find not only the General, as they call Mr. Booth, 
 but Mrs. Booth, ready and willing, please Heaven ! to help 
 the poor soul to a better life ! And though Lilla has gone 
 home to spend Sunday with her mother at Southampton 
 Mews, I '11 stop there passing and send a note in, and she '11 
 come round and dish up dinner and don't you, either of 
 you, dream of waiting a minute for me ! Now, I 'm going 
 back to Miss Morency though her real name is nothing 
 like so grand as that, poor creature ! ' ' 
 
 She turned at the door to nod and smile and say : 
 "And her and me will carry down her box between us, 
 so don't show yourselves to shame her poor swelled face 
 before the cabman." 
 
 "There's a woman!" said Mr. Knewbit exultantly, a 
 few minutes later, as the hall-door shut and the cab-door 
 banged, and the vehicle containing the Daughter of Rahab 
 and the Woman Above Rubies rattled away in the direc- 
 tion of Holborn Circus. 
 
 "I wonder you " P. C. Breagh was beginning, when 
 
 he stopped himself on the brink of an indiscretion. 
 
 "Eh? . . ." interrogated Mr. Knewbit. "What? . . . 
 Oh, but I did, though!" 
 
 Mr. Knewbit rubbed his chin, which needed shaving, 
 and shook his head in a despondent way. 
 
 ' ' I did. She was thirty-one when the Earl and Countess 
 pensioned her thirty-one pound a year For Life they 
 promised. . . . And it's been paid regularly, going on for 
 nineteen year now. And in the second year I came to lodge 
 here early in January, and finding her a comfortable, 
 cleanly, kindly creature, I stopped on and all but asked 
 her to marry me next time New Year came round. On 
 the following anniversary I took the plunge ! after reading 
 a passage of Solomon's peculiarly applicable to my case. 
 'He that hath found a good wife hath found a good thing,'
 
 THE MAX OF IROX 117 
 
 it was. Turned it up by accident, and showed it to her, 
 and asked her. And she said No! And goes on saying 
 it though I ask her for the last time regularly every year. 
 Here's the gal coming down the area-steps. Now that 
 meat and pudding's off my conscience, I shall put on my 
 boots for an airing before dinner. And while I'm gone 
 try your hand at a neat article in moderate paragraphs 
 describing the methods of that" Mr. Knewbit cast about 
 for a new term ' ' that Man-eating Alligator in the Euston 
 Road. "What was the name of the place? 'Royal Copen- 
 hagen Hotel!' . . . Why, it fairly smells of roguery! 
 'Royal Greenhorn' would be pretty well up to the mark." 
 
 Mr. Knewbit returned, just as the little servant pro- 
 nounced dinner to be in danger of spoiling in a cab ; and 
 thereupon ensued much jolting and bumping, suggestive 
 of the conveyance of heavy articles up the doorsteps into 
 the hall. Where, being summoned from the kitchen by a 
 bellow, P. C. Breagh recognized his own trunks and book- 
 boxes, and wrung the hand of his good genius with a grate- 
 ful swelling of the heart, and an irrepressible watering of 
 the eyes. 
 
 "It was so kind! and suppose I never am able to pay 
 you or keep you waiting a devil of a time?" he pro- 
 tested incoherently. 
 
 "Young fellow," said Mr. Knewbit, scowling with his 
 heavy brows and twinkling pleasantly from under them. 
 "You are a gentleman born and bred and taught. You 
 must have your Books to keep up your Latin and Greek 
 and other learning and to keep up your appearance you 
 must have your clothes. No man is so down in the world 
 that he can afford to go downer. This is my opinion, and 
 also Miss Ling 's ! " 
 
 "And to-morrow Mr. Breagh will find poor Miss Mor- 
 ency's room swept and scrubbed and got ready for him," 
 said Miss Ling that evening, during Mr. Knewbit 's ab- 
 sence. "And the rent is including Kitchen Board with 
 myself and Mr. Knewbit, who likes homeliness, sixteen 
 shillings per week. And if I trust Mr. Breagh for a month 
 that will be a chance for him of getting work to do. And 
 that he will turn from nothing that will bring him in an 
 honest living, I am certain; and that he will justify the 
 confidence of Mr. Knewbit, I am equally sure ! ' ' 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh, rather chokily :
 
 118 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "I hope to God I may one day be able to thank you 
 both as I should like to! You don't know what you have 
 done for me, either of you! But I will will repay you, 
 I swear ! ' ' 
 
 She said in her quaint way : 
 
 "What obligation there may be could be repaid now 
 with Mr. Breagh's permission. He saw that most unhappy 
 girl to-day. . . . He has seen a-many many like her! 
 If he would promise me never to bring about a fall like 
 that, or help to drag a head so fallen, lower! Perhaps I 
 take a liberty," said Miss Ling, "and presume, being al- 
 most a stranger. . . . Yet I ask it of Mr. Breagh, I do 
 indeed!" 
 
 He gave the promise, in words that were broken and 
 hurried, and with eyes that shunned her plain, kind, ear- 
 nest face. She said : 
 
 "There will be a beautiful young lady, one of these 
 days, all the happier for that promise Mr. Breagh has 
 given. And I hope he won't think me unjust because 
 I am a woman! and blind to the wreck and ruin that 
 my sex can bring about. I knew a young man, once; who 
 was good, and honest, and worthy ; and engaged to marry 
 a young person of his own rank in life. ..." 
 
 Carolan remembered Mr. Knewbit's story of the faith- 
 less underbutler. 
 
 "He went Abroad to Foreign Countries," said Miss 
 Ling, mildly, "sailing on a ship that voyaged for months 
 at a time. I am told that the women are very beautiful 
 in the islands that he visited ; and somehow or another, he 
 was led away. ..." 
 
 Though she looked at Carolan, her regard was curiously 
 impersonal. It was as though she saw the wraith of some 
 face once dear, and although changed, never to be for- 
 gotten, appear within the outlines of the face that looked 
 back at her. 
 
 "The ship sailed Home without him. He wrote by 
 another vessel to the young woman he was to have mar- 
 ried, begging her forgiveness. . . . He had loved her, he 
 said, and looked to be happy with her. But the sunshine 
 and perfume and color of them foreign places, and the 
 spell of the beauty of their wild brown foreign women was 
 over him. He could not come back. . . . He never may 
 come back again. . . . But if it happened so and he,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 119 
 
 being old and worn, and weary of strange ways and dis- 
 tant places, was looking for an honest roof to shelter him, 
 and a loving heart to lean upon at the last. ..." 
 
 "He would find both here, I know!" said Carolan, 
 gently. 
 
 She started and, recalling herself, said in a changed 
 tone: 
 
 "Mr. Breagh must excuse my having delayed him here 
 a-talking. To work and bustle is more natural to me ! ' ' 
 
 He took her hand, and having learned in Germany to 
 pay such pretty homage without looking foolish, he stooped 
 above it and touched it with his lips. She smiled her wise, 
 kind smile, and said with a touching simplicity : 
 
 "Mr. Breagh is good enough to honor a poor, hard, 
 working hand!" 
 
 He said, and the tone had the ring of sincerity : 
 
 "I wish, with all my heart, I were worthier of touching 
 it!" 
 
 And so went upstairs to sleep in Mr. Ticking's bed. 
 
 XVII 
 
 "MY student-cap and sclildger and the silver-mounted 
 beer-horn the English Colony gave me, and my mother's 
 Crucifix" found their places on the walls of the clean and 
 comfortable room, and upon cheap stained-deal shelves 
 the books of which Mr. Knewbit had spoken so respectfully 
 were ranged, waiting to refresh their owner's memory 
 whenever he chose to dip into them. 
 
 The sharkish manager of the ' '.Eoyal Copenhagen Hotel ' ' 
 had been cowed into giving up the detained luggage by 
 Mr. Knewbit 's assurance that the story of his knavery was 
 even then taking literary form under the skilled hand of a 
 young and aspiring journalist of his ( Knewbit 's) own 
 acquaintance, and might shortly appear in a newspaper 
 to the confusion of the said manager, unless the property 
 was surrendered upon payment of a corrected version of 
 the bill. 
 
 These terms being hastily accepted, the Rules of Fair 
 Play, according to Mr. Knewbit, demanded that the written
 
 120 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 record of the manager's iniquity should be consigned to 
 Miss Ling's kitchen-fire. 
 
 ''Not that it ain't a pity, for it ain't half bad for a be- 
 ginner, though wanting in what I call snap and sparkle. 
 But honor is honor- and if Mr. Ticking reads this know- 
 ing you're not going to use it you'll find the story crop- 
 ping up presently in the Camberwell Clarion or the Isling- 
 ton Excelsior. . . . Couldn't you do something else just 
 for a taster? Or haven't you something finished and put 
 away and forgot?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh finally disinterred from the litter of manu- 
 script notes at the bottom of a book-box, a scrawled descrip- 
 tion of a duel between two Freshmen at a well-known 
 tavern and concert-room outside the walls of Schwarz- 
 Brettingen. The humors of the battle, waged in a low- 
 ceiled room in the upper story, crowded with chaffing, 
 drinking, smoking students; the marvelous nature of the 
 defensive armor worn by the inexperienced Fuclise, the 
 blows that fell flat, the final entanglement of their swords, 
 and abandonment of these unfamiliar weapons in favor of 
 fisticuffs, made Mr. Knewbit chuckle, and won the suf- 
 frages of Mr. Ticking; who said the fight and the bit of 
 knock-about at the end was nearly good enough to be put 
 on at the Halls. 
 
 Mr. Ticking was a journalist who possessed a knack of 
 rhyme, penned comic ditties for Lion Comiques, when these 
 gentlemen would sing them, and lived in the hope of get- 
 ting a Burlesque produced at a West-End Theater one day. 
 He had educated himself because you couldn 't get on if you 
 were not educated. He could not have explained to you 
 how the process had been carried out. By dexterously 
 angling matter for short paragraphs from the swirl of 
 happenings about him, he contrived between the Camber- 
 well Clarion, the Islington Excelsior, and the Afternoon, 
 a late daily published in Fleet Street to net some three 
 pounds at the end of each week. Thirty shillings of this 
 went to support an aged and invalid mother resident at 
 Brixton; and if you had lauded Mr. Ticking as a heroic 
 exemplar of filial virtues, he would have been excessively 
 surprised. Though if you had told him that he wrote 
 Burlesque better than Byron, he would have believed you 
 implicitly. 
 
 Mr. Mounteney, Miss Ling's ladylike gentleman, proved
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 121 
 
 to be a tall, stout, elderly, rather depressed individual, 
 whose gold-rimmed glasses, attached to a broad black rib- 
 bon, sat a little crookedly upon a high, pink Roman nose. 
 His light blue eyes were over-tried and rather watery, his 
 hair had come off at the top, leaving his crown bald and 
 shiny ; his customary attire was a rather seedy black frock- 
 coat, a drab vest with pearl buttons, and rather baggy 
 brown trousers, and he wore turned-down collars and black 
 ribbon neckties, and displayed onyx studs and links in a 
 carefully preserved shirt. Pieces of paper protected his 
 cuffs, invariably covered with memoranda written in violet- 
 ink-pencil, referring to the most delicate and confidential 
 affairs. 
 
 For Mr. Mounteney, under the nom de guerre of "Ara- 
 minta," edited the "Happiness, Health, and Beauty" col- 
 umn of that fashionable feminine monthly, the Ladies' Men- 
 tor, into whose bureau, according to Mr. Mounteney, a 
 vast correspondence, penned by the wives and daugh- 
 ters of what Mr. Mounteney termed the Flower of Britain 's 
 Nobility and Gentry, as by their governesses and maids, 
 and the wives and daughters of their butchers, bakers, and 
 candlestick-makers, continually flowed. Signing them- 
 selves by fancy names, these confiding ones would put 
 questions concerning matters of the toilette and so forth, 
 the Answers to which interrogations, with the pseudonyms 
 prefixed, were inserted month by month. 
 
 "Little Fairy. A lady who weighs fourteen stone 
 need not necessarily give up waltzing. 
 
 "Ruby. "We should recommend you to powder it. 
 
 "Ravenlocks. To stand in the sun too soon after 
 applying is prejudicial to a successful result. 
 
 "Peri. Try peppermint." 
 
 Or the bosom of Araminta, guarded by the onyx studs 
 and the black pince-nez ribbon, would be made, according 
 to its owner, the receptacle of confidences calculated, if 
 revealed, to convulse Society to its core. Thus burdened 
 with secrets, it weighed heavily on Mr. Mounteney. AVhen 
 lachrymose with gin-and-water, to which cooling beverage 
 he was rather addicted, he would with tears deplore the 
 wreck of a once noble constitution, caused by reason of 
 emotional strain. But he never gave any of his corre-
 
 122 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 spondents away. And being of a kindly disposition, he 
 induced the Editor of the Ladies' Mentor to read and 
 accept a brief, mildly-humorous article, descriptive of a 
 German ladies' cake-and-coffee party; the details having 
 been long ago previously supplied by a fellow-student at 
 Schwarz-Brettingen, and worked up by P. C. Breagh. 
 
 Several other social paragraphs by the same hand found 
 their way, thanks to Mr. Ticking's introduction, into the 
 columns of the Islington Excelsior. In recognition, P. C. 
 Breagh, producing pairs of basket-hilted swords, pads, 
 cravats and goggles from one of the cases rescued from 
 the hotel manager, instructed Mr. Ticking in the noble 
 art of fence. 
 
 Their thrusts, lunges and stampings seriously threaten- 
 ing the stability of the third-floor landing, these combats 
 were transferred to the back-yard in fine weather, and per- 
 mitted in the kitchen when it was wet. And Mr. Ticking, 
 though he never mastered the science of the schlager, in- 
 ducted P. C. Breagh into the mysteries of boating and 
 velocipeding, having a cutter-rigged Thames sailing-boat 
 in housing near Chelsea Bridge Stairs, and a huge-wheeled 
 bone-shaker of the prevailing type stowed away in a de- 
 crepit conservatory adjoining the bathroom on Miss Ling's 
 second floor. 
 
 Mr. Mounteney could not be prevailed upon to handle 
 what he stigmatized as "deadly weapons," or to risk his 
 person on the whirling wheel, while even fresh-water boat- 
 ing caused him to suffer from symptoms not distantly 
 resembling those peculiar to the malady of the ocean. 
 But, flabby as the ladylike gentleman appeared, he was a 
 vigorous and tireless pedestrian, able to reduce Mr. Tick- 
 ing, who was not unhandy in the usage of his feet, into a 
 human pulp, and walk Mr. Knewbit, who had reason to 
 pride himself upon his powers of locomotion, completely 
 off his legs. 
 
 Expeditions were made to Addiscombe, in the green 
 swelling Surrey country, where the once famous East India 
 College was founded in 1812, and sold and dismantled in 
 1858 upon the transfer of the Company to the Crown. Of 
 the 3,600 cadets who were trained here, the names of Law- 
 rence, Napier, Durand, and Koberts are written upon the 
 rolls in letters of undimming gold. Or to Sydenham with 
 its acres of glittering crystal, its matchless fountains, and.
 
 THE WAN OE IRON 123 
 
 the view from the North Tower, extending over six coun- 
 ties and compassing the whole course of the Thames. Or 
 to Ascot, with its stretches of sandy heathland, its noble 
 racecourse and its woods of fir and birch, would the lady- 
 like gentleman, accompanied by one or the other or both 
 of his young friends, betake himself upon a highday or a 
 holiday, when duchesses ceased from troubling and milli- 
 ners were at rest. Or they would make for Hampton 
 Court or Bushey Park, or the ancient manor of Cheshunt, 
 or to Chigwell, immortalized by Dickens, where in the oak- 
 wainscoted dining-room of the King's Head, such rare 
 refreshment of cold beef and salad, apple pie and Stilton 
 cheese could be had, and washed down by the soundest and 
 brightest of ales; then even "Araminta" was tempted to 
 forget the crushing responsibilities inseparable from the 
 delicate position of adviser upon Health, Happiness, and 
 Beauty to the feminine flower of England's nobility and 
 gentry, and eat and drink like a navvy free from care. 
 
 And upon the return of the three wearied pedestrians 
 from these excursions, there would be a cheery supper in 
 Mr. Ticking's room, or in Mr. Mounteney's, or, best of all, 
 in Miss Ling's clean and comfortable kitchen, with more 
 beer and more tobacco, though by reason of a digestion 
 impaired by the continual wear and tear of his fair clients' 
 confidences, or by excessive indulgence in tea, Mr. Moun- 
 teney restricted himself to the mildest of Turkish 
 cigarettes. 
 
 Mr. Knewbit, who reveled in the growing popularity of 
 his protege, though he might in secret have shaken his head 
 over the articles and paragraphs published in the Ladies' 
 Mentor and the Islington Excelsior, learned very willingly 
 to whistle a beer-waltz, knocking the bottom of his tumbler 
 on the table in time to the tune; to say "Prosit" when he 
 drank, and vocally unite in the final melodic outburst of: 
 "0 jerum, jerum, jerum, jerum, la la la!" In which his- 
 toric and legendary burden Miss Ling would also join, and 
 laugh until the tears ran down. 
 
 Of the junior-stan room of the Early Wire, a bare, gaunt 
 place, lighted by three seldom-washed windows looking on 
 a sooty yard, or by six flaring gas-jets by night or in foggy 
 weather, Carolan was, by the interest of Mr. Ticking, one 
 day made free. Names of power were cut with penknives
 
 124 THE MAN: OF IRON, 
 
 on the ink-splashed deal tables, and the bottoms of the 
 cane-seated chairs had given way under the weight of per- 
 sonalities now famous, men who were paid for a single 
 article as much as Ticking earned in a year. 
 
 And thus P. C. Breagh joined the gallant company of 
 the Free Lances of Fleet Street, and very soon had its of- 
 fices and eating-houses, its haunts and traditions by heart. 
 What demi-gods walked upon those historic flags and cob- 
 blestones! Russell, the pioneer and King of War Corre- 
 spondents, and Simpson of Crimean fame, whose war- 
 sketches for the Illustrated London News had set England 
 ablaze in '54-5, and George Augustus Sala, and Macready 
 long since retired from the stage in 1870, the veteran 
 Charles Mathews and Byron of burlesque fame, and Bul- 
 wer Lytton, and Tennyson and Browning, and Planche 
 and Edmund Yates, and genial, handsome Tom Robertson, 
 who was to die, with his laurels green upon him, in another 
 year. All these were pointed out to the young man, with 
 certain places rendered for ever sacred by the footsteps of 
 Dickens and Thackeray, and other of the Immortals who 
 have passed beyond these voices into peace. 
 
 And into the world of Music and the Drama, our fortu- 
 nate youth, by virtue of his initiation into the cheery broth- 
 erhood of Pressmen, was now admitted. There were free 
 admissions for Popular Concerts where one could hear 
 Professor Burnett and Signor Piatti play the piano and vio- 
 loncello, and Santley most gloriously sing, and Sims 
 Reeves deliver Beethoven's incomparable "Adelaida" with 
 that splendor of voice and style that will never be sur- 
 passed. The Christy Minstrels of St. James's Hall be- 
 guiled our hero of a stealthy tear or two, and made him. 
 rot.r with laughter; and Blanchard's Drury Lane Panto- 
 mime of "Beauty and the Beast," with Kate Santley as 
 Azalea, the Peri, and Miss Vokes as the lovely Zemira, was 
 an eye-opener to a youth who had witnessed only provincial 
 productions in his native country, and half a dozen per- 
 formances of Schiller's "Robbers," "Don Carlos," and 
 "The Stranger" of Kotzebu as given by a stock-company 
 of Bavarian actors at the Theater of Schwarz-Brettingen. 
 
 Also our hero was privileged to witness the performances 
 of Mrs. Wood as Miss Hardcastle in "She Stoops to Con- 
 quer," and afterwards in the extravaganza of "La Belle 
 Sauvage," at the St. James's Theater, and J. S. Clarke,
 
 THE MAN OE IRON 125 
 
 then drawing the town with "Amongst the Breakers'* 
 at the Strand. 
 
 At the Olympic, Patti Josephs was touching the hearts 
 of the British Public as Little Em'ly, Rowe was tickling 
 people to laughter with the unctuosities and impecuni- 
 osities of Micawber, a certain Mr. Henry Irving was hold- 
 ing his audiences spellbound with the sardonic slyness and 
 hypocritical cunning displayed in his performance of Uriah 
 Heep, and beautiful Mrs. Rousby was breaking hearts at 
 the Queen's Theater. And evenings spent with these, or 
 with Professor Pepper at the Polytechnic, or the German 
 Reeds, who were playing Gilbert and Sullivan's little 
 operas, and ' ' Cox and Box ' ' at the Gallery of Illustration, 
 were crowned by suppers in the grill-room of "The 
 Albion" in Drury Lane, or at Evan's at the north-west 
 corner of Covent Garden. And these were merry times 
 and merry mimes, my masters, and we shall not look upon 
 their like again. 
 
 And in the environment I have endeavored to depict, 
 and with the associates I have tried to delineate, and with 
 the pleasant hum and swirl of this new life setting the tune 
 for his young pulses and mingling with his blood, Caro- 
 lan's temperament recovered its elasticity, and his charac- 
 ter developed apace. The magic gift of sympathy found in 
 the gutter on that night of homeless, hungry wandering 
 was his now, never to be lost or alienated. He had learned 
 much when he had discovered how to fit himself inside the 
 ginger kitten's ragged skin. 
 
 The bond of brotherhood, established between a shaggy- 
 haired boy and all other created beings capable of joy and 
 susceptible to suffering, would hold unbroken through all 
 the years to come. We are aware that the confidence of Mr. 
 Knewbit had been won that morning on Waterloo Bridge, 
 and we have heard Miss Ling (not ordinarily given to 
 broach the subject of the faithless underbutler) tell him 
 in her simple way of the desertion that had left her kind 
 heart empty and sore. We may know also that Mr. Tick- 
 ing revealed, with the fact of the existence of the invalid 
 mother resident at Brixton, the secret that he was beloved 
 by a certain Annie, the orphan daughter of a deceased 
 relative, who lived with the old lady as housekeeper and 
 nurse. Annie, it seemed, had a little fortune of her own, 
 and was so kind, so clever and so charming, that only the
 
 126 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 indiscreetly-evident anxiety of Ticking's mother to bring 
 about a match, and the too plainly manifested willingness 
 of Annie to accept the hand of Mr. Ticking, were it offered 
 held him back from becoming an engaged man. As it 
 was, he spoke, in somber whispers, of an amatory entangle- 
 ment with a splendid creature, not good as Annie was good, 
 but possessing the beauty in whose baleful luster honest 
 prettiness pales, and the charm whose sorcery kills the 
 conscience, and wakens the scorching desires of man. 
 
 "Passion! there's no going against that, you know!" 
 he would say, wagging his head dismally, ' ' and if ever you 
 see Leah, you'll understand." 
 
 But when P. C. Breagh did see Leah, who presided over 
 the gaudy necktie and imitation gold cuff-link department 
 at an East Strand hosier's, he failed to understand at all. 
 She had big burnt-out dusky-brown eyes and loops of coarse 
 black hair, and a big bust and a tiny waist with a gilt 
 dog-collar belt about it. Ticking had paid for the belt 
 when he had taken her to the Crystal Palace, and she had 
 admired the trinket on one of the fancy stalls in the 
 French Court next the Great Concert Hall. And there 
 had been a display of fireworks on the Terrace, and in the 
 dark interval between two set-pieces there had been a 
 mutual declaration; and the moth Ticking had singed his 
 wings in the flame of illicit passion, and would return to 
 flutter about the candle, he supposed, until he met his 
 doom. 
 
 Mr. Mounteney spoke of Passion as well as Mr. Ticking, 
 but in the exhausted accents of a world-weary cynic who 
 had drunk of the cup to satiety. He knew so much of 
 women, thanks to "Araminta," that he had nothing more 
 to learn. Yet when a pert and pretty waitress, who served 
 the table at which he commonly lunched at a Fleet Street 
 chop-house, proved ungrateful after six months of extra 
 tips, trips to Kew and Rosherville Gardens and innumer- 
 able theater tickets, and told Mr. Mounteney in the plainest 
 terms that he was "too bow-windowy in figure for a 
 beau," and that she preferred young swells on the Stock 
 Exchange to elderly newspaper gents, Mounteney the ex- 
 pressed preference having been illustrated by demonstra- 
 tion, was tragically comic in his manifestations of 
 wounded vanity, quite funnily touching in his display of 
 jealousy and despair. For a whole week following the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 127 
 
 betrayal his pale blue eyes were suffused with tears, his 
 Roman nose was red, and his light hair stood up on end, 
 where his despairing fingers had rumpled it. His black 
 ribbon necktie straggled untied over a limp shirt-front, the 
 violet-ink-pencil memoranda on his paper cuffs had merged 
 into blotches and blurs. 
 
 Then suddenly his dismal countenance recovered its mild 
 placidity, his necktie was tied, his hair lay once more in 
 smoothly brushed streaks across his shining crown. His 
 nose paled, his eyes reverted to their purely normal wateri- 
 ness. It seemed that nestling amid the grasses at the 
 feet of one who had plucked the fairest flowers that bloom 
 in the garden of Passion and sickened of their cloying 
 perfume and dazzling hues, the disillusioned Mounteney 
 had discovered a simple violet, and that the humble sweet- 
 ness and modest beauty of this shrinking blossom had re- 
 freshed his jaded senses and solaced his wearied mind. 
 
 In terms less obscure, Mr. Ticking explained that the 
 humble violet was a certain Miss Rooper, who for a monthly 
 salary attended at the office of the Ladies' Mentor thrice 
 a week to assist in the Herculean task of opening the letters 
 addressed to "Araminta" take down in shorthand her 
 representative's replies to the interrogations therein con- 
 tained make notes of queries impossible to answer on the 
 spot, and ferret out the answers by application at such 
 leading centers of information as the Reading-room of 
 the British Museum, Heralds' College, the Zoological 
 Gardens, the Doctors' Commons Will Office, Marshall and 
 Snel grove's, Whiteley's, Parkins and Gotto's, Twinings', 
 the Burlington Arcade, Scotland Yard, and the Cooper- 
 ative Stores. Ticking added that for years Miss Rooper 
 had brought her luncheon-sandwiches to the office in a vel- 
 vet reticule, and consumed them under cover of the lid of 
 her desk, but that now, the lady being regularly engaged to 
 Mr. Mounteney, he supposed the couple would go out to 
 "Araminta's" usual ordinary arm-in-arm. It would be 
 a jolly lark, he added, if Mounteney took his betrothed to 
 his customary table, as Flossie had already been thrown 
 over by the young jobber from Capel Court. 
 
 And when P. C. Breagh saw Flossie, who owned a turned- 
 up nose (I quote Mr. Ticking) that you might have hung 
 your hat on, and when he was introduced to Miss Rooper, 
 who was on the shady side of thirty-five and had a long
 
 128 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sagacious equine face, and boasted a fringe and chignon 
 and waterfall of black hair as coarse as the mane of a 
 Shetland pony, and was bridled with bands of "red velvet, 
 as the pony might have been, and caparisoned with leather 
 belts and strappings garnished with steel rivets, and tossed 
 her head when she was coquettish, and whinnied when she 
 laughed, and looked less like a modest violet than anything 
 else you could have imagined, he wondered very much. 
 For Mr. Mounteney had spoken of Passion in connection, 
 with the faithless Flossie, and by the latest bulletins his 
 sentiment for Miss Hooper had developed into Passion of 
 the strictly honorable kind. 
 
 Could the passion on which Shakespeare had strung the 
 pearls and rubies of Romeo and Juliet, and to which the 
 lyre of Keats throbbed out the deathless music of ' ' Endym- 
 ion" have anything in common with the loves of Ticking 
 and Leah, or the emotion wakened in the bosom of Mr. 
 Mounteney by Flossie and Miss Rooper ? 
 
 Could the emotion of which Carolan himself was con- 
 scious, the sudden, fierce, stinging temptation born of the 
 bold glance of a pair of painted eyes, ogling and laughing 
 from under a clipped fringe and a tilted hat, partake of 
 the nature, be worthy of the designation? For Sin beck- 
 oned sometimes, and the boy would tug at his chain, forged 
 of links of instilled religion and honor, instinctive cleanli- 
 ness and a sensitive, secret shrinking from the purchase of 
 something that was never meant to be bartered or sold. 
 
 But there were times when, sitting at the rickety but 
 useful and capacious old davenport in the room from 
 tenancy of which Miss Morency had been ejected, the pen 
 would hang idle between the fingers of P. C. Breagh, and 
 the article commissioned by the benevolent editor of the 
 Caniberwell Clarion or the Islington Excelsior, or the more 
 ambitious magazine-story that was being written as a bait 
 to catch a literary reputation, and would return as surely 
 as the swallow of the previous summer, from the editorial 
 offices of BlacJcwood's, or the Cornhill, or even Tinsley's 
 would hang fire. 
 
 "With his elbows on the blotting-pad, exposing to view 
 the shiny places on the right-hand cuff of the old serge 
 jacket, and his eyes vaguely staring at the strip of London 
 sky seen above the chimney-pots of Bernard Street, P. C.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 129 
 
 JtJreagh would fall into a brown study, a dreamy reverie 
 of the kind to which hopeful Youth is prone. 
 
 The outer angles of the eyebrows would lift, giving an 
 eager, wistful look to the gray eyes that had specks of 
 brown and golden dust in them, the nostrils of the short, 
 determined nose would expand as though in imagination 
 they were inhaling some rare, strange, delicate fragrance, 
 the upper lip would lift at the corners, showing the canines 
 of the upper jaw a mouth of this kind can be fierce, and 
 yet you have an example of it in the Laughing Faun. 
 
 A delicate, rushing sweetness would envelop, enter and 
 possess him, body and brain and mind and soul, and his 
 heart would beat fiercely for a minute or so, and then not 
 seem to beat at all ; and he would scarcely be able to breathe 
 for the strange new joy, and the subtle, mysterious sense 
 of being drawn to and mingled with the being of another, 
 some one wholly and unutterably beloved and dear. . . . 
 
 A touch, light as a flower, would visit his forehead, and 
 a voice, small and silvery-clear, and with a liquid tremble 
 in it that might have been mirth or shyness, would sound 
 in his ears again. He would sigh and lean back, shutting 
 his eyes, and feel the slight yet firm support of the delicate 
 limbs and slender body, and the small soft hand would stir 
 and flutter in his palm like a captured bird, and he would 
 find himself painting in the choicest colors of his mental 
 palette upon the background of London sky or neutral- 
 tinted wall-paper a face that was not in the least like 
 Krimhilde-Brunhilde 's. And then he would frown, and 
 shake himself as a red setter might have done, plunging 
 back out of dripping sedges at the sound of its master's 
 whistle, and hurl himself savagely upon the pile of blank 
 pages before him, and never pause again until the daily 
 task was done. Or supposing this retrospective mood 
 to have seized him at the ending of his stint of labor, he 
 would set his teeth, summon up 'the image of his colossal 
 beloved, and savagely add to her inches all that she had lost 
 since his meeting with the frozen Infanta at the Convent, 
 Kensington Square. For the truth must be told, and the 
 painful fact faced, that since that day the heroic Ideal of 
 P. C. Breagh had been steadily shrinking; and the hour 
 was coming when her golden tresses were to darken to the 
 black-brown hue of rain-soaked oak leaves in Winter, 
 when her roseate cheeks were to blanch to the hue of old
 
 130 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ivory, when her towering stature and robust limbs were to 
 dwindle to the slender shape and delicate extremities of an 
 elfin maiden's, and her late worshiper was shamelessly to 
 dote upon the change. 
 
 But had this been foretold to P. C. Breagh, he would 
 have scouted the prophet as an impostor, and laughed the 
 prophecy to scorn. Came a day, when, fastidiously 
 groomed, and dressed in well-cut, carefully chosen clothes, 
 he called upon Monica at the Convent, this time to apprize 
 her of the loss of his inheritance, and to assure her of his 
 present well-being, despite the change in his prospects 
 brought about by the defalcations of Mustey and Son. 
 
 He had not intended to ask after the Infanta ; the query 
 slipped out quite accidentally. But when Monica returned 
 that by the latest advice received from France, the health 
 of Mademoiselle Bayard might be pronounced excellent, 
 the querist was conscious of a tightness within his collar, 
 and a sudden rush of blood reddened him to the hair as 
 his sister added : 
 
 "She may be 'Madame' and not 'Mademoiselle' to-day, 
 since what date is uncertain. For her marriage was to 
 take place almost instantly on her return to Paris, she 
 told us. Her father he is Colonel of the 777th Mounted 
 Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard had set his heart on 
 this she worships him she would consent to any sacrifice 
 would let herself be cut to pieces if he but wished it. 
 Dear Juliette!" 
 
 P. C. Breagh got out, with difficulty, " Then but look 
 here, doesn't she love the fellow?" 
 
 The word last but three got out with difficulty. His 
 throat was hurt by its passage. He gulped as he stared 
 at Monica, moistening his dry lips. 
 
 "The fellow." Her eyes widened. "You don't call 
 the Colonel that? ..." 
 
 "Of course not. I referred to the young lady's husband. 
 Actual or yet expectant." He boggled horribly in the 
 attempt to seem natural and at ease. "Why should it be 
 a sacrifice to obey her father what has the the affair got 
 in common with cutting to pieces if she if she 
 
 He stuck there. Monica, of all Juliette's friends alone 
 held worthy to share the aching secret, had not been told, 
 for her own peace of mind. Yet, loving much, she had seen 
 much. Now she sat silent. But a little line of distress
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 131 
 
 came between her placid eyebrows, and tears were gather- 
 ing behind the beautiful, tender eyes, in readiness to fall 
 when next they might unseen. Carolan went on, not look- 
 ing at her : 
 
 "She said he was a noble gentleman, master of the 
 sword, and brave as a lion. That doesn't suggest that she 
 would think herself sacrificed in marrying him ? ' ' 
 
 A sigh heaved Monica's breast and exhaled unnoticed. 
 He mumbled with a hangdog grace: 
 
 "Could you, when you happen to write, just give her 
 a message? Don't ask what it means it has to do with 
 something we spoke of here the other day when you were 
 out of the room. ' ' 
 
 His eyes sought one particular square in the center of 
 the beeswaxed parquet, where he had sat leaning against 
 the Infanta's knees. 
 
 "Tell her that the man a fellow-student of mine at 
 Schwarz-Brettingen realized not long after the the girl 
 she will remember the girl's name! after the girl had 
 made the offer she will not have forgotten what that was ! 
 from how kind and generous a heart it came. And she 
 will believe she must believe ! that he has loathed him- 
 self heartily for the brutal way in which he answered her. 
 And he entreats her to forgive, and he thanks her with 
 all " 
 
 Something splashed upon the clenched hand with which 
 he had unconsciously emphasized his utterance. He wiped 
 <L ^ the drop furtively, and said, still not looking at Monica, 
 but scowling at that particular square in the middle of the 
 parquet : 
 
 ' ' With all his heart ! You won 't forget ? ' ' 
 
 He made her promise it, and left her wondering. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 BEING a daughter of France, and a Parisienne to the 
 finger-tips, it could not be that the return to Paris, delight- 
 ful capital where all the brilliancy, esprit, good taste, and 
 refinement of modern life were concentrated, should fail to 
 rejoice the heart of Mademoiselle de Bayard. Her charac- 
 teristic quality of humor, a trait not derived from the
 
 132 
 
 paternal strain, made her omit three items from the list 
 of purchases commanded by M. le Colonel. To supply 
 oneself beforehand with a complete bridal costume in the 
 view of immediate union with a husband never to one's 
 knowledge previously beheld, could anything be more out- 
 rageously impossible ! Juliette knew that she would titter 
 hysterically behind the stately backs of the powdered and 
 frock-coated gentlemen who parade Departments, and 
 probably laugh to madness in the faces of the powdered 
 and frizzled young ladies who should seek to minister to 
 her needs. 
 
 And so, though the fresh and charming toilettes of the 
 evening, the promenade and the theater, with the suitable 
 lingerie, were added to Juliette's wardrobe, the nuptial 
 robe, crown, and veil remained unbought. 
 
 Paris, a seething pot since the Auteuil assassination 
 early in that January, was in a state of ebullition upon 
 Juliette's return. Passing in a fiacre along the Champs 
 filysees, the progress of Mademoiselle's hired vehicle was 
 stopped. A regiment of mounted Chasseurs and a detach- 
 ment of the Guides blocked the Avenue to stem the black 
 torrents of people rolling toward Neuilly, to attend the 
 funeral of the murdered journalist Victor Noir. The 
 National Guards occupied the Place de la Concorde, and 
 in front of the Corps Legislatif was a battalion of infantry, 
 besides a force of sergents de ville. Yet by other thorough- 
 fares inky streams of men and women poured steadily 
 nor '-west, and a vast concourse packed the Passage Mas- 
 sena, where the dead man had lived, and when his coffin 
 was brought out, weeping friends unharnessed the bony 
 black horses from the shabby hearse, and six of them, hug- 
 ging the pole, drew it to the Cemetery. 
 
 But no speeches were made, though an instant previous 
 to the lowering of the coffin a disheveled, red-eyed woman 
 leaped upon the plinth of a memorial column that neigh- 
 bored the grave dug in the Jewish quarter of the Cemetery, 
 and shrieked : 
 
 ' ' He was only twenty-two, and was to have been married 
 in a few days! Vengeance upon the nephew of the Corsi- 
 can wild boar! Death to the murderer Bonaparte and all 
 his bloody race! ..." 
 
 The rest was lost in the strangled whoopings of hysteria. 
 But upon the ten thousand faces that had turned her way
 
 THE MAN DE IRON 133 
 
 a crimson glow was thrown, as though, the sun of Imperial 
 glory were indeed about to set, and a yell went up that 
 might have reached the ears of the princely homicide 
 lodged in the Conciergerie by order of his Imperial rela- 
 tive, pending that extravagant farce of the Tribunal of 
 Tours. There was a rush of police, and the woman was 
 pulled down and spirited away, it is said, by Revolution- 
 ists! But the Marseillaise had already cried more loudly 
 than the red-eyed woman, and had been heard to greater 
 effect. Indeed, upon the previous day M. Rochefort had 
 attended the tribune of the Corps Legislatif , and protested 
 in the name of the people against the decree ordering for 
 the trial of the noble criminal a Special High Court of 
 Justice composed of Judges notoriously amenable to Im- 
 perial influence ; proceeding to draw between Bonapartes 
 and Borgias some extremely uncomplimentary parallels. 
 
 The newspaper was seized upon the morning of the in- 
 terment at Neuilly, and its editor and proprietor served on 
 behalf of the Crown with a writ of prosecution for libel, 
 by the special authorization of the Corps Legislatif. Thus 
 M. Rochefort was rendered too late for the ceremony. 
 But one of the huge crowds of assistant mourners, rolling 
 back upon Paris, encountered him, in a hackney cab on 
 one of the boulevards, and the human torrent surging and 
 eddying about the vehicle, turned it round; and so rolled 
 and roared with it and its occupant in triumph to his home. 
 
 The savage faces, the sinister cries, the significant tokens 
 of popular disaffection and incipient revolt affected 
 Mademoiselle Bayard but little, it must be owned. Her 
 dear Parisians were for some reason boiling over. How 
 many times had she not beheld them in a state of ebulli- 
 tion? French blood is easily heated, see you well! A 
 little patience and the people would quiet down. 
 
 In the eyes of Juliette and how many other daughters of 
 the Empire, the personality of the stoutish little gentleman 
 with the heavy sallow face, dull regard, spiky mustache 
 and dyed brown chin-tuft was invested with an aureole 
 of semi-divinity. To her as to her sisters, the Emperor 
 stood for France. 
 
 Born nineteen years before in the very month of the 
 Coup d'fitat of 1851, what should she know of the betray- 
 als, treacheries, crimes that had been so many steps in the 
 ladder leading the man on to success. A tidal wave of
 
 134 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 human blood had set him upon the throne of St. Louis ; the 
 Church, first duped, afterward to be shorn by him of 
 power, had poured her hallowed oils upon his head ; titles, 
 dignities, gold, had streamed from his open hands upon his 
 supporters; the tradition of the Army that had throned 
 him was devotion to his name. 
 
 And Juliette was a soldier's daughter. How, then, not 
 reverence the Emperor, from whose ermined purples Field- 
 Marshal's batons, Grand Crosses of the Legion of Honor, 
 coveted commands, desired steps, constantly dropped. 
 That the blind, unreasoning support hitherto accorded to 
 him by the Army was weakening, that 50,000 private 
 soldiers' votes would be recorded against him in the forth- 
 coming plebiscitum, how was a mere girl to conceive of 
 this? 
 
 That her beloved Paris, transformed by him into the 
 gayest and most splendid of European capitals, was totter- 
 ing on the verge of bankruptcy, she would not have be- 
 lieved. Had she been told that High Finance is too often 
 synonymous with knavish trickery, that those who carry 
 out great civic works may drain treasuries of the national 
 millions it would have conveyed nothing to her. You 
 cannot talk to a school-girl in the shibboleth of the Bourse. 
 
 But one sign of the trend of popular resentment etched 
 itself as by a biting acid on her memory. When the sulky 
 driver of the ramshackle vehicle pulled up in the Avenue 
 of the Champs Elysees, in obedience to the upraised sword- 
 arm and authoritative voice of a lieutenant of mounted 
 Chasseurs, Juliette, thrilling with girlish delight at the 
 sight of the dear, familiar uniform, let down the window 
 and thrust forth her charming head. And at that moment 
 a party of four equestrians, followed by two grooms in the 
 Imperial livery, came galloping westward, from the direc- 
 tion of the Pont Royal. 
 
 Pray picture to yourself the congested condition of this 
 part of the Avenue, the squadron blocking its throat, the 
 halted cab, and the lengthy queue of phaetons, Americaines, 
 britzkas, dogcarts, and Victorias, forming up on the left 
 hand of the road to rear of it, containing ladies old and 
 young, pretty or plain, accompanied by the males of their 
 species ; while nursemaids pushing babies in perambulators, 
 elderly gentlemen out for constitutionals, and other harm- 
 less pedestrians, were marshaled on the right, under the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 135 
 
 surveillance of imperious policemen, who meddled not at 
 all with certain isolated clumps of somber-looking persons 
 dressed in black; broken links of one of the huge proces- 
 sions of mourners, checked upon their way to the Cemetery 
 at Neuilly. 
 
 There was a stir of interest, and every eye was drawn to 
 the little cavalcade, previously mentioned, whose leaders, 
 seeing the barrier of humanity, horseflesh and steel drawn 
 across the thoroughfare, checked their horses and came 
 forward at a walk. Military Governor was written large 
 upon a double-chinned, stiff-necked, gray-mustached and 
 imperialed personage who bestrode a high-actioned brown 
 charger, and wore the undress uniform of a General of 
 Division of the Service of Engineers. When he leaned to 
 speak in the ear of the slender, brown-haired, blue-eyed 
 boy who rode upon his right hand, you saw in the wearer 
 of the glossy silk topper, the accurately cut, single-breasted 
 black coat and dark gray-strapped trousers ending in 
 the daintiest of little polished boots, with gold spurs 
 the heir of the Imperial throne of France. 
 
 A cocked-hatted, white-plumed Imperial aide-de-camp 
 in blue-and-gold, and a green-and-silver Palace equerry 
 followed in attendance, succeeded at a respectful distance 
 by two grooms in the livery of the Tuileries; and a troop 
 of the glorious beings known as Cent Gardes came clatter- 
 ing after, balanced to a hair on their shiny, prancing black 
 horses, the long white horse-tails streaming from their 
 polished steel helmets, with tricolored side-plumes and 
 eagled brass plates, their brass-nutted steel cuirasses re- 
 flecting their lacquered mustaches and the adoring glances 
 of enamored femininity, their sky-blue tunics with the scar- 
 let and golden collars, their golden epaulettes and aiguil- 
 lettes, their gauntleted gloves of white leather, their skin- 
 tight breeches of snowy buckskin, their brilliantly polished 
 boots with huge brass roweled, steel-spiked spurs, glancing 
 and dancing, clinking and twinkling in the sun. 
 
 Ah me! Their morals were doubtful, those mustached 
 and chin-tufted Antinouses of the Guard, as not only giddy 
 work-girls and milliners, but fast variety actresses and 
 frisky ladies of fashion were perfectly aware. But they 
 were splendid, stately, expensive creatures, and so worthy 
 to clatter at Imperial heels. 
 
 And so gallant was the youthful figure they attended and
 
 136 THE MAN OF IRON" 
 
 guarded ; so well-graced the seat upon the spirited English, 
 chestnut, so light the boyish hand upon the mare's snaffle- 
 rein, so frank and debonair the smile with which he ac- 
 knowledged the scanty salutations of a few of the bystand- 
 ers; that Juliette's heart flew to him with her eyes, and 
 there broke from her in a voice so clear and thrilling that 
 the object of her homage started in his saddle : 
 "Vive le Prince! Vive le Prince Imperial!" 
 
 The French are tender to youth and beauty, accessible 
 to sentiment, lovers of Romance. Other voices joined in 
 the cry, hats not ominously furbished with crape were 
 lifted in salutation; a charming dignity was manifested 
 in the boy's reception of these tokens of good-will. 
 
 You can conceive the picture, set in the beautiful sce- 
 nery of the Champs Elysees, to the roll of carriages in 
 the great avenues, the glint of wintry sunshine on still or 
 leaping water, the nip of keen sweet air, perfumed with 
 the scent of damp grass and dead leaves and wood-smoke. 
 Delicate tracery of branches as yet bare, interspersed with 
 the hardy green of pines, laurels, and larches against a 
 sky pale blue as harebell, streaked with broad floating 
 scarves of gray-white vapor, made a background for the 
 green- jacketed, red-breeched Chasseurs on their bony, 
 brown horses, for the knots of strollers, curious or con- 
 temptuous, for the broken masses of the crowd of would- 
 be demonstrators, arrested in their progress by the block- 
 ing of the way. In the right foreground suppose the slim 
 young Napoleon sitting easily on the fidgety, fretful chest- 
 nut, the Military General balanced on his big champing 
 charger, the blue-and-gold aide and the green-and-silver 
 .equerry, the grooms and the escort of Cent Gardes looking 
 decorously between the ears of their well-trained, shining 
 beasts. To the left place the debilitated fiacre with its 
 weary Rosinante and red-nosed sulky Jehu, and leaning 
 from the open window of the vehicleJuliette. 
 
 Perhaps you can see her, a little toque of Persian lamb- 
 skin, with a blue wing in it, on her high-piled hair, with a 
 coquettish jacket of corduroy-velvet of the shade known 
 in the spring of that year as Bismarck gray, trimmed with 
 the lambskin, fitting close to her slender shape. She wore 
 a plain black silk skirt looped high over a vivid red cloth 
 petticoat it was a fashionable style of costume that year
 
 THE MAX OF IRON 137 
 
 and very much worn. A bright rose bloomed in each 
 cheek, pale as she was ordinarily; and her black brows 
 were spread and lifted joyously, and her eyes shone blue 
 as sapphires in contrast with a little knot of violets at her 
 breast and the big bunch held in her little gray-gloved 
 hand. And with a very fair aim she threw the latter so 
 that the bundle of wet fragrance lightly hit the saddleflap 
 close to the knee of the Imperial stripling, and behind the 
 shoulder of the swerving chestnut, as she cried again : 
 
 "Vive le Prince Imperial!" 
 
 The boy bowed to her, blushing at her beauty and her 
 loyal enthusiasm, the equerry, slimmest of the officers in 
 attendance, dismounted and picked up the flowers. A 
 trumpet sounded, a short, sharp order was given, there 
 was a trampling of hoofs and a clinking of bridles as the 
 files wheeled right and left, leaving a broad road open 
 between a double rank of saluting troopers, and the Prince 
 with his Governor and following rode down this open vista 
 and cantered away by route of the Avenue de 1'Impera- 
 trice, in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. 
 
 The boy held in his whip-hand- the bunch of violets 
 handed him by the equerry. Only a little grayish sand 
 clung to some of the dark, shining leaves. He sniffed 
 their fragrance and glanced back as the trumpet rang out 
 behind them, and the Avenue was once more blocked with 
 mounted Chasseurs. 
 
 XIX 
 
 HE was fourteen, delicate and rather backward for his 
 age, owing to the inevitable drawbacks of his environment. 
 Since the salvo of a hundred-and-one guns announcing the 
 birth of a Prince Imperial had crashed from the battery 
 of the Esplanade of the Invalides, to be echoed from every 
 fortress throughout the Empire ; and bells had pealed from 
 every steeple, flags had broached from every staff-head, 
 and dusk-fall had seen every city, town, or village, ablaze 
 with illumination, had he not been environed with pre- 
 cautions, lapped in luxury? Where another baby would 
 have slumbered in a wicker bassinette, the child of France 
 cried in a cradle of artistic goldsmithery. And the three 
 great official bodies of the State, the Delegates from all
 
 138 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the constituted Authorities paid homage. And they en- 
 rolled him in the First Regiment of Grenadiers of the 
 Imperial Guard on the day of his birth, and pinned the 
 Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor on his bib when he 
 was forty-eight hours old. 
 
 To gratify the paternal ambition of a father who had 
 dreaded the stigma of childlessness, this graft of his race 
 was to be forced into precocious maturity. You might 
 have seen the little creature at six months of age strapped 
 in a cane chair-saddle upon the back of a Shetland pony. 
 At five he could ride a military charger. Dressed in the 
 white-faced blue uniform of the First Grenadiers of the 
 Guard, his tiny face hidden in a huge fur shako with a 
 white plume and galons and a huge brass-eagled fore-plate, 
 you saw him with the Emperor at Imperial Reviews. 
 
 It is uncertain whether he was ever soothed to sleep 
 with the French equivalent of the rhyme of Baby Bunting, 
 whether he ever learned of the Archer who shot at a frog, 
 or was thrilled by the adventures of Jack the Giant Killer. 
 We know that the Napoleonic tradition was his ABC, the 
 Third Empire his primer. At the time of the war with 
 Italy, he being then some three years of age, his utterances 
 on the subject were quoted in the daily papers as miracles 
 of wisdom marvels of acumen. His seventh birthday 
 had been celebrated by the production of a Military Spec- 
 tacle, in the course of which real cannon were fired and 
 real military evolutions performed upon the stage. His 
 great- uncle on a white horse, in the little cocked hat and 
 gray capote of History, was the hero, you may be sure; 
 and three hundred soldiers' sons of his own age filled the 
 dress circle, stalls and upper tiers. One likes the pretty 
 story of the fair-haired child going down among these 
 little comrades to distribute smiles and bonbons. One can 
 understand the father's pride in the laborious pot-hooks 
 and hangers that compliment him upon the taking of 
 Mexico word of ill omen in Imperialist ears! and the 
 scrawled postscript that tells how his horse kicked at 
 exercise that morning, but that he sat tight and did not 
 fall. It was not for a long, long time to dawn upon the 
 expanding mind behind the beautiful, bright blue eyes, 
 that the Throne Imperial of France was a saddle insecurely 
 girthed upon a kicking charger, and that the paternal
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 139 
 
 horsemanship had been, and frequently was severely taxed 
 in the effort to stick on. 
 
 You may imagine the query, Why? forming in the 
 mind of seven years. Perhaps you see him in his lace- 
 collared, belted blouse and wide Breton breeches of black 
 velvet, scarlet silk stockings and buckled shoes, curled up 
 upon the blue-and-golden cushion of the gilded chair of 
 State upon the three-step dai's in the Throne Boom of the 
 Tuileries, where, while their Imperial Majesties dined, he 
 loved to play hide-and-seek with his tutor and an aide-de- 
 camp or so ; and wearied with play, conceive him dreaming 
 under the gorgeous crimson velvet canopy powdered with 
 golden N's and symbolical bees, edged with laurel leaves 
 of beaten gold, and surmounted by a great golden eagle, 
 perched with outstretched wings upon a laurel Crown. 
 
 Under the brooding wings of the Eagle on the Crown 
 this child of the Empire wondered about many things. . . . 
 Did any discovery connected with the peculiar duties de- 
 volving upon the Cent Gardes and the Tuileries Police 
 ever make the bright young head toss restlessly on its pillow 
 of down? For he must one day have learned that noise- 
 less footsteps patroled the corridors, that observant eyes 
 twinkled at every keyhole that sharp ears were listening 
 at every chink for suspicious sounds not only by night, 
 for the terror that walketh in the noonday is the peculiar 
 bugbear of Emperors and Kings and Presidents. 
 
 One may be very sure that long ere another seven years 
 had browned the fair hair, he was familiar with the fact 
 that the guardian angels of M. Hyrvoix and M. Legrange 
 kept unsleeping watch over the personal safety of his 
 father, his mother, and himself. That officials, function- 
 aries, ladies of the Court, and lackeys, male and female, 
 were maintained under constant and vigilant surveillance. 
 That there were even Police to watch the Police who kept 
 the Police under observation. That precautions of a pe- 
 culiarly special and delicate nature were observed with 
 regard to the food prepared in the Imperial Kitchens and 
 the wine that came from the Imperial Cellars, lest deadly 
 poison should be mingled therein by those who did not 
 love the name of Bonaparte. 
 
 He learned, next, perhaps the knowledge floated in the 
 air he breathed like some strange pollen, or was realized
 
 140 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 from certain experiences garnered during Imperial Prog- 
 resses, Distributions of Awards, Opening Ceremonies, and 
 other public Functions, that there were many of these 
 naughty people, who, while the soldiers and certain of the 
 townsfolk in the streets cried "Vive I'Empereur!" "Vive 
 rimperatrice!" and "Vive le Prince Imperial!" remained 
 silent even though they uncovered, and a vast number 
 who not only did not cheer, but kept their hats on, and 
 sometimes hissed. Following, came the shocking discovery 
 that there existed a party of extremists who were not con- 
 tent with being rude and making ugly noises, but had 
 even tried and tried more than once to kill the Em- 
 peror. . . . 
 
 "To kill papa, who is so good to me! . . ." 
 
 In a glass case in the Empress's cabinet were preserved 
 the crush-hat and the cloak worn by the Emperor on the 
 night of Orsini's attempt outside the Opera, and damaged 
 by a splinter from one of the exploding bombs. Perhaps 
 that glass case now yielded up its sinister secret to the 
 curious questionings of a child. 
 
 The discovery that this father, so indulgent, so tender, 
 and so much beloved, should be the object of such destroy- 
 ing hate as was cherished by these nameless men was 
 terrible. You may go farther into the thing, and suppose 
 its breaking in upon him presently that many thousands 
 of his father's subjects, not criminals or murderers, but 
 rather estimable persons than otherwise, thrilled with 
 something else than tenderness at the mention of the pa- 
 ternal name, and that the Empire, which had hitherto 
 signified for him the adamantine hub on which rests the 
 pivot of this spinning world of ours was not as solidly 
 founded as his pedagogues had taught him. That the 
 Army, the Peasantry, certain of the Nobility not of the 
 Ancient Regime and a section of the Bourgeoisie sup- 
 ported it; but that by the educated middle-class, and by 
 the intellectual, professional and working-classes it was 
 held in abomination execrated and detested; hated with 
 a bitterness that intensified from day to day. 
 
 The cat came out of the bag a full-grown tiger. Revela- 
 tions, discoveries, succeeded one another. Disillusions came 
 crowding thick and fast. When it was' discovered that he 
 was backward for his age, and the question of a ne\y;
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 141 
 
 private tutor was being discussed, he had asked his Gov- 
 ernor : 
 
 "Could I not go to a day-school like Corvisart and 
 Fleury and the Labedoyere boys?" 
 
 ' ' Impossible, Monseigneur ! ' ' was the answer. 
 
 He urged : 
 
 "But, mon cher General, you answer that to so many 
 questions. Pray, this time explain why?" 
 
 Horribly nonplussed, the military governor stammered : 
 
 ' ' The heir to an Imperial Throne could not be sent twice 
 daily to a day-school. Not to be dreamed of! Such an 
 innovation would be the signal for fresh insults, provoca- 
 tion of new perils. . . . Never could it be allowed ! ' ' 
 
 The boy's were rather dreamy eyes, under the silken 
 plume of hair, chestnut-brown like his beautiful mother's. 
 They were proud eyes, too, when they had flashed at the 
 word "insult." And brave, for mention of "perils" only 
 made them smile. He said thoughtfully that morning, 
 leaning his elbow on an unfinished Latin exercise that lay 
 on the table in the window of his study at the Chateau of 
 St. Cloud: 
 
 "An 'innovation' means something that is new. But 
 Primoli and Joachim Murat are being educated at a French 
 College, and did not the late King send his sons to be 
 boarders at the Lycee Henri IV. ? Could not I be a boarder 
 at the Lycee Napoleon, or the Lycee Bonaparte, M. le 
 General?" 
 
 With labored clearness and a great deal of circumlocu- 
 tion, M. le General explained: 
 
 "The heir of a Democratic Empire, Monseigneur, and 
 the sons of a bourgeois Royalty cannot be regarded upon 
 the same level, or educated upon identical principles. But 
 a plan has been devised for bringing your Imperial High- 
 ness into actual touch with the life of a public school. ..." 
 
 ' ' How ? Tell me quickly, M. le General ! ' ' 
 
 The child's delicate face flushed bright red. His eyes 
 shone. He sat upright in his chair as though a vivifying 
 breath had passed through him, waiting the reply. It 
 came. . . . 
 
 "One of the Professors of the Elementary Class has 
 been engaged to take your Imperial Highness through the 
 course prescribed for the other pupils. He will attend 
 daily here, or at the Tuileries. ' '
 
 142 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The child said, with a catching of the breath that was 
 almost a sob, and a look of bitter disappointment: 
 
 "The boys. . . . Then I shall not know the boys?" 
 
 "No, Monseigneur, except by hearsay. The Professor 
 will tell you their names, ages, and ah ! leading charac- 
 teristics. . . . You will learn with them, and every week 
 you will write a composition with them, recapitulating 
 what you have learned. And that they will hear of you 
 goes without saying. Frequently, Monseigneur, but fre- 
 quently ! ' ' 
 
 His pupil interrupted: 
 
 "They will hear of me, but what is that? They will 
 never see me I shall never see them ! Never join in their 
 games never be just another boy with them! Never be 
 
 friends or foes with them never beat them or be 
 
 No ! I should not like to be beaten at all ! " 
 
 M. le General rejoined solemnly : 
 
 "That degrading possibility, and graver dangers still, 
 will be averted by the fact that their Imperial schoolfellow 
 will not be ah ! bodily present in their midst, my Prince. 
 Perhaps your Imperial Highness would like to see the 
 Professor now?" 
 
 And so the Professor came, and from him the boy eagerly 
 gleaned information about his little schoolfellows of the 
 Seventh Form. He had friends of his own who came to 
 him after High Mass on Sundays and on all holidays. But 
 except Espinasse, they had been chosen for him. The joy 
 of selection anjl choice he was not to know. 
 
 Thus, many men of mark from different Lycees succeeded 
 one another in the work-room at the Chateau and succes- 
 sively occupied the arm-chair at the end of the leather- 
 covered table in one of the three windows of his corner 
 study on the third story of the Pavilion de Flore at the 
 Tuileries and when he had been attentive and pleased his 
 Professor, his reward would be to hear about the boys. 
 . . . Some were noble, splendid fellows, full of cleverness, 
 energy and spirits; others were funny by reason of sheer 
 stupidity, or some quaint characteristic or absurd failing 
 which had gained them nicknames among the rest. A few 
 were spoken of almost with reverence, as being dowered 
 with the magical gift of genius : poets, dramatists, novelists, 
 scientists in embryo, budding naval or military command- 
 ers, explorers who were to plant the Flag of France in
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 143 
 
 virgin corners of the earth and proudly add them to the 
 Empire that would one day be his own. . . . 
 
 He met his longed-for boys at last. One likes to picture 
 him having once taken a First Place in the Arithmetic 
 Class as being permitted to join in the St. Charlemagne 
 fete of the Lycee Bonaparte. He sat in the center of one 
 of the long tables, with long vistas of boys, boys, boys 
 opening out before him whichever way he turned his head. 
 And he was happy, but for this thing; that though most 
 of the boys in whom he had been particularly interested 
 were presented to him, he did not find as secretly he 
 hoped to find the friend of whom he dreamed. . . . 
 
 He tried to be ~bon camarade; to combine and he had 
 a special gift in this easy good-fellowship with gracious- 
 ness. But the boys did not respond as he would have 
 liked. They stood to attention, and looked him in the 
 face, and answered, "Yes, Monseigneur ! No, Monseig- 
 neur ! ' ' boldly, or they shuffled and blinked, and answered, 
 "No, Monseigneur! Yes, Monseigneur!" mumblingly, and 
 that was all. 
 
 He wished, secretly yet ardently, for brave, proud eyes 
 to meet his own, and strike out the sacred spark of chaste 
 and mutual fire that kindles the pure, undying flame of 
 Friendship 's altar. He longed for a grave, melodious voice 
 to match the noble, youthful face and the fine form of his 
 chosen friend. He sought a nature to lean upon, which 
 should be stronger, greater, than his own. . . . Superior 
 talents, greater capacities, ambitions to share, successes 
 to emulate. And he found none. Not a boy here was a 
 patch upon the shoe of gay, gallant, lovable, merry Espi- 
 nasse, who had never come up to his Prince's notion of a 
 bosom-friend. Could it be that the other self did not exist 
 anywhere? We turned from that thought, we who were 
 lonely when we were young. It made the world feel so 
 big and cold. 
 
 The Fete of St. Charlemagne having passed off without 
 any untoward incident or disagreeable demonstration, an 
 unhappy inspiration on the part of M. Victor Duruy 
 prompted the suggestion that the Emperor's heir should 
 preside at the distribution of prizes for the Concours Gen- 
 eral, and thus be for the second time brought into sym- 
 pathetic touch with the intellectual youth of France.
 
 144 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 You are to imagine the picture of the stately entry into 
 the great Hall upon the first-floor of the Sorbonne upon 
 an evening in mid- August; the reception by the Minister 
 of Public Instruction, gowned and capped and hooded, 
 and the Representatives of the Faculties; the ominously 
 restricted and frigid applause of professors and students, 
 greeting references made in the Rector's Latin speech to 
 the presence of an Imperial Prince in the classic groves 
 of Akademos. 
 
 Hostility, hidden behind a mask of frigid indifference, 
 was to dash down the brittle sham, and show the fierce 
 eyes of scorn and the livid hue of hatred, and the writhed 
 lips dumb with reproaches unutterable. Contempt and 
 mockery were to be conveyed in the small sibilant s'ss! 
 that rippled from parterre to gallery, and by the intoler- 
 able jeering titter that replied. 
 
 Yet all might have passed off tolerably but for the beldam 
 Fate, who had arranged that the second prize for Greek 
 translation, a trio of calf-bound, gilt-backed volumes con- 
 taining the Works of Thucydides, had together with a 
 laurel crown fallen to Louis-Eugene Cavaignac. 
 
 The young voice had not faltered in reading the name 
 upon the illuminated scroll. What did its owner know 
 of the Revolutionary soldier, the dauntless foe of Abd-el- 
 Kader? The Governor-General of Algeria who had been 
 recalled to Paris to assume the functions of Minister at 
 War to the Republican Government of 1848. The man 
 who had upheld the office of Dictator during the period of 
 terror that had followed the fatal days of June ! The can- 
 didate for the Presidency of the Republic who had scorned 
 to bribe; who had calmly accepted his defeat, and taken 
 his place in the National Assembly, when Charles Louis 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, the good citizen, was elected to the 
 arm-chair upon the tribune, and took the oath of fidelity 
 to the Republic of France. Who had been imprisoned in 
 the Fortress of Ham, with other Representatives of the 
 Left, his gaoler a commandant named Baudot, whom he 
 himself had appointed in '48, his guards the 40th Regi- 
 ment of the Line, which had been subject to his orders so 
 short a time before. 
 
 Of his seven fellow-captives between those grim and 
 oozing walls, one was paralyzed upon release, others were 
 victims to chronic rheumatism. Cavaignac had lived in
 
 retirement until the elections of June, 1857, when he was 
 chosen as one of the Deputies for the Seine, in opposition 
 to an Imperialist candidate. A few weeks later he had 
 died suddenly, leaving a wife and a son three years old. 
 
 This son, who had half-risen from his place upon the 
 bench at the sound of the voice that called upon him in the 
 name that had been his father's, had all these memories 
 in his flaming eyes. He did not seem to hear the applause 
 that greeted his triumph; he gazed steadily into the face 
 of the young Bonaparte, and then looked toward his 
 mother. And Madame Cavaignac, seated, beautiful and 
 stern as a matron of old Rome, relentless as Fate, in the 
 front of the gallery opposite, signed to him with an im- 
 perious gesture to sit down. He obeyed her. And then 
 round upon round of deafening plaudits made the walls 
 and rafters of the ancient building shake; and brought 
 the gray dust of six centuries drifting down upon the black 
 or brown or golden locks of the hopeful youth of France. 
 
 After that episode the heir of the Imperial dignities was 
 not again brought in contact with the students of the 
 lyceums. He made no reference to the prize-winner who 
 had refused the prize tendered by the son of his dead 
 father's relentless enemy. But the insult had gone to the 
 quick. Recalling it, he would clench his hands until the 
 nails dug deep into the delicate flesh, crying inwardly: 
 
 ' ' Oh ! to be a man full-grown, and avenge that day with 
 blood!" 
 
 At other times he would weep passionately in secret over 
 the memory of the outrage ; for, being of a sensitive, affec- 
 tionate and generous nature, it sorely hurt to find him- 
 self the object of such hatred from one in whom, it seemed 
 to him, and perhaps indeed it w T as so! he might have 
 found the bosom-friend and alter ego, so keenly longed for 
 and so eagerly sought. 
 
 The bright dark eyes and clear-cut features, the well-set 
 head and athletic form, the dignified, yet modest bearing 
 of this boy, so superior to himself in everything but wealth 
 and station, fitted the niche previously prepared. And 
 when he fell to dreaming, young Cavaignac 's resolute face 
 and calm, contemptuous bearing were invariably opposed 
 to his own unslumbering resentment, and finally-conquer- 
 ing generosity. For, varied as the plot might be, the
 
 146 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 denouement of each little drama would always be the 
 same. 
 
 They would meet, in manhood, upon some field of bloody 
 battle, during the great war beginning with the French 
 invasion of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ending with 
 the conquest of Germany and the annexation of the left 
 bank of the Rhine. A youth upon the verge of manhood, 
 the dreamer would have performed such prodigies of valor 
 in command of his regiment as to justify his appointment 
 as Comrnander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army of Invasion. 
 He had not decided what would happen. There would 
 be a great charge of cavalry led against overwhelming odds, 
 under a deadly fire of infantry and artillery, by himself. 
 He would cut down or shoot a gigantic Prussian trooper, 
 who had wounded a French officer. He would lightly leap 
 from his own charger the Arab " Selim" given him by 
 Sultan Abdul Aziz and aid the prostrate man to rise and 
 mount. Their looks would meet, the blue-gray and the 
 fiery black eyes would strike out a spark of mutual recog- 
 nition. Oh! the joy of heaping coals of fire upon that 
 beautiful, rebellious head ! 
 
 Or Cavaignac would not then recognize his saviour, but 
 long afterward, the Prince having become Emperor, would 
 head a conspiracy to dethrone him. Moving, as would 
 be the wont of the Fourth Napoleon, in disguise through 
 the public places of his capital, mingling with every rank 
 and class, a mystery to men, an enigma to women, wor- 
 shiped by all, known by none; he would have discovered 
 the plot and laid a counter-plot, which, of course, would 
 be successful. The mine would explode harmlessly the 
 conspirators would be seized. Their leader, lying under 
 sentence of death in a military fortress probably Mont 
 Valerien bedded upon damp straw, loaded with massive 
 fetters, would be visited by a young officer. He would 
 recall the features of his deliverer of long ago, and fall 
 upon his neck, crying: "Alas! my noble friend, long 
 sought, unfound till now, thou comest late, but in time, for 
 I am to die to-morrow!" "Die! Is it possible! Of what 
 art thou guilty, then?" Cavaignac would answer coldly: 
 "Of having conspired to dethrone the young Emperor!" 
 "Dost thou indeed hate him so?" "Ay! we have been 
 enemies since boyhood's days." Choking with emotion, dis- 
 sembled under a pale and resolute exterior, the visitor
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 147 
 
 would return: "And he hates thee not! Were he here 
 lie would say as much to thee!" "Can it be possible? 
 
 How, then ? " "I swear it upon the soul of my father ! 
 
 Thy Emperor is thy truest friend ! Here is my sword. 
 Behold this undefended breast, cage of a heart that has 
 ever loved thee ! Thrust, I command thee, if thou hast the 
 power!" "Sire, I am conquered; I have lived for a Re- 
 public I die the Emperor's most loyal subject!" "To 
 my arms, then, Cavaignac! Embrace me thou art for- 
 given ! ' ' 
 
 Impossible, beautiful dreams, grandiose and absurd, 
 ridiculous and touching. . . . 
 
 He was mentally carrying on one of these endless duo- 
 logues as he rode through the wintry avenues of the Bois, 
 and dismounted at my Lord Hertford's exquisite villa of 
 Bagatelle, set in beautiful, secluded grounds adjoining the 
 park. 
 
 Born of a whim of the Comte d'Artois, gay Monsieur, 
 brother of the Sixteenth Louis, built in fifty-four days by 
 the architect Bellanger, at a cost of six hundred thousand 
 livres, Bagatelle had always served as a shelter for gallant 
 adventures, not all of them set in what Republicans scorn- 
 fully termed ' ' the night of monarchy. ' ' 
 
 Mademoiselle de Charolais, beautiful and haughty; 
 Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, handsome, sensual, and un- 
 scrupulous; Madame Tallien, constant, noble, and courage- 
 ous; the Duchesse de Berri, and how many other women, 
 famous or infamous, had trodden its velvet lawns and 
 swept over its floors of rare marquetry or its pavements 
 of mosaic ? The blood of the Beauharnais mingled in this 
 boy's own veins, with the Corsican and Spanish tides and 
 the dash of canny Scots derived from distant Kirkpatricks. 
 That Celtic strain was responsible, it may be, for his 
 dreaminess and love of solitude. 
 
 He was dreaming as he rode through the forest; the 
 spell of his dream was still upon him as he turned his 
 Arab in at the gilded gates of Bagatelle, and dismounted 
 before its portico, in the shadow of the Gothic tower. 
 
 From childhood many of the happiest hours of this son 
 of the Empire had been spent at Bagatelle. In its laby- 
 rinths of myrtle and oleander, laurel and syringa, he had 
 liidden, bursting with childish laughter, when his play- 
 mates were seeking him; he had galloped his Shetland
 
 148 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 pony and raced with his dogs over its green lawns. Upon 
 its broad sheets of crystal water he had sailed his miniature 
 yacht-squadrons. At his entreaty, the Emperor, always 
 an indulgent father, had endeavored to buy the place from 
 its English owner. In vain! my lord of Hertford was 
 not to be tempted by gold, possessing so much of the stuff, 
 or allured by rank, who Was a premier English Marquess, 
 Knight of the Garter, and so forth. Yet he was a generous 
 nobleman, and made the Imperial urchin free of his coveted 
 fairyland whenever he, the owner of the place, should be 
 from home. 
 
 To-day's dream, for a wonder, was not the usual duo- 
 logue between the friend and the unfriend. Albeit inno- 
 cently, it was tinged by sex, it assumed the shape of the 
 triangle ; and worked out, though, to the satisfaction of the 
 dreamer, the eternal Rule of Three. Louis and his dear 
 enemy, men grown, madly loved one woman; a bewitching 
 creature, with a sparkling rose-flushed face, eyes like blue 
 jewels under a pile of black hair, crowned with a little 
 cap of velvet and gray fur, with a blue wing set at the side. 
 She adored the Prince who had won her love in the dis- 
 guise of a simple officer. Fortified by this passion, she 
 could hear Cavaignac plead unmoved. He, driven to 
 frenzy by jealousy, would conceal himself here, for the 
 Imperial lover would have settled Bagatelle with all its 
 treasures upon his lady-love! and at midnight when a 
 step echoed in the gallery of arms, and the fair one, re- 
 clining upon this very fauteuil in the window command- 
 ing the grass-plot centered by the Cellini fountain, sprang 
 up with a cry of joy to welcome her lover, the rejected 
 aspirant would leap from behind yonder trophy of six- 
 teenth-century pageant-shields, topped with the magnifi- 
 cent embossed and damascened one bearing the monogram 
 and insignia of Diane de Poitiers; and, seizing yonder 
 rapier from its stand, would challenge his successful rival 
 there and then, to a duel a entrance. 
 
 Need it be said that the Prince's well-known mastery of 
 the sword would enable him, by a lightning coup, follow- 
 ing a feint to disarm his antagonist ; upon whom he 
 would finally bestow not only the lady, but the villa, with 
 its treasures of paintings by ancient and modern masters, 
 its marvelous miniatures and enamels, its rooms of porce- 
 lain, cabinets of priceless coins and gems, galleries of an-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 tique sculpture, its costly furniture, its matchless grounds 
 and gardens, ending a great many nobly turned sentences 
 with the dignified peroration : 
 
 "Take her, Cavaignac, with all these riches! I ask 
 nothing in return, but your esteem!" 
 
 XX 
 
 COULD Juliette have known how she had been disposed 
 of in a boy's imagination, perhaps the Spanish Infanta 
 would have replaced the rosy nymph. But while her 
 Prince dreamed, her jingling vehicle had crossed the Port 
 de St. Cloud, and so by Ville d'Avray up the long avenue 
 between the breasting woods, stately and glorious still, 
 though stripped by the blasts of January, to the clean 
 white town that had sprung up, nearly three hundred 
 years before (upon the site of a little village patronized 
 by wagoners), where an ancient feudal castle stood on a 
 plateau surrounded by lake, forest, and marsh. 
 
 A touch of a King's scepter changed this ancient castle 
 to a Royal Hunting-Lodge, a whim of his successor trans- 
 formed the humbler dwelling to a Palace. Courtiers, offi- 
 cials, functionaries, guards, valets, lackeys, pimps, cooks, 
 barbers and innumerable hangers-on are necessary to the 
 upkeep of State ; and these must be housed in stately fash- 
 ion. Behold whole streets of buildings, with noble avenues, 
 radiating like the sticks of a fan from the sunlike center, 
 uprising like fungi from the swampy soil. Behold, as the 
 power and glory of the monarch redoubled, no less than 
 thirty thousand workmen engaged in enlarging and beauti- 
 fying the residence of His Majesty, while a regiment of 
 Swiss Guards dig out the lake. And when pneumonia, 
 fever, and ague carry off so many thousands of these hap- 
 less toilers that the dead have to be carted away by night, 
 and secretly dumped into pits dug for the purpose, and the 
 bottoms of the Royal coffers are seen through a thinning 
 layer of gold, and the Building Accounts of the Crown 
 Demesne show totals of unpaid debts sufficiently colossal 
 to stagger a lightning-calculator, and Ministers grow dizzy, 
 seeing a Kingdom on the brink of financial ruin, the 
 sublime forehead beneath the bediamonded hat and the
 
 150 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 towering wig is illuminated by an inspiration. ' ' Ha ! We 
 have it! Quick! commence new works! Pile on the na- 
 tional taxes, press a million unpaid laborers into the Royal 
 service. Let rivers of tears flow to swell the sources of our 
 dwindling fountains. Upon the uncounted corpses of vul- 
 gar toilers erect fresh monuments to all the glories of 
 France!" 
 
 No ghastly visions disturbed the royal dreams, no awful 
 Finger wrote the dreadful sentence upon the marble 
 friezes of his banqueting-halls. The shadow of the little 
 cocked hat that was to overtop his tallest wig by the whole 
 height of a Crown Imperial was never shown him. in Witch 
 Montespan's magic mirror. The bees that were to swarm 
 over his lilies and drain their golden honey were not to be 
 hatched for many years yet. He deemed himself im- 
 mortal in spite of the twinges of the gout, until it took 
 him in the stomach and carried him off, at seventy-seven, 
 leaving France to shudder in the embraces of a far worse 
 man than himself. Until, aphrodisiacs and apoplexy hav- 
 ing made an end of the infamous Regent, and Louis the 
 Well-Beloved having succumbed to vice and smallpox, and 
 the Red Widow having hugged the heads off Louis the 
 Locksmith and his fair young Queen, the Terror ushered 
 in the Revolution, Era of Liberty, Equality, and Universal 
 Phlebotomy; until men, wearied of serving many masters, 
 looked about for one to lead them, and the Little Corporal 
 with the pale hatchet-face and the inscrutable gray-blue 
 eyes under the great marble forehead rose up and said, 
 "Here am I!" 
 
 The Court of his nephew was just now at the Tuileries. 
 You saw the town of Versailles in its winter slumber, un- 
 disturbed by the roll of innumerable carriages, luggage 
 fourgons, pastrycooks' and tradesmen's vans, and other 
 vehicles, over its historic and venerable cobblestones. . . . 
 Fashionable people lived there all the year round; many 
 of the crack regiments of the Imperial Guard were quar- 
 tered in the innumerable barracks; there was no lack of 
 society not the cream of the cream, perhaps, but charm- 
 ing, lively and gay. 
 
 The 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard 
 were garrisoned in that antique quarter of barracks and 
 churches, convents and Royal harems, once known as the 
 Pare aux Cerfs. South of the great central avenue leading
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 151 
 
 from the Place d'Armes to Paris, you found its huge 
 monumental entrance on the right of the Eue de 1'Oran- 
 gerie, once the Hotel of the Gardes du Corps du Roi. It 
 boasted a frontage at once chaste and imposing. The high 
 window of the mess-room, balconied and dominated by a 
 lofty pediment, surmounted the great gates of wrought- 
 iron rolling back upon a wide sanded courtyard. If I do 
 not err, the quarters of M. le Colonel were upon the second- 
 floor upon the left-hand side of the gate, immediately above 
 a confectioner's, whence rose delicious odors of baking 
 pastry and simmering chocolate to titillate the nostrils of 
 Mademoiselle. The sleeping-chamber and boudoir, de- 
 scribed in the Colonel's letter as hung with rosebud chintz, 
 and elegantly furnished; the little kitchen on the same 
 floor, full of pots and bright pans, scoured by the Colonel's 
 soldier-servant into dazzling brilliancy, more than fulfilled 
 the expectations provoked beforehand. I. rather think 
 that the dinner an inexpensive and savory little meal, 
 consisting of vegetable soup with fillets of sole Normande, 
 an infinitesimal steak jardiniere) an omelette soufflee, Brie 
 cheese (nowhere upon earth does one get such Brie as at 
 Versailles), and dessert had come from the pastrycook's 
 on the street-floor. After the cooking one got at the Con- 
 vent and in default of the much better dinner Made- 
 moiselle could have evolved out of similar materials, it 
 was a meal for demi-gods. And you do not know Juliette 
 if you imagine she did not dispose of her share. 
 
 "I am gourmande, me," she would assure her confi- 
 dantes in all sincerity, fitting the tip of a slender finger 
 into a dint that would have needed slight persuasion to 
 become a dimple. "I love good dishes, or how should I 
 be able to cook them? One of these days it is possible 
 that I may even grow fat. Believe me, I am not joking. 
 Already I perceive the beginning of a double chin!" 
 
 M. le Colonel had excused himself from attendance at 
 Mess that he might dine with his daughter. Both Monsieur 
 and Mademoiselle were prodigiously gay, you may conceive. 
 But even while Juliette laughed and clapped her little 
 hands in delight at the paternal witticisms, while she leaned 
 upon her Colonel's shoulder, or sat upon the arm of his 
 chair; while her slender arm twined round his neck, and 
 her cheek, no longer ivory-pale, but painted by the delicate 
 brush of the artist Joy with the loveliest rose-flush, was
 
 152 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 tickled by the waxed end of his martial mustachio, the 
 hateful shadow of the faceless Charles rose up and thrust 
 itself between. It blotted out the last rays of the red 
 wintry sun, it sprawled across the shade of the Argand 
 lamp. It was heavy though impalpable, and diffused a 
 numbing chill throughout the little apartment. 
 
 Perhaps the father felt it, for as they sat together 
 talking by the cheerful fire of crackling beech-billets that 
 burned upon the open hearth, he gradually fell silent. 
 
 You can see him in his undress uniform jacket of green 
 cloth, braided, frogged, and with fur edging, unhooked at 
 the neck and showing the white shirt, stiff linen collar, and 
 scarlet tie. His polished boots and bright spurs, buttons, 
 buckles, and so forth, reflected the dancing firelight. His 
 forage-cap, a head-dress gaudy and bizarre enough to have 
 come out of a Christmas cracker, crowned a porcelain 
 bust of a young negress, chocolate-hued, with purplish- 
 crimson lips, pink protruding tongue, and rolling onyx 
 eyes (an art-object left behind as too fragile for transport 
 by the previous occupant of the quarters) while his long 
 saber leaned against her wooden pedestal. 
 
 His handsome face was very grave, almost somber, as 
 he pulled his crisp imperial, and stared at the little dancing 
 hearth-flames, forgetful of the excellent cigar burning itself 
 away to ash between the first and second fingers of his 
 well-kept right hand. The other hand sometimes rested 
 on his knee, sometimes touched his daughter's hair; for 
 Juliette had slipped from her previous seat to the carpet, 
 where she sat leaning against him. 
 
 And all at once the chill barrier of reserve broke down. 
 It was when a heavy tear splashed upon the hand that 
 rested on the knee of the crimson overall, a strong, brown, 
 manly hand, rather hairy on the back. It clenched as 
 though the single drop had been of molten metal, and 
 then Juliette caught it in both her own and spoke : 
 
 "Oh, my father, why must this marriage take place? 
 We have not said one word, but I know well that what is 
 in my mind is in yours also. Feel!" she drew the pris- 
 oned hand closely to her ' ' here lies your letter over where 
 my heart is beating so. Much of it I comprehend, but the 
 rest is anguish mystery! War is threatened that at 
 least is clear. The regiment will sooner or later be ordered 
 on active service. And were your daughter the wife of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 153 
 
 a gentleman of her father's profession, you fear that she 
 might suffer as her grandmother as her own beloved dead 
 mother did. But though my grandmother lost her hus- 
 band, War spared her son. You returned to her and to my 
 mother, not even wounded, darling! And if you appre- 
 hend for me a lot less fortunate, why need I marry any 
 one? Take me with you or leave me behind, I am your 
 obedient daughter always always ! But I had rather you 
 would take me, dear!" 
 
 Not trusting himself to speak, the father took the little 
 head between his palms and kissed the blue-veined temples 
 and the clear space between the wide-arched eyebrows. 
 The candid eyes met his, that were cloudy and troubled. 
 He searched for phrases to disguise a truth that must stab. 
 
 "If I met death upon the field, you by my side, you 
 would be left alone and unprotected. "Were I to leave you 
 behind even in the care of Madame Tessier, you would 
 none the less be alone. There is safety in permanent ties; 
 but only when her husband is by her side does the sacra- 
 ment of marriage open a haven to a young girl where the 
 libertine and the seducer dare not enter. I speak with 
 certainty only when her husband is by her side ! ' ' 
 
 So women were not to be trusted! . . . His palms 
 might have been burned had he not withdrawn them, so 
 fiery the sudden blush that rose in the clear, pale cheeks. 
 
 Barely comprehending his meaning, she faltered : 
 
 "Yet my grandmother ' 
 
 The Colonel broke in hastily : 
 
 "My mother was a Saint! What I have said does not 
 apply to her ! ' ' 
 
 "And my mother?" 
 
 Something like a groan broke from the man. She felt 
 him wince and shudder as she leaned upon him, saw the 
 strong square teeth of the upper- jaw nip the ruddy lower 
 lip, noted the ashen grayness that replaced the ebbed 
 color, and the points of moisture that broke out upon his 
 temples where his rich black hair was frosted with white. 
 And looking, she bleached and shuddered in sympathy. 
 His haunted eyes and haggard face bent over an .upturned 
 white mask, that had little of the grace of girlhood left in 
 it. The distended pupils encroached upon the blue until 
 her eyes seemed inky-black. He would have withdrawn 
 the hand she held in both hers, but the soft little fingers
 
 154 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 turned to living steel, and he could not free himself. And 
 the blue-black eyes staring out of the pinched elfin face 
 quested in search of something that his own eyes strove to 
 hide. As though his had been the weaker nature and 
 hers the stronger (impossible, the creature being feminine), 
 he felt his loathed secret being relentlessly drawn to light. 
 The clear, unshaken question: 
 
 ' ' Was not my mother good ? ' ' compelled him to truthful 
 utterance. He heard a voice unlike his own replying : 
 
 "At the beginning yes! I would stake my soul upon 
 it. But during the war in the Crimea, when the Allies 
 watered with the best blood of France and England that 
 fatal soil, her loyalty to the absent husband weakened 
 her heart strayed ! ' ' He struck himself upon the breast 
 passionately. "Yet here beat a heart that would have 
 throbbed for love in death, had her lips kissed the shape 
 of icy clay that housed it. It burns now with shame that 
 I must strip off the veil of secrecy that until this moment 
 has hidden from thee thy mother 's sin ! ' ' 
 
 The head bent, a swift kiss touched his hand. Her 
 mouth felt very cold. He went on, realizing that she 
 demanded it: 
 
 "She fled with her lover upon the very day of the re- 
 entry of the Army into Paris. After the triumph I has- 
 tened to Auteuil, where she and her child were living with 
 my mother. That sainted soul met me at the door the 
 first glimpse of her face told the terrible intelligence. 
 Had other lips than those beloved ones stabbed me with 
 the truth, that night my revolver would have ended it ! I 
 would not have lived to endure the pity in the faces of the 
 friends who loved me the curiosity in strangers' eyes." 
 
 A deep sigh stirred her, quickening in him the knowl- 
 edge that since she had kissed his hand she had listened 
 without breathing. She murmured now : 
 
 "Poor, dearest, best father! How old was I when 
 she " 
 
 He said tenderly: 
 
 "Let me see ... it was the August of 1856; thou 
 hadst five years, and thy curls were as soft and as yellow 
 as chicken-down. Thy mother used to say, Juliette will 
 never be black like me!" 
 
 That disloyal mother had been the darkest of brunettes, 
 ivory-skinned, and ebon-haired, with eyes of tawny wine-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 155 
 
 color, and the tall, lithe, exuberant form of a goddess of 
 Grecian myth. To question the man she had deserted 
 with regard to his betrayer seemed hideous, and yet . . . 
 Juliette strung herself to the effort, faltering : 
 
 ''And for whom . . . ? with whom . . . ? Do not tell 
 me if it costs thee too much ! ' ' 
 
 His comprehension was instant. Very coldly the answer 
 came: 
 
 "He was a personage of rank in his own country. A 
 military attache of the Prussian Embassy in Paris. They 
 had met at one of the Imperial receptions at the Tuileries." 
 
 "Is he alive?" 
 
 The whispered words might have been shrieked in his 
 ear, such a leap of the heart and such a thrilling of the 
 nerves responded. He rose to his feet and said sternly, 
 not looking at his daughter, but directly at the wall before 
 him: 
 
 ' ' The man is dead ! But he did not fall in a duel. He 
 lived to meet his end during the Prusso- Austrian War. 
 He had left Paris en route for Berlin when my representa- 
 tive called at the Prussian Embassy. Strive as I would, 
 I could gain no answer from him. Nor might the utmost 
 influence I could command obtain a response to my cartel. 
 This being so, the disgrace is his not mine ! ' ' 
 
 He grew quite tall in saying this, so dignified was the 
 little tubby man, so noble in his soldierly simplicity. His 
 daughter looked up at him, wondering at him, loving him, 
 sorrowing over him; yet yearning to hear more of that 
 beloved, faithless one who had dealt those bleeding wounds 
 he now bared in the sight of the child she had deserted, 
 and plowed such deep lines in his wrung and suffering 
 face. The words would break out, though she nipped her 
 lips to stop them : 
 
 "And my mother . . . did she repent and ask your 
 pardon ? Did you not forgive her before she died ? ' ' 
 
 "She did not die!" 
 
 The little Colonel had a great voice. His "Garde d 
 vous!" roared down the files like a spherical mortar-shell, 
 his "Chargez!" might have set dead men and horses up 
 and galloping. Indeed, his nickname among the troopers 
 of his regiment was, I believe, nothing less than "Bouche 
 d feu!" When he thundered the answer to Juliette's ques- 
 tion, not only did Mademoiselle Bayard leap to her feet,
 
 156 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 vibrating in every fiber of her slender, rigid body, but the 
 crystal drops of the mantelshelf chandeliers left by the 
 previous tenant danced and tinkled, and the panes of the 
 windows rattled in their frames. What more the Colonel 
 might have said was drowned, as the customary fanfare of 
 trumpets sounded from the Mess, heralding the loyal toast. 
 Then the "Vive 1'Empereur!" rang out, and the regi- 
 mental band crashed into "Partant Pour La Syrie," and 
 very soon afterward, from the uncurtained window com- 
 manding the barrack-square, lights could be seen moving 
 across the shadowy space as the dispersing officers returned 
 to their quarters or went about their duty, attended by 
 orderlies carrying stable-lanterns of the smoky, smelly, 
 tallow-burning kind. The Colonel's own duty called him 
 elsewhere, and he was glad of it. He muttered an inaudible 
 word, his eyes averted from his daughter; took his cap, 
 gloves, and riding-whip, and strode jingling from the 
 room. 
 
 Ah, it would need a great artist in words to depict the 
 swift and changing emotions that swelled and wrung the 
 heart of the poor girl he left behind him, and give some 
 adequate idea of the storm that swept over her in that 
 lonely hour. Joy at the discovery that the adored mother 
 of her childish memories yet lived was drowned in anguish 
 at the piercing thought, "She lives, but not for me!" 
 Shame burned her cheeks to crimson, grief washed them 
 white again; her heart bounded in her bosom, or sank, 
 heavy as lead. Except Madame Suchard, the soldier's 
 wife who had been engaged to wait upon Mademoiselle 
 de Bayard, and who now might be heard washing up the 
 dinner-plates and dishes in the little kitchen, there was no 
 earthly woman near to whom she might turn for comfort 
 in this her hour of need. 
 
 But as she wept, not the freely-flowing tears of girl- 
 hood, but with the dry sobbings and painful convulsions 
 that tortured women know, there chimed from the great 
 cathedral Church of St. Louis close by, the first long triple 
 of the Angelus, echoed by the thinner-sounding bells from 
 the Convent of the Augustinian Sisters, from the Priory 
 of the Bernardine Fathers, from the House of the Soeurs 
 de 1'Esperance, from the House of the Little Sisters of the 
 Poor. Mechanically Juliette's hand went to her bosom, 
 her pale lips moved, shaping the sacred words. And then
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 157 
 
 she went to her room and knelt at the little straw-bottomed 
 prie-Dieu that stood before her Crucifix, and prayed with 
 passionate earnestness that He, "Who when hanging upon 
 His Cross of Agony gave His Mother to be our Mother, 
 would hear Her pure prayer of intercession for that mother 
 who had deserted her child. Wherever she might be, how- 
 ever low she might have fallen, whatever the sins, vices, 
 follies that yet environed her, held her back or dragged 
 her down, the ray of Divine Grace had power to reach 
 her, raise her up, and lead her back by the path of Pen- 
 ance into the Way of Peace. 
 
 And pending the miracle, toward which end Masses 
 should be offered and Communions given; obedience to- 
 that father so cruelly betrayed, so bitterly wronged, must, 
 more than ever, be the watchword of Juliette. For the 
 conviction began to dawn in her that belief in the innate 
 purity and truth of her sex having been destroyed in him 
 by the unfaith of that most beloved, most unhappy one; 
 he sought to safeguard her daughter's virtue by means 
 of a husband, who, being the only son of a widow, and 
 therefore exempt from the obligations of military service, 
 must always be on the spot. Sorrowfully she sought her 
 bed, to remember, the moment her head touched the pillow, 
 that although she had mustered courage to plead against 
 the Colonel's sentence of marriage, provoking him thereby 
 to reveal the long-hidden secret of his betrayal, she had 
 never mentioned Charles except by inference. 
 
 What was he like, this young man, pious, virtuous, de- 
 voted to his mother, energetic, frugal, a manufacturer of r 
 and merchant in, the commodity of woolen cloth? Could 
 one build a husband out of such materials? Was it pos- 
 sible ? 
 
 She tried once more. The effort led to tossing and turn- 
 ing. Conscience is most active in the night-watches. 
 Juliette's bosom-monitor reproached her with having- 
 boasted to dear Monica's untidy brother of the faceless 
 Charles's mastery of the art of fence. Other lapses from 
 the strict line of veracity had preceded and followed. She 
 had told one curious girl that Charles owned the form of an 
 athlete, and hair of ruddy chestnut; another had reaped 
 the information that he possessed a profile resembling 
 that of Edgar Ravenswood, with dark, melancholy eyes, 
 and a jet-black mustache of the kind that is silky and
 
 158 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sweeps. Yet another eager inquirer had elicited the in- 
 formation that Charles was quite a duodecimo edition of 
 a lover, slender, brilliantly fair, and not much taller than 
 the bride-elect. Should it occur to these girls to compare 
 notes in some hour of recess or exercise, what would be the 
 impression conveyed to the Great Class ? 
 
 One had left School, however, and one was glad of it. 
 To go back with that tragic secret locked in one's bosom, 
 and mingle with fortunate girls whose mothers were good 
 women, happily alive or safely in Paradise, how could one 
 have borne that ? 
 
 A well-known footstep outside the door of her room, 
 which opened from the little salon, and a gentle rustling 
 sent a shiver through her. "When the step moved away 
 with its soldierly jingle of spurs accompanying it, De 
 Bayard's daughter sat up in bed and kissed both hands 
 to him, passionately; stretching out her arms with a wide 
 gesture as though something of the maternal mingled with 
 her love for him now. . . . When "Lights Out" sounded, 
 and the gas was extinguished, and no line of yellow 
 showed under the door, and the footsteps retreated and 
 his door shut upon them, Juliette crept out of bed, lighted 
 the candle, and picked up the scrap of paper that had been 
 pushed across her threshold by the strong, beloved hand. 
 
 It proved to be a note dated that day, and addressed 
 from the Tessier's house in the Rue de Provence, in Mad- 
 ame 's angular, spidery caligraphy. Felicitations to her 
 dear friend on the safe return of his cherished one were 
 followed by regrets. "My Charles, alas! will be detained 
 in Belgium at least until the Mardigras. The meeting of 
 these dear young people must necessarily be deferred until 
 that date. But to-morrow being the Feast of Saint Poly- 
 carpe, possibly M. le Colonel would bring Mademoiselle to 
 visit a friend, old and most affectionate, punctually at the 
 hour of one midif" With tender remembrances the note 
 concluded. Beneath the signature Marie-Anastasie Tes- 
 sier M. le Colonel had scrawled in pencil the curt inti- 
 mation: "Arranged. H. A. A. de B." 
 
 Knowing Charles safely bestowed in Belgium, Juliette 
 sank back upon her pillow, and soon was calmly sleeping 
 between her two great hair-plaits. But slippered footsteps 
 patroled the Colonel's room until gray dawn showed be- 
 tween the slits of the window-shutters, and the heavy
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 159 
 
 sighs and muttered words that broke from him would have 
 wrung his daughter's faithful heart. Sleepless and hag- 
 gard, the first pale beams of January daylight found him 
 still pacing his brown-striped drugget, a letter the cause 
 of his own and another's misery, crushed in his strong 
 right hand: 
 
 "555, AVENUE DE L'ALMA, PARIS, 
 
 "December 18, 1869. 
 
 "MONSIEUR, 
 
 "Acting upon instructions received from the senior 
 partner of the Berlin branch of our firm, we beg to ac- 
 knowledge your reply to his communication of the 7th 
 instant, and must point out to you that the attitude you 
 assume with regard to our client is equally unjust and 
 indefensible. No legal remedy was sought by you for the 
 injuries you allege that you sustained through the infidelity 
 of the lady who until the autumn of 1856 occupied and 
 without reproach the position of your wife. 
 
 "Further, during the years of her absence from your 
 side, she has neither asked nor received from you any 
 monetary payments toward her support and maintenance, 
 facts which certainly appear to suggest consent and knowl- 
 edge upon your part. You may further be aware that 
 His deceased Excellency, Count Maximilian von Schon- 
 Valverden, late junior military attache to the Prussian 
 General Staff, fully atoned for an indiscretion of his earlier 
 years, by making an ample settlement upon Madame de 
 Bayard ; and that she is now in a position to render liberal 
 assistance to relatives whom Fortune has not dowered with 
 ample means. 
 
 "Under the circumstances, we have advised our client, 
 whose natural affection for her daughter strongly urges 
 her to assert her maternal rights to the society of Made- 
 moiselle de Bayard, to enforce her claim by the reestab- 
 lishment of personal influence. 
 
 "The young lady in question is still unmarried, under 
 age, and therefore subject to maternal authority; and our 
 client does not disguise her hope that, by awakening the 
 long silent chords of filial tenderness, she may gain a power- 
 ful advocate upon the side of reconciliation, reunion, and 
 that unblemished and peaceful happiness which is only 
 to be found by the domestic fireside.
 
 160 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Recollect, Monsieur, that no legal bar exists to this 
 most virtuous and irreproachable aspiration. And under- 
 stand that unless a favorable answer is shortly received 
 by our firm to the application now made by us to you on 
 behalf of our client, her next appeal will be made to your 
 daughter and hers. 
 
 "We remain, etc., 
 
 "WIEGELT, NADIEB AND BIDUQUET, 
 "Solicitors." 
 
 By the chill light of the new day the Colonel for the 
 twentieth time re-read the letter, and its cunning mixture 
 of truth and falsehood, the venomed hint at knowledge 
 and complicity, struck fangs once more into his quivering 
 heart. 
 
 A devout Catholic, he had never sought to divorce the 
 wife who had betrayed him. Thus a civil marriage with 
 her paramour had been rendered impossible to Adelaide, 
 even had the Count desired it. Now, furnished with, 
 ample means by the generosity of her dead lover, did the 
 false wife seek at the hands of the injured husband re- 
 habilitation, in return for a heap of tainted gold? 
 
 Horrible thought! The walls of the room seemed to 
 close upon De Bayard suffocatingly. He opened the win- 
 dow and leaned out, drawing in deep drafts of the frosty 
 morning air. It cleared his brain ; he realized, in the event 
 of his contemptuous rejection of the hideous bargain, a 
 menace to his daughter's peace of mind. 
 
 Motherhood is of all earthly relationships the most 
 sacred. Yet there are mothers who in revenge for disap- 
 pointed hopes and thwarted ambitions have not hesitated 
 to strike, through their own offspring, at husbands ab- 
 horred. More than ever the husband of Adelaide bent to 
 his determination of placing Juliette, at the earliest mo- 
 ment, safe out of reach of that spotted maternal embrace. 
 
 XXI 
 
 UPON the following afternoon the Colonel duly escorted 
 Mademoiselle to the dwelling of Madame Tessier. You 
 may conceive that the portly little warrior, when panoplied
 
 fTHE MAN OE IRON 161 
 
 in the full-skirted, black frock-coat, gray peg-top trousers, 
 black cravat and vest, and curly-brimmed silk chimney- 
 pot of private life, looked a very gallant gentleman ; and 
 that his daughter, attired in a new and charming costume 
 of fine blue cloth, trimmed with velvet and loops of black 
 silk cord, and wearing a sealskin coat and a minute bonnet, 
 consisting of a knot or two of blue velvet, a froth of lace, 
 and half-a-dozen richly-tinted oak-leaves on her coils of 
 black hair, conveyed an effect of elegant simplicity and 
 youthful grace, such as only a well-bred French girl knows 
 how to combine perfectly. 
 
 During the walk, which absorbed the best part of a 
 quarter of an hour, Juliette occupied herself in the en- 
 deavor to glean a few meager items of information with 
 regard to her destined husband. To her timidly-cast bait 
 the Colonel barely vouchsafed a rise. One may imagine a 
 dialogue of timid interrogations and baffling replies, run- 
 ning somewhat after this fashion : 
 
 "Dear father, upon reflection, I find myself unable to 
 recall the features of M. Charles Tessier with anything 
 approaching clearness. I pray you be kind enough to 
 describe him to me ? " 
 
 ' ' My daughter, I myself experience how shall I phrase 
 it? a difficulty in verbally portraying the form and fea- 
 tures of that excellent young man. But his mother carries 
 his image in her heart, and doubtless has it on her walls 
 and in her albums. Look in the one before you search 
 the others ; it will be wise. ' ' 
 
 "Assuredly. But, my father " 
 
 ' ' Chut ! ' ' The Colonel twirled a waxed end of his mag- 
 nificent mustache, and resumed presently: "M. Charles 
 Tessier is a gentleman of honor, an excellent man of busi- 
 ness, and a most desirable parti for any young girl of good 
 family and limited fortune. Could the most exacting 
 bride-elect demand more than this? In addition, he has 
 
 a fine hand " 
 
 'Indeed, dear father- 
 
 A fine hand was something tangible. The owner of the 
 commended extremity might in addition be possessor of a 
 good figure, broad shoulders, a handsome nose. . . . And 
 yet hunchbacks occasionally have neat hands, and the 
 Colonel had only testified to one. That idea might be 
 dismissed as fanciful. Of course, Charles had the proper'
 
 162 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 complement of legs and arms. Half-smiling at her own 
 terrors, Juliette murmured: 
 
 ' ' Pray go on, dear father ! You said a fine hand ..." 
 
 "Hah aha! yes. A fine hand for a stroke at billiards. 
 In addition, it cannot be denied that Charles has a magnifi- 
 cent head " 
 
 ' ' I am listening, dear father ! . . . " 
 
 "A truly magnificent head for figures! Book-keeping 
 by double-entry is infant's play to this admirable young 
 man. He must teach thee the logarithms, my child, when 
 thou art married. . . . Docile and intelligent as thou art, 
 thou wouldst quickly learn to be his secretary and head- 
 clerk. It should be a true wife's ambition to help her 
 husband in business, and this is alone possible when his 
 avocations are of the strictly civil kind. ' ' 
 
 It was tragic. In her dreams Juliette Bayard had aided 
 to put on the casque, and buckle the cuirass of a stately 
 warrior. Now she must perforce mend the gray goose- 
 quill of a knight of the counting-house. You might have 
 seen how her slender throat swelled against the encircling 
 band of velvet. Tears sprang to her eyes. To keep them 
 back she bit her lip, straightened her back, and shrugged, 
 one barely perceptible shrug. The Colonel said, was his 
 kind glance a little troubled as it turned on her ? 
 
 "The letter of Madame Tessier has made it clear to 
 thee, that although thou wilt see thy future husband soon, 
 the meeting will not take place upon the present occasion. 
 Since October M. Charles Tessier" the Colonel twisted 
 his mustache "has been detained by affairs at Mons-sur- 
 Trouille in Belgium. I understand that at this country 
 hamlet near the town of Mons is situated the manufac- 
 tory of his partner, M. the name for the moment escapes 
 me. He is a wealthy gentleman of excellent Flemish fam- 
 ily. The daughter, I remember, was called Clemence or 
 Clementine. ' ' 
 
 The Colonel cleared his throat. Juliette expressed a 
 preference for the name of Clementine. The Colonel 
 begged her pardon. After all, it was Clemence. That did 
 not matter. Mademoiselle liked the name of Clemence 
 nearly as well as Clementine. The Colonel tugged at the 
 other side of the fiercely-waxed mustache, and changed 
 the subject. 
 
 "The pavement rings beneath the heel; I prophesy
 
 163 
 
 frost to-night. Thou art cold, my child, I saw thee shiver. 
 Shall we walk more quickly ? It will be better so. ' ' 
 
 She quickened her steps at the suggestion. There had 
 already been frost, and the air was keen and sparkling as 
 champagne. The young blood in her veins answered to 
 the pleasant stimulus of exercise. Her cheeks were rose- 
 tinted porcelain, her eyes blue stars, despite her wretched- 
 ness, by the time they reached Madame Tessier's door. 
 
 The house of the Widow Tessier was in the Rue de Pro- 
 vence, which runs north from the Avenue de Saint Cloud, 
 not far from above its junction with the Carrefour de Mon- 
 treuil, and ends at the corner of the Boulevard de la Reine. 
 
 A quiet, retiring street, its houses separated by ample 
 gardens, hidden by high walls of brick faced with fine 
 gray Caen stone, generally festooned with pretty creepers 
 and overtopped by stately trees. A noble pine shaded the 
 green glass conservatory, large enough to be termed a 
 winter-garden, which projected on the south side, from 
 what was a solidly built villa plastered yellow, with a 
 raised ground-floor, second story and attic story with Man- 
 sard windows; the short sloping roof, and these indeed, 
 the whole of the attic story to the floor-line, where a fine- 
 worked cornice of stone ran round the building being 
 covered with grayish-blue slates. 
 
 You rang at a gate of open ironwork, white-painted, in 
 which was a smaller gate to admit pedestrians, and while 
 you were waiting for someone to answer the bell, you had 
 leisure to admire the heavy porte cochere upon your left, 
 of solid oak timbers, studded with iron bolts, surmounted 
 with a fine arch of stone, centered with a blank lozenge ; and 
 the neat balcony railing topping the wall to your right, 
 in which was a modest little iron-studded door leading to 
 the kitchen and servants' offices, always secured by a huge 
 lock, and opened with much groaning of inward bolts. 
 
 You are to understand that the roof of the kitchen 
 formed a leaden terrace upon which the bay of the draw- 
 ing-room and other ground-floor windows opened; these, 
 like the windows on the basement and upper stories, being 
 furnished with outside shutters, the slatted wooden pat- 
 tern with which Continental travelers are familiar, yellow- 
 painted to match the plaster of the walls. The terrace 
 could be gained by a short flight of stone steps rising upon 
 your right as you entered. But upon a visit of ceremony
 
 164 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 you went on to the main entrance, which was reached by a 
 handsome ascent of five broad, shallow steps of the Caen 
 stone, continued along the north and east sides of the 
 house, so that from any of the ground-floor windows, which 
 were all of antique French door-pattern, you could descend 
 into the garden at will. The hall-door commanded a view 
 of the stables and the cottage attached to them, whose 
 tenant combined the office of coachman with the duties of 
 a gardener. You could not call those buildings unpic- 
 turesque, covered as they were with the now leafless 
 branches of a great vine and a magnificent wistaria. Be- 
 yond there stretched a kitchen-garden, with beds of flowers 
 and vegetables, under glass and in the open; and splendid 
 espaliers, whence many a basket of luscious cherries, huge 
 blue plums, brown Bon Chretien pears, and melting nec- 
 tarines, were gathered for the table in the season of such 
 luscious fruits. And behind and to the north side of the 
 villa was the pleasance, which must have formed part of 
 a nobleman's park at one time. For winding walks bor- 
 dered with ground-ivy led you in and out and among 
 clumps of oak and chestnut, and stately limes and acacias 
 stood upon the sunlit spaces of its velvet-lawns ; while near 
 its bounds shrubberies and thickets of Portugal laurel and 
 lilac, bird-cherry and hawthorn, syringa and arbutus har- 
 bored thrush and blackbird, and in spring rejoiced the lover 
 of beauty and perfume; and one great tulip tree opened its 
 crimson-purple chalices beneath the rains and suns of 
 early June. From the eastern boundary-wall jutted a stone 
 pipe, ending in a mask, from the mouth of which fell a jet 
 of clear water, forming a tiny pond, and a brook that ran 
 away between stones covered with moss and overgrown 
 with ferns and water-plants. But just now the pond was 
 frozen, and a great icicle hung from the jaws of the grin- 
 ning Satyr, and the blackened leaves of the water-loving 
 plants and club-mosses were hidden under a thin covering 
 of recently-fallen snow. What strange uses this place was 
 to serve before the terrible year of 1870 was ended ! How 
 many letters signed "Charles" were to be drawn by the 
 tiny hand of P. C. Breagh's Infanta from that grinning 
 satyr-mouth. 
 
 Entering the house for you are to see it plainly, serving 
 as it did for a theater upon whose table the life-blood of 
 France was to flow; and her body, beneath the steady,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 165 
 
 skillful hands of a man well fitted to perform such opera- 
 tions, was fated to undergo a terrible mutilation entering 
 the house by the double glass-doors, you found yourself 
 in a parqueted hall, furnished with Empire consoles and 
 large mirrors in frames of tarnished gilding. The chief 
 staircase, covered with striped drugget in gray-and-red, 
 you found immediately upon your right. Under this was 
 the opening to a servants' stairway leading down to the 
 kitchen beneath the terrace. Upon your left was a small 
 door masking another servants' stairway leading to the 
 attics; and beyond this two large folding-doors, covered 
 with green baize, led into a medium-sized but lofty apart- 
 ment, used as the dining-room, looking out on the garden, 
 and hung with a crimson flock paper patterned with gilt 
 palm-leaves, against which hung some large landscapes 
 and antique hunting-scenes in oils. There was a hand- 
 some white marble fireplace, with a high mantel-slab sup- 
 ported by terminal figures, one a nymph, wanton-lipped 
 and languid-eyed, her full voluptuous bosom partly veiled 
 by a leopard skin, her disheveled hair crowned with ivy, 
 like that of her companion ; a faun, and young, judging by 
 his budding horns. 
 
 A third pair of folding-doors facing the hall-entrance 
 opened into the drawing-room; a fourth to the right of 
 these gave entrance to the billiard-room, from which access 
 might be gained by a low glass door into the winter- gar- 
 den, a high-domed glass house full of palms and tree-ferns, 
 boasting a little fountain, whose leaden dolphin, balanced 
 almost perpendicularly on his tail in the center of a moss- 
 stained basin, could spout high enough to wet the green 
 roof when any charitable hand might set him going. A 
 door at the farther end of this winter-garden gave access 
 to a small room lined with books, classical works by stand- 
 ard French authors for the most part, smelling moldy, 
 and apt, when a curious hand strove to remove them from 
 their shelves, to stick to their neighbors on either side. 
 And looking at the conservatory from outside, one per- 
 ceived, running along the entire length of the rounded 
 glass roof, a wrought-iron gangway, or double-sided bal- 
 cony. From which, according to the testimony of Madame, 
 the late M. Tessier, from whose dressing-room this aerial 
 promenade could be gained by a glass door had been 
 accustomed to enjoy the prospect and breathe the air.
 
 166 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 XXII 
 
 MADAME, a discreet and sensible-looking person, with very 
 little more mustache than is becoming to a Frenchwoman 
 of sixty, embraced Juliette warmly on both cheeks, and 
 graciously received the Colonel's salute upon her mittened 
 left hand. The mittens were invariably black in tribute 
 to the memory of the late M. Tessier. Madame 's half- 
 mourning, gray poplin gown, trimmed with black gimp 
 upon the gores, round the bottom of the expansive skirt 
 and upon the waist and shoulder-lappets, might have been 
 the same she had always worn, in Juliette's memory. Her 
 cap had lavender ribbons, her front was bay, whereas it 
 had been chestnut, and the net of black chenille-velvet, in 
 which she confined her back hair, plentiful in quantity 
 and iron gray like her mustache and eyebrows, had silver 
 beads upon it here and there. 
 
 Father and daughter were made welcome, were enter- 
 tained with wine of Madeira, raspberry- vinegar for which 
 sweet, subacid beverage, diluted with water, young ladies 
 were expected to express a preference macaroons, rata- 
 fias, and little pink ice-cakes. The Colonel, having ac- 
 cepted a glass of the good vintage and consumed a biscuit, 
 expressed a desire to walk round the garden; Madame, 
 who had suggested the excursion, and Juliette, who had 
 gone goose-flesh all over were left to a tete-a-tete. 
 
 During the collation described above, Mademoiselle's 
 blue eyes had discreetly raked the walls of the dining-room 
 in search of portraits. Nothing rewarded her search but 
 a highly varnished oil presentment of a simpering young 
 woman in the vast flowery bonnet, the bunches of side- 
 curls, and the high-waisted gown of 1830, in whom one 
 must perforce discover Madame in her twentieth year. A 
 case of three miniatures hung beside the copper wood- 
 tongs on the left of the fireplace. When Madame affec- 
 tionately leaned to her young guest, patted her hand, and 
 bade her take her seat upon a green velvet fauteuil between 
 Madame 's own high-backed arm-chair and the carved-oak- 
 framed, glass-covered embroidery picture of Dido on her 
 funeral pyre that served as fire-screen, Juliette, in the act 
 of transit, cast a rapid glance at this case. In vain. Only 
 M. Tessier, in a high satin stock, gray curls and strips of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 167 
 
 side-whisker, Madame in a lace cap, fiddle-bodied brown 
 silk gown, berthe, and cameo brooch, and a chubby infant 
 of indeterminate sex, with sausage curls and tartan shoul- 
 der-knots, rewarded her anxious scrutiny. She could not 
 restrain a sigh. 
 
 To be taken by the chin is not unpleasant to a young 
 lady, under the right conditions and given certain circum- 
 stances. But when the ringed and bony fingers enclosed 
 in Madame 's black mitten, turned the small, pale oval to 
 the light, a choking lump rose in Juliette's throat, and the 
 black lashes veiled the eyes her aged friend would have 
 peered in. She felt given over to harpies, abandoned and 
 alone. Almost she could have rushed to one of the long 
 French windows, wrenched it open, and fled to the shelter 
 of her father. I wonder whether the Colonel was as ill at 
 ease as his daughter, as he paced the winding paths under 
 the leafless trees, between the beds of snow-powdered 
 ground ivy, already sprinkled with patches of aconite in 
 partially thawed places, shining yellow as little suns 
 against dark leaves and wet brown earth. . . . 
 
 She could see him from the nearer of the three long 
 windows opening on the steps that led' to the garden. He 
 walked among the trees bare-headed, holding his high silk 
 hat and gold-topped Indian cane behind him, his handsome 
 double chin bent upon his breast, his fine face full of care. 
 Even his boldly-curled mustaches seemed to droop under 
 the weight of sorrows that were no longer hidden from 
 his child. 
 
 At the bottom of his heart he distrusted her, she was 
 almost certain. And from the bottom of her own heart 
 she forgave the cruel wrong. He had come to believe, 
 since the great betrayal, that every woman save the Mother 
 of all mothers, and his own, had it in her to play the 
 traitress, given the opportunity. Thus the opportunity 
 was not to be given to Juliette. 
 
 Madame was speaking. She no longer held the little 
 chin, though the chill of her hard finger-tips still seemed 
 to cling to it. She smiled benevolently, making curves of 
 parenthesis in her well-powdered cheeks, and sometimes 
 punctuating her sentences by a rather disconcerting click 
 of teeth that were too startlingly white and never seemed 
 to fit properly. 
 
 "One understands, my cherished" (click}, "that this
 
 168 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 visit is a little triste for thee. . . . One who should have 
 been here to welcome thee does not appear. To repress the 
 feelings is convenable" (click} ''in a young girl of good 
 education, but nevertheless one cannot hide the oppression 
 of the heart. Rest assured, my little one, that my Charles 
 who is to be thy Charles so soon" Madame 's playful- 
 ness, emphasized by the click described, was more than a 
 little grisly "suffers as thou dost. He is chagrined to the 
 very soul, believe me ! that he cannot be with thee here to- 
 day. Detained in Belgium, at Mons-sur-Trouille (where 
 he has a manufactory for the production of woolen fab- 
 rics) by important business in connection with an im- 
 mense order given by a Paris firm of" (click) "drapers, 
 thou canst picture him counting the hours that must elapse 
 before the happy moment of his return. He is ardent, my 
 Charles noble, sincere, religious, and candid. I, his 
 mother, say to thee: Thou art happy" (click) "to have 
 won the love of so estimable a young man!" 
 
 And with this maternal peroration two gray poplin 
 sleeves went out and enfolded Mademoiselle de Bayard, and 
 two rapid touches of Madame Tessier's mustache visited 
 first her left cheek and then her right one. Fluttering like 
 a caught robin, Juliette faltered: 
 
 "You are so good, dear Madame, but when did I win 
 it?" She added, released from the imprisoning sleeves, 
 and with a bright red rose of agitation blooming in the 
 center of each pale cheek: "Alas! I refer to the love of 
 M. Charles Tessier. ... If I might know where he has 
 seen me ? ... I cannot recollect his ever having been pre- 
 sented to me. In my mind, Madame, your son has no 
 form, no features. ... It is terrible, but there you have 
 the fact!" 
 
 The truth was out at last. Now that the room had left 
 off whirling, Madame 's benevolent smile shone forth un- 
 changed. She clicked, and returned with archness that 
 was labored. 
 
 "My Juliette, I comprehend. Thou wert just a little 
 bewildered. . . . Thy father has not made it quite clear. 
 . . . Ah, naughty M. le Colonel, I shall scold him by- 
 and-by!" 
 
 "Pray, no!" Juliette's little hands went out entreat- 
 ingly. "Only explain, dear, dearest Madame, for I am 
 bewildered, as you say truly. My father's command that
 
 THE MAX OF IRON 169 
 
 I should leave school, provide myself with a trousseau, and 
 come here to be married instantly to M. Charles Tessier ! 
 was so brusque so sudden that I might be pardoned 
 for saying I have felt less like a young girl than a poor 
 lamb, hurriedly taken from the fold and driven to the 
 butcher's yard." 
 
 "Poor little lamb!" drolled Madame, still portentously 
 playful, and displaying a gleaming double row of teeth 
 between the parenthesis. Juliette felt more than ever like 
 the lamb of her analogy, as she strove to read the meaning 
 of the smile. Madame continued: "Too much boldness 
 an excessive display of sangfroid my Charles has ever 
 disliked in women. When I tell him how gentille thou art, 
 how sensitive, and how spirituelle, he will say to me, 
 'My mother, thou hast chosen well! and when he sees 
 thee 
 
 Something in the well-powdered elderly face of the 
 speaker sent an electrical shock of comprehension through 
 Juliette 's being, evoking the cry : 
 
 "Sees me. . . . But then ... he has never seen me?" 
 
 It was necessary to hold on with one's own eyes to 
 Madame 's, they so spun and whirled in their rather small, 
 round orbits. Then they steadied, as though she had made 
 her mind up. She said, and though the treacly suavity had 
 gone out of her voice, Juliette liked it better: 
 
 "No, my child Charles has never seen thee. This is a 
 betrothal this will be a marriage exclusively arranged by 
 the parents of the young people concerned. Thy father, 
 the son of my beloved friend Antoinette de Bayard, does 
 not desire that the husband of his Juliette should be a 
 member of the military profession, I am averse to the idea 
 of my son 's bestowing his name upon the Protestant daugh- 
 ter of a Flemish woolen-manufacturer for that that was 
 originally my son's intention, I will not seek to deny. 
 Wounded in my tenderest and most susceptible spot by the 
 announcement of Charles's infatuation, I might have 
 estranged him for ever even hurried on the catastrophe I 
 feared, had not the advice of my director, Dom Clovis, 
 of the Carmelite Fathers fortified and sustained me in 
 the trying hour! I wrote to my son. I poured out my 
 maternal heart in pleadings the most earnest the most 
 tender. I recalled to him the dispositions of his late 
 father's will. Under this document," Madame went on,
 
 170 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 drying a tear with a deep-hemmed cambric handkerchief, 
 "I possess the power at pleasure to divert from Charles 
 and his heirs a considerable portion of his sainted father's 
 funded property. And that power," said Madame, drying 
 another tear, "I solemnly assured my child, would in the 
 event of his union with Mademoiselle Clemence Basselot 
 unhesitatingly be used." 
 
 "Words might have come from the pale parted lips before 
 her. Madame tapped them to silence with a mittened fin- 
 ger and pursued her way. 
 
 "Charles is profoundly reasonable a quality he in- 
 herits from both parents. He wrote to me a letter inex- 
 pressibly touching in its expressions of filial trust and con- 
 fidence, over which, I assure thee, I have shed the most con- 
 soling tears." 
 
 Something had previously crackled in the pocket of 
 Madame 's black silk apron, when she had smoothed it over 
 her knees in seating herself. Now she drew it out, and 
 Juliette saw a blue envelope directed in a handwriting of 
 the business-like, copper-plate description. The sheet of 
 white paper the envelope contained had an engraved pic- 
 ture-heading of a square building possessing many win- 
 dows no doubt the Belgian cloth manufactory possessed in 
 partnership by MM. Basselot and Tessier. From the page, 
 closely covered all down one side with regular lines of 
 mercantile handwriting, Madame read: 
 
 "Sentiments of the most profound agitated me as I 
 read thy letter. These sentences penned by a mother's 
 hand, have touched me to the quick. Thy arguments, so 
 delicate, yet so powerful, have convinced me of the im- 
 possibility of the union toward which I will own! my 
 wishes urged me. I abandon the idea henceforth! Since 
 Mademoiselle Clemence is not to be mine, choose then for 
 me, best and noblest of women. Let her who taught my 
 infant lips to murmur the beloved name of mother select 
 for me some virtuous young girl upon whom I may confer 
 the equally sacred title of Wife. 
 
 "THY CHARLES." 
 
 And there, with a flourish like a double lasso, M. Tessier 's 
 letter ended, leaving Juliette swaying between the impulse
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 171 
 
 to shriek with laughter and the urgent desire to melt away 
 in tears. 
 
 Madame came to her rescue by proposing a visit to the 
 billiard-room, built and appointed by the late M. Tessier 
 to afford his son wholesome recreation at home. For 
 otherwise, Madame explained, the young man might have 
 been allured by the amusements to be found in the saloons 
 of the Hotel des Reservoirs and other brilliant and fashion- 
 able lounges, full of dissipated civilians and officers of 
 every branch of the military and naval services. Clubs 
 Madame regarded as gateways to eternal perdition. She 
 dried another tear as she thanked Heaven that her be- 
 loved child did not belong to one. "When possible, she 
 added, Charles avoided restaurants. A congenital delicacy 
 of constitution rendered over-seasoned dishes little less 
 than poison to him ; he habitually suffered from nettle-rash 
 after the consumption of shellfish. Green salad was, upon 
 this count, pernicious to his well-being. Nor should he 
 ever be permitted to sleep without a nightcap, having been 
 subject to earache from his youth. 
 
 The mental picture of Charles, suffering from an attack 
 of nettle-rash and crowned with his protective nightcap, 
 sent the listener's balance dipping toward hysteria. They 
 were in the billiard-room, a pleasant, longish salle, with 
 two high windows opening on the frontward terrace. The 
 glass door stood open leading into the winter-garden : from 
 whence came a smell of hot-water pipes, damp moss, and 
 mold, with an added whiff of ferniness, and a suggestion 
 of the cockroaches and mice that pervaded the place. 
 
 And then: "Thou seest, my sweet Juliette" pray 
 imagine Madame, indicating with a lifted mitten a gilt- 
 framed square of canvas hanging between the two French 
 windows ' ' a speaking portrait, painted but two years ago, 
 of my I should say, of our beloved Charles. ' ' 
 
 Obediently the eyes of Mademoiselle Bayard followed 
 the direction of the pointing finger. The painter or the 
 evil genius of Charles Tessier had induced him to sit for 
 his portrait in the habiliments of the chase ; thus in sport- 
 ing checks of the chessboard pattern, with the addition of 
 yellow leather leggings, gun pads, and a game bag, and 
 holding between his knees a weapon which obviously em- 
 barrassed him, he was presented for the first time to the
 
 172 THE MAX OF IRON 
 
 gaze of his future bride. Those eyes of Juliette's fastened 
 on the canvas a single moment before their dusky lashes 
 dropped. But in that moment Mademoiselle had classified 
 Charles as belonging to the Order of Invertebrates; com- 
 prehended his profound insignificance, and realized that 
 from the owner of a head so commonplace, eyes so round, 
 and a nose so blunt, a mouth so lax, and cheeks so pink 
 and chubby possibly the artist had been liberal of car- 
 mine nothing more of originality, decision, manly force, 
 or power of will might be expected than is commonly 
 demanded of the child's whirligig of stick and cardboard, 
 as seen gyrating madly or spinning feebly under the im- 
 petus of its owner 's breath. 
 
 It was impossible, Mademoiselle told herself, to detest 
 a being so utterly devoid of character a human pad of 
 blotting paper as uninteresting as a counting-house stool. 
 One could only pity him, and hope for his mother's sake 
 that sound business capacities were concealed behind that 
 characterless forehead, topped with brown hair cut very 
 short and standing upon end and wonder at or congratu- 
 late Mademoiselle Clemence. Flamandes are generally big 
 and muscular. One could only hope that she had taken 
 Charles by his sloping shoulders and soundly shaken him 
 when he had backed out of his proposal of marriage. 
 Though possibly he had never spoken to the girl at all. 
 
 M. le Colonel found his daughter silent during their 
 walk back to the Barracks. After a questioning eyeshot 
 or so at the dainty little figure that moved so demurely 
 beside him abandoning the vain endeavor to read her 
 mood from the droop of the pure eyelids, the chiseled lines 
 of the exquisite profile the father relapsed into his own 
 sad thoughts. And then Juliette, stealing a glance at him, 
 realized, with a pang, that his once luxuriant black curls 
 were thinning in places, and already thickly sown with 
 white hairs. The upright martial carriage was marred 
 by a rounding of the shoulders the stoop of a man upon 
 whose back sits perched Black Care. The seams of the 
 immaculately brushed frock-coat of civil ceremony were 
 shiny in places the rosette of red ribbon at the lapel was 
 frayed and faded the tiny medal tarnished and dull. 
 Perhaps the mood of the wearer, be it hopeful or despond- 
 ent, can affect the apparel, as the chameleon's wrinkled
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 173 
 
 skin changes from the hue of dead bark to the vivid green 
 of young leaves when sunlight touches it, and fades back 
 to the neutral tint when the golden ray is withdrawn. 
 
 Juliette would not have thanked me for that analogy 
 of the prehensile-tongued, long-tailed lizard. Inconstancy 
 as described by the poets is typified by the chameleon, 
 and her faith in the sincerity and truth of her Colonel was 
 founded upon the living rock. 
 
 We know that she had, or thought she had, discovered 
 why he dared not trust her to a husband whose career 
 must lead him from her. "My blood," she had mur- 
 mured to herself sorrowfully, "it must" (she meant un- 
 f aith ) " be in my blood ! ' ' The reason for his desperate 
 haste was all beyond her. It must be cruel, because it 
 hurt him so. 
 
 That heart of hers was as great as she herself was tiny. 
 Titania at need could love like a Titaness. And the blood 
 of Antigone runs in the veins of living women even to this 
 day, though the noble daughter of CEdipus died a virgin 
 unspotted. When the fairy hand in the perfectly fitting 
 gray glove crept under the Colonel's elbow, it gave, with 
 the smile that accompanied it, a silent pledge of fidelity 
 to the death. But oh, blind father, could you have seen 
 her, in that inmost chamber of the heart where the most 
 innocent maiden shrines the imaginary portrait of a lover 
 taking down the stately canvas bearing the presentment 
 of a soldier-hero unknown, and hanging up in its place 
 the picture of a mere Charles Tessier, your eyes, like those 
 of the protagonist of the Greek drama, would have wept 
 tears of blood. 
 
 That night a letter was penned to Monica in the small, 
 delicately pointed handwriting that seemed appropriate 
 to Juliette. 
 
 "To you, dear friend, who have exacted of me the 
 pledge that I will write to you before all, a faithful descrip- 
 tion of the person of my future husband, I hasten to fulfill 
 the vow. M. Charles Tessier has a fine head and a fine 
 hand, my father praises his capacity for business and his 
 skill at the billiard-table with equal fervor. Of his powers 
 of conversation I have as yet not sufficient experience to 
 afford you an opinion. In the presence of his mother he 
 has been silent and reserved. His letters, however, are
 
 174 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 eloquently expressed and forcible. When I mention his 
 letters, it should be explained that affairs have entailed 
 upon him the necessity of a journey to Belgium, where 
 he remains for the present, at the house of his partner, 
 M. Basselot. Thou wilt draw from this the correct con- 
 clusion that I am not yet married. Do not forget to pray 
 for thy faithful 
 
 "JULIETTE." 
 
 "See you well, I am happy content I dream not of 
 impossibilities. J'ai pris mon parti. I am sensible, me!" 
 
 In answer to a second letter from Monica received upon 
 the ending of the month there came : 
 
 "Tell M. Breagh that I have received his message, so 
 generously worded. Alas ! the poor young girl had no in- 
 tention of wounding a heart at once so courageous and so 
 proud. His fellow-student is unjust to himself. Why term 
 that 'brutality' which was merely honest brusquerie? Yet 
 if he gave pain and I do not deny it was so he may rest 
 assured he has been forgiven. Tell this to thy brother, 
 from 
 
 "JULIETTE." 
 
 ' ' M. Charles Tessier is still delayed by affairs in Belgium. 
 I visit his mother nearly every day. An excellent house- 
 keeper and cuisiniere, she is charmed with my skill in 
 cooking. For her and for my father, who dines with her 
 frequently, I plan delightful little menus. They eat, and 
 praise the dishes and cry at least, Madame cries: 'Ah, 
 Heaven! if my Charles were only here!' In a letter which 
 this morning's post brought me from the person men- 
 tioned, he dwells with that impassioned luxuriance of 
 imagery, warmth of color and fullness of expression not 
 denied to his sex, upon our approaching union. One can- 
 not deny that it is pleasant to be the sole object in life 
 of a young man so worthy and so amiable, and ah, my 
 dearest ! were the sacrifice of a personal wish demanded of 
 me, could I, knowing what I" (scratched out] "refuse to 
 gratify the cherished desire of my dear father's heart? 
 Each day that finds me by his side closes in deeper re- 
 spect and love more ardent. Our Lord, Whose will it was
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 175 
 
 to leave me motherless, decreed that in him I should find 
 the tenderness of a father and that of a mother too. 
 
 "J. M. DEB." 
 
 For the delectation of those readers who are anxious to 
 sample the luxuriant imagery, glowing color and plenitude 
 of expression ascribed to the epistolary communication 
 received by Mademoiselle de Bayard from M. Charles Tes- 
 sier I append the letter referred to as above : 
 
 "BASSELOT AND TESSIEE, 
 
 "WHOLESALE MERCHANTS. 
 "WEAVERS AND DYERS OF WOOLEN FABRICS. 
 
 ' ' MONS-SUR-TROUILLE. 
 ' ' BELGIUM. 
 
 " th January, 1870. 
 
 " MADEMOISELLE, 
 
 "That I have been tardy in personally assuring you 
 of my profound regard and unfaltering devotion you will 
 pardon, knowing me detained in a foreign country in the 
 interests of my business affairs. 
 
 "Assured that all that concerns my welfare will natur- 
 ally possess for you the deepest interest, I hasten to in- 
 form you that jointly with my partner, M. Felix Basselot, 
 I have entered into a scheme to facilitate the manufacture 
 of our woolen cloths and other textile fabrics by the pur- 
 chase and installation of the most recently invented ma- 
 chines. Raw cloths are now subjected to perching, knot- 
 ting, milling, washing, hydro-extracting, gigging, cutting, 
 cropping, boiling, brushing and steaming processes of the 
 latest invention, and we claim that the output of our manu- 
 factory will henceforth vie with the first qualities of goods 
 advertised by the leading firms of Belgium, England and 
 France. 
 
 ' ' My mother 's letters palpitate with your praises. What 
 happiness, Mademoiselle, awaits the man who shall be 
 privileged to confer upon such beauty, goodness, and 
 amiability, the sacred name of wife. You will be interested 
 to hear that for Saxonies, tweeds, merinos, and cashmeres 
 for ladies' drapery our house maintains its old reputation, 
 as well as for the heavier fabrics of masculine wear.
 
 176 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ' ' "Were I now at your side, how enchanting it would be to 
 confide to you that we have struck out a bold and original 
 line in dress-stuffs, dyed with the new agent called Aniline. 
 It is extracted from coal-tar, and the magenta so much 
 admired by our Parisian mondaines is obtained from it, by 
 treating the crude substances with the chloride of tin. 
 From magenta we derive rosaniline, a dye as delicate yet 
 as passionate as a lover's fondest wishes. In an experi- 
 ment recently made in my presence I beheld a pure young 
 girl immerse in a solution of this extraction containing a 
 little ammonia, a spotless lily, when instantly the virginal 
 blossom's whiteness was changed to the loveliest roseate 
 hue. 
 
 "Thus, dear Mademoiselle, your soul, so chaste, so spot- 
 less, and so innocent, being plunged in the consecrated vat 
 of marriage, will assume the glowing hue of Love. Bleu 
 de Lyons with Violet Imperial, all the most fashionable 
 shades of mauve and other colors can be obtained by 
 methods equally simple, and with the addition of aldehyde 
 and sulphuric acid, we secure a green of the most brilliant, 
 and a yellow that enchains the eye. By a simple process 
 these colors may be fortified to stand the test of washing, 
 as firmly and unchangeably as the affection I am privileged 
 to offer you ; which is hallowed by the blessing of the best of 
 mothers, and of a father noble as your own. 
 
 "Receive then, dear Mademoiselle, the tenderest assur- 
 ances of devotion, 
 
 "From yours eternally, 
 
 "CHARLES JOSEPH TESSIER." 
 
 Over this epistle, apparently begotten between a trade- 
 circular and a polite letter-writer, Juliette had wept help- 
 less tears of mirth. Reading it, one may conjure up a 
 picture of the excellent Charles, spurred by the maternal 
 threat of partial disinheritance to a desperate effort, bend- 
 ing over the paper in the throes of composition, diluting the 
 ink with the sweat of a non-intellectual brow. 
 
 Also, one may suspect the anonymous heroine of the 
 experiment with the lily to have been none other than 
 Mademoiselle Clemence Basselot, but the suspicion has not, 
 to the present date, been verified.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 177 
 
 XXIII 
 
 IN the July of that year, while the gilding was yet untar- 
 nished upon France's brand-new Constitution ratified by 
 a plebiscitum obtained after the usual methods, and re- 
 cording seven millions of pinchbeck votes while the Im- 
 perial Court of the Third! Napoleon played at Arcadian 
 pastorals under the mistletoe-draped oaks and spreading 
 beeches of St. Cloud, the question of the Candidacy of 
 Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the vacant Throne of 
 Spain appeared in the firmament of European politics 
 (even as the voice of Lord Granville prophesied a lengthy 
 period of unbroken fine weather) and broke about the 
 ears of the Power most concerned like a stinging shower of 
 hail. 
 
 The Spanish crown upon the head of a Hohenzollern. 
 Rather a Montpensier, intolerable as that would have 
 been. True, the Almanach de Gotha had offered (to Gen- 
 eral Prim, President Zorilla, and the Cortes, assembled in 
 solemn session) only the unwelcome alternative of the legal 
 heir to the throne going begging ; true, the Spanish people 
 were very well satisfied with the idea of being ruled by a 
 Catholic gentleman of Royal blood, suitable age, handsome 
 person, and military experience, married to a Portuguese 
 princess, and possessing two healthy sons. 
 
 But that a Prussian Prince, holding a commission in 
 Prussia 's Army, should be set up like a signpost of warning 
 on France's southern frontier, as though to keep her in 
 mind of what would happen in the event of another war 
 on the Rhine was, from the Gallic point of view, intoler- 
 able. ' ' The security and the dignity of the French nation 
 are endangered by this candidacy!" cried Jules Favre. 
 According to M. Thiers, "the nominacy was not only an 
 affront to the nation, but an enterprise adverse to its in- 
 terests. " Gambetta cried aloud that all Frenchmen must 
 unite for a national war. Marshal Vaillant made a mem- 
 orandum in his notebook. "This signifies war, or some- 
 thing very like it!" And at the Council of Ministers 
 hastily summoned to St. Cloud on the morning of the sixth 
 of July, the Emperor passed to the Duke de Gramont, 
 his Foreign Minister, a penciled communication. "Notify 
 Prince Gortchakoff at Petersburg that if Prussia insists
 
 178 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 upon the accession of the Prince of Hohenzollern to the 
 throne of Spain, it will mean war!" 
 
 "What haste to clutch at the casus belli. "When the Min- 
 isters quitted the Imperial Council, and the Corps Legis- 
 latif opened its session, long-continued applause greeted 
 the declaration of Gramont from the tribune that a certain 
 unnamed Third Power, by placing one of its Princes on 
 the throne of Charles V., threatened to disturb the equili- 
 brium of Europe, to imperil the material interests and en- 
 danger the honor of France. "If it be impossible to pre- 
 vent this," ran the peroration, "strong in your support, 
 Messieurs, we shall perform our duty without hesitation 
 or faltering!" Here was an ultimatum that sounded the 
 very note of war. 
 
 Do you hear the echo of the thunderous acclamations 
 that attended the Foreign Minister to his seat, the clapping 
 of hands, stamping of feet, roaring of lungs that have 
 been dust for more than forty years, or are now on the 
 point of dissolving into their native element? Naturally 
 because the Eight were defiant, the Left called their utter- 
 ances bellicose. Had the Right manifested a disposition to 
 turn the other cheek in Scriptural fashion, the Left would 
 have passionately taunted this band of politicians with cow- 
 ardice, lack of patriotism, indifference to the sacred cause 
 of national freedom, would have accused them of being 
 traitors to their country, and Heaven knows what else. 
 
 The Press threw oil upon the roaring conflagration. 
 Were this affront submitted to, cried the Gaulois, "there 
 would not exist a woman in the world who would accept 
 a Frenchman's arm!" The Correspondant was "relieved 
 to find that Frenchmen once more have become French- 
 men." The Moniteur Universel was charmed to discover 
 that the blame for this momentous conflict could never 
 be attributed to the French Government. The Figaro left 
 off making a cockshy of the* Imperial dignity, to admit that 
 for once the Emperor's official mouthpiece had spoken the 
 right word. And the Debats praised the attitude taken by 
 the Government. "Silence at this juncture would," it 
 cried, "have been pusillanimous. Shall the nation be ac- 
 cused of bowing its head for the second time, before the 
 cannon of Sadowa?" 
 
 Lord Granville, replacing the recently deceased Claren- 
 don at Great Britain's Foreign Ministry, mentioned to the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 179 
 
 Spanish Ambassador to England that the choice of Prince 
 Leopold would create a sore. He wrote to Layard at Ber- 
 lin that he considered France had been given good cause of 
 resentment. Lyons, in the shoes of Lord Cowley, at the 
 English Embassy in Paris, wrote to his chief that the 
 unhappy affair had revived all the old animosity, though 
 it seemed to him that ' ' neither the Emperor nor his Minis- 
 ters really wish or expect war!" The Times of July 8th 
 was severe on the policy of Prussia; the Standard for 
 once expressed the same opinion as the Times. The Daily\ 
 Telegraph prophesied that the succession of the Prussian 
 Prince would mean France's present humiliation and fu- 
 ture peril. The Pall Mall Gazette poked mordant fun at 
 the attitude of unconsciousness assumed by King William, 
 who, between sips of Ems water, declared his ignorance 
 of the whole affair. The Early Wire, backing and filling, 
 kept an even keel for a day or two. Then said Mr. Knew- 
 bit confidentially to P. C. Breagh, one midsummer evening, 
 after the early supper: 
 
 "My opinion is we are a-going to give a leg-up to this 
 'ere '0 'enzollern business, our Chief being when England, 
 Home, and Duty permit him to indulge the weakness 
 a red- 'ot admirer of a Certain Person at Berlin. Who ' ' 
 Mr. Knewbit's wink was infinitely sagacious "is said on 
 the strict Q.T. to have put up Field-Marshal Prim and the 
 Government at Madrid to making the proposal to the young 
 gentleman. For the sake of giving a jolt-up to the elderly 
 swell at the Tuileries. We all have our ideal 'eroes," Mr. 
 Knewbit added, "and our Chief's partiality dates from his 
 acting in an emergency as Special War Correspondent for 
 his own paper, durin' the Prusso- Austrian War of 1866. 
 It was at the Battle of that name always beats me " 
 
 "Koniggratz, perhaps?" suggested Carolan. 
 
 "Koniggratz when this 'ere Bismarck spurs his big 
 brown mare up to Colonel von Somebody to ask him why, 
 seeing the 'eavy losses occurring in his neighborhood from 
 Austrian Artillery he didn't ride forward with his Cuiras- 
 siers to find out where the shells came from? Took our 
 Chief's fancy uncommon, that did, as the iron sugar-plums 
 was dropping freely in the neighborhood, and when he 
 had rode on, swearing at the Colonel like anything you 
 can imagine the old man picked up a cigar-stump he'd 
 pitched away, and keeps it to this hour in the pen-tray of
 
 180 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the silver inkstand the Proprietors presented him with 
 when he came home." 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh reflectively : 
 
 "It's the rule, invariably. Men love Bismarck or lam- 
 poon him swear by him or swear at him. He 's the devil 
 or a demigod there 's no alternative ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Good ! ' ' said Mr. Knewbit, leaning back in his Windsor 
 chair, and rubbing the ear of the ginger Tom with the toe 
 of one of his carpet slippers. "Tell us a bit more. Any- 
 thing you can lay hold of. I want to see him stand out a 
 bit clearer in my mind." 
 
 "He gets his name from the Wendish I've read in the 
 Kleine Anekdotenbuch," said P. C. Breagh, "that 'Bis- 
 marck' really means ' beware of the thorns.' And there's 
 a golden sprig of blackberry-bramble among the family 
 quarterings, so perhaps there's something in it, after all. 
 An ancestor of his who lived in the sixteenth century was 
 a tailor and a natural son of Duke Philip of Hesse, by the 
 way! Duke Philip was a lineal descendant of St. Eliza- 
 beth of Hungary who in her turn was descended from the 
 Emperor Charlemagne " 
 
 "Lor' bless my soul!" said Mr. Knewbit, rubbing his 
 knees. 
 
 ' ' And he this man you want to know about ! was born 
 the younger son of a Pomeranian country squire, and 
 entered the University of Gottingen in 1831. They say 
 that he permitted study to interfere so little with the more 
 serious business of amusement that the name of Mad Bis- 
 marck was given him then, and had stuck to him even when 
 he passed his examination as Referendar, and began to 
 practice law in the Municipal Court of Aix-la-Chapelle. " 
 
 Mr. Knewbit, drinking in the information at every pore, 
 nodded "More" and P. C. Breagh obliged him: 
 
 "He served his year as Volunteer at Potsdam in the 
 Jdgers of the Guard, and then went home to the paternal 
 estate of Kneiphof , and began sowing wild oats acres and 
 acres of them. The officers of the garrison were a hard- 
 drinking set of fellows, and the county Junkers scorned to 
 be outdone by them so they hunted and shot and danced 
 and made love to the local beauties they dined and 
 supped and gambled and fought duels. In fact, they did 
 all the things men usually do when they mean to have a 
 high old time and don't care a damn for the consequences,'*
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 181 
 
 said P. C. Breagh, "and when you regularly hail smiling 
 morn with cold punch, beer, and corn-brandy, and wind 
 up the night with quart-beakers of champagne and porter, 
 the consequences must be 
 
 * ' A taut skin and a fiery eye next morning, ' ' interpolated 
 Mr. Knewbit, "and a tongue like a foul oven-plate or a 
 burned kettle-bottom. But my stars! what a constitu- 
 tion that man must have to be as hale and as hearty, and 
 as upright as they say he is, at fifty-five, and with a family 
 of grown-up sons! One wonders how his sweetheart ever 
 had the courage to marry such a such a Ring-tailed 
 Roarer. ... But Love 's a thing you can 't account for 
 nohow. ' ' 
 
 "I have heard that the Fraulein Puttkammer's family 
 objected to the engagement," said P. C. Breagh, "but he 
 seems to have got over their prejudices in a way peculiarly 
 his own. By betrothing himself privately to the Fraulein 
 first, and then calling openly to inquire how the family 
 felt about it," he added, in response to the interrogative 
 hoist of Mr. Knewbit 's eyebrows, "and taking the pre- 
 caution, upon entering the room to hug the young lady 
 before all her friends." 
 
 "The hugging would settle the thing in Germany?" 
 asked Mr. Knewbit. 
 
 "To a dead certainty." 
 
 "Without any male cousin or anything of that kind 
 getting up and calling the hugger out ? ' ' asked Mr. Knewbit 
 dubiously. 
 
 "When a man is six feet two inches in height, is as 
 strong as a bull, and possesses a well-earned reputation 
 as a fencer and pistol-shot, even male cousins," returned 
 P. C. Breagh, "are content to sit still and let him hug." 
 
 "And then he married her and went into politics and 
 to-day, when the Press says 'Prussia,' it means him!" 
 cried Mr. Knewbit. "What our Chief likes, and what 
 fetches me ! is his cool owdaciousness. If ever I chance 
 to find myself in Berlin," he added, "before visiting any 
 State Collection of Art Objects ever brought together 
 I'd choose to 'ave a look at that man!" 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh: 
 
 "I've seen the Iron Chancellor just once in '67 
 passing through Schwarz-Brettingen on his way to Berlin. 
 It was in my first semester at the University, and just after
 
 182 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the Constitution of the North German Bund was put into 
 force by Royal Patent. The Social Democrats had pro- 
 tested against the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from, 
 the independent State of Luxembourg wanted to rush 
 Germany into war over the business, and they, as well 
 as the Ultramontaine, having plenty of followers among 
 the students both parties formed up on the platform of 
 the railway-station, and gave the Count three groans." 
 
 "Plow did he take 'em the groans, I mean?" 
 
 "Rather as if he liked them, now I come to think of it. 
 I can see him now, in civil dress, black frock-coat, vest and 
 trousers, with a white choker something like a Lutheran 
 clergyman's. And he jammed his great black felt hat down 
 on his head and thrust his huge body half out of the car- 
 riage window. His eyes fierce blue eyes heavily pouched 
 underneath, and blazing from under shaggy eyebrows 
 swept over us as though we were a lot of squeaking mice 
 though he was laughing in a good-tempered sort of way. 
 And he shouted something in dialect they said it was a 
 common Pomeranian proverb, 'Let not Uve men fight 
 over a dead dog!' " 
 
 "Meaning ?" 
 
 "Meaning, one would suppose, that the Luxembourg 
 garrison was a right which had been given up as unim- 
 portant, and therefore was of no more value than a dead 
 dog, set against the cost of a new war." 
 
 "I'm obliged for your information," said Mr. Knewbit, 
 pushing back his chair and getting up to reach his brass 
 tobacco-box from, the high kitchen mantelshelf. "In 
 return I'll give you a bit o' news which may be of walley 
 to you. You have been talking A.I journalism, young 
 man, as different from the stuff you commonly put on 
 paper as gold is from this metal" he tapped the brass 
 tobacco-box "and my advice is For the future, write 
 only of what you know; have felt, and heard and seen!" 
 
 He sucked despairingly at the wooden pipe he was 
 filling and, finding it foul, stuck the stem in the spout of 
 the boiling kettle a practice abhorred of Miss Ling and 
 left it to be cleaned as he continued: 
 
 ' ' Big things are going on in the world at this moment 
 things worth watching and waiting for. Damme ! though 
 I'm not a swearer as a rule," said the little man, "if I 
 don't wish I could change places with something that has
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 183 
 
 wings. The great man we have been a-talking of is at this 
 minute at his country-seat in Pomerania that's the 
 estate he bought with the grant sixty thousand pounds 
 English, it came to the German Parliament voted him 
 after the Prussian- Austrian War. And the King of Prussia 
 is at Ems, a-drinking the waters, and the French Ambassa- 
 dor has been sent there by the Emperor Napoleon III. to 
 obtain a special audience, I'm told. And if you or me 
 could swop jobs with a fly on the wall at one place or the 
 other being a German insect it would be likely to under- 
 stand their crack jaw language me or you would be able 
 to supply a leaded half-column for Special Issue that would 
 fairly set the world afire. See this!" 
 
 He took the short poker from the top of Miss Ling's 
 kitchen-range, and, pushing back his chair, rose and 
 approached the wall, which was destitute of pictures, and 
 distempered in an economical brown color. 
 
 "Look here, I say! . . ." began P. C. Breagh. 
 
 "The breath of genius inflates me," said Mr. Knewbit, 
 who had had more than his allowance of beer at supper. 
 ' ' The impulse to prophesy stimulates me. Look at this ! ' ' 
 
 He wielded the poker deftly as he spoke. And on the 
 brown distemper appeared in huge white letters: 
 
 WILL THERE BE WAR? 
 
 YES! 
 
 HOHENZOLLERN QUESTION NO DEAD DOG TO FRANCE ! 
 GAUL. AND TEUTON RIPE FOR CONFLICT. 
 
 BISMARCK 'S VIEWS ! 
 
 "But, there, my inspiration gives out," said Mr. Knew- 
 bit, replacing the poker on the range and shaking his head 
 mournfully, "unless it was possible to change with that 
 fly on the wall and take him at one of his expansive, 
 confidential moments if he ever has any neither me nor 
 any other man living will ever be able to give Bismarck's 
 real views upon this or any other subject dealing with 
 Politics. Who's this?" 
 
 The hall-door had slammed a moment previously. There 
 had been a step upon the oilcloth-covered basement stair- 
 case, and now it bore Miss Ling's first-floor lodger, Herr
 
 184 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 von Rosius, the "quiet gentleman," who taught German 
 to English students and English to Germans at the Insti- 
 tute of Languages in Berners Street, W. across the thres- 
 hold of her tidy kitchen, pipe in mouth and hat in hand. 
 
 "Meine Herren, I haf to beg your pardons! I seek 
 
 the Fraulein Ling " he was beginning, when suddenly 
 
 the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the ill-fitting checked 
 tweed clothes was petrified into rigidity. The felt hat he 
 had civilly removed dropped from his hand, his jaws 
 clenched on his inseparable meerschaum. Bolt upright, 
 crimson to the hair, and staring through his steel-rimmed 
 spectacles, he stood confronting the huge white letters 
 that disfigured Miss Ling's brown distemper. 
 
 "Kreuzdonner wetter! was ist dies?" Carolan heard him 
 mutter in his own tongue. " Es ist in jedermanns Mund!" 
 Then he recovered himself almost instantly, picked up his 
 hat, and gave good-evening in his stiff, yet civil, way. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 "GOOD EVENING! Miss Ling is out, and won't be back 
 for an hour," explained Mr. Knewbit, "but if there was 
 anything you were wanting in a hurry, I'll see that you 
 get it, somehow. ' ' 
 
 "Thanks, thanks!" said Herr von Rosius pleasantly. 
 "So that I shall have my bill within an hour I shall need 
 nothing. Pray inform the Fraulein I haf just received a 
 cable from my family in Germany. They tell me I am 
 wanted at home." 
 
 "Sorry, sorry!" said Mr. Knewbit in his pouncing 
 manner. "Sudden, sudden! Hope no bad news?" 
 
 Von Rosius 's pale blue eyes might have been stones, 
 they were so hard, and had so little expression. He re- 
 moved and wiped his glasses with his silk handkerchief, 
 and said, carefully replacing them: 
 
 "Nein, ganz und gar nicht, but my mother is in need of 
 me. So I have resigned my post at the Berners Street 
 Institute of Languages, and got my passport from our 
 North German Consul in your city. Be so good to give my 
 message to the Fraulein. I go upstairs to pack my trunks 
 and bags!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 185 
 
 Von Rosius 's long legs had carried him to the first-floor 
 before Mr. Knewbit had done rubbing his ear and think- 
 ing. When his sitting-room, door had banged, and the 
 kitchen gaselier ceased to vibrate at the concussion, the 
 little man said, looking at Carolan: 
 
 "You have an eye in your head, young chap, and have 
 lived in that gentleman's country, and speak his language. 
 And yet the setting of his upper lip and the blank expres- 
 sion he throwed into his spectacles when I put a plain 
 question to him, have told me more about him than you've 
 learned. I'll bet you a ginger-ale that Germany is his 
 mother, and he has been recalled to serve in the Reserve 
 Force, I forget what they call it just now." 
 
 "They call the Reserve the Reserve, but I expect you 
 mean the Landwehr," returned Carolan, wondering at the 
 little man's sharpness. 
 
 "That's it. Listen to him singing," said Mr. Knewbit, 
 as the first-floor sitting-room door banged open again, 
 heavy steps crossed the landing, and the robust baritone 
 of Herr von Rosius trolled forth a fragment of song: 
 "Now, if that might be anything in the 'Rule Britannia* 
 line, my ginger-ale's as good as won." 
 
 "It's the Wacht am Rhein," said P. C. Breagh, return- 
 ing enlightened from an excursion to the bottom of the 
 kitchen staircase, "and I believe you've hit the nail on 
 the head." 
 
 "He served in '66 he told me," said Mr. Knewbit, indi- 
 cating the unseen Von Rosius with an upward jerk of his 
 chin, ' ' and now he 's got to go back and be a cog or a screw- 
 nut somewhere in the big war-machine you've told me of. 
 What did he call Service of the Active kind? 'Camping 
 under the helmet-spike. ' We shall miss him, for a quieter 
 and civiler lodger never wore out oilcloth. Hark! that 
 was the hall-door. Monsieur Meguet's back uncommon 
 early. As a rule, after the Museum Print Room closes he 
 goes to his club in Leicester Square." 
 
 The French gentleman who lived on the second floor had 
 ascended the doorsteps simultaneously with Mr. Ticking. 
 Mounting to the hall on his way upstairs, attended by the 
 ginger Tom no longer a kitten P. C. Breagh found them, 
 surrounded by a blue haze of Sweet Caporal and Navy Cut, 
 finishing a political discussion on the mat, while Mr. 
 Mounteney, languidly leaning against the door-post of
 
 186 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the ground-floor front-parlor, listened with a detached 
 and weary air. 
 
 "C'est de bouc emissaire I tell you he is the scape- 
 goat of a diplomat 's malice ! ' ' declared the French gentle- 
 man. "Of himself he is without designs unambitious! 
 a good child, nothing more ! Brave as he is has he not 
 been trained from infancy to hardihood and acts of daring ? 
 has he not slept with but a blanket for covering, and 
 eaten the soldier's sausage of pea? . . . Brave as he is, 
 he dare not draw upon his unhappy country the terrible 
 the devastating the exterminating wrath of France!" 
 
 The French gentleman whose profession was Prints had 
 spoken loudly, possibly without the design of being heard 
 upon the first floor. 
 
 Now, as he paused to wipe his streaming brow with a 
 brilliant green silk handkerchief, a door upon the landing 
 immediately above was suddenly thrown open, and as a 
 trunk was dragged across the landing, a stave of the Ger- 
 man equivalent to "Rule, Britannia," boomed forth in 
 Herr von Rosius 's powerful baritone : 
 
 "While there's a drop of blood to run, 
 While there's an arm to hold a gun 
 While there's a Jiand to wield a sword- 
 Brum brum brum brum " 
 
 The German words were lost in the racket accompanying 
 the violent ejection of heavy articles from the bedroom. 
 Comparative calm ensued as M. Meguet continued: 
 
 "Disciplined, well drilled, energetic, and brave, the Army 
 of France is unmatched and invincible. Our Emperor 
 assures us upon the honor of a Napoleon, that, equipped 
 and ready to the last buckle to the final gaiter-button, it 
 waits but the signal to roll on. Its musket is infinitely 
 superior to the Prussian needle-gun, that feeble invention 
 of an ill-balanced mind ! its artillery is commanded by a 
 picked corps of officers is enforced by that terrific weapon, 
 the mitrailleuse. The Army of Prussia is a bundle of dry 
 bones, fastened together not with living sinews but with 
 rusty wire. The Prussian Monarch is a tottering panta- 
 loon of seventy-three, crowned with dusty laurels; who 
 submits to be the puppet of a demon in human form! 
 The Genius of France is a divine and glorious being, whose
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 187 
 
 soul burns with the noble thirst for warlike achievements, 
 whose blood courses with the fire and heat of unimpaired 
 youth. ..." 
 
 From upstairs came the big baritone, buzzing like a 
 gigantic bumble-bee: 
 
 "The oath is sworn the .hosts roll on, 
 In heart and soul thy sons are one. 
 Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine, 
 We'll keep our watch, upon the Shine!" 
 
 ' ' I tell you ! ' ' cried M. Meguet passionately, and pitching 
 his voice so as to be heard, if possible, still more distinctly 
 on the floor above; "France will cross the Rhine! Her 
 hosts will inundate the soil of Germany like a vast tidal 
 wave, and in one moment obliterate " 
 
 Silence had prevailed above during the utterance of the 
 above-recorded sentences. At the word "obliterate," a 
 heavy canvas holdall dropped over the balusters of the 
 upper landing, missing the speaker by a calculated inch; 
 and as the ginger Tom, with an astonished curse, disap- 
 peared in the direction of the kitchen: 
 
 "Prut!" said the voice of Von Rosius from above, 
 "that was an uncommonly near shave. Pray pardon," he 
 added, appearing on the staircase, emitting volumes of 
 smoke from his big meerschaum. "I so much regret the 
 accident ! ' ' 
 
 He was attired in rough traveling-clothes, and wore an 
 intensely practical woolen cap with ear-flaps, though the 
 July night was oppressively hot. And his spectacles were 
 inscrutable as he gathered up the boots, slippers, and 
 clothes-brush that had escaped from the holdall, leaned 
 the bulky brown canvas mass against the hall-wainscoting, 
 and felt in the drawer of the rickety hatstand that never 
 had hats on it, for the cab-whistle that was wheezy from 
 overwork. 
 
 "It is nothing, Monsieur, you have not deranged me for 
 an instant," returned M. Meguet, with ominously smiling 
 bonhomie. Then refixing his late audience with his eye, he 
 went on as though the interruption had never happened: 
 
 "and obliterate from the face of the earth the entire 
 German nation." 
 
 Von Rosius opened the hall-door, letting in the sultry
 
 188 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 smell of the hot street. lie stood upon the threshold, and 
 blew for a four-wheeler, one tittering, mocking trill. 
 M. Meguet continued, quavering, and clutching his brow 
 in t' 3 character of the terriiied Hohenzollern, and impart- 
 ing a tremor of agitation to his legs: 
 
 "Is '.'". then, to be wondered at," cries this unhappy 
 Leopol i, "that the opinion of Queen Victoria and the 
 observations of the Czar of Russia have quickened scruples 
 already existing in my breast? Will my royal relatives 
 wonder that I say: This shall not be? The brand de- 
 signed to set a world on fire has been quenched by my 
 mother's tears, and the entreaties of my wife and infants. 
 Let M. de Bismarck mount the Spanish Throne, and adorn 
 his crafty temples with this crown of piercing bayonets. 
 I withdraw from this fatal candidacy, though the whole 
 world should say " 
 
 M. Meguet shrugged his shoulders and struck the blow 
 for which he had been saving himself: 
 
 "should say what the latest edition of that admirably- 
 informed journal, the Evening Gazette, quotes from this 
 morning's edition of Le Gaulois: 
 
 " 'La Prusse cane!' ' 
 
 Von Rosius was standing on the threshold of the open 
 door as the words hissed past him. Distant wheels were 
 rumbling up the dusty cobblestones of Coram Street from 
 the cabstand at the corner of Russell Square. 
 
 "Now, what's the English of that?" asked Mr. Ticking, 
 rashly. 
 
 "Possibly," remarked M. Meguet, with a sardonic smile 
 at the tall figure and broad shoulders that blocked the 
 hall-doorway, "Herr von Rosius might be able to inform 
 you!" 
 
 Von Rosius signaled to the driver of the approaching 
 cab before he turned. In his rough, loosely-fitting clothes, 
 he bulked large and menacing, though his spectacles were 
 as inscrutable as ever, and under his light mustache his 
 excellent teeth showed quite smilingly. He felt for money 
 in his trousers-pocket as he answered composedly: 
 
 "With pleasure. It is a slang expression used by the 
 blackguards of the lowest quarters of Paris. 'Cane' is 
 to 'back out' or to 'climb down,' as the Americans would 
 say. Excuse me! I go to pay my bill."
 
 He nodded slightly as he passed Ticking and Moun- 
 teney, and bestowed the same civility on P. C. Breagh. 
 Then his heavy footsteps thundered down the kitchen stair- 
 case, from whose hatchway he emerged a few minutes 
 later, accompanied by Mr. Knewbit, who had volunteered 
 to help with the luggage, and this being stacked. f ion the 
 cab, their owner got into it, and Herr von Rosius, frigidly 
 shaking hands with his English fellow-lodgers, and ex- 
 changing a distant salute with M. Meguet, got into the 
 fusty vehicle and was driven away to the triumphant 
 strains of the Marseillaise, performed by his racial an- 
 tagonist on the piano appertaining to the first-floor sitting- 
 room he had a moment previously vacated. 
 
 ' ' ' Prussia climbs down, ' ' ' murmured Mr. Knewbit, 
 standing before the inscription on the kitchen distemper. 
 
 "With the 'and on her 'elm that she 'as " he went on 
 
 shedding "h's, " as was his way when deeply meditative, 
 "I should doubt the correctness of that report. Still, I 
 shall advise Maria to keep them first-floor apartments 
 vacant a day or two in case Mr. von Rosius 's mother 
 doesn't want him after all. . . . What does Solomon 
 say? 'Designs are strengthened ~by counsels, and wars are 
 to be managed by Governments.' ' 
 
 The kettle was boiling madly, and a volume of steam 
 was issuing from the pipe-bowl. Mr. Knewbit rescued 
 the blackened briar-root, mechanically filled it, and looked 
 for a light. 
 
 There was a crumpled pale green paper lying near his 
 boot upon the worn linoleum. He picked it up, and saw 
 that it was a cablegram issued by the North German Sub- 
 marine Telegraph Company, addressed to Von Rosius, and 
 containing a message of four words : 
 
 "Lanze inden Schuh, Uhlan! Hauptquartier, Berlin." 
 
 "Now, which shall I do?" asked Mr. Knewbit, scanning 
 the baffling foreign words written in the familiar English 
 characters. Torn between conscientious scruples and a 
 characteristic thirst for information, the little man was 
 pitiable to see. "Which shall I do?" he repeated. "Use 
 this here for a pipe-light or show it to my young shaver 
 upstairs ? ' ' 
 
 Deciding on the latter course, he climbed to the attic 
 rented by the young shaver, and knocked at the door.
 
 190 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Come in! . . . I'm not working to-night," said P. C. 
 Breagh out of the darkness. Upon Mr. Knewbit 's striking 
 a match, the young man, who was leaning back in his chair 
 before the venerable davenport, contemplating the dusk 
 oblong of starry sky visible above the chimney-pots of 
 Bernard Street, shook himself free of thought as a setter 
 shakes off water, and got up. 
 
 "Feel out of sorts?" asked Mr. Knewbit, burning hi* 
 fingers, and striking another match as he bustled to the 
 single bracket over the narrow wooden mantelshelf and 
 lighted the gas. "Anything wrong?" 
 
 "I feel out of the swim," said P. C. Breagh, sitting down 
 again astride his chair, and cupping his square chin in a. 
 fist that had ink-smears on it, as he stared at the wobbling 
 blue flame that presently spread itself into a yellow fan of 
 radiance, "and hipped and beastly. I've no right to 
 quarrel with my bread-and-butter, but I'm doing it to- 
 night. The fact that I'm a Nobody doesn't prevent me 
 from wanting to wind up as Somebody. Putting the case 
 roughly, that's what's wrong." 
 
 "This here house," said Mr. Knewbit in his pouncing 
 manner, "belonged to a man who was a Nobody, if you 
 like. A Master Seaman, who used to tramp it to his ship 
 at Wapping, and pick up the outcast babies lying in the 
 kennels, and roll 'em in his big boat-cloak and carry 'em 
 home. Them foundlings was nobodies yet two of 'em 
 lived to be Lord Mayors of London. Old Captain Coram, 
 who founded the Hospital, died neglected and forgotten, 
 but nobody looking at his tomb in the Chapel yonder will 
 deny he wound up as Somebody at last!" 
 
 P. C. Breagh yawned hugely and rumpled his hair dis- 
 contentedly. 
 
 "The chap you're talking of was a philanthropist, and I 
 want I'm not ashamed to want to build a career for 
 myself instead of founding a charity-school. I want your 
 own talk has made me want! to get out of this little 
 squirrel-cage even though there are nuts and sugar and 
 bread in it all the year round. And" his scowl was por- 
 tentous "if this Hohenzollern hadn't backed out of the 
 Spanish Crown affair, when France cockadoodled, and 
 there had been a racket on the Rhine frontier I'd just 
 have rummaged round to find an editor who'd be ass 
 enough to pay a raw hand for letters sent from the seat
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 191 
 
 of hostilities and if I couldn't have found one and of 
 course I couldn't when seasoned men are as plentiful 
 as nutshells in the Adelphi gallery I'd have gone to the 
 war as a camp-follower and got experience that way!" 
 
 Said Mr. Knewbit, turning and scanning the resolute, 
 dogged young face, with black eyes that twinkled like jet 
 beads : 
 
 "I don't agree with you that seasoned Correspondents 
 are plentiful. There are thousands who 're ready to sit in 
 an office behind the Compositors' Room, and write eye- 
 witnesses' accounts of thrilling charges. But them that 
 are ready to go out with a Permit and get attached to a 
 Staff; them that are ready and willing to march with an 
 Army on the War path starve when there are no rations, 
 lie in the fields in the sopping rain when no roof's to be 
 had to cover 'em write accounts of the day's fighting 
 under shell-fire, and cheerfully get killed if a bullet comes 
 their way in the course o' things! you can't call the 
 journalistic profession overstocked with them. If you do, 
 just name me one such man for each finger of these two 
 big hands of mine. I defy you to, so there!" 
 
 They were very big hands, and as Mr. Knewbit held 
 them up side by side, with the palms toward his young 
 shaver, they not undistantly resembled a pair of decent- 
 sized flatfish. 
 
 "To become a man like one of these and they're the 
 Pick of the British Nation, ' ' said Mr. Knewbit, ' ' you must 
 be pitched into the midst of things neck and crop, and left 
 to sink or swim. I compliment you when I say that I 
 believe you one of the swimming kind. Now, supposing 
 War broke out after all how much Hard Cash would you 
 want to carry you through a Campaign?" 
 
 ' ' I 've got five pounds put away in the Post-Office Savings 
 Bank," returned P. C. Breagh, after a moment's mental 
 calculation, "and I believe I could manage if I had an- 
 other fifteen." 
 
 "Making Twenty Pound," said Mr. Knewbit, biting a 
 finger thoughtfully. He threw the finger out at P. C. 
 Breagh, and his black eyes twinkled more than ever. "For 
 Fifteen Pound down would you undertake to write and 
 send home to the person advancing you the money, for 
 say four weeks (that'd give two nations comfortable time 
 to have it out and settle their differences in a Christian-
 
 192 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 like manner, with a little burning of powder, and blood- 
 shed) three letters per week, describing in a style read- 
 able by plain, ordinary, everyday people what you've 
 seen, and heard and felt and smelt don 't forget that ! ' ' 
 said Mr. Knewbit, shaking his finger warningly at P. C. 
 Breagh, "on the march, or in the bivouac, or while the 
 fighting was going on?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh would have broken in here, but the held-up 
 finger stopped him on the verge of utterance : 
 
 "Avoid sham Technicality," said Mr. Knewbit sternly. 
 "Don't let me have stuff like: 'Sir On the morning of 
 the th the Field-Marshal von Blitherem or General Par- 
 lezvous shifted the left wing of his Division nearer to his 
 center, and shortly after nine o'clock the forces under com- 
 mand of What'shisname and Thingummy began to move 
 in column of so and so. A light 'aze lay upon the fields 
 the droppin' fire of the enemy's Artillery made itself 
 felt at the Advance Posts nor' and nor'-west.' Nor don't 
 you ladle me out sentimental slumgullion, after the fashion 
 of 'All is Peace, while I pen these 'asty lines and sip 
 my morning coffee. Yet ere the radiant beams of Sol 
 will have dried the pearly dew from these smiling fields, 
 the 'ideous roar of cannon and the withering burst of 
 shrapnel will have devastated and blighted Nature's 
 choicest 'andiwork, and Man, that noblest work of the 
 Creative Power will be engaged in the 'orrible task of 
 destroying fellow-men wrought in the image of hisself.' 
 For the Lord is a Man of War according to the Scrip- 
 tures," said Mr. Knewbit, ignoring P. C. Breagh 's amuse- 
 ment. "And it is written that He shall overthrow King- 
 doms and break the scepters of Kings, and cause that 
 nations shall be swallowed up in nations." He added, 
 with a sharp change to his business tone, "And bad or 
 good, these letters of yours are mine, to burn or print as 
 I think fit and necessary? All right! I'll draw up a 
 little agreement and whenever you choose to sign it 
 there 's your Fifteen Pounds. Lord ! to think I should live 
 to send out a Special Correspondent, all to my own cheek! 
 It's a a luxury I should never have anticipated." 
 
 "The Correspondent won't be much use without a war 
 to correspond about," said Carolan, growing weary of 
 Mr. Knewbit 's humor. "And I suppose there won't be 
 one now."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 193 
 
 "We shall know for certain, I dare say, when you've 
 thrown your eye over this paper here," said his patron, 
 producing a crumpled oblong of pale green. "That it's 
 addressed to another person ain't your business. I mean 
 that person no injury and naturally no more don't you. 
 What you're asked to do is to English these words for 
 me." He handed over the cablegram and expanded him- 
 self to hear. P. C. Breagh read with lifting eyebrows : 
 "Lanze inden 8chuh, Uhlan! Hauptquartier, Berlin." 
 "And what's that mean? English it, can't you?" 
 snapped Mr. Knewbit, rabid with curiosity. 
 P. C. Breagh Englished it as requested: 
 "Lance in rest, Hussar. Headquarters, Berlin." 
 
 Said Mr. Knewbit later on, warming his calves despite 
 the heat of the weather, at the low coke fire in the kitchen 
 register, while Miss Ling bustled about clearing away the 
 supper-cloth : 
 
 "That there cable was received in London at six- thirty 
 this evening, and the Evening Gazette Meguet quoted from 
 was the latest issue about eleven a. m. I shall go down 
 early to the office to-night!" 
 
 His Excellency Field-Marshal General Count von Moltke 
 had said that day, having dropped in at the Berlin Head- 
 quarters of the Reserve Landwehr for the purpose of 
 perusing certain lists sent from London a few days pre- 
 viously by the Teutonic gentleman who taught English 
 to German immigrants at the Institute in Berners 
 Street, W.: 
 
 "It was an excellent idea of Colonel von Rosius to fish 
 for missing Prussian conscripts and deserters from our 
 Landwehr in the character of a teacher of English to 
 foreigners in London. He has netted in a year, two thou- 
 sand privates and non-commissioned officers, would-be 
 waiters, clerks, porters, valets, and tradesmen men of 
 all ages, from forty to nineteen. A useful officer a very 
 intelligent officer. We shall make up much leakage in 
 adopting his plan!" 
 
 In the dimly gaslit murkiness of three o'clock in the 
 morning Mr. Knewbit sallied forth to business, carrying 
 his hat in his hand as he went, for the weather was oppres-
 
 194 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sive, yet walking at his usual red-hot pace, and making 
 as much noise with his boots as three ordinary men. 
 
 "I'm not in my usual mood for Nature," he said, on 
 reaching the bottom of gray, grimy Endell Street, "and I 
 flatter myself on being tough enough at a pinch to do 
 without my customary dose of fresh air. So I'll twist 
 down Long Acre and take the Drury Lane short-cut. Not 
 that there is any special reason for hurry to-night." 
 
 Yet hurry seemed abroad to an observation as strictly 
 professional as Mr. Knewbit 's. Cabs rattled over the stones 
 of the Strand, dashing Fleet Streetward ; panting mes- 
 sengers clutching envelopes dived under the horses' noses; 
 hurried pedestrians carrying little black bags jostled Mr. 
 Knewbit every moment; windows of offices glowed like 
 furnaces, and the champing of steam-engines made a con- 
 tinual beat upon the ear. 
 
 "The last report from the late Debate in the Commons 
 is in by now, ' ' said Mr. Knewbit, looking at his stout silver 
 timekeeper, under a gas-lamp, "and Gladstone 'as made 
 short work of that last batch of Bills for the Session. Fee 
 Fo Fum was nothing to 'im. Merchant Shipping, Ballot, 
 Turnpikes, Inclosures and a baker 's dozen of Scotch Bills 
 'ave been offered up in a regular 'ecatomb, and anathemas 
 'ave been 'urled at the 'eads of the Opposition with the 
 usual inspiritin' effect. The gentleman who is a-trying to 
 put a stop to the employment of young children in Fac- 
 tories and Workshops 'as been put down with the powerful 
 argument that the kids like their work, and would get up 
 at four in the morning to do it for nothink if they wasn't 
 paid for it. "What a headin' I could make out of that! 
 The stoker who was drivin' the engine to give the reg'lar 
 driver a rest when the Carlisle Railway Disaster happened 
 has been released without a stain on 'is character, and 
 complimented by the Committee on his 'umanity into the 
 bargain. Mr. Bright is better, and will wake up the Board 
 of Trade presently. That's all we shall have for our bill 
 of fare this issue, includin' the City Correspondence, 
 Sportin' Intelligence, Markets, Stocks, and state of the 
 weather, Railway Shares, Law and Police reports, and 
 Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and not leavin' out the 
 new midsummer drama at Sadler's Wells Theater or the 
 letters written by gentlemen with grievances, signing their- 
 selves ' Pater-f amilias, ' or 'Englishman,' or 'Verax,' who
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 195 
 
 have been sauced by hackney-cab drivers or over-rated by 
 the Income Tax, or overcharged for a cold-mutton, lettuce- 
 salad and cheese luncheon in a country inn. That's all, 
 and no more than bound to be ! And yet I feel as if some- 
 thing was going to happen. I'm not due in my Depart- 
 ment for another hour. I shall do a bit of a Look Round." 
 
 He entered by the swing-doors of the Fleet Street gen- 
 eral entrance, meeting a rush of hot air, powerfully flav- 
 ored with gas and machine-oil, and was instantly borne 
 off his feet by an avalanche of telegraph- agency mes- 
 sengers in oilskin caps and capes. The place was ablaze 
 with gas, shirt-sleeved men and grubby boys ran hither 
 and thither like agitated insects. The walls shook with 
 the panting of engines getting up steam. Perspiring 
 printer-foremen shot in and out of little baking-hot glass 
 offices where sub-editors were cutting down heaps of 
 * 'flimsy," ramming sheets of copy on files, correcting 
 proofs, and curtailing pars. . . . 
 
 Said Mr. Knewbit, fanning himself on a landing after 
 climbing a great many iron-shod staircases, and passing in 
 and out of a great many swing-doors emitting puffs of the 
 hot gas-and-oil-perfumed air already mentioned, and lead- 
 ing to glass-roofed departments, where shirt-sleeved and 
 aproned men labored for dear life, and huge steam-power 
 machines at high pressure trembled and panted like ele- 
 phants gone mad : 
 
 "The Foreign Telegrams are in type and the Leaders 
 are in the chases. The forms are in the machines, and in 
 another minute the word will be given to Print. Halloa! 
 Beg pardon, sir ! I 'm sure I didn 't see you ! ' ' 
 
 For a little red-hot, perspiring gentleman had leaped up 
 the staircase like a goat of the mountain, had charged at 
 the swing-doors immediately behind Knewbit, collided with 
 him, sworn at him breathlessly and vanished with a double 
 thud of the swing-doors, and a shout of "Matheson!" 
 
 A clang of voices seemed to answer him, there was a 
 brief minute's delay, ages as it seemed to the waiting Mr. 
 Knewbit; then the mad elephants, unchained, began to 
 heave and stamp and snort. And at the rate of twenty- 
 five thousand an hour, began to roll, from the great 
 cylinders of damp paper, the day's issue of the Early 
 Wire. 
 
 They rolled out as similar cylinders were rolling up
 
 196 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 and down Fleet Street and all the world over, the Report 
 of the late Debate in the Commons, the list of Bills be- 
 headed by the Prime Minister, the ineffectual efforts of 
 the gentleman who was trying to stop the Factory Owners 
 from employing Infant Labor, the result of the Com- 
 mission of Inquiry upon the Carlisle Railway Disaster, and 
 all the News of the day. And in a space reserved for the 
 Latest Foreign Intelligence appeared a telegram sent from 
 Ems by the King of Prussia, as condensed at a dinner- 
 council of three convivials, in the Wilhelm Strasse, Berlin. 
 
 And all the world read it and commented, as British 
 stocks went up and Continental Stocks played seesaw: 
 
 "The King of Prussia refuses to receive the French 
 Ambassador! . . . This most certainly means WAR!" 
 
 XXV 
 
 PERCHED on the wall, hung with an old-world Chinese 
 paper, figured with sprays of bamboo, pagodas, bridges, 
 mandarins promenading under yellow umbrellas, and fair 
 Celestials reclining on the banks of a meandering, bright 
 blue stream the German fly of Mr. Knewbit's envy would 
 have reaped scant information from the conversation of 
 the three men sitting at the dinner-table, for the reason 
 that they conversed in English perhaps for privacy's 
 sake. 
 
 The apartment, not ordinarily used as a dining-room, 
 possessed three sets of folding-doors, and beyond a sofa 
 and twelve heavy chairs, upholstered with a Chinese bro- 
 cade matching the paper, was scantily furnished. The 
 table plate was solid and handsome. A pair of huge 
 silver-gilt wine-coolers displayed a goodly array of cham- 
 pagne bottles, a cellar-basket with rows of horizontal 
 wicker-nests contained claret, Burgundy, and Rhine wine. 
 The second course was under discussion, but the servants, 
 after placing the dishes on the table, had withdrawn. By 
 a bell kept on a dumb-waiter at the host's elbow, bearing 
 sauces, clean plates, spare glasses, bread of white and 
 black, and other requisites, the attendants could be sum- 
 moned at need. 
 
 The hostess's chair at the table-head was vacant. The
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 197 
 
 two guests' places were laid on the right and left hand of 
 the host. All three men were in uniform, two were well 
 stricken in years; and Time had not left sufficient locks 
 among them to furnish a wig-maker with material for 
 covering a bald patch. 
 
 Also, they were men of whom the world had heard much 
 already, and was, before the ending of the year, to hear a 
 great deal more. 
 
 The tall, heavily-built man of sixty-seven, in the uniform 
 of a General of Division, who sat upon the host's right 
 hand, boasting a hair-tuft above either ear, a pair of 
 shaggy eyebrows, and a bristling mustache dyed to savage 
 blackness, any intelligent Berliner would have recognized 
 as Von Eoon, the Prussian Minister of War; while the 
 mild-looking veteran of seventy who opposed him, display- 
 ing the crimson badge of the Great General Staff upon a 
 plain dark close-buttoned military frock, with the ribbons 
 of a dozen decorations showing in a narrow line on his left 
 breast and the coveted Cross of the Ked Eagle of the 
 First Class hanging at the black regulation stock that 
 clipped his unstarched linen collar, would have been 
 claimed by the veriest street urchin as "Our Moltke!" 
 
 You saw in this hale, lean, stooping Staff Officer, who 
 covered a scalp as bare as a new-born babe's with an 
 obvious auburn wig, the first soldier of the day, 'the past- 
 master in war-craft. His fine, transparent beaky profile, 
 tight mouth, clear light eyes, set in a net of innumerable 
 knowing little wrinkles, and the cross-hatching of tiny 
 scarlet veins that made his hollow cheeks ruddy as Cornish 
 apples, might have belonged to some aged, ascetic Cardinal, 
 or venerable Professor of Science, rather than to Baron 
 Helmuth Carl Bernhard von Moltke, General, Field- 
 Marshal, and Chief of the Great General Staff of the 
 Prussian Army; whose heraldic motto, Erst wdgen dann 
 wagen summarizes his strategical policy ; whose conduct of 
 the Danish War of '64 and the Austrian War of '66 had 
 placed Prussia in the forefront as a military nation, under 
 whose banner were soon to gather the Confederated Ger- 
 man States. 
 
 Questioned as to the identity of the man at the head of 
 the table, the long-limbed, heavily molded, powerfully 
 built personage of five-and-fifty, attired in the undress- 
 uniform of a Colonel of White Cuirassiers, and wearing
 
 198 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 the Order of Commander of the Red Eagle, the citizen 
 would most likely have scowled, the street-boy spat forth 
 some unsavory epithet, tacked on to a name that was 
 destined to be inscribed upon the era in divers mediums, 
 inclusive of marble and iron, brass and gold and silver; 
 lead and fire; bright steel and red blood. 
 
 For this was the Minister to whom diplomats, Parlia- 
 mentary orators, and political leader-writers referred when 
 they mentioned Prussia; the accursed of Ultramontane,, 
 the abhorred of Socialists. Walking alone through the 
 streets, as, indeed, he loved to do, his keen eye and huge 
 physical strength had saved him, ere now, from the 
 assassin's bullet or knife. And you could not look upon 
 him without recognizing a Force, all-potent for good or 
 all-dominant in evil, an enemy to be execrated or a leader 
 to be adored. 
 
 The massive, high-domed head was scantily covered, save 
 for a grayish lock or so above either temple, and a thin 
 thatching behind the finely shaped, sagacious ears. The 
 eyebrows were thick of gray mixed with darkish brown; 
 the luxuriant brown-gray mustache covering the large, 
 mobile, sarcastic mouth, grew heavily as any trooper's. 
 The short, straight nose was rounded at the end like the 
 point of a broadsword. And in the indomitable, vital 
 regard of the blue eyes, partly hidden under thick and 
 level lids, you felt the master-mind, as they coldly con- 
 sidered some question of finance or diplomacy, or blazed 
 challenge and defiance, scorn and irony. And in the 
 sagging orbital pouches, as in the puffy jowl, you read 
 the unmistakable signs of bygone orgies, deep potations, 
 marvelous vital powers taxed to the utmost in the past 
 pursuit of pleasure, as by present indefatigable, unsleeping 
 labors with brain, voice, and pen in the service of Throne 
 and State. 
 
 The table-talk dealt chiefly, at first, with culinary and 
 gastronomical matters. Asparagus soup iced and a clear 
 soup with vermicelli had preceded the course of fish, placed 
 on the table by the servants, who had then been dismissed. 
 A huge dish of Waldbach trout with green sauce and an- 
 other, as capacious, of crayfish stewed in cream with mush- 
 rooms, vanished before a double onslaught on the part of 
 the War Minister and the Chancellor, the Chief of the 
 General Staff partaking sparingly, as was his wont.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 199 
 
 Said his host, smiling and setting down an empty wine 
 goblet : 
 
 "You eat nothing, Herr Baron Field-Marshal, whereas 
 I, who come of a family of great eaters, and His Excellency, 
 who boasts a similarly inherited capacity, have taken twice 
 of each dish." 
 
 "Thanks, thanks, dear Count," said Moltke mildly, 
 glancing downward at the well-marked hollow behind his 
 middle buttons ; ' ' but I do not like to overload my stomach, 
 particularly at my time of life." 
 
 "Being aware of Your Excellency's objection to dishes 
 that are heavy," the Chancellor continued gravely, but 
 still smiling, ' ' I took pains to select a menu of light, easily 
 digested things. What are three or four dozens of oysters 
 at the commencement of a dinner?" 
 
 Von Roon agreed, in a hoarse bass, that set the chande- 
 lier-glasses vibrating : 
 
 " Or a few half-pound trout, or a helping or so of stewed 
 crayfish? Mere nothings to a strong digestion." 
 
 "Mine cannot be strong," the great strategist remarked 
 modestly, ' ' for I find that an over-plentiful meal oppresses 
 the brain, and hinders steady thought." 
 
 Said the Chancellor, filling from a long-necked bottle 
 one of the three large crystal goblets that served him as 
 wine-glasses, emptying it at a draught and setting it 
 down: 
 
 "Hah! Were that known in a certain high quarter at 
 Paris, what a cargo of delicacies you would presently 
 receive from the Maison Chevet!" 
 
 Von Roon's big voice came in: 
 
 "Was not Chevet the Parisian purveyor who supplied 
 the banker-minister Lafitte with fish for a Dieppe dinner 
 in the time of the French Monarchy?" 
 
 "So!" The Chancellor, holding his napkin delicately 
 in both hands, dried the wine from his mustache, and 
 added, turning his great, slightly bloodshot eyes upon 
 the interrogator. "And who is now chief caterer for the 
 Emperor Napoleon the Third." He added, glancing back 
 at Moltke, and observing that his glass stood unemptied: 
 "Since Your Excellency will not eat, let me recommend 
 you the wine, which is of special quality. Not only Riides- 
 heim, but good Riidesheim. Ha, ha, ha!" 
 
 The veteran's clear eyes became mere slits in the mass
 
 200 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 of puckered wrinkles. He pushed back his auburn peruke, 
 showing his high-arched temples, and laughed, revealing 
 gums as healthy as a child's, and still accommodating 
 three or four staunch old grinders inclined at various 
 angles, like ancient apple-tree stumps. 
 
 "Nit,, nu! You are twitting me with my candor to 
 Sultan Mahmoud in 1835 ; but what else could I say when 
 Chosref Pasha intimated that His Sublimity required my 
 opinion? Directly I tasted his wretched wine, I knew 
 some rogue had sold him an inferior brand, and thus I 
 told him honestly: 'It is Riidesheim, Your Majesty, but it 
 is not good Riidesheim!' And with the first of the boxes 
 of tobacco and cigarettes that came from Constantinople 
 after my return to Germany, I received the message that 
 the tutun was not only Turkish tutun, but good Turkish 
 tutun." He drank off his wine, ending: "And so my 
 nephews say it is, for I smoke neither cigarettes nor 
 pipes. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I smoke pipes, ' ' said the Chancellor, stretching a white, 
 muscular hand toward the bell on the dumb-waiter, 
 "when my doctor prohibits cigars." He added: "Pipes 
 of all materials and descriptions one sort excepted. I 
 have no doubt Your Excellency could give it a name." 
 
 The War Minister, pondering, knotted his heavy tufted 
 eyebrows, and presently blew out his cheeks as a man may 
 when the jest baffles his wit. The Field-Marshal began to 
 laugh, a gentle chuckle that began by agitating his lean 
 abdomen, and shaking his bowed but vigorous shoulders 
 before it widened his mouth into a slit curved gaily at the 
 corners, and squeezed tears of merriment out of his 
 puckered eyes. 
 
 "I'll wager half a pfennig I will name it at the first 
 guess! You mean the Calumet of Peace!" 
 
 Von Roon barked out a laugh. The Chancellor nodded, 
 smiling. Then two middle-aged, grave-looking male ser- 
 vants in plain black entered with the third course, and the 
 faces of the diners underwent a curious change. They 
 were more suave, and all expression seemed as though it 
 had been wiped from them. Until, following on the heels 
 of the servants (who brought the entrees} , there appeared 
 a colossal boarhound, dark tawny in color, with black 
 pointings, short, rounded ears, massive chest, square 
 muzzle, and red-rimmed eyes. Fixing these fierce orbs
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 201 
 
 upon his master with an affection proved not altogether 
 disinterested by the copious dribbling of his jaws, the 
 great brute sat upright at his left hand, flogged the carpet 
 with his heavy tail, and saluted the placing of the dishes 
 on the table with three gruff barks. 
 
 "Aha, Tyras!" 
 
 "Hey, then, Tyras! So they have cut short your fur- 
 lough, boy!" 
 
 "He would tell you, like that sergeant of infantry who 
 was made postman of a country district after the war of 
 '66, and at whom the illiterate population who never got 
 anything but bad news or dunning letters used to shoot 
 as a mild hint to keep away altogether, that all the days 
 are field-days to him. Speaking as a dog with a master 
 who walks when he does not ride, and must be waited for 
 when he is neither riding nor walking. ' ' 
 
 The Chancellor, smiling, looked at the huge brute, which 
 rose and laid its massive jowl entreatingly upon his chair- 
 arm, and receiving no immediate return in caress, lobbed 
 a heavy forepaw pettishly upon the tablecloth. A chased 
 silver-gilt salt-cellar, in the shape of a Bavarian peasant- 
 girl carrying two milk-pails, toppled, and might have 
 fallen to the floor, but that the Field-Marshal caught it 
 dexterously, though without being able to prevent the salt 
 being spilt. 
 
 ' ' No harm done. See ! ' ' He triumphantly set the milk- 
 maid in her place again: "Only the salt is spilled upon 
 the cloth!" 
 
 "Now, if Tyras were superstitious!" commented the 
 host, as a servant hastened to repair the damage with the 
 aid of a napkin and a porcelain dessert-plate, "he would 
 be convinced that Madame Tyras and her sons were not 
 doing as well as might be hoped." 
 
 "The bitch has pupped, then?" said Von Roon as a 
 trio of corks exploded; and the servants, having carried 
 round the dishes, placed them on the table, set an open 
 bottle of champagne, dewy from the ice, and enveloped in 
 a damask napkin, at the right of each diner, and noise- 
 lessly quitted the Chinese room. 
 
 As the door shut, the Chancellor continued, responding 
 to Roon's question with a nod, and looking at the Chief 
 of the Great General Staff: 
 
 "However, Tyras is not one of those nervous sires who
 
 202 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 rend heaven and earth with outcries if danger threatens 
 one of their offspring. The Pomeranian breed are possibly 
 less nervous than the strain at Sigmaringen. I think 
 Prince Antony " 
 
 Blurted out the Field-Marshal, bolting a mouthful of 
 cutlet and crimsoning to the edges of his wig with sudden 
 anger: "May the great devil fly away with that pompous 
 old sheep 's-head ! ' ' 
 
 "It was not without reason," said the Chancellor, with- 
 out slackening in his onslaught upon an entree of duckling 
 stewed with olives, "that I arranged for us three to dine 
 without the servants. Did I not foresee that the hot 
 blood of the warlike youth would effervesce in some such 
 expression as that I have just heard ! ' ' 
 
 Said the old man, still flushed, but laughing, and sipping 
 at a bumper of dry Sillery: 
 
 "He is a sheep's-head, and a pompous one! He nego- 
 tiates with Prim, as head of the Hohenzollern family, quite 
 forgetting the King, it would appear! He is very well 
 pleased he thinks the place will suit his son capitally! 
 He sends him on second thoughts to ask the King if he 
 does not think so. Then when France hurries her Am- 
 bassador to Ems to inform the King, who has not said 
 'Ay' or 'Nay' in the matter, that she will not tolerate a 
 Prince of Prussia on the Throne of Spain, he writes to ' 
 the King saying that he is much impressed by the turn 
 things are taking at Paris, and though he thinks he can- 
 not in decency break off the affair, perhaps the King will 
 do it for him! Meanwhile Prince Leopold, who is the 
 chief person concerned where withdrawal or acceptance 
 is in question has quitted Ems and gone where you 
 please. . . . Not to his parents' country castle of Sig- 
 maringen, but to the Tyrol. . . . Now why to the Tyrol? 
 This marching and countermarching with no definite 
 purpose in it, makes my blood boil. Phew!" 
 
 And really the perspiration -fairly bubbled from the 
 pores of the old warrior, as he took off his auburn peruke 
 and mopped his dripping head and face with a large white 
 handkerchief. 
 
 The Chancellor, who had been discussing a second help- 
 ing of the dish before him, laid down his knife and fork 
 upon their silver-gilt supporters, unfastened a hook of his
 
 ,THE MAN OF IRON 203 
 
 undress frock, and said, withdrawing a small roll of tissue 
 papers and separating one thin penciled sheet from the 
 rest: 
 
 "There is some reason for the Prince's agitation. This 
 morning a telegram in cipher of which this is a fair tran- 
 script was dispatched from Sigmaringen to Olozaga, the 
 Spanish Ambassador at Paris. It conveys the intimation 
 that Prince Antony withdraws from the candidacy in the 
 name of Prince Leopold. It was sent by the French 
 Emperor's secret agent, a Roumanian named Straz. " 
 
 He went on informing himself, with a quiet side-glance 
 to right and left, of the effect his communication was pro- 
 ducing : 
 
 ' ' Perhaps you do not know Straz a man with the profile 
 and curls of one of M. Layard 's man-god bulls of Nineveh, 
 a living tool that might have been tempered in the 
 workshop of an Alexander Borgia, or a Catherine de 
 Medici " 
 
 He stopped to fill one of his great crystal goblets from 
 the champagne-bottle that stood beside him. Moltke, indif- 
 ferent to the dishes that stood temptingly within reach, 
 had been wiping the inside of his wig dry with his hand- 
 kerchief. Now, oblivious of the wig, and crumpling it 
 with the handkerchief into a ball, he was squeezing the 
 ball between his narrow palms as he listened to the speaker. 
 Von Eoon, who had been busy upon some sweetbreads 
 cooked in sour cream, paused in the act of helping him- 
 self again largely. 
 
 "So so this fellow Straz " The Chancellor stut- 
 tered now and then, and he did it here effectively ' ' This 
 
 uns-scrupulous f -fellow of whom I am t-talking " He 
 
 drained the big glass to the dregs, wiped his mustache 
 carefully, and began delicately unfolding more thin sheets 
 of paper from the small but pregnant wad. 
 
 * ' Ah, yes, where was I ? Th-this morning, the twelfth of 
 July, the originals of these three telegrams, which are not 
 in cipher, were sent from Sigmaringen by Prince Antony. 
 The first, to Marshal Prim, at Madrid, withdraws his son 
 from the candidacy. The second, to Olozaga, recapitu- 
 lates the wording of this. The third, ostensibly addressed 
 to the principal journals of Berlin and Germany, and to 
 the German Submarine Telegraphic Agencies by order of
 
 204 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, abandons all pretensions 
 to Jhe Spanish scepter, and restores to Spain her freedom 
 of initiative." 
 
 Von Roon bellowed like a nine-inch siege gun: 
 
 "What May-madness has the confounded old billy- 
 goat?" 
 
 The Chief of the Great General Staff put on his wig, 
 and said, folding his lean arms upon his sunken chest: 
 
 "How has he at Paris managed to frighten the old 
 man?" 
 
 The Chancellor said, fixing his full, powerful eyes upon 
 the light ones twinkling through their wise old puckers: 
 
 "The mission of M. Straz, privately sent, upon the 
 advice of the Duke de Gramont, by the Emperor of France 
 to Sigmaringen (while Count Benedetti repairs to the 
 King of Prussia at Ems, and a third emissary, Bartholdi, 
 is sent to menace President Zorilla at Madrid) the mis- 
 sion of M. Straz is to terrify the Prince and Princess 
 with threats of the assassination of one, if not both their 
 sons." 
 
 Commented Moltke, shrugging a shoulder : 
 
 ' ' To work on the woman, always if there is one ! . . . 
 Badinguet's tactics are not new but they are effective 
 beyond doubt." 
 
 "Knave!" came from Roon, in a blurt of indignation 
 
 "Says Stfaz to Prince Antony of Hohenzollern I give 
 you the exact words; 'Highness, His Imperial Majesty 
 the Emperor authorizes me to inform you that a group of 
 Roumanian conspirators are plotting against the life of 
 your elder son, Prince Charles von Hohenzollern now 
 Charles of Roumania. The threads of this plot being 
 centered in Paris, it is in the Emperor's power to sever 
 them he will do so if Prince Leopold withdraws from 
 the candidature, he will not seek to deter the conspir- 
 ators, should the Prince prove obstinate. Reflect in addi- 
 tion that Prince Leopold, as King of Spain, will have 
 to contend against the plots of Alfonsists and Carlists 
 as against the intrigues of Montpensier and other aspir- 
 ants to Isabella's vacated throne. He will not be sum- 
 moned to reign he will be called to a disaster. Death 
 will sit beside him, under the Royal canopy.' ' 
 
 The reader's muscular white hands drew another crack- 
 ling sheet from the little roll of papers. He went on:
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 205 
 
 "The mother of the two young men was present as 
 was intended when Straz delivered this message from, 
 the Emperor. Naturally the Princess brought her bat- 
 teries to work upon the Prince and her younger son, 
 who, though it is not admitted, was actually present. 
 She has wept, implored, prayed, fainted, argued for forty- 
 eight hours " 
 
 The Field-Marshal muttered: 
 
 "Poor soul!" 
 
 And with his wrinkled hand he rubbed a glistening 
 drop from his cheek, that was not perspiration. Von ROOD. 
 snorted like a dyed old war-horse: 
 
 "Meanwhile, the Imperial Ambassador, Count Bene- 
 detti, will be setting forth the object of his mission to the 
 King!" 
 
 Said the Chancellor, letting the words come out softly 
 and distinctly, and one would have expected so huge a 
 man to roar after the fashion of giants, rather than to 
 speak in such mellifluous tones: 
 
 "His instructions run thus: 'Say to the King that we 
 have no secret motive, that we do not seek a pretext for 
 war and that we only ask to reach an honorable solu- 
 tion of a difficulty that was not created by us.' ' 
 
 "It is honorable, then," said Von Moltke in a tone of 
 childlike wonder, ' ' to threaten to murder that old woman 's 
 two sons?" 
 
 "Meanwhile," said the mellifluous, pleasant voice of the 
 Chancellor, "the Emperor and Marshal le Boeuf have sent 
 Staff-Colonel Gresley to Algiers with secret orders to Mac- 
 Mahon to embark those troops from Africa which are 
 most available for service on the Continent, and to warn 
 the most distant regiments to be at Algiers on the 18th. 
 The Generals of his Artillery and Engineers have been 
 dispatched upon a plain-clothes confidential visit of in- 
 spection to the fortresses of the North-East, all leave has 
 been stopped, and the commanders of brigades have 
 apprised the staffs of the mobilization offices to dispatch 
 the orders of recall of the reserves. This was put into 
 effect on the 8th. Upon the same day the order was given 
 to bring the Infantry regiments up to War strength by 
 the creation of their Fourth Battalions, and General Blon- 
 deau, of the Administrative Branch of the "War Depart- 
 ment, has been authorized to exceed his credit by the
 
 206 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sum of a million francs." He ended, showing his small, 
 regular teeth, as he smiled agreeably upon his hearers: 
 "The Tuileries system of Secret Intelligence is certainly 
 excellent, but I do not think we are so badly served!" 
 
 "Badly served!" echoed Roon. "One would say not!" 
 
 "You must be served by the great devil himself and all 
 his devilkius, Otto, my dear fellow ! ' ' said the Chief of the 
 Great General Staff, with a merry chuckle, "to have all 
 this dished up to you before it is cold! "Well, well! 
 Thanks be to the good God we are not so far behind 
 these French as we might be! No, no! not at all so far 
 behind! . . ." 
 
 He said this musingly, his startlingly limpid eyes almost 
 hidden by the wrinkles and puckers, his long, humorous 
 upper lip drawn down and set firmly on the lower one, 
 as he cupped his sharp chin in the palm of one wrinkled 
 hand, nursing the elbow appertaining to it in the palm 
 of -the other hand. 
 
 " 'So far behind,' do you say?" growled Von Roon. 
 "Sapperlot! I should call it a day's march and a half- 
 day's march ahead!" 
 
 "It may be it may be!" said the Field-Marshal 
 placidly. "God grant that it prove so!" 
 
 ' ' You are as pious as the King to-night, ' ' said the Chan- 
 cellor, laughing heartily. "And your God is the God of 
 Battles, we all know!" 
 
 "Yes, yes, the Friend Above does not forget this old 
 fellow!" said the Field-Marshal simply. "The thousand- 
 ton Krupp gun whose acquaintance the Parisians made 
 at the Exposition of 1867, has been waiting ever since to 
 make upon them an impression of a different kind! Like 
 the gun, I have bided my time, as the Scotch say. Neither 
 the cannon nor myself will last for ever, but to worry is 
 folly! . . . Heaven will not let us rust upon the shelf!" 
 
 " 'Menscli drgere Dich nicht' is a good proverb." said 
 the Chancellor, "not only for Your Excellency! Chained 
 to my study-table all yesterday and this morning, hor- 
 ribly handicapped by the absence of my First Secretary 
 Abeken, who is doing duty with the King at Ems. listen- 
 ing to reports, receiving showers of telegrams, dictating 
 replies in answer to the appeals or expostulations of 
 Foreign Ministers sending instructions to Ambassadors, 
 and drinking Miihlbrunnen water, which must not be 
 taken when one is vexed or worried, if one wants it not
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 207j 
 
 to play the very devil in one's inside, I chewed the cud 
 of that proverb, 'Man, do not vex thyself!' to keep myself 
 from gnawing my tongue. That official international 
 threat of Gramont, uttered in the session of the Corps 
 Legislatif of July 6th, the filth hurled by the Paris Press 
 did not cost me a sleepless night. But that, after such 
 insults, the King of Prussia should treat with Benedetti 
 at Ems while the Prussian Foreign Minister remained at 
 Varzin stuck in my gizzard as though I had swallowed 
 a prickle-burr. It was worse than Olmiitz. ... I saw 
 nothing but resignation ahead of me!" 
 
 Von Eoon agreed: 
 
 "To me also it seemed a slight not to the Foreign 
 Minister alone but to His Majesty's Government in your 
 person. ' ' 
 
 The Field-Marshal added, his wrinkled face lengthening 
 dourly : 
 
 "I may tell you there being no ladies present! the 
 whole affair acted on me like unripe gooseberries, espe- 
 cially after reading that sentence in the Gaulois, written 
 by a gamin with a finger to his nose. ..." 
 
 Von Roon thundered: 
 
 " 'La Prusse cane!' Only say black-dose, rather than 
 sour gooseberries, and there you have the effect of the 
 words on me ! ' ' 
 
 Said the Chancellor, with a twinkle of humor: 
 
 ' ' They wrought upon myself as an emetocatharsis. For, 
 repudiating the slight, and simultaneously expelling from 
 my system the last remains of compunction, I decided 
 then and there to hurry off from Varzin to Ems for the 
 purpose of urging upon His Majesty the urgent necessity 
 for summoning the Reichstag. The words I meant to use 
 kept drumming in my skull We shall be traitors to our- 
 selves if we do not accept this challenge. Without an 
 instant's delay, we must mobilize!" 
 
 Said Roon: 
 
 "Why not, when we are prepared to take measures for 
 the safety of the Rhenish provinces? We can put Saar- 
 briick in a state of defense in twenty-four hours, and 
 Mainz in less than forty-eight. Is it not so, Herr General 
 Field-Marshal?" 
 
 Von Moltke's dry, level voice returned quietly: 
 
 "My plan of invasion was drawn up in 1868. All my 
 arrangements are made, as I have said. When His Maj-
 
 208 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 esty when the Chancellor of the Confederation and Your 
 Excellency give the signal I go home to my quarters on 
 the first floor of the south-east wing of the Great General 
 Staff Department, and dispatch a telegraphic message of 
 three words ..." He began to laugh, rubbing his hands 
 together. ' ' Then you will see whether I am ready ! All I 
 ask is Opportunity like Krupp's thousand-tonner gun!" 
 
 XXYI 
 
 THE CHANCELLOR said, emptying another bumper of cham- 
 pagne : 
 
 "This morning the opportunity lay within grasp. So 
 strongly convinced was I of this that as my phreton passed 
 through the village of Wussow, on the way to the station, 
 'War is Inevitable' seemed written on every house. The 
 old clergyman stood before his parsonage door and greeted 
 me with a hand-wave. My answer was the gesture of a 
 thrust in carte and tierce. For me the three words : ' War 
 is Declared' replaced the lettering of the advertisement 
 posters on the walls of the stations the special rushed 
 through. Yet, though I had notified His Majesty of the 
 advisability of summoning me to his assistance, I received, 
 even as I stepped out of the train at the Stettin Station, 
 a vacillating telegram from him, enjoining delay." He 
 added, laughing : ' ' Together with a message in cipher from 
 our Prussian Ambassador at Paris, informing me that it 
 has been given forth from the tribune of the Corps Legis- 
 latif that had not Prince Leopold retreated from the 
 Spanish candidature, to prevent the war with which the 
 Emperor threatens us the Government of Napoleon III. 
 would have extorted a letter of apology from the King." 
 
 Roon could not speak. Said Moltke: 
 
 "The Gallic cock crows loudly! Such a letter would 
 nicely recoup France for the humiliation of Sadowa." 
 
 "Did France succeed in extorting it," retorted the 
 Chancellor, "but she has got to get it first!" 
 
 The forehead of Roon was black as thundercloud. He 
 unhooked his collar, and wiped his congested face. The 
 Field-Marshal thrust his hand under his wig perplexedly, 
 saying :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 209 
 
 "That His Majesty should continue to treat with Bene- 
 detti after all these insults and outrages. ... It passes 
 my understanding, I am fain to confess!" 
 
 ' ' The Count himself would have no difficulty in reading 
 the riddle, ' ' said the Chancellor, shrugging. "He is 
 according to his own conviction a diplomat of the first 
 water, a statesman of infinite finesse and irresistible per- 
 suasions. Yet he did not coax us into the Emperor's trap 
 in 1867. Speaking of that, I have in my pocket something 
 that will presently jump out of it, a testimony in his own 
 handwriting that he is not quite so clever a fellow as he 
 thinks!" 
 
 "To-day," boomed Roon, "I met Prince Gortchakoff. 
 We were riding in the Unter den Linden when he stopped. 
 He spoke of the King's age the merest allusion in refer- 
 ence to a site he pointed out as being suitable for a statue. 
 His Majesty was to be represented holding a wreath of 
 laurel with the dates of 1864 and 1866 upon it. While 
 emblematical figures of Peace, and the Genius of the Do- 
 mestic Hearth, were shown disarming him of his helmet 
 and sword." 
 
 "A sneer thoroughly merited," said the Chancellor, "by 
 these days of hesitation ! ' ' He added : ' ' The Genius of the 
 Domestic Hearth is for the moment at Coblenz. However, 
 wifely expostulations can be conveyed by telegram. Her 
 Majesty's cry is, 'Remember Jena and Tilsit and avoid war, 
 even at the cost of national dishonor!' Should these en- 
 treaties of the Queen prevail, she will merit the reproof of 
 Sir Walter Scott I think it was Sir Walter Scott ! who 
 addressed to his grayhound, Maida, who had torn up 
 unless I err? the manuscript of a newly-completed novel. 
 'Poor thing! thou little knowest the injury thou hast 
 done!' " 
 
 "Women are less reasonable," declared Von Koon, 
 "than bitches, to my mind!" 
 
 ' ' Nay, nay ! ' ' said the Field-Marshal with sudden anger. 
 "Maida was not a bitch, and I cannot agree with you! 
 Great and noble female characters have been, and exist 
 now not only in the pages of history-books. It may be 
 that Her Majesty is prejudiced her influence has not 
 always been favorable to the adoption of measures I 
 would have counseled. But she is high-minded! a great 
 lady, and truly devoted as a wife. And with this ring
 
 210 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 upon my finger" he held up his wrinkled left hand and 
 showed the narrow band of gold "it would ill become 
 me to sit still and hear women likened to the unreasoning 
 beasts that perish, when for all I know my beloved wife 
 Mary is standing by my side!" 
 
 He drank a sip of wine, and continued more mildly: 
 
 "The good God took her to Himself twelve years ago, 
 in the fullness of life and strength and English beauty ! 
 while I, more than thirty years her senior, hang yet upon 
 the tree. On the top of the hill at Crusau is her tomb, 
 where one day I shall lie beside her. But before that day" 
 the brave old eyes snapped fire, and he wrinkled up his 
 ancient eagle-beak as though he savored the fumes 
 already "it may be that I shall smell powder again!" 
 
 "Let us drink to that!" said the Chancellor. As they 
 filled their glasses there came a peculiar, scratching knock 
 on the door. 
 
 "Come in, Bucher!" cried the host harshly, and the 
 summons was answered by one of His Excellency's Privy 
 Councillors of Legation, a little, stooping old gentleman, 
 with a large hooked nose and a grizzled mustache and 
 whiskers, who was dressed in a chocolate-colored, single- 
 breasted frock-coat, tightly fastened with gilt buttons, 
 and who wore a black satin stock, with the tongue of the 
 buckle sticking up among the locks at the back of his 
 neck, and baggy black cloth trousers ending in the feet 
 of a Prussian Lifeguard, encased in huge and shapeless 
 cloth boots; these moved him noiselessly to the elbow 
 of the Chancellor, to whom he whispered, handing 
 him a card, large and square, and unmistakably fem- 
 inine: 
 
 ' ' And so, as Madame was urgent . . . Your Excellency 
 knows what women are!" 
 
 "Thanks to some early studies in femininity, I am 
 credited," said the Chancellor, "with knowing a great 
 deal too much about the sex. Where have you put 
 Madame?" 
 
 Bucher answered, raising himself on his toes to approach 
 his lips to the large, well-shaped ear; for even seated, the 
 Chancellor overtopped him : 
 
 "In the gracious Countess's little red damask back 
 drawing-room " 
 
 " It is doubtful, my good Bucher, whether did she know
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 211 
 
 how she was honored the gracious Countess would welcome 
 her visitor." 
 
 "Alas! Your Excellency!" pleaded the Councillor, "but 
 Her Excellency does not know! and the room contains 
 nothing valuable. Only a few family pictures no china, 
 silver, or bric-d-brac. Nothing that it would be any use 
 to steal!" 
 
 ' ' Come, come ! ' ' expostulated the Minister, his blue eyes 
 alight with cynical amusement, "you must not speak of 
 Madame as though she were a house-thief. Our good 
 Bucher, " he went on, turning jestingly to his table com- 
 panions, "sees little difference between a person who picks 
 brains for pay, and sells the pickings, and another person 
 who picks locks and steals silver vases and cups. Rather 
 a reflection on the Diplomatic Service, now I think of it ! " 
 
 "Ach! Herr Gott!" said the Councillor in alarm, "I 
 cast no reflection, Your Excellency knows it! Only the 
 woman is of light reputation " 
 
 "And may be light-fingered into the bargain. Pos- 
 sibly " said the Chancellor, "and all the better if she 
 be so! "We will risk my wife's family portraits in her 
 vicinity until after dinner. Have coffee and liqueurs sent 
 to her, and beg her to wait a while." He added, "Let 
 them put cigarettes on the tray I have no doubt she 
 smokes tobacco. And as the smell will have passed off 
 before my wife and daughter return from Varzin, neither 
 of the ladies will ever know of the desecration of the red 
 damask back drawing-room." 
 
 And as Bucher shuffled out of the room to execute his 
 errand, his Chief rang the bell for the third course. 
 
 "By the way, Excellency," said the "War Minister, as 
 the demure servants out of livery removed the empty 
 dishes: "that Frenchwoman of poor Max Valverden's is 
 driving about Berlin." 
 
 "So!" commented the host, turning an inscrutable face 
 upon the Minister. ' ' She must find it very warm, and in- 
 sufferably dull." 
 
 "She consoled herself," said Roon, "not long after 
 Count Max's suicide." 
 
 "There," burst out the Field-Marshal, "was an incom- 
 prehensible catastrophe ! That young man who was mili- 
 tary attache at our Embassy in Paris until the return 
 of the Allied Armies of Great Britain and France from
 
 212 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the Crimea in 1856 ; and in 1866, ten years later, joined my 
 staff in Austria as third aide-de-camp I cannot under- 
 stand it he must have been demented ! ' ' 
 
 He unbuttoned the frock-coat, showing an unstarched, 
 but scrupulously clean white shirt and vest of white nan- 
 keen,- and taking a little silver snuff-box from his waistcoat 
 pocket, laid it down carefully upon the tablecloth as he 
 said: 
 
 "In '56 he brought his mistress from Paris with him 
 he was infatuated with her spirit and beauty. They said 
 she was the wife of an officer in Grandguerrier 's Division, 
 who had served throughout the whole of the "War in the 
 Crimea." 
 
 "A chef d'escadron of Mounted Chausseurs, who seems 
 to have taken his wife's desertion philosophically," com- 
 mented the Chancellor. 
 
 The Field-Marshal took a pinch of snuff, and gravely 
 shook his head. 
 
 "Of that I know nothing, but there was no meeting. 
 Max Valverden assured me, on his honor, that an oppor- 
 tunity for the challenge had been given. Otherwise the 
 young Count could not have continued in our Prussian 
 Army one would naturally have been obliged to retire 
 him." He sneezed and went on: "My personal acquaint- 
 ance with Valverden began ten years later. He served me 
 excellently. One should always give due praise to the 
 dead. But when he returned from Austria then hap- 
 pened the tragedy, at Schonfeld in the Altenwald, where 
 lies his patrimonial property, and where the lady waited. 
 And he shot himself, upon the very night of his return 
 to her." 
 
 "Not," interposed the cool, level voice of the Chan- 
 cellor, "not being expected until noon of the day follow- 
 ing." 
 
 "Of that I know nothing," said Moltke, turning his 
 ascetic hairless face full upon the speaker. "What I know 
 is that an officer who faithfully served his country and 
 whom I had recommended for distinction, at the earliest 
 opportunity died by his own hand! How the woman 
 was left, I cannot tell you. ' ' 
 
 "Count Maximilian von Schb'n-Valverden had provided 
 for Madame de Bayard when summoned upon active Ser- 
 vice," said the Chancellor. "His family did not contest
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 213 
 
 the will, and she is not badly off. Therefore," he added 
 with a smile, "when she condescends to serve my Intelli- 
 gence Department as a spy, you may suppose she does not 
 do it too cheaply. I must refer to my perambulating 
 ledger, Bucher, before I quote you the exact figures of the 
 sum I am to hand her to-night. She is a true daughter 
 of the horseleech, who cries 'Give, give, give!' incessantly. 
 But all the same I am indebted to her for those remark- 
 ably interesting particulars concerning the Mission of M. 
 de Straz to Prince Antony." 
 
 "So!" ejaculated Von Roon in astonishment. The 
 Field-Marshal rubbed his chin and turned his clear eyes 
 upon the speaker, who went on smilingly : 
 
 "M. de Straz is susceptible a fatal fault in a conspira- 
 tor. Madame is still seductive, with a figure like Circe, 
 ropes of black silk hair, a skin of cream, though the roses 
 are bought ones! and eyes the color exactly the color 
 of old, pale tawny port. Now, when you reflect that she 
 is waiting in my wife's red boudoir to interview me in my 
 next spare moment do you fear for my hitherto unassail- 
 able virtue, or regard me as proof against such charms ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' I never bet more, ' ' said Moltke, ' ' than half a pfennig, 
 and then only when I play cards with my niece. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I will wager you proof, ' ' cried Roon, ' ' for two hundred 
 thalers!" 
 
 "I can hardly bet upon my own marital infidelity!" 
 said the Chancellor, laughing, as a servant uncovered the 
 dish newly placed before him. "Will Your Excellency 
 take some of this?" 
 
 "This" was the savory piece de resistance of the mascu- 
 line banquet, a lamb of six weeks, roasted to a golden 
 brown, basted with marrow, and surrounded with tiny 
 cucumbers stuffed with seasoning. 
 
 Moltke accepted the offer with alacrity, indifferent to 
 the charms of veal with tomatoes and aubergines. Von 
 Roon, declining, hurled himself upon a fillet of beef jar- 
 diniere, and hacked a huge steak from its surface as with 
 a sword, rather than a carving-knife. The Chancellor, ply- 
 ing his gleaming weapons delicately, liberally supplied his 
 guest and piled his own plate, saying as he launched 
 himself upon its contents with unabated appetite: 
 
 ' ' Confederations may disappoint us Kings may deceive 
 us while our teeth and our digestions faithfully serve us,
 
 214 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 we can find some zest in life. When I retire, I shall culti- 
 vate vegetables, plant forest-trees, rear trout, breed cattle, 
 sheep, pigs, and poultry drop my hereditary patronymic 
 as I shed my titles of office and be known to all posterity 
 as the Farmer of Varzin ! ' ' 
 
 The hall-bell had been heard to ring a moment pre- 
 viously. There was another scratching signal on the door, 
 and Bucher appeared, manifestly excited and carrying a 
 telegraphic dispatch. 
 
 "What now?" asked the Chancellor, finishing a mouth- 
 ful. 
 
 "A telegram from Ems " began the Councillor. 
 
 The imperious hand whipped it from between his pudgy 
 fingers; the masterful voice demanded, as the envelope 
 was rent open: 
 
 "The decipherer has not left?" 
 
 "Excellency, no!" twittered the Councillor, agitated by 
 the portentous frown of his Chief, and by the grave faces 
 of Moltke and Roon. The paper was thrust back to him 
 with the curt order: 
 
 ' ' Get this deciphered do not delay ! ' ' 
 
 And as the Legation Councillor vanished, Bismarck said 
 with a short laugh, bending his powerful regard on the 
 gaunt, black stare of the War Minister : 
 
 "It is from the King, and will not please us. We may 
 make up our minds beforehand to that. Yet I drink this 
 glass to the honor of Prussia!" And filling his great 
 bumper glass from a fresh bottle that had been placed at 
 his elbow, he gulped down at least a pint of the creaming 
 nectar of the Widow Clicquot, and his guests, in smaller 
 measures, pledged the same toast. After that they sat in 
 silence, the Chancellor alone continuing to eat with appe- 
 tite until the Councillor's big feet came shuffling back 
 again. 
 
 "The copy, Excellency, 200 groups altogether," he be- 
 gan, "signed by the Herr Privy Councillor von Abeken, 
 at His Majesty's command." 
 
 The papers he held were whipped away from him. The 
 Chancellor read and his countenance most grimly altered. 
 His brows grew thunderous, trenches dug themselves along 
 his forehead, caves appeared about his blazing eyes, and 
 the pouches under them portentously bagged. The heavy 
 mustache might shade the mouth and chin, but could not
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 215 
 
 hide that they were changed to granite. He passed his 
 firm hand over them and said, his incisive tones veiled 
 with a curious hoarseness: 
 
 "Mr. Councillor of Legation, you will now leave us. 
 When I ring the bell it summons you. Pray tell Dr. Busch 
 that his services will be needed. Some articles must be 
 written for the Press to-night. ' ' 
 
 He said, as the door closed behind Bucher, and the smile 
 that accompanied the words was grim and cynical: 
 
 "Well, gentlemen, we have got our final slap in the 
 face! The Press organs of the Ultramontane and the 
 Democrats will call us by our nicknames to-morrow : ' Old 
 Hellfire ' and ' Death 's Chess-Player ' and ' The Pomeranian 
 Ogre ' and all the rest. But I swear to you that no enemy 
 of mine will ever despise me as I now despise myself ! ' ' 
 
 Roon and Moltke regarded him in silence. He went on 
 speaking, still with that strange hoarseness: 
 
 "Some have called me the Iron Chancellor. I will tell 
 you by what title Wilhelm the First of Prussia will go 
 down to posterity. Men will speak of him as the Fluid 
 King. It is written in the Scriptures, all day the phrase 
 has haunted me, 'Unstable as water, thou shalt not 
 excel!' ; 
 
 At a glance from the War Minister, Moltke rose up sud- 
 denly. His stooping scholar's body sprang upright as a 
 lance. He said, and the words rang clear as steel on steel: 
 
 "Your Excellency, I deplore the necessity of imposing 
 silence upon you. But the obligation of my military oath, 
 and your own " 
 
 He paused as the great figure of his host reared up at 
 the head of the table. He saluted the Field-Marshal and 
 said coldly: 
 
 "Herr General Field-Marshal, the rebuke is merited. 
 Holding the King's commission as Colonel of White 
 Cuirassiers of the Landwehr, I have spoken treasonably. 
 Does your Excellency wish me to ring for my sword?" 
 
 Moltke 's wrinkled face flashed into amusement, as the 
 Chancellor imperturbably stretched his hand to the bell 
 beside him. He said, laughing: 
 
 "Colonel Count von Bismarck-Schonhausen, I accept 
 your apology. I will limit the period of your arrest to con- 
 finement to this room until conclusion of dinner, on con- 
 dition that you read now this message from Ems."
 
 216 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 The Chancellor saluted, and glancing at Roon, who was 
 now standing, gloomy and downcast, "We look," he said, 
 "like three mourners about a bier. It is, in fact. Prussia 
 who lies dead upon the table. However, judge of the situa- 
 tion for yourselves." 
 
 And he read out the famous telegram handed in at Ems 
 at three-thirty : 
 
 "Count Benedetti spoke to me on the Promenade in order 
 to demand from me finally, in a very important manner, 
 that I should authorize him to telegraph at once to Paris 
 that I bound myself for all future time never again to give 
 my consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candi- 
 dature. I refused at last somewhat sternly, as it is neither 
 right nor possible to undertake engagements of this kind 
 a tout jamais. Naturally I told him that I had received no 
 news; and as he was earlier informed from Paris and 
 Madrid than myself, he could clearly see that my Govern- 
 ment once more had no hand in the matter." 
 
 "Ei-ei!" broke in Moltke, "'Somewhat sternly' . . . 
 ' Naturally I told' . . . 'Neither right nor possible,' and 
 then 'no hand in the matter!' Do I hear the King 
 or have my ears played tricks on me ? " 
 
 "Kreuzdonnerwetter!" exploded Roon. "Well might 
 one ask ' Is this the master or the servant speaking ? ' But 
 go on, go on, I pray your Excellency ! ' ' 
 
 The reader had transformed his face to an expression- 
 less mask that might have been wrought in stone or metal. 
 Now the tell-tale huskiness of fierce emotion cleared from 
 his voice. He resumed: 
 
 "This closes His Majesty's personal communication. 
 Herr Privy Councillor Abeken continues to the end. ' ' 
 
 Said Moltke: "Let us hear what little Abeken has got 
 to say to you." 
 
 The cold, incisive voice recommenced reading : 
 
 "His Majesty commands me to inform you that he has 
 since received a letter from the Prince. His Majesty, hav- 
 ing told Count Benedetti that he was awaiting news from 
 the Prince, has decided, upon the representation of Count 
 Eulenburg and myself, not to receive Count Benedetti 
 again, but only to let him be informed through an aide- 
 de-camp that His Majesty has now received from the Prince 
 confirmation of the news Benedetti has already received 
 from Paris, and has nothing further to say to the Ambassa-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 217 
 
 dor. His Majesty leaves it to Tour Excellency whether 
 Benedetti's fresh demand and its rejection should not ~be at 
 once communicated both to our Ambassadors and to the 
 Press representatives." 
 
 The close of the Royal communication plopped into a 
 pool of silence. The Chancellor coughed, and said with his 
 characteristic stutter : 
 
 "The-the laxity and diffuseness of the verbiage of this 
 dispatch 1-lul-leave me in no doubt as to the favorable effect 
 the Ems waters have already wrought upon the constitution 
 of His Majesty!" 
 
 Roon barked his laugh. Moltke raised his thoughtful 
 head from his breast and said laconically : 
 
 "It gives me the belly-ache to listen to such rubbish. 
 [Are we German men or German mice ? ' ' 
 
 The Chancellor shrugged and said: 
 
 ' ' More than ever it is clear that my position is untenable. 
 The King, under pressure of threats mingled with en- 
 treaties, has permitted himself to be heckled by the Em- 
 peror's Franco-Italian emissary. He ignores my urgent 
 request that he should refer Benedetti to his Foreign Min- 
 ister. Now, by the medium of an inferior official, he tells 
 me that I may acquaint the representatives of the State 
 and the Press that nothing is settled and no definite end 
 in view! What is settled is, that I resign!" 
 
 Von Roon called out harshly, striking a sinewy fist upon 
 the table : 
 
 "Your Excellency will not leave your friends in this 
 extremity ? ' ' 
 
 Moltke turned to him half whimsically, half plead- 
 ingly : 
 
 ' ' For our sake, Otto, stick by the old wagon ! " 
 
 The Chancellor said, with a sudden softening of the grim 
 lines of his strong face, and of the eyes that had been 
 fixed and expressionless: 
 
 ' ' You talk, both of you, like two babes in the wood. As 
 far as regards my personal influence to sway the King or 
 control the feeling of the Reichstag another hand may 
 guide the State as well as this of mine. Yet, were it pos- 
 sible having already the King's permission to produce a 
 somewhat concentrated version of this verbose telegram. 
 . . . Has either of you' a pencil? mine has been mis- 
 laid. , ."
 
 218 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Here, take mine!" said the Field-Marshal eagerly. 
 
 The Chancellor took the offered pencil with a brief nod 
 of thanks, swept the silver-gilt milkmaid ruthlessly aside, 
 and spreading the forms containing the Royal dispatch 
 on the space she had occupied, pored over them for a 
 moment, frowning heavily, before the red-chalk crayon 
 began to play its part. Words were struck out then 
 whole sentences. . . . 
 
 "Ah, ah!" said Moltke, beaming. "He has finished at 
 last. Now let us hear what it sounds like with its mane 
 cropped and its tail docked?" 
 
 "Reduced," said the Chancellor, lifting his great eyes 
 from the red-crayoned papers, "without addition or al- 
 teration, the message might run thus ..." 
 
 He read: 
 
 "After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary 
 Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to 
 the Imperial Government of France by the Royal Govern- 
 ment in Spain, the French Ambassador at Ems further de- 
 manded of His Majesty the King that he would authorize 
 him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King bound 
 himself for all future time never again to give his consent 
 should the Princes of Hohenzollern renew their candida- 
 ture." 
 
 1 ' Good, very good ! ' ' growled Roon. 
 
 "That seems to me excellent!" said Moltke, twinkling. 
 
 The Chancellor finished: 
 
 "His Majesty the King thereupon decided not again to 
 receive Benedetti, the French Ambassador, and sent the 
 aide-de-camp on duty with the information that His Maj- 
 esty had nothing further to say to him!" 
 
 "Bravo, bis!" roared Roon. 
 
 "Why," said Moltke, rubbing his hands delightedly, 
 ' ' now it has a different ring altogether. Before it sounded 
 like a parley. Now it is a fanfare of defiance ! Sentences 
 like these are worthy of a King!" 
 
 "And there can be no accusations of falsification," said 
 the Chancellor, bending his powerful regard upon his two 
 colleagues. "The Bund Chancellor carries out what the 
 Prussian monarch commands. He communicates this text 
 by telegraph to all our Embassies and to the Press agencies. 
 Is it his fault if its published words provoke the Gallic 
 cock to show fight ? ' '
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 219* 
 
 "I understand," said the "War Minister joyfully, "that 
 we should be the party attacked first. And we shall be, 
 and we shall win! Our God of old lives, and will not let 
 us perish!" 
 
 "Has Your Excellency nothing to say to me?" asked the 
 Chancellor, fixing his great eyes on the face of Moltke, now 
 radiant with childlike happiness. 
 
 "Were I a poet," returned the joyous old artist in war, 
 seizing the hand outstretched to him across the table, and 
 wringing it between both his own, "I should crown you 
 with a wreath of laurel inscribed ' Hail to thee, Guardian of 
 Prussia's honor!' or something of that kind. Being what 
 I am, I say that you are what my English nephews would 
 call 'a trump!' As you said this morning when you quitted 
 Varzin, ' War Is Inevitable ! ' ' He added, hitting himself 
 a resounding thump in the chest: "And if I may but live 
 to lead our armies in such a war then the devil may come 
 directly we have conquered these Frenchmen and fetch 
 away this crumbling old carcass!" He added, with a 
 change to gravity: "I do not say my soul, for I am 
 a decent Christian. Hey, look here, our dinner has got 
 cold!" 
 
 It was true; the viands were stagnant in the dishes. 
 The fillet sat in the center of a stagnant lake of congealed 
 gravy; the roasted lamb, reduced by the onslaughts of the 
 Chancellor to a partial skeleton, was covered with a frost- 
 ing of rich white fat. He said, with a laugh that clat- 
 tered against walls and ceiling like a discharge of mus- 
 ketry, and reaching for the bell that would summon 
 Bucher : 
 
 "It does not matter; my cook has always a second menu 
 ready in case of delays or accidents. While Bucher com- 
 municates to our Embassies and the European Press Agen- 
 cies the concentrated essence of His Majesty's telegram 
 while hundreds of thousands of handbills are being printed 
 that shall disseminate the text throughout Germany, and 
 Busch writes the articles that shall put the needful com- 
 plexion on this affair we will order up the Moet and 
 Chandon White Star I am thirsty after so much talking ! 
 and eat our dinner again ! ' '
 
 220 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 XXVII 
 
 EVER since the King, returning from the baths of Ems, 
 had been met at the railway-station by his Under-Secretary 
 of State bearing France's declaration of war, a huge, 
 orderly crowd, compact of all classes and callings, had 
 ceaselessly rolled through the streets of Berlin, chanting 
 with its thousands of sturdy lungs "Heil dir im Sieger- 
 kranz" and the "Wacht am Rhein" until its patriotic 
 fervor reached a state of ebullition only to be relieved by 
 volleys of cheers. 
 
 Jammed in the solid mass of bodies blackening the Unter 
 den Linden and packing the Opera-Platz to suffocation, 
 until the bronze equestrian statue of the Great Friedrich, 
 opposing the eastern courtyard gateway of the small stuc- 
 coed Palace, reared above a tossing sea of heads, P. C. 
 Breagh tasted the raptures of emancipation from the 
 mill-round, and drank in news at every pore. 
 
 For this was life in earnest. . . . With the red-hot cigar- 
 end of a corpulent merchant burning the back of his neck, 
 and the crook of a market woman's blue-cotton umbrella 
 imperiling his left eye ; while the sword-hilt of a gigantic 
 Sergeant of Uhlans insinuated itself between his third and 
 fourth ribs on the right side, and the huge flaxen chignon 
 of a servant-girl, armed with a capacious market-basket 
 crammed with meat, fish, and vegetables for family con- 
 sumption, bobbed itself into his mouth whenever he opened 
 that feature to cheer, or gasp for air, heavily burdened with 
 the fumes of beer, schnaps, herring-salad, garlic, sauer- 
 kraut, and perspiring humanity, he was happier than ever 
 he had been before. 
 
 The King, it was said, was holding a council with his 
 Ministers and Generals in his study on the ground-floor of 
 his Palace looking on the Opera-Platz. Presently His 
 Majesty might be expected to come out. 
 
 The tall, elderly, white- whiskered officer in the undress 
 uniform of the Prussian foot-guards a blue tunic with 
 red facings, silver buttons and epaulettes had already 
 appeared upon the balcony of a window overlooking the 
 Linden, and touched his spiked helmet in response to the 
 frenzied acclamations of his scarlet, perspiring subjects,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 221 
 
 whose staring eyes and open mouths a Berlin dust-storm 
 was filling with peppery grit. 
 
 Presently the King had moved back into the room 
 behind him, and returned with the Queen, a tall, thin, ele- 
 gant lady in half-mourning, who was weeping ; people said, 
 because she hated the thought of war, and had besought 
 her husband, on her knees, to truckle to the Napoleon at 
 Paris, and thus avert hostilities. 
 
 When the royal couple had retired amid plaudits of a 
 somewhat less enthusiastic kind, the people had demanded 
 the Crown Prince; and the King had stepped out yet 
 again with his hand on the shoulder of the heir-apparent, a 
 tall and stalwart man of thirty-nine, with a clear red-and- 
 white complexion, setting off his well-cut features, kindly 
 blue eyes, and flowing beard of yellow-brown. 
 
 Unser Fritz! his manly good looks and the Order of 
 Merit shining on his general's uniform had provoked fresh 
 outbursts of patriotic enthusiasm, in which the gray-pow- 
 dered foliage of the overrated linden-trees, limply resting 
 during a sudden lull of the dust-storm, had been wildly agi- 
 tated, and the very street-lamps had rocked. 
 
 But when the King, turning to his heir, gave him his 
 hand, when the son, reverently bending, raised it to his 
 lips, and the father with manifest emotion embraced him, 
 there had fallen a silence of sympathetic emotion. . . . 
 Then the great martial figure had reared erect again and, 
 stepping to the front of the balcony, had shouted to the 
 people : 
 
 "Krieg! MoUl!" 
 
 "Mobilization! . . . War! ..." 
 
 All the shouting that had gone before was no more than 
 the squealing of a kindergarten compared with the mighty 
 roar that greeted these two pregnant words! The scorch- 
 ing, dusty blue sky-dome, now tinged with sandy-pink sun- 
 set toward the Brandenburg Gate, seemed to quiver with 
 the upward rush of it. And not by accident from the 
 forest of flagstaffs mounted on the Palace, the Opera House, 
 and the buildings contingent, as down the whole length 
 of the Linden to the Ministerial palaces of the Wilhelm 
 Strasse, the black-and-white Flag of Prussia and the 
 Hohenzollern banner of white with the black eagle and
 
 222 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the cross of the old Teuton Order, broke and fluttered on 
 the sandy breeze. 
 
 The National Anthem broke out once more, and the war- 
 song, "Ich bin ein Preusse." The King retired on his son's 
 arm manifestly overcome with weariness. Still the vast 
 crowd of heated faces, set with shining eyes, and holed with 
 roaring mouths, persistently turned toward those ground- 
 floor windows of the Palace. Something more yet! asked 
 all the gaping mouths and staring eyes. 
 
 But the blinds of the monarch 's study were pulled down, 
 unmistakably signifying that all was over for the present. 
 . . . The central valves of the great gilded Palace gates 
 were now shut, leaving open only the smaller carriage-way, 
 through which mounted aides and orderly officers convey- 
 ing dispatches presently began to stream. The carriages 
 of Ministers and other State officials followed these, while 
 lesser personages, emerging from the exit left for pedes- 
 trians, began to hail cab-drivers from the stand of hack- 
 neys on the Linden side of the Opera House. Swearing, the 
 frustrated Jehus of these vehicles laid about them with 
 their whips in the endeavor to force their animals through 
 the solid crowd. . . . 
 
 A man went down under the hoofs of a wretched Rosi- 
 nante. There were cries for ' ' Police ! ' ' and spiked helmets 
 appeared in the crowd. It surged and swayed. . . . The 
 guardians of the law had drawn their cutlasses and were 
 beating their fellow-children of the Fatherland upon their 
 heads with the flat of these weapons, in the attempt to 
 effect a junction between the cabs and those who wished to 
 hire them. Thus the pressure on the flanks, ribs and 
 breast-bone of P. C. Breagh became suffocating. Lifted 
 from his feet, he was carried backward and forward by 
 rushes, growing less certain of his own identity as the 
 roaring in his ears became louder. Just as his eyelids 
 dropped and he passed out of his own knowledge, a power- 
 ful hand caught him by the coat-collar, and a solid rampart 
 of human flesh interposed between his lately-drifting body 
 and the waves of the human sea that raged beyond. 
 
 Gulping, P. C. Breagh became aware that he was spread- 
 eagled against the railings of the Palace courtyard facing 
 the Unter den Linden, and that a big man in a loose black
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 223 
 
 waterproof rain-cloak and broad-leaved black felt hat was 
 holding to a railing on each side of him and warding off 
 the rushes. 
 
 "Th-thanks! I'm tremendously obliged! . . ." he was 
 beginning, when the swish of the cutlasses and the shriek- 
 ing of the cutlassed drowned his voice. Yet another voice, 
 masculine, resonant, and imperious, dominated all others; 
 it cried: 
 
 ' ' The King commands the police to sheath their swords ! ' ' 
 
 And upon the instant lull in the tumult that followed 
 came another order: 
 
 "His Majesty has work to do for the Fatherland. Let 
 the people disperse quietly to their homes!" 
 
 And the crowd, pacified and quieted, answered, ""We 
 will so!" in a crashing volley of Teutonic gutturals, and 
 began to split up and move away in sections, singing "Keil 
 dir im Siegerkranz" in sonorous unison. When through 
 the Palace gates came a small and shabby brougham drawn 
 by a venerable bay, and driven by an elderly coachman 
 in gray-and-black livery, the sight of whose military cock- 
 ade evoked another whirlwind of enthusiasm. . . . 
 
 "Moltke! It is our Moltke!" men shouted to one 
 another, and the old General, who sat alone in the carriage, 
 the lean, stooping, septuagenarian in the spiked helmet, 
 whose thin, ascetic face was rosy with suppressed excite- 
 ment and whose pale blue eyes twinkled good-humoredly 
 between their narrow lids at the seething ocean of human- 
 ity in which the shabby brougham labored, saluted in ac- 
 knowledgment of the cheers. 
 
 "Moltke! Long live our Moltke! But where has Otto 
 got to ! " hiccuped an alcoholic seaman, clutching the ledge 
 of the brougham window. He continued in the midst of 
 a silence born of consternation: "What has become of the 
 Big Pomeranian? We would have hie! carried him 
 home shoulder-high for this week's hie! work he has 
 done!" 
 
 Zealous hands dragged the presumptuous speaker back, 
 as the venerable expert in war doffed his spiked helmet, and 
 said, popping his auburn-wigged head out of the brougham 
 window : 
 
 "Where Count Bismarck is needed there he will be, de- 
 pend on it ! Now, children, let me get back to my maps ! ' '
 
 224 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Tell us first how things are going in France yonder?" 
 bellowed another Berliner, and the great Field-Marshal 
 answered, pointing the jest with his keenest twinkle: 
 
 "You want to know how things are going there? Well, 
 the wheat has suffered from the drought, but acorns and 
 potatoes promise to be plentiful, and pumpkins will be big 
 this year!" 
 
 And the crowd, splitting with laughter, made way for 
 the brougham of the Chief of the General Staff, and the 
 joke was sown broadcast over Germany before the end of 
 half an hour. For were not Moltke's acorns the oblong, 
 round-ended bullets of the Prussian needle-gun, as his 
 potatoes were the shrapnel shell cast by the six-pounder 
 steel breech-loaders designed by Krupp for the Prussian 
 field-artillery, and the big pumpkins the seventeen-pound 
 projectiles fired by the siege-guns of nine centimeters' 
 bore? . . . 
 
 The massive ribs that had acted as buffers between. 
 P. C. Breagh and the battering onslaughts of the crowd 
 shook with laughter as the brougham moved on through 
 a lane that continuously opened in the mass of bodies and 
 closed when it had passed. . . . Then their owner settled 
 the wide-leaved felt hat more firmly on his head, and said 
 in well-bred, fluent English, turning his heavily- jowled 
 face and powerful, fiery-blue eyes on P. C. Breagh, who 
 was thanking him in his best German for his timely as- 
 sistance : 
 
 "Do not thank me so effusively. I have a habit of 
 sometimes saving a man 's life ! Yours happened to be in 
 peril ; there is no need to say more ! ' ' 
 
 The clear incisive tones had an inflection that was almost 
 contemptuous, yet a smile, curving the heavy mustache, 
 showed the small and well-preserved teeth it shadowed, 
 as he added in his admirable English, fastening a button 
 of the thin black waterproof cloak which had been dis- 
 arranged in the recent struggle sufficiently to show that it 
 covered some sort of military uniform: 
 
 "Save this, that I happen to possess a son about your 
 age, and should not care to lose him!" 
 
 And with this he was gone, leaving P. C. Breagh breath- 
 less with the greatness of the adventure that had befallen 
 For the owner of the bulldog face with the fierce
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 225 
 
 blue eyes blazing over their heavy orbital pouches, was 
 the unpopular Minister who had been booed by the Ultra- 
 montane and Socialist students three years before, as the 
 Berlin express-train passed through the station of Schwarz- 
 Brettingen the all-powerful Chancellor, who was meant 
 when diplomats and Press leader-writers referred to 
 "Prussia." 
 
 What did he on foot in those packed, roaring thorough- 
 fares, where the assassin's dagger or revolver might play 
 its part so safely? Perhaps, like the Third Napoleon, 
 whose peacock bubble of Empire might now have reached 
 the point of bursting, Count Bismarck believed in his 
 fortunate star. . . . 
 
 Ah! what was that round bright object lying on the 
 pavement? P. C. Breagh, still dazed with the magnitude 
 of the thing that had befallen him, stooped and picked, 
 it up. 
 
 It was a medal of silver, with the Prussian Eagle enam- 
 eled in red upon the obverse, and a name which left no 
 doubt as to the identity of P. C. Breagh 's rescuer. Upon, 
 the reverse was the inscription: "Fur Rettung aus Gefahr" 
 "For Saving From Danger." "With the date of the 
 24th June, 1842. . . . 
 
 No doubt the Chancellor prized this, the decoration 
 earned at twenty-four for saving his orderly-groom and 
 another private from drowning, when serving as Landwehr 
 cavalry officer with the Stargaard Regiment of Hussars. 
 Well, he should have it back, but into no hands but hia 
 would P. C. Breagh surrender it, P. C. Breagh, who had 
 been cast out with mockery from the editorial offices of 
 one daily and two evening newspapers, when he had offered 
 at a rate of astounding cheapness, to supply their col- 
 umns with material drawn from the experiences of one 
 who had never previously enjoyed an opportunity of seeing 
 the thing called War. 
 
 One Editor had dealt with him drastically, pitching his 
 card into the waste-paper basket, and saying, "No! Get 
 out with you!" A second had whistled up a tube and 
 called down a sub-editor, and said to him, ' ' Look at this ! ' ' 
 The third had preached a brief but pithy sermon on pre- 
 sumption and cocksureness, winding up with the intima- 
 tion that if P. C. Breagh ever found himself at the seat of
 
 226 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 war and in possession of any experiences worth recording, 
 he might submit them for consideration if he chose. 
 
 These men would never know it, but they were pro- 
 foundly humiliated. At least one of them had lost a half- 
 column, striking the note of personal adventure to the 
 clink of shekels of fine gold. As for Mr. Knewbit . . . 
 P. C. Breagh could almost hear him chuckling had only 
 to shut his eyes to see the poker, sketching out headings 
 on the Coram Street kitchen wall : 
 
 "ADVENTURE OF YOUNG ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 WAE CORRESPONDENT IN BERLIN. 
 CRUSHED BY THE CROWD. 
 
 RESCUED BY BISMARCK. 
 THE IRON HAND SAVES A LIFE!" 
 
 Meanwhile, the medal had to be returned to the hands 
 of its owner, who must, P. C. Breagh was firm on that ! 
 consent to receive it from the hands of the finder, if he 
 wanted it back again. P. C. Breagh knew the Foreign 
 Office, in the Wilhelm Strasse the shabbiest residence in 
 all that street of official palaces with its high-pitched, red- 
 tiled Mansard roof, its shabby gray stuccoed front (a main 
 building with two short wings, pierced by twelve windows, 
 and decorated with a sham-Hellenic frieze and shallow 
 pilasters), and its big, park-like garden stretching away 
 behind. 
 
 So, clutching the precious token, P. C. Breagh plunged 
 back into the crowd. It was dense, but no longer solid, 
 and, still lustily singing, with intervals of cheering, it bore 
 him down the Linden as far as the Brandenburg Gate. 
 
 There it split into three vociferating rivers of human- 
 ity. One of which streamed north-westward toward the 
 offices of the Great General Staff, where Moltke, the ancient 
 war- wizard, was busy over his maps! Another, desirous 
 of refreshment, surged onward in the direction of the 
 Thiergarten. The third flowed down the street of palaces, 
 and with it went P. C. Breagh.
 
 THE MAN: on IRON 227 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE FOREIGN OFFICE knocker was a colossal funereal wreath, 
 of sooty bronze laurel, that wakened hollow startling echoes 
 in the tomb-like void of a grim stone vestibule. 
 
 The vestibule lay at the end of a glass-roofed passage. 
 On the right was a window, behind the window gleamed 
 an eye, belonging to the Chancery janitor who had manip- 
 ulated the door-levers. The door banged behind P. C. 
 Breagh, and his hope climbed a central flight of stairs, 
 gray- white marble, with bronze balusters badly in need of 
 cleaning. The staircase was covered with worn Turkey 
 carpet, was lighted from above by a green and gold cupola, 
 and guarded by two conventional figures of sphinxes, 
 carved in shiny blackish stone. 
 
 All these details the eye of P. C. Breagh gleaned over 
 the arm of the Chancellor's door-porter, a seven-foot East 
 Prussian, who wore plain black official livery and carried 
 no gold-headed staff, yet would have snubbed the Rector 
 of the University of Schwarz-Brettingen had he presented 
 himself in this unceremonious way. 
 
 "What does he want? The young man must know 
 that His Excellency the Royal Chancellor of the North 
 German Confederation is engaged upon State business 
 not to be approached by strangers having no appointments 
 or credentials previously obtained. An introduction to His 
 Excellency is indispensable. Where has the young man 
 lived that he does not know that ? ' ' 
 
 To which the young man thus addressed could only 
 reiterate that he deeply regretted the absence of a letter 
 of introduction, and that his credentials could only be 
 displayed to His Excellency himself. 
 
 "It is likely!" The porter's forehead corrugated with 
 suspicion: "Thus is he approached by lunatics and dan- 
 gerous persons, armed with crazy petitions or lethal 
 weap " 
 
 "Bosh!" 
 
 The English word made the porter leap in his square- 
 toed, steel-buckled half-shoes. Recklessly P. C. Breagh 
 went on: 
 
 "I'm neither a lunatic nor an assassin ... It's just a 
 case of Rettung aus Gefahr. Two lives saved in the year
 
 228 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 1842, and another less than an hour ago. . . . Send that 
 message to His Excellency, and he'll see me, I believe!" 
 
 "He believes!" . . . snorted the porter indignantly. 
 
 A little, stooping, shabbily dressed old man in a choco- 
 late-colored frock-coat with gilt buttons came shuffling 
 across the vestibule carrying a handful of papers, telegrams 
 they appeared to be. He had paused to listen to the latter 
 part of the colloquy, holding his head on one side, as 
 though the better to focus his sharp gray glance on the 
 dusty, obtrusive young Englishman crowned with a sun- 
 burnt Oxford straw hat, attired in a well-worn brown 
 Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heather-mixture woolen 
 stockings, and shod with stout, black, leather-laced, hob- 
 nailed boots. 
 
 ' ' He believes ! ' ' exclaimed the porter as though referring 
 to the chocolate-coated old gentleman. "Will not the 
 highly well-born Herr Legation- Councillor order that I 
 summon Grams and Engelberg, and have this presump- 
 tuous person thrown into the street?" 
 
 "Softly, softly, my good Niederstedt ! " advised the lit- 
 tle chocolate-coated old gentleman. He added, shuffling 
 forward in his immense black cloth boots over the slippery 
 marble pavement of the vestibule : "It has occurred to me 
 that an utterance of this young man's referred to an ar- 
 ticle that has been lost by His Excellency." He added, 
 fixing his sharp, gray, jackdaw's eyes on the face of the 
 young man : ' ' Not valuable, but worth recovering purely 
 as a memento of the past ! . . . " 
 
 Said Carolan bluntly : 
 
 "I did refer to such an article. In fact, I have it on 
 me!" 
 
 A finger and thumb, stained with snuff, dipped into the 
 Councillor's waistcoat pocket. He said, secretly conveying 
 an order to the watchful porter with a twirl of one jack- 
 daw-eye : 
 
 "For a couple of thalers," he displayed the coin, "a 
 box of smokable cigars may be purchased in Berlin. ' ' He 
 added, having cast for a bite, and missing the rise : ' ' Four 
 thalers secures a really excellent article ! ' ' 
 
 "Certainly," agreed P. C. Breagh. 
 
 "But for ten thalers," continued the old gentleman with 
 forced enthusiasm, coaxingly beckoning P. C. Breagh to
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 229 
 
 approach nearer, "one may smoke the choicest Havana 
 brands. Give me the medal, fortunate young man, and 
 take the money. Such a sum is not often picked up in the 
 street!" 
 
 Said the young man, thus adjured, thrusting out his 
 square chin obstinately: 
 
 "If His Excellency consents to receive me, I will per- 
 sonally return the medal to him. Be good enough to let 
 him know as much." 
 
 "Unhappy young man! you realize not the greatness of 
 your own presumption!" expostulated the old gentleman, 
 lifting up his warty eyelids and puffing out his whiskered 
 cheeks over his old-fashioned black satin stock. "Is the 
 Chancellor of the Realm to be and at a national crisis 
 such as this? at the beck and call of every English trav- 
 eler?" He added with warmth: "For I know you to be 
 of that nation, young man, though you speak German 
 with some approach to facility. Hence ! Trouble here no 
 more, but give me that medal before you take your de- 
 parture. Otherwise you will be forcibly relieved of it by 
 the hands of those who are accustomed to deal with bump- 
 tious and obstinately-authority-defying persons of your de- 
 scription. ..." 
 
 He added, as the arms of P. C. Breagh were pinioned in 
 an iron grip that clamped the elbows together behind the 
 shoulder-blades, drew his arms down, and pinioned his 
 wrists: "He, he, he! That was a capital stratagem of 
 yours, my excellent Niederstedt! Really very smartly 
 done!" 
 
 The grim, sable-clad porter, in whose huge hands P. C. 
 Breagh vainly struggled, relaxed into a smile at the com- 
 pliment. He said, as from different points two stalwart 
 liveried attendants appeared, hastening to lend assist- 
 ance: 
 
 ' ' One has not served in the Prussian Guards for nothing. 
 Once a soldier, always a soldier! Will the highly well- 
 born Herr Legation-Councillor order Grams and Engelberg 
 to hold this English pig-dog while I take His Excellency's 
 medal out of the fellow 's clothes ? ' ' 
 
 Snarled P. C. Breagh, livid with rage and glaring at 
 the hostile faces like a young male tiger-cat: 
 
 "Add robbery to violence if you think well! you are
 
 230 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 four to one and in your own country. But as an English, 
 journalist I protest against the outrage. . . . And the 
 British Ambassador shall take the matter up ! " 
 
 There was an instant's pause of indecision, during which 
 P. C. Breagh heard the opening of a door on the landing 
 above. Then, with the rustle of silk, and the soft fall of 
 footsteps traversing heavy carpets, a resonant voice called 
 down the stair that led up between the basalt Sphinxes : 
 
 "Meanwhile, you will allow me to apologize for the too- 
 excessive zeal of my servants. Do me the favor to come 
 up here ! ' ' 
 
 The grip of the giant porter became flaccid as an in- 
 fant's. The voice spoke again from the summit of the 
 stair : 
 
 ' ' Herr Legation-Councillor, will you kindly see Madame 
 to her carriage? Au revoir, Madame, et bon voyage!" 
 
 A liquid voice responded : 
 
 " Au revoir, Monseigneur! At Paris who knows! 
 before the Noel!" 
 
 She pulled down her veil, curtsied with demure elegance, 
 and came softly rustling down in pale-hued, trailing silks 
 and laces, one snow-white hand blazing with splendid 
 emeralds lightly passing over the bronze baluster-rail, the 
 other holding the ivory and jeweled stick of a dainty 
 parasol. 
 
 "Madame!" 
 
 As by an afterthought he had called her. Midway in 
 her descent the lady turned to look up at him. He said, 
 bending his powerful eyes upon the face of sensuous loveli- 
 ness: 
 
 "Pardon! but I believe you are a native of France?" 
 
 The hint stung. She returned, with the stain of an 
 angry blush darkening the roses purchased from Rimmel; 
 and a hard line showing from the angle of each delicate 
 nostril to the corner of the deep-cut, scarlet lips : 
 
 "Monseigneur is correct ... I am a Frenchwoman. 
 . . . But the heart is free to choose its own country. . . . 
 And mine has learned to beat for the Fatherland! . . ." 
 
 So exquisite was the cadence with which the words were 
 uttered, that P. C. Breagh heaved an involuntary sigh. 
 The Legation-Councillor took snuff it may have been his 
 way of showing emotion. The huge porter sighed like a 
 locomotive blowing off steam. His colleagues, who, like
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 231 
 
 himself, stood waiting in rigid military attitudes, suffered 
 no sympathy to appear in their wooden faces, yet may 
 have felt the more. But the heavy mask of their master 
 was divested of all expression. 
 
 "Even," said he, in his clear, resonant voice, "to the 
 point of outdoing Agamemnon, King of Argos. For he 
 but doubtless you are familiar with the classic story! 
 merely sacrificed Iphigeneia on the altar of the virginal 
 Artemis. ..." He added with a tone of intolerable 
 irony: "It would have required fewer scruples and more 
 toughness than Agamemnon possessed to have offered up 
 an only daughter to Venus Libertina. . . . Only a woman 
 of fashion would be capable of such infamy. . . . Pardon ! 
 but you have dropped your parasol!" 
 
 She had shuddered and winced as though his words had 
 been vitriol, dropped from above corroding her delicate 
 flesh. . . . The costly toy had fallen from her hand as the 
 shudder had passed over her, and rolled down the stair, 
 as she continued her descent. P. C. Breagh picked it up 
 and handed it to her, as she set foot upon the lowest step 
 of the staircase. She looked at him, and bent her head. 
 And the beauty that had been hers a moment back was 
 so strangely, bleakly altered, he could scarcely repress an 
 exclamation of dismay. 
 
 Thus Circe might have stared, thought P. C. Breagh, 
 when her feeding hogs leaped up as men frantic for ven- 
 geance. Thus Duessa, when the spotted image of her own, 
 vileness was reflected in the glassy shield of Truth. 
 
 The change in the boy's face stabbed Madame to con- 
 sciousness. She caught at her mauve tulle veil, forgetful 
 that it was already lowered, and tore it horizontally, so 
 that her full white rounded chin emerged with fantastic 
 effect, like the moon through a bank of storm-wrack. And 
 then, with her head held high, she swept through the vesti- 
 bule in a frou-frou of silks and a gale of perfume, and 
 down the passage ending in the hall-door with the funereal 
 knocker. The Legation-Councillor trotted after her. One 
 of the servants followed him, and P. C. Breagh, mounting 
 the staircase between the Sphinxes, reached the landing 1 
 and the summit of his ambitions in a breath. 
 
 "Time is scarce!" said the man who was meant when 
 Prime Ministers and political leader-writers referred to 
 Prussia. "I have no more than five minutes to spare,
 
 232 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 but you shall have them. Come this way! So you are 
 an English journalist! What paper do you represent, here 
 in Berlin? Sit down and tell me in as few words as 
 possible ! ' ' 
 
 They were in a small but lofty room on the first-floor, 
 hung with green flock paper. It had a fireplace as well 
 as a stove, and it was a study, yet it contained no book- 
 cases, only a couple of shelved stands laden with pamph- 
 lets and papers of the official kind. The two high windows 
 open and unblinded, though the green-shaded reading- 
 lamp upon the big carved mahogany writing-table was 
 alight looked across the extensive gardens reaching to 
 the Koniggratzer-Strasse. Beyond lay the Thiergarten, 
 all black with masses of people under the sultry red-gold 
 sunset of middle July. 
 
 Perhaps you can see like Scaramouch and the Sultan 
 in the Eastern story P. C. Breagh, hot and dusty, flushed 
 and rumpled, seated opposite the most formidable per- 
 sonage of the day. He who dictated to Kings and carried 
 his Foreign Office trailing after him whenever he chose to 
 go campaigning, stood upon the skin of a white lioness 
 that served as hearthrug, and bit off the end of a huge 
 cigar. He looked bulkier than ever, and the powerful 
 modeling of his scant-haired temples, the splendid dome 
 of the skull that housed the keenest intellect in Europe, 
 the masterful regard of the great eyes, the sarcastic humor 
 of the mouth shaded by the heavy mustache traits and 
 features reproduced so constantly in the illustrated news- 
 papers of the period, conveyed to Carolan the impression 
 that a portrait moved and spoke. 
 
 He was attired, as usually represented, in a dark blue, 
 braided military undress-frock, and trousers tightly 
 strapped over boots with cavalry spurs. An Order hung 
 at his collar. As he threw back his head in the act of 
 lighting his cigar, P. C. Breagh recognized it the Cross of 
 a Commander of the Red Eagle. "While on the left breast 
 of the blue frock-coat was a small three-cornered rent in 
 the cloth from which the lost medal had been somehow 
 wrenched away. . . . 
 
 The sight of that tear in the dark blue-faced cloth sent 
 the blood racing to P. C. Breagh 's forehead. He knew 
 himself for a presumptuous young man. He plunged his 
 hand into the pocket of the brown Norfolk jacket, and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 233 
 
 brought out the red-and-white enameled decoration, and 
 said, awkwardly laying it upon the edge of the big writing- 
 table, in the yellow radius thrown by the lighted lamp : 
 
 "I found this after Your Excellency had gone!" 
 
 ' ' Hand it here ! ' ' said the heavy blue eyes imperiously. 
 P. C. Breagh got up and obeyed. The Chancellor's long 
 arm shot out, and the muscular white fingers whipped the 
 medal from the palm that offered it. Its owner assured 
 himself by a brief scrutiny that the token had sustained 
 no injury, nodded, and re-pinned it on the breast of his 
 frogged military frock-coat. When this was accomplished, 
 the small solution in the continuity of the cloth being 
 covered by the decoration, he said, taking the cigar from 
 his mouth, and knocking off the long crisp ash upon the 
 edge of the white earthenware stove: 
 
 "I should have been sorry to have lost that. But, while 
 thanking you for having restored it, let me say that had 
 my servants taken it from you by force majeure they would 
 not have been robbing you, though in law they might 
 have been held guilty of a personal assault. Now as to 
 your business. You have had one of your five minutes! 
 You have just now said you are an English journalist. 
 Does your business concern the War?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh stammered for the heavy eyes that rested 
 on him seemed to oppress him physically : 
 
 "To be frank with Your Excellency, I represent no 
 newspaper. I have some slight experience as a journalist, 
 that is all, War Correspondence seems to me the highest 
 branch of journalism, and I want, naturally, to fit myself 
 to practice it. Therefore, as no newspaper would employ 
 me, I accepted a private commission given, out of good- 
 nature, by a friend, who has helped me before. And my 
 first day in Berlin I fell in with Your Excellency. I 
 won 't deny it seemed a hopeful augury ! ' ' 
 
 "For the future! ... I understand!" said the Chan- 
 cellor, sending out a long cloud of cigar-smoke. "And in, 
 what way do you suggest that I should help you ? ' ' 
 
 He put the question so bluntly that P. C. Breagh, in the 
 effort to answer, floundered and boggled. He had suddenly 
 realized his own insect-like insignificance in the eyes that 
 were so intolerably heavy in their regard. His own eyes 
 sank to the neat, small, polished boots of the big man.
 
 234 . THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 who stood smoking upon the white lioness-skin. To the 
 wearer of those boots he was merely a beetle who could 
 be crushed by them. The slight ironical smile that altered 
 the curve of the mustache said as much. But the Minister's 
 tone was suave as he went on: 
 
 "I think I have grasped the mainspring of your reason- 
 ing. To begin with, you desire to accompany one of our 
 armies on the campaign?" 
 
 ' ' Yes sir ! Your Excellency, I should say ! ' ' 
 
 A lambent light of humor danced in the blue eyes 
 that were bent on him. The faint ironic smile broadened 
 into a laugh. The Chancellor took his cigar from his 
 mouth, knocked off the ash, and said quite pleasantly: 
 
 "And deducting from this premise, I conjecture that 
 because I have been privileged to save you from being 
 trampled to death under the feet of the mob upon the 
 Linden, you naturally take it for granted that I would 
 further your ambitions. Gratitude, one of your English 
 authors has admirably defined as a lively sense of favors 
 to come. ..." 
 
 "I I " 
 
 P. C. Breagh, who had been for some time shrinking in 
 his own estimation, suddenly saw himself in a newer, 
 meaner light. His torturer went on in mellifluous Eng- 
 lish: 
 
 "I do not know that any classical German author has 
 defined gratitude quite so cleverly. But we in Pomerania 
 have a folk-story which may be new to you." He drew 
 sharply at his cigar, then laid it glowing on the edge of 
 the stove: 
 
 "You speak German quite passably, so I will tell it in 
 our Pomeranian dialect. If this is not done, the dialogue 
 lacks salt. Thus it goes: Wedig Knips, a peasant of 
 Dalow, whose horses wanted watering, went one winter's 
 day to break the ice that covered the drinking-hole. . . . 
 'Bless us! what have we here?' says he, when he finds a 
 kerl called Peders, frozen in the ice, with his head down 
 and his heels up. To make a long story short, he chops 
 out Peders, takes him home, and sets him up to thaw 
 before the fire. . . . 'Now, neighbor,' says he, 'go about 
 your business!' 'How can I when my jerkin is wet and 
 my breeches are full of muddy water?' Says "Wedig: 
 'Poor devil! I will give you my Sunday trows!' 'And a
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 235 
 
 jerkin too, for you saved my life, you must remember!' . . . 
 Wedig scratches his head, but hands over a jerkin with 
 the rest. 'Come, now be off!' says he. ' "Off," with 
 my under-pants and shirt all sopping! Do you want to 
 kill me now that you have saved my life?' So Wedig 
 pulls a wry face, but hands over the underclothes. . . . 
 ' Put these on and be off, we are busy people in this house ! ' 
 'What,' says Peders, 'without paying me the value of the 
 good duds spoiled in your stinking horsepond?' 'Must I 
 pay ?'...' Certainly, you have saved my life ! Nobody 
 asked you ! I had thrown myself in because I was tired 
 of living. Now it is your bounden duty to make things 
 tolerable for me!' 'How make things tolerable?' 'To 
 begin with, I want a cottage to live in, and a plot of kail- 
 ground to it, and a wee pickle furniture.' 'But I have 
 only this cottage, and the bits of sticks you see!' 'Well, 
 give me them ! Didn 't you save my life ? ' . . . Wedig gets 
 confused, sees no way out of it. ' The devil ! ' says he, 
 'this is a nice affair! However, take them, man!' 'I 
 will take them,' says Peders, 'but you must give me the 
 cart and plow, the cow and the two horses?' 'Himmel- 
 Ttreuzbombenelement! Have I got to give you all that 
 because I saved your life?' 'Ay, undoubtedly! and you 
 must let me have your wife into the bargain. It's your 
 
 bounden duty ' 'I know! because I saved your life! 
 
 Shan't make such a mistake next time, you may be sure 
 of that!' 'No, but you did, so to grumble is no use.' 
 'Thunder! my old girl will make a terrible squawking.' 
 * Not when you have explained how you saved my life ! ' . . . 
 Wedig scratches his head, rubs his chin, gets a bright 
 idea. . . . 'Help me to explain to the wife, do you agree?' 
 ' Ay, of course ! What is it you want me to say to her ? ' 
 'Oh! say nothing. Only let me show her exactly how 
 I got you out of the water-hole.' 'Willingly!' 'But to 
 do that I must put you back just a minute ! ' ' Put me 
 back?' 'Only for a minute.' 'Promise when I cry 
 "Genug!" you'll take me out directly!' 'All right! 
 Come along!' So Wedig takes Peders by the legs and 
 sticks him back where he found him, driving his head 
 well down into the mud at the bottom of the pond. . . . 
 
 So he never cried 'Genug!' and Wedig left him there. 
 
 ? > 
 
 The hard blue eyes that had been all alight with laughter,
 
 236 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the heavily molded face that had unexpectedly proved 
 itself capable of comic changes, the voice that, as the droll 
 dialogue proceeded, had conveyed with slight, admirably 
 restrained mimicry the complacent assurance of the knave 
 and the dull bewilderment of the victim, changed, became 
 the Minister's again. He said, in his smoothest tones: 
 
 "I cannot put you back into the crush of the crowd, 
 because by an appeal to its loyal feelings and domestic 
 instincts I was so fortunate as to disperse it. What I might 
 do, of course, is to deliver you to the tender mercies of my 
 servants, to whom, when you brought back the medal, 
 you blustered about delivering it to me personally. This 
 not-exactly-very-clever ruse would have failed had I not 
 happened to step upon the scene. Your English policy is 
 often more fortunate than masterly. . . . Fortune cer- 
 tainly has favored you to-day. Not in the fulfillment of 
 your ambition to accompany a Prussian Army to the field 
 of action that is a wish impossible to gratify. For we 
 put up a general defense against the presence of any save 
 the most highly accredited Correspondents, and the War 
 Minister will only grant Legitimations to two or three. 
 But in obtaining for an obscure paragraphist a special 
 interview with the Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs 
 on the eve of a world-crisis, Fortune has certainly favored 
 you. Go back now to your hotel and write your article; 
 then telegraph to Fleet Street and make your own terms ! ' ' 
 
 "I'll be shot if I do!" choked out P. C. Breagh, flaming 
 scarlet to his hair-roots. "And I thank Your Excellency 
 for a lesson, and I beg to take my leave!" 
 
 "Why does he go? Why does he talk about a lesson?" 
 asked the broad, cynical gaze that rested on him. 
 
 As though he had spoken aloud, P. C. Breagh answered : 
 
 "Because I set my personal advantage above common 
 gratitude and honor. Your Excellency lost the medal in 
 pulling me out of the scrimmage at the risk of your own 
 life, and when I found the thing I used it, exactly as 
 you say! True, you'd snubbed me when I'd tried to 
 thank you ! yet I did believe your having saved me might 
 help me in some way. . . . But it would be better to cadge 
 in the dustbins for a living, than make money out of in- 
 formation gained by trickery. And I apologize sincerely 
 for having been such a cad!" 
 
 " 'Cad' is the slang for vulgarian, is it not?" He
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 237 
 
 added : ' ' Yes, they inculcate a code of honor at the Eng- 
 lish public schools." 
 
 The voice grated. P. C. Breagh hated its owner. But 
 he answered, looking squarely in the bulldog face that 
 bent on him : 
 
 ' ' They do, and I am sorry to have broken at least one of 
 its articles. May I wish Your Excellency good afternoon ! ' ' 
 
 The speaker bowed, not clumsily, and turned to quit the 
 room, when a ferocious growl behind him, and the scraping 
 of heavy claws on slippery parquet pulled round his head. 
 Savage, red-rimmed eyes challenged, and the bared gleam- 
 ing fangs of a huge boarhound couched at length under a 
 wrought-iron sofa at the west end of the longish room 
 menaced the stranger's throat: 
 
 1 ' Down, Tyras ! ' ' ordered the Minister harshly, and with 
 a deep groan the heavy brute dropped its nose between its 
 forepaws, and lay still, shaken by occasional rumbling 
 growls. 
 
 "You see," said the Minister, laughing, "that I can af- 
 ford to dispense with the services of detectives when this 
 good servant is at hand. Come, sit down another moment. 
 ... I am really willing to help you. . . . You have not 
 come so badly as you imagine out of the affair ! ' ' 
 
 "But I have said I will not write the article, and I am 
 intruding on Your Excellency's privacy." The soul of 
 P. C. Breagh yearned for the freedom of the streets. To 
 be shut up in the study of the greatest of living Ministers, 
 set beak-to-beak with the man who was occupying the 
 attention of Europe the master-mind in statecraft, who 
 used blunt truth as a weapon to beat down diplomatic 
 falsehood, and comported himself amidst the striving 
 parties of his national Parliament as a giant surrounded 
 by dwarfs ; had seemed, previously, a thing to boast of a 
 dazzling feather in the cap of achievement. Now it was no 
 triumph, but a torture. He writhed under those keen, 
 amused, analytical glances, knowing himself worthy to be 
 so despised. 
 
 "I have twenty minutes in which to refresh and rest, 
 not having eaten or sat down since ten o'clock this morn- 
 ing. You have had ten I will give you another five. Sit 
 down again there!" 
 
 Tyras emitted another savage growl as though in sup- 
 port of his owner's authority, and P. C. Breagh, loathing
 
 238 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 his host even more intensely than he hated P. C. Breagh, 
 obeyed the imperious hand that pointed to the chair he had 
 vacated, and sat down, white-gilled now, and sick with 
 longing to be out of this presence into which he had thrust 
 himself beyond the reach of the icy, contemptuous tones 
 and the arrogant, domineering eyes. 
 
 The Chancellor had turned away to pull at one of the 
 red woolen bell-ropes that hung on either side of the fire- 
 place, shabby things, threadbare with use, like the Persian 
 carpet that was trodden out in paths by the spurred feet 
 of the man who stood for Prussia; worn like the leather 
 cushions of the great wrought-iron sofa, under which the 
 great man's faithful attendant couched, with one eye on 
 the familiar face, and the other on the strange one that 
 might mask an enemy. 
 
 Above the sofa, beneath a trophy of fencing-swords and 
 masks, reigning over a rack supporting a number of red 
 and white military undress-caps in all stages of wear, and 
 another containing a collection of pipe-sticks and un- 
 mounted pipe-heads, hung the half-length oil-portrait of a 
 beautiful girl in ball-dress. Below was a large-framed 
 photograph of a noble-looking woman, with a mass of black 
 braided hair framing a long, serious face, with grave dark 
 eyes, thick straight nose, and full-curved, humorous lips 
 recalling published engravings of the English author of 
 ''Adam Bede. " Probably it was the Countess that same 
 Fraulein Johanna Puttkammer who had been hugged under 
 the gaze of her assembled family. She looked strong, 
 serene and courageous, fit thought P. C. Breagh to be 
 the wife of a man destined by Fate and framed by nature 
 to become a leader of men. Also, she looked like a woman 
 who could love with old-world, elemental, forceful passion. 
 She had bestowed such love upon this man who had 
 begun life as a roaring, hard-drinking young Pomeranian 
 squire, well worthy of the sobriquet of "Mad Bismarck," 
 bestowed upon him by his native county. 
 
 She had sifted the gold out of the sand. . . . She had 
 never openly displayed her influence. . . . All the same it 
 had been there, guiding, sustaining, controlling. . . . lie 
 had written to her, years after, when he had begun in 
 earnest to be a power in politics. . . . "You see what you 
 have made me! What should I have done without you?"
 
 THE MAN OE IRON 239 
 
 Arrogant, harsh, domineering, merciless, as his enemies 
 had reason to term him, there must be something noble in 
 'the man who had written like that. He was said to be a 
 kind, if not over-indulgent, father to his two big sons, even 
 then serving as private soldiers in a well-known regiment 
 of Dragoon Guards, and to be worshiped by his daughter, 
 a feminine copy of himself, if that oil-portrait were any- 
 thing like. . . . 
 
 "Have you taken any food to-day? ..." 
 
 The interrogation brought P. C. Breagh's head round. 
 A servant must have appeared, and gone, and come again 
 in answer to the bell-summons. For on a clear corner of 
 an etagere otherwise piled with official papers and pamph- 
 lets, stood a tray, bearing glasses and a vast crystal jug of 
 creaming golden-hued nectar with miniature icebergs float- 
 ing on the surface; and several dishes of rolls, split, pro- 
 fusely buttered, and lined with something savory, the sight 
 and scent of which awoke tender yearnings within. . . . 
 
 "No! I thought not. Drink this and eat some of 
 these sandwiches. I myself have fasted longer than is 
 agreeable ! ' ' 
 
 And a huge goblet of the ice-cold creaming nectar was 
 handed to P. C. Breagh, who immediately realized that his 
 tongue and palate were dry as the sun-baked asphalt of 
 the Linden. 
 
 "Prosit!" said his host, and drained his glass, adding, 
 as the guest duly responded according to the classic formula 
 and drank : ' ' You are University -bred, I see ! What Alma 
 Mater had the preference? Schwarz-Brettingen ! . . . Ah, 
 they thought very badly of me there about the time of 
 the Luxembourg Garrison Question. Nearly all the little 
 foxes barked at me as I passed through. However, we are 
 now reconciled, and more than a thousand of the students 
 have applied to serve as volunteers in this war, there's 
 an item of interest for your paper! though you have 
 Quixotically determined, you say, not to make use of any 
 information that I may be enabled to offer you. All 
 Quixotism is weakness, in my estimation ; a man, according 
 to my code, should pursue his advantage where he finds it 
 irrespective of ethical laws or religious prejudice. Now eat 
 some of these stuffed rolls. Here are caviar, smoked goose- 
 breast, Westphalian ham and liver-sausage. You see I 
 set you an example! and a would-be campaigner should
 
 240 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 be able to sleep soundly under any and all conditions ; and 
 eat whenever anything eatable is obtainable, with un- 
 flinching appetite ! ' ' 
 
 The savory rolls were vanishing under the speaker's 
 repeated attacks, and the golden tide in the great crystal 
 decanter was sinking visibly. He said, lifting and hold- 
 ing it so that between the light of the green-shaded table- 
 lamp and the red glow of sunset pouring through the 
 unblinded western windows, the liquid in it shone ruby 
 and emerald. . . . 
 
 "Come, let me fill your glass again, and then I shall send 
 you about your business. Absolved, you understand, from 
 that ridiculous vow of yours and with a magic talisman 
 to enable you to use your eyes." 
 
 The steady hand set down the now emptied jug, and 
 took from the red marble mantelshelf a small and perfectly- 
 finished pair of field-glasses, covered in black Russia 
 leather and mounted in ivory. An inlaid silver shield bore 
 a monogram, "O. v. B.-S.," and a date. 
 
 "You can shoot with a pistol? Good! then I should 
 advise you to buy one, if possible. A revolver of the 
 American Colt's invention six-barreled a feature which 
 increases weight in proportion as it adds to effectiveness 
 would be useful. Indeed, I carry one myself! One day 
 they will turn out such things with one barrel but we 
 must wait for that, I am afraid. Here is the case belonging 
 to the glasses, with a strap to sling it round your shoulders 
 and one thing more I will give you though I am less 
 certain about its ultimate usefulness!" 
 
 The writing-table stood in the middle of the room. He 
 moved to it with one of his long, heavy strides, sat down 
 dipped quill in ink and penned a few lines rapidly, 
 glancing at the sunburned, freckled face as though to 
 refresh his memory holding up an imperious hand for 
 silence when the recipient of the field-glasses seemed about 
 to protest against the value of the gift. 
 
 "Your nationality? 'British.' Name, 'Patrick Carolan 
 Breagh pronounced "Brack." Your height? Be very 
 accurate. One half-inch too much or too little might bring 
 you into trouble of a serious kind. 'Five feet nine' .^. 
 you promise to be taller. Your age . . . twenty-three last 
 January. . . . Shoulders broad, good muscular develop- 
 ment. Your hair . . . reddish, is it not? . . . You have
 
 THE MAN OE IRON 241 
 
 gray eyes with what the French would call taches of 
 yellow in them. Complexion fresh, considerably freckled. 
 Nose short and straight, ears small, teeth white and regular. 
 Chin square and with a cleft weaklings have not such 
 chins! ..." 
 
 He added a brief sentence to the hastily scrawled de- 
 scription, signed and blotted it, rose and came to P. C. 
 Breagh and thrust it in his hand. 
 
 ' ' Do not thank me ! It is my passing whim to help you 
 regard it in that light. As to this pass, safe-conduct or 
 whatever one may call it it may forward you or hinder 
 you. . . . Potztausend! I am a mere officer of Cuiras- 
 siers of the Landwehr General by courtesy not General- 
 issimo! . . . You, Bucher! . . . What is there wanted 
 now? . . ." 
 
 For a scratch on the door-panel had been succeeded by 
 the flurried entrance of the little Councillor of Legation, 
 breathing hard, and red in the face. He gabbled in Span- 
 ish: 
 
 "Pardon, Your Excellency, that I enter without knock- 
 ing. But His Highness the Crown Prince is coming up- 
 stairs! ..." 
 
 And almost in the same instant, as Tyras uttered a deep 
 "muff" of friendly greeting, the open doorway was filled 
 by the stateliest and most martial figure in Europe, and a 
 pleasant, manly voice said : 
 
 "Not finding you in your official quarters below-stairs, 
 I ventured, my dear Count Bismarck, to follow you to 
 your private study. It is a question of whether Le Sourd 
 
 delivered the war-gauntlet from Paris, or Pardon! 
 
 I had no idea that you were not alone!" 
 
 The tall, broad-chested, golden-bearded Viking in the 
 undress uniform of the First Regiment of Guards touched 
 his cap in acknowledgment of P. C. Breagh 's respectful 
 salutation. Then, as in obedience to a glance from the 
 Minister, the lean claws of the little Councillor closed upon 
 P. C. Breagh 's arm, and he was plucked from the room, 
 the Prince asked, glancing after the queer couple : 
 
 "May one ask who your young friend is?" and got 
 answer : 
 
 "It is only an English schoolboy, Your Royal Highness, 
 who thirsts to try his hand at "War-correspondence 
 having had a few articles printed in some London rag. And
 
 242 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 this being so, he applies to me, who am the least leisured 
 person in His Majesty's dominions- for a moment of my 
 spare time! ..." 
 
 "It is annoying, my dear Count," answered the mellow- 
 voiced Viking, ' ' but cannot your people keep such trouble- 
 some persons outside ? ' ' 
 
 The Minister returned, laughing: 
 
 ' ' He caught me on my doorstep, as the polecat waylaid 
 the badger! and as he brought back a decoration I had 
 lost, and which he, luckily for himself, had found! I 
 could not refuse him a minute's interview. But with 
 regard to Your Royal Highness 's question of an instant 
 since Le Sourd, the French Charge d 'Affaires, placed the 
 Emperor's declaration of war in my hands about an hour 
 after the opening of Council in the Palace to-day." 
 
 Said the Prince : 
 
 "Unhappy man! driven to risk the loss of an Empire 
 that he may continue to rule a nation of enemies. One 
 can hardly doubt the issue yet at what cost of lives shall 
 we not purchase victory ! ' ' 
 
 Bismarck said in harsh, metallic tones, bending his brows 
 upon the Prince, who all the world knew loved peace, and 
 loathed the thought of the red months of strife that were 
 approaching : 
 
 "Your Royal Highness is aware that I look upon, this 
 war as necessary, and that I should not have returned to 
 Varzin without giving in my resignation to His Majesty 
 had the issue been other than what it is. ... As for this 
 weak-backed Napoleon, this Pierrot stuffed with bran, 
 who is kept in an upright attitude only by the slaps I deal 
 him on one cheek and the buffets the Monarchists and the 
 Revolutionists lend him on the other! it will be better 
 for him to meet his end by a bullet or a sword-thrust on 
 the banks of the Rhine, than to be blown to pieces by some 
 bomb in the streets of Paris, or to die of apoplexy in the 
 bedroom of some nymph of the theater-coulisses!" 
 
 He drew himself to his full height and, folding his 
 powerful arms upon his breast, said, looking full at the 
 Prince, who had declined a seat and who was standing 
 near the window, his hair and beard glowing golden-red 
 in the full rays of the setting sun: 
 
 "Your Royal Highness speaks of the effusion of blood. 
 I am of those who have drawn the sword in the service of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 243 
 
 their King and country. I do not regard war from the 
 point of view of the man who stops at home. More than 
 this! . . . His Majesty is not the only father who has a 
 son serving in our Army. ... I have two. Herbert and 
 Bill. . . ." 
 
 A pale purplish tint suffused his heavy face and crept 
 to the summit of his rugged forehead. His fierce blue eyes 
 dimmed. He said, in slightly muffled tones : 
 
 "I am not given to pompous phrases. Yet if German 
 unity can only be brought about by a great national war 
 waged against our near-hand enemy our old, cunning, 
 sleepless foe I hail that war, even though it leave me 
 without posterity! If the gulf that divides the Northern 
 and Southern sections of the Fatherland can be better 
 bridged by my boys ' dead bodies ... I would give them as 
 freely as I would give my own ! ' ' 
 
 A spasm twisted his under-jaw. He said, laughing in 
 his stern way : 
 
 ' ' Three long-legged Bismarcks should equal one eighteen- 
 foot-seven plank. And I speak not only for myself. My 
 wife would echo me. ' ' 
 
 Said the Prince in his cordial way : 
 
 "My mother has a great admiration for Her Excellency. 
 My wife, too, speaks of her as a woman of antique nobility 
 of mind. ' ' He continued, with a smile that curved the bold, 
 frank mouth under the glittering mustache into lines of 
 exceeding pleasantness: "And her personal solicitude for 
 Your Excellency pleases my father much ! ' ' 
 
 The heavy face that opposed him lost its dogged, set 
 expression. The Minister broke into a hearty laugh. 
 
 "So! I have been waiting to hear somewhat of that 
 voluble telegram of hers to Abeken: 'Pray ask the King 
 not to bother Count Bismarck about State matters just now, 
 when he is taking Carlsbad waters for the gout!' ' 
 
 "Ha, ha!" The Prince joined gaily in the laughter. 
 "The Councillor was working with the King and myself, 
 when he received that wire. It came with a sheaf of 
 others he read it aloud without a change of expression. 
 . . . .Then you should have seen his face ... a study for 
 a comedian. ..." 
 
 The Minister said, still smiling : 
 
 "My wife pours many confidences of the domestic sort 
 into Abeken 's bosom. She said to him during the Constitu-
 
 244 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 tional Conflict of '66 ... 'Bismarck cares really nothing 
 at all about these stupid political matters. A cabbage well 
 grown, or a fir-tree well planted, means more to him than 
 the Indemnity Bill.' Yet when the Bill passed she was 
 all-triumphant. And to-day she remarked to me: 'War 
 is horrible to me on principle. But it would be equally 
 horrible to me if you said to me to-morrow: "All is over! 
 we do not fight! . . ." ' I made her angry by telling her 
 that one might parody in application to the mental atti- 
 tude of her sex the lines of the English Poet Laureate, 
 and say: 
 
 "Her reason rooted in unreason stood." 
 
 "When our German women become too highly edu- 
 cated," said the fair-haired giant, ''love will take wing 
 for a land where the culture of the feminine intellect is 
 still unpopular. We males hold our supremacy on the 
 very insecure tenure of a carefully inculcated belief that, 
 being men, we must be wise ! ' ' 
 
 Said the Minister: 
 
 "There is a Pomeranian proverb bearing on that ques- 
 tion. 'In the house where a strip of green hide hangs 
 handy, the wife will never know better than her old man!' ' 
 
 "Unless she happened to be the stronger of the two, 
 bodily as well as mentally, dear Count," the Prince re- 
 joined; "in which case the husband would be well advised 
 to accept the inferior place. For against brute-strength 
 and brains combined, there is no remedy but patience. ' ' 
 
 Bismarck retorted: 
 
 "Possibly but what if the muscular brute with the 
 brains possesses a share of patience also ? There is nothing 
 like knowing how to wait I assure Your Royal Highness ! ' ' 
 
 The Prince looked at the great figure topped by the stolid 
 bulldog face, and recalled something that the English 
 Princess, his wife, had said to him that day: 
 
 "This fearful struggle will set the coping-stone upon 
 that man 's colossal labors and ambitions ! ' ' 
 
 But he was all grave, gracious cordiality as they passed 
 from the lighter vein of talk to serious questions, though, 
 as he took leave of the Minister at the hall-door and 
 stepped into his waiting carriage, he said to himself 
 mournfully :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 245 
 
 "Alix was right. He has what he has waited and 
 schemed for. To light this international conflagration he 
 would have ventured down to fetch a burning brand from 
 the nethermost Hell. And what oceans of blood will be 
 poured out before the fire may be extinguished none 
 knows but God alone ! ' ' 
 
 XXIX 
 
 VON MOLTKE, the ancient war-wizard, went home from the 
 Council-Extraordinary to his private quarters at the offices 
 of the Great General Staff. He dispatched the three-word 
 telegram, and the vast machine began to work. . . . 
 
 All had been ready for two years. Nothing was left to 
 finish at the last moment. Not a speck of rust marred 
 shaft or spindle or bearing, not a drop of oil was clogged 
 in any slot. 
 
 Days back, the Heads of Departments had been recalled 
 by a brief telegram from the Chief who knew how to be 
 taciturn in seven languages. Now, while in Berlin, as in 
 every other city and town of Prussia Proper and her 
 Eleven Provinces, palaces, mansions, restaurants and cafes, 
 beer-gardens and schnaps-cellars blazed with gas and 
 resounded with the clinking of glasses, and people sat late 
 into the grilling July night discussing and rediscussing 
 that special supplement of the North German Gazette, 
 which was being distributed gratuitously by hundreds of 
 thousands, predicting the next move of the Man of Iron, 
 and the latest ruse of the Man of Paris, consuming tons of 
 sausage, caviar, pickled salmon, herrings in salad, and 
 potted tunny, with strawberries and other fruits and sweet 
 dishes, all washed down by floods of cooling beer, or iced 
 Moselle and champagne the numberless huge barracks 
 and other military establishments displayed another kind 
 of activity. 
 
 Here no outbursts of patriotic song and festivity checked 
 the rapid, organized, methodical scurry of warlike prepara- 
 tion. Soldiers ran about like busy ants, purposeful and 
 unblundering. Long trains of Army Service carts and 
 wagons streamed in at divers lofty gates, to emerge at 
 others after the briefest interval, heavily laden with Army
 
 246 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 stores, Army baggage, War material of all kinds. Night 
 and day, huge Government factories and foundries dithered 
 and roared, filling up newly made vacuums in those huge 
 magazines and storehouses which must always be kept full. 
 In the gloomy dominions of the Iron King, Herr Krupp, 
 that stout-loined Teuton who begat great guns instead of 
 tall sons, and had them godfathered by Prussian Royalty 
 what forests of tall chimneys belched forth smoke, canopy- 
 ing begrimed and prosperous Westphalian towns, populated 
 by innumerable swarthy toilers in the gigantic iron and 
 steel foundries! At Essen, where mountains of coal kiss 
 the sooty skies, and heavy locomotives ceaselessly grind 
 over networks of shining steel rails, dragging strings of 
 trucks, containing yet more fuel for the ever-hungry fur- 
 naces, within an impregnable rampart of solid masonry, 
 he dwelt in a Babylonian palace. The panting of innumer- 
 able steam-power engines, the banging, moaning, crashing, 
 groaning, and grinding of forges, lathes, and planing-ma- 
 chines; cutting, shaping, boring, and polishing machines; 
 with the beating of sixty-two steam-hammers, of all weights 
 up to that of fifty tons, which cost 100,000 to manufacture, 
 sounded like a cannon whenever it was used, and was kept 
 working without pause, so as not to lose a fraction of the 
 interest of the capital sunk in it made his concert by day, 
 and by night served for his serenade and lullaby.- He made 
 laws for the control of his grimy subjects, this Briareus of 
 ten thousand hands and enforced them by the aid of his 
 own police and magistrates. With orders in course of 
 execution for Turkey, China, Egypt, Russia, and Spain, he 
 was yet able to deliver eighty cannon per week to the 
 different artillery depots of his Fatherland. His steel, 
 tempered by his secret process, the new ore being brought 
 him from his Spanish mines by his own fleet c " *ansports, 
 surpassed even Bessemer 's. Yet he was not a conceited 
 or purse-proud man. By the chief entrance of the biggest 
 of all his factories stood the little soot-blackened forge 
 where forty years before young Krupp had labored with 
 his father and a couple of workmen. Small wonder the 
 powerful Iron King had honor from his over-lord. 
 
 Conceive next the well-ordered bustle at the headquarters 
 of the different Army Corps, when the withered finger of 
 the Warlock pressed upon the button, and the spark of
 
 THE MAN DE IRON 247 
 
 electricity leaped along a thousand wires, carrying with it 
 the vitalizing word. . . . Moltke's methods were then fire- 
 new, and made the world sit up. 
 
 You might have seen the Reserve men of the Twelve 
 Provinces whose summons for assembly lay ready in the 
 Landwehr office of every city, town, village, or hamlet 
 streaming in at the district depots, bringing each Line 
 regiment up to war-strength (nearly double its numbers in 
 time of peace). Mobilization was no foreign word to them, 
 for once a year, after Schmidt, the field-laborer, had done 
 getting in the harvest, and when Schultz, the bank-clerk, 
 and Kunz, the chemist's assistant, had got their annual 
 autumn holiday, Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz were accus- 
 tomed to perform a series of carefully rehearsed physical 
 exercises ending in maneuvers, and a safe if inglorious 
 return to the domestic hearth. 
 
 Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz were only remarkable by 
 their unlikeness to each other Schmidt being the brown, 
 uncouth, and unshaven husband of a stout wife and nu- 
 merous tow-headed babes. Schultz was more recently mar- 
 ried to a young lady remotely connected on the maternal 
 side with a family possessing the right to inscribe the aris- 
 tocratic prefix ' ' von ' ' before its surname. The couple lived 
 frugally on Herr Schultz 's salary of thirty pounds a year, 
 somewhere upon the outskirts of the select quarter of the 
 country town (some four miles distant from Schmidt's 
 native village) while Kunz, the graduate of a University, 
 and author of a text-book of Analytical Chemistry, sold 
 impartially to both, squills, rhubarb-tincture, and porous 
 plasters over the counter of his employer 's shop. 
 
 Served by the Burgomaster's clerk, or a wooden-faced 
 orderly- c** "I'oral, with the compelling bit of paper, Schmidt, 
 Schultz, and Kunz, having taken farewell embraces of their 
 nearest and dearest, would sling over their shoulders can- 
 vas wallets containing a lump of sausage, a shirt or so, a 
 huge chunk of bread, white or black, with a bottle contain- 
 ing wine or schnaps, and stowing next their skins leather 
 purses containing a few coins, and a parchment volume re- 
 sembling the English soldier 's ' ' small book, ' ' would hasten 
 by rail or road in the direction of their regimental ren- 
 dezvous, toward which bourne the Reserve contingent of 
 other towns, villages, and hamlets would also betake them-
 
 248 THE MAN, OF IRON 
 
 selves, until the roads were blackened with their tramping 
 bodies and the trains would be packed chock-full. Arrived 
 at Headquarters, batch after batch, subsequently to a 
 brief but exhaustive medical overhauling would be dis- 
 patched to the arsenal, where attaching themselves to a 
 tremendous queue of other Schmidts, Schultzes, and 
 Kunzes, they would mark time in double-file outside a vast, 
 grim, barn-like structure, until the moment arrived for 
 entering ; when with well-accustomed quickness, each would 
 find his way to a certain hook or group of hooks, sur- 
 mounted with his regimental number, from which de- 
 pended a certain familiar uniform, with accoutrements 
 and weapons equally well known. 
 
 Picture innumerable alleys formed by these dangling 
 uniforms, radiating away to the point of distance, and 
 suppose Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz equipped in something 
 answering to the twinkling of a Teutonic eye. 
 
 In supposing Schmidt, Schultz, or Kunz to belong to 
 the Infantry a pair of dark gray unmentionables, red- 
 corded down the side-seams, and a pair of mid-leg-high 
 boots, very roomy and strong. Inside the boots were no 
 stockings, tallowed linen bands being bound about the legs 
 and feet. A single-breasted tunic of dark blue cloth with 
 red facings followed, and a flat forage-cap of blue cloth 
 with a red band, or a glazed black leather helmet with a 
 brazen Prussian eagle front-plate and a brass spike-top. 
 With the addition of a zinc label, slung round the neck, 
 and bearing a man's name, number, company, and regi- 
 ment, an overcoat made into a sausage and tied together at 
 the ends, a canvas haversack, glass leather-covered canteen, 
 a pipeclayed waistbelt with two cartridge-boxes of black 
 leather, and a knapsack of calf-skin tanned with the hair, 
 stretched upon a wooden frame, and slung by two pipe- 
 clayed straps hooked to the waistbelt in front and then 
 passing over the shoulders. Two shorter straps, going 
 under the armpits, would be fastened to the knapsack, 
 which had a receptacle for a packet of twenty cartridges 
 at either end of it. Within, suppose the usual soldier's 
 kit, with spoon, knife, fork, comb, and shaving-glass; and 
 on top imagine a galvanized iron pot, holding about three 
 quarts, with a tight-fitting cover which became, at need, a 
 frying-pan. Arm with a strong waistbelt-sword about fif- 
 teen inches long, an unburnished needle-gun heavily
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 249 
 
 grease-coated, and Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz, having 
 hung their civilian garments on the hooks that erst sup- 
 ported the martial panoply, tugged at a final buckle-strap, 
 wheeled and passed out, transformed, by yet another door. 
 
 Always the three had known that an hour would come 
 when these familiar exercises would not end with half-a- 
 dozen exceedingly strenuous field-days, and a return, on 
 the part of Schmidt and Schultz, to the arms of their 
 respective wives. Schmidt, on whose breast shone the 
 war-medal of '66, and who must now be addressed as 
 "Herr Sergeant" by his social superiors, seemed not to 
 mind at all, though he swore at his boots, quite unjustly, 
 for pinching. But the bank-clerk's espousals were too 
 recent, and his first experience of paternity too near at 
 hand, for any display of hardihood, while Herr Kunz was 
 but newly betrothed to the apothecary's daughter Mina, 
 and could not forget how the tears had rolled out of her 
 large blue eyes at the prospect of parting with her beloved 
 Carl. 
 
 Therefore, although the mouths of the trio were, when 
 not professionally shut, busily engaged in bellowing "Die 
 Wacht am Rhein," "Ich bin ein Preusse," and other 
 patriotic songs, or sending up deafening "Hochs" for the 
 King, the Crown Prince, Prince Friedrich Karl, "Our 
 Moltke, ' ' and another public personage recently very much 
 elevated in the popular esteem, the mental visions of at 
 least two of them were occupied with prophetic visions in 
 which blue-eyed sweethearts pined and faded away out of 
 grief for absent betrotheds, and young wives wept over 
 empty cradles until they too expired, with faltering mes- 
 sages of love for the husband so far distant on their dying 
 lips. . . . 
 
 "Sapperlot! What in thunder are you gaping at, you 
 gimpel, you?" a rough, loud voice would shout, and a 
 terrific thump from the hard and heavy hand of Sergeant 
 Schmidt would visit the shoulders of Private Schultz, or 
 Kunz. Who thus addressed would jerk out: 
 
 "Oh, nothing, nothing, Herr Sergeant, truly nothing at 
 all ! " and receive from their recently despised inferior the 
 rule counsel to look alive and keep cheery : 
 
 "For this will be a war worth fighting in, mark you! 
 The Man on the Seine has played the part of the Evil
 
 250 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Neighbor too long. France and Prussia have got to come 
 to clapperclaws there's no help for it! The soup is 
 cooked, so let us eat it. He is the luckiest who gets the 
 spoon in first!" 
 
 You may suppose precisely similar scenes and dialogues 
 occurring in the experience of Kraus, Klaus, and Klein, 
 who, having served their time with the active Army and 
 passed from the Reserve into the Landwehr, were now 
 fetched out with the First Call, not only to replace the 
 garrisons of Saxony, Prague, Pardubitz, and all the other 
 fortified points on the Unes of communication, but to 
 guard and patrol those lines of road and railway over which 
 the three marching armies were to receive supplies of food, 
 ammunition, clothing, stores, and medicine; and maintain 
 telegraphic communication with Berlin. Meanwhile Grein, 
 Schwartz, and Braun, men of riper years, stiffer joints, and 
 older experiences, remained at home; waiting the hour 
 when, Death having thinned the ranks of the fighters in 
 the forefront of the battle, the Second Call should sound. 
 When these hardy veteran battalions, formed into divisions 
 of the same numerical strength as those of the regular 
 Army, would roll over the frontiers, to fill up the bloody 
 gaps left by the scythe of the Red Mower, and play their 
 part in the vast, chaotic, multi-tableauxed drama of War. 
 
 Prussia contributed some 652,294 actors of small parts 
 to the said drama, not counting the leading men, stars of 
 the war-theater, who supported the heavier roles. And 
 Bavaria, Wiirtemburg, and Baden contributed their con- 
 tingents, bringing up the strength of the cast to 780,923 
 performers. The equine actors numbered 213,159. 
 
 . The vast machine worked wonderfully. It is interesting 
 to know that the German Staff maps of France showed 
 recently made roads which in July, 1870, had not been 
 marked upon any map issued by the Imperial War Office 
 at Paris, and that within three days from that three- 
 word signal-wire of Moltke's, military trains full of men, 
 guns, horses, ammunition, and proviant, began to run at 
 the rate of forty per day, from north, east, and south, 
 toward the narrow frontier between Strasbourg and Lux- 
 embourg. 
 
 "For God and Fatherland!" and "Watch well the 
 Rhine!" said the miniature banners carried by thousands
 
 251 
 
 of people. You could see them fluttering from crowded 
 roofs and packed windows, and variegating the sidewalks 
 of thoroughfares below, as regiment after regiment 
 marched to the station, in shining rivers of pickelliaubes 
 and bayonets, or Dragoon helmets, Hussar busbies, and 
 Uhlan schapkas, flowing between upheaped banks of wav- 
 ing women and cheering men. 
 
 Speedily, in response to communications addressed by 
 the Crown Prince to the South German sovereigns, notify- 
 ing these potentates of his appointment as Commander-in- 
 Chief of their armies, came replies expressing satisfaction 
 of different shades and qualities. The Grand Duke of 
 Baden's bubbled with joy, and expressed the determination 
 of his troops to gain their Royal Commander's confidence 
 by fidelity and bravery. The King of Wiirtemburg re- 
 joiced likewise, but in cooler terms, "in our German af- 
 fair ' ' being brought to a head at last ; and was anxious to 
 have the opportunity of saluting the heir of Prussia. The 
 King of Bavaria telegraphed "Very happy. Many thanks 
 your Royal Highness' s attention!" A message which con- 
 veyed no more warmth than was felt. 
 
 His telegram of martial support, addressed at the outset 
 of affairs to Onkel Wilhelm, had seemed quite genuine. 
 Had not Count Bismarck quite a sheaf of documents, more 
 or less compelling, signed in the youthful monarch's 
 scrawling hand? King Ludwig had ordered immediate 
 mobilization of the dark green and light blue uniforms 
 expended millions of gulden in variegated lamps, public 
 fountains of white beer and red wine, bands, Royal Com- 
 mand Opera performances, patriotic set-pieces in fireworks 
 (representing the tutelary genii of Prussia and Bavaria, 
 cuirassed and armed, upholding the standards of black- 
 and-white and blue-and- white), joined in the "Wacht am 
 Ehein" as though he liked the tune (which he abhorred), 
 and certainly enjoyed the tumultuous plaudits with which 
 his subjects greeted their monarch's first and last appear- 
 ance in the character of a man of action. 
 
 But instead of riding away at the head of the South 
 German Army, Nephew Ludwig sent an excuse to Onkel 
 "Wilhelm one has heard a gumboil named as occasion of 
 the disability and Cousin Fritz was dispatched to take 
 over chief command. 
 
 Prince Luitpold of Bavaria accompanied the First Army
 
 252 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Headquarter Staff. Alas, the appointment but served to 
 inflame the gumboil of the jealous King, the accounts 
 that were daily to reach him of the prowess of his martial 
 cousin of Prussia worked like poison in his blood. He 
 drew the hood of his mantle of dreams more closely over 
 his head to shut out those fanfares of triumph, those 
 "Hochs!" and eheerings, and plunged more deeply into 
 the solitudes of his forests and mountain-caves. Blood and 
 iron were his bugbears, and yet they might have been his 
 tonics too. They might have staved off the black hound of 
 Destiny, already baying at his heels, and saved him from 
 vicious decadence, ultimate madness, and a strange and 
 sordid end. 
 
 And yet, how did his chivalrous cousin die, at the 
 meridian of robust manhood, under the newly imposed 
 weight of an Imperial Crown? Not the swift, soldierly 
 death that is given by the bullet of a chassepot the pro- 
 jectile from a mitrailleuse the flying fragment of an 
 exploding shrapnel-shell but a straw-death, a bed-death 
 such as angry seers and cursing Valkyrs of Scandinavian 
 legend foretold as the speedy punishment of warriors who 
 had broken faith and tarnished by false oaths the bright- 
 ness of their honor. 
 
 But no shadow of the grim fate that was to befall him 
 darkened those brave blue eyes at this period. Laboring 
 night and day at the mobilization of his Third Army, in 
 concert with his Chief of Staff, Von Blumenthal, he was 
 buoyantly happy, despite his hatred of the shedding of 
 blood and his undisguised compassion for the conjectured 
 plight of the Man on the Seine. 
 
 With whom Britannia at first expressed a sympathy not 
 at all restrained or guarded, and for the success of whose 
 arms she was openly eager, until, toward the close of this 
 momentous month of July, 1870, the text of a brief but 
 pithy diplomatic document, penned in precise and elegant 
 French, and dated a few years previously made its ap- 
 pearance in the columns of the Times. 
 
 The movements of the opposing forces camped on the 
 banks of the Meuse and the Saar lost interest for the public 
 eye in perusal of this rough memorandum of a proposed 
 treaty between the Third Napoleon and the King of Prus- 
 sia, scrawled in Count Benedetti's flowing Italian hand. 
 
 Since the spring of '67 it had been hidden away in a
 
 ; THE MAN OE IRON 253 
 
 snug corner of Bismarck's dispatch-box, waiting to jump 
 out. You recall the terms of the thing one of many overt 
 attempts to seize a coveted prize. The Empire of France 
 was to recognize the acquisitions made by Prussia in the 
 war of 1866 with Austria. Prussia was to aid Napoleon III. 
 to buy from Holland the debatable Duchy of Luxem- 
 bourg. The Emperor was to shed the luster of his smile 
 and the aegis of his approval upon Federal Union between 
 the North German Parliament and the South German 
 States the separate sovereignty of each State remaining. 
 In return, Prussia was to abet the Bonaparte in the mili- 
 tary occupation and subsequent absorption of the King- 
 dom of Belgium. And in furtherance of these laudable 
 ends, an alliance, offensive and defensive, against any 
 Power, insular or otherwise, was to be compact between the 
 great gilt eagle of the Third Empire and the black-plu- 
 maged bird across the frontier. 
 
 Britons, with inconveniently good memories, perusing 
 this draft, recalled the existence of a treaty existing be- 
 tween France, England, and Prussia, mutually binding 
 these Powers to protect the neutrality of Belgium, and 
 drew reflections damaging to the betrayer and the betrayed. 
 French diplomatists asserted that the project had been 
 drawn up by Benedetti at Bismarck's dictation. Why 
 preserve so explosive a document, they argued, if it was 
 never to be drawn out and supplied with detonators in the 
 shape of signatures ? Later on M. Rouher 's boxes of official 
 papers, found at his chateau of Cercay, gave up the origi- 
 nal draft-treaty annotated in the Emperor's handwriting. 
 
 For it was his nature, may God pardon him ! to be false 
 and specious, ungrateful and an oath-breaker. He must 
 always repay great services with great wrongs. Thus in 
 the red year 1870, England, who in '54 had poured out 
 blood and treasure lavishly to aid him, receiving this plain 
 proof of treachery, stood sorrowfully back and saw him 
 rush upon his fate. Sick and desperate, madly hurling 
 his magnificent Army hither and thither upon the arena, 
 a Generalissimo out-generaled before the War was a week 
 old. 
 
 He had made France his mistress and his slave, and now 
 her fetters were to be hacked apart by the merciless sword 
 of the invader. Through losses, privations, and humilia- 
 tions; through an ordeal of suffering unparalleled in the
 
 254 THE MAN OE IRON 
 
 world 's history ; through an orgy of vice and an era of infi- 
 delity ; through fresh oceans of blood shed from the veins of 
 her bravest; she was to pass before she found herself and 
 GOD again. 
 
 Meanwhile, North, East, South and West, prevailed a 
 great swarming scurry of military preparation, the tunes 
 of the "Wacht am Rhein" and "Heil dir im Sieges- 
 kranz" clashing with "Partant pour la Syrie" and the 
 "Marseillaise"; and the solemn strains of masses rising up 
 together with Lutheran litanies, as two great nations strove 
 to convince Divine Omnipotence that Codlin deserved to 
 whip, and not Short. 
 
 Strange ! that Christian men, who frankly confess them- 
 selves to be sinners, worms, and dust-grains before the 
 supreme Majesty of the Creator, should be so prone to offer 
 Him advice. 
 
 XXX 
 
 THE LOVELY LADY whose lace parasol P. C. Breagh had 
 picked up at the bottom of the Prussian Chancellor 's stair- 
 case was driven, by the tipsy-faced Jehu of a debilitated 
 hack-cab, to a semi-fashionable hotel situated in a graveled 
 courtyard facing toward the Linden. The bureau-manager 
 looked out of his glass-case as she swept her rustling 
 draperies over the dusty Brussels carpets of the vestibule, 
 and muttered to the pale-faced ledger-clerk at his side : 
 
 "A representative from the firm of Miiller and Stettig, 
 Charlotten-Strasse, has called three times to see the lady in 
 Suite 35. With a jewelry account for payment, promised 
 and deferred." 
 
 The clerk assented with a nod of the double-barreled 
 order, and reaching an envelope from a numbered pigeon- 
 hole offered it for the inspection of his superior. 
 
 " Baroness VOD Valverden," sniffed the bureau-manager, 
 and in his turn reached a squat red Almanach de Gotha 
 from the top of a pile of ledgers, and ruffled the leaves 
 with an industrious thumb. 
 
 " It is as I thought there is no Baroness von Valverden. 
 Baron Ernst von Schon-Valverden is a minor and a bach- 
 elor, private in the th Regiment of Potsdam Infantry
 
 THE MAN; or IRON 255 
 
 of the Guard. This must be the Frenchwoman I have 
 heard of as mixed up in the scandal connected with the 
 death of Baron Maximilian at Schonfeld in the Altenwald 
 some years ago. He left Madame a lapful of thalers I 
 suppose she has played skat with the money. Not that that 
 matters if the hook-nosed, long-haired Slav she has got 
 with her upstairs has the cash to settle with us! But if 
 not " 
 
 The manager's tone was ominous. The clerk scratched 
 his nose with the feather-end of his pen, and said ad- 
 miringly : 
 
 "If not, the Herr Bureau-Director will give orders to 
 detain their valises and trunks ? ' ' 
 
 The bureau-manager smiled, and said, jerking his chin 
 at another envelope reposing in the numbered pigeon-hole : 
 
 ' ' Send that up at once and let them know we will stand 
 no nonsense. Keep Miiller and Stettig's back for the 
 present. Understand ? ' ' 
 
 And the clerk nodded again, and whistled down a tube, 
 and evoked from regions below a brass-buttoned, gilt- 
 braided functionary, to whom he entrusted the missive 
 indicated, which bore the monogram of the hotel-company, 
 and indeed contained their bill. 
 
 It was handed to Madame by the brass-buttoned func- 
 tionary just as she reached the ante-room of her second- 
 floor suite of apartments. She took it from the salver, and 
 said without looking at it: 
 
 "Presently!" 
 
 The functionary gave a peremptory verbal message. She 
 repeated : 
 
 "Presently, sir, presently. ... At this moment I am 
 exceedingly fatigued!" 
 
 The brass-buttoned functionary begged to remind the 
 gracious lady of similar excuses previously received by the 
 management. At this she turned upon him the battery of 
 her magnificent eyes. Always economical of her forces, she 
 had removed her torn tulle veil during the cab-drive, and 
 with a delicate powder-puff drawn from a jeweled case 
 dependant from her golden chatelaine, removed from her 
 lovely face all traces of emotion. Only a spiteful woman 
 would have called her thirty-five. . . . And the functionary 
 was a man, despite his brass buttons and gilt braiding.
 
 256 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 When she smiled, he caved in, bowed, and left her. But 
 he did not forget to leave the bill. 
 
 She had it in her hand as she entered the drawing-room 
 of the suite of apartments, one of those impossibly shaped, 
 fantastically-uncomfortable salons, possessing a multi- 
 plicity of doors and windows, upholstered with rose-satin 
 and crusted with ormolu, such as are only seen in foreign 
 hotels and upon the stage. Despite the sultry heat of the 
 July weather the windows were shut, their Venetian blinds 
 lowered, and their thick lace curtains drawn over these. 
 And in a rose-colored arm-chair with twisted golden legs 
 and arms and an absurd back-ornament like an Apollonian 
 lyre, huddled a dark, hawk-featured, powerfully built man 
 of something less than forty, wrapped in a short, wide coat 
 lined, cuffed, and collared with black Astrakhan ; wearing a 
 traveling-cap similarly lined, and presenting the appear- 
 ance of one who suffers from a cold of the snuffly, catarrhal 
 kind. 
 
 He sneezed as Madame surged across the threshold, and 
 would have told her to shut the door, only that she divined 
 his intention and forestalled him, throwing her parasol 
 upon a sofa and sinking into a chair as ridiculous as his 
 own. Yet when her wealth of pale-hued draperies poured 
 over it, and the ripe outlines of her voluptuous form con- 
 cealed its crudities of design and coloring, it could be for- 
 given for being in bad taste. 
 
 She looked in silence at the traveling-cap, not at its 
 sulky wearer, until, conscious of her sustained regard, he 
 raised his hand to his head. In haste then, as though she 
 dreaded the shock of his purposeful abstention from the 
 customary courtesy, she said: 
 
 ' ' Do not take it off ! Pray keep it on ! " 
 
 "Thanks!" He uttered the word laconically, drooping 
 his immense, black-lashed eyelids over his fierce and 
 staring eyes. They, too, were black, with the white, hard 
 glitter of polished jet; black also were the great curved 
 eyebrows, the coarse and shining hair that fell to his 
 shoulders, the parted mustache, and the wedge-shaped 
 beard that depended from his boldly curved chin. Rip- 
 pling in small, regular waves, suggestive of the labor of a 
 primitive sculptor's chisel, the inky chevelure of this man 
 with the cold, taken in conjunction with his large, aqui-
 
 THE MAIS' OF IRON 257 
 
 line nose, deep chest, fleshy torso, and thick muscular 
 limbs, reproduced the type of an ancient Assyrian warrior, 
 as represented in some carved and painted wall-frieze of 
 Nineveh or Babylon, marching in a triumphant proces- 
 sion of Shalmaneser or Sennacherib. Even the conical 
 head-dress was reproduced by the modern cap with ear- 
 pieces, and turned-up border ; and the deep yellowish- white 
 of the alabaster in which the ancient sculptor wrought his 
 bas-relief was reproduced in thick, smooth, unblemished 
 skin. 
 
 Handsome as he undoubtedly was in his exotic, Oriental 
 style, even in spite of influenza, Madame contemplated him 
 with ill-concealed distaste. To a woman who loves, what 
 matters the temporary thickening of the beloved object's 
 profile, even when accompanied by attacks of sneezing and 
 a running at the nose and eyes? She can wait the day 
 when his voice will clear, and his leading feature will regain 
 its former beauty. That is, as long as she continues to 
 love. 
 
 The passion of this man and this woman had in its brief 
 time burned high and fiercely. So does a fire of paper or 
 straw. Now Passion lay dying, and Satiety and Weariness 
 were the only watchers by the death-bed. Every twenty- 
 four hours that passed over the heads of the couple brought 
 nearer the hour when these would give place to Hatred and 
 Dislike. And meanwhile both were infinitely hipped. 
 
 "Every window. . . . Every curtain. . . . Must we, 
 then, asphyxiate? ..." At the end of her patience, she 
 made an angry gesture as though to loosen the ribbon of 
 mauve velvet that held a diamond locket at the base of her 
 round white throat, bit her full lip and let her hand drop 
 idly into her silken lap again. 
 
 Her companion stretched out a pair of muscular, but 
 shortish legs, encased in dark green trousers with braided 
 side-stripes, and looked with interest at his patent boots. 
 Then he answered, speaking with a drawling, nasal accent : 
 
 "Unless M. de Bismarck has supplied you with the 
 means of averting a singularly-unpleasant catastrophe, it 
 may be that the answer to your question should be 'Yes'!" 
 
 She understood that he questioned, and said, drooping 
 her proud, languorous eyes under the hard black stare of 
 his:
 
 258 THE MAN OE IRON 
 
 "You would be wiser to speak in a lowered tone, when 
 you refer to that personage. One does not trifle with 
 him here or elsewhere!" 
 
 "The Pomeranian bear," said her companion, pouting 
 a slightly swollen lip, and dabbing gingerly at his reddened 
 nostrils with a voluminous cambric handkerchief exhaling 
 the heavy perfume of opoponax, "has claws and fangs. 
 Also a hug, in which friends of mine have stifled. But they 
 were men and you are an enchanting woman!" He re- 
 moved his cap and bowed ; resuming : ' ' Besides you went 
 to M. le Ministre with a trump in your hand a little 
 Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud. Have you played 
 her, may I ask?" 
 
 He got up, pocketing his handkerchief, came over to her 
 and stood beside her, in the upright attitude which called 
 attention to the disproportion between his huge torso and 
 his too-short legs. He held his furred cap upon his hip with 
 one hand, and with the other stroked his waved wedge- 
 beard. The rasping sound made by his heavily-ringed 
 fingers as they passed through the thick, crisp hairs irri- 
 tated her to anguish. Yet not so long ago it had thrilled 
 her to sensuous ecstasy. 
 
 "I played the girl and I have lost!" Almost against 
 her will a cry broke from her. ' ' My God ! what things he 
 said to me ! My God ! what humiliations we women endure 
 for men!" 
 
 "I had imagined, my Adelaide," said he of the Assyrian 
 hair and profile, showing in a smile a double row of teeth 
 so perfect that they struck the imagination as being carved 
 out of two solid curves of ivory "that you were playing 
 for your own advantage even when you played my game. 
 Did M. le Comte mention me at any point of the inter- 
 view?" 
 
 She started at the unexpected question. Her voice shook 
 a little in the reply. 
 
 ' ' He said that he had heard that M. de Straz had lately 
 visited Berlin. That his agents would tell him. Of 
 course ! ' ' 
 
 "He said nothing of a flying visit of mine to Sig- 
 maringen?" 
 
 She answered hastily : 
 
 "I think not. No! I am quite certain he did not." 
 
 "No?"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 259 
 
 Straz sniffed and whipped out his handkerchief, grum- 
 bling : 
 
 ''Yet the purport of my mission to that South German 
 crow Vnest was known to him here in Berlin I can prove 
 it! by nightfall of the day I interviewed the Prince." 
 He added, trumpeting in his handkerchief, "Of course, 
 M. Bismarck has spies everywhere. But all the same it 
 was quick work!" 
 
 Her face was immovable. No guilty flush stained its 
 smooth ivory surface. Only the lines about her scarlet 
 mouth sharpened, that was all. 
 
 Straz went on, peevishly, strolling to the fireplace, and 
 leaning an elbow on the corner of the mantelshelf. 
 
 "I suppose they call that princely hospitality to send 
 a man who has traveled night and day, and is decanted 
 out of a crazy railway-station droschke at the door of their 
 confounded Stammschloss at five o'clock in the morning 
 to an inn ! ' ' 
 
 She said in a velvet tone of amorous insinuation, and 
 with a glance of sleepy fire : 
 
 "To an inn where Love lay waiting ! . . . " 
 
 "Truly," he admitted, "but how were they to know 
 that you were there? What possible connection could 
 have been imagined between two chance travelers I 
 arriving from Paris you coming from Berlin ? Besides 
 to send me to a summer tavern on the banks of the Danube ! 
 when they have two hundred bedrooms at the Schloss! 
 If that is princely hospitality, I tell you that I spit upon it ! 
 I grind it under the heel of my boot ! " 
 
 Her nostrils dilated with disgust as he demonstrated by 
 spitting on the hearthrug. She said, meeting his angry 
 black stare with eyes that were of the color of tawny 
 wine: 
 
 "The Prince cannot have regretted his omission to ac- 
 commodate you with an apartment, when the Emperor's 
 message was made known to him!" 
 
 He demanded: 
 
 "Am I a hired bravo? Pardieu! your words suggest it. 
 "Were either of the old man's sons in danger personally, 
 from me? Not at all! I but repeated a lesson gave a 
 warning as it had been given. . . . But I understand you 
 have been chagrined by the nature of your reception from 
 the Federal Chancellor ! ' '
 
 260 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 She returned, now flushed and breathing deeply : 
 
 "It is true. I suffocate at the recollection. Give me 
 time to breathe!" 
 
 She rose. Straz said, going over to her, taking both her 
 hands, kissing them and replacing her in her chair : 
 
 "Compose yourself. Let me understand the attitude 
 M. le Ministre is taking. I need not remind you that not 
 until I had learned from you that, through the lamented 
 Count Valverden, you were sufficiently acquainted with 
 M. de Bismarck to obtain an interview, did I suggest that 
 you should seek one. Well, you did, and it has taken 
 place. You told him of the little episode I witnessed 
 in January on the day of the funeral of Victor Noir at 
 Neuilly. Monseigneur the Prince Imperial was riding 
 with his governor and escort the Avenue of the Champs 
 Elysees was blocked by troops. A charming girl threw 
 M. Lulu a bunch of violets made a little scene of loyalty 
 and enthusiasm in contrast with the unamiable attitude 
 of the crowd assembled. An equerry dismounted and gave 
 the flowers to Monseigneur. He carried them with him as 
 he galloped toward the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing of im- 
 portance in that, perhaps, had he not afterward sent for 
 the equerry who had picked up the flowers, and said to 
 him, blushing, 'Pray tell me who was she?' So skilled a 
 master of phrases as M. de Bismarck could hardly have 
 undervalued the question from the heir to an Empire, 
 taken in combination with the blush. Or discounted the 
 importance of the fact that, later, when the equerry 
 brought him the information that the charming unknown 
 was the daughter and only child of a certain gallant 
 Colonel commanding the 777th Regiment of Mounted 
 Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard at that moment quar- 
 tered at Versailles, Monseigneur said, with another blush 
 as ingenuous as the first, ' I am glad she is the daughter of 
 so brave a soldier! Possibly I may meet her one of these 
 days.' Being told that her baptismal name was 'Juliette' 
 he blushed once more, and wrote it down, together with 
 Mademoiselle's surname and address, in a little memoran- 
 dum-book he habitually carries. . . . And there, my ex- 
 quisite Adelaide if your narrative style did credit to my 
 teaching, the interest of M. de Bismarck should have been 
 engaged."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 261 
 
 She lowered her chin and drooped her somber eyelids, 
 and said with curling lips : 
 
 "It was. He took out his watch, and told me: 'I can 
 hear you for three minutes longer! Has the Prince Im- 
 perial with the disinterested assistance of those about him, 
 altered that possibility into a certainty?' I explained to 
 him then that nothing further had come of the rencontre, 
 though measures had been taken to preserve Monseig- 
 neur's interest from dying for lack of excitement, bouquets 
 of violets being sent to him at regular intervals, with a slip 
 of paper attached to the stems, upon which had been 
 written in an unformed, girlish hand 'From one who 
 prays for the H ope of France!' ' 
 
 "And then? ..." 
 
 "Then M. de Bismarck spoke, keeping his thumb all the 
 time on the watch-dial: 'So! The girl plays the part of 
 an ingenue for the present ! Will she keep these airs of 
 candor and innocence when she has got her claws on that 
 poor stripling? And do you suggest that the Prussian 
 Secret Service should supply her with funds for the carry- 
 ing out of her design, whatever it may be ? Are we to lay 
 our heads together, like the Brethren in the libretto of 
 Mehul's opera "Joseph," and sing in chorus: This is the 
 heir. Come, let us kill him!' ' 
 
 "Even Beelzebub," said Straz, "can quote from Scrip- 
 ture when it suits him. I suppose you were annoyed, and 
 showed it which was an error of judgment on your part ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' I rose up, ' ' said she, and suited the action to the word, 
 "with indignation, assuring M. de Bismarck that his sus~ 
 picions were unjust. That the young girl mentioned was 
 of ancient family and irreproachable morals, convent-bred 
 and highly educated. And that I, myself, being her near- 
 est living relative of her own sex, was able to vouch for 
 the fact. I added that the interest displayed in her by 
 Monseigneur the Prince who until that moment had 
 never been known to look at a woman led me to con- 
 ceive that by aid of a few deft hints, a little discreet 
 encouragement another distant glimpse a meeting acci- 
 dentally brought about in some retired spot favorable to 
 the revival of first impressions, an influence might be 
 brought to bear upon the Imperial boy which might develop 
 his mind and mold his character. Somehow in my agita-
 
 262 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 tion the name of Juliette de Bayard escaped me 'De 
 Bayard,' exclaimed M. de Bismarck. 'So! You are her 
 mother!' Great Heaven! the intolerable tone in which 
 he uttered the words! Only the most abandoned of her 
 sex could have supported the insulting irony of the look 
 accompanying them. Choking, I took my leave. . . . He 
 accompanied me to the staircase, with a false appearance 
 of courtesy. As I turned to descend, he hurled the last 
 insult of all! Nicolas, do not ask me to repeat the sen- 
 tences! and yet, I must have them written in another 
 memory. . . . He twitted me with my nationality before 
 his secretary and servants. He likened me to a mytho- 
 logical character with an unpronounceable name. . . . He 
 said only a modern mother would be infamous enough to 
 devote her only daughter to Venus Something-Or-Other. 
 . . . Next to my husband, I detest that man ! ' ' 
 
 Straz had been pulling at his moist red underlip as she 
 raved out her story in a frenzy of rage and resentment, 
 intensified by the necessity of speaking in a lowered tone. 
 Now he dragged the feature out as though it had been made 
 of india-rubber, let it snap back, and said, shrugging his 
 bull 's shoulders and getting up : 
 
 "You are a woman and he is Bismarck! He does not 
 for the moment want the wares you desire to sell him. It 
 is unlike him the diplomat who could encourage M. Bene- 
 detti to lay before him the Emperor's pro jet de traite 
 in writing and lock it away for use at a future oppor- 
 tunity not to be willing to secure an advantage placed 
 before him with clearness and skill in the newly awakened 
 fancy of a schoolboy who, if he lives, will be an Emperor 
 for a charming and innocent young girl ! ' ' He pronounced 
 these words as though they were smeared with something 
 sweet and luscious, licking his lips gently, and rolling his 
 dead black eyes in sensual enjoyment. "As regards your 
 husband, he has certainly not replied to the letter of your 
 solicitors, but why do you hate the unlucky man?" 
 
 "Do you ask?" Adelaide demanded, with glittering 
 eyes and heaving bosom. "Did he not refuse to divorce 
 me? Should I not have legally borne the title of Baroness 
 von Valverden if his sentimental prejudices had not 
 blocked the way ? ' ' 
 
 Straz pulled his waved beard, and said, delicately sepa-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 263 
 
 rating a strand of it from the rest, and keeping it between 
 his thick white fingers: 
 
 "Sentimental, why sentimental? Do you not even give 
 him credit for sufficient spirit to resent being made ridicu- 
 lous ? The desire to be revenged you will not even allow 
 him that?" 
 
 She bit her scarlet underlip and answered, breathing 
 quickly : 
 
 "He was too good, too high-minded too chivalrous 
 oh! 'tis ridiculous, I admit!" for Straz commenced to 
 titter silently, screwing up the corners of his eyes and shak- 
 ing his shoulders, as he sat with his thick, short arms folded 
 on his chest. "An idea to make you hug yourself as you 
 are doing. But true, nevertheless ! He would have said 
 at this distance of time I can still hear him preaching: 'I 
 will avenge the injury to my honor when I am confronted 
 with my enemy. I will not revenge myself upon the 
 woman who deserted me for him!' ' 
 
 The words came, not in her own voice. Straz left off 
 sniggering. He said to himself, considering her through 
 narrowed lids: 
 
 ' ' Those were De Bayard 's actual words. I wonder, since 
 she has neither seen nor heard from him since she left him, 
 how it is she knew that they were spoken ? Some obliging 
 mutual friend may have repeated them. Or she read them 
 in some letter of his, written to Count Valverden. That 
 is quite possible. But the question is, whether she would 
 detest him so bitterly if her passion for him were absolutely 
 extinguished. She is even jealous when one speaks of 
 their daughter, whom he worships. ... I will play her on 
 this string it may be useful, who knows?" 
 
 Aloud he said: 
 
 "Detest your husband, dear friend, if it affords you 
 entertainment. Probably he deserves it, though women I 
 have met who knew him vowed him un creme d'homme, 
 worthy of the name he bears." He smiled in his beard, 
 hearing her foot tap upon the shining parquet, and went 
 on. ' ' Men have praised his gallantry and his disinterested- 
 ness " 
 
 ;< 'Disinterestedness!' " she mocked. "Truly to the 
 point of fanaticism he is disinterested. Have we not to 
 thank that characteristic for the ruin of our plans?"
 
 264 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Said Straz: 
 
 "A little more subtlety upon the part of your solicitors, 
 and you might have found M. le Colonel less obstinately 
 inclined to discourage the idea of a reconciliation. To have 
 entrusted a portrait to the hands of the lawyers would have 
 been an excellent move. Once convinced that the thirteen 
 or fourteen years that have elapsed since you parted 
 have increased rather than diminished the beauty that 
 once he worshiped and I fancy De Bayard would have 
 accepted your terms ! ' ' 
 
 He sniggered, and waited as the violet shadows about her 
 brilliant eyes deepened, and she breathed more quickly. 
 Then he went on : 
 
 "They were generous I allude to the conditions. 
 Ninety men out of a hundred would have accepted them. 
 For what has De Bayard to condone that others have not 
 winked at? You were a mere girl, weary of separation 
 from a husband who doubtless consoled himself after his 
 own fashion, for his detention in the Crimea. Bored to 
 desperation condemned to spend your days in the care of 
 a child, and in listening to the imbecile grumblings of a 
 sick old devotee, point out to me the woman, young, 
 beautiful, brilliant, and ambitious who would not in 
 your place have done precisely as you did ? ' ' 
 
 She threw her head a little backward, bringing into 
 prominence the superb modeling of her columnar throat 
 and the heavy lines of the lower jaw. Her wine-colored 
 eyes considered him between their narrowed lids. She 
 savored his words, silently, with palpitating nostrils, and 
 rippling movements of the muscles of her tightly closed 
 lips. And the qualities of treachery and cruelty, mingling 
 in her strange character with sensuality, and pride, and 
 recklessness, were written upon her beauty as plainly as 
 they are stamped upon the individuality of a tigress, or a 
 poisonous snake. 
 
 "You speak of weariness ... of boredom ..." She 
 spoke between her teeth, accentuating the vowels and pro- 
 longing the sibilants : ' ' Nicolas, it was hellish that menage 
 at Auteuil! ..." She clenched the white hand that 
 rested on the chair-arm and continued, looking with burn- 
 ing eyes through Straz into the past. 
 
 "That woman my husband's mother, with her parade 
 of devotion for the absent. With her ceaseless repetition
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 265 
 
 of 'my son,' 'my son's child,' and 'my son's wife!' . . . 
 Grand Dieu! how she enraged me! How she made me 
 hate hate hate them! yes! all three. . . . Perhaps my- 
 self also, most bitterly of all ! " 
 
 "We have a curious proverb in my country," com- 
 mented Straz, with his snigger: " '1 draw water from a 
 well that has no bottom when I tell my gossip of the faults 
 of my mother-in-law!' ' 
 
 She said, with undisguised scorn : 
 
 "I am not a collector of curios from your country!" 
 
 "Ah, but wait! Hear the rest of it!" said Straz, dex- 
 terously embroidering on the original: "'But when my 
 mother-in-laiv wishes to acquaint my husband with my good 
 qualities, she will write them with the plume from a gnat's 
 head, on the paper that wrapped a butterfly's egg, when 
 she has bought her ink at the shop where they sell none!' ' 
 
 Adelaide continued, ignoring the labored witticism : 
 
 "In the letter of farewell that I wrote to De Bayard I 
 said 'Tour mother will console you, I have no doubt!' . . . 
 How often I have imagined I could hear her talking to 
 him. . . . He would weep on her knees, like a schoolboy. 
 She would lead him to look at the child, asleep in its cot by 
 the side of her bed, and tell him, 'Do not fear! She will 
 not be like her mother! She will grow up candid and dis- 
 creet and virtuous!' Everything that Adelaide was not, 
 you understand. . . . Ha, ha, ha! Absurd old creature! 
 Were she not dead, I should detest her still ! ' ' 
 
 Straz mentally commented : ' ' The daughter has inherited 
 the hatred, unless I am mistaken." Aloud he said : 
 
 "The prophecy, if made, has not been fulfilled, my 
 Adelaide. . . . Mademoiselle, if inferior to her mother in 
 splendor and beauty, certainly has been dowered with her 
 elegance and charm. ' ' He bunched the fingers of his right 
 hand, kissed them, and launched the kiss, conjecturally, in 
 the direction of Paris. ' ' A pocket edition of Psyche before 
 that little affair with Cupid! A rare jewel! A chic type, 
 give you my word ! ' ' 
 
 The daintily shod foot had beaten time, as Straz en- 
 larged upon the theme of Juliette's perfections, to what 
 might have been the tune of a tarantella: now it ceased. 
 She laughed in the Roumanian's face, and cried, still 
 laughing : 
 
 "A child! ... A schoolgirl who has seen no more of
 
 266 THE MAN OE IRON 
 
 the world than the pearl in the oyster! All this is too 
 funny give you my word!" 
 
 Said Straz, lolling his head against the chair-back and 
 licking his red lips cattishly: 
 
 "Ah, but when the pearl-diver opened the oyster, he 
 said: 'Here is a gem worth a Kingdom, or an Empire, 
 when it shall be polished and properly set!' ' 
 
 " 'Or an Empire!' ' 
 
 She echoed the three words, throwing her head back in 
 imitation of Straz 's attitude, and looking at him with 
 languid provocation. Then she yawned, showing her per- 
 fect teeth and the tip of a rosy tongue, and remarked 
 with an air of boredom : 
 
 "My friend, whether your pearl be worth an Empire 
 or a cabbage-plot, your chance of proving its value is for- 
 ever forfeited, thanks to the obstinacy of M. de Bayard." 
 
 Said Straz: 
 
 "Our plan would have been easier to carry out, had 
 M. de Bayard been more complaisant." 
 
 She rose up, her beautiful face livid and gray under its 
 artificial roses. Her eyebrows writhed like little live snakes, 
 her eyes burned " like wind-blown torches. She spoke, 
 looking past her confederate in the chair, and with a 
 voice he barely recognized: 
 
 ' ' His mother must have prayed her Saints for this, ' ' she 
 said, "that I should always fail in the moment when 
 triumph seemed most sure. Max Valverden would have 
 married me it is absolutely certain! had not Fate sent 
 him back on leave from the Staff in Austria but a couple 
 of hours too soon. "Weak, sentimental Max ! always threat- 
 ening extreme measures. Who would have believed him 
 capable of carrying out that menace so often reiterated! 
 But this I know. Had he confronted me with what his 
 letter termed 'the unmistakable proofs of my appalling 
 treachery,' I would have convinced him even against the 
 testimony of his own ears and eyes. But De Bayard but 
 my husband! " 
 
 She had forgotten Straz; she saw nothing but her own 
 frustrated ambitions, the dead body of the man whose 
 suicide had robbed her of a title, and the living husband 
 whose stern rejection of her overtures had left her forever 
 outside the social pale. . . . 
 
 "Do I not know the man he is! [With another it would
 
 THE MAN: DE IRON 267 
 
 Eiave been so easy. He would have granted an interview, 
 I would have been suppliant and humble I would have 
 told my tale in such a voice ! . . . You were away. ... 7 
 was young and inexperienced. . . . I foolishly yielded to 
 the persuasions of another. . . . Once I had let Valverden 
 kiss me I felt myself smirched for ever. I fled with him 
 because I dared not meet your eyes!" 
 
 Straz sniggered. She went on, not hearing him. . . . 
 
 "He would have taken me to his heart again. Once 
 reinstated there I would have regained the entree to 
 Society. For a woman who has lived within the pale 
 even if she finds it better fun outside it is hideous to be 
 declassee. A few triumphs, a little intriguing and I 
 should have been received at Court. . . . For the Emperor 
 is above all a man of the world ; and the Empress loves to 
 surround herself with beautiful and witty women. With 
 gifts, talents, charm like mine, I should have carried all 
 before me! I should have reigned I should have drunk 
 the wine of Success from a goblet of diamond." 
 
 "Without doubt," agreed Straz, "had M. le Colonel 
 consented to receive you. Yet I contend, his refusal is a 
 hopeful sign, if it means that he is afraid." 
 
 She winced as though he had thrust a knife in her side, 
 and cried out: 
 
 ' ' Afraid ! You do not know him. ... No ! I tell you, 
 that it is to him as though I had never existed. . . . Did 
 we meet, he would look me in the face pass me by with- 
 out the twitch of a muscle without the nicker of a glance. 
 . . . But you have shown me how I may reach his heart 
 and one day I shall thrust my hand into his breast and 
 tear it out and trample on it. ... It is she my daughter 
 who will accomplish this! . . ." 
 
 Said Straz, pushing back his chair, getting up and blow- 
 ing his nose loudly: 
 
 "Then the sooner we exchange these avenues of dusty 
 lime-trees, choked with crowds of bellowing Teutons, for 
 the boulevards of Paris, the better. We shall, of course, be 
 forced to return by a detour via Brussels the Rhine 
 Valley railways being reserved for the transport of troops. 
 Passports can be had on application to the usual authori- 
 ties. The only insuperable obstacle to our departure is 
 the bill!" 
 
 Madame came back to consciousness of sordid things as
 
 268 THE MANi DE IRON 
 
 the Roumanian ostentatiously turned out his trouser- 
 pockets. 
 
 "You are at an impasse for lack of funds?" she asked 
 him. 
 
 ' ' Upon my life, my soul ! ' ' Straz smilingly assured her, 
 "I am at present without a radish! A sum of two thalers 
 negotiable currency constitutes my stock of cash. Although, 
 as I have told you, I carry secreted on my person an order 
 for" he tapped his bosom "ten thousand francs pay- 
 able from the Secret Funds of the Imperial Government. 
 
 This I tried to cash before I left Paris " He measured 
 
 off an infinitesimal quantity of finger-nail and displayed it 
 to her. ' ' Do you think I got a franc from anyone ? No ! 
 you know better! The Emperor's methods are under- 
 stood too well. And thus it is that the disinclination of 
 M. de Bismarck to finance our plan for the union of two 
 young and ingenuous lovers has hit me in the midriff. A 
 thousand curses on his niggardliness!" 
 
 As though prompted by some recollection of Adelaide's 
 previous display of tragic passion, he scowled portentously, 
 spat at the fireplace, then began to strut about, vaporing 
 and waving his ringed, hairy-backed hands. 
 
 "Penniless. . . . What damnable absurdity! The 
 Emissary of a Potentate ! The Bearer of the Bowstring 
 with Life or Death in my hand. For lack of cash I travel 
 second-class to that accursed South German Principality 
 I stoop to put up at a third-rate inn. My Mission per- 
 formed, I yield to the promptings of my ardent nature. 
 In the company of her who reigns sultana of my soul, 
 who for my sake has shared the discomforts of that abom- 
 inable caravanserai I return to the barbarous capital of 
 the Hohenzollerns I risk my person in the streets of 
 Berlin. Had my brain been cooler had your image glowed 
 less seductively before my mental vision" he rolled his 
 black eyes amorously and laid a thick ringed hand upon 
 his breast "it may be that I should not have accom- 
 panied you, that I might have hurried back express to 
 Paris presented myself to my Imperial master and 
 reaped the golden prize!" 
 
 "Say rather," responded Madame, in a tone not un- 
 tinged with acrimony, "that as the result of your unsuc- 
 cessful endeavor to enlist the interest of M. de Bismarck 
 in that charming plan to unite two ingenuous young people
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 269 
 
 you are placed in a position that is not without un- 
 pleasant possibilities. My beaux yeux are less to blame 
 than your ambition 'to kill,' as the English say, 'two birds 
 with one stone!' You " 
 
 "Say 'we,' not 'you,' my divine Adelaide," corrected 
 Straz, with tender insistence, "for if not in actuality hus- 
 band and wife, we are thus inscribed upon the bureau- 
 register. 'One in sorrow, one in joy,' to quote a poet of 
 my nation. I wish you were acquainted with the verses 
 of Stepan Mieciwycz. They would afford you exquisite 
 delight." 
 
 "Possibly," said Madame, with an ominous hardening 
 of the facial muscles, and a whiteness about the lips. 
 ''What does not afford me delight is that these brigands 
 downstairs have threatened to seize our luggage if their 
 claim is not satisfied within an hour." 
 
 "Sapristi!" commented the Roumanian. "A beautiful 
 imbroglio! And as I have no luggage beyond a travel- 
 ing valise, ' ' he added with a gentle snigger, ' ' your trunks, 
 bonnet-boxes, imperials, traveling-bags, and so forth 
 must become the prey of the management. It grieves me 
 to the soul that you should suffer this denudation at the 
 hands of these coarse Germans. But what I cannot pre- 
 vent, I can but deplore!" 
 
 * ' And if, ' ' she said in a vibrating voice of anger, ' ' these 
 coarse Germans should lay hands upon your person, for 
 the purpose of ascertaining for themselves the state of 
 your purse ! . . . What then ? ' ' 
 
 "What then?" Straz 's cynical composure broke up. 
 "Istenem! Istenem! Nothing could be more dangerous! 
 My letter of instructions from M. de Gramont, annotated 
 in the Emperor's own hand! The official letter, of intro- 
 duction from the Minister to Prince Antony the copies of 
 those three telegrams His Highness sent from Sigmaringen 
 the order on the Privy Purse all concealed in a silk 
 belt I am in the habit of wearing these Prussians will find 
 the papers should they search me to the skin. Then I, 
 with my ivife " He italicized the sentences. 
 
 ' ' One in sorrow as in joy, I think you said ! ' ' interpolated 
 Madame, bitterly. 
 
 "We should be arrested dragged before official inter- 
 rogators ! imprisoned ! Oh ! do not imagine I am laying 
 on the colors too thickly. Is it incredible that M. de
 
 270 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Bismarck might welcome an opportunity pending the 
 result of this war to turn the key on us?" 
 
 "Why on us?" demanded Adelaide. "Do / wear a 
 silken belt containing incriminating letters? Orders on 
 the Secret Funds . . . copies of Hohenzollern telegrams ?" 
 
 Straz looked at her, and his black stare hardened sus- 
 piciously. The swift Oriental blood that pigmented his 
 eyes and skin, and fed the luxuriant growth of hair upon 
 him, leaped in the dark to the conclusion that he had been 
 betrayed. He said, smiling, and speaking with a lisp, a 
 trick of his that boded ill, had she but known it: 
 
 "Not to my knowledge. ... I have never searched 
 while you were sleeping, or spiced the draught that made 
 the sleep profound." 
 
 "My thanks," she said, keeping her countenance mag- 
 nificently, "for the glass of mulled Burgundy I gave you 
 when you returned from the Schloss. You were suffering 
 from chill you shivered and burned alternately. . . . 
 Like a woman, I did what I could and you are ungrate- 
 ful, like all other men." 
 
 "My soul," simpered Straz, "I adore you madly. But 
 like every other man, I am a son of Adam, and you are a 
 daughter of Madame Eve. And a little snake hisses in 
 my ear whenever I am not looking at you: 'She would be 
 truer to her sex if she were false!' ' 
 
 "Nicolas! This is too much! No, no, I beg of you to 
 let me leave you!" 
 
 Adelaide had put her hand to her heart, given him a 
 look in which passionate tenderness seemed to strive with 
 wounded pride, quitted her chair, and hurried, the Rou- 
 manian hot upon her heels, to the door communicating 
 with the boudoir. Detained by his feverish grasp upon 
 her hand, prisoned by the muscular arm about her waist, 
 she could only reiterate her desire for freedom. Straz 
 asseverated : 
 
 "Yes! when you have forgiven me! Pardon, beloved 
 Adelaide! Life of my life, you know we Slavs are natu- 
 rally suspicious it is always in our blood!" 
 
 He thrust his face to hers, amorously ogling. The slight 
 thickening of the consonants, due to catarrh, made his 
 passionate speech sound grotesquely ridiculous. The ap- 
 proach of his mouth, the contact of his breath, reminded
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 271 
 
 the fastidious Adelaide that such colds could be trans- 
 ferred. So she smiled dazzlingly upon him, and gently 
 freed herself from his enfolding tentacles, leaning her 
 softly-tinted cheek downwards to the shoulder her own 
 overtopped. 
 
 "You are pardoned, my beloved one! But think with 
 me how this bill may be settled! What if you really 
 should be in danger in this place!" 
 
 He shrugged hopelessly, and ejaculated: 
 
 " Sapristi! I can conceive it possible. . . . But 
 hampered by the lack of money, what are we to do?" 
 
 She said with a start, as if suddenly enlightened: 
 
 "Dearest, I have some jewels. . . . Think nothing of 
 the sacrifice! . . . "Will it not be made for him who is 
 more to me than all? . . ." 
 
 ' ' Angel ! . . . Now I know, indeed, that Adelaide is true 
 to me ! Pardon thy slave, who dared to deem otherwise ! ' ' 
 
 Straz devoured her hand with kisses, became more en- 
 terprising as she grew, or seemed to grow, more yielding. 
 But she put him from her, suffering her bright glance to 
 linger on him amorously, saying in tones of liquid sweet- 
 ness, with a bewitching accent of rebuke : 
 
 "Be good now! I am tired, and must positively dine 
 in my room to-night. My maid will bring you in a few 
 moments a case containing what I mentioned just now. 
 Late as it is, shops are still open . . . there is a firm 
 of jewelers Miiller and Stettig in the Charlotten-Strasse, 
 who will buy such things for ready money. ... It should 
 bring sufficient to supply us with funds for a long time. 
 . . . Poor Valverden paid eighteen thousand thalers for 
 it!" She added as Straz licked his lips appreciatively: 
 " It is a star of emeralds and brilliants you have often seen 
 me wear." 
 
 ' ' Thou art my star ! O incomparable Adelaide ! ' ' 
 
 She pushed him from her, yet oozing with impassioned 
 admiration. She gently shut the boudoir-door and noise- 
 lessly shot the bolt. Then her face changed, and all her 
 disgust for Straz, his cheap compliments his slovenliness 
 his arrogance and self-satisfaction, his impecuniousness 
 and his cold in the head, was written on her face and ex- 
 pressed by every movement of her body. She ran across 
 the boudoir, abandoning her air of languor, burst into the 
 bedroom beyond, and aroused a dozing maid.
 
 272 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ""Wake up, Mariette ! Find me it is in the red morocco 
 jewel-case in the brown leather imperial the diamond star 
 with emerald points!" 
 
 While the woman rummaged, the mistress swiftly re- 
 viewed the situation. The cold, clear brain that dwelt 
 behind that velvet mask of sensuous beauty had formu- 
 lated a plan for getting rid of the Slav. 
 
 He would be an enemy dangerous as a rattlesnake, she 
 told herself. But trap your rattlesnake, and he cannot 
 bite. On the other hand, his subtle capacity for intrigue 
 his swift Oriental cunning even his masculine strength, 
 made of him a useful ally, even when he had no more 
 secrets for a clever woman to ferret out and sell. 
 
 For the brief telegram in cipher, dispatched by Madame 
 to a studiously unsuspicious address in Berlin before night- 
 fall of the day of the arrival in Sigmaringen with the 
 later-sent copies of Gramont's letters the formal intro- 
 duction which had secured the Agent from the Tuileries 
 an audience of Prince Antony, and the four pages of 
 secret instructions margined with the Emperor's annota- 
 tions, had brought in a handsome sum of money, thanks 
 to the potency of mulled Burgundy heavily dosed with 
 laudanum. Adelaide had known a moment of deadly ter- 
 ror when the Slav 's black eyes had looked at her with that 
 sinister stare of suspicion, and his conjectures had leaped 
 in the dark, so very near the actual verity. She felt no 
 desire to encounter that look again. 
 
 So she pondered, fingering the bulky roll of Prussian 
 banknotes paid her by Privy Councillor Bucher a few days 
 previously,- how she might best get rid of Straz without 
 another scene. His Oriental cunning, his childish vanity, 
 his petulance and sensuality, his colossal greed of money 
 and money's worth, blinded her to the ruthlessness and 
 ferocity of his tigerish nature, and provoked her to brave 
 a risk far greater than she guessed. 
 
 She would get rid of him play the game he had devised, 
 without him; and win, in spite of cold water thrown by 
 M. de Bismarck. The trap he had planned to catch the 
 son of the Emperor should yet be set successfully. Was 
 not the intended bait of living maiden's flesh her own? 
 
 She felt no pity for the innocence of the girl, or for the 
 inexperience of the stripling. She was curious to know 
 how under given circumstances they would comport
 
 THE MAN OE IRON 273 
 
 themselves; she was eager to bring to terms the Minister 
 who had contemptuously rejected her proposal she 
 thirsted above all for revenge upon the husband she had 
 wronged. 
 
 Straz stood in the way, therefore Straz must be swept 
 aside. His mission to Prince Antony performed, the 
 Napoleon would have no more use for the instrument. 
 Perhaps that order on the Privy Purse would never be 
 paid? 
 
 She arrived at this conclusion as the maid brought the 
 red morocco jewel-case. She unlocked it with a key she 
 wore in a bracelet, and drew out a shagreen-covered box 
 containing the vaunted ornament. It had not been given 
 her by her dead lover ; the story of the thousands spent on 
 it was no more reliable than the doubleted emeralds, and 
 the thin central star of diamonds set flush with the gold 
 setting of the toy. 
 
 But it looked well; and Straz was no good judge of 
 jewels, and she had not paid Miiller and Stettig the mod- 
 erate sum demanded as its price. The merchants had been 
 rude enough to dun her, and when Straz should appear 
 and tender the article for sale to them, the manager would 
 summon a policeman, and the Roumanian would be de- 
 tained. He would refer to herself, but long before a repre- 
 sentative of the firm could appear to interrogate her, she 
 would have paid the hotel-bill and departed, leaving the 
 price of the trinket in the hands of the management. 
 Flaws in the plan, no doubt, but on the whole it was 
 workable. She rose, took the star from the case stamped 
 with the too-revealing, names of Miiller and Stettig, glanced 
 in the mirror, left the bedroom and swept through the 
 boudoir. 
 
 "Nicolas!" she whispered, unbolting the door noise- 
 lessly, and opening it a little way. 
 
 "My Peri, I am here!" snuffled the impassioned Rou- 
 manian. 
 
 She opened the door a little further, and thrust out a 
 white palm cradling the glittering gewgaw. He pounced 
 on it, leaving a kiss instead. 
 
 "Remember, Miiller and Stettig, 85 Charlotten Strasse. 
 Fly!" 
 
 "Sultana, I depart upon the wings of Love, to return 
 like the bee to the rose, laden with golden pollen."
 
 274 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Your wings, unlucky bee, will be clipped by a police- 
 man," Madame said inwardly, as the drawing-room door 
 shut and the Slav's footsteps crossed the little ante-room. 
 There was a murmur of voices, that of Straz raised as if in 
 surprise or interrogation. Probably the gilt-buttoned 
 functionary had been lying in wait for him with the hotel- 
 bill. She listened a moment, heard no more, and went 
 back, saying to her attendant : 
 
 "Pack everything. We leave at once for Brussels." 
 
 The maid said, with peculiar demureness: 
 
 "And Monsieur, Madame?" 
 
 Her mistress told her: 
 
 "Monsieur has gone to call upon his bankers." 
 
 The maid responded with even greater demureness: 
 
 "Madame should know that in her absence Monsieur 
 endeavored ' ' 
 
 Madame said hastily: 
 
 "Pay no heed. These are customs common in Rou- 
 mania ! ' ' 
 
 The woman continued, bridling with all the scorn 
 Lesbia's waiting-maid feels for the penniless gallant: 
 
 "Monsieur endeavored to borrow of me ten thalers. ..." 
 
 Madame shrugged and bade her: 
 
 "Go on with your packing! Monsieur does not accom- 
 pany us!" 
 
 And without the exchange of another word the mistress 
 and maid understood each other perfectly. The impe- 
 cunious Straz was to be jettisoned for the lightening of the 
 ship. 
 
 Meanwhile, Fate willed the Slav should encounter on the 
 threshold of the ante-room the emissary of Messrs. Muller 
 and Stettig, who had called for the third time to demand 
 payment of the bill. This being offered for his inspection 
 as the responsible male of the party, threw unexpected 
 light on the intentions of Adelaide. 
 
 "Sixteen hundred thalers," he murmured. "Reason- 
 able, too most reasonable ! I have seen Madame wearing 
 the ornament, and admired it very much. Yes, if you 
 desire it, I will speak to the lady. It is doubtless mere 
 forgetfulness that has deferred the settlement of your 
 claim. Wait here ! ' ' 
 
 He unwound a knitted silk scarf that was folded round 
 his bull-neck. He turned down the collar of his Astrakhan-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 275 
 
 lined coat, and went back with noiseless steps. The door 
 of the boudoir was ajar. He satisfied himself that Adelaide 
 was in the bedroom beyond it. He stepped in, glanced 
 about him, formulating his plan, then locked the boudoir- 
 door, put the key in his pocket, crossed the room, and 
 knocked upon the door of the bedroom, swiftly stepping 
 aside, so that the door which opened outward, should 
 conceal him from those within. 
 
 ' ' Who is it knocks ? Open and see ! " he heard Madame 
 command her maid within the bedroom. The maid ap- 
 peared, crossed the boudoir, found the door fast, and re- 
 turned to tell her mistress. But then she found the door 
 of the bedroom she had quitted was bolted on the other 
 side. There was no sound within, but a kind of rustling, 
 and once or twice a footstep on the carpet. So, with the 
 patience of her caste, the maid sat down upon a sofa 
 until it should please her lady to undo the bedroom- 
 door. 
 
 Her lady was incommoded by the grip of Straz's thick 
 hairy hands upon her windpipe. He freed one in a mo- 
 ment and then Adelaide was being blinded by the folds 
 of a silken scarf. . . . Long, wide, and elastic, it served 
 the Roumanian 's purpose admirably. Perhaps it had been 
 useful in that particular way before. And as he rolled 
 and twisted it, he whispered sniggeringly in the little pearl- 
 white ear that jutted from between the crimson swathings, 
 almost as though it had been purposely left free : 
 
 ' ' So, my Sultana ! so, you would betray me ! . . . " 
 
 Enveloped, she stammered through the silken meshes 
 some barely intelligible sentences. The folds tightened 
 chokingly and the words died in a gasp. 
 
 "Mercy! . . . Forgive! ..." 
 
 "Surely, my proud Sultana," said the thickish voice 
 with the catarrhal snuffle in it. "What will men not 
 pardon to beauty such as yours!" 
 
 She moaned and strove to tear away the smooth bands 
 that were suffocating her. He whipped a velvet ribbon 
 from the toilet-table, brought down her hands, and bound 
 them behind her back. That little shell-shaped ear was 
 purplish by this time. At the point of losing conscious- 
 ness, she felt him softly groping for the treasure hidden in 
 her bosom she heard the crackling of the roll of notes 
 withdrawn.
 
 276 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Do not . . .!" she tried to say, but no sound came 
 from her but a groaning; and through the roaring of her 
 blood she heard him answer back: 
 
 "Do not rob you! would you plead, my peerless Ade- 
 laide? Far from it. I merely take from you what is my 
 own! For there was the taste of opium in my mouth 
 when I awakened in Love's embraces. And conviction, 
 stronger than proof, convinces me that I have been sold. 
 Else why this store of honey in the breast of the Queen of 
 the garden, while the black bee was sent roaming to gather 
 store elsewhere ? Eh, eh ! I think I could manage to guess 
 at the reason why I was to have been detained by those 
 jewelers on suspicion of theft! My Sultana would have 
 vanished, leaving no address behind her. . . . 1st en-em! 
 but the emerald star would have served your purpose 
 well!" 
 
 There was a silence. Rings of fire, stars of emerald 
 whirled before Adelaide's blinded vision. 
 
 ' ' Do not be afraid, my Queen, I am not going to murder 
 you!" chuckled the thick voice in the little swollen black- 
 ening ear. "Only to spoil your beauty a little nothing 
 more terrible. Your eyes will be less clear, your skin 
 less dazzlingly unblemished, after this experience. You 
 will never again look in your mirror without remembering 
 me!" 
 
 Rocking and swaying, ready to fall, she was only kept 
 upright by the arm of Straz about her body. She felt him 
 free that arm, shifting her weight against his great chest, 
 and as she lay blind and helpless there, his snigger vibrated 
 through her horribly. Then the smooth, slippery folds of 
 the silk scarf tightened murderously, stopping all breath, 
 shutting out consciousness. Whelmed in an abyss of 
 Nothingness, she felt and knew no more. . . . 
 
 "Madame is a little unwell," said Straz, who regained 
 the ante-chamber by the way of a dressing-room com- 
 municating with Madame 's bedroom. "She will call on 
 Messrs. Miiller and Stettig to-morrow, and settle their 
 account. Meanwhile" for the representative of the firm 
 was beginning to expostulate "she returns the emerald- 
 pointed star with her regrets. ' ' He added smilingly as the 
 relieved employe gratefully pocketed the trinket: "Ladies 
 are not business-like in these little matters of money. 
 But Heaven, who inspired in man the desire to see them
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 27T 
 
 well-dressed, has conferred on him the privilege of paying 
 their bills." 
 
 He accompanied the jeweler's foreman down to the 
 vestibule, chatting agreeably. He carried no valise, so 
 was allowed to pass out with the man. Keeping one thick, 
 hairy-backed hand thrust down into a pocket of his Astra- 
 khan-furbished shooting- jacket, close-clutched upon the 
 solid roll of Prussian banknotes, reft from that smooth 
 and perfumed hiding-place. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 "THE CEOWN PRINCE," wrote P. C. Breagh, "and the Red 
 Prince as people nickname Friedrich Karl of Prussia, in 
 virtue of his partiality for the crimson uniform of his 
 regiment, the Ziethen Hussars, have departed amidst 
 scenes of overwhelming enthusiasm, to take over the re- 
 spective commands of the Third and Second Army Corps. 
 On July 31st, at half-past-five noon, the very day on which 
 I pen these lines, the aged Sovereign drove in an open 
 landau drawn by two superb black Hungarian horses to 
 join his Ministers and his Chief of the Great Staff at the 
 station, where waited the special train destined to convey 
 the venerable Commander-in- Chief of the Field Armies of 
 Germany to the immediate Seat of War." 
 
 There was a jolt, the pencil bucked furiously, and the 
 writer's skull came smartly into contact with the un- 
 cushioned seat-back of the gray-painted, semi-partitioned 
 railway transport-car, in which, with some forty blue- 
 uniformed infantrymen of the Prussian Guard, P. C. 
 Breagh was being hurried toward the Rhine frontier, ill 
 a din so comprehensive that you could only make your 
 neighbor hear by putting your mouth to his ear and 
 bawling, and in an atmosphere so thick with dust and 
 smells, of varied degrees of intensity and picturesqueness, 
 that you drew it into your lungs in gulps and exhaled it 
 with sensible effort. 
 
 The partly-glazed windows did not let down, bars began 
 where the glass left off, and therefore the N.C.O.'s of the 
 eighth of a company appropriated to themselves the 
 corner-seats. Sandwiched between two large and heated
 
 278 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 warriors, with his unstrapped knapsack on his knee, and 
 his elbows jammed immovably against his lower ribs, P. C. 
 BrEagh abandoned the impulse to rub his bump, and con- 
 tinued to write, using the old straw hat which crowned 
 the knapsack as a support for a notebook. 
 
 "The Queen," he went on, "who was evidently labor- 
 ing under the influence of emotion, accompanied His 
 Majesty. A thunderstorm coruscated and detonated over- 
 head as the Royal salute of guns crashed out, and King 
 Wilhelm's subjects greeted him with round upon round of 
 enthusiastic 'Hock's.' The object of their acclamations 
 kept continually smoothing his heavy white mustache 
 with the right, ungloved hand, between the salutes with 
 which he acknowledged the plaudits of his people a char- 
 acteristic gesture of the veteran monarch when ..." 
 
 The pencil faltered. "Under the influence of emotion" 
 could not be used again, because it had already done duty 
 for the Queen, whose eyes, poor lady! had been red with 
 crying. P. C. Breagh knocked off to sharpen his pencil 
 and read over what he had set down. "Coruscated and 
 detonated" pleased him, though to have said that the 
 thunderstorm had growled and blazed would have been a 
 good deal nearer the mark. And "characteristic gesture" 
 was loftier language than "familiar trick" or "habit." 
 Mr. Knewbit would have snorted at it, it was true, but 
 this was not one of Mr. Knewbit *s stipulated-for letters, 
 "describing in a style readable by plain, ordinary, every- 
 day people, what you've seen and heard, and felt, and 
 smelled." 
 
 Still, one could not hope to please everybody and this 
 was a descriptive article not a chatty news-letter. "When 
 complete, it would be forwarded to the Editor of a Leading 
 Daily, with the brief intimation that more like it might be 
 had at a price. That it would draw commissions, P. C. 
 Breagh believed implicitly. There was a stately stodginess 
 about the style that could not fail to impress. So he con- 
 tinued as "Die Wacht am Rhein" broke out once more; 
 and the deep bass notes emitted by his burly right-hand 
 neighbor tickled his ribs and made him goosefleshy. 
 
 "The aged monarch seemed weary, it appeared to me." 
 
 "Ach, ach! but the old man looks tired!" people in the 
 front had holloaed to one another. All the week-end one 
 had seen the King bowling up, and down, and round-about
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 279 
 
 Berlin in his little one-torse carriage, with a single, 
 mounted orderly-officer in attendance; giving out colors, 
 addressing the regiments, conversing in short, soldierly 
 sentences with the field-officers in command. 
 
 "Baron von Moltke, Chief of the Great General Staff," 
 went on the pencil, "the War-Minister General von Eoon, 
 and the Federal Chancellor and Minister-President Gen- 
 eral Count von Bismarck-Schonhausen, with the personnel 
 of the Great Headquarters Staff and the mobilized Foreign 
 Office, received His Majesty at the railway-station, taste- 
 fully adorned with black-and-white bunting, carpeted with, 
 red, and garlanded with roses, said to be the favorite 
 floral emblem of the septuagenarian potentate. . . . " 
 
 It could not be denied by P. C^ Breagh, the painfully 
 hammered-out paragraphs smacked of the sample supplied 
 by Mr. Knewbit for avoidance. "Sham technicality and 
 sentimental slumgullion, " he seemed to hear that rigorous 
 critic saying, so loudly and in such a pouncing manner, 
 that P. C. Breagh hurriedly scratched out the sentence 
 about the floral emblems, though "septuagenarian poten- 
 tate" must be reserved for use later, as offering a refresh- 
 ing change from "aged King" and "veteran" or "vener- 
 able monarch." "Hoary-headed Ruler" would come in 
 usefully by-and-by. . . . 
 
 Bump bump jolt, ker-link-Jcer-lank ker-lunk! . . . 
 
 The two powerful engines, pulling a train-load of fully 
 two-thirds of a regiment at fullest war-strength, were slow- 
 ing up at a station: ... A roar of voices kept con- 
 tinually at crescendo hailed the arrival. Another roar, 
 mixed with fragments of patriotic song, replied. The plat- 
 form presented a sea of heads of both sexes, backed by an 
 imposing array of shelves, decorated with foliage, dangling 
 lamps and national bunting; surmounted by a bust of the 
 King between busts of Moltke and Bismarck, and literally 
 groaning under piles of sausages, loaves, cheeses, oleaginous 
 packages of sandwiches and pastry rows of gilt and sil- 
 ver-foiled wine-bottles, and then more rows. . . . 
 
 Barre]s of genuine Berlin beer, adorned with the Hohen- 
 zollern colors, stood hospitably ready to replenish glasses 
 and mugs. Filled with the amber nectar, trays of these, 
 suspended from the shoulders of stalwart youths, wearing 
 Red Cross arm-badges, and white-muslin-draped maidens 
 adorned with crimson sashes, waited to quench the thirst
 
 280 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 of Prussia's soldier sons. And taking in the condition of 
 things at a glance, said one of the two N.C.O.'s in charge 
 of the party: 
 
 "Himmeldonnenvetter! . . . Lads, there seems no help 
 for it. We have got to tuck in again!" 
 
 And simultaneously with the bass response: "At your 
 service, Herr Sergeant!" and almost before the slow- 
 going locomotives stopped, panting Samaritans hurled 
 themselves upon the carriages, and arms ending in hands 
 proffering packages of comestibles and tobacco, bottles of 
 beer or frothing glasses, or packets of cigars, were thrust 
 in between the window-bars, until every man's jaws were 
 busy, and every man's hands were laden. . . . Until even 
 the modestly retiring P. C. Breagh had been compelled to 
 accept a mighty hunk of iced plum-cake and a giant pack- 
 age of liver-sandwiches, and forced to empty a foaming 
 beaker of brown Bavarian. 
 
 "Why not, why not, when they have plenty for every- 
 one?" hiccoughed a stalwart private, who had emptied 
 many mugs: "Won't every fellow of the regiment find 
 his double-pint waiting him, when the next train comes 
 up?" 
 
 There was plenty for everyone. Not only the troop- 
 train that would follow this, containing the odd thousand 
 rank-and-file and the rest of the regimental officers, would 
 find the "cool blonde" and the "dark brunette," the 
 savory snack and the soothing weed, as ready for the 
 alleviation of possible requirements as they had been 
 at every halting-place the City of Hanover severely ex- 
 cepted since the huge send-off at Berlin on the afternoon 
 of the previous day. 
 
 Every class contributed to the refreshment of the sol- 
 diers. Wealthy brewers sent drayloads of barrels, rich 
 aristocrats gave wines from their cellars. The bakers be- 
 stowed bread, the pork-butchers contributed hams and 
 sausages, the tobacconists cigars and pipe-tobacco. While 
 the cook baked cakes with her perquisites of lard and 
 dripping : and the servant-maid took from her scant savings 
 for the purchase of a gross of match-boxes, to distribute 
 at the station when the military trains came in. 
 
 Poor was the wight who could be liberal in nothing.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 281 
 
 And thus thought the little old woman when she cooked 
 her dozen ginger-snaps. 
 
 She was a tiny little monkey-faced old peasant, in a 
 frilled white mutch, jaded red shawl, blue apron and 
 brown-striped drugget petticoat ; and she stood quite alone 
 in a clear space left upon the platform of a little country 
 station, as the eager philanthropists about her crowded to 
 lavish hospitality on the inmates of the incoming train. 
 As the pastry and the cakes, the coffee, beer, and spirits 
 flowed in at the windows and down the throats of the 
 wearers of the blue, white-faced Guard uniforms, this little 
 old woman made no effort to offer her ginger-snaps, which 
 were ranged in three rows of four on a dingy white cloth 
 in a little broken basket, and were palpably melting under 
 the rays of an ardent July sun. 
 
 Her timidity and her feebleness had kept her back, but 
 when the Colonel in command issued the order to entrain, 
 and the officers who had clanked in pairs up and down the 
 platform, good-humoredly answering the questions of old 
 ladies, and gallantly returning the admiring glances of 
 young ones, accepting a leaf-full of fruit here, or a glass 
 of Ehine wine or a cigarette there, began to take their 
 places, she mustered courage to hold up her basket to 
 a dandy young subaltern and murmur: "Please to 
 take!" 
 
 Next moment the dandy could not have meant it, 
 but as he pushed away the extended basket, and swung 
 round upon his heel, his silver sword-knot caught in the 
 frayed cloth or broken wicker-work, and down went the 
 basket, and the snaps were spilt upon the ground. . . . 
 
 ' ' Thou dear God ! ' ' the little old woman cried in anguish. 
 "Ach ach! the good, the delicious ginger-snaps! . . . 
 Who now will eat them? Ach! Ach!" 
 
 And up to her poor eyes went her blue apron. It was 
 a terrible tragedy to her. Some people pitied her. Others 
 were heartless enough to laugh after the fashion of the 
 blond, red-lipped officer and to laugh once more at the 
 summary fashion of his setting-down. 
 
 For a terrible, rasping voice said, speaking behind the 
 dandy subaltern, and full four inches above the level of his 
 ear: 
 
 ' ' Under-Lieutenant Fahle will remedy the damage done
 
 282 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 by his carelessness before he resumes his place in the 
 train!" 
 
 Thus the train waited while the offender, blood-red with 
 rage and confusion, picked up the sticky brown cakes 
 with his snowily gloved fingers, and replaced them in the 
 broken basket, amidst the little old woman's humble apol- 
 ogies, and entreaties that the gracious gentleman would 
 not trouble himself. When the Colonel, owner of the 
 rasping voice above referred to, in conjunction with a 
 bushy scarlet beard and bristling mustaches, a stately 
 height of six feet four inches, a regulation waist, and three 
 rows of decorations, performed an act of bravery for which 
 he deserved another medal still. For, selecting the snap 
 that looked cleanest, this dauntless warrior gravely took it 
 between his thumb and finger, bit a piece out, and declared 
 it excellent. Then, amidst the rapturous plaudits of the 
 onlookers, he solemnly saluted the twittering old lady, and 
 swung himself loftily back into his carriage, thundering 
 out once more the order: 
 
 "Entrain!" 
 
 Conceive the banging of doors, the bumping and clank- 
 ing, the cheers and the tears da capo, and the curtseys 
 the little old woman dropped, one after another, almost 
 faster than one could count. Suppose the train moving 
 slowly on, and a tricksy spirit inspiring a wag among the 
 rank-and-file aboard, to shout to her: 
 
 "Hey there, Mother Ginger-snaps! give us one before 
 we go!" 
 
 Twenty voices took up the cry, and blue cloth-covered 
 arms were thrust out between the carriage window-bars. 
 Hands waggled, soliciting the sugary boon. And the little 
 old woman, torn between the desire to give and the im- 
 possibility of giving, danced like a hen on a hot griddle, 
 until a giant porter, compassionating her plight, snatched 
 her up like a large doll, and ran with her beside the mov- 
 ing carriages, holding her out at arm's length, as she up- 
 held her basket, until all the ginger-snaps were gone. 
 
 Instinctively as P. C. Breagh had felt that the cumbrous 
 grandiloquence of his descriptive article would be snorted 
 at by Mr. Knewbit, so he knew that the little incident of 
 the ginger-snaps would afford his patron delight. There- 
 fore he tucked it away in a safe pigeon-hole of his memory, 
 with a description of the rough, gay-painted, crowded
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 283 
 
 wooden box lie sat in, odoriferous with its conglomera- 
 tion of smells, based on the combined stenches of tallow 
 and perspiring humanity, laced with the sharp sour of 
 malt, and mercifully tempered with the fumes of strong 
 tobacco. 
 
 Piff! The hot, cinder-flavored draughts that raced in 
 over the glazed half-windows were powerless to freshen or 
 dilute the atmosphere. Yet among the varied types of 
 men who, their heavy knapsacks disposed in iron racks 
 above them, sat packed as close as sardines on the narrow 
 benches, were not a few, who, judging by the mute evidence 
 of their well-groomed skins and carefully kept finger-nails, 
 their finer hair and more clearly modeled features, be- 
 longed to Germany's upper class. 
 
 Shriek! The train plunged into a cutting ending in a 
 tunnel of sheer blackness. Bursting, with another shriek, 
 into the light of day, she raced for a while neck-and-neck 
 with a cavalry-train. They were Red Dragoon Guards and 
 White Cuirassiers of the Great Headquarters Staff, and 
 they exchanged cheers and sharp, staccato shouts of 
 "Hurrah, Preussen!" with the infantry of the Guard, as 
 the latter were hurried by. 
 
 Nothing was left to Chance. All was deadly, methodical 
 accuracy. The keen, clear brain under Moltke 's wig con- 
 trolled the speed of every train upon the six Rhine and 
 Moselle railways over which the Army of United Germany 
 was rolling to inundate France. 
 
 Trains, trains, trains ! 
 
 Trains of trucks, laden with gabions woven of split 
 beech-saplings, with oaken lascines and bales of empty 
 earth-bags. Commissariat trains of wagons packed with 
 sheep and cattle, and the ubiquitous pig of the Fatherland. 
 Coffee-and-sugar trains, trains of pea-sausage and the 
 rock-hard brown biscuit wherewith "Our Moltke" fed his 
 soldier men. Trains of spare arms, clothing, trenching- 
 tools and cooking-utensils ; trains of cartridges, gunpowder, 
 blasting-powder, solid shot, shrapnel, and the big pro- 
 jectiles destined for the siege-guns ; with trains upon trains 
 close-packed with the men who were to use these things, 
 took precedence or gave it, because the withered finger 
 beckoned or waved. . . . 
 
 ' ' Our Moltke, ' ' so mild and affable and courteous, truly, 
 when the Genius that possessed thee spread his steely
 
 284 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 wings and soared, thou wert a very terrible old man, or 
 so it seems to me. 
 
 The descriptive article laid by, you found P. C. Breagh, 
 in the interests of Mr. Knewbit, studying his fellow-trav- 
 elers. The weak-eyed, spectacled young soldier on his 
 left-hand, whose fingers were burned and yellow-stained, as 
 though their owner had dabbled in chemical experiments, 
 and who had remained mute as a fish throughout the 
 journey, only opening his mouth to eat or drink, or reply 
 to a remark addressed to him by a non-commissioned 
 officer, was reading the "Iliad" of Homer in the original, 
 from a little parchment-bound, Amsterdam-printed El- 
 zevir edition, that he seemed to cherish as the apple of 
 one of his short-sighted eyes. ... A handsome young 
 bugler in the next compartment had a well-thumbed copy 
 of "The Pickwick Papers." The huge tanned Guardsman 
 on his right, whose broad breast displayed the medals of 
 1866 and of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, and whose 
 powerful bass notes had reverberated through the dia- 
 phragm of his neighbor when he sang, was chatting with 
 a younger comrade who sat opposite. Holding the well- 
 greased unburnished needle-gun between their solid thighs 
 to hang the silver-spiked Guard's helmet on the muzzle 
 seemed a popular way of disposing of the headpiece they 
 exchanged experiences in a genial roar, subdued to a growl 
 at confidential passages. 
 
 "Grete came to the Barracks to bid me God-speed. . . . 
 There were a few tears dried when I promised to bring 
 her a wedding-gift from Paris. Thou seest, she is going 
 to turn over a new leaf, and get married to a waiter at a 
 Sommer-garten a club-footed man who is not called upon 
 to serve being on the Exempt List." 
 
 They guffawed at the picture of the happy bridegroom. 
 Said the senior, wiping his overflowing eyes with a 
 hand as brown and broad as an undersized flitch of 
 bacon : 
 
 "I looked up 'Mina in the Landsberger-Strasse. She 
 could not meet me, as her old woman had a betrothal- 
 party for one of her daughters. A young student from a 
 Conservatoire, in a tail-coat three sizes too small for him, 
 and a pair of linen cuffs as big as starched table-napkins,, 
 was the victim served up. I saw him as 'Mina carried in
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 285 
 
 the spiced wine and rum-punch, and a longer pair of 
 lantern- jaws I never saw. But when they sat down to 
 table, and I took another peep through the door-crack, I 
 promise you those jaws of his were grinding away like 
 steam ! ' ' 
 
 "Nu, but the punch?" asked the other Guards- 
 man. 
 
 "Sapperlot! do you suppose I went without my whack 
 of it ? and 'Mina 's eyes as red as preserved cherries with 
 crying about my going to the War? I had had a mug of 
 the good stuff, and a bottle of something or other! gilt 
 paper on the neck of it nothing at all but fizzle inside. 
 Then I settled down to a jug of cool beer and the breast 
 of a turkey, while 'Mina was waiting on the parlor-folks. 
 Heard her step coming along the passage thought I'd 
 play the fool with her a bit so I turned the kitchen-gas 
 low and hid behind the door. In she comes! I'd got my 
 arms round her and kissed her a regular juicy smack or 
 two, before by the yell she gave! I knew it wasn't 
 'Mina at all. ..." 
 
 "Potzblitz! who was it, then?" 
 
 "Who but the old woman? But for the thumping size 
 of the waist I'd squeezed, and the taste of violet-powder 
 in my mouth, I might have thought I'd got hold of one of 
 the young Frauleins. 'Help, murder, thieves!' cried she. 
 'How dare you insult a respectable mother of a family! 
 Give your name, you rogue, or I '11 have in the police ! ' 
 'Don't do that,' says I. 'I'm only 'Mina's brother 
 dropped in to take leave before going to the War!' 'A 
 fine brother!' says she. 'Do brothers hug their sisters in 
 that bearish way ? Be off with you quick march ! and 
 think yourself lucky to escape so easily ! ' . . . " He 
 wound up : " But if she had reported me to the Herr 
 Oberst Leutnant, nothing much would have come of it. 
 He'd have said: 'Was soil Ich! but we're off to the 
 War!' ' 
 
 A sentence or so more, and the conversation resolved 
 itself into strong tobacco-smoke. Twilight was fading into 
 dusk. Dortmund Elberfeld Diisseldorf had paid tribute 
 of beers, cheers, and tears to the defenders of German 
 Unity, the most inveterate songsters and conversationalists 
 were getting sleepy, and it would be midnight before the 
 troop-train, traveling, like the others that followed it, at
 
 286 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 a speed strictly calculated to permit of the somewhat slower 
 transit of six supplementary trains bearing the King and 
 his Great Headquarter Staff could reach Cologne. 
 
 The lamps, adding the flavor of hot kerosene to the 
 conglomeration of odors had been lighted at Diisseldorf. 
 The tobacco-reek had grown so dense that below their band 
 of yellow light was a sharply defined band of opaque blue 
 fog, in which medium colors were neutralized to mono- 
 chrome, and outlines of sleeping, or chatting, or card-play- 
 ing, or reading soldiers blurred into vagueness, wavered, 
 and were blotted out for P. C. Breagh in a sudden doze. 
 
 He wakened at a late hour, to the iron measure clanked 
 and ground and beaten out by couplings and brakes, 
 wheels and axles. Snores of all kinds from the shrill 
 clarionet-note of the spectacled student of Homer to the 
 deep 'cello-bass of the Guardsman who had hugged 'Mina 's 
 mistress in mistake for his sweetheart resounded on all 
 sides; the tobacco- fog had somewhat thinned. 
 
 Finding it possible to move, because his burly neighbor 
 was soundly sleeping, pillowed upon the body of the man 
 upon his right hand, P. C. Breagh yawned recovered his 
 knapsack, which had slipped from his knees to a floor 
 which in point of cleanliness left much to be desired, re- 
 moved from it with a fragment of newspaper the worst 
 impurities it had contracted by contact, threw the news- 
 paper out of the nearest window and, in the performance 
 of this act, caught a not unfriendly eye. 
 
 Its owner, a huge young man, who, occupying a place on 
 the end of the same seat, had been hitherto screened by 
 the body of the huger private who had kissed not wisely, 
 said, and in English of the Oxford brand : 
 
 ' ' You find our men lacking in good manners ? Yet there 
 is much spitting on the part of English soldiers, when they 
 are standing at ease, or off duty. I have myself observed 
 this." 
 
 "Then you know England?" P. C. Breagh interrogated, 
 and the private, who was very tall, very blond, very broad- 
 shouldered, straight-featured, blue-eyed, and small-waisted, 
 answered : 
 
 "Pretty well. I have a relative who married a lady 
 who is your countrywoman. I have been the guest of her 
 family at their London house. You speak our language,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 28? 
 
 for I have heard you. And with a North Prussian accent, 
 by the way." 
 
 P. C. Breagh returned: 
 
 "I spent three years at Schwarz-Brettingen. With the 
 sole result that I can make myself understood by Ger- 
 mans who don't speak English. And that I owe to my 
 landlady." 
 
 Said the Guardsman, yawning and smiling: 
 
 "My father sent me to Oxford. Three terms have 
 yielded this result, that I can converse with Englishmen 
 who know German. Thanks to a charming young lady, a 
 niece of the relative I spoke of just now, who was so good 
 as to read the poems of Tennyson with me. ' The Princess, ' 
 'In Memoriam,' and 'Maud,' were her chief favorites 
 I preferred his epics founded on the Arthurian legend. 
 Though my charming English cousin was often vexed with 
 me for saying that our Wagner's verse-drama of the 
 Nibelungen-Ring possessed far truer inspiration, and that 
 'Die Walkiire' and 'Tristan' would have been finer than 
 anything Tennyson has ever written,^-had they existed 
 simply as poems, and never been wedded to music at all. 
 At that the young English lady was angry ; she said things 
 to me in her indignation which were terrible ; but she for- 
 gave me, because I was compelled to leave the University 
 and return to Germany to put in my term of service as a 
 private, before I present myself as a candidate for an 
 officer's silver sword-knot in the usual course of things. 
 You are, perhaps, acquainted with our German methods 
 of qualifying for a Commission? Bismarck has two sons 
 serving as troopers with the 1st Dragoon Guards ; whereas 
 a private of Ours is a nephew of Moltke 's, and two or three 
 others are cadets of princely families representatives of 
 what your countrymen would call the 'aristocracy of Ger- 
 many.' Perhaps one or two of them will find that silver 
 sword-knot they are looking for across the frontier, some- 
 where between the Rhine and the Moselle ! . . . " 
 
 "When do you think there will be fighting?" 
 
 Inexpressibly P. C. Breagh yearned to know when and 
 where the dance was expected to begin. But his eagerness 
 seemed to freeze the loquacious Guardsman, whose blue 
 eyes narrowed, whose smile stiffened, whose smooth voice 
 instantly diverted the current of the talk to other things: 
 
 "Were you at the Gala Performance at the Opera, the
 
 288 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 night before last? Delphine Zucca could hardly sing; her 
 husband, young Baron von Bladen, of the Jastrow Hus- 
 sars, has been appointed first galloper on the Staff of Gen- 
 eral Manteuffel, Chief of the First Corps, First Army. So 
 the Zucca is naturally inconsolable, as they've only been 
 married a month. But Elise Hahn-Tieck, as the Genius 
 of United Germany, in a corslet of gilt chain-mail, and a 
 helmet crested with oak-boughs, with a green Rhine mean- 
 dering over her white muslin robe, was tremendous when 
 she came down to the center of the stage to sing 'Die 
 Wacht am Eli ein,'- carrying our East Prussian Flag and 
 the banner of the Hohenzollern, and followed by other 
 operatic actresses in character as the Auxiliary States. 
 Sapperlot! "When she drew her sword, she was tremen- 
 dous! And when she fell upon her knees, the big chan- 
 delier in the auditorium jumped. She sang the part of 
 Gretchen last season, and looked not much over thirty. 
 Make-up, because, you know, she has a grandson who is a 
 junior-lieutenant in the Duke of Coburg's Regiment of 
 White Cuirassiers, and must be sixty if she's a day. 
 Prime donne are like wines, no good till they've arrived at 
 a ripe old age. Though I could introduce you to a little 
 girl of eighteen or so, just now doing a song-and-dance at 
 the Schiitzen-Strasse Tingel-Tangel, who has a voice that 
 pleases me better than the warblings of any of the highly 
 paid Opera House nightingales. And what a figure ! round 
 and tempting and seductive. And such arms, and 
 Sapperlot! what a pair of legs!" 
 
 Thus prattled the twenty-year-old sprig of German aris- 
 tocracy, to the other youngster, his senior in years if his 
 junior in knowledge of the world. He went on in his 
 Oxford English: 
 
 "Not that I'm inclined to ruin myself for women, though 
 I must say a good many pretty ones have been uncommonly 
 kind to me. That sort of thing runs in my family, though ! 
 and I ought to be obliged to my Cousin Max for dying a 
 bachelor. Killed himself in '66 about a mistress who was 
 playing the double game. A regular French adventuress, 
 diabolically handsome, who eloped with him when he was 
 attache of our Prussian Embassy at Paris in '57, and has a 
 husband living, they say. Colossal impudence actually 
 passes herself off as my cousin's widow, in society of a 
 certain sort. So, out of the desire to deal Madame Venus
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 289 
 
 a slap in the face, I got a comrade who knew her, to intro- 
 duce me at a festive supper-party. . . . Said he : ' Coun- 
 tess von Sehon-Valverden, permit me to present my most 
 intimate friend,' and reels off my name. Would you be- 
 lieve it, the woman never turned a hair. It was I who 
 got flustered when she stared me in the face. Colossal 
 coolness I can hear her now, lisping: 'The Herr Count 
 is doubtless a relative of my poor, dear Maximilian! Even 
 had he not borne the name, I should have been struck by 
 his resemblance to my beloved lost one.' And then I got 
 out, not half as cleverly as I had planned it: 'And even 
 had you borne the name that is your own, Madame, I 
 should have been shot through the heart by the beauty 
 that has already proved fatal to one member of my fam- 
 ily!' : He added, "I laid an emphasis on those four 
 words, 'shot through the heart,' because my unlucky cousin 
 actually met his death after that fashion. . . . Will you 
 have a cigar of mine? They are better than the weeds 
 our patriotic friends have bestowed on us." 
 
 P. C. Breagh accepted a smooth light-hued Havana from 
 the offered case, asking with interest, due to the lurid flare 
 of tragedy in the background of the other 's lively chatter : 
 "And the lady of the Venusberg how did she take your 
 reference to her past?" 
 
 The Guardsman, cigar in mouth, stopped in the act of 
 striking a fusee-match to answer: "She took it as a 
 woman of Madame de Bayard's stamp might be expected 
 to. With a sangfroid that one could only admire some- 
 what less than her superb skin and hair, her shape of a 
 goddess and her marvelous eyes almost the color of 
 Brazilian tourmaline." He sent out a spiral of fragrant 
 brownish-blue smoke and added: "Had I actually stood 
 four years ago in the shoes which I have legally inher- 
 ited, I'll be hanged if I'd have shot myself and left her 
 to my rival. For the other was at Schonfeld actually in 
 the house, you must know ! when Cousin Max came home 
 on leave. Hence the tragedy at three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. Such a depressing hour to commit suicide. Now, 
 had it been after supper . . . " 
 
 He shrugged, and sent out another spiral of cigar-smoke, 
 and, perceiving that his whilom listener heard no longer, 
 ceased to talk. 
 
 The while P. C. Breagh plunged into a brown-study by
 
 290 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the chance utterance of a stranger's name, and unblush- 
 ingly abandoning the effort to remain true to his gigantic 
 type-ideal, hung fondly over the mentally evoked image 
 of an Infanta in miniature. 
 
 Where was Juliette de Bayard now? Had the outbreak 
 of war hastened or delayed her marriage with the happy 
 master of swordsmanship? And worshiping her father 
 as Monica had said she did how had she borne the parting 
 from him? 
 
 She would be very calm. . . . P. C. Breagh pictured 
 the little face drawn and pinched with misery; saw the 
 sapphire eyes dimmed with tears unshed, imagined the 
 slender throat convulsed with sobs that were kept reso- 
 lutely back, heard the silver-flute voice saying : 
 
 "My father has honored me with his confidence as long 
 as I can remember, sir ! " and, ' ' See you I will be trusted 
 absolutely, or I will not be trusted at all!" 
 
 Strange that his elfin queen his carved ivory Princess 
 should bear the same name as the woman the Guardsman, 
 had gossiped of the beautiful, evil creature with the eyes 
 like Brazilian tourmalines. And, what particular color 
 in Brazilian tourmalines might have been intended ? Some 
 were purple, others pink, and yet others reddish-brown. 
 The woman who had dropped her parasol on the staircase 
 at the Chancellor's had had eyes of tawny wine-color. 
 With the remembrance, came back the perfume shaken 
 from her rustling silks and laces, and the languid echo of 
 her caressing voice. 
 
 Drowsiness came next, and then oblivion, in heavy 
 slumber. And, as the unconscious form of P. C. Breagh 
 lapsed this way and that, and his chin burrowed deeper 
 into his bosom, the Sergeant who occupied the corner-seat 
 facing the sleeper, shading his eyes from the lamplight 
 with a broad brown hand that wore a thick silver wed- 
 ding ring upon the little finger, lowered the hand, and, 
 leaning forward, stared in the young man's unconscious 
 face, with small, suspicious, unwinking eyes. Now the 
 eyes looked round so sharply, that every waking man in 
 the compartment, save the blue-eyed patron of the Tingel- 
 Tangel girl, found it necessary to assume the appearance 
 of slumber, and the Sergeant 's voice said hoarsely : 
 
 "Private von Valverden!"
 
 291 
 
 "At your service, Herr Sergeant." 
 
 "Private von Valverden, is this one, then, an English- 
 man?" 
 
 ' * Undoubtedly, Herr Sergeant ! ' ' 
 
 "Gut!" said the Sergeant. "But what is his calling? 
 Is he of the newspaper-offices that he sits and scribbles 
 so?" 
 
 "That question I cannot answer, Herr Sergeant, but 
 if he be on the staff of any paper, he cannot accompany us 
 without a Legitimation, and a letter from someone in 
 authority. ' ' 
 
 The Sergeant sucked in his bearded lips, and rolled his 
 sharp little eyes more suspiciously than ever. Valverden 
 went on: 
 
 "Doubtless he has them I saw him show a paper to 
 the Halt Commandant at Berlin, and the Herr Colonel 
 himself spoke to him and told him he might travel as 
 far as Bingen by this train. And I happen to know 
 that four London newspaper correspondents have been ac- 
 credited by the King upon the instance of Count Bismarck ; 
 one being appointed to accompany the Crown Prince, 
 another being permitted to accompany the Second Army, 
 while two are attached to the Great Headquarter Staff." 
 
 The Sergeant said, glancing at the unconscious slum- 
 berer : 
 
 "Gut, gut! but is this fellow one of them?" 
 
 "If he be not, Herr Sergeant, he will get no farther 
 than Bingen, for doubtless the Commandant there will be 
 on the lookout for persons whose credentials are not of 
 the best." 
 
 The Sergeant shook his head vigorously, wrinkling up 
 his full-bearded countenance suspiciously: 
 
 "And suppose the Commandant is not on the lookout, 
 Private von Valverden? See you, I have had my sus- 
 picions since yesterday, and I tell you . . ." 
 
 XXXII 
 
 EVERY waking ear in the neighborhood, and there were 
 now a good many, pricked with curiosity as the Sergeant 
 half -rose, and, inclining his inflamed countenance and
 
 292 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 bearded lips toward the ear of his selected confidant, 
 continued in a hoarse rumbling undertone : 
 
 "Two of those verdammte English newspaper-scribblers 
 that have got on the blind side of Their Excellencies and 
 His Majesty the Commander-in-Chief were at the station 
 at Berlin picking up information the very day we en- 
 trained. Well do I know that paunchy little one with the 
 big beard, who has, they say, as many Orders as a Field- 
 Marshal, and who will venture to thrust himself upon 
 Our Moltke in his study, and accost His Excellency Count 
 Bismarck upon the very doorsteps of the Reichstag itself. 
 They got off three trains ahead of us, paying for men and 
 horses and trucks, to Cologne; and if this fellow were not 
 a knave, would he not have gone with them? Ach, ja! 
 It would have been so! But they did not even know him, 
 though he pretended to touch his cap to them. ... I tell 
 you he turned as red as beetroot when they passed him 
 without a glance. Nu, nu! he is an unlicensed meddler, 
 if not a French spy, speaking English. Do they not teach 
 it at their Lycees? And he has got on the blind side of 
 the Commandant at Berlin and the Herr Colonel. But I, 
 Sergeant Schmidt, have my weather-eye open, and it 
 sticks in my gizzard that our so-glorious Moltke, let 
 alone His Majesty, should with so much civility these quill- 
 driving vagabonds encourage; when they say the French 
 Emperor has given orders that, should the like of them 
 about the heels of his Army Corps be caught sniffing, they 
 are to be shot." 
 
 "Possibly the Napoleon has more deficiencies to be 
 ashamed of than we have, Herr Sergeant!" 
 
 Taking a deep breath, the Sergeant blew himself out to 
 the utmost of his capacity and bellowed: 
 
 "Himmeldonnerwetter! are you going to insinuate in 
 my presence that the Prussian Army has anything at all 
 to be ashamed of? Now you've waked this rascal with 
 your racket, maybe you'll sit on his head while I go 
 through his pockets. Here, Braun and Kleiss, catch hold 
 of his arms and legs ! ' ' 
 
 Waking in the chiaroscuro of the smoke-filled, lamplit 
 troop-carriage to find himself in the brawny grip of the 
 aforesaid Braun and Kleiss, P. C. Breagh fought for free- 
 dom, yelling as one possessed, and lashing out with all his 
 might. In the heat of the scrimmage that followed, as a
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 293 
 
 muscular arm in a coarse blue sleeve came round his neck 
 from behind and choked him into silence, somebody said 
 in his ear: 
 
 "Keep still . . . not hurt you! Only going . . . 
 search!" 
 
 And before he had rallied his wits sufficiently to realize 
 that the warning was in English, a pair of extra-sized 
 hands had deftly emptied the pockets of the old brown. 
 Norfolk jacket, relieved him of the cherished binoculars, 
 a brand-new revolver, and a purse and letter-case that 
 had been hidden in his bosom next the skin. Then, a 
 soiled newspaper having been spread upon the carriage- 
 bench and the pieces of conviction arranged upon it, Ser- 
 geant Schmidt, surrounded by an audience of admiring 1 
 inferiors, commenced to interrogate their owner: 
 
 "What is this?" He held up the well-used briar-root. 
 ' ' A pipe, and yet it might be used to conceal dispatches or 
 tracings. A pistol also. On the principle of the French 
 mitraille, with many barrels. Prisoner, answer! Where 
 did you get this?" 
 
 Returned P. C. Breagh, scarlet and breathing shortly: 
 
 ' ' I bought it in Berlin from a pawnbroker in the Lands- 
 berger-strasse. By what right . . . " 
 
 Someone behind hacked him on the ankle, driving home 
 the axiom that silence was wisdom, and he subsided, boil- 
 ing within, as the Colt, a nearly brand-new six-barreled 
 weapon, seen and purchased, together with its box of three 
 hundred cartridges, for seven of P. C. Breagh 's cherished 
 sovereigns, was laid by, while the Sergeant, breathing 
 stertorously, examined the contents of the purse. He 
 snorted, letting the bright coins run through his greedy 
 fingers like yellow water : 
 
 "Nine pieces of gold. French coins, too, or call me a 
 sheepshead ! ' ' 
 
 "At your service, Herr Sergeant," put in the smooth, 
 well-bred voice of Valverden, following on the ominous 
 murmur that had greeted the Sergeant's announcement; 
 "the money is as English as this revolver is American. 
 Prove the first for yourself. When has the French Em- 
 peror figured in a woman's hair and corsage?" 
 
 A guffaw went up. P. C. Breagh, recognizing the voice 
 which had spoken from behind him, realized that here was 
 a friend in need. But an attempt at speech on his part
 
 294 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 was frustrated by an ominous tightening of the muscular 
 arm that had previously half-strangled him. The Sergeant, 
 his fiery pot-zeal rather damped by frequent set-backs, 
 snapped-to the purse and said, keeping it tucked in one 
 capacious palm, as he shook out the contents of the letter- 
 case: 
 
 "So! He is cunning, like many another of his kidney. 
 Yet it may be here is proof sufficient to show him a 
 rogue! Who here reads French?" 
 
 ' ' I do, Herr Sergeant. ' ' Once again the well-bred voice 
 of Valverden. The Sergeant grunted surlily: 
 
 "There is another here . . . Private Kunz!" 
 
 The spectacled soldier who read Homer in the original, 
 and who had been violently displaced when the muscular 
 Braun and the athletic Kleiss had obeyed the order to 
 pinion the suspected one, shot bolt upright in his distant 
 corner, saluted and said in a meek voice: 
 
 "At your service, Herr Sergeant!" 
 
 "Private Kunz, canst thou read French?" 
 
 "Zu befehl, Herr Sergeant!" The spectacled private 
 added as the Sergeant passed him over the contents of the 
 letter-case: "But these letters are not in French. Two 
 are in English, and one is in German." 
 
 The Sergeant scowled and thundered: 
 
 "Thou art an ass!" 
 
 "At your service, Herr Sergeant," mildly agreed the 
 spectacled soldier, "but Private Count von Schon-Val- 
 verden, who understands the French and English lan- 
 guages, will corroborate my statement if you will kindly 
 refer to him." 
 
 ' 'Kindly refer.' . . . 'Corroborate my statement.' 
 . . . " The Sergeant, purple in the gills, and with bolting 
 eyes, loosened his collar-hook before he launched into 
 profanity: "Potzblitz! Never did I meet with language 
 to equal thine. What wert thou as a civilian before thou 
 didst enter the Army ? ' ' 
 
 "Graduate of the University of Wiirzburg, Herr Ser- 
 geant," faltered the spectacled Guardsman, "and Privat- 
 docent in Chemistry and Philosophy. Occupying the post 
 of assistant to Herr Weber, Dispensing Chemist, of Strahl- 
 sund, near Stettin." 
 
 "Sehrgut, Private Kunz," said the Sergeant, conscious 
 of the grins lurking behind the respectful faces about him. 
 "Tell us plainly, and without lying or skipping, what
 
 MAN OF IRON 295 
 
 are these papers the fellow has got on him? Put him 
 back on the seat, Braun and Kleiss, and sit on either 
 side, each taking a wing. Now, Kunz, do thou be- 
 gin!" 
 
 And the little sheaf that had been transferred from the 
 horny clutches of the Sergeant, to the yellow-stained 
 sensitive-looking fingers of the chemist's assistant, was 
 subjected to the scrutiny of the weak eyes behind his large 
 round spectacles, as sleepy-looking Westphalian villages of 
 cottages with tall tiled roofs, grouped about squat, low- 
 spired churches; and leagues of rye and barley, almost 
 ready for the sickle, streamed by the half-glazed windows, 
 all black in shadow and white in the clear, pure radiance of 
 August's crescent moon. 
 
 Item, a worn letter in English handwriting of the legal 
 kind, dated in the January previous, and directed to 
 P. C. Breagh, Esq., Care of Frau Busch, Jaeger-strasse, 
 Schwarz-Brettingen. Hem,, a passport issued some ten 
 days previously, to the same person on application at the 
 London Foreign Office, on disbursement of the sum of Two 
 Shillings, and authorizing him, on payment of the proper 
 dues and at his own risk, to proceed via Ostend to Berlin. 
 Item, another passport, procured as a last resource grant- 
 ing the said P. C. Breagh permission on the part of the 
 Berlin Foreign Office, and as a strictly non-combatant 
 British subject, to transfer himself, via Belgium and 
 Luxembourg, to French territory. Lastly, a half-sheet of 
 tough Chancellory note-paper, covered with the large, 
 closely-set, vigorous handwriting of the man who was 
 meant when newspaper-editors and politicians, diplomats 
 and monarchs, guttersnipes and generals, talked of Prussia. 
 What would happen when that came under the spectacles 
 of the ex-chemist's assistant? P. C. Breagh thirsted to 
 know. 
 
 What happened was, that the Sergeant, rendered im- 
 patient by delay on the part of the spectacled one, grabbed 
 at the documents and dropped them on the unclean floor. 
 The half-sheet of Chancellory note was picked up by 
 Valverden. He gave it one glance and said, smoothly and 
 with an indefinable change in the tone of the voice that 
 P. C. Breagh had thought so friendly : 
 
 "I would put this paper back with the rest and return 
 them to their owner, Herr Sergeant, and prosecute no 
 further inquiries, if I were you."
 
 296 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Nu? . . . Was? I cannot read the crabbed stuff that 
 is written and printed on the other papers," grunted the 
 Sergeant. "But this seems wholesome German. . . . 
 What says it, then? Tell us, you, since that gimpel in 
 glasses can make nothing of it, for all his brag." 
 
 Valverden obeyed and read : 
 
 "The bearer of this is an Englishman, named Patrick 
 Carolan Breagh, speaking German with a slight accent. 
 Ileight five feet nine inches, age 23. Hair reddish and 
 curling, complexion fresh, much freckled. Short, straight 
 nose, gray eyes with dots of yellow, chin square, slightly 
 cleft. Further his desire to proceed with our troops, if 
 possible. I can personally vouch for his honesty and good 
 faith. 
 
 1 BERLIN, 
 
 "July, 1870." 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 P. C. BREACH never heard the order given, but next mo- 
 ment his aching wrists were released from the huge, hard 
 grip of Privates Braun and Kleiss % and the muscular legs 
 that had affectionately twined about his own, were with- 
 drawn. Subsequently, singly, and in silence, the Sergeant 
 handed back the watch, pipe, tobacco-pouch, purse, and 
 note-case. Last of all, Valverden, making a long arm, 
 returned the half-sheet of Chancellory note, bearing the 
 signature that had worked the miracle, without words, and 
 looking coldly in its owner's face. 
 
 "Thanks tremendously! . . . I've no doubt I'm to 
 blame for not producing my credentials earlier," said 
 Carolan. "But I'd no notion of the rather serious turn 
 things were going to take. However, all's well that 
 ends " 
 
 His smile froze upon his lips, and died out of his eyes as 
 he encountered the stare the other turned upon him, an- 
 swering haughtily:
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 297 
 
 "I regret that you have suffered some rough handling 
 from my comrades, under the wrong impression that you 
 were an agent of the French Secret Service. Admitting 
 that our own side act advisedly in employing persons like 
 you, I must say that to me, personally, a spy is a spy!" 
 
 "But, hang it! you don't suppose " Carolan choked 
 
 out after a moment of angry bewilderment. And with the 
 Sergeant's piggish little eyes curiously fixed on him, Val- 
 verden answered curtly: 
 
 "I suppose nothing. Excuse me from further conver- 
 sation. ' ' 
 
 The revolver with its cartridges had not been returned 
 with the other articles. Its owner asked the Sergeant for 
 it, getting in reply only a glare. Thenceforward the long 
 night's journey for one traveler was performed in unbroken 
 silence. P. C. Breagh had been dispatched to Coventry by 
 one and all. 
 
 Men who conversed spoke in barely-audible whispers, 
 their covert glances, like the frigid indifference of Val- 
 verden's regard, and the extra six inches of seat-space 
 accorded to the holder of the States Chancellor's written 
 guarantee, testified to the aroma of suspicion that per- 
 sonage's document exhaled. 
 
 So at breathless, baking midnight the troop-train clanked 
 into Cologne, no longer throbbing with the beat of drums, 
 roaring with iron-shod wheels, swarming with men in 
 brass-spiked helmets, choked with continuously shouting 
 patriots, as it had been a few hours earlier when the 
 Headquarter Staff trains had passed through, and in the 
 close, gray dawn of a thundery day, jolted into Bingen. 
 
 Here miles of rolling-stock and numberless engines 
 blocked up the metal roads. Shuttered windows and bar- 
 ricaded doors testified that house-owners had temporarily 
 abandoned their property. Strings of barges, laden with 
 Commissariat stores and live-stock, were being towed up 
 the Rhine by the gaily painted, white-awninged, paddle- 
 wheel steamers familiar to the British tourist, while others 
 were conveying voluntarily exiled residents and fugitive 
 visitors down the classic stream out of harm's way. 
 
 Conveyance by railway of a kind was to be had upon 
 terms prohibitory to all but the opulent. And disheveled 
 ladies, pale or red with panic, besieged the station-master
 
 298 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 and his master, the Halt Commandant with prayers, com- 
 mands and entreaties, for places, but for places on some 
 Northward-going train. . . . 
 
 Something was in the air besides the short, staccato 
 bugle-calls, the scream of signal-whistles and the ceaseless 
 beating of the Prussian side-drums. P. C. Breagh knew 
 it, even as a tall, lean, red-faced Inspector caught his eye 
 and beckoned him imperiously to quit his cage, asking: 
 
 "You have a Legitimation to proceed with the troops to 
 Kreuznach? No? Then be good enough to stand aside 
 until I have an opportunity of ascertaining why you were 
 originally permitted. Here is the Commandant." 
 
 Standing on the whitewashed platform, hot, dusty, un- 
 brushed and unwashed, burdened with his unstrapped 
 knapsack, a stout walking-stick, a leather-covered, screw 
 topped sling water-bottle, some crumpled newspapers and 
 a package of solid sandwiches thrust upon him at one of 
 the previous stopping-places, P. C. Breagh was conscious 
 of cutting a sorry figure. Conscious, too, of Valverden's 
 supercilious eye-glass, glittering a few yards off, as he 
 stretched his long legs on the platform and talked eagerly 
 with some comrades of his own standing, straight-backed, 
 long-legged youngsters, with arrogant manners, clear 
 eyes, budding mustaches, newly fledged whiskers, broad 
 shoulders and regulation waists. 
 
 No new pupil at a young ladies' boarding school, smart- 
 ing under the double stigma of plainness and poverty, no 
 cheaply arrayed debutante at a suburban subscription-ball, 
 ever blushed more hotly or winced more painfully under 
 the scrutiny of prettier and richer girls, than did P. C. 
 Breagh under the glances of these young men. 
 
 Not the memory of the Army Service examinations he 
 had failed in galled him, or that missed shot for the I.C.S., 
 or the University career foregone. It was the word "spy" 
 that rankled in his memory and took the starch out of his 
 self-conceit. 
 
 Before the discovery of the Minister's written guarantee, 
 Valverden had gossiped with him as an equal the other 
 Guardsmen had been friendly in their rougher way. The 
 fateful half-sheet of Chancellory note had changed every- 
 thing. "As though one had blossomed out in plague 
 or smallpox," P. C. Breagh had said to himself bitterly.
 
 THE MAN OE IRON 299 
 
 "And I feel like a kind of Ali Baba or somebody, whose 
 talisman would only work upside down ! ' ' 
 
 Even his parting salute had met with grudging acknowl- 
 edgment. The Sergeant had grunted. Braun and Kleiss 
 had spat, and looked the other way. Valverden's finger 
 had barely brushed the narrow peak of his forage-cap. 
 Only Kunz, the spectacled ex-chemist's assistant, had 
 civilly bidden the parting guest good-day. 
 
 He was horribly sore at the treatment received from 
 Yalverden. Susceptible of hero-worship, warm and sincere 
 in feeling, he had taken a liking to the brilliant youngster, 
 three years his junior, his superior in social status and in 
 cynical knowledge of the world. Was it disgraceful to 
 belong to the Prussian Diplomatic Secret Intelligence De- 
 partment, that ramifying spider-web of invisible wires, 
 reaching to the uttermost Kingdoms of the civilized globe, 
 and emanating from the Chancellory in the Friedrich- 
 strasse, Berlin? 
 
 The Army had its secret agents, an army of them, by 
 Jingo! Had not scraps of conversation reached the ears 
 of P. C. Breagh no later than the previous day, relative 
 to a certain dandy Colonel of Prussian Field Artillery, 
 who for the past two years had filled the well-paid post of 
 lace and ribbon Department Manager at the Paris Bon 
 Marche. 
 
 Then why on earth. . . . But at this juncture the Halt 
 Inspector returned with the Commandant, a white-whis- 
 kered, potty officer, in blue infantry uniform with distinc- 
 tive white shoulder-straps, beside whom stalked a tall, 
 middle-aged Colonel of Uhlans, whose pale eyes, unshaded 
 by the tufted schlapka, glittered through steel-rimmed 
 glasses, whose teeth were clenched on a familiar meer- 
 schaum and whose gaunt, broad-shouldered figure looked 
 better in the dark blue cavalry uniform with its yellow plas- 
 tron and white cross-belt, than in Herr von Rosius's Ber- 
 lin-made private clothes. 
 
 For it was undoubtedly Miss Ling 's quiet-mannered first- 
 floor lodger, who had resigned his post of teacher at the 
 Berners Street Institute of Languages when the wire had 
 come from Headquarters, bidding him come back and 
 be a cog-wheel in Moltke's big war-machine. What Mr. 
 Knewbit would have called "the blank expression'' 
 appeared behind his spectacles when they showed him his
 
 300 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 young fellow-lodger from Coram Street. But he paused 
 when the Commandant halted and began to ask questions 
 which Carolan answered in the German so frequently tested 
 on Herr von Rosius. 
 
 "How came you to travel from Berlin in a train set 
 apart for the use of the Guard Infantry? Show me your 
 Legitimations-Kart and military ticket, if you have one! 
 You have neither? . . . Then how did you, against the 
 regulations, obtain permission of the authorities to enter 
 a militdr-zug ? It is inconceivable that you should have 
 managed to conceal yourself without connivance of some 
 kind!" 
 
 Things were getting close to the Chancellory half-sheet, 
 but it would never be displayed with the consent of P. C. 
 Breagh. He had wild ideas of feigning idiocy, of appeal- 
 ing to Von Rosius, but the first resource savored of the 
 theater too strongly for adoption, and the second one 
 glance at the hard, ignoring eyes behind the steel-rimmed 
 glasses disposed of that for good. 
 
 At his wits' end, a loud, genial voice hailed him in the 
 English language, flavored with the County Dublin 
 brogue. 
 
 "By the powers! and there's the face I'm looking for. 
 Longer by a yard than it was when you capped me at 
 Berlin. Faith ! and I stared at you with all my eyes, won- 
 dering where in the world I'd last beheld ye? Till Chris 
 Brotherton quizzed me and I bet him five shillings the 
 place was Fleet Street. Now, on your honor, was it? 
 Speak, or forever after hold your tongue!" 
 
 "Not quite Fleet Street, sir, but hardly a stone's throw 
 from it!" A great wave of unreasonable hope lifted the 
 sinking heart of P. C. Breagh. 
 
 The big, warm voice and the kind, bright glance that had 
 wrought the miracle, belonged to a stout little bearded 
 gentleman of fifty, topped with a hard gray Derby, and 
 attired in a pepper-and-salt cutaway coat, brown holland 
 vest and neat white hunting-stock, gray Bedford cords and 
 shiny black spurred Blucher boots. Had you met him 
 cantering on some plump and well-fed cob along a green 
 lane in the Mother Country, you would have taken him 
 but for the revolver-pouch that depended from a neat 
 black leather belt, and the wallet that, with its companion-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 301 
 
 ing field-glass, was slung across his shoulders for a hard- 
 riding country surgeon or solicitor, of the good old English 
 kind. But P. C. Breagh knew better, and his drab world 
 changed to rose-color, as the big voice rolled from the 
 capacious chest: 
 
 "Hardly a minute's . . . Hold on! For the life of 
 you, don 't refresh my memory ! What would it be to 
 find one's mental legs getting shaky at the start of a new 
 campaign ! Not a stone 's throw from Fleet Street, did you 
 say? ... By the Beadle of Old Trinity! if you don't 
 mean the Maze at Hampton Court or the Nevski Prospect 
 at Petersburg, or the garden of the Dilkusha at Lucknow, 
 you're talking of Printing House Square! Am I right 
 now?" 
 
 "You've hit the nail, sir! You were walking arm-in- 
 arm with Mr. Sala and I 'd been introduced to him before, 
 luckily! and he remembered my name and presented me 
 to you!" 
 
 ' ' And I 'm five shillings the richer by the meeting. For 
 if Chris Brotherton dares to say the Thunderbolt office 
 and Fleet Street are anything but synonymous, he's a 
 bolder man than I take him to be. But I 'm interrupting a 
 conversation. . . . " He broke off, saluting the official. 
 "Pray accept my apologies, Herr Commandant, I'll wait 
 while you finish with my young friend." 
 
 The Commandant stiffly returned the genial salute before 
 he wheeled and walked off with the Inspector and Von 
 Rosius, who, while the king of British War Correspondents 
 chatted with his glowing vassal, had exchanged a few sen- 
 tences with these personages apart. Then said the kindly 
 little gentleman, with a humorous twirl of the eye at the 
 three : 
 
 ' ' I claimed your acquaintance because I saw you nearing 
 the jaws of a German guardroom. Though I fancy you'd 
 a friend at Court in that Uhlan Colonel there! ... I 
 heard him tell the Commandant that he'd no earthly idea 
 how you got here, but you were simply an English school- 
 boy who was crazy to see a war. And the Commandant 
 said something about turning tail at the first whistle of a 
 Bombensplitter that's a shell-splinter. Though I'm 
 pretty certain by the cut of your jib you'd do nothing of 
 the kind!" 
 
 He added, as a familiar shout of "Entrain!" and a
 
 302 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 bugle-call brought the platform leg-stretchers scampering 
 to their places and the long train of gray-painted wagons, 
 officers' horse-boxes and baggage trucks, clanked into 
 motion again: 
 
 "Your friends of the Guard have gone without you. 
 Kreuznach will be their detraining-point that's all I can 
 tell you. For the reason and it's an uncommonly sound 
 one! that the newly mobilized men of the infantry bat- 
 talions want a march to limber their joints and stretch 
 their new boots a bit. Begad ! my own brogues would be 
 the better of a day or two on the trees. But rheumatism 
 and corns are the price one pays for experience and the 
 privilege of talking like a daddy to harum-scarum gossoons 
 like yourself. You've no business to be here, boyo! but 
 since you are use your eyes and brains to observe with 
 never be ashamed of running away when you can get out 
 of danger by doing it ! and for your mother 's sake, if she 's 
 living don't be dragged into fighting on a side. Forget 
 that you have a revolver, if that bulge under your jacket 
 means that you carry one, and keep your temper cool and 
 your opinions strictly neutral, if a fellow with a drop of 
 Irish blood in him can! Twit me with Bull Run, now, and 
 you'll get the historic answer: 'Do as I advise you to do, 
 not what I do ! ' ' 
 
 He pulled out the battered gold hunting-watch at the 
 end of its short, strong leather guard, and glanced atMt, 
 saying with a sigh of relief: 
 
 "Seven o'clock. Breakfast ought to be ready at the 
 Victoria barrack of a hostelry, packed with cocky Prussian 
 officers. Suppose you come back there with me and have 
 a bite and sup?" 
 
 Dazzling prospect! to a young man given to hero-wor- 
 ship, which the historian of "Cromwell" had positively 
 asserted to be good for youthful bodies and souls. P. C. 
 Breagh would have given a great deal if Valverden could 
 have heard the invitation. . . . However, it was more likely 
 than not that he had beheld the object of his scorn in 
 familiar conversation with the most famous of British War 
 Correspondents, as the gray-painted troop-train carried him 
 away.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 303 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THAT was an enchanted walk for P. C. Breagh, back to 
 the big, bare, barrack-like Victoria. It was the Doctor's 
 generous amends for an, unintentional slight. Two days 
 previously, at the Potsdam Eailway Station, Berlin, when a 
 companion had said to him : ' ' Who 's the enthusiastic young 
 admirer who kowtowed to you ? English, I should say, and 
 you cut him unmercifully," he had answered, out of the 
 whirl of great affairs: 
 
 ' ' I 've no notion ; but I '11 make amends if ever he crosses 
 my path again. It 's not my way to hurt a boy. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Bet you five bob he hails from Fleet Street, ' ' the friend 
 had cried; and the Doctor had answered: 
 
 ' ' If so, he has a claim on me I 'm not going to deny. ' ' 
 
 Dust underfoot made the tread fall as on velvet. Dust 
 in the air parched the throat and got in the eyes. And the 
 incessant rolling of the Prussian side-drums, lanced 
 through with signal whistles and sharp bugle-calls, made 
 the hot baked atmosphere quiver, and the play of early 
 sunshine on myriads of brass helmet-spikes made the eyes 
 water and blink, as the battalions of blue infantry that 
 had marched into Bingen on the previous day mustered 
 from their billets, were entrained and conjured away ; and 
 other battalions that had marched fifteen miles since cock- 
 crow tramped in with the thick white dust turned to mud 
 upon them by the heavy Rhineland dews that had soaked 
 their boots and damped their uniforms, halted but to 
 breakfast and were off, almost on the heels of the first. 
 
 Division after Division of Cavalry Uhlans in light or 
 dark blue piped with red, and shiny black Lancer scliap- 
 kas, Cuirassiers in white uniforms, with steel breast and 
 back plates, and steel helmets simple in design as those of 
 Cromwell's Ironsides; light blue Dragoons, Hussars with, 
 tufted shakos of miniver, and braided jackets of red, black, 
 green, brown and pale blue, with their flying batteries of 
 Horse Artillery, their proviant columns and ammunition- 
 trains, had been rushed to the frontier with astounding 
 speed. Now the blue deluge of marching men with needle- 
 guns came rolling after. With thunder of heavy siege- 
 trains, with patches of green upon the monotonous blue, 
 that stood for picked battalions of sharpshooters; sons of
 
 804 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 gamekeepers and forest-rangers; bred from childhood to 
 woodcraft and hunter 's lore ; experts in the use of the rifle, 
 scouts and trackers of daring and skill. 
 
 On the seventeenth of July the Warlock had said to his 
 King, "Give me to the third of August and we are safe." 
 This was the third of August. And the air was thick with 
 something besides dust. 
 
 Conscious of this, they talked, the neophyte and the 
 adept discussing things that had happened during the 
 pregnant interval. How Forbes of the Da/ily News, who 
 tramped it up to Saarbriick by the Nahe Valley Road from 
 Kreuznach, had seen the first blood flow, when a couple of 
 infantrymen of the garrison were brought in in a chipped 
 condition, having been sniped at by red-breeched French 
 marksmen across the frontier-line. 
 
 With a single battalion of the Hohenzollerns, the 7th 
 Regiment of Rhineland Uhlans had hitherto constituted 
 Saarbriick 's garrison. And the French being reported in 
 force at Forbach, some fifteen or sixteen thousand men 
 being said to be strung out along the frontier, a detach- 
 ment of Uhlans with spare troop-horses had ridden into 
 Neunkirchen on the morning of the twenty-fourth of July, 
 and borrowed from the collieries a dozen stout miners, 
 armed with picks, and supplied with blasting cartridges, 
 fuses, and so on. These grimy stalwarts they tied on 
 troop-horses ; crossed the frontier, and blew up the viaduct 
 on the railway-line branching from the Forbach-Metz rail- 
 way near Cocheren and connecting Metz with Saargue- 
 mines, Bitche, Hagenau and Strasbourg. 
 
 Thenceafter, nothing of note happened until the twenty- 
 eighth of July, when the Emperor Napoleon III. entered 
 Metz with his Staff and the hjeir to the Throne Imperial, 
 and formally took command of the seven corps d'armee 
 known as the ' ' Army of the Rhine. ' ' Upon the same day, 
 a party of the Hohenzollerns, commanded by an N.C.O., 
 reconnoitering on the right front, flushed a French vidette, 
 in a wood covering a knoll of rising ground, over the top 
 of which went the imaginary frontier-line. 
 
 Being shot at, the Hohenzollerns retired to garrison. 
 But about regimental soup-time, twelve or thereabouts, a 
 battery of six French field-pieces came over the slope of 
 the Spicherenberg heights, getting into position on a 
 plateau half-way down.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 305 
 
 'And while the Prussian drummers beat to arms; while 
 the Hohenzollerns hastily posted their four companies, one 
 on each of the town's three bridges, and sent one forward 
 on the heels of a squadron of Uhlans, up the Forbach Eoad, 
 which runs through Saarbriick, rising as it trends to the 
 west ; while the rest of the Uhlans stood to their horses in 
 the Markt-platz, and the civilian population stopped to 
 look on, or scuttled for cover, six shells were fired, three of 
 them hitting a little beerhouse on the hill-brow, just off 
 the Forbach Road and the Imperial cannonade was over, 
 the artillerists retired, and nothing more had happened, 
 though the videttes and patrols, Gallic and Teuton, had 
 cracked away at each other from high noon till batlight. 
 
 Discussing these things, the adept and the neophyte came 
 to the Victoria, every window of which was crowded with. 
 Prussian officers, eating, drinking and smoking, or shouting 
 for breakfast, coffee, beer, wine and tobacco in every key 
 of the human register. 
 
 Distracted waiters ran about like ants, and before the 
 packed and roaring caravanserai keeping guard over one 
 of the little decrepit iron tables that stood under the dusty 
 acacias a little table that had a fly-spotted cloth upon it, 
 and a great glass basin filled with sugar cubes, and was 
 further adorned with brown rings made by the bottoms of 
 coffee-cups and beer-glasses, were the two friends referred 
 to by P. C. Breagh's Good Samaritan. 
 
 One was a handsome, fair-haired, smiling man in the 
 scarlet, yellow-faced, gold-adorned uniform of a crack 
 regiment of British Light Dragoons, "a swell of the haw- 
 haw type ' ' Mr. Ticking would have termed him. With this 
 splendid personage, who was generally referred to as 
 "Major Brotherton," was a shorter, plainer individual 
 with fluffy whiskers, attired as for the sports of the field, 
 in a white, low-crowned felt, large checked tweeds, in which, 
 orange and pink predominated, drab leggings and heavily 
 nailed highlows. A Dolland field-glass was slung from his 
 shoulders, and over a neighboring chair lay a huge box- 
 coat, the multitudinous pockets of which appeared to con- 
 tain his luggage, for a bath-sponge in a rubber bag rolled 
 out of one as he rose up to welcome the leader of the 
 party, and a box of areca-nut tooth-paste, and a hairbrush 
 with a patent collapsible handle had to be shifted before
 
 306 ,THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 the sponge could be replaced; just as though Mr. Toole 
 had thought out the costume and the comic business for 
 some traveling Briton in a new farce. 
 
 You may suppose P. C. Breagh blushing from con- 
 sciousness of the contrast of his own travel-stained grimi- 
 ness with the Major's dazzling brilliancy, when that per- 
 sonage shook hands with him and said it was going to be 
 a hot day. Introduced by his kindly patron to the sports- 
 man in pink and orange tweeds with: 
 
 ' ' Tower, this is a young countryman of mine picked up 
 at the station just tumbled out of a troop- wagon full of 
 Guards Infantry " 
 
 The fluffy whiskered sportsman civilly nodded and ob- 
 served: "And dashed good luck for him!" He added: 
 * ' Doctor, if you recognized your baggage- van by that con- 
 founded goat you've had painted on it, I'll admit it's 
 served some purpose besides frightening German crows!" 
 
 "Begad! it frightened me when I saw it on the siding 
 this morning ! ' ' avowed the genial Doctor. ' ' But how was 
 I to know that the Berlin painter who undertook to copy 
 the crest from my family coat-of-arms had got a magnify- 
 ing eye?" 
 
 Said the man in cavalry uniform, smoothing his drooping 
 mustache, and speaking with the drawl of Robertsonian 
 comedy : 
 
 "At any rate, the size of the animal testifies to the 
 antiquity of your race, and so on. For in prehistoric days, 
 I take it, goats were as big as cows are now!" 
 
 "My thanks to you, Brotherton, for supplying so plausi- 
 ble an explanation. I'll salve my pride of pedigree with 
 it next time I'm taken for a traveling quack, and Prus- 
 sian soldiers suffering with indigestion apply to me for 
 pills and black-dose. ' ' He added, with his pleasant laugh, 
 catching P. C. Breagh 's glance of incredulity: "Actual 
 fact, and no embroidery, I assure you! You understand 
 that to emphasize the strictly pacific nature of my calling, 
 I 'm exploiting my honorary degree for all it 's worth ! ' ' 
 He added, rather pointedly addressing the handsome cav- 
 alryman, "I've no special ambition to be shot as a com- 
 batant!" 
 
 "Nor have I," said the man in sporting checks, warmly. 
 "And, Brotherton, my dear fellow, if this 'ere 'umble 
 individual may add his advice to the counsel you've al-
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 307 
 
 ready had from the man, by Jove! who of all men knows 
 best what he's talkin' about, you'll stow that 'ere lady- 
 killing uniform, and the silver helmet with the flowin' 
 plume away in some spare portmanteau, and leave 'em with 
 your saber and the dazzlin' horse-furniture you showed 
 me this morning in charge of the landlord here, until you 
 come back from the war-path safe and sound. Am I talk- 
 ing 'oss sense, Doctor?" 
 
 "Indeed you are, Tower!" agreed the Doctor. "And, 
 Chris, if you'll listen to him, I'll be eternally grateful to 
 you, for your own sake. You've too much of what Tower 
 and the Yankees call 'horse sense' not to know you're 
 handicapped as a war correspondent by your glorious 
 panoply ! ' ' 
 
 The Major smiled, and said, smoothing the drooping 
 mustache with a fine white hand that wore a diamond-set 
 signet : 
 
 ''You can't blame me for thirsting to carry the harness 
 I 've worn in sham fights for nearly half my lifetime, where 
 bullets are flying in real earnest?" 
 
 ' ' Not a bit, dear fellow, ' ' said the Doctor, with a twinkle, 
 "so long as you thirst to do it and don't! That letter 'R' 
 on your shoulder-cord is hardly big enough to serve as 
 cover where those bullets are plentiful. And with your 
 influence, prospects in life, and position, you'd be an in- 
 grate to Fate if you were anxious to die at thirty-four. ' ' 
 
 Said Brotherton, knitting his fair eyebrows over the 
 restless fire in his handsome eyes: 
 
 "Influence has been my bane, and the two other things 
 have stood in my light ever since I was an urchin in knick- 
 erbockers. I've been Queen's page, and Prince's Equerry, 
 and aide-de-camp on the Duke's Staff, and I've never seen 
 an army in the field, or smelt powder, except at Aldershot, 
 or Shorncliffe, or the Curragh of Kildare, or at carbine- 
 practice. What luck do you call that?" 
 
 ' ' Dashed hard ! ' ' said Tower. 
 
 Brotherton went on: 
 
 "I was a callow cadet at Sandhurst when the Regiment 
 covered itself with glory at Balaclava, and as it has seen 
 no active service since I've had no chance to find out 
 whether I 'm a real soldier, or a kid-glove one. ' ' 
 
 "Why not have exchanged " began Tower. The 
 
 Major shook his head.
 
 308 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "It wasn't to be done, for a very solid reason. My 
 father, who served with Redlett's Brigade in the Crimea, 
 was killed on Balaclava Day ; and I was an only son. And 
 my mother was a confidential Lady-in- Waiting, and knew 
 where to apply, by Jove ! when my youthful ambition was 
 to be cold- watered. ... And now that the dear soul has 
 gone, and I'm on the Retired list after fifteen years of 
 Windsor, Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, Pall Mall and 
 Hyde Park out breaks the war that I 've been sighing for. 
 And, after hovering about the Thunderbolt office till 
 every printer's devil knows me by name, and cooling my 
 heels on the doorstep of your chambers in the Albion so per- 
 sistently that your housekeeper believed me a bailiff with a 
 writ I managed to knock over Opportunity on the wing 
 and secured, thanks to you, Doctor! the chance of my 
 life!" 
 
 He stood up, a handsome, martial figure in his scarlet 
 and golden uniform, his eyes ablaze under the silver, gold- 
 starred, white-plumed helmet, his fine face flushed with the 
 battle-lust. And as he stretched out his hand across the 
 spotty tablecloth, the feasting flies rose in a buzzing 
 cloud. 
 
 "And glad am I if word of mine helped to get that 
 chance for you, and you know it, Chris, and that it's a 
 pleasure to have you with me, ' ' said the genial voice, as the 
 Doctor took the offered hand. ' ' But the military array, my 
 dear fellow! The wampum and war-paint that's what I 
 kick at, with my gouty toe of fifty- two. ' ' He added : ' ' But 
 here comes the waiter with the coffee and eggs, and bread 
 and butter, and something like the cold sliced ham I'm 
 dying for if only it doesn 't happen to be raw ! So sit 
 down and we'll fortify ourselves against possible short- 
 commons at Mayence. For that's where the King is, with. 
 Moltke and the Great Headquarters. And that's the des- 
 tination we take rail for at twelve noon." 
 
 He added, as Brotherton and Tower started in their 
 chairs, and P. C. Breagh quivered like a fox-terrier shown 
 a rat: "As for the other chiefs, the Red Prince is no 
 one seems able to tell where and the Crown Prince is on 
 the frontier. Maybe we'll hear of him at Wissembourg 
 by-and-by ! ' ' 
 
 "We should be there ourselves, in the thick of it," as- 
 serted Brotherton, savagely slashing at a pallid pat of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 309 
 
 butter, as Tower poured boiling milk and coffee into cups 
 half-an-inch thick. 
 
 "We would be, Chris, me dear man!" said the Doctor, 
 liberally piling slices of cold veal and ham-sausage on his 
 guests' plates, cutting bread and passing the pickles, "if 
 the authorities panted to have English correspondents at 
 their elbows while they're posting their pawns and pieces 
 for the opening game!" 
 
 Brotherton retorted with a touch of pomposity : 
 
 "You take it lightly, sir. But for the honor of our 
 profession, we should extort recognition at the hands of 
 these foreigners. We should, as representatives of a great 
 Power, submit to no belittling. Wielding as we do 
 
 "Keep all that toffee for the speechmaking end of a 
 Newspaper Press dinner, Chris, my boy," drolled the Doc- 
 tor. ' ' Sure, 'tis we ourselves are the foreigners here hard 
 as it is of conception to a true-born Briton. And since 
 we're permitted on sufferance to accompany the forces 
 of United Germany the least we can do is to extract the 
 necessary information painlessly!" 
 
 "But, my God! when I think of what may be doing at 
 this moment!" broke out Brotherton, hitting the table, 
 "I feel as if I should go stark, staring crazy! Have I 
 sacrificed what I have sacrificed and and borne what I 
 have borne, to trot like a stray tyke at the tail of a moving 
 Army picking up such scraps as may be thrown me from 
 day to day? I tell you, sir, the mere idea is horrible to 
 me ! I cannot put it more mildly. My blood is not yet 
 chilled by age, or my susceptibilities blunted. ..." He 
 pushed away his plate and rose, pulling his gloves from his 
 belt, and taking up the cloak that had been thrown over a 
 neighboring chair. ' ' I will ask you to excuse me ! I have 
 not yet received my papers back from the Halt Comman- 
 dant. I will call upon him now ! ' ' 
 
 "Come with you, if you've no objection to walking in 
 civilian company?" said Tower, swallowing a mouthful, 
 emptying his coffee-cup, and reaching for the white felt 
 hat and the box-coat. 
 
 "Come back about ten I may have a scrap or two of 
 news worth hearing," said the Doctor, with imperturbable 
 good temper ; and with a horsey touch of the hat on Tower 's 
 part, and a sulkily dignified salute from the Major, the tall 
 soldierly figure in its scarlet and blue and gold, and the less
 
 310 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 dignified personality in the clothes that might have been 
 worn by Toole in the part of a horsey squire, went away 
 together, over the yellow-burnt grass and the dusty sun- 
 baked gravel, dotted with little breakfasting groups of of- 
 ficers, who had been crowded out of the Hotel. 
 
 "I'm glad Tower's gone with him. He's in a frame of 
 mind that won 't make for pleasant relations with Prussian 
 transport-officers," quoth the Doctor, looking after the 
 retreating couple with something like a twinkle and some- 
 thing like a sigh. ' ' But he 's a grand fellow ! a splendid 
 fellow is Brotherton ! even if he sometimes reminds me of 
 the Quaker wife who said to her husband : ' Friend Timo- 
 thy, all the world is wrong except thee and me, and thou 
 is a little wrong sometimes, Friend Timothy ! ' ' 
 
 And having got rid of his vexation in one gentle gibe at 
 the idiosyncrasy of the petulant Brotherton, he fell to his 
 breakfast again, urging his guest to a renewed attack on 
 the strong ham-sausage and weak coffee, with the words: 
 
 "Bad policy neglecting rations. Must stoke when fuel 
 for the human engine is to be had, if you 're going to chron- 
 icle the deeds of an army that fights as it marches. And 
 when you've cleaned your plate, and drunk another cup of 
 coffee, you shall tell me why you came here and what you 
 want to do." 
 
 He commented, when P. C. Breagh, duly replete, had 
 stated the nature of his aims and ambitions ; touching upon 
 his discouragements as briefly as might be : 
 
 "War Correspondence! . . . Well, I'll admit I guessed 
 that you'd set your heart on something of the kind, when 
 I saw you tumble out of that troop- wagon with a note 
 book sticking out of your jacket-pocket. And so old Knew- 
 bit financed ? Sporting of him ! and he deserves that his 
 letters should be worth reading. Call 'em 'Experiences of 
 a Tyke at the Tail of an Army.' ' He added, his bright 
 brown eyes twinkling through their gold-rimmed glasses. 
 "For that's where you've got to be!" 
 
 lie lighted a huge cigar, twisted round his green-painted 
 iron chair and sat astride upon it, resting on its rickety 
 back his folded arms, short and strong, with small muscu- 
 lar hands, sunburned like his bearded face and thick bull- 
 neck. 
 
 "I am not joking, my young acquaintance. Can't you 
 understand that to keep abreast with even a secondary
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 311 
 
 Staff in the war-field you have to sweat out money at 
 every pore? And without gold for transport or thalers 
 for trinkgelt or seasoned knowledge to help you even if 
 your pockets were full, what can you accomplish? I tell 
 you frankly nothing at all! But if you'll follow on the 
 fringe of a Division, marching with the hangers-on and 
 officers' servants you'll get many a scrap of useful news 
 and many a meaty bone of valuable information tossed 
 to you day by day. And even with the rear of the Army 
 Corps you elect to stick to, you'll sup your fill of raw-head 
 and bloody bones take the assurance from me. Will you 
 with the advice?" 
 
 The great man was so unassuming in his kindness that 
 the little one hardly grasped the full extent of it, even as 
 he said, blinking as though a cinder of the Lower Rhine- 
 land Eailroad had got into his eye: 
 
 "Yes, sir, and thank you! I shall never forget how 
 good you've been to me!" and got reply: 
 
 "You've no business to be here, boyo, but since you 
 are, more by luck than grace, use your eyes and stuff your 
 memory with things worth keeping. Now as my time is 
 precious, is there anything more you want to know?" 
 
 "Only one thing. ... I have been puzzled by an 
 an incident that happened to a fellow in my own posi- 
 tion. " P. C. Breagh boggled horribly: "Was regularly 
 set on getting to the Front hadn't a notion how to set 
 about it when he accidentally managed to get hold of 
 a kind of official authorization. An informal pass, cer- 
 tifying the bearer as trustworthy written and signed by 
 Count Bismarck himself. ..." 
 
 "And that wasn't half bad," the Doctor said, knocking 
 the ash off the huge cigar, "for a beginner pretty well, it 
 seems to me ! ' ' 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh: 
 
 "He was tremendously elated at having got the paper. 
 It seemed to smooth away every difficulty. But later, 
 when he found himself in touch with Prussian Army men 
 they, not only the gentlemen privates qualifying for com- 
 missions, but the common rankers, dropped him like a 
 hot potato once they knew! And I'd like to know the 
 reason why they cut me I mean him? because they 
 supposed him to belong to the Secret Intelligence Depart- 
 ment? 'A. spy is a spy! Excuse me from further con-
 
 312 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 versation!' ' His mouth twisted wryly, repeating the 
 hateful words. 
 
 "I understand." The Doctor stroked his beard. "And 
 previously this young Englishman and the rank-and-file 
 of the Guard Infantry" P. C. Breagh kept as straight an 
 upper-lip as was possible "had chatted together upon 
 friendly terms?" 
 
 "That was it. He had got on splendidly with them 
 one fellow especially. And it hurt, being suddenly sent 
 to Coventry ! . . . " 
 
 "And does it strike you" there was infinite sagacity 
 in the clear brown eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses, 
 "that if you had been chatting freely with a supposed 
 equal, about your own position, prospects, and opinions, 
 you would have 'dropped him like a hot potato' if you 
 had suspected him of being commissioned to sound you for 
 French sympathies, predilections, and so forth on the 
 eve of hostilities with Prance ? ' ' 
 
 A light broke in upon the darkness in which Carolan had 
 groped. His eyes became circular, and his mouth shaped 
 for a whistle. He exploded : 
 
 "Oh, hang it! I never thought of anything so so 
 beastly. ... I wondered why Valverden shied, supposing 
 me a Secret Information agent, when the Army has shoals 
 of 'em. . . . But that Government should set such fellows 
 sniffing at the heels of the Army of course I never thought 
 of that. It's not cricket, is it, sir?" 
 
 The Doctor's hearty laugh pulled round the heads of a 
 breakfasting party of officers not far off. He said, low- 
 ering his voice: 
 
 "You remember the nigger's definitions of verse and 
 prose, don't you? 'Go up mill-dam, fall down slam! dat 
 verse. Go up mill-dam, fall down whoppo, dat "blank, 
 verse.' Prussian military authority may hold, that between 
 spying on the enemy before the Army and spying on the 
 Army before the enemy, there is as little distinction. 
 Though they'd think differently at the Horse Guards, thank 
 the Lord! By the way, with regard to that gaunt, long- 
 legged Lieutenant- Colonel of Uhlans of the Landwehr who 
 claimed to know something of you, rather luckily for your 
 ambitions! where did you come across him? 'An English 
 schoolboy,' he called you, 'crazy to see War!' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh explained :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 313 
 
 * ' He did know something of me, sir ! though it was the 
 merest chance our meeting. Until a week ago he was 
 a teacher of English at the Berners Street Institute of 
 Languages, and lodged at my landlady's. And they re- 
 called him to Berlin a few hours before the Declaration 
 of War." 
 
 XXXV 
 
 IT WAS the Doctor's turn to whistle. 
 
 "Phew'! So that's how they spy out and trap deserters 
 from their Reserve and Landwehr. Clever uncommonly ! 
 Possibly it's not business to tell you, but you've given away 
 a genuine bit of information. And as a lesson in caution 
 for the future, I shall annex your nugget do you hear? 
 In return I've a pass for an extra groom who has shot 
 the moon with three weeks' double pay in advance, the 
 cowardly beggar! And supposing you're not too proud 
 I '11 take you with me as far as Mayence. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I don 't know how to thank you, sir ! " 
 
 " Leave thanking for the present." He pulled out the 
 gold chronometer, secured by its twisted thong. "Ten 
 o'clock, and here come Towers and Brotherton, like Rosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern, 'with a kind of confession in 
 their looks which their modesties have not craft enough to 
 color.' No news to be had? No starting for Mayence 
 before twelve sharp, in spite of honied entreaties lavished 
 on the authorities?" 
 
 "Deuce a scrap!" 
 
 "Devil a minute!" 
 
 They threw themselves upon chairs, hot, dusty and pant- 
 ing. They had got their papers back, countersigned, from 
 a kind of understrapper, after, to do him justice, very 
 little delay. But of intelligence, not a modicum was obtain- 
 able, except that the Emperor was said to be close to the 
 frontier near Saarbriick at the head of the Imperial 
 Guards. 
 
 ' ' Though they 've been saying that for forty-eight hours, ' ' 
 grumbled Tower, "and I'm dam' if I call it anything but 
 Ancient History. ' ' 
 
 At which candid confession the Doctor 's mouth twitched 
 under the thick, curling mustache of rusty iron-gray. He
 
 314 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 said, his quick eye noting an excited stir and bustle about 
 the thronged entrance of the hotel, and the crowding of 
 officers about another, who had a paper in his hand : 
 
 "Those officers have heard something that is not An- 
 cient History. And look at the fellows who were eating 
 at the tables in the windows; they've something tastier to 
 discuss now than the landlord 's indifferent grub ! ' ' 
 
 It was true. In the long dining-room, in the restaurant, 
 and in the reading-room, which had been converted into a 
 temporary coffee-room, men were swarming like bees and 
 buzzing like them, while detached, staccato sentences 
 shaped out of the buzz. 
 
 "Saarbriick . . . Spieheren . . . Frossard . . . Colonel 
 von Pestel. ..." 
 
 "Something up. ..." Towers adjusted his eyeglass. 
 Brotherton. catching a sentence shouted by an officer of a 
 j'dger battalion to another green-coat leaning from a win- 
 dow on the second-floor, jumped as though he had been 
 prodded with a bayonet, and turned a flaming face upon 
 his friend: 
 
 "A telegram has come in. . . There has been serious 
 fighting at Saarbriick. Did they lie to us at the station, 
 then? Officers and gentlemen " 
 
 "Softly, Chris!" The Doctor's hand upon his arm 
 checked him on the verge of a fiery outburst. "I fancy 
 they've a right to hold back intelligence dispatched from. 
 Headquarters when the senders mark the wire ' Delay.' ' 
 
 "No doubt, but I had better interview the Commandant. 
 Details would be worth having ! ' ' said Brotherton, adding 
 with a peculiar smile, " Or at least I, in my inexperience, am 
 inclined to think so." 
 
 Came the quick answer : 
 
 ' ' You can have details now without troubling the Com- 
 mandant! Full well, as fully as I got them under a 
 strict undertaking of secrecy for four hours at six o 'clock 
 this morning!" 
 
 Brotherton turned as ashen-pale as he had hitherto been 
 crimson. Towers called out gleefully, as active little thrills 
 of excitement coursed down P. C. Breagh 's spine : 
 
 "Bravo, Doctor! And you had it up youi sleeve all 
 the time. ' Unfold, thou man of 'orrid mystery ! ' as Miss 
 Le Grange says at Astley's in the Specter's Bride." 
 
 "There's not so much to unfold. But from eight thou-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 315 
 
 sand to ten thousand French troops made an attack on 
 Saarbriick yesterday. Some battalions of the 8th Prussian 
 Army Corps had augmented the original garrison, and their 
 nearest support was at Lebach, five miles to the rear. A 
 mitrailleuse-battery and some field-guns posted on the 
 Reppertsberg drove the Blue Uniforms out of the town!" 
 
 Towers said : ' ' Then why the deuce ..." and broke off. 
 Brotherton gloomed heavily. The Doctor went on: 
 
 "The Emperor and the Prince Imperial were on the 
 heights, with the Imperial Staff, to see the show an aston- 
 ishing spectacle it must have been. Frossard, in the center 
 with supports drawn from the Second Corps Marshal 
 Bazaine on the right, with troops picked from the Third. 
 And in command of the Fifth Corps, De Failly, who 
 crossed the river at Saarguemines. " 
 
 Queried Tower: 
 
 "And when the big bow-wow had made the little one 
 drop the bone, he didn't stick to it?" 
 
 The Doctor returned : 
 
 "No and that's the puzzle of the whole affair. The 
 whole glorious display resolved itself into a cannonade, 
 with occupation of the heights on the left bank, and nothing 
 further. Though the French foreposts actually occupied 
 the three bridges and held the town." 
 
 Tower said, his pale eyes sharp with intelligence: 
 
 "Bet you a tenner it was done for the boy. Got up to 
 blood the young 'un cockerel of the Walk Imperial. Gee- 
 whillikins! What telegrams Nap must have fired off to 
 St. Cloud!" 
 
 "They'll have read them in Berlin and London long 
 before they get to us, ' ' said the Doctor, shrugging. ' ' Where 
 are you off to, Brotherton?" 
 
 Brotherton returned and the tone was offensive, if the 
 words were not : 
 
 "To do what my senior Special does not appear to think 
 necessary wire the news to Printing House Square." 
 
 The elder answered with a good-humored twinkle: 
 
 "Why, that was done hours back, by grace of the 
 authorities. They bridled my tongue, but left my pen un- 
 hampered. 'Knowing, of course, that the British Public 
 must wait for its news until breakfast-time to-morrow. 
 Were you speaking to me, Brotherton?" 
 
 The Major was saying in a voice as little like his own as
 
 316 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the livid mask of rage he turned on the Doctor resembled 
 his ordinarily calm and placid visage: 
 
 ' ' I was addressing you, though it pleased you not to hear 
 
 me. I was asking you what you meant, by G ! in 
 
 stealing a march on the man you've called your friend?" 
 
 The Doctor's eyes blazed behind their gold-rimmed 
 glasses. Anger darkened his handsome sunburnt face. He 
 drew himself up and said, speaking simply and with dig- 
 nity: 
 
 "How do you infer that I have 'stolen a march on you'? 
 By taking the apology they give one here for a cold tub at 
 cockcrow and going over to the Hauptmann's office with 
 our papers while you and Tower were sleeping like 
 
 "Like dormice, by Gad!" put in Tower. "And so we 
 were. And it's a case of the early bird and not the first 
 time, I'll swear by thousands! And, Brotherton you 
 ought to apologize. You were simply infernally rude just 
 now!" 
 
 Said the Major loftily: 
 
 ' ' I gave it as my opinion that I had been dealt with un- 
 fairly. I do not withdraw the words I used. But I com- 
 prehend that my senior in the service of the paper is not 
 anxious to share the credit of the earliest intelligence with 
 regard to what is taking place on the frontier just now." 
 
 "For God's sake, Chris, don't say what you'll be sorry 
 for!" 
 
 "I'll say what I think, to you, sir, or to the King of 
 Prussia ! ' ' 
 
 The gray-bearded, strongly-featured face, with the look 
 of generous sorrow on it, and the younger, fairer, hand- 
 somer face, with the stamp of arrogance and vanity and 
 pride marring its manly beauty, confronted each other in 
 silence, until, with an impatient snarl, Brotherton swung 
 round upon his heel. 
 
 ' ' Look here ! look here ! where the merry hell are you 
 off to?" Tower spluttered, grabbing at the sleeve of the 
 splendid scarlet tunic. "Not going to part company for 
 a misunderstanding hey ? ' ' 
 
 "I am going to part company," Brotherton returned 
 bitterly, freeing himself from the detaining hand, "since 
 the jealousy that hampered me in my military career 
 threatens to mar my prospects now. "Where I am going to 
 I cannot tell you probably you will hear from me, but I
 
 cannot promise it. Good-bye! Or if you prefer it 
 Auf wiedersehen!" 
 
 He shook hands with Tower, nodded coldly to the aston- 
 ished P. C. Breagh, formally saluted the Doctor, who re- 
 turned with a slight bow, picked up his cap and cloak 
 and strode away over the sun-dried grass and the hot yellow 
 gravel, making for the gaudily painted iron gates that 
 ended the drive. 
 
 "Oh, Chris, man-alive, and am I jealous of ye?" said 
 the Doctor, his spectacles dewy with irrepressible laughter, 
 as the gallant figure in its gorgeous scarlet and golden 
 trappings was swallowed in a crowd of blue uniforms : " If 
 you'd waited another minute, I'd have told you of some- 
 thing else your senior in the service of the paper by seven- 
 teen years, some odd days, and a minute or two isn't 
 anxious to share with you, and that is a reputation for not 
 being a hot-headed, unreasonable young ass ! ' ' 
 
 "He's making a bee-line for the Railway Station," said 
 Tower, wiping his heated forehead with a gaudily-hued 
 silk handkerchief, "and if he comes across any of those 
 Transport swells there '11 be the deuce to pay. He 's got the 
 bit in his teeth and his tail tight down over the ribbons, by 
 George ! and he '11 kick the trap to pieces and lame himself 
 to a dead certainty. Shall I go after him and try to soother 
 him down a bit?" 
 
 The Doctor shrugged assent. 
 
 "If you think 'twill be any good! . . . Meanwhile I 
 have to write a letter or two, and pack, or rout my man 
 out of the servants' quarters to do it. As for you, my 
 boyo!" he turned on P. C. Breagh a keen, humorous 
 glance that summoned up blushes to mantle under the 
 railway grime ' ' a wash and brush-up will do you no harm, 
 and besides my absconding Berliner isn't described on 
 his passport as a mulatto ! ' ' 
 
 Tower came back in half an hour, reporting failure in 
 the attempt to pacify Brotherton, who nevertheless joined 
 the Doctor's little party at the station, having apparently 
 recovered his serenity of temper, and abandoned his deter- 
 mination to forswear his senior's company. 
 
 Beer, coffee, bread and meat were still being lavishly 
 distributed among the troops continually parading for 
 departure, and the train-loads of soldiers passing through.
 
 318 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 And the exodus of panic-stricken visitors, flying from the 
 little up-Rhine watering places, in apprehension of the 
 arrival of the Emperor with his mitrailleuses, continued; 
 until, in another hour, the shrunken finger of the Warlock 
 wagged, and thenceforth the Rhine Valley Railways were 
 totally blocked for civilian passengers, and given over to 
 the transport of men and munitions of war. 
 
 Presently, when a train of coal-trucks from Kreuznach 
 came jolting into Bingen, bearing on their sable flanks the 
 chalk hieroglyphics that signified their official emptiness, 
 P. C. Breagh was destined to behold personages of the 
 loftiest rank and the utmost exclusiveness, German Serene 
 Highnesses, Austrian Duchesses, and English peeresses, 
 with their children and lap-dogs, their maids, chefs, coach- 
 men, lackeys, and grooms, packed into these grimy vehicles 
 without precedence or selection, or any seating-accommo- 
 dation other than that afforded by an empty sack or an 
 armful of straw. 
 
 The troop-train conveying the mounted gendarmerie of 
 the Third Army Corps huge men equipped as dragoons 
 to Mayence, afforded accommodation to the men, horses 
 and vans of the Doctor's party. Long before the fortifica- 
 tions came in sight the roads were blotted out by marching 
 columns, and the fields were dotted with moving transport- 
 trains. 
 
 At Mayence, whose stone-paved streets were roaring with 
 the passage of iron-shod wheels, the trampling of iron- 
 shod hoofs, and the measured tramping of infantry bat- 
 talions, the Doctor, stepping from the train, was seized 
 upon by friends. Yet after the first eager interchange of 
 interrogations and answers, he found time to bestow a part- 
 ing hand-grip on Carolan and a final word of advice. 
 
 "And put this in your pocket it'll be a help to you 
 if it doesn 't hang you. They 're lithographed by the Prus- 
 sian War Department, and every German officer has one. 
 And here's something else, a lot more use than the revolver 
 those chaps stole from you. You '11 know better than to use 
 it unless in case of need ! ' ' 
 
 This was a folding pocket-map of the Eastern Depart- 
 ments of France, with certain military routes very nicely 
 marked in red upon it. While the something else proved 
 to be a wicker-covered metal pocket-flask, containing about 
 half-a-pint of the whisky of Kinahan.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 319 
 
 The donor added : 
 
 "Remember, train your memory to pigeon-hole things 
 for later description, and never be caught taking notes, or 
 fighting on a side ! And be on your guard with women, 
 pretty ones especially. And there's a scrap of paper in 
 the pocket of the map-cover, may come in handy, at a pinch. 
 No, no thanks ! General von Reigen, that 's the light blue 
 "Wiirtemburg Hussar officer talking to Tower tells me 
 Moltke and his staff are quartered at the Hotel de Holland. 
 If so, the King won't be far off. He things Bismarck has 
 gone to a house outside the town, but he can't swear to it. 
 There goes a carriage with the Red Prince's big buck- 
 nigger on the box. Shows his Highness must be some- 
 where hereabouts. As for the Crown Prince, nobody will 
 say anything. He 's marching with an end in view. And 
 they say the French are shooting uncommonly badly and 
 that half of the Reserve men don't know how to use their 
 ehassepots. Well, they '11 have practice enough, before long. 
 Good luck, and good-bye ! ' ' 
 
 The "scrap of paper," upon later examination, proved 
 to be a five-pound note, placed there by the hand that 
 later penned those wonderful war-letters under a wayside 
 hedge, at a corner of a plank bivouac-table, on the zinc 
 counter of a wine-shop filled with carousing soldiers at the 
 ebony and tortoiseshell escritoire of Madame la Marquise, 
 in the boudoir of the chateau that had been so sorely bat- 
 tered by those big potatoes of Moltke 's. 
 
 Kind little, great man; a whole chestful of Orders had 
 no power to chill the big warm heart that prompted your 
 many deeds of generosity. It molders in a coffin now, 
 and the decorations are dimming with dust in a glass- 
 topped box. But beyond the Veil that parts the seen from 
 the unseen world, I like to think that there were waiting 
 for you rewards and honors, in comparison with which the 
 most coveted earthly insignia were vilest dirt and dross. 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 SAID the sutler-woman, whose coarse black hair was 
 powdered white as any lady's of the early eighteenth 
 century, smearing the dust from the peonies of her
 
 320 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 cheeks with a brawny arm that was dusty as any 
 miller 's : 
 
 "Young man, if thou stick to thy word, and take good 
 care of the jackass, remembering the sharp nail-spike in 
 the end of the whip-butt if he tries to kick or bite I'll 
 creep in under the tilt and take a forty-winks. Lord be 
 thanked ! my legs are sound, but they ache a bit ! ' ' 
 
 The jackass, who boasted the not inglorious name of 
 ' ' Rumschottel, " laid back his ears viciously at his mis- 
 tress's reference to the persuasive spike in the whip-butt, 
 and the young man addressed by his temporary employer 
 nodded in assent without opening his lips. For the dust 
 in which the little tilt-cart moved was almost solid, being 
 kicked up by the Seventh Corps of the Second Army of 
 Germany, in line of march through the Haardt Wald by 
 Kaiserslautern. 
 
 The sutler-woman's young man had marched with the 
 Fifth Corps from Mayence by Oppenheim and Alzey, and 
 had picked up an American tourist who knew of a short cut 
 to Kaiserslautern, and had mislaid the Army Corps in 
 trying to find it. Staffs, squadrons, batteries, battalions, 
 transport and baggage had vanished like smoke among 
 these vineyard-and-forest-clad hills, these pine- jacketed 
 gorges, these roads that ran between natural ramparts of 
 granite, or passed through quaint villages tucked under 
 hillsides crimson android with laden appletrees, and 
 dominated by ancient castles perched on towering plat- 
 forms of rock. 
 
 Scenery palls when the thigh-bones seem wearing through 
 their sockets ; when the stomach complains for very empti- 
 ness, and there are bloody blisters inside the ragged socks. 
 The American w r ho had been so cocksure about the road to 
 Kaiserslautern was lying up under a peasant's penthouse- 
 thatch, at a twenty-mile distant village, drinking Kirsch, 
 nursing his own skinless heels, and reading up ' ' Murray. ' ' 
 His late companion had refused to give in, and perse- 
 verance had won its reward. Sixty miles or so above 
 Kreuznach, where the main road forks right and left, climb- 
 ing the shoulders of the Nahe Valley, he had met the Ninth 
 Corps of the Second Army marching up from Bingen, and 
 hobbled at the heels of one of the dusty battalions until 
 he could hobble no more. 
 
 The sutler-woman had come upon him sitting pumped-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 321 
 
 out by the wayside, had sold him bread, coffee and sausage, 
 doctored his blisters, supplied him with tallowed strips of 
 linen to replace his wornout socks, earned his gratitude, 
 and displayed no reluctance to profit by her philanthropy, 
 when he had volunteered to help lead the jackass as far as 
 Kaiserslautern. True, he spoke a most vile jargon, but 
 you cannot have everything. And the weather was so 
 beautifully dusty, thought the sutler- woman, that an as- 
 sistant would certainly be of use. Without the dust that 
 clogs the human throat, the trade in liquid lubricants would 
 be less roaring. And the tilt-cart contained, beside other 
 marching-requisites, a twenty-gallon barrel of rather luke- 
 warm beer. 
 
 The young man nodded again as the cart-shafts tilted in 
 the hame-straps, and a command to throw his weight on the 
 front-board was issued from behind. There was a good 
 deal of creaking as he obeyed. A heavy weight suddenly 
 added to the jackass's load made Rumschottel look malev- 
 olently round his near-side blinker, and display an upper 
 row of long orange-colored teeth in testimony of his desire 
 to bite. Then his driver slid off the board, took the rope 
 reins, and continued to trudge beside him, keeping well 
 to the low hedgerow so as to leave a clear space between 
 the sutler's cart and the seemingly endless column of 
 dusty infantrymen, striding steadily forward through a 
 blazing August noon. 
 
 Ahead, where black-and-white and white-and-black lance- 
 pennons flickered at the turn of the road below a steep hill- 
 shoulder covered with bronzing vineyards heavy with pur- 
 pling grapes, the light-blue of a Prussian Dragoon regi- 
 ment and the facings of a squadron of Red Uhlans showed 
 through the thick coating of dust that clung to horse and 
 man. But the dark uniforms of a succeeding battery of 
 Horse Artillery and the indigo or rifle-green of the bat- 
 talions that marched with the needle-gun, had long ago 
 given place to a pervasive whitey-brown. 
 
 Schmidt, Klaus, and Klein were pressing on in spite of 
 dust and an eighty-five-in-the-shade thermometer, you must 
 understand, so as not to get left out of the fighting that 
 must be going on ahead. For the First and Second Corps 
 of the Second Army, with the Headquarters Staff, were 
 known to have reached Homburg, and on the previous 
 night the Army of the Crown Prince had bivouacked be-
 
 822 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 hind the Klingbach, south of Landau. . . . Five or six in 
 the morning, supposing him to have marched at dawn, 
 would see him well across the frontier. And scouts on the 
 hills had heliographed and flag-signaled the arrival of Im- 
 perial battalions and artillery at Wissembourg, and blue 
 Baden Dragoons reported a cavalry camp at Selz. For all 
 they knew, "Unser Fritz" and the Napoleon were even then 
 at grips. 
 
 So they marched as they had marched since they de- 
 trained at Bingen, swinging starkly on under the weight of 
 the knapsack, eighty rounds of ammunition, rolled great- 
 coat, camp-kettle, sword, spade, water-bottle, haversack 
 and bread-roll, or half-a-dozen flint-hard brown biscuits 
 threaded together on a bit of string. 
 
 Men sweated and blistered under the relentless sun, but 
 not many fell out, and there were very few severe cases of 
 sunstroke, these for the most part falling to the lot of 
 Reservists. And in the hottest part of the day a plump of 
 thunder broke among the hills eastward, and a deluge that 
 followed turned the dust on them to paste. Then the sun 
 came out again and baked the paste hard; and the sutler- 
 woman stuck her head out between the front flaps of the 
 cart-tilt, and told her young man to pull up for a bit of a 
 rest and a snack. 
 
 So P. C. Breagh unharnessed Rumschottel, and the jack- 
 ass rolled in a sandy hollow in asinine fashion, and rose 
 up braying and refreshed. Then, quite mildly submitting 
 to be hobbled by his mistress, he fell-to upon a patch of 
 thistles that the battery-wheels had spared. And the sutler- 
 woman, who answered to the name of Krumpf, produced 
 black bread and cheese, with peppery sausage of Bruns- 
 wick, and a mighty tin bottle of cold milk-coffee, from the 
 depths of her vehicle, and liberally dispensed of these re- 
 freshments to her servitor. She partook of them herself, 
 largely, lacing her own mug of coffee out of a private bottle 
 of schnaps. 
 
 "Hetr Je!" she grumbled presently, "what is he gaping 
 at?" For her young man had finished eating, and was 
 absorbed in watching marching legs. . . . She added, 
 snorting scornfully: "We might sit here and sleep for 
 three hours, and they would still be going by when we woke 
 up. . . . Horses' legs and men's legs, just as though they 
 had got clockwork inside them. ... It was so in Schleswig-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 323 
 
 Holstein, and it will be so in France. And what the Danes 
 got the French will get, and that will be a thumping!" 
 She nodded directly afterward and dozed heavily, leaning 
 her broad back against the wheel of her cart. 
 
 Perhaps she slept a quarter-of-an-hour while the dusty 
 men marched by, four abreast, without slackening pace or 
 changing step. They had hard-featured, serious, intelli- 
 gent faces for the most part, thought P. C. Breagh, though 
 here and there was a visage that bore the stamp of vice 
 upon it, or was pimply with drink, or brutal, or merely sly. 
 They had ceased to sing, though their bivouac of the night 
 before had been patriotically vocal; the dusty instruments 
 of the bandsmen came less frequently out of their dustier 
 bags. They marched for the most part in silence, though 
 the trampling of their feet made the solid ground rever- 
 berate. 
 
 Sometimes a battalion would quit the road, and hedges 
 would go down before it as by magic; and through the 
 middle of a field of browning corn or whitening barley 
 a broad white highway would be beaten hard as any 
 threshing-floor, bare of anything save the most insignificant 
 tokens of their passage, such as a covey of late-hatched 
 partridge chicks trampled into rags, a broken strap, a frag- 
 ment of biscuit, a scattering of potato-peels, an empty 
 match-box, the paper that had held an ounce of tobacco, 
 and many empty bottles that had held beer. Rarely, a 
 great scurry in the dust where some obstreperous charger 
 had reared and fallen with his rider, the extent of whose 
 injuries might be guessed by a clotted puddle of drying 
 blood and a broken stirrup-iron. Thus, under the rhyth- 
 mical tread of the dusty boots, as under the iron-shod 
 wheels and iron-shod hoofs that had preceded and would 
 follow them green things were beaten from the face of 
 earth, and fur and feather fled, as they were flying before 
 the Third Army, marching toward Wissembourg; as they 
 were flying before Steinmetz, bringing the First Army from 
 the North. 
 
 Where they halted they left their taint by the scorched 
 hedgerows, and the black circles of their great fires re- 
 mained to tell of them, like the soil-pits that scarred the 
 fields where they had bivouacked. Last night, by some de- 
 lusion of the wearied senses of sight and hearing, they had 
 seemed to the boy who had slept on the outskirts of their
 
 824 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 camp to be marching even as they slept. The lusty snoring 
 of the countless swathes of sleepers between the long, 
 orderly rows of stacked needle-guns topped with gilt-spiked 
 helmets, suggested the rushing of a host in onward motion. 
 When the boy who had lain through the night under the 
 sutler-woman's cart to guard it from light-fingered mar- 
 auders had fallen into a troubled slumber, his blistered 
 feet had carried him on in dreams behind them still. Then 
 in the blue dusk before dawn cavalry trumpets far ahead 
 and shrill bugles near at hand had shrilled reveille and 
 when the tremendous war-machine rushed on again once 
 more, the dusty boy had been caught up once more by the 
 wind of its going, and drawn along with it, as a chip is 
 whirled in the under-draught of a rushing express-train, 
 or a wisp of hay is caught up by a traveling tornado, and 
 borne upon its dreadful way. 
 
 He grinned now, reminiscent of the Doctor's analogy, as 
 a blunt-nosed, shaggy dog of no distinguishable breed 
 trotted past, sneezing, between the files at the rear of a half- 
 company-column. "Whose is the beast?" he heard a sol- 
 dier ask his neighbor on the right-hand, and : ' ' Nobody 's 
 joined the battalion at Bingen!" was the reply. Upon 
 which the inquirer tossed the canine waif a scrap of biscuit, 
 with "Here, Bang!" and Bang, thus adopted and chris- 
 tened, neatly caught the morsel, bolted it, and trotted on, 
 no more an ownerless mongrel, but a regimental dog. 
 
 Now the sutler-woman was waking, rubbing the sleep out 
 of a pair of eyes which were less bright than they had been 
 before their owner became addicted to the use of beer with 
 schnaps as a lacing. She had an incipient beard, and the 
 voice of a heavy dragoon, yet there was a tinge of womanly 
 coquetry in her way of straightening her big, battered 
 bonnet, and adjusting the checked blue-and-yellow shawl 
 tied crosswise over her voluminous bust. She yawned, 
 struggled to the perpendicular position, with some diffi- 
 culty, owing to her corpulence ; and cried, pointing a stout 
 red finger at her henchman, yet squatting in the shade of 
 a clump of dusty whins : 
 
 "Lord ! if he isn't mooning still, with his chin on his two 
 fists ! Such a gimpel I never yet did see ! But they say all 
 the Englisch are mad, their climate makes them so. Other-
 
 THE MAN OE IRON 325 
 
 wise would they not live in their country? but no! they 
 can't, flier I Catch Eumschottel, and let's be moving!" 
 
 P. C. Breagh obliged, undisturbed by the appellation of 
 idiot, or the contumely heaped on the United Kingdom. 
 It was better to be on the black books of the sutler-woman 
 than distinguished by her too-favorable regard. 
 
 For though the stout proprietress of the tilt-cart had 
 undoubtedly played the part of a Samaritaness toward 
 the wandering Englander, she was, it had to be owned, 
 more charitable than chaste; trading not only in beer, 
 bread, sausages, matches, cheap packs of cards, dominoes, 
 pipe-tobacco, sweets and pickled cucumbers, but following, 
 between marches, the oldest profession in the world. 
 
 Being invited on the previous evening to convey a verbal 
 billet 'of the amorous kind to a young Pioneer of Wiirtem- 
 berg Artillery, P. C. Breagh had flatly declined. Conceiv- 
 ing the refusal to be prompted by jealousy, Frau or Frau- 
 lein Krumpf had not taken it in ill part. Until, being 
 undeceived upon this point, she uncorked the vials of her 
 anger and exerted a gift for vituperation justly celebrated 
 among her clients of the rank and file. 
 
 "You threadling, you whipper-snapper! You pickled 
 herring in a jacket and breeches! There is a man buried 
 in the Domkirche at Mainz, where I belong, that has been 
 dead over a hundred years, and has more of good red life 
 in him to-day than thou! 'Frauenlob,' they called him, 
 because he couldn't live without women, and women! and 
 when he died, eight of the town-girls carried him on his 
 bier. And they poured wine over his grave so that you 
 stepped up to your knees in it all because he had liked 
 the women as a tom-cat likes cream!" 
 
 The first spate of her resentment over, she had accepted 
 the situation. But the wound remained ; and as the better- 
 half of Potiphar may have railed at her husband's young 
 Hebrew steward, the sutler-woman nagged at the young 
 man who limped beside her jackass, through the deep wel- 
 come shade of ancient oak-forests or over long blistering 
 stretches of naked mountain roads, as those tireless, dusty 
 men marched by. 
 
 There was no keeping up with them; they passed, and 
 others swarmed after them. Batteries succeeded battalions, 
 ammunition and baggage, ambulance and commissariat-
 
 326 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 trains were followed by yet other battalions, while the 
 sweat dripped into the eyes of P. C. Breagh and the skin 
 wore off his heels. 
 
 At midday, when his chest hurt with the very act of 
 breathing and his straining muscles seemed about to crack, 
 a man died. 
 
 He was an infantryman of Hessians, and it happened 
 quite suddenly. P. C. Breagh, who had long ago aban- 
 doned all unnecessary integuments, marching without coat, 
 vest, collar, or braces, had noticed him a moment previously 
 swinging along with unbuttoned uniform it was marvel- 
 ous how small a minority of the soldiers had sought this 
 method of relief. . . . His open shirt showed the lighter 
 skin of his bare chest, his pickelhaube was perched upon the 
 cooking-pan crowning his knapsack-top, and he had draped 
 a wetted red handkerchief over his steaming head. 
 
 Save that his face was purple with congested blood, so 
 that his pale, staring eyes seemed colorless by comparison, 
 and he walked with open mouth, the Adam's apple in his 
 lean throat jerking as he gulped down the hot air, he con- 
 veyed no dire impression of breakdown. But suddenly he 
 stumbled and spun round, as if seized by sudden giddiness, 
 clutching at his shirt-breast, dropping his gun. Men were 
 thrown out of step as he fell, with an absurd clatter of metal 
 and tin-ware. Yet they marched on without a pause. 
 
 Others came, stepping over the fallen figure lying 
 huddled in the way. Its fingers moved, paddling in the 
 dust; and P. C. Breagh, yielding to a sudden impulse, 
 dropped the bridle of the jackass, ran in, grabbed hold 
 and hauled the heavy body out of the way. 
 
 "What are you doing, born stupid that you are?" the 
 sutler-woman cried viciously, for Rumschottel had swerved 
 aside to the hedge and was ravenously devouring weeds. 
 She added, becoming aware of the prone infantryman, who 
 was lying on his back staring at the sun unwinkingly : ' ' It 
 it all up with that one, his eyes are turning white already. 
 Such as he have never six pfennigs to pay for other folks' 
 time and trouble. Better leave him for the Feld-lazarett 
 to pick up." 
 
 But P. C. Breagh only grunted dourly, hunkering by the 
 prostrate Hessian, and with a parting sarcasm the pro- 
 prietress of Rumschottel seized her beast's head and 
 trudged on. if she had looked back, she would have seen
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 327 
 
 good Irish whisky wasted. For despite the shade of the 
 tree under which he was hauled, the rolled-up coat thrust 
 under his head and the laving of his face and breast with 
 spirit, it was all up with the man, as she had prophesied. 
 
 He grabbled with his sunburnt fingers in the dust a 
 little, and tried to lift a hand to his perspiring chest. By 
 the tin crucifix dependent from a leather bootlace round his 
 neck, you could tell that he tried to make the sacred Sign. 
 Then his eyes rolled up, and an expression of great surprise 
 overspread his discolored countenance. His knees jerked 
 and a sound like a rotten stick of wood, breaking, came 
 from his open mouth, 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 HE would breathe for possibly an hour longer, but prac- 
 tically the man was dead. Still listening for the faint, 
 intermittent heart-beats, a splash of gravel stung P. C. 
 Breagh smartly in the neck and cheek, and the dull thunder 
 of horse-hoofs came unpleasantly close and stopped. He 
 lifted his ear from the rattling chest, and looked up into 
 the face of an infantry officer, who was reining up his 
 beast and bending from the saddle as he looked at the 
 casualty on the ground. The officer asked in staccato sen- 
 tences : 
 
 " It is a case of heat-stroke ? You are a doctor ? ' ' 
 P. C. Breagh answered shortly: 
 "Enough of one to know that there is no hope." 
 The horse, a fine, spirited animal, hoofed the ground 
 impatiently. The captain said, patting the glossy, sweat- 
 ing neck: 
 
 ' ' Very good. Will you kindly show me his name-tag ? ' ' 
 P. C. Breagh found the zinc label, bearing the moribund 
 Hessian's name, regimental, battalion and company-num- 
 ber, and turned it face-upward on the discolored breast. 
 The captain, leaning from the saddle, read, and mentally 
 registered. His keen eyes, hedged with dusty fair lashes, 
 narrowed against the blinding white sunshine and, some- 
 what bloodshot with heat and fatigue, had something like 
 a smile in them ; and for some reason, to the dusty young 
 man who squatted on the ground by the dying, the smile
 
 328 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 was an offense. He scowled, and the officer, noting this, 
 asked curiously : 
 
 ' ' Were you acquainted with that one, then ? ' ' 
 
 He indicated the body by an overhand thumb-gesture. 
 Eesenting the gesture for the same inexplicable reason, P. 
 C. Breagh responded with a head-shake. The captain 
 pursued, pulling the damp and blackened reins between his 
 gloved fingers, stained with his own sweat and the horse's 
 within the palms. . . . 
 
 "I asked, because you seemed how shall one put it? 
 sorry for him, you know!" 
 
 The dust-smeared, freckled face turned on the inter- 
 locutor angrily. The smouldering fire in the eyes leaped 
 into sudden flame : 
 
 ' ' I am, damned sorry for him ! To come by his end like 
 this without firing a single shot!" 
 
 There was something unusual about this little dialogue, 
 carried on between the smart mounted officer and the foot- 
 sore, untidy pedestrian, over the body stretched out by 
 the roadside. As the broad stream of marching men flowed 
 by, curious eyes rolled their way, the whites showing 
 startlingly in their owners' sunburned faces. Men won- 
 dered what he had died of, and what they were discussing 
 there. And P. C. Breagh went on, his mouth pulled awry 
 with wrathful bitterness: 
 
 "He was as good a patriot, I'd bet my hat! as any 
 fellow in his battalion. He set as much store as others by 
 King and Fatherland! I daresay he dreamed of getting 
 the Distinguished Service medal for some tremendous act 
 of gallantry, and astonishing his wife he wears a wedding 
 ring, so I suppose he had one ! with it when he got home. 
 And now it's all over. It makes me feel sick. All over, 
 and nothing to show for it!" 
 
 The blank, rolled-up eyes, staring unwinkingly in the 
 face of the coppery, westering sun, and the discolored face, 
 with the look of agonized surprise now fixed upon it, 
 seemed to echo dumbly: "Nothing but this!" The officer 
 returned : 
 
 "So! but there will be a war-pension for the widow, as 
 he died upon Active Service, and that will not be so bad, 
 after all. And presently the Feld-lazarett will come up and 
 put him in a wagon. He will be buried at sundown, when
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 3291 
 
 we halt. . . . They will give him a firing party and a 
 bugler everything will be done decently. After a battle 
 there is not always you understand ? . . . " 
 
 He shrugged, and the Danish and Austrian war-medals 
 on his dark blue tunic glinted, in witness of his ripe knowl- 
 edge and experience. Hating him still more vigorously, 
 P. C. Breagh ended his sentence: 
 
 "Not always time to stow away lost pawns!" 
 
 " 'Pawns!' My worthy sir, our pawns are battalions!" 
 The captain laughed, showing even, but tobacco-stained 
 teeth under his thick brown mustache. "This was a 
 unit among myriads of myriads. . . . You will find plenty 
 of work waiting for you among his comrades, if, as I guess, 
 you are a graduate in surgery out for practice. . . . Let 
 me advise you to join a Bed Cross ambulance the arm- 
 badge is a protection of a definite kind." 
 
 He saluted, gave rein, and the tired, yet impatient horse 
 snorted relief, and cantered on with him, sending another 
 shower of dust-grains and gravel-grit over the extinct 
 "unit among myriads of myriads" and the unkempt 
 Samaritan hunkering by its side. 
 
 A scalding wave of bitterness and resentment had swept 
 over him a moment previously. Behind and through the 
 officer's brown-eyed, good-looking face he had seen the 
 fierce, challenging blue stare and great domed skull and 
 bulldog jaw of the great Minister who made wars at will. 
 And the limp, dead body of the "unit among myriads of 
 myriads," lying by the beaten track where twenty thou- 
 sand men thus clad and armed had passed already, had 
 awakened in him a rage of pity and a fury of disgust. 
 
 This War that had seemed such a huge and splendid 
 world-event, shaking sovereigns upon their thrones and 
 stirring nations to wildest enthusiasm, meant catastrophes 
 innumerable as minute ; infinitesimal tragedies never to be 
 heard of, related or known, involving the humbler and 
 the weaker among the people of both sides. 
 
 Meanwhile here was a letter, pinned inside the dead 
 man's shirt, an ill-spelt, loving scrawl, containing a wilted 
 sprig of some kind of garden-herb, smelling evilly. 
 
 "Glory is glory," said the poor soul who wrote, "but so 
 thou bring thyself safe back to me and the Kinder, that will 
 be enough." Meanwhile, entreating her lambkin to re-
 
 330 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 member that "old man" kept off the fleas, she enclosed 
 "a bit picked from the clump in the garden border by the 
 old red gooseberry bush, ' ' and with a tender inquiry after 
 his poor corns, and a row of blotty kisses, signed herself 
 his faithful wife Lottchen. One could only be sorry for 
 poor Lottchen and note down her address, together with, 
 her deceased lambkin's name and regiment, and send her 
 presently a line from a stranger who had been near him 
 when he died. 
 
 For the unit among myriads of myriads, nothing 
 could be done beyond pulling his yet pliant limbs into 
 decent straightness and folding the already stiffening hands 
 upon the unheaving breast. Then P. C. Breagh covered 
 his face with the red handkerchief, and a tin crucifix 
 being suspended from the neck by a leather bootlace 
 touched the violet-mottled lips with it, and whispered a 
 prayer for the departed soul, before, resuming possession 
 of his discarded jacket and shouldering his knapsack, he 
 trudged upon his way. 
 
 "Our Moltke" was testing his material at the outset, 
 by heavy marching. Since breakfast-time there had been 
 no halt; the columns of human flesh and horsemeat had 
 pegged along, tirelessly as though the sinews that bore 
 them had been forged of elastic steel. 
 
 The blazing sun set in a great whirlpool of molten rubies 
 and gold beyond the Birkenfeld, while the sky to the north 
 and east was green, with a vivid, springlike hue. The 
 clear, thin dusk of August fell, yet the tireless columns 
 marched on and in company of other, even queerer way- 
 farers, the dusty young man with the knapsack doggedly 
 continued to trudge beside them. When at length the halt 
 was sounded, he staggered through a hedge-gap into a field 
 of flax, and threw himself heavily face downward amid 
 the yellowing stems that had long ago flowered, and 
 seeded, and ripened for pulling. 
 
 Stupid with weariness, he might have lain there ten min- 
 utes, when a bugle shrilled close by, and the brown, hairy 
 heads and forelegs of the leaders of a team of gun-horses 
 trashed through the hedgerow, the scarlet face, open shout- 
 ing mouth, and uplifted whip-arm of the forerider showing 
 above. As luck would have it, orders had been given that 
 a half-battery of mounted artillery should bivouac in this 
 flax-field. And death under the iron-shod hoofs of the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 331 
 
 horses, and the iron-shod wheels that followed them, shaved 
 very close to P. C. Breagh. 
 
 Yet he was not grateful as he picked himself out of the 
 hollow into which his frog-like, instinctive leap for life had 
 landed him. The heavy riding-whip of the forerider had 
 cut him bitterly across the loins while yet in mid-air. 
 Adding insult to injury, the artilleryman had cursed his 
 victim for getting in the way of the battery, and the other 
 riders and the gunners on the limber were grinning from 
 ear to ear. Smarting, P. C. Breagh cursed back, in a 
 cautious but vigorous whisper, as he hobbled back to the 
 road. . . . 
 
 Upon the farther side two half-battalions of infantry, 
 divided by a little bushy knoll, were already encamped 
 upon a strip of gorsey grass. The thing had been done as 
 if by magic, the officers grouped in the foreground round 
 their little camp tables were drinking Rhine wine and beer 
 as peacefully as though they had not stirred for hours. 
 Behind them the battalion-color and the halberd of the 
 drum-major had been planted upright in the center of an 
 orderly array of drums and band-instruments, the straight 
 rows of knapsacks within rolled greatcoats, stretching 
 away in the rear, were divided by the customary ten-pace 
 interval, and the mathematically balanced stacks of needle- 
 guns. 
 
 Fires of brush and dry cones from the pine-groves fring- 
 ing the road crackled in the small oblong trenches dug by 
 the fatigue-men. Squad-cooks were cutting up pea-sau- 
 sages, raw potatoes, and onions into camp-kettles of water, 
 destined to simmer, slung on sticks reaching from bank to 
 bank. And the regimental butchers had already slaugh- 
 tered a couple of young bullocks, whose skins lay smoking 
 by the chopping-block. Presently, when the officers' mess- 
 cooks had chosen such joints as seemed good to them, the 
 rest of the meat would go to enrich the stew of the rank- 
 and-file. Meanwhile the men, scattered to the utmost 
 limits of the cordon of sentries, blunted the edge of hunger 
 with black bread and the flinty brown biscuit, crowded 
 thirstily round the beer and wine-carts, squatted in groups 
 playing cards, chatting, or singing part-songs; wrestled 
 and ran races, or dozed lying face downward on the sun- 
 burnt grass, their foreheads resting on their folded arms. 
 
 A charming scene, now that the all-pervading dust had
 
 332 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 begun to settle the bivouac roofed in by the clear green 
 twilight, through which diamond star-points began to 
 thrust. If only one had been less sharp-set, and the pro- 
 prietors of the wine and beer-carts had had bread and 
 sausage to sell as well as warm, flat beer and musty-smel- 
 ling vintage, the beauty would have appealed to one a good 
 deal more. 
 
 Squatted by a lichened boulder in a clump of sun- 
 scorched bracken, P. C. Breagh searched his pockets, and 
 then the recesses of his knapsack, for something to eat. 
 An ancient crust of black bread rewarded his investiga- 
 tions, just as the savory-smelling camp-kettles were taken 
 off the fires. 
 
 He fell to work upon his crust as the stew was appor- 
 tioned, and the big cans of beer distributed to each mess; 
 and as he gnawed dog-like at the stone-hard lump of baked 
 rye-dough, he caught the eye of one of the Barmecides, a 
 merry-faced, red-haired young private, who was evidently 
 the jester of his squad. 
 
 "Our soup smells good, what? "Well, the smell may be 
 had for nothing. He may fill his belly with as much of 
 that as he can ! ' ' 
 
 A roar of laughter greeted the sally of the humorist. To 
 whom P. C. Breagh nodded assent, and, gravely extending 
 his diminished crust in the quarter from whence the whiff 
 of oniony pea-soup came most powerfully, fell to with 
 apparently renewed appetite, provoking the approving 
 comment : 
 
 "He can take a joke! Well, then, let him take this! and 
 this! Catch it, junge!" 
 
 A lump of very fresh beef, boiled in the oniony pea-soup, 
 was dumped into a bit of newspaper, screwed up, and 
 pitched across to the supperless. P. C. Breagh gratefully 
 caught the oleaginous parcel and the two hard Army bis- 
 cuits that came after, and, pulling out some small change, 
 signified his desire to pitch back the coins in return. But 
 a big hand waved them vigorously away, with the gruff 
 exclamation: "Der Teufell let him keep his pfennigs. One 
 gives a share of one 's supper one doesn 't sell ! ' ' 
 
 And so genuine was the one that, despite the smarting 
 weal that had been the gift of another less kindly, P. C. 
 Breagh 's faith in humanity lifted up its head. 
 
 He disposed of the grub, and drank some hill-water tine-
 
 THE MAN OF ( IRON 333 
 
 tured with Kinahan, a permissible indulgence in view of 
 his fatigue, and stuffed the well-used briar-root with bird's 
 eye, and, propping his back comfortably against the 
 boulder, kindled the pipe of peace. By nature clubbable, 
 and athirst for news, he would have liked to mingle with 
 the replete, unbuttoned soldiers, who, supper over, gathered 
 round the fires to smoke and chat and sing. But the snub 
 dealt by Valverden had not left off smarting; the fear of 
 incurring another rebuff, even from a social inferior, kept 
 him aloof and solitary. He realized with dismay that his 
 stock of self-confidence was beginning to run low. 
 
 "I'd a lot of faith in myself when I accepted that com- 
 mission from Knewbit," he ruminated, chewing hard on 
 the stem of the venerable briar-root. "More than half 
 his money 's spent what did I want with that revolver ? 
 and I haven't written him a line. Instead, I've swotted up 
 a thundering long descriptive article, telling people all 
 about what they know already and sent it to that shaved 
 sea-elephant in a Gladstone collar, who told me I might 
 forward letters from the seat of hostilities if ever I got 
 there!" 
 
 He frowned, mentally reviewing the points of the first- 
 born launched upon the tide of speculation. However 
 ancient its matter might be, the vigor and mastery of 
 that descriptive article completed in the train between 
 Bingen and Mayence, and dropped with paternal solicitude 
 into the sack of a corporal of the Field Post would surely 
 could not fail to insure its appearance in print. 
 
 Why did a horrible conviction of its utter stodginess 
 come home to him at this eleventh hour? Its labored 
 periods revolted, its stately mawkishness sickened his mem- 
 ory. He knocked out the pipe-bowl against the boulder 
 and got out his note-book and began to jot down a letter 
 to Mr. Knewbit by the light of the now risen moon, who, 
 with Venus blazing emerald at her opulent side, hung high 
 in the south-east, looking down upon forest and field, 
 mountain, valley and river, and the armed men and beasts, 
 guns and wagon-trains, strung out over leagues of dis- 
 tance, calmly as befitting an aged Queen familiar with the 
 portents of War. 
 
 She stared down so haughtily at the travel-soiled and 
 dusty scallawag lying upon the fringe of the bivouac 
 among the remnants of a meal cadged from a soldier's
 
 334 THE MAN, OE IRON 
 
 camp-kettle, that he caught her eye and broke his pencil- 
 lead. No ! he couldn 't write, even well enough to ' ' please 
 plain, homely people." . . . Why, hang it all! Old 
 Knewbit must have known from the beginning, to do that 
 was the highest and most difficult art of all. Men came 
 into the world equipped, as had come Shakespeare, and 
 Scott, and Dickens, each with a single feather, such as 
 might belong to the wing of a Phoenix or an Archangel, 
 sprouting from his own flesh. Urged by the inborn crave 
 to set down Life, each had plucked forth his birth-gift with 
 a pang of unutterable anguish, and there, at the quill-end, 
 hung a single drop of red, red blood. And that drop tinc- 
 tured every page they penned, and thus what they wrote 
 lived. To be a distinguished War Correspondent one had 
 to be born with the magic pen-feather. The Doctor had it. 
 That was why his written sentences dug home to the quick. 
 Without it, Success would never come to one, no matter 
 how hard one tried for it. One would be nothing better all 
 one's life than a plodding paragraphist. 
 
 Pity an unlucky youth, fagged, footsore, and smarting, 
 not only from disillusion and chagrin, but from the very 
 recent application of an Artillery horsewhip. In addition, 
 the infantry band had now begun to play with soul-melting 
 sweetness. First "The Lorelei," and then "Red Dawn 
 That Lights Me to My Early Grave, ' ' and then the song of 
 Siebel from "Faust" with all its yearning passion and 
 tender anguish. And possibly other eyes were wet besides 
 P. C. Breagh's, who fairly put down his head and sobbed, 
 under cover of the twilight and the protecting boulder, as 
 he had not done since his knickerbocker days. . . . Not 
 now from a vague, wistful aching for the voice and the 
 touch of the young, unknown, long-dead mother. Pain 
 and longing were there, but of how different a kind. . . . 
 
 The reign of Briinhilde-Britomart-Isolde was over. That 
 night saw the smallest and slenderest of heroines estab- 
 lished on the vacant throne of the Ideal. 
 
 He who wept was not the type of a young girl's hero, 
 choking and gulping, and burrowing his hot, wet face into 
 the dry, rustling fern. But he suffered as only youth can 
 suffer, the pangs were very real that wrung from him such 
 stifled cries as these : 
 
 "Oh, God! I love her Juliette de Bayard! ... I
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 335 
 
 have loved her since the moment our eyes met. My in- 
 fernal ingratitude that she forgave like an angel! the 
 brutal things I thought and said of her were because I 
 could not forgive myself for loving her so. My discontent, 
 my restlessness, my ambition to do something and be some- 
 body weren't they prompted by the longing to cut a 
 figure in her eyes ! . . . Lovely eyes ; and at this minute 
 her husband may be kissing them ! ' the noble gentleman, 
 brave as a lion, ' who fought like the deuce and all ! Stop, 
 though ! If he 's an Army man, he has had to leave her. 
 Could I have borne to do that if I had had the luck to be 
 in his shoes? Yet how she would despise a lover who hesi- 
 tated between her and his duty ! Even if ' her heart-strings 
 about his heels were tied,' as the Suabian ballad says, 'she 
 would bid him march to war!' For a girl like that could 
 love, mind you! like. Juliet and Desdemona and Viola 
 rolled into one, and yet never be blinded by love into for- 
 getfulness of God, or honor, or loyalty. It is written in her 
 face. Are these things first with me? I'm afraid not! 
 ... I think not! ... I know they're not! . . . And 
 yet I dare to love her to whom they mean everything!" 
 
 His conscience stung and smarted like the weal from 
 the Artillery whip-lash. And the dread of Death and the 
 Hereafter wakened in him, shuddering and quaking in the 
 creeping dusk. 
 
 Now he comprehended his own insignificance and weak- 
 ness and loneliness. . . . He had seen a man die that 
 day, suddenly, without time for preparation, as thousands 
 of others would die before the ending of this war. "What if 
 to-morrow at the hottest hour the trenchant blade of the 
 sun should bite through P. C. Breagh's brain-pan? He 
 heard the other self within him saying "Suppose . . .?" 
 And he asked himself, with a cold sweat breaking out upon 
 his flesh, and a curious stirring among the roots of his 
 hair, what would have happened only an hour or two 
 back, if the flying squirrel-leap that had made the white 
 teeth flash against the brown faces of the gunners on the 
 limber, had failed to land the dusty scallawag who had 
 been sleeping in the flax-field beyond reach of the pound- 
 ing of the hoofs of the battery-team! . . . 
 
 "Father, I cry to Thee!" 
 
 The soldiers were singing the Battle Prayer of Korner, 
 the lusty Teutonic basses and baritones and tenors mingling
 
 336 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 in melodious unison with the night-breeze that had risen 
 with the moon. 
 
 Previously P. C. Breagh might have smiled at the simul- 
 taneous production of hymn-books, the rising at the word 
 of command to sing the short, business-like prayer recited 
 by an officer, that was followed by a crashing Amen. 
 
 Now, it seemed to him> there was something wholesome 
 and good in the military regulation that united men of 
 every Christian creed and denomination, with those who 
 habitually omitted religion from the daily routine, 'in the 
 brief act of worship described. . . . Recalled by it to the 
 teachings of the Mother Church, he made the sacred sign 
 upon brow and breast, and whispered his nightly prayers. 
 The name of Juliette mingled in the entreaty that Our 
 Lord and His Mother would bless and guard those dear to 
 the petitioner from danger and harm. 
 
 "And not let me come to grief for her sake of course I 
 mean Monica's! For she never would have loved me even 
 if there hadn 't been another man. But O ! take care of 
 her, and shield her from evil, sickness, grief, and danger. 
 And let me see her again one day!" 
 
 He grew drowsy, lying against the yet sun-warm boulder, 
 listening to the distant cry of the mousing owl, and the long 
 rattling chur'r'r! of the nightjar, mingled with the occa- 
 sional snorting of the tethered horses, the measured tramp 
 of the sentries, the small explosions made by pine-cones 
 thrown upon the blazing guard-fires, and the other sounds 
 of the bivouac. 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 THE WATCH was set at nine o'clock. Then the "Lie Down" 
 sounded far and near, and the moon stared down on rows 
 of prone men wrapped in their greatcoats and pillowed on 
 their knapsacks, stretching away under the pansy-dark 
 canopy of heaven for miles. 
 
 The officers sat for some time longer, drinking their 
 Rhine wine and playing cards by moonshine and lantern- 
 light, or strolling, cigar in mouth, upon the outskirts of 
 the bivouac. Several Artillery-officers, who had supped 
 with them, went back to their own bivouac after voluble 
 leave-takings. Infantry-officers, who had shared the hos-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 337, 
 
 pitality of the gunners, returned, enlivening the night with, 
 scraps of gossip, and more or less melodious song. 
 
 A couple of these late-comers halted on the outskirts of 
 the cordon of sentries to finish a confidential conversation. 
 The moon was obscured by clouds, the bivouac was swathed 
 in shadow. Of the lumpy boulder by which the Adjutant 
 stood, only its shape could be discerned against the dusty- 
 pale grass by the dust- white road. 
 
 Said the Adjutant to the senior Captain, and the ex- 
 cellent cigar he was smoking smelt pleasantly in the dark: 
 
 ' ' One can 't call yesterday 's a big battle, but at the same 
 time it was a tolerably serious engagement." 
 
 The senior Captain snorted. 
 
 "Donner wetter! one would think so. Nearly fifteen 
 hundred prisoners, and Douay's Division obliged to aban- 
 don its camp and baggage. The Crown Prince has begun 
 well one expected no less!" 
 
 Said the Adjutant: 
 
 "I shall advise the Herr Colonel to anounce the news 
 to the regiment at roll-call to-morrow. It will make a good 
 moral impression upon those who are new to Active 
 Service, when they realize that the French have been 
 trounced. ' ' 
 
 Then they were silent a moment, but one felt that both 
 were crowing. 
 
 We know what had happened. Before midday the Crown 
 Prince had pounded Douay's Division into brickbats, the 
 brave General himself was dead, the town of Wissembourg 
 had fallen; by two o'clock the mitrailleuse-batteries on 
 the Geisburg had been silenced, and the Chateau stormed 
 and won. 
 
 The men of the Imperial Army in Alsace had fought 
 magnificently. Red-capped, swarthy Turcos in baggy 
 white breeches, Zouaves and French infantrymen, light 
 blue Bavarian and dark blue Prussian uniforms, with what 
 had been brave men inside them, lay scattered among the 
 hop-gardens and vineyards on the mountain-side. 
 
 Of these no doubt the Adjutant was thinking when he 
 threw away his cigar-butt and said, with a sigh and an oath 
 together : 
 
 "Kreuzdonnerwetter! one does not win victories for 
 nothing. It must have been a bloody fight, and especially 
 in the streets ; you understand me ? The French fired from
 
 338 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the windows, and from the roofs of the houses. . . . There 
 was a terrible struggle at the point of the bayonet, and both 
 sides used the butt liberally ! ' ' 
 
 "The butt may be brutal," commented the senior Cap- 
 tain, clearing his throat and expectorating copiously ; ' ' but 
 all the same it is a hellishly useful thing!" 
 
 "Why leave your enemy brains when he may live to 
 plan your defeat by the use of them ? ' ' agreed the Adjutant. 
 The scabbard of his sword clinked, as he moved, against 
 the boulder, and the sound made an eavesdropper go goose- 
 fleshy all over, as he lay prone among dry bents and 
 bracken in the blackness on the farther side. Then he 
 heard the Captain ask: 
 
 "Did the Crown Prince continue the advance to-day?" 
 and strained his ears for the Staff officer's reply. 
 
 "Undoubtedly! Moltke's telegram from the King's 
 Headquarters at Mainz ran : 'Seek out and fight the enemy 
 wherever you may find him,' and Marshal MacMahon is 
 said to be concentrating all his force on a high plateau be- 
 tween Froeschwiller and Eberbach, west of the Sauer and 
 the Sulz. The bridges have been broken his position is 
 an exceptionally strong one. ... Of course you know the 
 kind of ground ! ' ' 
 
 "Open ground," snorted the Captain, "over which an 
 assailant must pass to get at him. Sapperlot! don't I wish 
 I 'd had the chance to-day ! ' ' 
 
 "You are too greedy, Scheren," joked the Adjutant. 
 "Ts't! What was that?" 
 
 Both men were silent, intently listening. For the eaves- 
 dropper, titillated to madness by a spear of seed-grass that 
 had thrust up a nostril, had given a smothered sneeze. 
 Now on the point of discovery, he found presence of mind 
 sufficient to repeat the sneeze, panting doggishly, whining 
 and scratching among the fern. . . . 
 
 The ruse was successful. The Adjutant said, laughingly : 
 
 "It's a dog, nosing at a rat or rabbit-hole. Under- 
 Lieutenant Brand 's terrier ' Nagler, ' perhaps. ' ' 
 
 "Hie, then, boy!" 
 
 "Here, Nagler!" 
 
 The Captain whistled, the other man advised indiffer- 
 ently : 
 
 "Let the brute alone perhaps the rabbit's a French 
 one!" He added, "It would be amusing to read a dog's
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 339 
 
 Impressions of the campaign. What time is it? 'Ten!' 
 Very well, I shall go and turn in. You'll do the same 
 thing if you'll take my advice." 
 
 The Captain grunted assent, and the two officers clanked 
 away together, while P. C. Breagh noiselessly collected his 
 venerable waterproof, his water-bottle, and knapsack, and 
 departed in search of a more distant sleeping-place. 
 
 But when he found it in a dry ditch a quarter-of-a-mile 
 below the Mounted Artillery bivouac, and stretched him- 
 self out to sleep, he could not. . . . His head rang with 
 the news that would presently thrill the civilized w r orld. 
 
 First blood to Germany. . . . Did the Doctor know ? . . . 
 
 That genial little gentleman had prophesied accurately. 
 The "meaty bone" of early and accurate information had 
 fallen to the ' ' tyke at the tail of the Army Corps. ' ' While 
 the prophet, delayed by pumped-out horses and recalcitrant 
 grooms, at the Lion Inn of Neustadt, knew no more than 
 that the heir to the Prussian Crown was over the frontier, 
 and was reported to have taken Wissembourg from the 
 French. 
 
 That dry ditch accommodated a complacent lodger. His 
 misgivings banished by one stroke of fortune, P. C. Breagh 
 brooded sleeplessly over the Koh-i-noor that had fallen 
 to him. . . . Though, to hold such a jewel and know one- 
 self impotent to use it, that was the verjuice mingled in 
 the cup of bliss. 
 
 Without funds for telegraphing an Editor to print 
 one 's letters and a public ready to read, what was the use 
 of information ? Stop ! What was that the more authorita- 
 tive of the two officers had said? the one who had given 
 the news to the other man? "It would be amusing to read 
 a dog's impressions of the campaign! . . . 
 
 Would it? Such a dog, perhaps, as the mongrel that 
 had joined the green- jacketed Saxon infantry regiment at 
 Bingen. The cur the compassionate soldier had christened 
 "Bang." Lying on his back, pillowed on his knapsack, 
 staring at the waning moon, the boy pondered. Suppose 
 one wrote one 's letters to Knewbit in the assumed character 
 of Bang? 
 
 The idea grew, and he sat up to review its possibilities. 
 Something soft and feathery brushed past his ear as he 
 stirred. An owlet, most likely, yet I prefer to believe that
 
 340 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 it may have been the wing of Inspiration, touching the 
 head destined to be crowned by Fame. 
 
 "Pages from the Diary of 'Bang,' the Battalion Dog." 
 That should be the title, or simply, ' ' The Story of ' Bang. ' ' 
 "Short and to the point," he heard Mr. Knewbit saying. 
 And Knewbit . . . 
 
 Here was day! . . . 
 
 Reveille after reveille sounded, shattering his train of 
 thought, waking the hilly echoes. Under how strange a 
 sky the bugles clamored, the bivouac stopped snoring; 
 men sat up on dew-wet cloaks and rubbed their eyes. 
 
 The cup of heaven was red as though brimmed with blood 
 new-drained from the veins of heroes. In the leftward 
 hemisphere looking East, Ursa Major swam in blood, 
 blazing with white-hot fierceness. On the ensanguined 
 South the Dog cowered as though in terror. And like a 
 skeleton arm, the Milky Way pointed over the blood-dab- 
 bled hill-crests and the blood-tipped pine-groves from the 
 south-east, West. . . . 
 
 Men's faces and hands were crimsoned by reflections cast 
 from that portentous sunrise, the dew-wet grasses were 
 dyed the same hue. 
 
 They broke their fast on their black bread washed down 
 with bitter black coffee. In the pause that followed the 
 roll-call, a voice spoke. And amid deafening cheers the 
 news sprang from bearded lip to lip. 
 
 "Lucky is the standard that flies over the first-fought 
 field ! ' ' says the proverb. 
 
 How those Teutons marched, that day of rain-pelts and 
 thunderstorms, upheld by their first draft of the strong 
 wine of Success! 
 
 At Mayence, Moltke had commented to his Sovereign, 
 with his keen old eyes twinkling with joy: 
 
 "Douay's troops were preparing their evening coffee 
 when the Prince with his four Divisions appeared on the 
 heights above Schweigen. The Red Breeches thought it 
 was a promenade militaire in the Second Empire style, 
 until the shells began to plop into their cooking-pots!" 
 
 ' ' Thanks be to Heaven ! " returned King William piously, 
 "our artillery-fire has improved since the Bohemian cam- 
 paign."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 341 
 
 "All the same," returned the "Warlock, shaking the wise 
 old head cased in the auburn scratch-wig, ' ' their musketry 
 should do much for the French. For the chassepot is 
 quicker in loading than our needle-gun, and spits less, 
 which is better for the aim. . . . Then our needle-gun has 
 A poor trajectory at 500 yards, and wounds rather than 
 kills outright. While the chassepot bullet, driven by its 
 huge charge of powder has a splendidly flat trajectory, 
 and flattening out, makes a magnificent wound! In at 
 the chest out at the shoulder-blades! . . . The man has 
 a hole in him you can see the landscape through ! ' ' 
 
 And he rubbed his withered hands, the old specialist in 
 slaughter. While Bismarck said, laughing, to his cousin 
 and military attache: 
 
 "The enthusiast forgets that the perforated examples 
 will be German. . . . Look at him! Already he begins 
 to resemble a bird of prey. Have you read these French 
 newspapers? The King has laughed heartily over them, 
 but they must horribly irritate the Emperor. Listen to 
 this, from the Constitution-net: 'Prussia continues to insult 
 us with impunity, when the Armies of the Empire, at a 
 word from their Chief, might descend like three crashing 
 avalanches upon the hosts of Germany. Why is the word 
 not uttered? Why is the massacre ivith the rout that 
 must inevitably follow, delayed for a single hour?' " . . . 
 
 The Emperor had perused the leaders, in his headquar- 
 ters at the Prefecture at Metz. His eyes seemed opaque as 
 clouded glass, his face was a puffy mask, devoid of expres- 
 sion, as he replied to the hinted condolences of a sycophant 
 upon his staff. 
 
 "The opinions of these gentlemen of the Press were not 
 solicited. They are free to criticize me, let them do so. 
 I am not bound to divulge to them my plans. ' ' 
 
 Alas ! vacillation, hesitation, and delay on the part of the 
 Imperial Commander-in-Chief fatally clogged the move- 
 ments of his magnificent Army. He did not put in an 
 appearance with his staff at headquarters until a fortnight 
 subsequent to the Declaration of War. A week later 
 and no Plan of Campaign had been issued to his generals. 
 True, he had demolished, with field-fire, a beer-shop at Saar- 
 briick. He had paraded on the hills with Frossard's Army 
 Corps. He had witnessed the evacuation of the town by 
 its tiny garrison had withdrawn his advanced posts and
 
 342 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 gone home to Metz to dine and telegraph to Paris of the 
 "capture of the heights" and the "short resistance of the 
 Prussians ' ' ; to tell of the cannon-balls and bullets which 
 fell at his own feet, and those of the Prince Imperial, ' ' who 
 showed admirable coolness. " " Some of the soldiers wept, ' ' 
 he adds, "beholding him so calm. ..." 
 
 And indeed, though one takes the soldiers' tears with a 
 grain of salt, the spirited bearing of the boy must have 
 cheered the sick heart of his father, and yet thrust another 
 dagger in it, too. 
 
 Had the Imperial Commander-in-Chief any plan, one 
 wonders. . . . Long after he had ceased to be Emperor, 
 a pamphlet was published at Brussels, which is generally 
 accepted as the work of the pen that signed the Capitulation 
 of Sedan. 
 
 "To Marshals MacMahon and Lebceuf alone, the Emperor 
 had entrusted his scheme of warfare. His purpose was to 
 mass 150,000 troops at Metz, 100,000 at Strasbourg, and 
 50,000 at the Camp of Chalons. The concentration of the 
 first two armies one on the Sarre, and the other on the 
 Rhine did not reveal the purpose of the Imperial Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, for the enemy would be left in uncer- 
 tainty as to whether the attack would be made against the 
 Rhenish Provinces or the Duchy\ of Baden." 
 
 Would the Warlock have long remained in uncertainty? 
 But hear the pamphleteer: 
 
 "As soon as the troops should have been concentrated at 
 the points indicated, it was the Emperor's purpose to in- 
 stantly unite the armies of Metz and Strasbourg; and at the 
 head of 250,000 men, to cross the Rhine at Maxau, compel 
 the Southern States of Germany to observe neutrality, and 
 hasten to encounter the Army of Prussia." Later on oc- 
 curs the pathetic complaint: "// one could only know 
 beforehand exactly where the enemy was, one's plans would 
 "be easy to carry out!" 
 
 Indeed, the dispositions of Moltke were made with baf- 
 fling secrecy. Even as the Heathen Chinee accommodated 
 card-packs innumerable in his ample sleeves, so the War- 
 lock hid the twelve Army Corps of the North German 
 Confederation, with the Prussian Guard Corps, the Ba- 
 varian Field Army and the Wiirttemberg and Baden Di- 
 visions, in the skirts of his military cloak. . . . When the 
 moment came, the aged conjuror twitched open the garment
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 343 
 
 and showed them: Steimnetz with the First Army at 
 Treves, Prince Frederick Charles with the Second at 
 Mayence, the Crown Prince with the Third at Landau. 
 
 When the Three Armies rolled on, the art of the strate- 
 gist covered their movements with a baffling veil of cavalry. 
 That immense, well-organized and highly mobilized arm 
 was throwTi well forward before the Germans crossed the 
 frontier : at their first entry into France they came in con- 
 tact with French troops. A day's march ahead of the 
 Army Corps' advanced-guards, Divisions of Uhlans, 
 Dragoons and Hussars (in a little all were "Uhlans" to 
 the terrified French peasants) provided for the security of 
 the huge infantry bivouacs behind them ; made requisitions 
 for provisions, fuel, and forage ; rendered railways and 
 telegraphs useless scouted for the enemy's positions 
 took prisoner or shot dispatch-bearers and patrol-riders 
 harassed marches, and boldly fired into camps. Many fell 
 in forays, or skirmishes, many were those accounted for by 
 the long-range hitting chassepot, which was heartily de- 
 tested by Prussia's mounted men. 
 
 ' ' If I had not been called to Metz to attend an Imperial 
 War-Council," Marshal MacMahon is reported to have said 
 bitterly, when the news of the defeat of Wissembourg 
 reached him, "this blow upon the south would not have 
 fallen. My Second Division would still be left to guard 
 the opening between the Vosges and the Rhine." 
 
 The thunder of the guns of Worth add their comment 
 upon that utterance. 
 
 Over the head of the town, lying at the bottom of a fer- 
 tile valley patched with hop-gardens and vineyards, and 
 threaded by a river, was waged between the Marshal with 
 50,000 troops, the pick and flower of the French Army, 
 and "Unser Fritz" with twice the number of men, a des- 
 perate and bloody fight. 
 
 The French on the bluffy wooded cliffs that are the foot- 
 hills of the Vosges, occupied, as strategists have declared, 
 an almost unassailable position. But the fire of the mitrail- 
 leuses was hampered by the artillery of the 2d Bavarians 
 under Hartmann, that seasoned veteran, who had fought 
 at Waterloo in 1815 and now led an Army Corps against 
 France in his seventy -sixth year. Thus the Prussian in- 
 fantry crossed the Sauerbach on bridges improvised of 
 planks and hop poles ; and though the chassepot proved an.
 
 344 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 infinitely deadlier weapon than the needle-gun, the general- 
 ship of Von Kirchbach and Von der Tann, in command 
 of the Prussian 4th Division and 5th Corps, backed by a 
 division of the llth Corps, forced MacMahon's hand. 
 
 Outnumbered, outflanked and disorganized, with the 
 loss of 9,000 men killed, 5,000 taken prisoners, twenty 
 pieces of artillery, six mitrailleuses, and two eagles, the 
 Marshal fled by the way of Zabern, under cover of night, 
 trailing after him the beaten remnant of the Army of 
 Strasbourg. 
 
 The Third Army of Germany had lost 489 officers and 
 10,153 rank and file. Before night of the 7th the dead 
 were buried in great trenches, ,the columns of the Society 
 of the Red Cross, the Sisters of Mercy and Lutheran 
 Deaconesses, with surgeons, volunteers, and Army ambu- 
 lance-bearers, had cleared the wounded from the field. 
 
 ' ' Ah ! if we had only had this sort of thing at the Alma 
 and at Inkerman!" a grizzled Zouave sapper growled to 
 one of the ladies of the Red Cross. ' ' I was wounded there 
 sacred name of a pipe! My belt-buckle was carried by 
 a shell-splinter through my ceinture into my stomach. 
 This very buckle, look you, that I wear to-day!" He 
 added, rubbing the locality of the previous casualty: 
 "There is nothing inside there now, because of late they 
 have not fed us, or our chassepots. How the devil can 
 men kill Prussians without soup in their bellies or cartridges 
 in their guns?" 
 
 The Zouave spoke truth. It was a half-equipped and 
 under-rationed army that had made such a splendid show 
 at Froeschwiller. It was a starving, demoralized remnant 
 that surged and weltered through the passes of the Vosges 
 at MacMahon's flying heels. Cavalry on foot, Zouaves 
 riding Artillery-horses, mitrailleuse corps without mitrail- 
 leuses, baggage-wagons crowded with men of a dozen dif- 
 ferent regiments, went clanking and jolting over the roads 
 that were littered with discarded chassepots, bearing wit- 
 ness to the pitiable, ghastly disorder of the retreat. 
 
 The hour of their defeat had seen Frossard 's Army Corps 
 holding with Forton's Cavalry Brigade the heights over 
 Saarbriick, simultaneously attacked by the 7th and 8th 
 Corps of Unser Fritz's terrible army, and driven back in 
 confusion and with slaughter, toward Metz.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 345 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 THE HUGE peacock-bubble of the Third Empire was 
 pricked and leaking in good earnest. Thenceforward it 
 was to shrink, and pale, and dwindle to its inglorious end. 
 
 The Emperor must have known its days were numbered, 
 when those wires of the 6th reached him. On the 7th the 
 news of Worth electrified Paris. Can you hear Jules 
 Ferry joyfully exclaiming to the father of Paul Deroulede, 
 "The armies of the Third Napoleon are annihilated! At 
 last there dawns a day of hope for France!" But fierce, 
 triumphant voices like these were drowned in the muffled 
 sobs of mothers, the moans of wives made widows, and the 
 wailing of children now fatherless. Later, and as though, 
 to enhance the bitterness of defeat, lying telegrams were 
 published in Paris, announcing that the Duke of Magenta 
 had retaken Wissembourg, captured sixty guns, and made 
 25,000 prisoners. Chief among these unlucky ones figured 
 the Prussian Crown Prince, who in an access of despair 
 had shot himself. . . . 
 
 For some hours the streets and boulevards were packed 
 with rejoicing multitudes. Cries of "Vive I'Empereur," 
 scarce at this era as snowflakes in summer, were suddenly 
 heard again. Flags and Chinese lanterns were displayed 
 from every window, the people stopped the hansom-cab in 
 which the famous Opera tenor Capoul was being driven 
 along the Place de la Bourse, and, hoisting their idol to the 
 top of a stationary omnibus, compelled him to chant the 
 "Marseillaise." 
 
 When the Emperor's sorrowful dispatches of the 7th 
 revealed the cruel truth, and proclamations signed by the 
 Empress and the Ministers made it public, rapture gave 
 place to frenzy of the wildest. Troops of cuirassiers and 
 mounted Gardes de Paris, bands of National Guards, 
 companies of the Line, and Marines were employed to clear 
 the Rue de la Paix, and the Places de 1'Opera and Ven- 
 dome, of rioters. 
 
 The Chambers assembled amid tumult indescribable. 
 Ministers were insulted on their way to attend the delibera- 
 tions. "A la Frontiers!" cried the huge crowd, thronging 
 the quay before the Palace of the Corps Legislatif. "Vive 
 Rochefort!" A bas les Ministres!" "Chassepots!"
 
 346 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Their reiterated demands for arms could be heard within 
 the Chamber. Where, when M. Schneider mounted the 
 tribune to read the Imperial Decree of Convocation, the 
 opening formula : "Napoleon, by the Grace of God and the 
 national will, Emperor of the French, ' ' was vigorously 
 howled down. Ollivier, the unpopular Head of the Imperial 
 Cabinet, who had egged on the war, fared no better. Later, 
 the fall of his Ministry was greeted with salvo upon salvo 
 of enthusiastic applause, and when the news was published 
 all Paris went mad once more with joy. 
 
 While the moment of supreme collapse of the great pea- 
 cock bubble was coming nearer, the Crown Prince of Prus- 
 sia was hunting MacMahon through the defiles of the 
 Vosges, his flying cavalry snapping up scores of wounded 
 or footsore stragglers, his advance batteries of light artil- 
 lery harassing the bleeding flanks of the fugitive. The 
 Second and First Armies were moving Metzward, the War- 
 lock having knowledge that the Emperor's main Army, the 
 Imperial Guard, and Bazaine's, Ladmirault's and Fros- 
 sard 's Corps, with part of Canrobert 's, were concentrating 
 there. 
 
 The Great Bubble was sagging pitifully. The weather 
 was wet and chilly, the Imperial troops not yet in action 
 were disheartened by the news of battles lost. Their equip- 
 ment was incomplete, their new boots had proved to be of 
 no better material than brown paper and American cloth. 
 Worst of all, the Commissariat, always inadequate, showed 
 signs of caving in. And the blame for all was heaped upon 
 the shoulders of the Emperor, whose faith in his fortunate 
 star had quite deserted him ; a man tormented by telegrams 
 of wifely censure and wifely advice from Paris; dis- 
 gruntled, if ever man was ; haunted and oppressed by 
 premonitions of impending disaster; sleepless, shaky, sick, 
 and prematurely old. 
 
 The taking of the fortresses of Bitche and Phalsbourg 
 memorable by reason of its brave Governor's resolute de- 
 fense the seizure of the undefended City of Nancy, the 
 Zorn Valley railway line, Forbach with its immense mili- 
 tary stores, Sarreguemines, and other garrison towns were 
 lesser shocks, falling on a mind already paralyzed. Hasty 
 decisions, contradictory orders, had emanated, one after an- 
 other, from the Headquarters. He was confused and flur- 
 ried, finding his good brother of Prussia so near. For the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 347 
 
 "Warlock, scenting a movement of French troops to the 
 rear, had crowned the uplands eastward of Metz with the 
 1st and 7th Corps of the First Army of Germany under the 
 veteran General Steinmetz, cavalry well to the fore and 
 outposts skillfully posted, so as to look into the French po- 
 sition from all points of view, while the Red Prince felt 
 for a solid footing for his Second Army on the left or 
 French bank of the Moselle. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince, 
 whose clutches Marshal MacMahon had evaded by tak- 
 ing a vast circuit to Chalons, had swept round and was 
 marching northward from Vigneulles toward Metz. 
 
 Ah ! in what a hornet's nest the Imperial Commander-in- 
 Chief found himself. Almost incapable of mental effort, he 
 recognized, like Mr. "Wilkins Micawber, whose epistolary 
 style is occasionally suggested by his Proclamations and 
 harangues, that something had to be done at once. To 
 shake off the intolerable burden of authority was the most 
 urgent necessity. He transferred it to the youngest of his 
 Marshals, Bazaine. 
 
 "You will get us out of this, won't you, Marshal?" 
 cried an officer of the Imperial Staff, as the new Com- 
 mander-in-Chief came out of the Prefecture. 
 
 The Marshal had left his Imperial master in bed, expect- 
 ing answers to letters he had penned to the Emperor of 
 Austria and the King of Italy, soliciting aid and alliance, 
 which these potentates did not bestow. True to himself, 
 he could not quit Metz without a proclamation, penned in 
 the old nourishing, ambiguous style: 
 
 "Inhabitants of Metz. In leaving you to oppose the 
 invading enemy, I rely upon your patriotism to defend this 
 great city. You will not allow the foreigner to seize this 
 bulwark of France, and you will emulate the Army in 
 courage and devotion. ... I hope to return in happier 
 times to thank you for your noble conduct." 
 
 Then he quitted the place with his son, his cousin and 
 his personal following and escort. As his cortege clattered 
 through the streets choked with soldiers, guns, provision- 
 carts and baggage-wagons, and faces of contempt, or de- 
 rision, or hatred turned to see, did he hide his sick, hu- 
 miliated face behind the green silk screen of the carriage 
 window? How did he answer the inevitable questions of 
 his son? 
 
 A prey to hideous uncertainties, for the new Commander-
 
 348 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 in-Chief had suddenly applied to be superseded, the luck- 
 less Emperor spent the night at the camp at Longeville, 
 waking upon a foggy morning if he could be said to sleep, 
 who never slept to a brisk salute of Prussian guns. For 
 a patrol of Uhlans with a half battery had made, during 
 the night, a bold attempt to seize upon the Imperial person, 
 and being foiled within an ace of success, had retreated, 
 plumping a shell or so into the lines from the German side 
 of the river. And while these hornets were being repulsed 
 with heavy metal, the muddy, travel-stained Army of the 
 Ked Prince crossed the river lower down ; the little episode 
 described having diverted attention from their transit; 
 effected, even as in a jam of batteries, battalions, squad- 
 rons, baggage and ammunition-trains, the French retreat 
 was being made. 
 
 So choked were the roads that the Emperor and his suite 
 with the Imperial Guard Escort only managed to struggle 
 as far as Gravelotte, a village some eight miles from Metz, 
 where Bazaine had his headquarters: 
 
 ' ' Gentlemen, we will remain here, but keep the baggage 
 packed ! ' ' had been the Emperor 's instructions to his follow- 
 ing upon alighting at the inn, where two miserable bed- 
 rooms were with difficulty obtained for himself and his 
 son. Prince Napoleon and the other personages of the 
 suite found harborage at various cottages ; the lackeys slept 
 in the baggage-fourgons, it may be hazarded. For in the 
 morning these vehicles and their attendants were found 
 to have disappeared. They had departed for Verdun, 
 whither their master was now to follow them. Bazaine, 
 who could not shuffle off his now detested responsibilities, 
 was summoned, to find the Imperial carriage standing in 
 readiness before the tavern door. 
 
 XL 
 
 ONE can see the splendid bays, clamping their bits of 
 solid silver, their sleek skins and their costly harness 
 glittering in the sunshine that had driven the early morning 1 
 fogs away, the postilions and outriders in their green and 
 gold liveries sitting in the saddle, the landaus of the suite 
 drawn up at the distance prescribed by etiquette.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 349 
 
 Everybody was breakfastless, save the Emperor, his son, 
 and cousin, and their immediate following. The regiment 
 of Chasseurs d'Afrique, the gorgeous Cent Gardes in gold- 
 crested, crimson-tufted, silver helmets with flowing white 
 horsetails and caped cloaks of azure, were empty of all but 
 air, like their own famous kettledrums. Their horses had 
 cropped a little grass in the fields during the night's 
 bivouac, and were better off than their riders, by one 
 meal. 
 
 The young Prince Imperial looked sulky and discon- 
 tented, but neat and soldierlike in his new uniform of a 
 subaltern of infantry. Prince Jerome Napoleon, the portly 
 M. Plon-Plon of the Crimean War caricatures, wore a 
 cocked hat pulled down hard over his eyes, and was but- 
 toned up in a military cloak. 
 
 The Emperor had suffered in the night, for a traveler 
 who had slept in an attic above his bedroom had heard him 
 pacing to and fro and groaning. He wore a black-caped, 
 red-lined waterproof cloak over the uniform of a General 
 of Division ; a glimpse of the Star of the Legion of Honor 
 fastened on his breast showed as he raised his hand to throw 
 away the butt of the inseparable cigarette, and set his neat 
 little polished gold-spurred boot on the carriage-step, and 
 beckoned with a small white-kid-gloved hand. 
 
 Obeying this signal, a green-and-gold equerry and a 
 demure elderly valet hoisted him respectfully on one side, 
 while a keen-eyed, lean- jawed young man, accurately at- 
 tired in deep black, propped him scientifically upon the 
 other. We know this deft and silent personage to have 
 been a brilliant young Paris surgeon, retained about the 
 person of the Emperor ; a specialist whose ministrations, in 
 dulling unbearable pain with subcutaneous injections of 
 morphia, and combating the progress of disease by skilled 
 surgical treatment, became more necessary every day. 
 
 They got him in. The sweat was starting through the 
 rouge upon his livid face as he sank heavily upon the seat 
 of the carriage. His son and cousin followed. Bazaine, 
 who was accompanied by Canrobert and Bourbaki, and did 
 not dismount, rode up to receive his master's farewells. 
 
 He did not entreat again to be relieved of the supreme 
 responsibility. Perhaps the Emperor imagined that he 
 might. For he put out his hand in haste and shook the 
 Marshal's, reiterating:
 
 350 
 
 "All will go well! Excellently, I have no doubt of it! 
 You understand, you have broken the spell." 
 
 Of ill-luck, did he mean, clinging to the fatalist whose 
 Star was on the point of setting. He added : 
 
 "I go to Verdun and Chalons. Put yourself upon the 
 road for Chalons as soon as possible. . . . May you be 
 fortunate! Au revoir! En avant!" 
 
 The brigadier-general in charge of the escort gave the 
 word. The Advance was sounded, the Chasseurs on their 
 gray Arabs dashed onward, riding in fours, keeping a sharp 
 lookout for Uhlans. A half-troop of Cent Gardes preceded 
 the Emperor's carriage, his equerries and aides and those 
 of the Prince 's household followed on their empty, chafing 
 beasts. Another peloton of Cent Gardes were succeeded 
 by three Imperial carriages containing the surgeon, secre- 
 taries and valets ; grooms followed with led horses ; and the 
 Empress's regiment of Dragoons, brass-helmeted, black- 
 plumed warriors, in green with white plastrons, brought up 
 the rear. 
 
 It was four o'clock in the morning when they started. 
 Deep defiles rather than roads, with wooded, precipitous 
 banks, stretch between Metz and Gravelotte. By the time 
 the Imperial cortege had extricated itself from the stray 
 columns and batteries choking these, and the cliffy banks 
 had lowered to hedgerows, it was six o'clock and a glori- 
 ously sunny morning. 
 
 One may imagine, as the landscape broadened and 
 smoothed like a human face relieved from carking anxiety, 
 the young Prince Imperial turning in his seat, and looking 
 back upon the scene he was unwillingly quitting, with a 
 scowl of resentment and dissatisfaction that changed and 
 aged his boyish face. 
 
 He saw the white tents of the huge camps of the Imperial 
 Divisions snowing over a vast area of country on the French 
 side of the river, and the clotting of cavalry and infantry in 
 swarms upon the roads, where vast aggregations of baggage 
 and provisions and ambulance wagons impeded their pas- 
 sage. He saw the Imperial Standard break out above the 
 Tricolor on the flagstaff of the Fort of Plappeville, signify- 
 ing that Bazaine had entered. He could see the artillery- 
 batteries on the high ground at Rezerieulles, and he knew 
 that others were posted behind the woods of Genivaux,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 35* 
 
 and yet others near the quarries of Amanvilliers. The 
 glitter of steel and the flutter of red and white lance- 
 pennons told of the Light Cavalry outposts at St. Ruffine. 
 And sinister moving specks upon the hill-crests beyond the 
 river above St. Barbe and others moving in the villages, 
 with darker, bigger patches toward Sarrebourg, testified, 
 like the gray-white drifts of powder-smoke that came down 
 upon the northeast breeze, with the reduplicated rattle of 
 musketry, the detonation of field-guns and the yapping of 
 mitrailleuses to the near, active presence of the ancient, 
 racial foe. 
 
 He was drawing nearer, always nearer, to the coveted 
 key-city of the Two Kivers, seated within her ancient 
 fortifications, guarding the northeast frontiers of France. 
 He wanted Metz, with her vast modern arsenal, her huge 
 hospitals and military colleges, her fifteen bridges (the 
 railway-bridge had been blown up by Bazaine's engineers 
 on the night before last, when the squadron of Uhlans, 
 greatly daring, had made their way into the French lines, 
 with the project of seizing upon the person of papa) and 
 her glorious Cathedral, whose vast gray bulk was now 
 bathed in the misty golden sunshine of a perfect autumn 
 day. 
 
 Soon, soon, those indomitable dark blue soldiers would be 
 at grips with Frenchmen for the possession of Metz. Oh I 
 not to be able to fire a shot, or strike a blow with her de- 
 fenders, because of one's pitiable weakness and youth! 
 Oh ! to be perpetually guarded and protected and plucked 
 from the very possibility of danger, because one happened 
 to be Heir to the Imperial Throne. 
 
 Why had the Emperor resigned the supreme command 
 of the Army? There had been reverses does a Com- 
 mander-in- Chief give up for that? True, he was not well, 
 but the First Napoleon had fought battles and won them, 
 in spite of cramps and colic. He would never have driven 
 away under the noses of King "Wilhelm and Count Bis- 
 marck and the Prince Commanders. He would have called 
 the nephew who could commit such an impair as that a 
 godichon. He would have said: "To the devil with you, 
 who boast yourself of my blood! A Napoleon and not a 
 general! You might have proved yourself a fighter, at 
 least!" 
 
 The soldiers regarded the Emperor's resignation as the
 
 352 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Great Napoleon would have done. They had not cried 
 "Vive I'Empereur!" when papa had driven out of Metz. 
 Upon the contrary, they had maintained silence, scowling 
 or sneering covertly. To-day, the meanest piou-piou had 
 presumed to wink or grin. More, voices from the depths of 
 company-columns had called out horrible insults; things 
 that had made the son's teeth set and his fists clench with 
 the passionate desire to thrash the offenders, yet had not 
 twitched one muscle in the father's impassive face. . . . 
 
 "Why do you look back so often, Louis? "What are you 
 thinking about?" 
 
 The Emperor's question brought the young head round. 
 He muttered, twisting the gold knot of his little sword : 
 
 "I am looking at the Army, and at Metz and at those 
 Uhlan outposts. And I want to know why we are going 
 away just because the Prussians are coming? Why can- 
 not we stay and fight ? ' ' 
 
 The diplomatic, evasive answer came : 
 
 "Because for the present it is more prudent that we 
 should withdraw ourselves." 
 
 The boy shrugged, almost imperceptibly, and his young 
 face took on an expression of heavy obstinacy, bringing 
 out, quite startlingly, a resemblance to the sire. He mut- 
 tered: 
 
 "All very well. . . . But it isn't nice to absquatulate !" 
 
 The slang term filer might be rendered as above. The 
 Emperor's gray face with the patches of rouge on the flaccid 
 cheeks moved not a muscle. Turning his hunched shoulders 
 upon the scene of his horrible humiliations, he stared with 
 fixed eyes along the road to Verdun, stretching away to the 
 west between its bordering poplars, whose long blue shad- 
 ows the day being yet young barred the white dust 
 rather suggestively. 
 
 At Etain, where the cortege halted for breakfast, the 
 Prince had a much nearer view of those ubiquitous horse- 
 men in the dark blue uniforms. Indeed, the Emperor and 
 his suite barely escaped a surprise, and the escort of Cent 
 Gardes, who were here replaced by some of MacMahon's 
 Chasseurs d'Afrique, were hotly chased and sniped at on 
 the way back to, camp. 
 
 Through the journey of that night, performed in the 
 cushionless plank seats of a third-class carriage, his suite 
 being accommodated in a string of cattle-trucks, of what
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 353 
 
 did the sleepless Emperor think ? "What questions occupied 
 that sick and sluggish brain ? 
 
 The question of returning to Paris, the refuge he longed 
 for and yet dreaded inexpressibly. The question as to 
 whether the Empress Eegent would welcome the Emperor 
 who could no longer rule the State, and what kind of ova- 
 tion the people would extend to the General who had de- 
 serted the Army of Metz before the advancing hordes of 
 United Germany. 
 
 Would not Kebellion, Anarchy and Revolution rear up 
 their hydra-heads to greet the Third Napoleon, reentering 
 his capital? Would his reign end in the explosion of a 
 bomb, and a shower of torn flesh and scattered blood upon 
 the paving-stones ? Would his son ever wear the Imperial 
 crown, won by bribery, bloodshed, fraud and trickery? 
 Would the Church forgive the rape of temporal power? 
 Would Heaven succor one who had defrauded Her? Was 
 this the beginning of the end? 
 
 Lugubrious doubts like these and many others haunted 
 his sleepless pillow in the Imperial pavilion of the camp on 
 the dusty plains of Champagne. Dismantled at the close 
 of the October maneuvers, and now hastily prepared for 
 the Emperor's reception, the place was damp, dismal, and 
 cheerless, as such places usually are. 
 
 The newly levied troops were showing signs of insubor- 
 dination; the Gardes Mobiles from Paris were in open 
 mutiny against their generals. The great camp was a 
 wasp's nest, which the presence of the Emperor stirred to 
 frenzy; the lewd songs in which he figured, the yells of 
 savage laughter greeting obscene jests leveled at him and 
 his, reached him, pacing the mildewed carpets underneath 
 the damp-stained draperies festooned from the claws of 
 Imperial eagles, whose gilding was tarnished and discol- 
 ored, like the Imperial central crown. 
 
 All night he paced, on thorns. With the dawn of day he 
 had the answer to his questions. From the Empress, who 
 wished him to abdicate that she might reign for her son; 
 from the new War Minister, a creature of his own aggran- 
 dizing, who by influencing the Empress, who detested him, 
 dreamed of becoming another Richelieu; from the Prefect 
 of Police who indeed brought the warning in person 
 came a triple sentence of exile for the sick, dejected man. 
 
 Spewed forth again upon the road toward the northern
 
 354 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 frontier, he was a clog upon the feet of the army that 
 might, by a movement in which boldness combined with 
 rapidity, have relieved Bazaine at the critical moment and 
 changed the fate of France. Thenceforth he was to be a 
 passive witness, rather than a participator, in scene after 
 scene of horrible disaster; disgraces, disillusions, defeats, 
 crowding one upon the other, to be crowned by the un- 
 speakable catastrophe of Sedan. 
 
 XLI 
 
 THREE hours after the Emperor had driven out of Grave- 
 lotte the Red Prince had blocked the direct road to Verdun. 
 The First Army had crossed the Moselle. Moltke and the 
 Royal Headquarter Staff were already at Pont a Mousson, 
 the Crown Prince was marching toward Chalons. 
 
 At this stage of the game, the Warlock gave the signal. 
 Von Redern 's guns opened suddenly on the French cavalry 
 camp near Vionville. You remember the squadrons were 
 watering : Murat 's Dragoons stampeded with their baggage- 
 trains, De Gramont's troopers sent in a volley of carbine- 
 fire, mounted and retired in less haste. This was the open- 
 ing figure of the three days of bloody conflict waged in the 
 rural tract between the northern edges of the Bois de Vaux 
 and the Forest of Jaumont. The French call it the ' ' Battle 
 of St. Privat," the Germans the battle of Gravelotte-St. 
 Privat. 
 
 The Great Headquarters of the Prussian Commander-in- 
 Chief were at the riverside town of Pont a Mousson, some 
 ten miles distant from the war-theater whose stage occu- 
 pied some six square miles of undulating, wooded, ravine- 
 gashed country-side. 
 
 And here, his possessing genius, or demon, prompting 
 him, the tactics of Moltke abruptly changed. 
 
 I have fancied the Warlock getting up at cockcrow on 
 the day of Vionville, he had a little folding camp-bed he 
 always slept upon. Undressed to shirt and drawers, he 
 would roll himself in a gray-striped blanket which did not 
 reveal the fact when it needed washing, and cover himself 
 on chilly nights with a big, shabby, military cloak.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 355 
 
 Beside the bed, with the extinguished candle-lantern 
 standing on a corner of it, was the little portable campaign- 
 table, covered with faded green baize. His maps were 
 spread on this, and an Army revolver of large caliber lay 
 atop of them, well within reach of its owner's practiced 
 hand. 
 
 He sponged his old face and sinewy neck economically in 
 a basin of cold water, carefully washed his hands, rinsed his 
 mouth and put on a clean white shirt. A white drill waist- 
 coat went on under the old red-faced uniform frock, with 
 the distinctive shoulder-cords of Chieftaincy of the Great 
 General Staff and the Order of Merit dangling from the 
 silver-gilt swivel at the collar. Then he polished his bald 
 head with his silk handkerchief, reached his wig from the 
 chest of drawers and assumed it, read a text in his Lutheran 
 Bible, prayed a twenty-second prayer standing: lighted a 
 thin, dry, ginger-colored cigar, such as his soul loved, and 
 sat down to work at his maps. 
 
 Bismarck might well have likened him to some bird of 
 the predatory species. With the rising furrows of his bald 
 brow hitching up his wig, and his clear eyes, lashless with 
 old age, crimson-rimmed by dint of fatigue and overstrain, 
 his fierce hooked beak following the journey of his withered 
 claw over the tough cartridge-paper one can imagine him. 
 very like an eagle, or a member of the vulture-tribe. 
 
 It grew lighter as he worked with his old chronometer 
 and well-used compasses and stumpy pencils ; and the little 
 thumbed table of distance-measures to which he sometimes 
 referred. He finished and rang his handbell for his orderly- 
 servant; chatted with his Adjutant and secretary as he 
 broke his fast on bread and black coffee. Then at a great 
 jingling of cavalry bridles and stamping of iron hoofs upon 
 the cobblestones below, he went down, carrying his rolled 
 map-case, mounted, and rode away with his following. 
 , The sun rising had found him, lean, inscrutable and 
 silent, on the ridge above Flavigny, where he had told 
 Prince Charles and Steinmetz, Moltke would be found that 
 day. . . . 
 
 He had met and primed them with the result of his 
 calculations, had seen a fierce engagement from his coign 
 of observation. By three noon, he was back at Pont a 
 Mousson, had interviewed the King, dined frugally, and
 
 356 THE MAN, QF, IRON 
 
 now stood chatting with the Iron Chancellor upon the 
 steps of the Mairie. 
 
 Guns were muttering in the distance as they had done all 
 day at intervals. There had been fighting, he answered 
 mildly when questioned. Quite a considerable battle one 
 might call it. The villages of Flavigny and Vionville were 
 burning as he spoke. 
 
 The potato-gardens of Flauville were thick-strewn with 
 corpses of French and German foot-soldiers. In a little, 
 layer upon layer of dead and dying men and horses had 
 been piled upon these. Necessity knows no law ; and it had 
 been found necessary to interpose Prussian cavalry between 
 the French Artillery and exhausted masses of German in- 
 fantry. Which accounted for a considerable thinning in 
 the ranks of Ranch's Hussars. 
 
 The sacrifice had been necessary. He told himself so as 
 he stood there smoking. His high forehead was quite un- 
 clouded as he returned in answer to some reference to 
 MacMahon's losses at Worth: 
 
 "It is one of the traditions handed down from the days of 
 Murat and Kellerman and Lassalle the French belief in 
 the virtue of the massed cavalry charge. ..." 
 
 The Minister to whom he spoke replied : 
 
 "The English exploded the theory at Balaklava sixteen 
 years ago, by their magnificent but useless sacrifice of 
 Cardigan's Light Brigade. They learned then, and we have 
 profited by the lesson that MacMahon has just been spanked 
 for forgetting and that Your Excellency will presently 
 teach Bazaine. ..." 
 
 The great strategist cupped his long chin in his lean hand, 
 and said in his dry, thoughtful way : 
 
 "Yes, yes. We will drub this precept into his brain at 
 cost of his breeches. Regiments of mounted men serve 
 admirably for the protection of marching Army Corps are 
 priceless for reconnaissance, outpost and patrol-work, but 
 when they are thrown against vast bodies of troops armed 
 with the modern breech-loader, their use is unjustifiable, 
 being nil." 
 
 "And when in addition, the unlucky horsemen are 
 charged as at Worth, over hop-poles and tree-stumps, open 
 field-drains and shattered garden walls, ' ' said the Minister, 
 "then they are worse than useless, I should add." 
 
 The Warlock's thin-lipped mouth opened in a silent laugh
 
 357 
 
 that creased his lean cheeks and displayed the gums that 
 fvere all but toothless. He rubbed his hairless chin and 
 fcaid: 
 
 "Ay, unless from the point of view of that farmer of 
 Schleswig-Holstein who said as our troops marched by his 
 barn-yard : ' Let us look on them as manure for next year 's 
 wheat!' ! 
 
 The Iron Chancellor's blue eyes hardened with sudden 
 anger. Imagine him in his great muddy jack-boots, with 
 cord breeches not innocent of clay and soil, the black 
 double-breasted frock with pewter buttons and yellow collar 
 and cuff-facings, the white cap with the yellow band and 
 the long, heavy, steel-hilted cavalry sword, puffing at a 
 giant cigar as he stood on the doorsteps of the Mairie, over 
 Vvhose door drooped the Prussian flag, and the white Hohen- 
 zollern pennon with the Black Eagle and the gold blazoning, 
 showing, like the bodyguard of Red Dragoons and White 
 Cuirassiers, the numerous orderlies, and the double cordon 
 of sentries placed about the building, that there lodged the 
 King. While the Red Prince's headquarters were distin- 
 guished in similar fashion at the National Bank of France. 
 
 "I have not forgotten!" The response came in Bis- 
 marck's grimmest vein of humor. "Nor has the rascal 
 either, if he happens to be alive still. Our infantry taught 
 him very thoroughly that there are more uses than one for 
 a bundle of straw. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Some of our German Princes have mastered that lesson 
 quite recently, Excellency," said Count Paul Hatzfeldt, 
 First Secretary of the ambulatory Foreign Office, turning 
 a handsome, humorous face upon his Chief. "The Grand 
 Duke of Mecklenburg slept in a barn at the last halting- 
 place, and Prince Leopold of Bavaria in a loft over a stable 
 yard, where, as he explained afterward, there were not only 
 mice, but rats!" 
 
 "I understand His Excellency to refer," said Moltke, 
 taking a pinch of stuff, "to the Polish method of flogging, 
 which is to tie a man face-downward on a truss and thrash 
 him to a jelly with green birch-rods." 
 
 "Precisely. Only not having birch rods 'convenient' as 
 Lever's Irishmen would say," returned the Chancellor, 
 ' ' our fellows used their belts buckle-end preferably. Then 
 they pitched the farmer on his own dunghill, and left him 
 to rot there for the land in spring."
 
 858 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Severe, but severe lessons are best remembered, " said 
 the Warlock, placidly. "Thus MacMahon will perhaps 
 throw no more regiments of cavalry away! As for our- 
 selves, we have hardly brought that arm of the Service to 
 its present condition of usefulness to handle it wastefully. 
 Military science true military science does not allow of 
 undue extravagance in the sentient material of war. Nay, 
 it will never be said of me that I wasted blood prodigally !" 
 He curved his long thin hand about his large and beauti- 
 fully shaped ear, and added, as the distant detonations of 
 heavy artillery made the windows rattle in their sashes and 
 the pavement quake underfoot. "They are still fighting 
 south and west of Metz. In halt an hour, if the firing has 
 not abated, I am going to ride in that direction with the 
 King." 
 
 He glanced at his chronometer, then went down the side 
 steps, and strolled, contentedly smoking, to where his own 
 charger and his master's were waiting in charge of some 
 orderlies near the Royal carriages and fourgons that occu- 
 pied the center of the Market Place. While Count Hatz- 
 feldt, glancing after the thin figure, shrugged and said to 
 his Chief in an undertone : 
 
 "Heaven send that by this time to-morrow we may not 
 be deploring some tremendous holocaust of Prussian 
 cavalry ! Do not ask me how the idea suggested itself. ..." 
 
 "Possibly," the Minister slightly moved his hand to- 
 ward a string of country gram-wagons, crowded with 
 wounded, and drawn by farmers' horses, converging from 
 the westward boulevard toward the Market Place "pos- 
 sibly because so many of those fellows have been brought 
 in here since twelve noon. And in Moltke's very disclaimer 
 of blood-waste, you find cause of suspicion. In that case, 
 our greatest strategist would be like the spider, who agitates 
 her web to conceal herself before she has even been seen. 
 Moreover, they I refer to our wounded have been in- 
 fantry of the Third Corps chiefly, nearly all Prussians from 
 the Mark of Brandenburg. The French prisoners were 
 mostly horsemen; Light Blue Lancers and Cuirassiers of 
 the Guard Imperial. What fellows are these ? ' ' Under his 
 heavy brows he scrutinized the approaching train of suf- 
 ferers, adding: "H'm! Marshal Frossard's chassepotiers 
 have taken toll of Ranch's Hussars with a vengeance! 
 Where are you going, Count, in such haste?"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 359 
 
 Halfway down the steps Hatzfeldt halted, dropping his 
 eyeglass and turning round an astonished face. 
 
 "Going, Excellency? Why, naturally, to speak to these 
 wounded cavalry men. My wife has a cousin, a captain in 
 the Hussars of Rauch. " 
 
 The Chancellor said, bending his powerful gaze on the 
 handsome face of the diplomatic dandy: 
 
 "Let me counsel you to quench your desire for informa- 
 tion. The King's windows are overhead. And the in- 
 quiries natural for you to make in your own character will 
 be suspected, should His Majesty observe them to have 
 been prompted by me. ' ' He showed a corner of the sealed 
 dispatch he had thrust into his pocket. "You recognize 
 the Queen's handwriting upon this envelope? Augusta 
 will have written another such Jeremiad to her spouse. 
 Mercy and moderation, piety and philanthropy will be the 
 headings of the sermon penned on my own sheets of letter- 
 paper. The text of the King's will be, 'Bismarck is alone 
 to Name!' Fortunately my back is broad, and I have his 
 entire confidence. . . . But if he once suspected me of 
 getting what the Yankees call 'cold feet!' ..." 
 
 The hand that held the cigar indicated a stoppage of the 
 foremost wagon. ' ' See ! Moltke is speaking to the officer 
 in charge of the convoy. I will wager you a case of cham- 
 pagne that his mouth is being corked up. A wise proceed- 
 ing too! For, remember, the story of a wounded man is 
 painted from his own wounds always a red tale of dis- 
 aster. How can it be otherwise ? In the heat of battle, or 
 perhaps without having fired one shot, or ridden one charge 
 he has been struck down, poor wretch ! and carried, bleed- 
 ing, from the field. . . . Has it occurred to Your Excellency 
 that those guns are drawing nearer ? ' ' 
 
 The query was addressed to Moltke, who had returned, 
 leaving the wagon-train to jolt with its doleful load in the 
 direction where the Flag of the Geneva Cross, hanging from 
 doors and windows, announced the location of temporary 
 hospitals. 
 
 The expert listened as distant crashes of volley-firing 
 were answered by the hyena-yapping of mitrailleuses, and 
 answered, pointing to the weather-vane on the tower of the 
 Market Hall: 
 
 "Your Excellency is wrong. The breeze has altered its 
 direction. It was northerly, and is now blowing directly
 
 360 
 
 from the west. Yet if the action should assume grave 
 proportions, it may prove necessary to shift Headquarters 
 to some village further afield." 
 
 "Heaven forbid!" murmured Count Hatzfeldt, expres- 
 sively raising his fine eyebrows, "when one is able to get a 
 decent dinner, and a daily bath at one's hotel! ..." 
 
 "Heaven generally ordains, through the mouth of Your 
 Excellency, an exodus," said the Chancellor, laughing, 
 "when a comfortable bed falls to my lot. At Herny my 
 couch had to be lengthened with chairs and carriage- 
 cushions, and these kept parting company all the night 
 long. My feet were on the floor when I awakened in the 
 morning, literally at cockcrow for my window opened 
 upon the dunghill where the lord of the poultry-yard 
 sounded his reveille. Now here I am accommodated in 
 quite respectable fashion; in a little red creeper-covered 
 house at the corner of the Rue Raugraf, and three of the 
 Councillors are stowed under the same roof with me." 
 
 "While I," said the Warlock, "have my quarters at a 
 cleanly bakery, where there is quite an excellent piano, by 
 the way. So that, to-night, unless Fate order otherwise, I 
 shall hear my nephew Henry von Burt sing some of my 
 favorite songs. He is in voice for the first time since his 
 attack of sore throat. The King has been much pleased 
 with his rendering of Herder's 'Volkslieder' and 'Die 
 Blumen' of Heine, which doubtless Your Excellency 
 knows. ' ' 
 
 "I am acquainted with the song you mention. Or I 
 was," returned the Chancellor, "in my salad days. They 
 are over for me, unluckily! . . . Only Your Excellency 
 possesses the secret of perpetual youth." 
 
 And he turned aside to receive a bulky sealed packet of 
 dispatches from a green- jacketed Royal Courier, who 
 had just driven into the Market Place in a farmer's gig, 
 and now got down, tossing a fee to the scowling driver of 
 the muddy, panting roadster. While Moltke, stood smiling 
 and humming with characteristic untunefulness a stave of 
 the tender, sentimental ballad: 
 
 "// they Tcnew it, the little flowers, 
 How she wounded this bleeding heart, 
 They would weep with me in bright dew-showers, 
 Healing, healing its anguished smart!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 361 
 
 Said the Minister in an undertone to Hatzfeldt, as be 
 transferred to his keeping the bulky sealed envelope re- 
 ceived from the courier: 
 
 "Let his Excellency sing only loud enough, and neither 
 Steinmetz nor the Red Prince will be able to prevent the 
 music-loving Frenchmen from retiring upon Verdun." 
 
 He had not meant the pungent jest to reach the ear of 
 the great strategist. But Moltke glanced round and an- 
 swered mildly, if with a narrowing of his wrinkled eyelids, 
 and a sardonic twist of his thin, dry lips : 
 
 "Then all the more surely should we surround and 
 annihilate them. My second plan is usually stronger than 
 my first. And I have already issued instructions to Prince 
 Frederick Charles and General Steinmetz, indicating the 
 course they are to follow should Bazaine pierce our left 
 wing. Mean-while let us listen to this fellow's singing. It 
 may please Your Excellency better than mine ! ' ' 
 
 The arrival, a Captain of Dragoons of the Prussian 
 Guard, acting as aide-de-camp upon the staff of Steinmetz, 
 had just galloped into Pont a Mousson, accompanied by an 
 escort of half a dozen troopers on blown horses, and had 
 little breath left even for speech. But when he threw him- 
 self from his reeking beast, the dispatch he took from his 
 belt-pouch and handed to the Chief of the Great Staff told 
 of a huge expenditure of ' ' the sentient material of war. ' ' 
 
 ' At noon of the day, looking from his point of observation 
 on the high ground between the Bois des Ognons and Grave- 
 lotte, short-legged, fiery-tempered Steinmetz had seen what 
 seemed a weak spot in the French position. Under cannon, 
 mitrailleuse and chassepot-fire he had ordered several bat- 
 teries of the 7th Corps and Von Hartmann's Division of 
 Cavalry to cross the Gravelotte defile and plant themselves 
 on the slopes south of the road. Death had harvested redly 
 from the extravagant movement. The slaughter that en- 
 sued had shaken even the men who carried the needle-gun, 
 their huge columns were giving ground. General Stein- 
 metz and his staff were under heavy fire. Only the Prussian 
 field-batteries, served and trained by gunner-sharpshooters, 
 kept the German right wing from caving in. 
 
 Heavy news, one would suppose, yet the Warlock read 
 the dispatch to his master with as placid an expression as 
 though he were at that moment seated beside the baker's
 
 362 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 excellent piano, listening to the tender warblings of the 
 melodious Henry von Burt. 
 
 "Steinmetz is over ardent, it may be, yet it is what I 
 should have done, had I been in his place," he said in 
 answer to some perturbed exclamation of King Wilhelm. 
 "Only, perhaps," he fingered his long chin thoughtfully, 
 "I should have done it in a different way. He is supported 
 by now. Stiilpnagel will have thrown his Division forward 
 and gripped the woods and heights upon the French left. 
 Your Majesty will see a change in our favor by the time 
 we have reached the ground!" 
 
 "Your Excellency should be there now and I with you. 
 Pray order the horses ! ' ' urged the agitated King. 
 
 "They are waiting, sire!" said the Warlock, cool, calm, 
 and inscrutable as ever. In fact, he hummed another bar 
 or two of the plaintive ballad about the weeping flowers as 
 he followed his Royal master downstairs to the door, and 
 the War Minister, Von Roon, who had been hastily sent for, 
 rode up with his staff as the King mounted his steadiest 
 charger, a powerful black horse. 
 
 "The Federal Chancellor, Count von Bismarck Schon- 
 hausen, begs permission to accompany your Majesty!" said 
 Hatzfeldt, gracefully approaching as the orderly of the 
 Body-guard resigned the bridle-rein. 
 
 He said to himself as he returned with the graciously 
 accorded permission to where the Minister waited by the big 
 brown mare that was held by an orderly of Cuirassiers: 
 
 "How perfect is his discretion! How completely he 
 hides the iron grip of power under the velvet glove of 
 diplomacy! Roon is the King's quartermaster-sergeant, 
 Moltke is his calculating machine, Bismarck is his ruler 
 but he will always seem his slave! Wherever the King 
 goes on journeys, shooting excursions, visits to watering- 
 places he is always at his elbow; he rides with him to 
 maneuvers, and reviews and parades. Since the War began 
 and at cost of what exertion, mental and bodily, no one 
 understands better than I do ! he has never left his master 
 alone for long enough to further the intrigues and influ- 
 ence of other men. . . . Every battle-field the King looks 
 on will be seen through the Chancellor's eyes. For this 
 War is his War and he knows it ! ... Here come gallop- 
 ing the Royalties and Serene Highnesses, rabid to see some
 
 363 
 
 real fighting. . . . Bismarck calls them the Tinsel Rabble, 
 if only they knew ! ' ' 
 
 And Count Paul, smiling in his gently satirical fashion, 
 strode back to his quarters to pen to his young, pretty, and 
 exceedingly coquettish Countess, a marital letter full of 
 tender expressions and requests for lots more cigarettes. 
 "While their Highnesses and Mightinesses of the Royal Suite 
 pranced away in the wake of the King and his three great 
 servants, without the slightest idea that the Chancellor 
 who rode on William's left hand held them in such con- 
 tempt. 
 
 The wounded men sitting or lying on hay in the grain- 
 carts at the hospital door looked up as the Great Head- 
 quarter Staff rode by and gave a shaky Hoch ! of greeting. 
 Heads of dressers, nurses, Knights of St. John, and surgeons 
 appeared at windows from which projected the Flag with 
 the Red Cross. While a long train of haggard French 
 prisoners, halted before the porch of the church that had 
 been converted into a temporary prison, stared with lack- 
 luster eyes over the bowls of cabbage-soup and the huge 
 hunches of bread that had been distributed among them 
 by pitying ladies; and a battalion of little black-a- vised, 
 green-coated Saxon soldiers who had marched in dead-beat 
 and were dozing on straw under the Market Hall, lifted 
 their heads from their knapsacks, saying: "There goes 
 Moltke with his King, and the Big Pomeranian. Some- 
 thing is up out yonder ! ' ' and rolled over to sleep again. . . . 
 
 The inhabitants and tradespeople of Pont a Mousson were 
 too crushed to make any audible comments. "Within a 
 fortnight they had had twice to feed and quarter a French 
 Division. Now here, as it seemed, was the whole Prussian 
 Army poured out upon them. 
 
 They were dumb and stupefied in the Babel of foreign 
 dialects. They could make no headway against the flood. 
 Everywhere were loud-voiced Intendants making requisi- 
 tions and giving orders; officers and quartermaster-ser- 
 ge.ants shouting for rooms, provender and stabling; the 
 men, like the officers, insatiable in demands for meat, bread, 
 forage, tobacco, flour and wine, liberal in oaths and blows 
 to those who could not satisfy their needs. 
 
 Tradesmen in gutted shops swore in whispers over 
 basketsful of dirty little nickel coins with (to them) inde-
 
 364 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 cipherable inscriptions all they had to show in return for 
 one or two thousand francs' worth of stock. To grumble 
 brought retribution, swift, sharp and merciless, on the 
 head of the grumbler. To resist meant death. Therefore 
 they would be silent until the invader should have passed 
 on. 
 
 But when the wearers of the muddy blue uniforms and 
 the riders of the muddy, well-fed horses did pass, fresh 
 hosts came swarming after them. There seemed no end to 
 the brown-faced men in the loathed blue uniform. . . . 
 
 "Are there more to come?" those of them who under- 
 stood French and many did were asked timidly, and 
 they answered: "Naturally. We are only the Advance. 
 To keep the roads by which we have passed open, and to 
 guard the telegraph-wires we have left behind us there will 
 be very many more required!" 
 
 Germany was being emptied into France 's lap, it seemed 
 to the bewildered peasants leaning against the walls of 
 their cottages or peering from the doorways, as had done 
 the peasants of Alsace-Lorraine. They, like them, were 
 ruined, their crops devastated by cataclysms of armed hu- 
 manity, their cellars emptied, their frugal stores devoured. 
 
 ' ' But where are we to find food for all these, we who had 
 fared badly enough before they came? And who will pay 
 us for what they have not paid for, or give cash for this 
 stuff called money that they have left behind? Will it be 
 the King or the Emperor ? ' ' some haggard man or woman, 
 reckless with despair and misery, would demand with fran- 
 tic gestures. "And how shall we feed our children when 
 they leave us nothing? How live at all when they live 
 upon us ? " 
 
 They asked this less often when the Flag with the Geneva 
 Cross appeared above roofs and thrust out of windows of 
 buildings appropriated as hospitals, and when long trains 
 of German ambulance- wagons and hay-carts full of 
 wounded men in blue uniforms began to pass by, as well 
 as piteous processions of French w T ounded and French 
 prisoners. . . . 
 
 "You see, they die!" they presently began to tell each 
 other. "Frenchmen are being killed like Hies out yonder 
 where you hear the cannon, but not Frenchmen only. 
 These too, die. . . . MacMahon has failed us and the cursed 
 Emperor has run away for fear of Bismarck, and Bazaine
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 365 
 
 may prove a rotten staff for France to lean on. But if our 
 generals have forgotten how to lead, the Army of France 
 has not forgotten how to fight, and thousands upon thou- 
 sands of Prussians have been killed since the beginning of 
 the "War. They dig their great trenches so quickly and 
 bury the slain in such haste that the greatness of their 
 losses will never be really known. "When they would hide 
 them more completely, they heap up corpses in farmers' 
 barns, and pile the farmers' straw and hay and faggots 
 about them, and pour on petroleum and tar and set fire to 
 it and thus their dead are consumed to ashes and some- 
 times the yet living with the dead ! ' ' 
 
 As at Paris, spy-fever raged in cities, towns and villages, 
 while the armies of the invader plowed bleeding furrows 
 in the flank of prostrate France. For the Prussian Secret 
 Intelligence Department had its emissaries everywhere. 
 Hotels, public bureaus, railway stations, shops, offices, even 
 clubs, had harbored them unknowingly. Now they cropped 
 up on all sides, speaking French with the Gallic accent, 
 their German brains full of neatly pigeon-holed and dock- 
 eted information, ready to place themselves at the disposal 
 of their friends. Hence, patriotic Frenchmen, favored by 
 chance or heredity with blue eyes, fair hair, ruddy com- 
 plexions and the advantage as to inches over their neigh- 
 bors, found themselves cold-shouldered by their intimates 
 and subjected to unpleasantly suspicious scrutiny when 
 consuming refreshment in cafes and restaurants, or strol- 
 ling with their acquaintances on public boulevards. 
 
 English artists attached to illustrated newspapers, special 
 correspondents, handicapped by blonde whiskers and an 
 i imperfect acquaintance with the French language, found 
 themselves in many a tight place. "Mort aux espions!" 
 is not a cheering cry when some thousands of red-hot 
 throats are uttering it, and half a dozen soldiers or gen- 
 darmes form the only barrier between the unlucky suspects 
 and the furious mob. 
 
 XLII 
 
 A MUD-BEDAUBED nondescript who toiled at the heels of the 
 Great Headquarter Staff upon a huge velocipede of the big- 
 wheeled, bone-shaker type prevalent at that remote period,
 
 366 THE MAN OF IRON" 
 
 met plenty of scowling glances from groups of peasants 
 gathered at the corners of villages and listening by the 
 wayside. Even on territory occupied by German troops, 
 it was not safe for lagging soldiers to drop behind upon 
 the march. To enter roadside taverns or farmhouses with 
 a comrade was imprudent, to venture in alone was perilous,, 
 the sight of the German uniform, the sound of the Teu- 
 tonic gutturals, were so fiercely abhorred. Of the reason 
 for this loathing the Englishman was not ignorant. March- 
 ing with the infantry of the German army, he had followed 
 where the Uhlans had passed. 
 
 He had slept, the night before the Army of the Red 
 Prince had crossed the river, in a little deserted country 
 chateau, an ideal honeymoon nest for lovers, standing in a 
 high-walled garden full of fruit-trees and tangled roses 
 in the middle of a sloping meadow on the banks of the 
 Moselle. 
 
 The butt of some Prussian soldier's rifle had served for 
 key to the locked door in the high garden-wall. Those who 
 had gone before had stripped the bushes and espaliers. 
 The house had been entered, and the dainty silk-upholstered 
 drawing-room chairs and sofas had been dragged out into 
 the garden. The piano a tiny rosewood bijou probably 
 a wedding present and the absurd little billiard-table with 
 which Monsieur had disported himself, stood crookedly upon 
 the gravel ; a long tear in the green cloth of the one ; prints 
 of tumblers, marks of greasy fingers marring the shiny 
 veneer of the other. Bottles that had contained Cham- 
 pagne and Moselle butts of cigars, empty tobacco-papers 
 and match-boxes were scattered everywhere over gravel, 
 and grass-plot and the once trim garden-beds. An im- 
 promptu ca/e-concert had evidently formed a feature of the 
 bivouac. 
 
 P. C. Breagh had slept in a charming bedroom, under 
 rosebud-chintz curtains looped with silken ropes, having 
 carved wooden Cupids, painted pink, instead of tassels. 
 The bed was not as luxurious as it might have been, because 
 the blankets and sheets had been carried off. Opening his 
 eyes in the gray of morning he had seen himself as he lay 
 reflected in a long cheval-glass, and failed, for the moment, 
 to recognize in the bronzed, shaggy, unclean tatterdemalion 
 therein reflected the young Englishman of respectable ap- 
 pearance who had interviewed the German States' Chan- 
 cellor in the Wilhelm-strasse.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 367 
 
 He was not alone in the room, that was the next discovery. 
 A woman, young and swarthy, dressed in the quaint cos- 
 tume of the country, stood upon the other side of the bed, 
 with a kitchen chopper in her lifted right hand. He took 
 in the chopper at a glance, and promptly rolled off the bed 
 upon the side facing the friendly cheval-glass, and stood 
 glowering at the black-eyed girl. 
 
 ' ' I have startled Monsieur ? A thousand apologies ! ' ' 
 
 She forced a smile with her curtsey and backed toward 
 the door. P. C. Breagh explained in his French that he 
 was no robber but a harmless traveler, and that she need 
 not be alarmed. 
 
 " Monsieur is very kind!" Her chopper-hand hidden 
 under her apron, she explained that she had served as 
 cook in the establishment. Upon the news that M. de Bis- 
 marck was coming, tout a coup, Monsieur and Madame 
 had gone away together to Paris. They were noble and 
 very amiable, but old, old, and feeble. . . . They had left 
 the little chateau in her care. . . . 
 
 "Mademoiselle is not easily frightened?" P. C. Breagh 
 tinted. 
 
 Said the black-eyed, modestly: 
 
 "I am Angele nothing of Mademoiselle. A peasant 
 like my father, who was gardener for Monsieur and 
 Madame. ... I was alone here when the Prussian horse- 
 men came, breaking the doors and shutters. . . . Every- 
 thing was spoiled, or taken, wine, linen, the fowls in the 
 poultry-run. Destitution, ruin everywhere! ..." 
 
 She accentuated her tale of loss by heavings of the bosom, 
 shrugs of the fine shoulders, dramatic gestures. 
 
 "Then my father returned and found . . . No matter! 
 Both he and I should have been silent and endured every- 
 thing. ... It was not wise, Monsieur, that the old man 
 should have struck a Prussian, even for my sake. For then 
 he was beaten. "Whenever I shut my eyes, I see it. ... 
 Therefore I have vowed not to sleep again until. . . ." 
 She opened her eyes wide, and smiled, rather grimly, then 
 changed the subject with a wave of the unchoppered and 
 visible hand. Was Monsieur hungry? By searching, a 
 crust of bread might be found in some cupboard, an egg or 
 two laid by one of the abducted hens in some private cor- 
 ner a pinch of coffee and sugar sufficient for Monsieur ! 
 
 "I should be glad of it. But when you are in such 
 trouble it seems unfair/' protested Monsieur. He added,
 
 868 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 reverting to the language of the country, that he would be 
 happy to pay for the dejeuner. 
 
 "But no! A meal for a bird! Monsieur and Madame 
 will never" miss it!" and Angele curtseyed herself away, 
 with forced smiles. 
 
 Left alone, P. C. Breagh bolted the door and finding 
 water in the bedroom jugs, and scented soap upon the 
 washstand, enjoyed the luxury of a comprehensive wash, 
 drying himself, in the absence of towels, upon a pillow-case. 
 A pot of cold-cream, tinted a delicate pink and bearing the 
 label of Piesse and Lubin, he found, and anointed his blis- 
 tered feet therewith, and not without pangs of conscience 
 tore up the pillow-case and bandaged them. He would pay 
 the girl for the damage done to her master's property, he 
 told himself. 
 
 He combed his shock of dusty hair with a tortoise-shell 
 comb he picked up from the carpet, and went downstairs, 
 knapsack in hand. It was four o'clock. The dusty, foot- 
 print and wheel-marked highway beyond the broken door 
 in the garden-wall was strangely bare and lonely. The 
 battalion he had marched with had bivouacked on the other 
 side of the village. The troops that would presently follow 
 were not yet upon the road. 
 
 The girl cried out that Monsieur's breakfast was ready. 
 It had been laid, looking quite tempting, on one of the little 
 inlaid tables that stood upon the tiny lawn. A truncheon 
 of bread, fairly new, a pat of butter, two eggs, and a bowl 
 of fragrant, steaming milk and coffee such a meal as 
 P. C. Breagh had not enjoyed for many a day. 
 
 He begged Angele to share. She replied with a graceful 
 wave of abnegation that she had already eaten. P. C. 
 Breagh expressed regret, muttered his old Rockhampton 
 grace and savagely fell to. 
 
 "Monsieur is Catholic? ..." 
 
 The movement of his hand, making the sacred Sign, had 
 not escaped her. He nodded, with his mouth full, and 
 Angele turned pale under her swarthy skin. Her guest 
 vigorously beheaded an egg and reached for the coffee- 
 bowl. The expression of the girl's eyes, as he lifted it to 
 his mouth, brought something back to him. He sipped 
 cautiously recognized the French equivalent for English 
 rat-poison spat forth what he had taken, with a hideous 
 grimace, and poured the deadly stuff out upon the ground.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 369 
 
 Then lie got up and looked for Angele, whose white- 
 frilled cap, crimson bodice, and striped stuff petticoat had 
 vanished round the corner of the little hen-house. He could 
 hear the klop-klop of her varnished cow-leather clogs re- 
 ceding along paths unknown. 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh, speaking with mouth awry, for the 
 intense bitterness of the alkaloid had dried up tongue and 
 palate : 
 
 "I'd like to follow that girl and shake her. But more 
 than likely her sweetheart and male relatives are lurking 
 in the neighborhood with pitchforks, to speed the unwel- 
 come guest." 
 
 He went back to the breakfast-table, but the glamour 
 had faded from the banquet, and the leathery dryness of 
 mouth and throat foiled him in the effort to finish the egg 
 he had begun. He pocketed the other, abandoned the bread 
 and butter as unreliable, strapped on his dusty knapsack, 
 and was hobbling away upon the sticks that had lately 
 served him as crutches, when he caught sight of an obvi- 
 ously new coffin of thin tarred planking, on the gravel near 
 the conservatory door. It bore a cross and an inscription 
 roughly scrawled in letters of white paint : 
 
 t ' 
 
 JOSEPH MARIE MEUNIEE, 
 
 AGED 80. 
 
 KILLED BY THE PRUSSIANS, 
 AUGUST, 1870. 
 
 R.I.P. 
 
 And then, with a stiffening of every muscle and a cold 
 and deadly sinking at the heart, the English boy realized 
 that Angele 's father had been murdered, and knew what 
 had been the unendurable injury that had provoked the 
 man of eighty to strike in his daughter's defense. Next
 
 370 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 instant a gun banged, but the charge of slugs that had 
 been meant to lodge in P. C. Breagh's cerebellum merely 
 smashed the conservatory glass and peppered the walls and 
 trees. The intended recipient of these favors had previ- 
 ously been lame. Now, regardless of blisters and skin 
 cracks, he cast away his improvised crutches, darted down 
 the garden-path, nipped through the shattered door that 
 hung upon one twisted hinge, and ran for dear life. 
 
 Thenceafter our young friend did not stray too far from 
 the column he temporarily marched with. The secret of 
 those haggard eyes and scowling looks was clear to him 
 now. And the discovery of a giant velocipede with the 
 solid rubber tires of the period and a front wheel of four 
 feet in diameter abandoned in a ditch, presently enabled 
 him previously schooled by Mr. Tickling in the manage- 
 ment of a machine of similar construction to outpace the 
 Ked Prince's marching battalions ; and upon highways, 
 keep abreast of his flying cavalry. 
 
 Now, hugely daring, he pounded along in the wake of the 
 Great Headquarter Staff, guided by the whipping flicker 
 of the black and white lance-pennons of the Red Uhlans 
 bringing up the rear. 
 
 There were troops upon the road. . . . One or two stray 
 batteries of artillery, and part of an Engineer Corps going 
 the same way, halted to give a cheer for the King. But 
 the galloping dispatch-bearers with their guards of troop- 
 ers, bound for Pont a Mousson, meeting the Great Staff on 
 the way, turned back with it, adding to the clouds of dust 
 in its wake. 
 
 The Doctor had promised P. C. Breagh plenty of raw- 
 head and bloody-bones whether he marched with the Ad- 
 vance or remained at the rear. The prophecy had been 
 verified. He had not yet seen a battle or even a battle- 
 field. But thousands of wounded men, displaying every 
 sickening mutilation that shot and shell and steel can 
 inflict upon the human body ; thousands upon thousands of 
 prisoners, gaunt with fatigue, hunger and misery, had 
 passed in an almost unending panorama before his sickened, 
 pitying eyes. Ruined chateaux, farms and churches, crops 
 destroyed or rotting in the ground ungarnered, villages 
 razed or burned, towns battered out of shape, and fortifica- 
 tions breached by heavy gunnery, were to become sights of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 371 
 
 common occurrence as he traveled the long red road that 
 was to lead him home at last. 
 
 Now he rode and odd lines of songs, comic or tender, 
 fragments of Fleet Street talk, brain-pictures of things seen 
 or persons remembered passed through his mind as he 
 pedaled between long lines of roadside poplars, whitening 
 in the hot breeze that carried the scorching dust along in 
 clouds. 
 
 The face of the peasant girl who had tried to poison him. 
 By George! if Mrs. Rousby or Miss Marriott or Mrs. 
 Vezin could have seen her fierce, gleaming eyes, and her 
 heavy black eyebrows lifted at the outer corners, and the 
 way a white canine tooth had nipped her red underlip. . . . 
 The voice of Mr. Knewbit barking, "Avoid Sham Techni- 
 cality and Sentimental Slumgullion, " the well-bred voice 
 of Valverden dealing the unforgotten snub. The fortune 
 told him by the gipsy woman on Waterloo Bridge after 
 that unforgettable January night 's vigil : ' ' Yer '11 travel a 
 long road and a bloody road; and yer'll tramp it with the 
 one yer love, and never know it, until the end, when tute 
 is jasing. ..." 
 
 "When tute is jasing" meant "When thou art going" 
 he had been told so by a man who knew a bit of Romany. 
 His imagination made a grasshopper-leap of years to the 
 death-bed of a celebrated War Correspondent. a grim, 
 bronzed man who had followed his arduous calling in many 
 quarters of the world, and had earned much kudos and a 
 whole chestful of decorations, but had never married, and 
 was understood to look with coldness upon the loveliest 
 women, his heart having been irrevocably given in earlier 
 days. Juliette still young, and ah! how exquisite in 
 maturity Juliette in widow's weeds, would hasten to the 
 moribund 's side and place her little hand in his, gaunt and 
 damp with approaching death. She would hear his story 
 of faithful, hopeless passion, and close his eyelids for the 
 last long sleep. And standing by his pillow, looking pity- 
 ingly at the dead face, she would realize that she loved 
 too late. . . . 
 
 He sniffed and gulped as the tears stung his smarting 
 eyelids, so moving was the picture of that death-bed scene. 
 
 A picture of the King of Prussia as he had seen him.
 
 372 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sitting at the open window of his lodgings at the Mairie 
 of Pont a Mousson next came up, with faces of market- 
 people and street-boys gaping round-eyed at Le Eoi de la, 
 Prusse, who nursed his clean-shaven chin and stared un- 
 winkingly before him. Again, the old man, pale, square- 
 shouldered, capped and tightly-buttoned, riding through 
 the market-place with his Iron Chancellor by his side. 
 
 "Wiry, hawk-eyed Moltke and saturnine, shaggy-browed 
 Roon clattered upon the heels of them, but P. C. Breagh 
 had had eyes only for the great soldierly figure that be- 
 strode the big brown mare. 
 
 Did he not owe his life to the well-shaped hand that 
 had rested on the thigh of the brown mare's rider, as the 
 Minister bent to speak to the King? 
 
 No common bond of confidence and friendship seemed to 
 unite the master of seventy-three and the man of fifty-five. 
 The hard, somewhat vulpine face of the Hohenzollern, with 
 its drooping, aquiline nose, narrow light hazel eyes, curled 
 white mustache, precise, tight-lipped mouth and rounded 
 chin projecting between the brushed back white whiskers, 
 had been all alight with interest, and warm with kindliness. 
 
 This is what the Man of Iron had said with his small 
 square teeth showing laughingly under the heavy hair- 
 brake, and his fierce, prominent blue eyes sparkling with 
 humor and fun : 
 
 "The final scenes of melodrama are always the most 
 strenuous. Your Majesty must regard the ridge over 
 Flavigny as your Royal box on the Grand Tier, the occasion 
 as a farewell performance of the French Empire played 
 for the benefit of United Germany, before the whole 
 world!" 
 
 Flavigny was a village. . . . But the flickering black- 
 and-white pennons that tipped the dust-cloud ahead were 
 slowing. . . . Three battalions of infantry, each with its 
 band playing gaily at its head, the bronzed, healthy-look- 
 ing, white-powdered men marching eight abreast, had halted 
 and front-faced as the word of command followed the 
 sound of the Great Staff trumpeter: 
 
 "Clear the way! Clear the way! Here conies the King!" 
 
 And now the scorching air vibrated with their vigorous 
 cheering as the King cantered by and was gone with a 
 shout and a wave of the hand. 
 
 "Our old one takes dust and sun, saddle-blisters and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 373 
 
 short commons like any old trooper!" P. C. Breagh heard 
 a Lieutenant say to a subaltern as the dusty ranks half- 
 wheeled and fell into step once more. "He's a precisian 
 too. . . . Zum Beispiel, he called to a man in Vidler's 
 company that he had got his 'needier' on the wrong 
 shoulder. Now that's another thing I like in the old 
 man! . . ." 
 
 ' ' The Field Marshal is taking the Great Headquarters to 
 where it will be hellishly risky," a Captain with Staff 
 shoulder-cords was saying to another, as a new outbreak 
 of cannon and mitrailleuse-fire caused his horse to start 
 and rear. He added: "They were hard at it at Mars la 
 Tour, Vionville and Rezonville all day yesterday: the 
 5th Division were in action all round Moltke as he stood 
 on the high ridge above Flavigny. . . . To-day our 7th 
 and 10th are fighting between Gravelotte and St. Hubert, 
 where the French have the devil's own array of battery- 
 emplacements and rifle-pits our guards are at Doncourt, 
 our 9th and 8th corps are at Verneville and Amanvilliers. 
 Now the fighting seems to have rolled down nearer the 
 river. I have certainly heard cavalry trumpets sounding 
 the charge, and volleys of musketry French, I judge! 
 coming from that direction. I should judge that. . . ." 
 
 "Bazaine must have turned the handle in too much of 
 a hurry!" retorted the junior, who enjoyed a regimental 
 reputation for humor, and a volley of laughter rattled 
 along the marching files, now breasting a steep and gravelly 
 hill, half-way up which the rider of the giant-wheeled 
 velocipede had been compelled to dismount. 
 
 P. C. Breagh had seen, reproduced from the Charivari in 
 all the German illustrated papers, the famous caricature of 
 Cham, over which King Wilhelm's brown-faced infantry- 
 men were grinning as they climbed the hill. Who does not 
 remember the Count de Noe's memorable presentment of 
 the field of war dotted with defunct Prussians, and the 
 French mitrailleuse-gunner in the foreground who ex- 
 claims in astonishment: "Sapristi! the battle is over. I 
 must have turned the handle too fast ! ' ' 
 
 But more than the sardonic jest of Cham, the Captain's 
 reference to the nearness of a possible action interested the 
 would-be spectator of a battlefield. The wiry, sun-bronzed 
 young man in the broken boots and the dusty brown Nor- 
 folk jacket, now pushing the solid-tired giant- wheel up a
 
 374 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 steep and lung-testing hill which the bearers of the needle- 
 gun took in a canter, had seen war-casualties in appalling 
 numbers, but he had not yet beheld War. 
 
 And now sharp bugles and piercing trumpets were 
 clamoring of War all round one. The musketry that one 
 could hear at Pont a Mousson clattered in volleys among 
 the neighboring hills. The deep booming of heavy field- 
 batteries persistently answered. Every now and then the 
 ear was violently assaulted by the hideous hyena-yapping 
 of the mitrailleuse. 
 
 These breasting hills, these deep-cupped valleys walled 
 and ramparted with wood-crested hill-ranges, cut up the 
 honest battle into a dozen skirmishes. Oh! for an open 
 campaign and a vantage on some breezy hill-top whence 
 one might see, as the King was seeing with Moltke and his 
 Chancellor from the ridge above Flavigny! 
 
 XLIII 
 
 THE RIDGE above Flavigny seemed farther off and more in- 
 accessible than the Great Atlas. One must get off the 
 highroad to some elevated bit of ground, consult the Doc- 
 tor's map, and use the Chancellor's binoculars. Here was 
 a broad track, green with grass grown over ancient wheel- 
 ruts, leading off upon the left near the crest of the hill. 
 
 The grass-road led to a stone quarry evidently long aban- 
 doned. Skirting the quarry, P. C. Breagh began to climb 
 the grassy scarp of the hill. It grew steeper, and presently 
 he awakened to the difficulties of mountaineering with a 
 velocipede, and hid away, with the intention of retrieving it 
 later, his stolen giant- wheel in a clump of whins. Alas! 
 its bones, like those of many a sentient charger, were to 
 rust in rains and blister in suns upon that hillside of the 
 Meurthe Department for many and many a year. 
 
 But not knowing this, P. C. Breagh continued climbing. 
 The ridgy backbone of turf-jacketed rock proved a natural 
 buttress rising to a towering platform sparsely grassed, 
 tufted with thorn and furze-bushes, stunted pines and 
 dwarfy oak-trees, all mossy of stem and bending to the 
 southwest. 
 
 The afternoon sunshine was mellow rather than hot.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 375 
 
 The pure dustless air was fragrant with hill-thyme and the 
 meadow-sweet. The autumn-tinted woods were golden, the 
 hills bathed in clear blue air. The short herbage clothing 
 the steep was warm, smelling like the clean hide of some 
 great grass-feeding animal. But for the restless bickering 
 of trumpets and bugles, and the hellish noise that men with 
 guns were making, it would have been sweet to be upon the 
 hillside alone with God. 
 
 There was a great view from the summit of the colossal 
 limestone. . . . You could see that bone of contention, the 
 road leading to Verdun, stretching away southwestward, a 
 dusty-white ribbon between its lines of whitening poplars, 
 over the tops of three thick patches of rusty-golden wood- 
 land, and the bushy uplands above Gravelotte and the 
 church spire of Verneville. 
 
 Dark blue Prussian columns showed on the grassy slopes 
 traversed by the road that ran from Ars to Bagneux. 
 Near the Quarries of Rezerieulles was a huge French bat- 
 tery served by red-legged artillerymen, who ran about like 
 ants. But one could only guess at the fact that Germany 
 and the Bad Neighbor were locked in the death-grips over 
 six miles square of battle-ground, the breasting plumps 
 of trees and towering bush-clad ridges hid so much away. 
 
 Ah ! but the din was hellish ! The woods vomited fire. 
 White balloons that meant shrapnel-shells described arcs 
 against the hot blue sky, crossing and recrossing between 
 Rezonville and Gravelotte. When they fell upon the slip- 
 pery grass slopes they exploded with fearful crashes, or 
 became black .balls that rolled merrily a while and then lay 
 quiet. In the grass near them were shapeless lumps and 
 masses, red and blue, and dark blue ; and things with stiff 
 legs sticking up grotesquely, the human and equine debris 
 of the morning 's fighting and the battle of the previous day. 
 The soft westerly breeze brought an ugly taint upon it 
 less loathsome, but more horrible than the stench coming 
 from the huge crowded camps of French about St. Quentin 
 and Plappeville and Les Carrieres and St. Eloy. . 
 
 Two great nations at each other's throats and God's 
 image being shattered everywhere. . . . Blizzards of Lead 
 and Iron, Steel and Fire raging over six miles square of 
 ground. Rivers of blood being poured out, and yet, in 
 spite of the terrific din of War, the insects and birds 
 and beasts went about their usual business. The shrill
 
 376 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 laugh of the green woodpecker sounded in the copses, 
 the jackdaws were gossiping as they darted in and out of 
 the clefts of the gray rock. Two magpies were feeding a 
 late-hatched fledgling among the dwarfy oak-scrub. Rab- 
 bits were showing their white scuts on the edges of the 
 oak-plantations ; and the black and gray humble-bees were 
 buzzing as they rifled the lavender scabious and the blue 
 corn-bottles and the late white clover-blooms. 
 
 Looking northeast toward the richly wooded hill where 
 perches Fort Queleu, you could see the French flag flying 
 from there, and from St. Privat, and the great cathedral of 
 Metz sitting in the lap of the Moselle. The railway bridge 
 crossing the green, slowly rolling river above Ars was 
 guarded by Uhlans and Engineers. A stray outpost with 
 half a field-battery held the island below the bridge, and 
 the rear squadrons of a brigade of cavalry, Blue Dra- 
 goons, White Cuirassiers, Uhlans, and Bed .Hussars, with 
 two batteries of Horse Artillery, were traversing the iron 
 roadway, the troopers walking beside the horses as they 
 delicately picked their way along. The Advance was al- 
 most out of sight, the midpost squadrons, remounted, were 
 under the bluff that runs beside the river road from Ars 
 to below Aney, and with the Staff of the Cuirassier brigade- 
 commander the dazzling scarlet-and-gold of his British 
 Dragoon's uniform contrasting forcibly with the steel cui- 
 rasses and white coats, his red-plumed silver helmet shin- 
 ing like a miniature sun rode Brotherton, on a powerful 
 dappled-gray horse, his handsome face animated and eager 
 as he replied to some remark addressed to him by the 
 Brigadier. 
 
 ' ' Certainly, General, but I should think the sword could 
 never be superseded. It is, with the bow and spear, the 
 traditional weapon of war." 
 
 "You omit the sling, Colonel!" called out an officer 
 who rode behind him. And then the scrap of English talk 
 was swamped in the clink of steel on steel, and the rhyth- 
 mical trampling of the squadrons that followed. 
 
 P. C. Breagh sat astride of a hot boulder, got out the 
 Doctor's map and adjusted his cherished binoculars. They 
 showed him the battalion he had marched with halted by 
 the side of the river road. The bridge at Pagny showed 
 black with solid columns of infantry, marching eight
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 377 
 
 abreast; their sun-touched bayonets rippling lines of 
 molten silver, each helmet-spike a flame of ruddy gold. 
 
 The First and Second Armies of United Germany, hither- 
 to compelled to a strenuous inactivity, were having their 
 innings with a vengeance now. . . . Looking Metz- 
 wards, one could see that three new lines of pontoons were 
 thrown across the river below Vaux. A division of the 
 dark-blue soldiers, with eight squadrons of cavalry and 
 half a dozen batteries of mounted artillery, were crossing 
 almost within range of the guns of Mount St. Quentin 
 and Plappeville. 
 
 How thickly the white tents were clustered on the green 
 slopes about both fortresses, Red Breeches swarming in 
 thousands without and within the walls. Were the gun- 
 ners of the huge bronze Creusots one had read of asleep, 
 or lazy or indifferent? The answer came in a spirt of 
 white vapor from an embrasure of the middle salient of 
 St. Quentin 's long, eight-pointed star. A white-hot flame 
 leaped, a towering cloud of smoke soared, the roar of a 
 heavy piece of artillery followed ; and a shell of big caliber 
 soared above Moulins and burst with a shattering explosion 
 and an uprush of flame. Some Artillery-horses on the 
 nearest pontoon reared, causing a momentary confusion. 
 Their dismounted drivers quieted them, and the orderly 
 crossing went on. 
 
 Boom-Boom! Crack! A clatter like old iron and a 
 heavy splashing and pounding of hoofs. St. Quentin had 
 got the range. No ! the shrapnel shell had been fired from 
 a French field-battery placed behind earthworks above 
 St. Ruffine. Another shell hit the upper pontoon and 
 must have smashed it adrift on the landing side. For 
 dark-blue men and struggling horses were drifting away in 
 the direction of Metz, and the green river was tinged with 
 red. The wheelers of a gun-team, dragged downward by 
 the weight attached to them, had gone to the bottom almost 
 without a struggle. The leaders, submerged all but their 
 wild heads and splashing fore-hoofs, battled a while with 
 the current before one of them vanished. The other, whose 
 rope-and-chain traces had somehow broken, swam gallantly 
 down-stream, and finally landed on the farther bank. 
 
 Further successful practice on the part of France's 
 artillerists may have followed. At this juncture the atten-
 
 378 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 tion of P. C. Breagh became diverted by a curious fact. 
 One of the stone-pines seemed to be lobbing cones at him. 
 Whiff-phutt! they were dropping on all sides. Or could 
 it? ... A shrill whistling sound close by his ear, and a 
 simultaneous bristling of the hairs upon his scalp and body, 
 told him that it could. The missiles were bullets. 
 
 They came, sometimes with a sharp whistle that told of 
 unexpended energy, at others with the pleasant humming 
 that had at first attracted him, from the woods that clothed 
 the rising ground northwest and west of the platform he 
 occupied. 
 
 "Were they Prussian bullets or French ? At the moment, 
 the question did not interest him. He had pocketed his 
 map and crawling on his belly towards the southern edge 
 of his platform, looked cautiously over, meditating descent. 
 Beyond was a sandwich-shaped stretch of woodland climb- 
 ing to a ridge ; and beyond the ridge a considerable expanse 
 of bush-dotted common bordered by a stream and speckled 
 with a few farm-buildings. Quite a decent-sized town 
 lifted its Norman church-tower nearly a mile away. 
 
 The town must be Gorze. Withdrawing his eyes from it, 
 they dropped into a deep ravine or combe running parallel 
 with the western and southern sides of the giant limestone 
 rock he sprawled on. Ferns clothed the deep, hollow sides, 
 and oaks and birches, springing from the bottom, lifted 
 their bushy heads to the level of his face. Spying between 
 the branches, he saw that the ravine was full of garishly 
 colored lights and shadows, and that a*steady current of 
 glittering white metal snaked in and out between the tree- 
 trunks, setting from west to east. 
 
 Bayonets, carried on the shoulders of red-breeched 
 French soldiers, moving with startling rapidity over the 
 dry leaves at the bottom of the ravine. A battalion, at 
 least, of wiry, active-looking Voltigeurs, a mitrailleuse- 
 battery, each weapon hauled by a team of three gunners. 
 . . . Green-coated Chasseurs a pied, with cocks' plumes 
 shading the peaks of their kepis followed. Would a sur- 
 prise be intended for the cavalry-brigades that had crossed 
 the railway-bridge and ridden eastward down the river- 
 road a few minutes previously? In that case, what ought 
 one to do ? 
 
 Even as he asked, the advanced company of Voltigeurs 
 discovered the Prussian squadrons. He saw a ripple of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 379 
 
 excitement pass down the ranks, and the Voltigeurs hurry- 
 forward at the double. He saw the mitrailleuse-batteries 
 string out in line, push up the sloping sides of the ra- 
 vine, and scatter among the trees of the plantation that 
 climbed the ridge. The Chasseurs followed. Their inten- 
 tion was obvious. They were going to enfilade the passing 
 brigades from the cover of the wood. 
 
 Even as the hounds of hell seemed to break loose, and a 
 sheet of pure yellow-white flame ran from end to end of the 
 ridge where the trees ended, the foremost brigade of three 
 Hussar regiments came in view, trotting over a track that 
 traversed the common, became a road, and plunged be- 
 tween deep woodlands trending west. His map had told 
 him that the road led to Rezonville and Gravelotte. 
 
 He heard the Prussian trumpets sound through the ear- 
 splitting racket of the French rifle-fire. He saw through 
 the thin haze of powder-smoke that hung above the wood, 
 the massed columns split into squadrons, the squadrons 
 divide into troops, the troops become units scattered over 
 the common, galloping to re-form again upon the road that 
 led through the woods to Rezonville. 
 
 They were two of the brigades forming Rheinbaben's 
 Fifth Division, under Von Barby and Von Bredow, push- 
 ing forward to join General von Redern in the neighbor- 
 hood of Mac La Tour. Their mobility saved them from 
 decimation on a grand scale, but they left dead horses and 
 men and officers dead and wounded. Their retreat was 
 covered by one of their batteries of Horse Artillery, and 
 two squadrons of a Uhlan regiment. 
 
 In the distance a riderless gray charger galloped wildly 
 over the common, and a prone figure in a brilliant scarlet 
 coat lay motionless beside the track. More could not be 
 observed just then, for the battery of Horse Artillery got 
 into position, while the Uhlans dismounted and coolly 
 returned with carbine-fire the enfilade from the chassepots 
 in the wood. 
 
 They knelt, and aimed and shot without hurry, and that 
 their shooting was effective was demonstrated to the non- 
 combatant onlooker, by half a dozen French Artillerymen 
 and Chasseurs a pied who came staggering or limping back 
 through the trees, and got down into the ravine. One 
 toppled over in the act of negotiating the descent, and lay 
 sprawling and head downward. Another, who kept put-
 
 380 
 
 ting a hand to his streaming cheek, and taking it away to 
 stare at the blood upon it, was shot again in a vital part, 
 spun around, and collapsed in a heap. 
 
 "Lee-ee eer!" 
 
 The wailing, stinging screech of a bullet that had shaved 
 unpleasantly near was accompanied by the whisking of 
 the sun-scorched straw hat from the head of P. C. Breagh, 
 and an acute pang of deadly fear. In the same instant the 
 Prussian field-battery opened fire. Beyond the trees four 
 puffs of white smoke went up, and four tongues of bright 
 yellow flame preceded the quadruple crash of the driving- 
 charges. Lanes opened through the smoke-filled wood, 
 as trees split into kindling and match-sticks. And heaps 
 of green and scarlet rags mixed with bloody flesh and 
 shattered bones mingled with the debris. And something 
 that screamed like a devil unchained hurtled through inter- 
 vening space, and plumped upon the limestone platform 
 within a dozen feet of P. C. Breagh. And he shrieked like 
 a shot rabbit as it exploded with a splitting crash, and a 
 spurt of evil yellow fire licked the skin off his ear and 
 cheek. 
 
 Dazed and stupefied, he removed himself to the farther 
 and more sheltered side of the platform. But the skirmish 
 was over, the Voltigeurs and the Chasseurs a pied, with 
 what remained of the mitrailleuse-battery, had not waited 
 for the Uhlans to charge, but were in pell-mell retreat along 
 the ravine. He heard a French voice cry savagely: 
 
 "We are cut off ! These woods are full of Prussians !" 
 
 And in the same instant, through the lanes that had been 
 hacked through the trees, P. C. Breagh saw the Prussian 
 artillery limber up and ride off with what remained of the 
 Uhlan squadrons. They were wanted badly at the front, 
 and the infantry-battalions with which P. C. Breagh had 
 marched from Pont a Mousson, and the Division coming 
 up from Pagny, striking into the Ars road, had crossed the 
 upper end of the ravine. The woods were indeed full of 
 them. And they also were wanted at the front and had 
 no time to spare. 
 
 As blue uniforms and crimson faces topped by gilt- 
 spiked helmets came crowding through the trees, the 
 human river, flowing along the bottom of the defile, rose 
 in a wave and splashed back upon itself. A red-haired 
 young officer of Voltigeurs, drawing his sword, used his
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 381 
 
 voice and the flat of the weapon to restore order ; and suc- 
 ceeded so far that his company formed in straggling lines 
 and began to send in volleys with the courage of despair. 
 The gunners of the mitrailleuse that was not smashed by 
 the German shell-fire could not use the piece effectively at 
 the bottom of the death-trap. They were shot down in the 
 attempt. 
 
 It was cool, scientific slaughter merciless carnage. 
 Before it began, a bugle cautioned attention. A flat- 
 capped field-officer pushed his horse to the front and cried 
 in stentorian tones: 
 
 "Aimed fire!" 
 
 The men of the chassepot made a gallant stand, but the 
 odds were heavy, and the men of the needle-gun did not 
 waste a cartridge. They loaded and aimed, fired and re- 
 loaded with machine-like precision. When the ravine was 
 piled with bloody corpses the bugles sounded "Cease fire!" 
 Then the Prussian field-officer spurred to the edge of the 
 red ditch and shouted, looking down : 
 
 "Does anyone here ask quarter?" 
 
 There was a laugh. But something raised itself from a 
 heap of bullet-pierced bodies. A rattling voice cried : 
 
 ' ' No, dog of a Prussian ! ' ' 
 
 A revolver cracked, and the speaker, a Voltigeur, was 
 silent. His voice had sounded like that of an old man, but 
 he wore the epaulettes of a lieutenant and had carroty- 
 red hair. At this juncture, being overtaken by grievous 
 retching and vomiting, P. C. Breagh's observations 
 ceased. 
 
 He sat up presently and wiped his dripping neck and 
 mopped his forehead. It seemed to him that he had seen 
 the whole French Army exterminated, and yet he had 
 witnessed but a skirmish ending in a battue. He shook his 
 wits into some order, and controlled the shuddering that 
 took him in the pit of the stomach, when he remembered 
 that in common decency he must go to Brotherton. 
 
 The descent from the rock-platform was nothing more 
 than a risky scramble. There were plenty of pine and 
 furze roots and jutting stones for holding to and clefts into 
 which to thrust one 's toes. But the crossing of that ravine 
 cumbered with bloody corpses was not effected without 
 revolt of body and soul. He slipped once and fell, and 
 struggled up all horribly besmeared and sick and shaking.
 
 382 THE MAN OF IROX 
 
 For the teeth of a head from which the face had been 
 shot away had snapped close by his ear. Then came the 
 negotiation of the bit of woodland. Here were more Vol- 
 tigeurs and Chasseurs a pied dead and horribly mutilated, 
 and the wreck of a mitrailleuse, with two of its gunners. 
 Some of these poor wounded creatures were living, and 
 moaned for water. 
 
 "My God! my God! how I suffer!" one feeble voice 
 kept crying. 
 
 Help was coming, for from the direction of the town 
 some carts were being driven, one by a stout priest in cas- 
 sock and broad-brimmed hat, others by men with Red Cross 
 armlets. Black-habited, white-capped Sisters of Mercy 
 were in these vehicles, with baskets, and pitchers, and 
 pails. 
 
 Seven dead Hussars showing hideously the effect of 
 mitrailleuse-fire, a troop-horse or two, and a White Cuir- 
 assier shot through the body and swearing horribly in 
 Low German, were the fruits of the French enfilade. The 
 fine gray charger had ceased careering ; it grazed peaceably 
 on the short herbage by the track that led over the com- 
 mon. But Chris Brotherton would never sit in saddle 
 again. 
 
 P. C. Breagh turned him gently over and opened the 
 gold-laced scarlet tunic. There was no blood upon it, only 
 clean dust, nor was the dead man bruised or cut, having 
 fallen where it was grassy. Upon the broad breast, under 
 the white cambric shirt, was an oval miniature, pearl-set, 
 of a pretty woman. The handsome mouth of the wearer 
 smiled under the drooping fair mustache, and his blue 
 eyes stared glassily. A bluish hole in the right temple and 
 a bloody clot amid the hair upon the left side showed 
 where the chassepot bullet had traversed the brain. 
 
 He had been high-handed, arrogant, and domineering, 
 yet the Doctor and the horsey Towers had seemed to love 
 him. No doubt that woman in the miniature had held 
 Chris Brotherton dear. ... P. C. Breagh would have 
 left her fair face lying on the yet warm breast of her lover, 
 but something he saw going on among the casualties upon 
 the edge of the wood caused him to change his mind. 
 
 That gaunt-eyed, greedy-fingered creature in the peas- 
 ant's blouse and Red Cross brassard, who glided from 
 body to body, rifling pocket*, should not plunder the Doc-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 383 
 
 tor's friend. With this determination, Carolan took away 
 the portrait, a packet of letters, and Brotherton's watch 
 and purse and pocketbook, then ^ent forward to meet the 
 Sisters, just descending from th& foremost of the string of 
 peasants' carts; and began: 
 
 "My Sister . . ." 
 
 The nun addressed turned a pleasant face upon him, and 
 cried, with a sympathetic clasping of her small, work- 
 roughened hands: 
 
 "There is blood on Monsieur! . . . He has been 
 wounded." 
 
 P. 0. Breagh explained with economy of words how and 
 where he had been watching the fighting, and whence came 
 the ugly stains upon his clothes. The nun glanced toward 
 the wood, paled and shuddered, and said, making the sign 
 of the Cross upon her starched, cape-like guimpe: 
 
 1 1 But all cannot be dead who lie bleeding in that ravin 
 the hollow where our poor school-children gather primroses 
 in Spring?" 
 
 "I think they must be. The massacre was carried out 
 deliberately. Aimed fire and there is not a movement, 
 not a groan. ..." 
 
 P. C. Breagh shuddered, remembering the crossing of 
 the red ditch. The nun said with energy, as other black 
 habits and white guimpes came crowding round her: 
 
 "We must make sure. . . . Each of those bodies must 
 be lifted and examined. Life often lingers, sir, when it 
 seems to have fled. We learned that in the Crimea, when 
 we worked in the base-hospitals of Kamiesch. WTiat of 
 these things?" P. C. Breagh was holding out the portrait, 
 purse, pocketbook, and letters. "You wish our Keverend 
 Mother to take charge of them? They belonged to that 
 dead officer yonder, in the scarlet uniform ? He was Eng- 
 lish, you tell me and you, too, are of England? Very 
 well! It shall be as you wish, Monsieur I am free to 
 decide, as I am the Superior of our community. But I 
 will not receive the valuables at your hands until you have 
 helped us to clear that terrible ravine. We have only our 
 good priest with a few peasants and one surgeon, and some 
 charitable ladies and gentlemen of the Association of the 
 Red Cross. Everyone else is panic-stricken they have bar- 
 ricaded themselves within their shops and houses, and 
 taken refuge in the cellars. . . . The explosions of can-
 
 384 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 non have been so terrible they are becoming yet more 
 alarming, and when the fighting came quite close. . . . Our 
 people are not brave, you think! Still, everyone cannot 
 be courageous. . . . But, Monsieur, who watches men 
 being killed by guns to gain experience we may look to 
 Monsieur for help ? ' ' 
 
 The clear woman-eyes went to the sun-browned, freckled 
 face of the young man in the travel-worn, dusty, blood- 
 stained clothing, and realized that a struggle was going on 
 within him. She said: 
 
 "If Monsieur is of necessity compelled to go and leave 
 us, I will take charge of the dead English officer 's property 
 for Monsieur. But a great blessing is for those who succor 
 the wounded. Our Lord has always promised this!" 
 
 No one listened to the little colloquy ; some of the Sisters 
 were already stooping beside the prone bodies, two of them 
 were helping the vocal Cuirassier into a cart. . . . 
 
 With a great longing P. C. Breagh had longed to make 
 the ridge south of Flavigny, and see with his own eyes 
 how the Man of Iron comported himself in the clash of war. 
 And to stay behind and forego the possibility cost him 
 poignant anguish, but one could not leave the Superior and 
 the Sisters to dabble unaided in that ghastly ravine. 
 
 ' ' I will stay, Reverend Mother, ' ' he said, with a bow that 
 might have been more clumsy. Next moment Brotherton's 
 property had vanished into a huge pocket hidden some- 
 where in the black habit. The nun clapped her hands, 
 crying to the peasants : 
 
 "Thanks! thanks! Come, Antoine, Pichegru, Eloi, 
 Benoit! Dubois! To the wood, my friends! and the 
 hollow, where are many sufferers ! I place you under the 
 orders of this English Monsieur." 
 
 XLIV 
 
 UPON that battlefield of Gravelotte, France, driven to bay, 
 fought like a royal tigress. How many times the dark blue 
 Divisions were thrown back in their assault upon positions 
 zoned with death-bellowing cannon and death-barking mi- 
 trailleuses, History relates. So murderous was the fire of 
 her chassepotiers from their densely manned rifle-pits that 
 you could trace Moltke's plans of assault in mounds of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 385 
 
 dead Uhlan cavalry and long regular swathes of motionless 
 blue objects that had been Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz. . . . 
 
 Yet if the "Warlock had said within himself, "This shall 
 be above all a battle of cavalry," it would seem as though 
 the determination had been formed upon the other side. 
 
 For this day that saw the death-charge of Von Bredow's 
 brigade upon the Gorze Road Uhlans, White Cuirassiers, 
 and Dragoons of the Guard hurled in a solid column of 
 shining steel against French field-batteries and battalions 
 of riflemen also saw the cavalry of Frossard, of Lad- 
 mirault, and Canrobert ride do\vn whole squares of Ger- 
 man infantry, who rose again and poured in volleys from 
 their needle-guns, to be beaten down by the storms of 
 leaden hail ground out by the mitrailleuse. 
 
 A glowing, coppery sun looked down on those six square 
 miles of fiercely contested ground. Over its whole expanse 
 there was not one patch as big as a National School play- 
 ground without its debris of arms and accouterments, its 
 ghastly or ludicrous tokens of war. 
 
 In an intermittent lull of the racket you could hear the 
 dry earth, that had been pounded bare of verdure, sucking 
 moisture as though after heavy rain. Only the rain was 
 red. The faint, sour smell of it came to the nostrils 
 mingled with the smell of burnt gunpowder, human and 
 equine exhalations, and the acrid stifle of burning wood. 
 
 For Flavigny was yet smouldering, the farm-buildings at 
 Gorze were burning, Malmaison was a furnace ; houses and 
 barns at Verneville were wrapped in clouds of black smoke 
 shot with lurid flame. 
 
 Exhausted battalions, sick and stupefied with slaughter, 
 were lying down among the dead and the wounded to snatch 
 a wink of sleep. Others opened their haversacks to snatch 
 a hasty mouthful, or drained their canteens of the last 
 drop. Surgeons were going up and down among them, 
 patching up flesh-cuts with lint and diachylon, temporarily 
 plugging bullet-wounds of the minor order. "There!" 
 they would say to the Schmidt, Kunz, or Schultz so treated ; 
 ' ' now you are fit for fighting again ! ' ' 
 
 Perhaps you can see the Man of Iron in his white Cuiras- 
 sier cap, black undress frock with the pewter buttons, and 
 great steel-spurred jack-boots, standing, grim- jawed and 
 inscrutable, behind his King's camp-chair. Through the 
 stress and storm of two long days of hot fighting, that
 
 386 
 
 patch of high ground south of Flavigny had been the point 
 to which orderlies and aides-de-camp furiously galloped 
 from every point of the compass, and from which they 
 galloped back in even more desperate haste. 
 
 In the rear of the camp-chair, not so close to it as to 
 draw fire, were the King's personal military staff, a bevy 
 of Princes, and the representative of the British War Office, 
 
 Colonel . Several Councillors and Secretaries of 
 
 the Chancellor's traveling Foreign Office stood about, stout, 
 gray-haired, important-looking persons in semi-military 
 uniform. The carriages that had conveyed them waited at 
 Tronville. The King's charger and those of the other 
 great personages were in the care of orderlies. The Escort 
 waited by their horses in the background. 
 
 Moltke stood apart, taciturn and inscrutable, nursing 
 his thin elbow and cupping his long chin. Roon, who con- 
 trary to his custom was not wearing his helmet, gloomily 
 champed his cap-strap, unable to disguise his anguish of 
 anxiety. He would have given a year of life to say : 
 
 ' ' Old man, so cool in the midst of this hellish slaughter, 
 can it be that you do not know how things really are going ? 
 Since two of the clock the French have had the best of it ! 
 The chassepot you termed a 'magnificent weapon' has jus- 
 tified your eulogism. The mitrailleuse we despised, not 
 comprehending its terrible capabilities, has revealed them 
 to our undoing. The Army of United Germany bleeds at 
 every pore ! ' ' 
 
 He tore his mustache, the dye upon which had not been 
 renewed recently. His heart swelled with the flood of 
 pent-up speech. 
 
 "The Commander-in-Chief 's dispatches to the Queen 
 have been cheered in Berlin. Throughout Germany they 
 are hailed with joy. . . . 'France now fights with her back 
 to the Rhine,' the people say. 'Our Army stands arrayed 
 between Bazaine and Paris!' Is it possible they do not 
 realize that the situation is critical? Have they no suspi- 
 cion that the tables might be turned ? ' ' 
 
 He wrung his knotted hands together in torment, and 
 the sweat started in gouts upon his livid skin. 
 
 "Before us the Army of Bazaine behind us at Chalons 
 the Army of MacMahon. Were the Duke of Magenta 
 with his recuperated Divisions to advance energetically and 
 swiftly to the relief of his brother Marshal could the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 387 
 
 Crown Prince hold him back? And if he could not, what 
 were our chance worth? ..." 
 
 The sentence had escaped Boon without his knowledge. 
 Moltke's wrinkled visage turned his way. The scarlet- 
 rimmed eyes glittered on him a moment. Boon leaped as 
 the dry voice said : 
 
 "Not so much as a pinch of snuff!" 
 
 The War Minister stammered: 
 
 "Pardon, Your Excellency! You spoke to me? . . ." 
 
 Moltke answered quietly: 
 
 "I asked if you could spare me a pinch of snuff. My 
 box is empty." He opened the little silver receptacle and 
 turned it upside down, tapping it on his finger nail: 
 ' ' Neither have I a single cigar ! ' ' 
 
 Boon had forgotten his cigar-case in quarters. He 
 fumbled for his snuff-box, thought it must be in his cloak. 
 A resonant voice said from behind the King's camp-chair: 
 
 "Will Your Excellency take one of these?" 
 
 "Why not? why not? If they are not too strong for 
 me. ..." The Warlock smiled, showing his toothless gums. 
 The Chancellor said, opening and offering the plain green 
 leather case with the coroneted B stamped in gilding on it : 
 
 "It may be they are stronger than you are accustomed 
 to smoke?" 
 
 Moltke's keen, swift glance met the heavy blue stare of 
 the Chancellor. He returned: 
 
 "I will answer Your Excellency when I have tested 
 them." 
 
 The case held three Havanas of varying merit. Two 
 were good, one super-excellent. The withered hand hoT- 
 ered, paused above them, made selection, while the sharp, 
 glittering glance seemed to say : " So ! . . . You are trying 
 again the test you put me to at Koniggratz ! See ! I am 
 cool enough to choose the better creed!" While Bismarck 
 returned the case to his breeches-pocket, mentally com- 
 menting : 
 
 "Excellent. He has chosen the best one. He is not 
 flustered he has yet a trump to play!" 
 
 Believed, he returned to his post behind the King's 
 camp-chair, a rugged, powerful figure, with the face of a 
 thoroughbred mastiff, unwearyingly keeping guard lest 
 meaner influences should undermine his power and topple 
 his unfinished life-work down.
 
 388 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Watching the battle through these noonday hours, he 
 had, being a practical soldier as well as a consummate 
 statesman, known some moments of horrible foreboding. 
 Now his courage revived. The work would be completed. 
 The well-shaped, sun-browned hand lightly resting on the 
 chair-back would hold all Germany within its iron grip. 
 
 The thrill of conscious power transmitted itself to the 
 King, it may be, for he moved impatiently in his seat. 
 Sometimes he must have chafed, the white-haired Ilohen- 
 zollern chieftain, knowing himself a puppet in the hands 
 of his powerful Minister. 
 
 "How they fight! How they fight! Ach Gott!" he 
 muttered. "Wouldst thou have credited, Otto, that such 
 fire was left in France ? ' ' 
 
 And the helmeted head of the old chieftain shook with 
 an uncontrollable nervous spasm. Over it came the scof- 
 fing retort: 
 
 "It is the fire of fever, the fire of phosphorescence. It 
 will leave them weak and debilitated it will glimmer out 
 and go black. And yet Bazaine, contemptible as a strate- 
 gist, has his moments of inspiration. The thrust of the 
 skilled fencer will sometimes puzzle the master of swords- 
 manship. . . . Frossard and Canrobert are devout Catho- 
 lics, and no doubt believe in guardian-spirits. They have 
 had a hint, it may be, from some celestial Field Marshal; 
 St. Louis, possibly, or the Chevalier de Bayard." 
 
 The King murmured, unheeding the jest, his eyes glued 
 to the field-glasses that jerked in his shaking hands: 
 
 "Even a victory could not bring my soldiers of the 
 Guard to life again. And there ! Dost thou see ? . . . " 
 
 The Minister turned his own binoculars in the indicated 
 quarter. "What remained of a Division of the Prussian 
 10th Corps, with a brigade of cavalry, Uhlans and 
 Dragoons, was locked in the death-grip with a Cavalry 
 Division of Bazaine 's own corps, the Third, on the plain 
 between the Bois de Vionville and the Bois de Gaumont. 
 And even the Chancellor's iron hand trembled as with 
 ague, and his breathing harshened perceptibly as he care- 
 fully focused the glasses on the fight. He said after a 
 moment : 
 
 ' ' Those three regiments of cavalry on brown horses with 
 green, silver-laced dolmans and red-bagged talpacks are 
 Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. Fine fellows! They
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 tave a man to lead them, it would seem, in that little 
 Colonel with the big paunch." 
 
 The Brigadier of the Chasseurs had been killed by a 
 shell, and upon Paunchy had devolved the leadership. 
 Twice he had led the green dolmans in shattering charges, 
 under the stress of which the dark blue islands of infantry 
 had hollowed and caved in. Twice he had fought his way 
 out at the head of his shrunken and mutilated squadrons. 
 Now, sweeping round, the Dragoons and Uhlans had at- 
 tacked the Chasseurs furiously in the rear. 
 
 All that could be seen, even through the binoculars, was 
 a shifting kaleidoscopic jumble of gay uniforms. Men's 
 heads and arms rising and falling, flashing swords, flicker- 
 ing lance-pennons, and the crests and hindquarters of 
 plunging beasts. . . . Hence Kraus, Klaus, and Klein of 
 the blue infantry could not fire into the melee for fear of 
 shooting their countrymen. Eed Breeches hesitated to use 
 his chassepot on the same count. 
 
 About a bushy knoll to the left of the struggle, the 
 German cavalry circled like swallows, greedily assailing a 
 swarm of green and red dragon-flies. The chasseurs' car- 
 tridge-boxes being empty, they used their long sabers as 
 they had used their carbines, coolly and effectively; and 
 Paunchy, lifted above the press by the little knoll referred 
 to, encouraged them with looks and gestures and words. 
 
 "Courage, my children! . . . Follow me! . . . Bravo! 
 . . . One moment's breathing-space, and at them again!" 
 
 He was only a green and scarlet speck in the midst of an 
 aggregation of other specks on the vast battlefield, yet the 
 King and the Minister watched him with fixed regard. 
 
 "Grosser Gottl How that man fights!" the King mut- 
 tered at one point in the conflict, and the rejoinder came 
 from overhead: 
 
 "He is gallant, certainly, but a bit of an actor. Would 
 not one say that flourish was meant for the ladies in the 
 orchestra-stalls ? ' ' 
 
 "Because he has kissed a medal or a relic?" the King 
 muttered, tugging at his white whisker. "Doubtless he is 
 Catholic. . . . We ourselves have many brave soldiers of 
 the Roman faith ! ' ' 
 
 For as his squadrons ever thinned and dwindled, every 
 instant paying toll to the great swords of the Prussian
 
 390 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Dragoons and the blood-thirsty Uhlan lances, they had 
 seen the little Brigadier take from the breast of his green 
 dolman something white and press his bearded lips to it, 
 and thrust it back again, and sign himself with the Cross. 
 
 "Hurrah Preussenl Immer vorwdrts!" yelled the 
 Uhlans, as their dripping lance-points flickered in and out 
 between the red-stained sword-blades, and the bodies of 
 dead Chasseurs and dead horses rose in a mound about the 
 knoll where stood the little Brigadier. 
 
 Paunchy possessed a great voice. His "Chargez!" had 
 reached the ears of the King and his Chancellor through 
 all the pandemonium of battle. When his Staff trum- 
 peter's instrument, bullet-pierced, gave forth no sound 
 but a strangled screeching, the little Colonel's thundering 
 "Feu!" needed no trumpet to make the order plain. Now, 
 his "Vive la France! Vive I'Empereur!" boomed out like 
 the roar of a dying lion. His melting squadrons gave back 
 the rallying-cry. 
 
 But they were lost. Prisoned within the ring of piercing 
 steel that tirelessly revolved about them, they could kill, 
 but they could not break through the barrier. Fresh squad- 
 rons rushed with hoarse shouts to the aid of the German 
 cavalry. The Chasseurs were hopelessly outnumbered, and 
 must inevitably be crushed. 
 
 The subaltern who bore the Imperial standard got a 
 lance-thrust in the shoulder. At the same moment, his 
 horse was shot dead. As the beast reared in the death- 
 throe and went down under the plunging hoofs of the 
 maddened horses round him, the Colonel leaned from his 
 saddle, seized the hand that gripped the staff of the stand- 
 ard, drew the fainting officer upward, and laid him across 
 his own saddle-bow. Then, as his gallant horse braced 
 itself to bear the double burden, the rider lifted high the 
 glistening folds of the tricolor topped by the golden Im- 
 perial eagle, and as the Uhlans charged the knoll he shouted 
 again in terrible tones the slogan of the dying Empire : 
 
 "Vive la France! Vwe I'Empereur/' f 
 
 War has many of these sublime moments mingled with 
 her squalid hideousness. Upon this day many a soldier, 
 French and German, died as finely as the father of Juliette. 
 You are to see him bareheaded, for the fur talpack with 
 the plume of green and scarlet had been sheared from his
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 391 
 
 head by a glancing sword-cut lifting a war-flushed fore- 
 head to the sky all sunset-red. Then a mortal lance-thrust 
 reached him over the body that lay across his horse's 
 withers, and he reeled upon his saddle, and fell backward, 
 partly swathed in the Flag for which so many heroes have 
 died. 
 
 Through the tricolored folds yet other Uhlan lance- 
 points reached him. Did any thought of his daughter pass 
 through the brain of the dying soldier between the sharp 
 pangs of the probing steel? 
 
 "My child . . . safe . . . neutral territory. . . . Charles 
 . . . honest man . . . protect my girl from Adelaide! 
 Now . . . death! Ah I agony! Save, Jesu! . . . Mary, 
 help!" 
 
 A few of his gallant Chasseurs surrendered. But these 
 were only a handful. Nearly the whole strength of his 
 brigade of three regiments lay dead upon that patch of 
 common that was cumbered with their corpses and those of 
 their enemies. 
 
 XLV 
 
 BISMARCK said, lowering his binoculars: 
 
 "Lucky that war is so confoundedly expensive. Other- 
 wise, one might get too fond of it ! " 
 
 The King groaned: 
 
 "My Dragoons of the Guard! my Uhlans, slaughtered 
 in regiments! My infantry shattered decimated anni- 
 hilated in Divisions. The bravest blood of France poured 
 out upon French soil like water. . . . Great God! how 
 shall I defend this carnage to the Queen? ..." 
 
 The voice behind him said, ironically : 
 
 "My wife writes me ten pages every three days, urging 
 upon me in Biblical language the necessity for complete 
 extermination of everything French! Believe me, Sire, 
 he who is guided by the advice of a woman follows, not a 
 Jack, but a Jinny o' Lantern, that will inevitably lead 
 him into a bog ! ' ' 
 
 The King winced under the gibe, yet he said, striking 
 his clenched hand passionately upon his knee : 
 
 "And this shadow that we follow southward, this vision, 
 of a Crown Imperial ! What is it but an ignis fatuus that
 
 392 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 has plunged us to the neck in the morass of War? If the 
 whole Army of United Germany sink down in the death- 
 sleep, for what have we offered up the sacrifice ? ' ' 
 
 The answer came, prompt and authoritative: 
 
 "Your Majesty may leave that question to be answered 
 by the sons of these men who lie dead about us, and the 
 sons they shall in their time beget. If your Majesty's 
 whole army must be sacrificed to insure German Unity, let 
 it be so, in the name of Heaven ! ' ' 
 
 The King tugged again at his white side-whisker and 
 muttered something about "sinful ambition." The hand 
 that had wrenched the curb now offered sugar. The 
 voice said, mellowed and softened to persuasive tender- 
 ness: 
 
 "I have served a great King. I aim to serve a great 
 Emperor. If my ambition be sinful, it is at least not base ! ' ' 
 
 "Ah, Otto!" The King rose, and his hard, yellowish- 
 hazel eyes were full of tears as they met the Minister's. 
 "You have no argument so strong as your disinterested- 
 ness. For even your bitterest enemies have never ques- 
 tioned that!" 
 
 Something took place in the brain behind the great domed 
 forehead hidden by the Cuirassier cap, the fierce, almost 
 challenging stare sank beneath the old man's tearful look 
 of love. The Man of Iron was asking himself: "Am I, 
 then, so disinterested? ... If I am, why is it that these 
 words have power to gall me so? Can it be that I have 
 my price as well as others ? I think myself repaid in Power 
 for what other Ministers will only sell for gold. ' ' 
 
 The momentary embarrassment passed. He said, point- 
 ing to one of those long blue mounds of dead infantry : 
 
 "And who could see our soldiers advance under the fire 
 of these French chassepots ,and the terrible mitrailleuses, 
 and doubt that they have understood the greatness of the 
 issue at stake Excuse me a moment, Sire! . . . What 
 is it, Gotzow?" 
 
 The aide-de-camp, in the full uniform of the Chancellor 's 
 own regiment of Cuirassiers, was white as his own coat. 
 He gulped out: 
 
 "Excellency, I am charged by His Highness, Prince 
 Augustus of Wiirttemberg, Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Prussian Guard Corps ..." 
 
 The Chancellor 's prominent blue eyes lightened so fiercely
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 393 
 
 upon the speaker that he began to stammer and boggle in 
 his speech: 
 
 "Terrible intelligence . . . only just received by His 
 Highness. . . . Yesterday Your Excellency's sons, Count 
 Herbert and Count William, were in the general cavalry 
 charge which took place at Mars la Tour ..." 
 
 The great soldierly figure standing with the huge spurred 
 boots apart, the hands leaning on the long steel-hilted 
 sword, might have been cast in iron or carved in granite 
 for all the emotion conveyed by look or gesture. The voice 
 said stridently and harshly : 
 
 ' ' The First Dragoons of the Guard were not involved in 
 the struggle. Only the brigades of Von Barby, the 4th 
 Westphalian Cuirassiers, the 10th Hussars, and the 16th 
 Dragoons. ' ' 
 
 The ghastly aide faltered, perspiring freely: 
 
 "At the moment of General von Barby 's charge, it has 
 been unfortunately ascertained, a squadron of Prussian 
 Guard Dragoons of the First Regiment returning from a 
 patrol, dashed into the melee ..." 
 
 The Chancellor drew a sharp breath, but stirred not a 
 finger. His fierce eyes, staring from dark pits that had 
 suddenly been dug round them, paralyzed the wretched 
 bearer of the tragic intelligence. He asked in a tone that 
 appalled by its tranquillity : 
 
 ' ' Have both my sons been killed ? ' ' 
 
 The aide-de-camp got out that it was feared so. He was 
 thanked and charged with a polite message to the Prince. 
 As he saluted and retired, lightened of his tidings of an- 
 guish, the Minister focused his binoculars with a steady 
 hand upon that point toward the northward where the dark 
 bulk of the fortress of St. Privat loomed on a hill-top 
 covered with masses of troops and traversed by a straight 
 white, poplar-bordered road, regularly trenched for mus- 
 ketry. He said in the same tone of composure, though his 
 set face and the hand that held the glasses were wet as 
 though with rain: 
 
 "St. Privat still resists. General Pape, with the 
 Guard's cavalry and the Saxons, will find their work cut 
 out for them in driving those French battalions out of the 
 village below the hill." 
 
 He lowered and wiped the glasses with his handkerchief. 
 King said entreatingly, laying a hand upon his arm:
 
 394 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Go, go! Find out the truth about your sons, Bis- 
 marck. . . . Leave not a stone unturned, in God's 
 name ! ' ' 
 
 Even as the King spoke, German drums and trumpets 
 sounded the charge; and there was a sudden shifting of 
 masses of troops in the direction of St. Hubert. Then as 
 a wave of dark blue men began to roll out from the deep 
 woods that flanked the village of Gravelotte, so fierce a 
 storm of cannon and mitrailleuse and chassepot began to 
 beat about their heads that the unseasoned horses of the 
 Princes of the suite kicked and plunged and the Minister 
 said: 
 
 "It would be wise did your Majesty remove out of this 
 neighborhood. These bon-bons thrown by Frossard's artil- 
 lery are coming much too near. ' ' 
 
 ' ' I will ride back I will move out of the way, ' ' said the 
 old man in great agitation. "But you, Bismarck! you 
 must go and see about your sons ! ' ' 
 
 He answered, and his great bloodshot eyes and sagging 
 jowl were more than ever those of a mastiff: 
 
 "When I have seen your Majesty in a place of safety 
 I will ask your permission to do so." 
 
 An orderly from Steinmetz, who now had his field head- 
 quarters at St. Hubert, arrived with an urgent entreaty 
 that the King would at once retire. 
 
 The horses were brought. King William and Von Roon 
 mounted. The Chancellor's mare had been sent to water; 
 his orderly appeared with her as the King's party rode on. 
 With a hasty word of reproof the Minister swung his great 
 figure into the saddle, but the brawn and bone of his beast 
 had not carried him clear of the threatened spot before a 
 retreating wave of German foot and horsemen swept over 
 it, followed by the thundering gallop of a retreating 
 battery. 
 
 It was a sauve-qui pent, caused by the smashing fire 
 from the French shrapnel and mitrailleuse batteries, and 
 the practice of the French riflemen entrenched at the 
 Moscow Farm. A general officer rode through the rout, 
 laying about him with the flat of his drawn sword and 
 swearing horribly, to judge by his bloodshot eyes, and 
 purple countenance. 
 
 "Hares! Gottverdammt! hares!" he gasped breathlessly, 
 finding himself face to face with a gigantic officer of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 395 
 
 Cuirassiers. "A thousand pardons, Excellency. I did 
 not at once recognize you. Surely you will follow his 
 Majesty to the rear?" 
 
 "Willingly," said the Chancellor, as a brace of French 
 shells exploded, digging pits in the sandy ground over 
 which the Headquarter Staff had passed. "Only, as shell 
 does not fall twice in the same place, I ain waiting to make 
 sure." And, with a knee-touch, he put the brown mare 
 into her stride. 
 
 There was a backward surge of disorganized infantry as 
 the huge beast lifted herself over the yawning craters. 
 But she passed through the press by the bore and thrust of 
 her great shoulders, and the beast and the big man she 
 carried were swallowed up in the roaring dusk. 
 
 Moltke, the bald-headed war-eagle, remained brooding 
 his coign of observation upon the verge of the ridge 
 south of Flavigny, his feathers drooping, his shoulders 
 hunched, his sharp, hooked beak inclined toward his breast ; 
 his red eyes, burning with the battle-lust, staring fixedly 
 from under the wide, hairless brows. 
 
 The sun sank in clouds of smoky gold and crimson over 
 that country of copses, ravines, ruddy brown farmhouses, 
 and white villages. Evening came down and dipped her 
 wings in billows of salt-tasting gunpowder smoke, rose- 
 tinged above and beneath by the reflection from the red 
 sky and the red earth. The green Moselle was tinged with 
 blood. Little rivers ran blood, streams and springs became 
 blood. Wells were filled with blood, as in old time under 
 the rod of the Lawgiver of Israel, and still the battle 
 raged over hill and valley, common and highroad. 
 
 Flavigny village still smouldered, Malmaison was burn- 
 ing, houses and barns at Verneville were wrapped in roar- 
 ing flames. Yet the gunners of the French batteries at 
 Moscow, Point du Jour, La Folie, and the Quarries of 
 Amanvilliers and Kezerieulles, continued to make practice 
 of the deadliest; and still French cavalry charged the 
 Teuton's dwindling infantry-squares. 
 
 Had not a comparatively fresh and vigorous Prussian 
 Army Corps dropped in at the crucial moment success had 
 hardly crowned the arms of United Germany. They had 
 been marching every day since they quitted the Saar, 
 those solid-thewed Pomeranians of the 2d Corps, but at
 
 396 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Puxieux they had cooked and eaten, and now appeared 
 like giants refreshed. 
 
 Not only Steinmetz rode at their head, with their com- 
 mander Von Fransecky, but the Warlock in person directed 
 their attack. Battalions that had retired in disorder re- 
 formed and rushed back to meet afresh the brunt of battle. 
 Wherever the red eye glittered and the withered finger 
 pointed, fresh sAvarms of fierce assailants were hurled 
 against the dwindling hosts of France. 
 
 Down came the dark, and now St. Privat was burning; 
 the village under the lee of the fort was burning sending 
 up great columns of livid smoke shot with licking tongues 
 of flame. The day was over. But crackling lines of fire 
 outlined the position of the rifle-trenches; the mitrailleuse 
 batteries still spat death unwearyingly, as what remained 
 of Bazaine's Army retired in comparative safety to the 
 Fortress of St. Quentin under cover of that fiery screen. 
 
 There the shattered brigades and mutilated divisions 
 clung like swarming wasps "with plenty of sting in them 
 yet," said Moltke, "and the hive" meaning the huge 
 Fortress of Metz "handy in their rear. But, on the 
 whole," he added, "I am excellently well satisfied. My 
 calculations have worked out correctly. Those Pomera- 
 nians of the Second Corps arrived just in time!" 
 
 And the veteran galloped joyously as a young trooper 
 of twenty-five to cheer his King with the good news. 
 
 And can you see that other man, to whom Emperors and 
 Kings and Ministers referred when they mentioned Prussia, 
 who outwitted nations in policy and made wars at will, 
 spurring the great brown mare wildly through the welter- 
 ing darkness, with salt drops of mortal anguish coursing 
 down his granite cheeks ? 
 
 "Bazaine's right has been turned by the Saxons, the 
 Guards have smashed his center, and the Pomeranians of 
 the Second Corps have taken St. Privat and forced him to 
 retreat, leaving Germany master of the field. Success has 
 crowned beyond hope the arms of the Fatherland, but 
 where are the sons who called me father? ... Is this Thy 
 judgment upon one through whom so many fathers are 
 sonless, my offended God ? ' ' 
 
 Perhaps he groaned forth such words as these, as he 
 bucketed the great brown mare through the perilous dark-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 397 
 
 ness, over roads bestrewn with helmets, swords, and cui- 
 rasses, knapsacks, talpacks, forage-caps, and schakos, 
 needle-guns, and chassepots, and camp kettles, as well as 
 the human debris of War. The flare of a lantern tied to 
 and swinging from one of the great steel stirrups threw a 
 treacherous and fitful light upon his road. 
 
 Follow him as he ranged from camp to camp, ques- 
 tioning, investigating. ... It was black night and raining 
 heavily when a gleam of hope dawned upon the man. 
 
 The cavalry piquet-officer who had given the clue beheld 
 the great brute and her huge rider vanish in a cloud of 
 their own steam. A furious clatter of hoofs came back out 
 of the weltering darkness, as the flaring lantern, gyrating 
 like some captive fiend at the end of its tether, dwindled 
 to a dancing will-o'-the-wisp and vanished, the officer ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 "Kreuzdonnerwetter! he must have a neck like other 
 men. Yet he rides as though it were forged of tempered 
 steel!" 
 
 "Who rides? . . . What was that?" asked a brother 
 officer, waking from a doze of exhaustion beside the hissing 
 logs of the rain-beaten watch-fire. He got reply: 
 
 ' ' Only the Pomeranian bear ranging in search of his lost 
 cubs. ' ' He added : "I was able to tell him that he would 
 find the eldest of them at the field-hospital of Mariaville, 
 upon which he galloped away like mad. ' ' 
 
 "The field-hospital of Mariaville" proved to be a farm- 
 house on a hill-top near the battlefield of Mars la Tour. 
 Candles stuck in the necks of empty wine-bottles revealed, 
 through the open, unblinded windows, the figure of the 
 surgeon in charge and those of his orderly-assistants pass- 
 ing to and fro. 
 
 ' ' Have you a Bismarck here ? ' ' 
 
 The stentorian shout from the yard made wounded men 
 turn upon their improvised pillows, and brought the head 
 and shoulders of the bibbed and shirt-sleeved surgeon 
 thrusting out of a window on the first floor. A colloquy 
 ensued between the unseen and the medical officer. Pres- 
 ently the arbitrary voice interrupted: 
 
 "What do you call not seriously wounded, man? De- 
 scribe the sasualty clearly, without professional Latin, or 
 too many crack jaw words." 
 
 The dressers winked to each other behind the back of
 
 *98 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the surgeon. He said, supporting himself with one hand 
 against the crazy window- frame as he thrust his head and 
 shoulders forth into the dripping darkness and gesticulated 
 with a hand that held a probe : 
 
 "Excellency, your elder son has received three bullets. 
 One lodged in the breast of his tunic, another hit his 
 watch, and the third is at present in the upper part of his 
 thigh. I was about to place the patient under chloroform 
 when Your Excellency 's call summoned me from his side. ' ' 
 
 The voice said, with a clang of anger in it : 
 
 "You should not have left him had it been the King 
 who called. Go back to him instantly. I am coming up." 
 
 And he came striding in his great boots up the crazy 
 one-flight stair. Ghastly faces of wounded soldiers turned 
 upon their pillows of straw as that gigantic figure filled up 
 the doorway. His shadow, thrown by the flaring tallow- 
 candle flames, loomed portentously on the whitewashed 
 walls. He wore no cloak or overcoat and dripped as though 
 he had swum, not ridden, through water to his finding ; the 
 peak of his field-cap discharged quite a little deluge upon 
 his son's white face as he stooped over the stretcher where 
 the young man lay and touched his hand, and kissed him 
 on the cheek. 
 
 "Never mind. Clean water does no hurt," he said, for 
 he had drawn out his handkerchief to wipe the splash away, 
 and finding it soiled with dust and powder-grime had re- 
 turned it to his pocket. 
 
 The surgeon returned : 
 
 "I wish we had clean water it would be above price. 
 But all the springs are fouled with blood, and there are 
 dead French in the courtyard- well. " 
 
 "They must be got out and the well cleansed, if pos- 
 sible," said the Chancellor. "Meanwhile, a temporary sup- 
 ply must be found. ... What nourishment have you, fit 
 for wounded men ? ' ' 
 
 The surgeon responded, busy with a cotton-wool chloro- 
 form pad : 
 
 "Nothing, Excellency, except wine and a little Extract 
 of Liebig. " 
 
 The Chancellor said harshly: 
 
 "Yet this appears to be a farm-house, and I heard the 
 clucking of fowls down below ! ' ' 
 
 The surgeon, who was a bullet-headed, obstinate East
 
 399 
 
 Prussian, and did not relish this sort of hectoring, returned, 
 thrusting out a stubbly under- jaw : 
 
 "Excellency, there are certainly fowls in the farmyard. 
 But they are not mine, nor have I money to buy. They 
 belong to the unhappy wretch who owns this place, and 
 has lost everything else." 
 
 And he gave back the stare of the fierce eyes that raked 
 him. The Minister began to lisp, an ominous sign : 
 
 ' ' Ah, indeed ! . . . May I may I ask where you where 
 you gained your notions of the code of ethics that should 
 prevail in warfare?" 
 
 Said the surgeon, fronting him fairly and squarely : 
 
 "Excellency, from my father, who was an honest man!" 
 
 Straw rustled under heads that slewed to look at the 
 blunt speaker. There was a long instant's pause. Then 
 the Chancellor thrust his hand into his breeches-pocket, 
 pulled out a gold coin, and said, tendering it to the medical 
 officer : 
 
 "Kindly pay this to the object of your pity for twenty 
 fowls at a mark apiece. Now I will keep you no longer 
 from your patient. Good night to everyone here. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Good night, Excellency ! ' ' came in chorus. 
 
 He gave his brusque salute and had already reached the 
 threshold, when his son, a colossal, black-haired, brown- 
 skinned young trooper, who lay back upon his stretcher, 
 staring sulkily at the smoke-blackened rafters, or contem- 
 plating the twitching bare toes of the leg that bore a 
 tourniquet above the plugged and bandaged wound, started 
 slightly, looked round, and called: 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 "What is it, my dear fellow?" 
 
 His great stride took him back to the prone young giant 
 on the stretcher. Count Herbert said, barely removing his 
 eyes from the ceiling, and speaking in a studiously indif- 
 ferent tone : 
 
 "If you are upset about Bill, sir, there's no need to 
 worry. His horse was shot under him, but he got hold of 
 another. I saw him ride off all right with a wounded 
 comrade behind him. That 's all. Good night ! ' ' 
 
 The son nodded surlily and resumed his inspection of 
 the ceiling. The sire, who had received the news in silence, 
 went out at the door, stooping under the lintel, his great 
 shoulders rasping the posts on either side. They heard his
 
 400 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 heavy footsteps pass down the crazy staircase. A curt sen- 
 tence or two reached them, spoken as he went through the 
 kitchen on his way to the door. Then he was in the yard, 
 loudly calling for an orderly to bring a lantern. An in- 
 stant, and three revolver-shots cracked in rapid succession, 
 each followed by a significant cackling and squawking. 
 The surgeon, now fitting the cotton-wool pad upon the wire 
 mouthpiece and signing to his assistant to hand him the 
 chloroform, clapped the pad upon the mouth and nostrils 
 of young Bismarck, and said, with a dry chuckle as he 
 poured the pungent anaesthetic upon the wool : 
 
 "His Excellency is having a little sport. All the same, 
 without water, one cannot cleanse wounds or boil hen- 
 broth." 
 
 Water arrived an hour later, two barrelsful upon a 
 hand-cart drawn by terrified peasants, behind whom rode a 
 trooper of Uhlans, accelerating their movements with prods 
 of the lance. A general officer had sent the barrels for 
 the use of the wounded at Mariaville. This service ren- 
 dered to his son, he rode in search of his King. 
 
 XLYI 
 
 HE found him, with his Staff, not far distant from Rezon- 
 ville, having returned there when the French cavalry of 
 the Left withdrew after their tremendous charge. The 
 King was reading dispatches, seated on a saddle thrown 
 across a wet faggot, beside a smoky watch-fire. The farm- 
 stead of Malmaison, now sending up showers of sparks 
 like a set-piece at the end of a display of fireworks, gave 
 light enough by which to read. 
 
 Persuaded to take shelter, the old man found it in a 
 deserted hamlet, of which the very name was uncertain, 
 so sorely had it been mauled about. A crust of stale bread 
 and a mutton-chop grilled on some wood embers furnished 
 his supper. Water fit for drinking being unattainable, he 
 tossed off a nip of sutler 's rum out of a broken tulip-glass, 
 and lay down in his clothes to rest upon the royal ambu- 
 lance, within four walls and under a roof holed and gapped 
 by shot and shell.
 
 THE MAN OF. IRON 401 
 
 The Princes of the Suite, much to their Highnesses' 
 chagrin, were compelled to subsist on fragments of stale 
 sandwiches from their holster-cases. The escort bivouacked 
 about the Royal lodging. Troops, wearied to exhaustion 
 by the two days' continuous fighting, lay down to sleep in 
 the pouring rain. 
 
 The "Warlock supped with his personal Staff on ration- 
 biscuit and raw bacon, and spent the night by a bivouac- 
 fire, among the living and the dead. Can you see him 
 sitting on the empty ammunition-box, buttoned in his drip- 
 ping waterproof, his scanty meal eaten and his cigar well 
 alight? . . . How contentedly he listens while the bulbul 
 Henry sings, without notes of accompaniment, his moving 
 ballads. How piously he rises, bares his old head, and joins 
 in the robust hymn sung by his battered but victorious 
 legions, ' ' Now thank we all our God ..." 
 
 Or, with the mind's eye, one can follow the Man of Iron 
 as, having bidden his master good night and left the young 
 Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg to keep guard over 
 the royal carriage, he set out, in company of his cousin 
 Bismarck-Bohlen, a lieutenant of Dragoon Guards and one 
 of the minor Councillors of the Embassy, in search of a 
 lodging until break of day. 
 
 Sheridan, the famous American General, representing 
 the United States with the Prussian Headquarters Staff, a 
 short, alert gentleman of forty-five, with a dark mustache 
 and chin-tuft, and a pronounced Yankee twang, followed, 
 begging leave to accompany the expedition. The first cot- 
 tage approached as likely to afford a night's shelter was 
 found to be on fire. 
 
 ' ' Too hot, though I like warm quarters ! ' ' the Chancellor 
 commented. The next house was found crammed with 
 wounded soldiers, all suffering from the excellent shell- 
 practice made by the gunners of General Frossard. The 
 next house and the next had also been converted into field- 
 hospitals. Th.e fourth yielded to the Minister's personal 
 investigations a vacant attic, with three truckle-beds, pro- 
 vided with straw palliasses, tolerably clean. 
 
 Sheridan and Bismarck-Bohlen threw themselves upon 
 their rude beds and very soon were soundly sleeping. For 
 a little while the Man of Iron stood beside the narrow un- 
 glazed window in the attic gable, his great arms folded on
 
 02 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 his broad breast, his eyes, bloodshot and strained with gaz- 
 ing through the fire and smoke of bombardments, looking 
 out into the wild black welter of the rainy night. 
 
 Those torn-up pastures and plow-acres, those devas- 
 tated cornfields and woodlands, those burning farms and 
 villages of Lorraine lay in comparative quiet now. . . . 
 The hellish roar and crash and tumult of War had ceased 
 for the time being. Its ghastly sights were veiled, for the 
 most part, by merciful darkness, though the innumerable 
 little sputtering fires kindled by the soldiers threw fitful 
 illuminations upon grotesque, or strange, or terrible, or 
 indescribably hideous things. . . . 
 
 Hungry, thirsty, weary, and saddle-sore as any trooper of 
 his own "White Cuirassiers was the Man of Iron, having 
 broken his fast at dawn upon a hunch of bread and bacon- 
 fat, and supped upon a couple of raw hen's eggs, broken 
 on the pommel of his big steel-hilted sword. But as his 
 bloodshot eyes looked upon his handiwork, he was con- 
 tented. This huge, vehement, and bloody conflict had es- 
 tablished the mastery of Germany: France was outnum- 
 bered, out-generaled, and out-fought. 
 
 With frightful loss Moltke had attained his premier 
 object. The Army of MacMahon had been driven in rout to 
 Chalons, the retreat of Bazaine 's Army westward had been 
 effectually checked. The South road from Metz to Verdun, 
 hitherto lightly held by the advance-patrols of the Prus- 
 sian Crown Prince, was now blocked by the whole effective 
 strength of two out of the three armies of Germany ; weak- 
 ened, wounded, and bleeding after the two days of desper- 
 ate fighting, but still powerful, menacing, and grim. 
 
 One desperate effort made at this juncture might have 
 broken through the barrier of living flesh and steel. Would 
 it be made, or would the French Army of the Rhine fall 
 into the snare so cunningly left open, and retire within 
 the fortified area of Metz? 
 
 The gable-attic looked toward the great fortress. In vain 
 his glasses swept the formless blackness. The sparkle of a 
 moonbeam on a bayonet-point the green or crimson ray cast 
 by a Staff lantern moving over the ground, yet screened by 
 the French batteries, might have cleared the point in doubt. 
 Save for the sputter of German watch-fires over the recent 
 field of battle, and the yellow candle-flare in the windows of 
 half-ruined cottages and outbuildings, where wounded men
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 403 
 
 lay on straw or the bare earth, no light showed, no life 
 seemed to be. ... He swung the shattered casement wide, 
 and thrust his head out, gripping the window-sill, intently 
 listening. . . . No distant roll of iron-shod wheels, no re- 
 verberating tread of countless footsteps; no other sounds, 
 such as might betray the retreating movement of an armed 
 host, broke the silence of that tragic night. 
 
 Only the sob of the wind and the dripping of the chill 
 rain from the overflowing roof-gutters, came to him, with 
 the deep ruckling snores of exhausted Divisions, and the 
 strangling coughs and hollow groans of mangled and dying 
 men and beasts. 
 
 All would be well, he told himself, as he shut up the 
 glasses, unbuckled his sword-belt, and unhooking his collar 
 stretched himself in his great boots upon the groaning 
 truckle-bed, his heavy revolver ready to his hand. Moltke's 
 great plan would be successful. . . . The King would once 
 more prove his Chancellor a true prophet. . . . The hand 
 that could build up Prussia from a fourth-rate State into 
 a world-power, would yet hold the German Empire in its 
 grip of iron, and through that Empire rule the world ! 
 
 If He Who created the World had been displeased by 
 Bismarck's ambitions, things would have gone less smoothly 
 from the outset. ... If He Who wrought Man in His 
 Image had been moved to wrath by all this bloodshed, He 
 would have shown it by letting something happen to the 
 boys. . . . 
 
 But Bill was safe, while Herbert was only slightly 
 wounded. To-morrow he should be brought back to the 
 hospital at Pont a Mousson and thence invalided home. 
 
 Reverting to Bill, secretly the father's idol, in whose 
 person he saw his own lost youth renewed, the Chancellor 
 smiled now, painting in imagination on the darkness a pic- 
 ture of that charge of the French square at Mars la Tour. 
 According to Herbert, who had put the thing badly, Bill 
 had had his horse shot, and jumped on another, taking a 
 comrade behind him as he rode off the field. 
 
 A fine story to write home to the boy 's mother. . . . How 
 her deep eyes would glow and kindle as she read. . . . An 
 exploit with which to dazzle fat Borck, hated keeper of 
 the King's Privy Purse. . . . Nor must one omit to em- 
 body the incident in the next official communication penned 
 to Count Bernstorff, Prussian Ambassador in London, who
 
 404 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 would be sure to retail it to some Lady-in- Waiting possess- 
 ing the ear of the Queen. Lastly, what a magnificent anec- 
 dote for the convivial stage of a Foreign Office Staff din- 
 ner, or an official banquet, related with spirit garnished 
 with exaggerations of the pardonable harmless kind. In- 
 deed, with such embellishments he subsequently related the 
 slight episode, proving himself capable of the very folly of 
 paternal tenderness. The picture cropped up constantly 
 among his dreams on this wild night of Gravelotte. And 
 when the wan-faced Dawn peeped shuddering between her 
 blood-stained curtains, and the reveille sounded, waking the 
 living from their sleep among the dead, so that their hag- 
 gard uprising seemed as though in answer to the trump of 
 the Archangel of the Resurrection he heaved his giant's 
 frame from the squalid bed to learn, with a savage thrill 
 of exultation, that Bazaine had fallen into the trap. 
 
 In the dead of night, behind the screen of the unsilenced 
 French batteries yet emplaced behind the high-walled 
 farms of Montigny la Grange, La Folie, and from thence ta 
 Point du Jour, the bleeding Army of the Rhine had re- 
 treated to the treacherous shelter offered beneath the guns 
 of Metz. 
 
 Said the "Warlock, smiling in his sunniest manner as he 
 made his hasty morning toilet in the shelter of a baggage- 
 wagon tilt: 
 
 "Three French Marshals are twittering in this birdcage 
 on the Moselle one Army has been shut up with them. 
 Another yet remains at large, with Paris and the huge re- 
 sources of France in rear of it." He paused to absorb a 
 pinch of snuff and extract a clean white shirt from a small 
 and shabby japanned tin field-case, then added: "A 
 France on the point of Revolution an Army commanded 
 by MacMahon, who has been badly beaten, and has that Old 
 Man of the Sea, the Third Napoleon, sitting on his back 
 wherever he goes ! ' ' He put on the shirt and emerged from 
 temporary obscurity to finish. "If the spirits of the just 
 be permitted knowledge of earthly matters, my beloved 
 wife Mary is pleased with her old man!" 
 
 And he equipped himself in his old war-harness, and 
 crowned his old wig with his battered war-helm, and got on 
 his fine charger and rode off to meet and confer with his 
 King, the Chancellor, and the War Minister, and issue in- 
 structions to his Chiefs of the various Staffs, trolling even
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 405 
 
 less tunefully than usual, another verse of his favorite 
 song : 
 
 "And knew they, the shining stars above me, 
 
 Of the bitterness of my woe, 
 They would come down and bid her love me, 
 Pleading: 'Ah! do not scorn him so!' " 
 
 XLVII 
 
 RUMOR had it that the King, the Chancellor, Roon, the 
 Royal Staff, and the Tinsel Rabble, with the escort of red, 
 blue, and green Hussars, Guard-Dragoons and Uhlans, had 
 ridden toward Flavigny. 
 
 The Warlock placidly followed, traversing the battlefield 
 near Rezonville. Here bearer-parties of the German Ambu- 
 lance Service, with Red Cross helpers, Knights of St. John, 
 volunteers and French and German surgeons wearing the 
 Geneva badge, were now arriving; and some progress had 
 already been made in the gigantic task of separating the 
 wounded from the dead. 
 
 The Iron Chancellor was found here, attended by his 
 shadow, Bismarck-Bohlen, sometimes dubbed "The Little 
 Cousin," other whiles "The Twopenny Roue," according 
 to the humor -of his powerful relative. The Minister was 
 glancing through the morning 's letters, his cousin was read- 
 ing him extracts from the Daily Telegraph, a parcel of 
 English papers having arrived. Hard by, squads of fa- 
 tigue-men, aided by bloused peasants, were working to fin- 
 ish the second of two parallel trenches, in length some three 
 hundred feet, near which had been collected a huge mass 
 of French and German corpses, many half -naked, the ma- 
 jority of them still in uniform. Carts lumbering up with 
 fresh loads to discharge continually, augmented the terrible 
 mound of bodies, a huge percentage hideously displaying 
 the effects of shell-fire, many in the initial stages of de- 
 composition, hastened by the sweltering and oppressive 
 heat. 
 
 Soldiers went about with huge canvas sacks, filling these 
 with zinc identification-tags taken from the necks of their 
 dead comrades, gathering a harvest of watches and purses, 
 the former sometimes of such value, and the latter occa-
 
 406 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 sionally so well-filled with French money as to suggest 
 that they had previously been taken from the dead. 
 
 " Acli Gott!" the perplexed officer of Pioneers in superin- 
 tendence of the trenching-party kept saying : ' ' More, more, 
 and still more. . . . What is one to do with so many dead 
 men?" 
 
 Some utterance of this kind reaching the ears of the 
 Chancellor, he turned in his saddle and called to the officer : 
 
 ' ' Your trench is too deep, sir, and not half wide enough. 
 Three feet is sufficient. Lay them in as cooks dispose 
 herrings in oil-pickte, across in layers and not singly and 
 lengthways labor and space will be economized thus." 
 
 ' ' Alas, Excellency ! ' ' protested the officer, ' ' will not such 
 a method be very unwholesome ? The churchyard at Flau- 
 ville is already raised four feet above the pavement of the 
 church." 
 
 "Let them lay on fresh dead," said the Chancellor, smil- 
 ing grimly, "and stop when they reach to the level of the 
 window-sills. Thus our good fellows will be able to listen to 
 the Cure 's Sunday address. Meanwhile, bury thick. ' ' He 
 added, as Moltke rode up, pointing to the ground now trod- 
 den into mud and littered with French schakos and kepis, 
 Prussian helmets and schapkas, knapsacks, arms, under- 
 clothing, accouterments, brushes, razors, and shoes : ' ' Would 
 not one call this 'Death's Rag Fair'?" He added as the 
 wind, blowing over a battery of dead horses, brought with 
 it an odor that made the senses reel: "Or 'Death's Per- 
 fumery Shop' would be as appropriate a title. ... I must 
 advise the King not to breathe this atmosphere longer, fast- 
 ing. It might result in dysentery." 
 
 Moltke agreed, expanding his thin nostrils : ' ' Truly, the 
 effluvium is exceedingly bad ! ' ' 
 
 "Hypocrite!" said the Chancellor, openly laughing. 
 "Do we not all know that the bouquet of a battle-field cov- 
 ered with slain enemies is sweeter to you than November 
 violet-blooms." 
 
 "Both may be agreeable," said the old war-eagle, "in 
 different fashion ; as the partition of a conquered province, 
 and the dismemberment of a truffled capon might afford 
 pleasure of two kinds to Your Excellency. ' ' 
 
 Said Bismarck, as his cousin reined back and joined the 
 modest personal staff of Moltke, following at some distance 
 in the rear of thefCommander-in-Chief :
 
 THE MAN OF IKON 407 
 
 "I prefer the first, if the second appeals to my empty 
 stomach. Though we must not sell the bear's skin before 
 we have killed the bear!" 
 
 He went on, patting the sweating neck of the brown 
 mare, who had winced and started as yet another dead-cart 
 shot out its dreadful load to windward. . . . 
 
 ' ' The King has been in favor of keeping the country up 
 to the Marne. I have yet another idea, which may be too 
 Utopian to realize. A kind of German colony a neutral 
 State of eight or ten million inhabitants, free from the con- 
 scription, and whose taxes should flow to Berlin. France 
 would thus lose a district from whence she draws her best 
 soldiers one would cut her claws thus ! ' ' 
 
 Said Moltke, his clear eyes narrowing in merry wrinkles : 
 
 ' ' And draw her teeth as well ! ' ' 
 
 The Chancellor went on : 
 
 ' ' That the annexation of the piece of territory will give 
 jaundice to the French is a matter of no consequence. Re- 
 venge should be made impossible. Even without annexation 
 we must render them permanently harmless before we risk 
 their bite. The surrender of the eastern fortresses of 
 France can alone serve our purpose. We have bought 
 them with the best of our German blood ! ' ' 
 
 Agreed the Warlock: "Many noble Prussian families 
 will be plunged in mourning. Wesdehlen and Keuss, We- 
 dell and Finkenstein have been killed Rahden is most 
 grievously wounded, and a whole crowd of officers com- 
 manding regiments or battalions are either badly hurt or 
 dead. I can but thank Divine Providence that I have suf- 
 fered no personal bereavement. ' ' 
 
 "I echo your thanksgiving," responded the Minister, 
 ' ' though some pints of my own blood have vicariously been 
 shed." 
 
 "I had heard I had heard somewhat, but feared to 
 touch upon the matter," said the Warlock. "With the 
 younger olive-branch they tell me all is well ! ' ' 
 
 The Chancellor answered, stammering slightly and look- 
 ing straight in the other 's eyes : 
 
 "Bill rode off the field in safety, carrying two unhorsed 
 comrades out of the leaden hailstorm, one in each stirrup, 
 Cossack-fashion, and accommodating a th a third on the 
 crupper of his horse ! ' ' 
 
 "Ei ei! I had not heard these interesting particulars, "
 
 408 THE MA1ST OF IRON 
 
 exclaimed Moltke, raising his hairless brows in apparent 
 astonishment. "I did not know the brave young man had 
 distinguished himself so much! The Countess will over- 
 flow with pride and gratitude. . . . She writes regularly, 
 I think Your Excellency told me ? Naturally she would be 
 solicitous for your health." 
 
 ' ' I had a letter from her yesterday, ' ' returned Bismarck, 
 ' ' in which she mingles, in equal doses, stern admonition and 
 affectionate advice. Thus, I am to avoid the French wines, 
 which are known to be gout-provoking, and be sure to re- 
 turn in time for the celebration of pur wedding-day. . . . 
 While, remembering, however strongly Paris may be forti- 
 fied, that the walls of Jericho fell down when the trumpets 
 of Joshua were sounded I am to give Your Excellency no 
 peace, ' until the modern Babylon is utterly destroyed. ' J 
 
 ' ' Ha, ha, ha ! " The "Warlock laughed with boyish merri- 
 ment, until the water stood in his clear, keen eyes. "Her 
 Excellency, as I have often told thee, Otto, possesses a per- 
 sonality of the antique order. She is of the breed of Judith 
 and Zenobia. ... I would also say Boadicea, but for the 
 Countess's known antipathy to the British race. So we 
 are to destroy Paris, and what of the Bonapartes and Bour- 
 bons and Orleans? . . . Have we, then, no cut-and-dried 
 instructions as to what is to be done with these?" 
 
 The Chancellor returned, with immovable gravity of 
 tone and feature, belied by the amusement dancing in his 
 eyes: 
 
 "We are to purge France of the whole lot of them. 
 Though supposing the Prince Imperial were to complete 
 his education at a German University, and thus attain to 
 manhood surrounded by German influences Monseigneur 
 Lulu might one day become a subaltern in our Prussian 
 Army subsequently to completion of the customary period 
 of service in the ranks ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Capital. Her Excellency is indeed a woman in a thou- 
 sand." And Moltke fairly rocked in his saddle with laugh- 
 ter, finally having recourse to the frayed cuff of his old 
 uniform field-frock for the mopping of his overflowing eyes. 
 "Thou must paint for the King," he gasped, "that picture 
 of Lulu as a Prussian private soldier. Do not fail to tell 
 him it will be sure to make him laugh. ' ' 
 
 Said the Chancellor, shrugging his great shoulders : 
 
 "He has ridden with Von Boon and the Tinsel Rabble
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 409 
 
 in the direction of Flavigny, where the French bombard- 
 ment so greatly endangered him yesterday. Von Roon will 
 be pouring into the royal ear dismal details of our losses, 
 which are to be estimated for the Berlin newspapers at 
 something under twenty thousand, including officers." 
 
 ' ' Seventy thousand would be nearer the mark, ' ' said the 
 "Warlock placidly. "Nor do I regard it as a heavy price 
 for such a victory as we have won. Roon, however, is not 
 to be envied an unpleasant duty, which, for my own part, 
 I prefer, when possible, to leave to other mouths than 
 mine." 
 
 And leaving the battle-field they struck into a road in a 
 cutting leading east toward Flavigny, and bordered with 
 cottages shattered and scorched by shell-fire, most of them 
 standing in gardens gay with dahlias, sunflowers, snap- 
 dragons, marigolds, lavender, and phlox. Every house that 
 boasted a roof was full of wounded French and German 
 soldiers, most of them lying on bare boards or earthen 
 floors. Oaths and cries of anguish came from kitchens that 
 in virtue of their solid tables had been converted into 
 operating theaters ; ambulance-assistants emptied buckets of 
 ensanguined water over the gaily-colored flower-beds, while 
 bare-armed surgeons, in blood-stained aprons, came to the 
 doors every other moment to cool themselves, or fill their 
 lungs with draughts of cleaner air. 
 
 "It is sad to see all this suffering, ' ' remarked the Chan- 
 cellor, ' ' or would be, did one not know it unavoidable ! ' ' 
 
 Said the Warlock, smiling cheerfully: 
 
 "Blood and wounds, dying men and dead men, are the 
 inseparable concomitants of War. One takes them then as 
 natural, and pays no heed to them. Did armies fight with 
 truncheons of sausages, and dumplings stuffed with plums 
 instead of iron shells full of shrapnel, there would still be 
 deaths in plenty. ' ' 
 
 The Chancellor said, laughing heartily : 
 
 ' ' And the Field equipment of our Army surgeons would 
 consist of calomel and rhubarb-pills. Here now are a col- 
 lection of soaked macaws and paroquets. The fine feathers 
 of the Napoleon 's Guard Imperial have suffered badly from 
 last night's rain." 
 
 In two fields right and left of the road they followed were 
 crowded nearly four thousand French prisoners, under 
 a heavy guard of Mecklenburg infantry. The Mecklen-
 
 410 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 burgers were drinking their morning coffee and munching 
 Army bread and raw ham rations. The emerald, pale blue, 
 and scarlet Imperial Dragoons and Cuirassiers, the white- 
 mantled, red-fezzed Chasseurs d'Afrique, the green-coated 
 Chasseurs a cheval, the gorgeous Guides and Lancers, the 
 Voltigeurs, and the red-breeched, blue-coated grenadiers be- 
 longing to individual regiments, standing as if in the ranks, 
 or lying down in groups upon the muddy ground where 
 they had spent the last night, looked with hollow eyes of 
 famine, upon their munching jailers, but disdained to ask 
 for food. 
 
 "They are wet," said Moltke, "for few of them have got 
 their greatcoats. It is the love of display that leads the 
 French soldier to throw away what extra weight of cover- 
 ing he carries when he is in the thick of a melee, or sud- 
 denly called upon to charge. While our stout fellows will 
 come out of an assault with what they carried into it. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Or perhaps a little more ! ' ' hinted the Chancellor. 
 
 "It may be it may be!" admitted the Field Marshal. 
 "The French love for gold-carrying is the cause of that 
 enrichment. Hence most of their Guard Cavalry officers 
 carry beneath their tunics or in the pockets of their tight 
 pantaloons netted purses given them by their women, that 
 stick out in a tempting style. A prod of our German lance, 
 or a rip from the bayonet, and out pops the purse into the 
 soldier's fist. You would not call him a thief for taking 
 what he finds in this manner?" 
 
 "I cannot answer for myself," said the Chancellor, turn- 
 ing a laughing look upon the speaker, "but I can safely 
 predict that my wife would exonerate him upon Scriptural 
 authority. By the way, I see that your brigadiers have not 
 thought it worth while to place the French wounded under 
 surveillance." He pointed to a halting procession of rough- 
 ly bandaged casualties in torn and muddy uniforms. "I 
 have already passed at least a thousand of these limping 
 fellows in red breeches, and of course there must be thou- 
 sands more. ' ' 
 
 "How could they escape?" asked the Warlock, turning 
 his ascetic, hairless face upon the speaker. ' ' And did they 
 succeed in doing so, of what use would they be as comba- 
 tants? All these you see, have they not been wounded by 
 shell-splinters in the head or arms, or hit in the legs and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 411 
 
 feet by our rifle bullets ? Why should we burden ourselves 
 with the maintenance of men who cannot fight against us? 
 and must be helpless burdens upon their country even were 
 they within the French lines ? ' ' 
 
 "I admit the clearness of your Excellency's judgment," 
 said the Minister, ''even while I doubt whether, if some of 
 these red-breeched rascals happen to be in possession of 
 concealed weapons there would not be an excellent oppor- 
 tunity, at this moment, for ridding France of Bismarck or 
 Moltke." 
 
 "Or both," the "Warlock amended, "with the aid of a 
 double-barreled pistol. Look here ! Was ever a more star- 
 tling likeness between a dead man and a living, than is pre- 
 sented at this moment before Your Excellency and my- 
 self?" 
 
 And returning the salute of a young soldier in the white- 
 faced blue uniform of the Guards Infantry, who in the act 
 of galloping past upon a powerful if wearied beast, had 
 checked his stride so as not to splash mud upon the Chan- 
 cellor and the great Field-Marshal, Moltke signed to him to 
 halt. 
 
 "That he is a relative of Max Valverden 's, " said Bis- 
 marck, "I would have wagered you a dozen of Moselle, of 
 Comet vintage, if Your Excellency were not already in- 
 clined to bet on the relationship." 
 
 ' ' I never bet, ' ' chirped Moltke, ' ' except in boxes of choc- 
 olate and gloves with my nieces, and then it is a matter of 
 certainty beforehand that the little girls are going to win ! ' ' 
 And he turned his narrow, glittering gaze upon the object 
 of his curiosity, who was now fixed in the front attitude of 
 attention, immovable as an equestrian statue of painted 
 stone. 
 
 ' ' I will not detain you upon what is no doubt a pressing 
 errand, ' ' said the Chief of the Great Staff, smiling amiably 
 in the Guardsman's rigid countenance. "I merely wished 
 to ask your name, and why it is that a private soldier of 
 Guard Infantry happens to be riding an officer's horse?" 
 
 "Pardon, General Field-Marshal!" The statue blushed 
 becomingly. "My name is Carl Bernhard von Schb'n Val- 
 verden, at the service of Your Excellency. Of my rank in 
 the Army I am hardly at this moment certain, as I was 
 promoted Corporal and Sergeant yesterday, during the ac-
 
 412 THE MAN OF IROX 
 
 tion of the Guard at St. Privat and Amanvilliers, and am 
 now acting temporarily as junior Captain of my company, 
 nearly all our officers having been killed." 
 
 "I congratulate you, Sergeant!" rejoined the Field- 
 Marshal cordially, "and am glad that you, as successor to- 
 the family honors of an officer who served the Prussian 
 Army with distinction, seem likely to follow in the steps of 
 your relative. Prut ! that was a close thing ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Hellishly so ! " agreed Bismarck. 
 
 For the flushed and laughing face of Valverden had sud- 
 denly hardened and sharpened. With lightning quickness 
 he had drawn a revolver from a pouch strapped to his belt 
 and fired across the withers of the big brown mare bestrid- 
 den by the Iron Chancellor. As the single shot rang out, 
 another followed almost instantly, and the midmost of a 
 knot of three dismounted Lancers, their heads, legs, and 
 arms swathed in clumsy, blood-stained bandages, who had 
 halted to rest by the side of the muddy road, yelled shrilly 
 and pitched heavily backward, dropping, with the broken 
 pair of clothes-props that had served him as crutches, a 
 cavalry holster-pistol that had exploded as it fell. 
 
 Said Valverden, stiffening his features in the endeavor to 
 disguise his almost passionate elation: "Your Excellencies 
 will pardon me, but I saw the fellow was dangerous. ..." 
 
 "He might with reason," the Chancellor answered, "have 
 entertained a similar idea of you ! ' ' He turned to Moltke, 
 saying : 
 
 "Will not Your Excellency give orders that the com- 
 panions of these would-be assassins all upon the road who 
 have witnessed the attempted outrage shall be shot with- 
 out delay? It strikes me also that more stringent precau- 
 tions must be taken with regard to disarming wounded 
 prisoners. The man had a pistol that goes for much ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Certainly certainly ! ' ' agreed Moltke, beckoning to an 
 aide of his small Staff, who followed at some distance. He 
 issued some brief directions, speaking in an undertone, then 
 said, smiling and turning to Valverden : 
 
 "The late Count Max was an excellent marksman with 
 the pistol. You seem to have inherited this talent of his!" 
 
 The Chancellor added, looking at the still smoking re- 
 volver : ' ' You have there a pretty little weapon, apparently 
 of American make ! ' ' 
 
 "It is one of Colt's six-shooters," said Valverden, smil-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 413 
 
 ing. "I bought it from a non-commissioned officer quite 
 recently, and have practised with it in the trenches at the 
 animate mark. But of the ammunition I got with it all has 
 been expended save six cartridges, one of which I have had 
 the honor to dedicate to the service of Your Excellencies." 
 
 Both the Excellencies laughed, Moltke saying: 
 
 "It would be a pity to spoil your shooting, Sergeant 
 Count von Schon Valverden, for want of a few cartridges. 
 Give me the caliber of your weapon and I will engage to 
 supply you with a few hundred. And, as to your prompti- 
 tude may be owed the priceless life of Count Bismarck, the 
 silver-sword-knot must be the reward." 
 
 "Thanks, thanks! Your Excellency!" stammered Val- 
 verden, grasping the offered hand of the old warrior. 
 
 "And the King shall hear how important a service his 
 newly promoted officer has rendered him," appended the 
 Chancellor, "in preserving to the Throne and nation of 
 Prussia the greatest of living strategists ! ' ' 
 
 "Under Divine Providence," said Moltke, devoutly rais- 
 ing his forage-cap. 
 
 "Under Divine Providence," repeated the Chancellor, 
 touching the peak of his own. 
 
 He added, as Valverden, dismissed by a wave of the 
 Chief's finger, his blue eyes blazing, his blond face aglow 
 with triumph, set his borrowed spurs to the flanks of his 
 late Captain's charger, and with a showy bound and demi- 
 volte, galloped furiously away : 
 
 "He is as vain as Count Max, but seems to possess more 
 character. I prophesy he will go far ! ' ' 
 
 Moltke agreed, slightly glancing after the flying horse- 
 man: 
 
 ' ' Far if Heaven preserve him from the clutches of such 
 women as Adelaide de Bayard. Wouldst thou believe, Otto, 
 the she-fiend spread her nets to catch that youngster, who 
 out of dare-devilry prevailed on an officer of her acquaint- 
 ance to take him to her house ? ' ' 
 
 " So ! " Bismarck turned his large eyes on the withered 
 eagle-face. "Did the meeting ripen into intimacy?" 
 
 Moltke replied: 
 
 ' ' Sufficiently so to cause Valverden 's family acute appre- 
 hension. One would suppose that she first revolted, then 
 attracted, then charmed. . . . The Countess in the anguish 
 of maternal solicitude wrote a letter to the Colonel of Val-
 
 414 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 verden's regiment. . . . Fortunately the call to Active 
 Service diverted the young man 's thoughts elsewhere. ' ' 
 
 Bismarck said, smiling and smoothing his heavy gray 
 mustache with his ungloved right hand : 
 
 "And, happily for her intended victim, an accident be- 
 fell the sorceress, which blunted some of the arrows in her 
 quiver of irresistible charms!" 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 "SAD, sad! I had not heard. How did it happen?" asked 
 Moltke, elevating his hairless brows inquiringly. 
 
 "Briefly, the affair, as its details have reached me, sums 
 up in this way: Straz, the Roumanian agent of the Em- 
 peror Napoleon, having performed his mission to Prince 
 Antony of Hohenzollern, met Madame de Bayard at a Sig- 
 maringen hotel. . . . She is as clever and light-fingered as 
 she is, or was, beautiful " 
 
 ' ' I know, I know ! ' ' said Moltke. ' ' She sucked Straz dry 
 of his store of Imperial secrets, but how, I did not hear 
 from Your Excellency." 
 
 Eeturned the Chancellor : 
 
 ' ' By drugging him or so he vows ! she obtained those 
 copies of his instructions from the Emperor (with copies 
 of his copies of the telegrams sent by Prince Antony) 
 which I was privileged to show you later on. Subsequently, 
 and in floods of artificial tears, she awakened her victim, 
 declaring she must return that instant to Berlin. Which 
 she did a special engine having been kept under steam at 
 the Sigmaringen railway station in time to place the pa- 
 pers in the hands for which they were destined. The ex- 
 quisite point of the jest is that Straz accompanied her 
 subsequently discovering how roundly he had been be- 
 fooled ! But upon this point I am not certain. ... I only 
 argue from the premises that when Delilah was subsequent- 
 ly found gagged, half-strangled, and robbed in her bed- 
 room at the hotel where she and her Roumanian had put up 
 Straz who had vanished was the perpetrator of what 
 Madame has since termed 'a mysterious outrage.' ' 
 
 "He took the money?" Moltke queried. 
 
 "Undoubtedly he took the money, which Bucher had
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 415 
 
 paid her a few hours previously. Twenty thousand marks 
 in honest Prussian bank-notes. Some of them Straz changed 
 before he left Berlin. He is now here in France, and that 
 is all I care to know of him at present. But in the eyes of 
 every man she now encounters, Madame will read some- 
 thing that will keep her animosity alive." 
 
 "So changed, is she?" asked Moltke, with interest. 
 
 ' ' So changed is she, in spite of the aid of cosmetics, that 
 as I looked at her I was minded to exclaim with the Prophet 
 Ezekiel: Devourer of men . . . iliou shalt devour men 
 no more!" 
 
 The speaker added: 
 
 ' ' Unless vicariously, for the De Bayard has a daughter 
 not destitute of charms, if there be truth in the description 
 given me by her mother, when the woman offered, for a 
 consideration, to sell the girl to me ! " 
 
 "Prut!" said Moltke, reddening angrily and frowning. 
 ' ' Decency demands that such vileness be kept hid ! ' ' 
 
 Said the Chancellor, shrugging indifferently : 
 
 "Decency and such women as Max Valverden's ex-mis- 
 tress have long ceased to be on nodding terms. To do 
 Madame justice, she flew at higher game than a mere Prus- 
 sian Minister. Her idea was to influence a future Emperor, 
 in the person of Badinguet 's heir. ' ' 
 
 Moltke wrinkled up his transparent, arched nostrils, as 
 though an unpleasant odor had afflicted them: 
 
 "Pfui! what beastliness! what abomination! And the 
 boy but fifteen, and childish for his age ! ' ' 
 
 "And cleanly of habit and thought," added Bismarck, 
 "considering his paternity, and the sort of people who ha- 
 bitually surround him." He turned slightly in his saddle 
 as carbine-shots rang out, followed by oaths, shouts, and in 
 the distance behind them muscular blows: "The gendarm- 
 ery of the Wiirttembergers are carrying out your orders in 
 a general 'battue. It should be enforced as an iron rule 
 never to be infringed or departed from, that not only those 
 soldiers, reduced to the level of non-combatants who at- 
 tempt to revenge the misfortunes of their Army by acts of 
 violence but those who witness such acts are to be in- 
 stantly shot. More, the rule should extend to private per- 
 sons: I would without mercy shoot or hang all those who 
 do not treat as sacredly inviolate the persons of their con- 
 querors ! ' '
 
 416 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 His deep-cut nostrils expanded, his blood-tinged blue eyes 
 Tslazed under the heavy eyebrows, the corners of his mouth 
 clamped downward, giving to the thick mustache a certain 
 appearance of solidity, typical of the man, and suggesting 
 a human mask carved in granite, or cast in bronze and col- 
 ored with the hues of life. His resonant voice had the 
 clang and timbre of a war-gong, forged of metal tempered 
 by Pagan priests in blood of human victims. And he went 
 on, his clenched right hand beating the measure of his 
 words upon his solid thigh : 
 
 "I speak from the inner depths, at the promptings of a 
 profound conviction. Strictness unmerciful strictness 
 should be wielded, to bring home to the innocent and the 
 guilty, the feeble as well as the powerful, the horror and 
 hideousness of War. And yet ' ' his voice assumed a milder 
 tone, the somber frown relaxed, and the tense corners of 
 the deep-cut mouth twitched a little: "And yet wilt thou 
 credit that durog the frightful carnage of the last two 
 days there have been moments when my bowels melted to 
 water when Pity and Compunction have gripped me by 
 the throat?" 
 
 "Ach-ach!" ejaculated Moltke, turning his clear red- 
 rimmed eyes wonderingly upon the heavy features whose 
 ruddy color had faded to grayish: "Thou wast unfed, or 
 hadst made some rough soldier's meal that disagreed with 
 thee. Man's stomach will upon such occasions chide with 
 the very voice of conscience. Unavoidable horrors need not 
 cause twinges. Besides, pity and compunction are felt by 
 my niece Gusta when she has trodden upon her lapdog's 
 tail. ... I am myself agitated by these sentiments when. 
 Gusta exhibits to me her chilblains. ... In War espe- 
 cially a recklessly provoked war of attack, such as this 
 neither pity nor compunction can be tolerated. Grief of 
 heart, I have been hitherto spared by Heaven's gracious 
 preservation of those dear to me. Thou art nearly as fa- 
 vored, for the wound of Herbert is comparatively slight, 
 and Bill the hero of the astonishing episode thou hast 
 related has come off the field not only with four I think 
 Your Excellency mentioned four rescued comrades, but 
 without a scratch upon his skin?" 
 
 The simple, serious, almost childish tone of his harangue 
 brought back the thunderclouds to the forehead of the Man 
 of Iron. His grim mouth set, his bulldog jaw thrust for-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 417 
 
 ward, a dull cloud of red swept upward to his temples, 
 chasing the sickly grayish hue. He said, stammering in his 
 characteristic manner : 
 
 "Your Ex Your Excellency and myself have, as you 
 say, been spared the bereavement which will presently 
 plunge the noblest Prussian families into mourning. But 
 Heaven looking down upon the Gorze Koad, now white 
 with the bodies of Von Bredow's Cuirassiers or contem- 
 plating the field of Mars la Tour, heaped with the corpses 
 of our Guard-Dragoons and Uhlans might be inclined to 
 disclaim arch-responsibility for the orders that in one in- 
 stance hurled suss six Prussian squadrons upon a French 
 Infantry Division and the combined strength of Frossard's 
 batteries, and in the other, pitted against eight regiments 
 of French Imperial Guard Cavalry Von Barby's Heavy 
 Brigade." 
 
 "EH" said Moltke, placidly ignoring the irony, but with 
 a rosy heightening of the color in his wrinkled cheeks: 
 "And Heaven would be in the right of it. Von Alven- 
 sleben in the first case, General Voights-Ehetz in the sec- 
 ond, had been told in such and such an emergency to do 
 thus and thus. In the Wars of Joshua and David, as re- 
 corded in Holy Scripture, Heaven assumed the chief gen- 
 eralship. In the War of Germany with France, in this 
 year of 1870, Heaven is pleased to let Moltke have his own 
 way." 
 
 Verbal thrusts and riposte had the grind of edged steel 
 on steel. 
 
 The Chancellor returned with elaborate suavity: 
 
 "And yet I quote Your Excellency's own utterance, 
 such use of cavalry as I have quoted has been condemned 
 by Moltke as unjustifiable." 
 
 "And Moltke was right," trumpeted the indomitable 
 veteran, ' ' only you have not quoted me right. Such use of 
 cavalry by a general is unjustifiable. Unjustifiable abso- 
 lutely unless he wins ! ' ' He added, rather nettled by the 
 Chancellor 's criticism : 
 
 * ' Here we part, as I ride toward Gorze to visit the scene 
 of Von Bredow's brilliant exploit, in the course of which, 
 though Your Excellency has omitted to mention it, the 
 French battery was cut to pieces, and an infantry column 
 ridden down. Thus the loss of life in a military sense 
 weighs nothing against the advantage ! ' '
 
 418 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 And stiffly returning the Minister's salute, the Warlock 
 galloped away. 
 
 "I have trodden on Moltke's corns," said Bismarck, 
 laughing, as his cousin Bismarck-Bohlen rode up to join 
 him. "He grew testy on being twitted with our losses in 
 cavalry." He added, as the low hedges hounding the road 
 vanished, and the arena of the previous afternoon 's conflict 
 opened before them : ' ' There is the King, whose face Roori 
 has lengthened with tremendous lists of losses on our side. 
 It will now be my business to shorten the royal countenance 
 again. Roon and I resemble Ixel and Axel in the child's 
 story-book, only that we manage better on the whole ! ' ' He 
 explained as his cousin professed ignorance of the legend: 
 "Ixel and Axel were possessed of a magical birth-gift, 
 which worked in the same way, but differently. . . . Thus, 
 Axel had a little finger that stirred sweet, while Ixel's 
 stirred sour, only neither could remember to use his gift 
 properly. Thus, Ixel would sour the coffee in the pot, spoil 
 the beer, and turn the jelly in the house-mother's pipkins, 
 while Axel would stir the sauer-kraut sweet and make sweet 
 calf's head with cabbages!" He added, laughing: "If a 
 dish thus flavored were now set before me, I should cer- 
 tainly make short work of it. Save for a bowl of the sol- 
 dier 's pea-soup given me by General von Goeben this morn- 
 ing my stomach would now be as empty as the inside of 
 Louis Napoleon 's head ! ' ' 
 
 The scene of the Homeric battle of the previous after- 
 noon, watched by the King, Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke 
 from the ridge south of Flavigny, was indescribable. Blue 
 Prussian infantry, mingled with Uhlan lancers, Dragoons, 
 and mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard, covered the 
 wide stretch of level common-ground between the Bois de 
 Vionville and the Bois de Gaumont. So high were piled 
 the bodies of dead men and dead horses, mingled with that 
 sorrowful debris of shattered arms, scattered accouterments 
 and ownerless headgear, that live men walked through nar- 
 row lanes and crevasses opening here and there among 
 them, and failed to reach the surface at the full stretch of 
 the arm. 
 
 Bearer-sections of the German Ambulance were looking 
 for survivors, burial-parties were collecting the German
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 419 
 
 dead. Here and there the narrow lanes that ended nowhere 
 had become crooked thoroughfares, owing to these efforts 
 and the labor of bands of volunteers and peasants work- 
 ing under the Red Cross. 
 
 P. C. Breagh was one of these toilers. On the previous 
 day he had helped the peasants clear the Red Ravine under 
 the direction of the Gorze Sisters of Mercy, and darkness 
 falling before the gruesome task was ended, he had kept on 
 by torch and lantern-light until brain and muscles gave in. 
 Then, staggering with weariness, he had gone back with 
 the Sisters to their convent had been dried and warmed, 
 fed with soup and bread, stewed fruit and coffee, and had 
 slept dreamlessly in the clean spare bed at their gardener's 
 cottage to wake, refreshed, in the light of a new day. 
 
 Morning had found every house in Gorze crammed with 
 French and German wounded, and every able-bodied resi- 
 dent, willingly or otherwise, impressed into the service of 
 the Red Cross. One single lady of the Sister's acquaint- 
 ance, whose villa had been forcibly turned into a hospital, 
 had retired to sleep off a nervous headache, setting her maid 
 to guard her bedroom door. Which door, after an interval 
 of trampling and violent argument, had been kicked open, 
 revealing the kicker in the person of a Prussian General, 
 muddy to the whiskers, hoarse from exposure and shout- 
 ing, and red-eyed from the lack of sleep, who there and 
 then forcibly ejected the hapless spinster from her bed, and 
 telling her go and nurse the wounded, pulled off his spurred 
 boots, and promptly installed himself in her place. 
 
 This was mild treatment, even tender, to the usage re- 
 ceived by many other harmless non-combatants. P. C. 
 Breagh had seen an elderly priest savagely hit in the face 
 by a dismounted Uhlan, whom he had unintentionally 
 jostled in helping to lift a disabled French soldier into a 
 cart. 
 
 And he had been witness of other outrages. He had seen 
 a wayside cabaret gutted, and the casks hauled up from 
 the cellar, set up on end, unheaded, and emptied by a party 
 of blue infantry-men. When they had dipped in and filled 
 their water-bottles, they had drunk out of their helmets, 
 and when they could drink no more, they had emptied out 
 the wine upon the ground before the bush-decorated door- 
 way, and with brutal jests and laughter watched the red 
 stuff trickle away.
 
 420 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 To this senseless waste the host had offered no objection. 
 A blow from a gun-butt had previously knocked him sense- 
 less, and his wife, with her black hair hanging wildly over 
 her shoulders, and her face blurred with tears and pale 
 with terror, was trying to bring him round again. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 THE sight of the battle-field blotted out that brutal picture 
 made him clench his hands until the nails dug deep into 
 the palms, shut his eyes and set his teeth, fighting down 
 the deadly qualm. ... It was worse than the Red Ravine a 
 hundred times magnified. It was awful inconceivably aw- 
 ful. . . . He found himself muttering : 
 
 ' ' I wonder how God can bear to look down on it all ! " 
 
 With difficulty he controlled his ardent desire to remove 
 himself as far as possible from this attained vision of his 
 great desire, by using the legs that had brought him to this 
 hideous scene : 
 
 "If some of the fellows who gas about wanting to see 
 War as I gassed not twenty-four hours ago could be 
 set down where I stand now, they'd find out, as I have 
 found that they didn 't know what they were talking about. 
 . . . Oh, God ! . . . suppose one of them saw that German 
 Hussar without a head, sitting upright on a dead horse, 
 curiously caparisoned with its own intestines, would he go 
 sheer crazy or tumble down in a swoon ? ' ' 
 
 He who saw the thing kept on his legs and did not lose 
 his mental equilibrium. We are so weak to our own knowl- 
 edge that it is always a marvel when we find ourselves 
 strong. He found the nausea going and the dimness clear- 
 ing from his vision. He could even breathe the dreadful 
 air, and, standing on the limber of a broken gun-carriage, 
 stare out over the rigid billows of that silent sea of death 
 and tell himself that a not inapt comparison would have 
 been Deal Beach, with ridges of dead men and beasts in- 
 stead of ridges of pebbles, and flocks of carrion crows 
 instead of gulls flapping heavily from one place to settle 
 down in another and renew their dreadful banquet, between 
 hoarse croakings that sounded like ' ' More, more, more ! ' ' 
 
 Starlings in myriads were there, reveling in blood and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 421 
 
 fat like the titmice and robins, who manifested predilections 
 calculated to divest P. C. Breagh of the last remnant of 
 belief in the tender fable of the Babes in the Wood. But- 
 terflies, Royal Peacock, and Purple Emperor greedily 
 sipped blood in preference to honey-dew. Hares, rendered 
 tame by bewilderment and terror, couched among the 
 corpses of men, their natural enemies. 
 
 Toward the northeast rose a knoll, about which the 
 battle seemed to have raged desperately. For it was high- 
 heaped with bodies of the green- jacketed Chasseurs on the 
 bony brown horses, and ringed about with Red Uhlans and 
 Dragoons in blue coats. The black and white lance-pennons 
 were whipping and flickering in the morning breeze that 
 brought with it the appalling savor of death. . . . 
 
 One had come to work, not to make notes. P. C. Breagh 
 got down from the limber into the trough between two tow- 
 ering wave-crests and looked about him helplessly, not 
 knowing where to begin. A bearer-party of the Prussian 
 Ambulance Service pushed by him. They were hard-bitten, 
 brown-faced men, who joked and laughed freely. A scared 
 band of peasants followed, carrying auxiliary stretchers 
 made of hurdles and sacks and poles. 
 
 Upon the heels of these tottered a single figure. Was it 
 a young girl, or an old woman, so slight and frail, so bowed 
 and blackly clad? A black silk veil covered the bent face, 
 the small white hands were knitted across the narrow 
 bosom. A white linen armlet with the badge of the Red 
 Cross showed vividly against the sleeve of her plain black 
 merino dress. The little, daintily shod feet that showed 
 under the dabbled hem of the skirt had red mire upon 
 them. Through the veil her great eyes gleamed, haggardly 
 moving from side to side, restlessly seeking. . . . 
 
 P. C. Breagh was becoming familiar with that look of 
 strained apprehension and bleak anxiety, stamped upon the 
 sharpened faces of those crowds of black-clad men and 
 women who hastened from all quarters to seek amid the 
 brute and human waste and wreckage of battle, their own 
 wounded or dead. 
 
 She moved with the irregular gait of one walking in a 
 fog, looking from side to bide, questing amid blue and livid 
 or waxen faces for the face, it was quite plain. Her look 
 passed over bodies that did not wear the dark-green, silver- 
 laced dolman, and silver-striped red pantaloons of the
 
 422 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 mounted Chasseurs of the Guard Imperial. She ignored 
 faces that were young, and unadorned with the crisp mus- 
 tache and the Imperial tuft. 
 
 For whom did she seek? A husband, uncle, father? . . . 
 What lay in her path ? Something that, did the little foot 
 strike it unwarily, might bring to an end that anguished 
 search. . . . The impact seemed so imminent that his voice 
 died in his throat when he strove to call to her. He got out 
 in a gasping croak : 
 
 ' ' Stop ! . . . Look ! . . . Right in your path there ! . . . 
 For God's sake, don't touch it it's a live shell!" . . . 
 
 She swerved blindly aside in obedience to the warning, 
 though he who uttered it had spoken in his own tongue. 
 The edge of her skirt brushed the unexploded shrapnel, a 
 potentiality fraught with hideous death. But she struck 
 her knee against the wheel of the broken limber would 
 have fallen but for P. C. Breagh. Even as the slight figure 
 stumbled against him, he knew the veil screened the face of 
 Juliette. 
 
 " Mademoiselle de Bayard. . . . Madame ..." 
 
 "Ah, it is you it is you!" she said gaspingly. 
 
 And she would have dropped at his feet had he not thrust 
 out strong hands and caught hers that were still knitted 
 over her breast. 
 
 They were so cold, so cold and tiny. They stirred in his 
 grasp like little half-frozen birds. She freed one, and put 
 aside the heavy veil, and showed him what havoc Grief can 
 make in loveliness. . . . She said in the toneless wraith of 
 the crystal voice he remembered : 
 
 "When you spoke to me in English, I knew Our Lord 
 had not forgotten me. Ah, Monsieur Breagh, for the love 
 you bear your sister! for the love of charity do not de- 
 sert me! Me, I am in the greatest extremity, or I would 
 not venture to appeal to you now. In the midst of these 
 appalling cruelties and terrors I seek the body of one who 
 is all the world to me. . . . For that I may find him living 
 I do not dare to hope ..." 
 
 P. C. Breagh choked out, crimsoning and stammering : 
 
 "Not your husband? . . . You don't mean your hus- 
 band . . . ?" 
 
 She said, with a wonderful, pure dignity : 
 
 "Not my husband. My father, sir. It is since a week 
 that I returned from Belgium upon receiving news of his
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 423 
 
 captivity in the hands of the Prussians. The intelligence 
 was false I afterward learned. How I cannot now tell 
 you. At this moment, and in the presence of all these poor 
 corpses, of odor so terrible, of appearance so frightful, I 
 can remember nothing very well. But this that I have 
 come from Rethel since yesterday, and that I have come al- 
 together alone." 
 
 ' ' Alone ! . . . without a guide, or protector of any kind ? 
 . . . Without papers ? . . . " His face expressed the blank- 
 est surprise. 
 
 "A passport was obtained for me," she told him, "by 
 whom I will not say now, so that from the Belgian frontier 
 I might reach Rethel. When I quitted Rethel, I was given 
 a military permit by the aid of which I returned to Verdun. 
 From Verdun, in a train full of French wounded in 
 a fiacre part of the way in a peasant 's cart the remaining 
 distance I traveled ; hoping to reach the Camp of the Im- 
 perial Guard Cavalry at Chatel St. Germain. But at 
 Plappeville they detained me. A great battle was raging. 
 . . . What thunder of guns, what fire and smoke, what ter- 
 rible confusion, devastation, wounds, and death did I not 
 behold! ..." 
 
 She unknitted one of the little rigid hands that he had 
 let go, felt for her handkerchief, and wiped away the cold 
 drops of anguish that stood upon her blue-veined temples 
 and about her colorless lips. And P. C. Breagh could only 
 look at her in an agony of pity, and wonder at the courage 
 that bore the frail creature up. 
 
 "Last night the frightful explosions of cannon ceased 
 A poor peasant woman had afforded me shelter in her cot- 
 tage, and shared with me the milk of her goat and her last 
 loaf of bread. News came before day, brought by a wound- 
 ed soldier, whose comrades had been killed, that the battle 
 had been won by the Army of France, but that M. de Ba- 
 zaine had withdrawn our forces for rest and shelter to the 
 Citadel of Metz. I asked this poor soldier for intelligence 
 of my father's regiment, the 777th Mounted Chasseurs of 
 the Guard. The reply was : ' Three regiments of Mounted 
 Chasseurs lie dead on the field of honor. You will find 
 them south of Flavigny, between the Bois de Vionville and 
 the Bois de Gaumont. ' I cried out then, for the words had 
 pierced me like sharp iron. I would have run out of the 
 bouse to find my father, like a creature distracted, but that
 
 424 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 an ambulance of the Red Cross, accompanied by two Eng- 
 lish Protestant Sisters, passed through the village on the 
 Avay to this terrible place. They brought me with them 
 'You cannot seek among the dead,' they told me. 'without 
 the brassard of the Rouge Croix. ' This they put upon me, 
 and then they bring me with them. Now I know not where 
 they are, but I have found you. Help me, monsieur and I 
 will pray for you until I die ! ' ' 
 
 She gave him one wild, supplicating look, put her little 
 frozen hands together would have knelt down on the 
 bloody grass to plead with him the better, if he had seemed 
 to delay. But he caught fire at her naming eagerness, and 
 snatched at the wallet of Red Cross necessaries he had un- 
 slung when he had climbed upon the broken limber to gaze 
 over that sea of Death that spread to the horizon, crying: 
 
 ' ' Of course 1 11 help you look for your father ! . . . But 
 how to search for him and where ? . . . Tell me ... the 
 regiment and the color of the uniform?" 
 
 Shuddering, she pointed to the green, silver-braided dol- 
 man clothing of one of the rigid figures near them. He 
 noted the red and green plume of the sealskin talpack, cut 
 through, perhaps, by a stroke of the heavy saber yet 
 gripped in the stiff right hand of a Prussian Dragoon. He 
 muttered, even while mentally registering other details of 
 the Chasseur's uniform noting the crest embroidered on 
 the green schabraque of the brown charger whose inert 
 weight rested on its dead rider's thigh: 
 
 "777th Chasseurs . . . I've heard German officers telling 
 each other that they fought like devils yesterday. . . . Half 
 a dozen regiments might have been cut up here! And we 
 have to find one man somewhere in a square mile of piled- 
 up bodies. ... If one only had a bloodhound and one of 
 De Bayard 's gloves ! ..." 
 
 Love has a scent as keen as the great dun hound of the 
 hanging dewlap. The issue of the search was to prove this. 
 For an hour, as it seemed, they traversed narrow lanes that 
 wound between walls of dead men. Then the ground rose 
 to a knoll, topped with three scorched oak-trees that had 
 been stripped of their leaves and lopped of their branches 
 by the blizzard of metal and fire, still burning, the air ex- 
 panding in their sap-channels, exploded with the detonation 
 of musketry. Charred cinders dropped from them; they 
 gave forth clouds of acrid-smelling whitish smoke.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 425 
 
 About and upon this knoll of the three oak-trees the bat- 
 tle of the previous day had raged the billows of the sea 
 of Death had beaten fiercely. The lane became a crevasse, 
 the floor of which sloped sharply from the sides of which 
 projected rigid limbs, human and equine. But the slender 
 figure in black moved between them stooped to pass under 
 them, seldom faltering. When the young man who fol- 
 lowed begged her to turn back, she shook her head with- 
 out answering, and kept on. The silent gesture meant : 
 
 "Not yet! A little farther still! ... Be patient with 
 me, I beg of you ! ' ' 
 
 For it seemed to Juliette 's tense nerves and overstrained 
 brain as though those white or blue, or darkly-discolored 
 faces, hideously distorted or wearing an unnatural expres- 
 sion of calm, were all staring with their glassy eyes in one 
 direction, pointed out by myriads of stiffened arms. 
 
 She said, tottering with sheer weakness, and turning 
 upon her companion colorless, black-ringed eyes set in a 
 face most strangely peaked and shrunken: 
 
 "Here where these trees are I will turn, because my 
 strength is failing. . . . See, see ! O Mother of God ! . . . 
 O Jesu! ... HE IS THERE!" 
 
 The scream that tore through her slender throat turned 
 P. C. Breagh's blood to snow-water. He could only gasp, 
 clutching at the folds of her black school-dress with a vague 
 idea of holding her back from some sight of intolerable 
 horror : 
 
 "Wait! For God's sake! Wait! . . . Let me! . . ." 
 
 She shook off his unconsciously violent grasp as though it 
 had been a baby 's. She was gone, wading through a languid 
 runnel of fast-congealing blood, stepping over a broken 
 lance-shaft and a horse's rigid hind-limb. When P. C. 
 Breagh reached her, she was crouching on a patch of hoof- 
 torn earth through which the limestone core of the knoll 
 showed in places, hugging to her bosom a stiff blue hand. 
 
 It wore a familiar ring, that brave right hand, from 
 whose grip the long cavalry sword had dropped when the 
 Uhlan gave the death-thrust. But I think, even without 
 the crested sard, his daughter would have known. ... 
 
 Madness was near enough in that fell hour to brush the 
 bowed veiled head of Juliette with her tattered mantle of 
 imaginary enemies. She saw nothing and knew nothing 
 but that her father was there. She kissed the stiff blue
 
 426 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 hand, and sang to it and cuddled it. Ophelia was not more 
 tragic than this Convent school-girl, squatting in the chilly 
 shadow of a heap of dead horsemen, lavishing futile, fool- 
 ish tendernesses on that piece of insensible clay : 
 
 "My father, now that I have found thee, we must never 
 be parted again never ! Indeed, I have tried to obey thee 
 but I could not help coming back because I love thee so ! 
 . . . Thou hast been wounded, but I will nurse thee and 
 cure thee. When thou art well again we will find a quiet 
 home together, where my mother shall never come. For 
 she is not good as my grandmother was, and as thou art, my 
 own father ! . . . I have fear of her, now that I have seen 
 and known! ..." 
 
 She broke off and listened, as though an answer had come 
 from under the blood-stained Imperial eagle and the corpses 
 that hid De Bayard from her view. One of them was the 
 body of the young subaltern who had borne the standard. 
 Over him sprawled the colossal form of a German officer of 
 Dragoons. He was not dead, for he moved, and blood was 
 yet trickling from a sword-cut that had bitten deep into his 
 shoulder through the cuirass, and a deep gash in the close- 
 cropped scalp of his unhelmeted head. 
 
 ' ' Help ! Some drink ! Donner! how my head hurts ! " he 
 groaned faintly. 
 
 P. C. Breagh, judging it a case for practical Samaritan- 
 ism, got to him by skirting the heap of dead and scaling it 
 from the opposite side. Reaching the summit, he dosed the 
 Dragoon with cognac, and was about to apply a first-aid 
 bandage to the damaged shoulder, when the red-banded 
 forage-caps and bearded faces of a burial-party of Prus- 
 sian Guard infantry strung through the narrow alley below 
 the level of his operations, and an unforgotten voice said 
 in rough Teutonic gutturals: 
 
 "Hereabouts or near. Begin this widening the way 
 until carts can get through to be loaded. . . . Kreuzdon- 
 nerwettcr! is that a dog up there?" 
 
 Another voice answered : 
 
 * ' No, Herr Sergeant. It is either a nun or a woman ! ' ' 
 
 The Sergeant thundered : 
 
 ' ' You silly sheepshead ! Aren 't nuns women ? But you 
 verdammte Catholics think such wenches are angels out of 
 the sky. Turn her out of that nun or woman ! " 
 
 With a savage rush of scalding blood to his sun-bronzed
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 427 
 
 cheeks and temples, P. C. Breagh realized that they meant 
 Juliette. He thrust his head forward, peering down from 
 his eyrie. The crouching little shape in black looked no 
 bigger than a big dog. Near her stood a soldier in the 
 white-faced dark blue uniform of the Guard Infantry. It 
 was the spectacled ex-chemist Kunz, who had nodded him 
 civil farewell. Staring up from below was the copper- 
 colored countenance of the too-zealous Sergeant Schmidt, 
 not rendered more amiable by mud-splashes and powder 
 grime, in combination with a stitched-up scar across the 
 bridge of the nose, and a flamboyant overgrowth of beard. 
 He bellowed to the ex-chemist: 
 
 ' ' Speak to her ! Ask what is her business. ' ' 
 
 The spectacled Kunz stooped over the little bowed head, 
 and seemed to put a question. She lifted her drained white 
 face, shuddered, then resumed her previous attitude. In- 
 terrogated from below, Private Kunz responded: 
 
 "She is deaf, or mad. She only shakes and stares at 
 one!" 
 
 The Sergeant bellowed : 
 
 "Shout in her ear, fool! You are not courting your 
 sweetheart ! Tell her to get up and move out of this ! ' ' 
 
 Thus urged, the ex-chemist approached his lips to the 
 little ear shaded by the black silken tresses, and bawled 
 the order of his superior. She gave no sign of having 
 heard. Copper-red with indignation, the Sergeant com- 
 manded : 
 
 ' ' Turn her out. then ! Promptly up with the baggage ! ' ' 
 
 Kunz, thus adjured, gripped the slight arm, not brutally. 
 At the touch, Juliette gave a faint cry, and crouched lower, 
 hiding her face upon the rigid hand she held. And P. C. 
 Breagh saw red, abandoned his groaning cavalryman and 
 leaped for it, slithering down from the summit of his dread- 
 ful eyrie with a roll of four-inch bandaging trailing in 
 his wake. Casting caution to the winds, he shouted sav- 
 agely to the ex-chemist : 
 
 ' ' Let the lady go ! Take your hand off ! Damn you ! 
 do you hear ? ' ' 
 
 The words, being English, were not comprehended by the 
 Sergeant. For an instant he stared open-mouthed at the 
 unexpected apparition. The next he had bawled out an 
 order to his men, and P. C. Breagh found himself looking 
 down the long brown barrels of a couple of Prussian
 
 428 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "needlers, " accurately covering the exact area of waist- 
 coat behind which his heart hammered and bumped. There 
 was a creaking of leather then and with the jingle of 
 steel on steel, the snort of a horse reluctant to be ridden 
 into an alley without turning-space. Over the heads of 
 the Sergeant and his party rose the pricked ears, sagacious 
 eyes, and broad frontlet of a great, gaunt brown mare, rid- 
 den by a gigantic field officer, wearing the flat white, yellow- 
 banded forage cap, black pewter-buttoned frock, white 
 cords, and immense spurred jack-boots of the Coburg regi- 
 ment of White Cuirassiers. 
 
 "Whom have we English here? Who called out 'Take 
 your hands off ! ' : 
 
 From under the peak of the white forage-cap the rider's 
 heavy domineering stare took in the huddled feminine fig- 
 ure, the disheveled young man menaced by the Service 
 rifles, and the truculent attitude of Sergeant Schmidt. He 
 lifted a finger, and the "needlers" became vertical. He 
 beckoned with the authoritative digit, and P. C. Breagh 
 drew near. And the sickening horrors of the battlefield 
 faded suddenly from about the Englishman. . . . He was 
 back in the tobacco-scented study of a house in the Wil- 
 helmstrasse, Berlin. And the resonant tones of the man 
 who stood for Prussia in the mind's eye of the world were 
 saying, in Bismarck 's well-phrased English : 
 
 ' ' Even though you belong to a neutral nation, you should 
 not presume upon the fact too rashly. Had I not been 
 within earshot just now, you would have paid with your 
 life for your interference. German military authority is 
 supreme, and in the execution of its duty not to be turned 
 aside." 
 
 P. C. Breagh retorted, tingling to the very finger-tips : 
 
 "Your Excellency, I interfered to save this lady from 
 ill-usage. ' ' 
 
 ' ' She is a Frenchwoman ? . . . Explain to her, ' ' said the 
 resonant voice coldly and brutally, ' ' that even to reach the 
 side of a fallen lover, too much may be risked and lost ! ' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, meeting the imperious stare with yel- 
 low-gray eyes that blazed tigerishly : 
 
 ' ' Excellency, the dead man is her father, Colonel de Bay- 
 ard, 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard." 
 
 "Stand back," said the domineering voice, "and I will 
 speak to her ! ' '
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 429 
 
 At a touch of the spur the great brown mare moved for- 
 ward, breasting a lance-shaft that barred the narrow alley, 
 terribly squeezing the Sergeant and his men. 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Bayard!" said the authoritative "voice. 
 
 ' ' Excellency, she does not hear you ! The shock has been 
 too terrible," Carolan was beginning. He was brusquely 
 interrupted with : 
 
 ' ' People usually listen when I speak to them. ' ' And the 
 curt command was issued in French, suave and polished : 
 
 "Be good enough, Mademoiselle de Bayard, to stand up 
 and listen to me ! " 
 
 The big brown mare snorted angrily and fidgeted. He 
 turned her head with an iron hand on the curb-bit, looking 
 steadily at the other female thing. 
 
 ' ' Mademoiselle de Bayard, do you hear ? ' ' 
 
 This time she lifted her sunken head, and turned her 
 small pinched face his way. In the haggard young mask 
 of frozen anguish two wild eyes glittered, tearless and 
 stony-hard. Then slowly, as though his powerful will im- 
 pelled her, she rose to her knees, and stood upon her feet 
 before him. He said, in cool, incisive accents : 
 
 "Young lady, your father was a gallant soldier. I my- 
 self had the privilege of seeing how he died. I wish such a 
 man had served a better master ! . . . " 
 
 She answered, her white lips barely moving as they 
 framed the sentence: 
 
 "He served the Master of Kings and Emperors, before 
 "Whom he stands now ! ' ' 
 
 His somber eyes lightened suddenly as though in irrita- 
 tion. He said in tones that had the clang of overbearing 
 authority : 
 
 "I cannot enter now into a theological discussion. The 
 battle-field is no place for debate, or for unprotected women 
 and young girls. ... In your own best interests I counsel 
 you to return home. ' ' He added and there was no flicker 
 of recognition in the passing glance vouchsafed to P. C. 
 Breagh: "Alone, if you prefer or under the escort of 
 this young Englishman. ... I will promise you that your 
 father's body shall be treated with respect!" His heavy 
 eyes fell on the stiffened face of the Sergeant, standing 
 rigidly in the attitude of salute. "Where is the officer in 
 charge of this burial-party?" he added, grimly enough. 
 
 ' ' Here, Excellency ! ' ' came from behind him. He glanced
 
 430 THE MA1ST OF IRON 
 
 over his shoulder and said to the flurried under-lieutenant 
 who had hurried up and was standing in the alleyway : 
 
 "A separate grave, distinguished by some mark that is 
 recognizable by the daughter." He looked back at the 
 daughter, saying curtly : ' ' Your veil ! ' ' 
 
 She removed it in silence, and handed it to the ex- 
 chemist, who received the frail fluttering cobweb between 
 his finger and thumb. Then the brown mare, in obedience 
 to the iron hand upon the bridle, backed out of the alley 
 of silent witnesses, baring her long, vicious-looking yellow 
 teeth and showing the whites of her savage eyes resentfully. 
 From the florid bull-dog face of her rider, barred with the 
 heavy mustache of iron gray, all memory of the little 
 drama just enacted had been effaced, as the outlines of a 
 sketch in charcoal are wiped from wood or stone. 
 
 But as the alley widened and his great beast surged 
 round, switching her tail, putting back her ears and lash- 
 ing out with her heels so as to nearly brain the officer, P. C. 
 Breagh thought he caught the words : 
 
 ' ' Separate grave . . . marked to find easily. All respect 
 . . . answer to me!" 
 
 More he might have heard, but for Juliette's sobbing. 
 For God had remembered her, and sent her tears at last. 
 
 She had suddenly seen, lying at her feet, a frayed and 
 crumpled envelope bearing the Belgian postmark, and ad- 
 dressed in her own handwriting to M. le Colonel H. A. A. 
 de Bayard, Headquarters of the 777th Mounted Chasseurs 
 of the Guard Imperial with the Army of France, at Mete. 
 And the intuition of love told her that the dead man must 
 have carried this, the last message received from his daugh- 
 ter, hidden in his bosom; and have drawn it forth and 
 kissed it as in very truth we know he had shortly be- 
 fore he died. 
 
 "See, see, my friend! Behold my own letter. His 
 sacred blood has stained it. ... His lips perhaps have 
 pressed it! it well may be that tears of his have fallen 
 here also! . . . Never shall it leave me until my hand is 
 cold as this is! Adieu, dear hand!" She knelt down to 
 fondle it, had to be raised almost by force would have 
 returned for a last caress a final prayer, but that P. C. 
 Breagh, rendered desperate by the evident impatience of 
 the officer and the scowling looks of the Sergeant and his
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 431 
 
 merry men, lifted her bodily in his arms and carried her 
 away. 
 
 "I pray you put me down! . . . Me, I am not an in- 
 fant!" she protested. "See you well, Monsieur Breagh, I 
 do not think it conv enable that a gentleman should carry a 
 lady so! . . ." 
 
 Then her strength ebbed from her and she became in 
 truth, an infant. As her frail body yielded to his clasp, as 
 her head sank down upon his shoulder, she sighed, a long, 
 quivering sigh. 
 
 What of the youth who waded through the frozen sea of 
 Death, bearing in his arms his worshiped lady? He was 
 footsore and aching in every bone and muscle from long 
 marches and desperate exertion. His heart pounded so be- 
 neath her cheek that it seemed to him she must hear it and 
 be frightened, or that he must suffocate and die outright. 
 Terror and rapture, exquisite pain and exquisite pleasure, 
 mingled in the draught now held to his lips by Fate, Life 's 
 cup-bearer. And as he drank, with what strange birth- 
 pangs, his budding manhood burgeoned into flower. He 
 might look back upon his boyhood with regret, contempt, or 
 tenderness. . . . He would never be a boy again. 
 
 THE smallest and slenderest of women can be surprisingly 
 heavy, when carried in the arms of a lover who long has 
 borne her in his heart. 
 
 Thus to P. C. Breagh, stumbling with his burden over 
 roads strewn with weapons, accouterments, mess-tins, and 
 water-bottles, boxes of biscuit and halves of sugar-loaves 
 discarded by troops retiring in haste, the appearance of a 
 very tall peasant leading a little white-faced donkey came 
 as an unspeakably welcome relief. For a franc in good 
 French mon^y the owner of the donkey was more than will- 
 ing to hire out his beast. Thus, seated on this humble ani- 
 mal, P. C. Breagh 's Infanta returned to the cottage where 
 she had passed the previous night. 
 
 It was one of a hamlet boasting the name of Petit Plappe- 
 ville. To reach it they skirted the frightful carnage at St.
 
 432 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Hubert, threaded the wood of Chatel St. Germain, crossed 
 the railroad, unmolested by the Prussian patrols, and, fol- 
 lowing narrow lanes hidden between copses, came at last 
 upon its single street. 
 
 Madame Guyot, stout, hospitable, and voluble, received 
 Juliette with cries of welcome and open arms. Mademoi- 
 selle should have something better than dry bread on this 
 occasion, for a neighbor had that morning killed a calf. 
 Hence veal cutlet, fried in batter for some of the hens, 
 scared by yesterday's bombardment, had already begun 
 laying and an omelette with fine herbs. No less than 
 young demoiselles, wounded soldiers require nourishment, 
 and here behold, English Monsieur accompanying Made- 
 moiselle, here upon the pallet-bed in the corner of the 
 kitchen one of France's brave defenders in the person of 
 my Cousin Boisset. Pardon that he cannot rise to salute 
 you, for the Prussians have made it impossible. During 
 the battle of St. Privat yesterday, my Cousin Boisset was 
 twice wounded while serving with the Eighteenth Field 
 Battery of the Sixth Army Corps. . . . 
 
 Thus introduced, the gunner told his story, and told it 
 with vivacity in spite of his evident pain. His bandaged 
 head and the useless leg roughly swathed in a homespun 
 towel of Madame Guyot's told their story no less than his 
 nimble tongue and vivacious eyes and hands. 
 
 "We were overcome by force of numbers. . . . The Ger- 
 mans know nothing of scientific warfare. . . . Believe me, 
 Mademoiselle and Monsieur, we swept them down in rows 
 like ninepins painted black. At twelve hundred yards, and 
 again at fourteen hundred and the more we killed the 
 more there were to kill. Name of a pipe ! pardon, Made- 
 moiselle! it was inconceivable! We were compelled at 
 length to cease our fire because our ammunition failed us, 
 and it was not possible to butcher any more ! Worst of all, 
 our generals lost their heads, and issued contradictory or- 
 ders! Commissariat broke down before the ammunition- 
 service we had had nothing to eat for two days then we 
 ceased to have shrapnel with which to feed our guns. . . . 
 So we stood in front of a wood in which we might have 
 taken cover, being peppered by Prussian fire of infantry 
 and artillery, for three whole hours! Three solid hours, 
 Monsieur and Mademoiselle until we were remembered, 
 and ordered to retire. When the order came, few officers
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 433 
 
 remained, and not a single non-commissioned officer was left 
 to us. Of the three batteries of our brigade Division, two- 
 thirds lay dead upon the field. With my wounded leg 
 trailing behind me, I crawled over rank after rank of 
 bodies, pausing over many of my old comrades. . . . Then 
 I lay in the wood till dusk, and made crutches of saplings I 
 cut down with my penknife. With the day I reached my 
 cousin's house. . . . You may say 'All this is War' but 
 what kind of War ? is what I ask you. . . . I a soldier who* 
 has fought and bled for France ! ' ' 
 
 It was the voice of Juliette that answered from the cor- 
 ner of the blackened oaken settle, where she sat huddled 
 in the leaden stupor that is born of grief and fatigue : 
 
 "Soldier of France, I will try to answer your question. 
 ... I am young and ignorant, but I have read and thought 
 much. And now I have experienced what never can be for- 
 gotten. ... I have sat by the corpse of my father on the 
 battlefield. ... I have looked in the face of the great man 
 who is my country 's cruel enemy. ..." 
 
 Madame Guyot, who was frying a panful of veal cutlet, 
 started and looked round from her sputtering, savory- 
 smelling cookery. The wounded gunner, propped up on 
 the pallet-bed that stood in the corner of the low-ceiled, 
 stone-built kitchen, turned keen dark eyes and a resolute 
 bearded face toward the quarter whence came the silvery 
 voice : 
 
 "It is Bismarck's War," she said. "Stone by stone he 
 has built up Prussia until her vast shadow has swallowed 
 up all Germany. He has seen this huge man of colossal 
 ambitions that the road to Power greater still leads 
 through the gate of France. And Diplomacy could not 
 steal the key, so War is the lever with which he opens it. ' ' 
 
 "Alas, Mademoiselle," returned the gunner sorrowfully, 
 "it would never have opened while a French soldier was 
 left alive if we had not been betrayed! Have you seen 
 the picture of Cham in last week's Charivari? It reached 
 my battery through one of our officers. It is true mon 
 Dieu! it is desperately true. There is the Little Napoleon 
 of To-day dressed up in the old cocked hat and the tattered 
 rags of the capote that used to be worn by the Great Na- 
 poleon. He begs at the street-corner for sous and even 
 the prostitute turns away from the impostor. ' The End of 
 the Legend!' is written underneath. It is furiously chic
 
 434 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 and terribly clever and frightfully true, Mademoiselle. 
 For the Napoleonic legend is done with finished, for good 
 and all!" 
 
 She did not answer, the momentary flash of interest had 
 died out. "With her sad eyes fixed upon the ebony and 
 silver crucifix of her rosary, she was murmuring a prayer 
 doubtless for her father's soul. Seeing her thus ab- 
 sorbed, the soldier glanced at her companion, shrugged sig- 
 nificantly, and tapped his own forehead, as though he 
 would have said : 
 
 "It is well that women have faith in Heaven. See! 
 she turns to her beads, the poor little one. She is able to 
 pray ! that is fortunate. . . . Otherwise, grief would turn 
 her brain!" 
 
 Meeting no response from P. C. Breagh, who sat upon a 
 backless straw-bottomed chair in the chimney corner, rapt- 
 ly contemplating the small, sorrowful face, the gunner 
 shrugged again, and exchanged a wink of intelligence with 
 Madame Guyot, as she took the bubbling pan from the fire, 
 proclaiming the cutlet cooked to a turn. 
 
 Who has loved and does not remember the first meal par- 
 taken in the company of the beloved. To one guest at 
 Madame Guyot's board, the fried cutlet and tomatoes eaten 
 from her coarse platters of red-flowered crockery, the 
 home-baked loaf, the jug of thin red wine, the country 
 cheese and the dish of purple plums that served as dessert, 
 made a banquet worthy of the gods. To sit opposite that 
 little drawn, white face with the lowered, swollen eyelids, 
 and watch her brave pretense of relishing their hostess ' 
 victuals, would have been torture had it not been bliss. 
 
 When the homespun cloth had been drawn, the crumbs 
 shaken out upon the threshold for the hungry poultry, the 
 cat accommodated with a saucer of scraps, and the hearth 
 swept, P. C. Breagh, glancing at the cuckoo-clock that had 
 hiccuped twelve, and now pointed to the half-hour, got up 
 and reluctantly tore himself away. 
 
 "You are going? . . . Back to him? ... To make sure 
 that those soldiers have obeyed the orders of M. de Bis- 
 marck ? Ah ! that is what I have been praying for ! Our 
 Lady has put it into your head." 
 
 She said it eagerly, with her hand quieting the flutter in 
 her bosom. Of what else should de Bayard's daughter
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 435 
 
 have been thinking, P. C. Breagh asked himself. He en- 
 treated, his troubled gray eyes wistfully questioning: 
 
 ' ' You won 't leave this place until I come back ? Pray do 
 not ! . . . Promise me ! " 
 
 The soldier, chatting in low tones with the good woman 
 of the cottage, pricked his hairy ears at the unfamiliar ac- 
 cent of the English words. Juliette answered in the same 
 tongue : 
 
 "Monsieur, I give you my parole of honor. When you 
 come back to this house, if I am alive, you will find me 
 here, under the manteau of Our Lady. May she protect 
 and guard you. Au revoir! . . ." 
 
 P. C. Breagh echoed the final words, and held out his big 
 hand. She considered it a moment, hesitated, then laid her 
 own in the broad, blistered palm. As he shut his strong 
 fingers over the fragile captive, it struggled, then lay still, 
 throbbing like some small imprisoned bird. And a dimness 
 came before his eyes, and he hurriedly released her, stam- 
 mering : 
 
 "Take take care of yourself, won't you? I'll not be 
 very long away!" 
 
 She called him back. He knew a shock of joy and hur- 
 ried toward her. She slipped her Rosary into his hand 
 with a gold coin, faltering with eyes brimful, and quiver- 
 ing lips: 
 
 "This ... to be buried with him! . . . This for a 
 priest to read the Office and offer Mass ... if one can be 
 discovered ! . . . Oh ! if I might come with you ! . . . but 
 no ! I will not be unreasonable. Again, it must not be that 
 you carry me, as you did to-day !" 
 
 He trembled at the poignant recollection. She went on, 
 breathing fast and eagerly, lifting her eyes, poor rain- 
 washed scillas, to his laying her small hand timidly on his 
 shabby sleeve. 
 
 "Me, I have an idea! . . . There is now in Heaven a 
 great saint who was priest of a little village that lies not far 
 from here. . . . Since he died, it is eleven years. ... I 
 speak of M. Jean-Baptiste Vianney, the Blessed Cure of 
 Ars. ..." 
 
 P. C. Breagh nodded recognition of the shining name she 
 mentioned. She went on, her small fingers pinching a fold 
 of the rough brown sleeve :
 
 436 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Sacrifice mortification the Cross these things to the 
 holy Cure were the Keys of Heaven. The poorest and 
 simplest of his peasants was not poorer or simpler than he. 
 Even before his death Our Lord gave him the grace to 
 perform miracles, and always did Our Lady regard him 
 with tenderness. . . . See you well, I will pray to the 
 Blessed Jean Vianney to intercede for me, that God may 
 send a holy priest to read the Office for the dead ! ' ' 
 
 Her voice broke, and the bright tears brimmed over her 
 pure underlids. At the sight a wave of tenderness surged 
 up in him, pure of all sensuous passion, knowing only the 
 overwhelming desire to serve, and comfort, and protect. 
 ... He bent his head, and kissed the little hand, before he 
 turned and went from her. When he glanced back, midway 
 down the wide dusty street of the hamlet of scattered cot- 
 tages, Juliette was standing in the sunshine, looking ear- 
 nestly after him. 
 
 LI 
 
 SHE could think clearly and remember again. The con- 
 fusion in her overwrought brain gradually subsided. She 
 went back to the fatal days when the news of the defeats 
 of Worth and Spicheren rushed shrieking through France 
 and Belgium, and the 16th of August brought word of 
 Bazaine's intercepted retreat from Metz. That day a 
 young girl, sitting under the grisly wing of Madame Tessier 
 at the table d'hote of the Hotel de Flandre, in Brussels, 
 had risen up as pale as death and hurried from the room. 
 
 The picture was clear-cut, definite as a photograph. She 
 saw the tables in confusion. . . . French guests uprising, 
 the men exclaiming, and the ladies in tears, Belgians sym- 
 pathizing Teutons exchanging congratulatory eye-glances, 
 and smiles not at all concealed. As the white girl passed 
 the chair from which a German cavalry officer had risen, he 
 whipped the obstacle out of her way with an ogle and a 
 bow. And Juliette, covering her eyes as though the sight 
 of him scorched them, had fled past him. ... As she 
 quitted the salle a manger, the voice of Madame Tessier had 
 reached her, saying grimly to the dandy: 
 
 ' ' A civility from one of your nation at such a moment is 
 an insult, Monsieur."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 437 
 
 And Madame, with bristling mustaches, had also risen, 
 and gone in search of her daughter-in-law elect, to be 
 arrested at the foot of the grand staircase by a waiter with 
 the intelligence that Mademoiselle had gone to her room to 
 lie down, and begged not to be disturbed. ... To which 
 apartment, it being on the third floor, Madame Tessier 
 having wound up the twelve-o'clock dejeuner of hot meats 
 and vegetables and salad with coffee and pastry, did not 
 follow her. Had she braved the ascent, this story would 
 have ended in quite a different way. 
 
 Upon this day, that saw the battle of Mars la Tour, Juli- 
 ette would not have met the elegant, self-possessed, in- 
 gratiating lady who had spoken to her so amiably on the 
 previous afternoon. When Madame Tessier being en- 
 gaged in changing a French billet de ~banque into Belgian 
 money Juliette had inquired for letters at the bureau. 
 
 " 'Mademoiselle de Bayard.' . . . Unhappily there is 
 not a single letter for Mademoiselle de Bayard ..." had 
 said the curled and whiskered functionary, taking an enve- 
 lope from compartment "B" of the green baize-covered 
 letter-rack, and handing it to this lady, who stood imme- 
 diately behind. 
 
 Juliette had found it impossible not to see the address 
 upon this letter: 
 
 "To MADAME DE BAYE, 
 "HOTEL DE FLANDRE, 
 ' ' BRUSSELS, ' ' 
 
 written in rather a vulgar scrawl. It carried extra stamps, 
 and looked bulky. And the elegantly-gloved hand that was 
 extended to take it, recoiled from the contact as though the 
 envelope had concealed a scorpion. 
 
 The owner of the hand had regarded Mademoiselle de 
 Bayard with a piercing and exhaustive scrutiny, even as 
 she slipped the letter into a gold-mounted reticule, and 
 snapped the spring tight. She had observed in soft and 
 well-bred accents : 
 
 "Letters from one we love are enhanced in value, when 
 the writer must lay down the sword to use the pen. ..." 
 
 Through a black lace veil so thickly flowered as to 
 suggest a mask, a pair of brilliant eyes glittered at Juliette. 
 What dazzling teeth were revealed by the crimson lips
 
 438 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 that smiled. . . . The well-bred voice added, with an en- 
 trancing touch of melancholy: 
 
 "Under other circumstances, to address Mademoiselle 
 would be held a liberty the speaker being a stranger. 
 Yet as the wife of a French officer of the Imperial Guard, 
 I may be pardoned for presuming in my young country- 
 woman an anxiety similar to my own? ..." 
 
 "Ah, Madame," Juliette had said impulsively, "who is 
 there w r ould not pardon you?" 
 
 And she had looked with a young girl's honest admiration 
 at the sumptuous form in the perfectly-appointed dress. 
 When the lady had said, with brilliant eyes fixed on her : 
 
 "Were this letter not from my husband, I could wish it 
 had been for you," she continued: "Does Mademoiselle 
 know M. de Baye's regiment? The 777th Mounted Chas- 
 seurs . . .?" 
 
 "My father commands it, Madame," Juliette had 
 proudly answered. And an animated conversation would 
 have sprung from this answer, but Madame Tessier turned 
 round rather sharply, and the lady, with a slight, graceful 
 inclination, had glided rather rapidly away. 
 
 Later, Juliette had encountered Madame de Baye upon 
 the staircase, and had received another of her brilliant 
 glances, and another of her entrancing smiles. And, being 
 lonely in this strange land, and athirst for interest and 
 companionship, the young girl had woven a little romance 
 out of this passing acquaintanceship. 
 
 Now as she reached her room, trembling and ready to 
 sink with excitement and agitation, a woman stopped her 
 in the corridor, who looked like a lady's maid of the better 
 class. Well mannered, smart and discreet, she dropped 
 Mademoiselle de Bayard an ingratiating curtsey, handing 
 her at the same time a little three-cornered note. 
 
 As the messenger plainly waited for an answer, Juliette 
 unfolded the delicately perfumed cocked-hat. This is what 
 she read in a finely-pointed feminine caligraphy, with lasso- 
 loops to all the "g's," "y's," and "h's," and "s's" of the 
 prolonged, old-fashioned kind. 
 
 The maid had penned it at the dictation of her mistress, 
 who for an unexplained reason preferred another hand to 
 bait her hook. This is what Juliette read between her 
 heart-beats, striving to check her flowing tears, and the 
 sobs that rose in her throat:
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 439 
 
 "To you, Mademoiselle, so spirituelle, gentille and amia- 
 ble, I am fated, alas! to cause the greatest grief. I have 
 received the most terrible news of my husband's regiment. 
 The reports of the Emperor's resignation are false from 
 the beginning. The Army of Metz, Mademoiselle, has 
 encountered Prussian forces. . . . Where I knoiv not, but 
 with terrible loss! My Victor has been dangerously 
 wounded and conveyed to hospital at Metz. 1 fly thither 
 on the wings of anxiety and tenderness to receive too pos- 
 sibly! his final kiss. Also I learn that M. le Colonel de 
 Bayard has been taken prisoner. . . . My pen trembles as 
 I write the words. 
 
 "Since I may not tender them personally, receive, Made- 
 moiselle, my condolences and farewells. May Heaven pro- 
 tect you! 
 
 "Distractedly and devotedly, 
 
 "A. DE BAYE." 
 
 Madame was packing, said the maid upon whom Juliette 
 turned with a breathless inquiry. Without doubt Madame 
 would receive Mademoiselle. . . . And, having previously 
 been primed with instructions, Mariette, whom not so long 
 ago we encountered in Berlin, conducted Mademoiselle to a 
 door upon the lower landing, and having knocked discreetly 
 ushered the young lady in. 
 
 It was a bedroom crowded with trunks and imperials, 
 none of which seemed to have been unpacked. The lovely 
 lady of the veil was standing near the toilette-table in a 
 thoughtful pose which did justice to her figure and the 
 beauty of her profile. She had removed her veil and held 
 it in her hand, as she changed the position of a jeweled 
 comb in her hair. . . . She looked round as the door 
 opened. Her brilliant eyes, ruddy-brown as Persian sard 
 or Brazilian tourmaline, encountered the tearful eyes of 
 Juliette. She advanced to meet the girl with effusive 
 tenderness, crying: 
 
 ' ' Alas, poor little one ! From my heart I pity you ! . . . " 
 
 She was not so beautiful, unveiled, as she had appeared 
 behind her mask of black lace flowers. The handsome 
 eyes were bloodshot and too prominent. There were faint 
 dusky-red streaks showing through the purchased roses 
 and lilies of her complexion ; horizontal marks, resembling 
 the congenital disfigurement known as "port- wine stain."
 
 440 
 
 And withal she was an attractive woman of fascinating 
 manners. And her sympathy seemed genuine, and yet 
 for some incomprehensible reason, Juliette trembled at and 
 shrank from her touch. . . . 
 
 "You are too good to receive me you who are also 
 suffering! ..." She tried to collect herself, and not 
 cause distress. "How I pity you I cannot tell you! but 
 at least you have the knowledge that you are returning to 
 your husband's bedside. You will have the sad consola- 
 tion of seeing him, while I ..." 
 
 She broke down and sobbed, and the sympathetic Ade- 
 laide administered red lavender on sugar, while her maid 
 kept guard on the landing to intercept Madame Tessier 
 should she appear. The cock-and-bull story told the girl 
 would hardly have borne the test of recital before a third 
 person. But Juliette was young, and innocent and unsus- 
 pecting, and Adelaide was experienced in the ways of the 
 world, and very old in guile. . . . 
 
 "Courage, my child, and above all, have faith in 
 Heaven!" It did not at all suit her voluptuous type, the 
 heroic-pious tone. . . . "Naturally you will, knowing M. 
 le Colonel a prisoner, leave nothing undone to assuage the 
 miseries of his situation! . . . Have I guessed right? I 
 venture to think I have !" She patted Juliette's hand and 
 smiled in the drowned blue eyes, from which she gently 
 drew the little soaked handkerchief. "Accompanied by 
 your venerable protectress, you will instantly return to 
 France. You will leave no stone unturned to obtain an 
 interview with the Emperor you will implore him on your 
 knees to obtain M. le Colonel's exchange. . . . Presto! 
 the Emperor will set the machinery in motion. He will 
 give back three Officers to the King of Prussia and Made- 
 moiselle will have her father again! Is it not so, tell me, 
 my little one?" 
 
 She held the girl 's small hands in hers, and as she marked 
 off each item of her program, she gently clapped the hands 
 together, as in approval or consent. It was a character- 
 istic trick with Adelaide when she meant to be playfully 
 coaxing, and there was imprudence in employing it now. 
 But with the first inchoate stirring of memory in Juliette, 
 caution reawakened in Madame de Bayard. She released 
 the hands, and said in a graver tone : 
 
 "Your gouvernante will not object to return?"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Juliette responded: 
 
 "Dear Madame, that lady is not my instructress. She 
 is the excellent Madame Tessier, my grandmother's oldest 
 friend." 
 
 Adelaide's lip wore the expression of one who sniffs at 
 physic. Had she not been deafened with the recounted 
 virtues of this very Madame Tessier! As she racked her 
 memory for the date of a possible meeting, Juliette con- 
 tinued : 
 
 ' ' She is very kind to me. But I fear she will not consent 
 to return to France immediately. She is now upon her 
 way to Mons-sur-Trouille to attend the wedding of her only 
 son. All has been arranged. It is to take place upon the 
 22d." 
 
 A sigh heaved her breast, and her eyelids sank under the 
 burning gaze of Adelaide. But Adelaide was still engaged 
 with Madame Tessier. 
 
 "If she has seen me once and it may well be once! 
 she certainly has forgotten me!" she commented mentally. 
 Aloud she said : 
 
 ''But you, Mademoiselle you are free to return to our 
 beloved country. Under my own guardianship if you will. 
 Do not refuse ! . . . Grant me the privilege ! ' ' 
 
 Juliette panted: 
 
 "Oh, if I might accept! . . . But this marriage is the 
 obstacle ! Because M. Tessier could not return to France 
 for it, my father commanded that I should go. All the 
 more urgently that War had been declared with Prussia, 
 and the regiment had been ordered to join the Imperial 
 Army at Metz." 
 
 Madame Adelaide repeated scoffingly: 
 
 "This marriage . . . this marriage. ... Is your pres- 
 ence necessary to legalize the ceremony?" 
 
 Juliette cried, opening wide her eyes : 
 
 "Alas! yes, Madame! for I am to be the bride! . . ." 
 
 A shock visibly passed through the nerves of the woman 
 who heard her. She started in her chair and grew livid 
 underneath her powder and rouge. And the dusky marks 
 on her fair skin started into sinister prominence. She was 
 suddenly terrible, and haggard and old. . . . 
 
 "So, that was de Bayard's plot. ... To marry her!" 
 Adelaide heard an inward voice saying. "Why did you 
 not foresee that, knowing her of age? Nineteen though
 
 442 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 she looks like a child, almost. . . . Her grandmother pos- 
 sessed that physique of an infant, in combination with an 
 iron determination, and a regard of truth that robbed Life 
 of every alleviation, deprived conversation of grace and 
 versatility reduced the very language of Love to the level 
 of a notary's precis. ..." 
 
 All this passed through her brain in an instant. She 
 controlled herself, rose, took the girl's hands again, and 
 kissed her on the brow, saying with sorrowful melodious- 
 ness : 
 
 "My child, I comprehend! But while I rejoice at the 
 happiness that awaits the daughter, I weep forgive me 
 that I weep! for the father in his prison-cell. He is 
 handsome, thy betrothed and brave and not a soldier? 
 In a day like this when our France cries out for men?" 
 
 Juliette clenched her little hands as the languid irony 
 stabbed her. She cried out, almost beside herself: 
 
 "Oh, that is what I feel, and for that I cannot pardon 
 him ! Why is he not a soldier ? One could esteem him if 
 he were! But oh! Madame, I despise him, and that 
 makes it the more terrible. . . . This marriage with a 
 husband whom I have never even seen!" 
 
 "Ah, ha! ..." she heard a strange voice scream 
 through peals of laughter. "Ah, la, la! what a clumsy 
 game to play ! . . . Fi done, M. le Colonel! ... So we 
 were to be married in the style of the Old Commander. 
 . . . 'Pas files a droitet ... To the church, quick march!' 
 Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! how droll! ..." 
 
 She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, and said, 
 controlling^-her frantic merriment: 
 
 "Sweet child, forgive me, I am a little hysterical. . . . 
 The shock of Victor's wound . . . my sympathy with your 
 cruel situation. . . . How could M. le Colonel subject you 
 to a trial so severe?" Feeling herself upon unsafe ground, 
 she dried her eyes again and amended. "That, I compre- 
 hend, is a question between yourselves. . . . When this 
 wedding was arranged M. le Colonel had no comprehension 
 of what would befall him. Yet, for his sake, would it not 
 be wise to delay? Engage the interest of the Emperor 
 before it is too late to reach the beloved captive. Should 
 he be interned in some fortress of East Prussia, how will 
 even a daughter's tenderness reach him amidst those deso- 
 late plains in those caverns of freezing stone! ..."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 443 
 
 She used her fine voice like a consummate artist of the 
 theater. . . . Juliette had a vision of her father dying, 
 fettered, ghastly and gaunt with famine, as an engraving 
 of Count Ugolino in his dungeon she remembered to have 
 somewhere seen. . . . And her secret horror of Charles 
 Tessier, wedded with the feverish longing to return to 
 France and work for the release of her dear prisoner, 
 prompted her to decision now. . . . 
 
 "I will go with you, since you are good enough to pro- 
 pose it. But Madame Tessier will never give her consent. 
 Therefore, we must leave here without consulting her, and 
 secretly. ... I will write a letter explaining all. Money 
 I have for the railway charges, not much, but I think 
 sufficient ! ' ' 
 
 Said Adelaide, barely able to hide her triumph : 
 
 "Leave the purchase of the tickets to me, ma mignonne! 
 I have a pretty little score to settle with M. le Colonel. "We 
 will settle our accounts presently, I promise you! What 
 is the matter now?" 
 
 Juliette gasped : 
 
 ' ' Alas ! I have no passport ! At least, Madame Tessier 
 has both ours. ..." 
 
 "Ah, bah!" said Adelaide. "We will borrow Mari- 
 ette 's. . . . She can remain here at pasture, and amuse 
 herself with the waiters ! . . . " She burst out laughing at 
 Juliette's look of astonishment, and tapped her under the 
 chin, telling her to go to her room, pack a small hand-bag 
 with necessary articles, change into a dark, plain walking- 
 dress, and rejoin her as soon as might be. She showed 
 a small watch, its back thickly crusted with emeralds, 
 saying : 
 
 ' ' Hurry ! . . . You have barely a quarter of an hour. ' ' 
 ' Then she opened the door, sped her capture with a beam- 
 ing smile, beckoned Mariette, and this strange colloquy 
 took place between Circe and her tirewoman: 
 
 "Did the old woman come nosing upstairs after the 
 little Mademoiselle joined me?" 
 
 Mariette replied : 
 
 "She did, Madame, but I had locked both Mademoiselle's 
 doors that leading into the old lady's room, and the one 
 that opens on the corridor, and put the keys in my pocket. 
 Here they are ! ' ' 
 
 She held them up, her sallow features expressive with
 
 444 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the expectation of a reward earned by intelligence. Said 
 Adelaide, impatiently tapping her handsome foot: 
 
 "And then? . . . And then? ..." 
 
 "Then I accidentally encountered Madame on the 
 threshold of Mademoiselle's apartment. Seeing her about 
 to knock, I told her that I had seen the young lady descend 
 the stairs, carrying a letter, which I supposed Mademoiselle 
 intended to post at the pillar in the vestibule. . . . Hear- 
 ing this the old lady thanked me, and bundled down- 
 stairs. She is asthmatic, judging by her wheezing. . . . 
 She will wait a bit before she climbs up all these flights 
 again." 
 
 Adelaide thought a moment, and then gave orders. 
 
 "Run you down, hunt up the old woman help her to 
 search everywhere for the little thing you understand! 
 . . . Half an hour will be sufficient to detain her below 
 stairs. In less time Mademoiselle will be safe with me in 
 my apartment. . . . Then you will give Madame these 
 keys and a little note written by Mademoiselle. . . . Or 
 do you know of a waiter who would undertake to do this 
 and hold his tongue?" 
 
 Mariette's expression became sentimental. She said, 
 with her head tilted on one side : 
 
 "There is one, a Swiss youth, handsome and with the 
 form of an athlete, upon whose fidelity and silence Madame 
 can implicitly rely. ..." 
 
 "For how much?" Adelaide demanded, having no illu- 
 sions as to the permanence of an unpurchased silence. 
 
 Mariette answered: 
 
 "I will guarantee Adolphe Madame 's for the sum of 
 twenty francs!" 
 
 Adelaide gave her a bank-note, and the faithful creature 
 tripped away to split it. Despite youth, beauty and 
 muscles, her Adolphe only got ten francs. But he carried 
 out his instructions and handed Madame Tessier the keys, 
 with a little envelope, containing a hasty line in the hand- 
 writing of Juliette: 
 
 "Dearest Madame," it said. "This moment I have re- 
 ceived grave news of my father, compelling me to leave 
 your side. This marriage must be deferred. Entreat .)/. 
 Charles to excuse me! I embrace and pray you to pardon. 
 
 "J. M. DEB."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 445 
 
 The little note was penned on the corner of Adelaide's 
 toilette-table. While Madame read it and fainted, was 
 revived by Mariette and the athletic Adolphe, scolded 
 herself into hysterics, came out of them and dispatched 
 telegrams; tore the telegrams up and wrote letters, Juli- 
 ette was safely hidden in Madame Adelaide's room. 
 
 Later on, when Madame Tessier had left the hotel, with 
 her luggage and the trunks and bandboxes of the vanished 
 bride-elect this time containing the marriage robe, crown 
 and so on, Madame de Baye sent for her bill and paid it 
 ordered a fiacre and drove to the station, accompanied by 
 her maid, and her maid's sister, a demure little person in 
 black merino, cut convent-style, whose head was draped, 
 after the fashion of some lay novices, with a black silk veil. 
 
 The abduction was effected in the simplest fashion. . . . 
 Not a soul turned to look at the dowdy little figure carrying 
 the hand-bag, its slight proportions half hidden in the 
 sweeping folds of Adelaide's silken train. 
 
 The station was crowded with newly-arrived French 
 officers, men of MacMahon's defeated army, who wore their 
 swords, having given their parole to their captors not to 
 serve again in the War. Belgian officers fraternized with 
 them, Belgian ladies of the Red Cross were busily en- 
 gaged in making much of those who were wounded. . . . 
 Juliette's heart swelled at the sight of the bandages and 
 crutches, and when the laden stretchers were carried past, 
 the hot tears streamed down her white cheeks behind her 
 screening veil. 
 
 The train carried a great many French passengers, as 
 well as an English Red Cross column and a Belgian one. 
 When the engine shrieked, Juliette started as guiltily as 
 though it had been the voice of Madame Tessier, shrilly 
 lamenting an absconding daughter-in-law. 
 
 They were off launched upon the iron road that led 
 back to France and freedom. The excellent Mariette re- 
 mained behind. She would sleep at some hotel, procure 
 a passport, and join her mistress later. Madame de Baye 
 took the trouble to explain. 
 
 From the shrinking little figure in the corner of the car- 
 riage came a muffled sound in answer. 
 
 "Let her mope," Adelaide said to herself. "Thought is 
 necessary to carry out my plan ! ' '
 
 446 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 You are to see her as Juliette saw her, leaning her fair 
 round elbow on the padded window-ledge, and thinking, as 
 the rolling plains in the vicinity of Brussels gradually gave 
 place to valley and hill. All of fierce and sensual and 
 treacherous that mingled in her complex nature with how 
 many nobler qualities, showed now in the beautiful mask 
 of Adelaide, even as she sat brooding there. 
 
 She had knotty problems to decide, it must be admitted. 
 . . . How best to play this marvelous trump, her daughter 
 thrown in her way by chance, was one of these. That plot 
 of Straz, for bringing the girl into contact with the Heir 
 Imperial, might be combined with Adelaide's own original 
 notion of employing the girl's influence to bring about a 
 reconciliation with M. de Bayard. 
 
 The indifference of M. de Bismarck had quashed her 
 tentative approaches on the one subject. The silent con- 
 tempt of de Bayard had thrown the other affair out of 
 gear. To score off both would be magnificent. ... As 
 for Straz . . . she lost grip of herself when she thought of 
 the Roumanian, murmuring : 
 
 "For revenge on him, who has robbed me of my beauty, 
 how cheerfully I would give my soul ! ' ' 
 
 Juliette, from her corner, saw the change and shuddered. 
 Adelaide turned sharply, to read terror in the girl's face. 
 
 "What is it, my chicken? Has anything frightened 
 you?" . . . 
 
 The terrifying Medusa turned to a maternally-smiling 
 Cybele. She leaned across the intervening space of cushion, 
 to playfully pat the knee of her charge. But the answering 
 smile was as faint as the scent of frozen violets. . . . The 
 spell of her beauty had been broken when her demon had 
 looked out of her eyes. 
 
 ' ' My nerves are not as strong as they were before what 
 happened in July," she told herself. "And that is another 
 debt I owe to Nicolas. He would be wiser to let me forget 
 him if oblivion be possible. ' ' 
 
 Her looking-glass bore out each day what the Roumanian 
 had said to her. "Never will you ~be able to look in your 
 mirror without remembering me!" 
 
 And to keep her smart alive, the Slav had adopted a 
 method of his own invention. Peculiarly ingenious and 
 characteristic of Straz. 
 
 At intervals Adelaide received anonymous letters, con-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 447 
 
 taining inclosures, wherever she went and by whatever 
 alias she passed. Envelopes directed in varying hands 
 would contain doll's mirrors costing but a sou or two. 
 Pinchbeck-framed ovals or circles of tin or glass, always 
 reflecting the same thing. 
 
 A livid face of hate, streaked with those faint brownish 
 red marks left by the tightened folds of the silk scarf that 
 had so nearly strangled her. She had tried to laugh at this 
 childish form assumed by the malice of the Roumanian. 
 But the deadly cleverness of the thing lay in the fact that 
 it did what it was meant to do. The medieval torture of 
 the falling drops of water was equaled by this Ordeal of 
 the Penny Looking-Glass. 
 
 "Look, see, and think of me!" sometimes ran the dog- 
 gerel rhyme scrawled on the paper wrapping of the doll's 
 mirror. At other times: 
 
 "Charms that are spoiled hold no men entoiled!" would 
 be the motto, or something equally stupid, dull and banal. 
 The stupidity was becoming unbearable by its very repeti- 
 tion ; by the certainty and regularity with which the laden 
 envelopes arrived. Sometimes Adelaide felt entangled in a 
 cunningly woven network . . . surrounded by spies, sleep- 
 less and unseen. . . . Yet in the maid Mariette the Slav 
 had found an accomplice clever enough to carry out his 
 purposes single-handed. The cream of the thing was 
 Adelaide never suspected Mariette. 
 
 Treacherous herself, she believed in the devotion of this 
 woman, who watched her anguish grimly, planting fresh 
 thorns in her mistress's shuddering flesh. And every day 
 or so brought another doll's looking-glass. The jeer that 
 accompanied the last had been a vilely parodied verse of 
 the child's dancing-song: 
 
 "Ma commere etait belle! 
 Helas! dans le temps! 
 Ma commere etait belle! 
 Helas! dans le temps! Helas! 
 Pousser un soupir! 
 A vue de ma commere: 
 L' Amour n'a qu'a mourir! 
 Helas!" 
 
 One may imagine the curl of Adelaide's lip on reading 
 rubbish like this. But she read it more than once, and 
 when she finally burned it, the accursed jingle, burr-like,
 
 >48 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 stuck in her memory: for she it was who had been beauti- 
 ful in the time that had passed for evermore the gossip 
 at the first sight of whose damaged, unveiled charms Love 
 sighed and gave up the ghost. 
 
 LII 
 
 MEANWHILE Juliette, nestled in her corner, stared from the 
 window as Belgium hurried by. Bouillon, at whose station 
 they left the train, showed a platform crowded with swag- 
 gering Prussian officers of the Crown Prince 's army some 
 of them wounded, all upon parole. French ladies, entering 
 and leaving the carriages, looked daggers at their enemies. 
 Poisoned daggers at Adelaide, who, to her secret annoyance, 
 was recognized and familiarly greeted by two of these 
 Teutonic warriors, one a tall and red-whiskered Bavarian 
 Light Dragoon, the other a brown-coated Hussar of von 
 Barnekow's Brigade. 
 
 In vain Adelaide ignored the pair and redoubled the 
 directions she was giving to a porter. The Bavarian coolly 
 thrust the man aside, opened the carriage-door and jumped 
 upon the steps. 
 
 "Meine gnddigste . . . loveliest Countess, you won't give 
 the go-by to your old comrade Otto? Here also is von 
 Wissman, who claims a greeting from you!" 
 
 There was no gainsaying the boisterous good-fellowship 
 of the officers. They superintended the removal of the lug- 
 gage from the van, engaged a pair-horsed fiacre, and ad- 
 vised as to its loading. When Adelaide and her charge 
 entered they followed uninvited, and deposited themselves 
 on the front seat, incommoding the ladies with their long 
 spurred boots and filling the vehicle with the odor of 
 cigars and wine. Both talked much ; the Hussar chattered 
 incessantly; giving details of the various actions he had 
 been engaged in, the chance by which he had been taken 
 prisoner, the irksomeness of being interned in Belgium 
 until the ending of hostilities: 
 
 "Not that it will be long before the War is over. We 
 now hold Alsace Lorraine and the country north and east 
 of Metz. The Crown Prince is making for Chalons; that 
 will give the French Emperor an attack of hysterics. He 
 has handed over the supreme command to Bazaine, and
 
 THE MAK OF : IRON 449 
 
 yesterday left Gravelotte for Verdun. That means Chal- 
 ons, and after Chalons will be Paris. Badinguet has had 
 enough of campaigning to last him the rest of his reign." 
 
 Adelaide asked: 
 
 "And the Prince?" 
 
 The brown Hussar puffed out his cheeks and squinted 
 like a pantomime-mask. The Bavarian replied: 
 
 "Lulu went with papa, though we heard they had trou- 
 ble to make him. He wanted to stop and kill Prussians 
 they're such horrible beasts, you know!" 
 
 "You droll beggar, Strelitz, shut up with your mum- 
 mery," said the Hussar, leaning across him to pitch his 
 cigar-butt away. 
 
 "Madame is fire-proof, why waste the stump of a three- 
 mark Havana?" chuckled Strelitz, keeping his own weed 
 alight. He went on, drolling for the benefit of his com- 
 panion : 
 
 ' ' This meeting, loveliest Countess, makes me feel a youth 
 again garlanding the grim temples of Bellona with the 
 roses of the goddess of Love. You remember the classical 
 lessons you used to give me only last winter, in your charm- 
 ing flat near the Linden Strasse ? ' ' 
 
 He ogled Adelaide with comic sentimentality : 
 
 "And the jovial supper-party at which I was present, 
 when von Kessel, of the Guards Infantry, had the presump- 
 tion to bring an uninvited guest!" 
 
 ' ' Why apologize ! ' ' laughed the Hussar. ' ' The pleasant- 
 est acquaintanceships are made by chance ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Ah, but this was not chance ! ' ' said the Bavarian, with 
 mock solemnity. ' ' It was one of those accidents that only 
 happen by design. Von Schon-Valverden bored von Kessel 
 frightfully to take him left the fat fellow no peace until 
 he gave in. The Count is reported to have paid the pen- 
 alty." 
 
 ' ' Aha ! I can imagine what happened to the youngster ! ' ' 
 giggled the Hussar. 
 
 Replied the comedian : 
 
 "He had three losses that evening. Each one more 
 serious than the last!" 
 
 Adelaide shrugged, but she did not look angry; indeed, 
 through her veil her disdainful beauty assumed a smiling 
 cast. 
 
 "Three losses," the comedian repeated, "exactly as in
 
 450 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 my own case. For he first lost his money so did I ! we 
 were playing baccarat that evening then he lost his head, 
 and finally his heart ! ' ' 
 
 "Otto, thou wert always a tease!" protested Madame, 
 but her ill-hurnor had softened into conscious coquetry, 
 and her eyes beamed radiantly through the flowers of her 
 masking veil. 
 
 "Or he would have!" continued Otto: "had not his 
 mother, the Countess, come flying to the rescue and carried 
 him off, nobody knows where ! . . . " 
 
 Adelaide's eyes blazed. She said in a tone of haughty 
 nonchalance : 
 
 "Count Valverden is now with the first Army, advanc- 
 ing toward Metz. . . . He says he hopes to win the silver 
 sword-knot before the close of the campaign." 
 
 "You correspond?" the Hussar asked, grinning, as the 
 driver signified impatience by kicking the back of the box- 
 seat. Both officers got out of the carriage as Adelaide 
 answered coldly: 
 
 "He often writes to me." 
 
 The driver, ignored, opened a little padded trap-hole in 
 the front part of the vehicle. He clapped his mouth to it 
 and shouted in the Flemish tongue : 
 
 "Geef my U address!" 
 
 Adelaide gave the name of the Hotel des Postes. The 
 officers kissed her hand and said they would call there on 
 the morrow. They waved as the fiacre rumbled out of the 
 station. Adelaide waved back, and issued quite another 
 direction through the driver's trap-hole. And the fiacre 
 went jingling through the old-world streets of the castled 
 town that sits on the broad flowing river whose bridge was 
 crowded with French and Belgian officers, chatting, smok- 
 ing and discussing the news of the War. 
 
 Presently they were free of the streets, roaring with the 
 tongues of many nations, choked with trains of French 
 wounded, Red Cross columns, Sisters, surgeons, bearers, 
 carriages full of visitors, and more processions of officers 
 on parole. The fiacre lumbered at a good pace behind its 
 pair of heavy-hocked Flemish horses along a wide, straight 
 road, with plains on either side. And presently tall black 
 wooden observation-towers marked the frontier where Bel- 
 gian videttes and outposts amicably fraternized with 
 French.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 451 
 
 Kilometer posts of wood instead of stone. . . . The dear 
 French language in the mouths of people. Breasting hills 
 covered with woods, instead of fallow plains, intersected 
 with level roads bordered with eternal poplar-trees. 
 
 With the joy and relief of the return, Juliette's heavy 
 heart grew lighter. Her muscles relaxed. She could un- 
 clench her hands again. For the horror she had felt at the 
 contiguity of the German officers and the loathing their 
 familiar address had inspired in her had been well-nigh 
 unbearable, though she understood their language but 
 imperfectly. And this strange woman, her self-chosen 
 protectress, who greedily fed on an admiration so coarse, 
 Who was she? What was she? The poor girl shuddered 
 as she wondered. Of women like Adelaide she had no 
 experience, and yet she could not silence the voice of her 
 doubt. 
 
 When Madame good-humoredly bade her unlock travel- 
 ing bags, unstrap baskets and serve both with the food 
 and drink she had lavishly provided, Juliette, declining all 
 offers of refreshment, waited upon her, in silence so frozen 
 that the patience of her protectress was severely taxed. 
 
 Unaided, Madame emptied a pint bottle of champagne, 
 a fluid which temporarily elevates the spirits, and con- 
 sumed the greater part of a cold pate, with pastry and 
 fruit, winding up the repast with a Turkish cigarette and 
 a thimbleful of cognac from the silver flask in her traveling- 
 bag. 
 
 ' ' How dull you are how cold, you tiny creature ! ' ' she 
 grumbled. "Is it blood that runs in your veins, or melted 
 snow? From whom do you inherit this torpid nature 
 without vivacity, warmth, or gaiety? Your father was 
 not lacking in fire and passion. . . . Your mother 
 Her long eyes laughed wickedly. "A feminine volcano, 
 shall we say?" 
 
 A shock went through the girl. She visibly quailed and 
 shuddered. Through the rumbling of the fiacre, she heard 
 herself speaking in a voice she hardly recognized : 
 
 "My mother. . . . Did you know my mother? And 
 knowing her dare you speak of her to me? . . ." 
 
 Dare ! . . . " Adelaide threw back her handsome head 
 in a gale of laughter, curling back her crimson lips, lavishly 
 displaying her splendid teeth. "I dare do many things," 
 she said, still laughing. "Conventionality . . . timidity
 
 452 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 . . . these are not characteristics distinctive of me! Nor 
 were they ever, to do myself justice. . . . Why are we 
 stopping at this miserable place ? ' ' 
 
 Juliette, rendered dumb by growing fear of her com- 
 panion, did not answer. The carriage drew up at a cross- 
 roads where a bridge arched the Givonne. They were upon 
 the fringes of the village, near a country inn and posting- 
 house. The driver had an ancient understanding with the 
 proprietor of this hostelry that his beasts should break 
 down here. 
 
 He now got down from his perch. Adelaide lowered the 
 window. The man explained by the aid of signs that the 
 horses were quite exhausted and they were yet three miles 
 from Sedan. The proprietor of the inn assisted at the 
 colloquy, extending the distance by another mile hinting 
 at possible dangers after nightfall. He could supply an 
 excellent supper, a comfortable double bedroom coffee at 
 the peep of day, a vehicle and horses to take Madame and 
 Mademoiselle to Sedan, or wherever they chose. . . . 
 
 Finally the driver was paid enough to satisfy even his 
 cupidity. Madame 's luggage was taken upstairs, the ladies 
 mounted to their room. 
 
 It was a low-ceiled, dampish apartment containing two 
 bedsteads of uncomfortable aspect, with flock beds and 
 dusty chintz draperies. Candles were lighted, put on the 
 chimney-piece. ... A fire of damp billets was set smoking 
 6y the efforts of the chambermaid, who was not disinclined 
 to talk. French troops were encamped near. Let the ladies 
 look from the window. Those lines of red and yellow lights 
 glaring through a rising fog marked the sites of the sol- 
 diers' watch-fires. There were officers down below drinking 
 wine and playing cards in the salle a manger. Also sol- 
 diers were drinking cider in the yard. It made one feel 
 more safe, the presence of so many warriors. Indeed, 
 Sedan was full of them, and all the country round about. 
 . . . At Metz also, even more, with guns enough to kill 
 all the Prussians in existence. The chambermaid felt con- 
 fident that they would soon be driven out of France. 
 
 Still talking, she supplied hot water, and laid a little 
 supper- table, the ladies preferring not to descend. A 
 smoked omelette with herbs, some stewed pears, and a 
 seed-cake furnished the supper, with a decanter of thin red 
 wine.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 453 
 
 Adelaide nibbled and sipped discontentedly. Juliette, 
 being famished, made a meal. The billets refusing warmth 
 Madame unrobed her sumptuous person, arrayed herself in 
 lace and lawn, enlisting the services of her charge as lady's 
 maid, and gracefully betook herself to bed. There she 
 leaned on her white elbow, chatting while Juliette made 
 her own preparations for the down-lying. . . . Her tigerish 
 mood was past. She was amiable almost affectionate. 
 . . . She even praised the girlish charms reluctantly un- 
 veiled in the process of undressing ; remarking : 
 
 "After all, you only want style and more tournure to do 
 execution among the men. Some of them actually prefer 
 coldness. They say it gives the illusion of innocence. Have 
 you locked the door? Yes! Then double-lock and drag 
 a trunk before it, and shut the window and slide the bolt. 
 . . . Pull down the blind and draw the curtain. . . . One 
 cannot b^ too careful in places like these! ..." 
 
 "But we shall be suffocated!" Juliette cried in con- 
 sternation, forgetting her deadly fear of Adelaide in her 
 craving for fresh air. And then in the ghastly face the 
 other turned upon her, she saw the unmistakable stamp of 
 Fear. 
 
 "What have I said? . . . What has frightened you? 
 Are you ill? Pray tell me!" she begged. 
 
 But Adelaide waved her off, biting her pale lips to bring 
 the blood back to them, saying harshly: "It is nothing! 
 A spasm. I have suffered from them of late. ... Do not 
 stare at me as though I were hideous. Give me my reticule. 
 . . . There! on the toilette-table. How clumsy you tiny 
 things can be ! . . . " 
 
 Trembling, Juliette handed her the gold-mounted bauble. 
 She took a little phial from it and a measuring-glass. 
 
 "Now place one of those candles on the night-stand, 
 beside me. One will not do give me both ! . . . " 
 
 There was laudanum in the little crystal phial. When 
 Adelaide had measured and swallowed her dose she 
 breathed more easily, stared less fixedly, and those disfigur- 
 ing reddish-purple streaks of Straz's handiwork showed 
 less vividly against the creamy skin. Her suffused eyes 
 regained clearness. She lay back among her pillows and 
 declared herself better . . . laughed at the terror still vis- 
 ible in Juliette's face. . . . 
 
 "Now give me the little pistol and the pearl-handled
 
 454 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 dagger out of the inner compartment in my traveling-bag. 
 ... The large, deep pocket that fastens with' a snap. 
 What! you would rather not! . . . You do not like to 
 handle them. . . . Fi done, Mademoiselle! A soldier's 
 daughter and guilty of such cowardice ! . . . " 
 
 Juliette winced at the thrust. It was her turn to bite 
 her lips. She steadied them and mastered her voice suf- 
 ficiently to say : 
 
 "I dislike to touch such weapons, because I have never 
 learned to use them. And I will ask you, Madame, not to 
 speak jestingly of my father to me!" 
 
 "Give me the pistol and stiletto, then!" stipulated her 
 tormentress. 
 
 In silence Juliette took one of the candles, and set it near 
 the traveling-bag upon the table near the supper-tray 
 which the chambermaid had neglected to remove. She 
 dived into the deep pocket as directed, and drew out a 
 double-barreled pistol, mounted in ebony and silver, and 
 the dagger, a costly toy of Indian workmanship. Some- 
 thing else fell upon the floor with a faint tinkle. It was a 
 miniature set with pearls, that had rolled under the table. 
 She laid the pistol and dagger there, took the candlestick 
 and stooped to pick the miniature up. The portrait within 
 the oval of pearls and gold was that of a girl-child of some 
 five years. In the pictured face that smiled up at her 
 with eyes as deeply blue as the spring skies of Italy, 
 Juliette with a thrill and shock indescribable, recognized 
 herself. . . . 
 
 "It was the August of 1856. Thou hadst five years, and 
 thy curls were as soft and yellow as chicken~down. . . . 
 Thy mother used to say: 'Juliette wiU never be black 
 like me!' ' 
 
 The beloved voice was in her ears, with the very throb of 
 his aching heart in it. De Bayard 's daughter knelt so long 
 upon the floor, motionless, staring at the horror, that 
 Adelaide accused her jestingly of having fallen asleep. 
 
 "Get up! Wake! Give me my pistol and the dagger. 
 I call them my babies they sleep under my pillow ever 
 since never mind! . . . Ah! You have blown out the 
 candle. . . . Light it at this one! or perhaps you will 
 have light enough without it? ... Ugh! how cold your 
 hand is, you chilly little frog!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 455 
 
 Juliette had blown out the candle so that she might 
 unseen return the portrait to the dressing-bag. Had 
 Straz's Sultana not been heavy with laudanum, she would 
 have perceived this. 
 
 Now she yawned, stretched, smiled, declared herself 
 actually sleepy, in spite of a mattress apparently stuffed 
 with potatoes and stones. . . . 
 
 Juliette was kneeling by the other bedside, a slender, 
 rigid little figure in a white night-robe, striving to collect 
 her whirling thoughts sufficiently to say her prayers. When 
 she rose up, Adelaide asked her drowsily: 
 
 "Do you pray always? . . . And what do you pray for ? 
 And for whom, tell me, you secret little thing!" ,, 
 
 The low answer came: 
 
 "I pray for the living, Madame, and for the departed. 
 . . . For my father and others who are dear to me; for 
 myself and for my grandmother's soul!" 
 
 "For your mother?" Adelaide queried curiously. 
 
 ' ' I pray that my mother may repent and be forgiven ! ' ' 
 
 "Ah-h!" Adelaide's inflection was sleepily scornful. 
 ' ' So you think her a terrible sinner, eh, Mademoiselle ? ' ' 
 
 The white-robed figure palpably shuddered, yet the an- 
 swer came unfalteringly: 
 
 "It is not for me to judge you, Madame!" 
 
 The clean riposte pierced the consciousness that had 
 been dulled by the opiate. There was a dreadful silence, 
 during which the girl could hear her own heart drumming, 
 and through the noise it made, the hiss of her mother's 
 sharply intaken and expelled breath. Then Adelaide 
 shrugged, saying in a tone of drowsy irony : 
 
 "That is the most sensible utterance I have yet heard 
 from you, ma mignonne. Well the discovery was inevit- 
 able! Now, with your leave, I am going to sleep! ..." 
 
 And she did, while the girl sat huddled among her scanty 
 bedclothes, clasping her knees and praying for day. Torn 
 between unconquerable aversion toward this bold, auda- 
 cious, worldly woman, and the old yearning toward the 
 beautiful lost mother, enshrined as a demi-goddess in a 
 young child's recollection, you may imagine Juliette's 
 mental and physical plight. 
 
 That one should shudder at the touch of her who stood* 
 in so sacred a relation was inconceivable. . . . That one 
 should welcome it was inconceivable also. . Dim con-
 
 !456 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 jectures as fo her mother's past, as to her present mode of 
 life, were evolved from the depths of the daughter's Con- 
 vent-bred ignorance. . . . Would those German officers 
 have looked so boldly, conversed so coarsely and familiarly, 
 if they had not had reason to believe such approaches 
 welcome, even agreeable? . . . The lives of Phryne, 
 Thai's and Aspasia were missing from the pages of 
 Juliette's School Dictionary of Classical Biography. Yet 
 when Cora Pearl had flashed past her in the Bois, or upon 
 the Champs Elysees, driving four mouse-colored ponies in 
 silver harness wielding a jeweled parasol driving-whip 
 she had instinctively averted her gaze from the face of the 
 courtesan. 
 
 Was Juliette 's mother a woman like that woman ? And 
 why, within a few hours from their chance, accidental 
 meeting, had she inveigled her daughter into a snare ? . . . 
 For that some sinister purpose had prompted the proceed- 
 ing began to be clear to the poor young girl. 
 
 Love. . . . Oh, Heaven ! was the look in those hard eyes 
 born of the divine tenderness that a mother feels for her 
 child ? Was it not hatred that glittered from them ? Was 
 it not revenge that had concocted the plot? 
 
 The marriage with M. Charles Tessier, so keenly desired 
 by the Colonel, had been quashed by his wife's kite-like 
 swoop upon the bride. Was that story of de Bayard's 
 having been made prisoner by Prussians true or invented ? 
 If false, whither were they now bound ? . . . " Oh, help, 
 Mother of Mercy, Mary most pitiful! Pray for me that 
 light may be given me! teach me what I ought to 
 do! . . ." 
 
 Growing calmer the reflection occurred to Juliette that 
 this mother so strangely encountered could not be all un- 
 tender toward her daughter, or the pearl-set miniature 
 would not have been kept. . . . This brought tears to 
 her aching eyes, and some relief to her apprehensions. She 
 determined, remembering that token of lingering kindness, 
 that she would yield duty and obedience to her mother now. 
 Until she found her all untrustworthy, she would trust 
 her. . . . She had invented freely, in setting her springes 
 and yet not altogether lied. . . . 
 
 Sleep did not come to Mademoiselle de Bayard that 
 night, or for many nights after. She lay staring at the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 457, 
 
 curtains that met across the blinded window, until the 
 dawn edged them with a line of glimmering gray. As the 
 streak encroached, she rose noiselessly, and silently as the 
 dawn itself approached her mother's bed. 
 
 Adelaide lay upon her back with her head thrown back 
 amid its wealth of rich black tresses, her arms tossed out 
 and upward, the hands clenched, one knee a little raised. 
 The unfastened robe of lawn disclosed the creamy beauty 
 of her throat and the swelling contours of her magnificent 
 bosom. The sight sent an exquisite pang to the heart of 
 her sorrowful child. Oh, God ! if beauty so divine had been 
 but chaste, what pride, what happiness to call this woman 
 mother ! To lay one 's head upon that breast and weep all 
 griefs out there ! . . . 
 
 The sleeper stirred beneath the wistful gaze of her 
 daughter. Violet shadows were round her sealed eyelids 
 and about her nostrils and mouth. She moaned a little 
 and murmured brokenly: 
 
 "Nicolas . . . Monseigneur . . . insult . . . never par- 
 don! . . . 'Only a woman of fashion would ~be capable of 
 such infamy. . . .' Ah, mon Dieu! . . ." 
 
 She cried out, and her eyes opened, staring about wildly. 
 She asked suspiciously as they fell on Juliette: 
 
 ' ' Have I been talking ? . . . What was I saying ? ' ' 
 
 Juliette answered simply and literally: 
 
 "That only a woman of fashion would be capable of 
 such infamy." 
 
 LIII 
 
 THEY broke their fast on rolls and coffee, dressed and 
 demanded, with the bill, the promised carriage. This was 
 not so quickly forthcoming as the landlord of the Coup 
 d'fipee had prophesied. Indeed, the debilitated convey- 
 ance of the wagonette type, drawn by one promoted cart- 
 horse, could only be had by grace of the traveler by whom 
 it had been previously engaged. He proved, when Ade- 
 laide swept her charge downstairs, to be a Monsieur 
 Anglais, traveling for pleasure. A middle-sized, clean- 
 shaven, inconspicuous, elderly man, in an ill-fitting suit of 
 drab-color. He sported a sealskin vest in spite of the op- 
 pressive heat of the weather, and spoke the French of 
 the conversation-manual with the accent it inculcates. His
 
 458 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 baldish grizzled head was covered with a straw hat bound 
 with a preposterous light-blue -ribbon. His luggage con- 
 sisted of a brown calfskin bag, a portable easel, sketching- 
 block and color-box, and a violin-case, of which articles 
 he took the most excessive care. Nothing could well be 
 more respectable, or appear more harmless. Juliette 
 breathed more freely at the sight of the elderly drab- 
 clothed man. 
 
 He professed himself happy to accommodate the ladies 
 with a share in the wagonette as far as Bazeilles, where he 
 meant to take train for Verdun. Interpreting for Ade- 
 laide, who possessed no English, Juliette learned that their 
 own destination was not Metz, but Chalons. 
 
 That drive to Bazeilles in the freshness of the morning 
 would have been delightful under other circumstances. 
 The night-mists yet hung white as milk over the valleys, 
 while the breasting rises crowned with woodlands were 
 golden in the sun. Tents of French brigades snowed over 
 the countryside. Bugles and trumpets sometimes drowned 
 the rushing of the Givonne, beside whose stream their road 
 conducted them. The stubbles were full of grain-devour- 
 ing wood-pigeons, too heavy even to rise and take wing 
 when peasant-lads threw stones. The drab Englishman 
 praised the view in the set terms of the manual, until dis- 
 covering that Mademoiselle had command of the tongue of 
 Albion, he reverted to that language with evident relief. 
 
 "For I won't deny it comes easier, though I manage to 
 get on with the other when necessary. And since I left 
 England seven months ago my poor health requiring a 
 holiday from business it has been necessary most of the 
 time." 
 
 "Ask the hideous animal in the ugly clothes whether he 
 has seen a newspaper this morning," instructed Madame. 
 "And find out if he knows anything of the movements of 
 the Emperor. Those miserables at the inn were absolutely 
 ignorant, or else they would not tell!" 
 
 The drab English traveler had reason to know something 
 of his Imperial Majesty, having recently encountered him 
 with his suite at the village of Gravelotte, eight miles from 
 Metz. He explained in a rambling manner, and with many 
 divagations, that he himself had been surprised by the 
 intrusion of War at the outset of a sketching-tour in the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 459 
 
 northwest of France, which, was to have realized the ambi- 
 tion of his life. 
 
 "Painting from Nature and playing on the violin. . . . 
 Those are what I may call my weaknesses," he told the 
 ladies by-and-by. 
 
 He was moist-eyed and red-nosed and shaky-handed, 
 which must have interfered with his brush-work and bow- 
 ing. An odor of strong waters exhaled from his person 
 and clothes. You, had you been there, could have imag- 
 ined him making an inventory, serving a summons, or, 
 mounted on a Holborn auctioneer's rostrum knocking 
 down second-hand works of inferior Art to imaginary bid- 
 ders, and vaunting the qualities of sticky-toned violins. 
 Save for his garrulity, he was inoffensive ; though his open 
 conviction that his fellow-travelers were mother and daugh- 
 ter caused Juliette infinite anguish and disquiet of mind. 
 
 ''With regard to His Majesty the French Emperor, I 
 was brought into contact with him unexpectedly, ' ' said the 
 drab man. "You can picture me, young lady, in the en- 
 joyment of my well-earned holiday, strolling, as one may 
 say, from village to village, enjoying the fresh air and the 
 scenery, such a change after five-and-twenty years of 
 Camberwell, the Courts of Law, and Furnival 's Inn. ' ' 
 
 Adelaide complained: 
 
 ' ' He bores me horribly, this red-nosed imbecile ! Cannot 
 he answer the question ? What is he saying now ? ' ' 
 
 The drab man prattled on: 
 
 "For from the cradle, as one might say, I have been the 
 vassal and slave of Business, having been sent by my father 
 to a Mercantile and Legal Training College at Bromersham 
 when only seven years old. At fifteen I was office-boy and 
 under-clerk in the old gentleman's office. Believed in be- 
 ginning at the bottom of the ladder, you see ! At eighteen, 
 articled again to the old gentleman! He being a solici- 
 tor and attorney with a good old-fashioned family practice, 
 and naturally being desirous to see his son a full-blown 
 partner in the Firm! ..." 
 
 He sighed and shook his head sentimentally. 
 
 "No use to tell the old gentleman I had been born with 
 other ambitions. That Art had a fascination, and the voice 
 of Music called. ... I used up reams of office wove-note 
 in making pen-and-ink designs for illustrations to the books
 
 460 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 I'd read on the sly, and the plays I'd seen on the quiet. 
 . . . I 'd render popular airs on the mouth-organ to the ad- 
 miration of all the other clerks. 'Now, Mr. William, let's 
 have a Musical Selection!' they'd say whenever the old 
 gentleman popped out. ... I saved up my money to pay 
 for a course of tuition in Drawing from the Round and 
 Life Model at a Night School of Art in Soho. But I never 
 got time. The old gentleman must have been more know- 
 ing than I suspected, for he always managed to keep my 
 nose to the grindstone. Will you believe that I bought 
 this box, and this easel, and the violin twenty years ago 
 and never got a chance to use 'em, until now? To such a 
 degree was my liberty hectored over, and the talents that 
 might have made me the center of a circle of admirers, 
 blighted by the Senior Partner and Head of the Firm. ..." 
 
 Adelaide, growing more restive, interrupted : 
 
 "Does this fatuous person who talks so greatly afford 
 any information, or does he not?" 
 
 " Yet I could show you a sketch of the Roman Aque- 
 duct at Ars that would surprise you," went on the drab 
 man, addressing Juliette, "regarded as emanating from 
 the pencil of a simple amatoor. Also I could touch off a 
 French chansong on the violin in a style equally creditable 
 and gratifying and justifying my retirement from Busi- 
 ness in the interests of Music and Art. But 
 
 He took out a plaid silk handkerchief and wiped his 
 moist eyes with it, and wagged the grizzled head that wore 
 the absurd blue-ribboned straw hat in a maudlin, despon- 
 dent way. 
 
 "But just as I'd settled to the roving life, tramping 
 from inn to inn and finding 'em comfortable, the country 
 cooking tasty, and the country vintages nice War breaks 
 out and spoils everything! Another week, and I should 
 have bought a Bit of Ground ! ' ' 
 
 He mopped his eyes and snuffled a little, and put away 
 the handkerchief. 
 
 "It was going cheap the Chatto and farm and wine- 
 plant and vineyards. I had a good look at the title-deeds 
 everything was in order there, even to a professional eye. 
 . . . All I had to do was to put down the money. I 'd have 
 painted and fiddled, made wine and drunk it sold what I 
 didn't drink, and branded the vintages: 'Chateau Musty, 
 Dry, Sparkling . . . Chateau Musty, Special Still.' . . .
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 461 
 
 Chateau Musty, sweet, preferred by ladies. . . . Stop, 
 though! It wouldn't have been that name! My name is 
 Fumival! Excuse me, Mam'selle, but I think your lady- 
 mother is making some remark to you. At least she im- 
 presses me with that idea." 
 
 ' ' Madame is greatly desirous of intelligence with respect 
 to the Emperor," Juliette explained. The talkative 
 traveler looked aggrieved: 
 
 "Pray tell the lady I am coming to him presently. 
 After the War broke out Lord! what a hurrying and 
 scurrying of soldiers. . . . Bugles blowing your head off 
 at four o'clock in the morning all the wagons taken to 
 carry baggage all the farm-horses whipped off to drag 
 cannon ... no more sensible business done anywhere! 
 . . . And when the shooting began, it was a scandal! 
 Positively perilous to visitors! Why, I've been absolutely 
 in danger of my life ! . . . " 
 
 Adelaide's foot tapped impatiently on the floor of the 
 wagonette. Her fine eyes shot forth indignant sparks. 
 She bit her crimson lips. The drab Englishman regarded 
 her mildly, commenting: 
 
 "If I wasn't accustomed by this time to French ways 
 and manners, I should take it that your mamma had a 
 temper of her own. But it's the national method of over- 
 working the features. . . . Not that your Emperor is 
 given to too much expression. Heavy, he struck me as, 
 and puffily low-spirited! And even a worse sleeper than 
 myself, if you ask me! For I spent the night in a room 
 over His Majesty's, the night he stopped in the inn at 
 Gravelotte, and didn't shut my eyes for an instant with 
 his groanings and his moanings and his trampings to and 
 fro. . . ." 
 
 He wagged his head, and pursued with solemnity: 
 
 "In the morning I peeped out of the window and saw 
 him drive off. All sorts of French Nobs bowing and 
 scraping. . . . Orders and Stars and shiny carriages, and 
 silver-mounted harness on prancing bays. . . . Yet if he 
 had asked me, I wouldn't have changed places. Thinks I, 
 'How much better to be Me, plain William Furnival, an 
 honest English Commoner, than an Emperor whose crime- 
 stained conscience keeps him broad awake o ' nights ! ' ! 
 
 Said Juliette, her eyes blue fire, two angry roses in her 
 usually pale cheeks:
 
 462 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "But you, Monsieur who also sleep badly is that be- 
 cause you have crime upon your soul?" 
 
 "What have you said to this creature that has fright- 
 ened him?" Adelaide demanded, as the drab traveler's jaw 
 dropped, and his red nose glowed brilliantly in a visage of 
 dingy-white. 
 
 Juliette translated. Said Madame, regarding the per- 
 turbed Mr. Furnival, with a glance of superb indifference : 
 
 "He is a runaway husband of some Englishwoman who 
 keeps a pension. Or the absconding clerk of a London 
 notary." 
 
 Whatever he may or may not have been, he fell silent 
 after the little passage here recorded. At Bazeilles, where 
 the driver was paid, and the wagonette dismissed, though 
 he entered the same train of vilely dirty third-class car- 
 riages and goods-trucks, he traveled in a compartment re- 
 mote from that selected by his companions of the drive. 
 
 At Verdun they learned that the railway bridge below 
 Metz had been blown up by M. de Bazaine 's Engineers, the 
 line beyond being in Prussian hands. . . . And at this 
 point the drab gentleman got out, hugging his violin-case, 
 bag, and artist's fit-out. Juliette saw him swallowed up 
 in a roaring crowd of mobilists from the Ardennes, who 
 rushed upon and instantly crammed solid every corner of 
 the train. 
 
 A good-looking officer, entering with the deluge, apolo- 
 gized to the ladies in a well-bred, easy way : 
 
 "It is inconvenient, Mesdames, but at the same time 
 necessary. ... I take these little ones to Chalons to be 
 incorporated in the New Army of MacMahon. . . . They 
 are rough, as you perceive, and very few are yet in uni- 
 form. But blue cloth and red cloth are less important 
 than chassepots, and they have them and can use them 
 these little ones of mine ! And when they receive orders to 
 march north and give a helping hand to M. de Bazaine 
 I prophesy that, boots or no boots, they will keep up with 
 the best!" 
 
 Adelaide smiled witchingly on the speaker, plied the 
 archery of her fine eyes, evoking admiring glances from the 
 officer and his uncouth, half-clad, half-trained mobilists. 
 She said she had no doubt of the courage of these sons of 
 Western France. She had heard, she added, that the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 465 
 
 Emperor was at Chalons, but that H.I.M. intended to 
 resort to Paris, having surrendered to another the baton of 
 supreme command. 
 
 * * ' To Paris ' ! " The officer shrugged. ' ' Alas ! at such a 
 crisis in the affairs of the nation, Paris would be the last 
 shelter for the French Emperor. It is no longer a secret 
 that the Emperor has already left Chalons with the Grand 
 Headquarters Staff and the First Corps of the Army of 
 MacMahon. . . . Rheims is the destination that intelli- 
 gence is also public property. ..." 
 
 "And the Prince?" Adelaide asked eagerly. 
 
 ' ' Monseigneur the Prince Imperial left for Rheims with 
 the Emperor, but will be sent on from there to Rethel, with 
 his carriages, and an escort of Imperial Body Guards 
 under Colonel Watrin. His three aides-de-camp, Colonel 
 Lamey, Colonel Comte Clary, and Commandant Duperre 
 of the battleship Le Taureau, attend him. Comte d'Aure 
 is equerry now instead of old Bachon ! . . . Pardon, Ma- 
 dame? . . . You descend here . . . ? But I thought you 
 were traveling to Chalons! . . . Permit me to open the 
 carriage door ! ' ' 
 
 And the prattling officer, who had promised himself a 
 charming vis-a-vis upon the journey, must needs leap out 
 upon the platform, arrest the guard's arm in the act of 
 signaling the start. . . . Adelaide was handed down. 
 . . . Juliette followed with an avalanche of Madame 's 
 traveling bags and parcels ... a discontented porter was 
 called upon to rescue her trunks and portmanteaux from 
 the van. . . . 
 
 The signal fell, the train steamed out of the station. 
 Juliette, white and fagged, sitting on an up-piled luggage 
 truck, was asked by Adelaide : 
 
 "Where do you think we are going now, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 Came the weary answer: 
 
 "I do not know, Madame. . . . First, it was to Metz, 
 and then to Chalons. Now, it may be to Rheims, as the 
 Emperor is there." 
 
 Adelaide returned tormentingly : 
 
 "But we are not going to Rheims." 
 
 A thrill passed through Juliette. 
 
 "My father is not a prisoner, then?" 
 
 "My faith!" said Adelaide, shrugging with ostentatious 
 indifference. "He is as he was yesterday. But all the
 
 464 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 same, my little one, we do not go to Rheims, but to Rethel. 
 . . . Tell me you have brought with you a walking- 
 costume that is tolerable ? Something more becoming than 
 this lugubrious garment you have on!" 
 
 Juliette replied in the negative. Adelaide's look was 
 coldly scornful as she scrutinized the little figure before 
 her. Could this really be her daughter, this pale, peaked, 
 elfish thing? . . . 
 
 What sloping shoulders, what tragic, haunted eyes, what 
 a long upper lip, what lack of vivacity and elegance. . . . 
 Her grandmother that well-loathed woman, lived again 
 in de Bayard 's child. 
 
 Monseigneur the Prince Imperial must have curious taste 
 in feminine beauty to have been smitten with this stiff 
 little white-faced mannequin. Whom de Bayard wor- 
 shiped . . . whom even Straz had admired. . . . What 
 were his words . . . "A little Queen of Diamonds, fresh 
 as a rosebud!" Grand Dieu! . . . how comical! "A rare 
 jewel. . . . A chic type. . . . A pocket edition of Psyche, 
 before that little affair with Cupid." 
 
 Well, Cupid waited at Rethel. . . . Her red lips writhed 
 with the jeering laughter she stifled. Two devils of mock- 
 ery looked through the windows of her eyes. And with 
 the swift understanding of this stranger that came of 
 their close, intimate relationship, Juliette encountering 
 that look, said mentally: 
 
 ' ' She hates me ! My mother hates me ! For that reason 
 she sought me out and told me that false tale. . . . Be- 
 cause of that she lured me away with her from Brussels! 
 Because of that she has planned to do something. . . . 
 Oh, my father, if only you knew ! . . . " 
 
 LIV 
 
 THE Hope of a tottering and crumbling Empire was in- 
 stalled at the Prefecture of Rethel, a picturesque, old- 
 world river-town of many bridges, and houses with quaint 
 carved gables, slanting floors, and low ceilings crossed by 
 heavy beams. 
 
 He had arrived late on the previous evening. There had 
 been no flags, no bands, no popular ovation, no delirium of
 
 465 
 
 enthusiasm in greeting the Imperial heir. Press organs 
 were now telling incredulous Parisians that in considera- 
 tion of the Prince's weariness the people had foregone 
 their privilege of welcome. In honest truth, the unlucky 
 townsfolk were too sad and sick-hearted to cheer. 
 
 A great battle was impending in the neighborhood of 
 Metz. The First and Second Armies of United Germany 
 had crossed the Moselle, wheeled right-about-face, and were 
 closing in on Bazaine, who had failed in his attempt to 
 retire upon Chalons by the Verdun Road. The Prussian 
 Crown Prince had come out of the Vosges, and was march- 
 ing North instead of moving upon Chalons. If his van- 
 guard clashed with MacMahon's patched-up Army there 
 would be trouble. . . . Everyone expected trouble, the 
 soil of France had been sown so thickly with the bad seed 
 from which great national disasters spring, even before 
 it had been plowed by German shells. . . . The coming 
 tragedy chilled and numbed as the iceberg chills the senses 
 of the passenger in the Atlantic liner's warm deck-cabin, 
 long before the keel grates, and the white fog lifts, and 
 shows the towering Death on which the doomed vessel is 
 being hurled. 
 
 The deep dejection of the officers around the Heir Im- 
 perial could not be covered by any well-meant attempts at 
 disguise. The rumors that came through the fog into 
 which Bazaine had vanished were horribly disquieting. 
 They waited upon thorns, for a telegram from the Em- 
 peror, conveying intelligence on which they might rely. 
 
 There was something in the situation of the lonely, proud 
 young creature they surrounded that made the heart bleed 
 as you looked at him. So helpless and yet so representa- 
 tive of unfettered Power, so ignorant in the ways of the 
 world, and yet so conversant with its outward forms and 
 ceremonies, so palpably the last frail link upon a chain 
 that was being hacked through by the Prussian sword. 
 
 He had grown older and thinner since the days of July, 
 and his fresh, fine color had faded to paleness. There was 
 a frown upon the open forehead now, the gay, confident 
 regard had changed to sullenness. The blue eyes were 
 less lustrous. The silky chestnut hair was rumpled and 
 duller. Care had overshadowed the boyish head with her 
 heavy sable wing. 
 
 The arrival of the previous night had been sudden and
 
 466 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 unexpected, the startled authorities had been rarely put 
 about to find fitting accommodation for their Emperor's 
 son. This morning Monseigneur had been hurried out of 
 his bed at the Prefecture to receive the apologies of the 
 Prefect, an Imperialistic vine-grower, who had been absent 
 in the interests of his affairs. 
 
 "Your Imperial Highness will be aware that this is a 
 critical month with owners of vineyards. The vines have 
 borne well and the grapes are ripening magnificently. 
 Next month the champagne-making ought to be in full 
 progress. But the lack of hands terribly hampers us. ... 
 Women cannot replace the men who are skilled in the 
 various processes. And who knows 
 
 The Prefect broke off, for the Sub-Prefect had nudged 
 him openly. Even if the tide of War should turn, and 
 France be freed from her invaders, who knew whether any 
 of those grape-pickers and sorters and pressers, Reservists 
 and volunteers and conscripts who had been called out to 
 carry the chassepot against the Prussians, would ever re- 
 turn to their countryside again ? Who knew whether they 
 would not be thrown as ripe grapes into Death 's huge wine- 
 press? Perhaps their red blood was foaming in the vat 
 even now. 
 
 Who knew whether those rich, prosperous vineyards on 
 the Aisne would not be trampled into sticky mashiness 
 under the ruthless feet of Prussian Army Corps? If the 
 rumors were correct, an advance upon Paris might take 
 place at any moment. True, MacMahon's Army was said 
 to be covering the road to the capital. 
 
 But MacMahon had been already beaten terribly. . . . 
 Recollecting it, the Prefect shuddered in his well-polished 
 shoes. 
 
 But he said his say and shook the young hand graciously 
 offered him, and got out of his own wife's drawing-room 
 as awkwardly as though he had been one of his own clerks. 
 While the Sub-Prefect, a sharp-visaged little man, who 
 combined the office of public notary with the trade of 
 wool-stapler, trotted after him, very much at his ease. 
 
 "How you sweat! Wipe your head and your neck too," 
 counseled the notary. "Otherwise your cravat will be a 
 perfect wisp and Madame will certainly take you to task ! ' ' 
 
 "You have such sangfroid, my good M. Schlitte. I envy
 
 THE MAN OF IRON" 467 
 
 you; I do, positively!" stuttered the Prefect, puffing and 
 blowing and mopping. "Royalty invariably dazzles me. 
 ... I tremble ... I blunder. ... In a word, I make a 
 fool of myself! At this moment I am tortured by the 
 weight of my responsibilities. . . . True His Highness 
 is well guarded true, the Army of Chalons is somewhere 
 or other in the neighborhood ! . . . But the daring of these 
 Prussian horsemen . . . the danger of a surprise! ..." 
 
 "A surprise. . . . Nonsense, my dear sir. The thing is 
 impossible ! ' ' 
 
 And M. Schlitte, who was said upon the strength of his 
 queer French accent to be a native of Strasbourg, soothed 
 the Prefect, and grinned like a rat-trap as he betook him- 
 self home. Inhabiting a riverside villa in the neighbor- 
 hood, from which residence we may suppose for the 
 better conduct of his extensive business a private tele- 
 graphic installation connected him with Rheims, Paris, 
 Brussels, Luxembourg and, when necessary, Berlin it 
 would have been possible to have made arrangements for 
 that very contingency. His suggestions were not adopted 
 at the Prussian Headquarters, but his zeal was approved 
 in the right place. He became Prefect of Rethel a little 
 later, when Berlin was settled at Versailles. 
 
 He stopped now, on his way back to his villa, to send 
 the town-band round to the Place of the Prefecture and 
 to bribe some loafers with small silver to mix with the 
 crowd and cheer for the Emperor and the Prince. Conse- 
 quently, a drum, trombone, cornet, and ophicleide shortly 
 made their appearance before the Imperial lodgings. . . . 
 La Eeine Eortense and Partant Pour La Syrie entertained 
 Monseigneur while he breakfasted. Since then he had 
 thrice been summoned out upon the balcony to acknowl- 
 edge the acclamations of the loyal populace of Rethel. 
 
 It was pouring rain, and the knots of spies, loafers, and 
 genuine enthusiasts were sheltered by umbrellas. The very 
 fowls that pecked between the cobbles had a listless and 
 draggled air. The boy shivered as he turned from, the 
 dismal outdoor prospect to contemplate the Empire hang- 
 ings, ormolu girandoles, and obsolete, scroll-backed chairs 
 and claw-foot tables, gracing the Prefect's wife's reception- 
 room. He told himself that it was horrible, even when one
 
 468 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 waited for the news of certain victory, to be shut up in a 
 beastly hole like this. 
 
 He nearly jumped for joy when the name of M. de Straz 
 was brought him by his equerry. He remembered the 
 Roumanian agent, who had previously been presented to 
 him. 
 
 "Pray bring him quickly, M. le Comte," he said eagerly 
 to M. d'Aure, who had replaced old M. Bachon. "It is 
 possible that he may bring a message from the Emperor. ' ' 
 
 He colored, and his eyes regained a little of their old 
 brightness. The green-and-gold equerry, who loved him, 
 as did every member of his household, was glad to see him 
 interested, for more reasons than one. 
 
 Straz, known to be a secret agent of the Emperor, and 
 hailing from Rheims, where his employer was now Straz 
 might well amuse the Prince while his protectors waited 
 for an Imperial telegram. Meanwhile, the bodyguard 
 about the Prefecture was unostentatiously doubled, the 
 carriages and the baggage were secretly held in readiness 
 for a move. 
 
 You can imagine Straz, with his profile and beard of a 
 courtier of old Nineveh, bowing over the boyish hand, and 
 rolling his jet-black, glittering eyes. He had looked better 
 in his Astrachan-trimmed traveling jacket than in the 
 tight-waisted, closely buttoned, black frock-coat and pearl- 
 gray trousers of ceremony, and the inky river of black silk 
 cravat that flowed over the expanse of white shirt-front 
 now covering his Herculean chest. 
 
 He wore white spats, which made his short legs appear 
 shorter. A bouquet adorned his buttonhole pink carna- 
 tion and tuberose. Its cloying fragrance hung heavily on 
 the damp air of the Prefecture reception-room, as the boy 
 pleasantly said: 
 
 "Good-day, M. de Straz; do you come to us from the 
 Emperor ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, my Prince, and no! . . ." Straz had long ago 
 got rid of his cold, yet a certain thickness characterized his 
 consonants. He shrugged his great shoulders and smiled, 
 showing his dazzling double curves of solid human ivory. 
 "I come from Rheims, where His Imperial Majesty is mak- 
 ing history. ... I am not charged with any message 
 from him!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 469 
 
 The boy's face fell. He said, with, a brave effort to 
 conquer his disappointment: "I am impatient, Monsieur, 
 for news of another victory. It is so long since the engage- 
 ment of Saarbriick, and that was only a little one. You 
 are an officer in the Army of Roumania, you have told me. 
 You are aware, even better than I, that military plans take 
 time to develop . . . and that Papa has every confidence in 
 the generalship of M. de Bazaine. ... If I were five or 
 six years older, I should be admitted to the Councils of 
 the Imperial Btat Major. ... I should understand the 
 reasons for these changes which puzzle me. . . . But one 
 thing I should like to ask ..." He flushed and glanced 
 round nervously. ''They do not believe in Paris or Lon- 
 don that we are being . . . beaten? ... I beg of you to 
 answer me candidly ! ' ' 
 
 Straz drew himself up dramatically, expanding his huge 
 chest, and curling his parted mustache. His fierce black 
 eyes, staring from their great curved arches, glittered like 
 balls of polished jet. . . . 
 
 "They do not, my Prince! They wait for the Star of 
 the Bonapartes to rise resplendent from a sea of gore shed 
 from Prussian veins. . . . They wait, as the world waits, 
 for the Empire to emerge more glorious than ever from 
 this conflict, which will restore to her forever her lost 
 Provinces of the Rhine. It may be that the Coronation of 
 Napoleon IV. will be solemnized in the Cathedral of Co- 
 logne. . . . Aha, my Prince, have I won a smile at last?" 
 
 He looked, despite the frock-coat, more than ever like 
 some ancient warrior of Assyria, marching in a carved and 
 painted procession along the walls of some unearthed 
 palace of Nineveh or Babylon. And so admirable an actor 
 was he that the sick heart of the boy now warmed at his 
 simulated fire, and gladdened at his deceptive words of 
 hope. 
 
 "I had pictured my Imperial Prince," he went on, "in 
 brighter and less gloomy surroundings, with sympathetic 
 and delightful companions to alleviate his exile from 
 home. ' ' 
 
 He had touched the wrong chord. The slender, well- 
 made figure was drawn up proudly. The delicate brows 
 frowned, the lips quivered as the boy said:
 
 470 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Monsieur, it is not 'exile' when an officer is ordered on 
 Active Service. . . . And I am with the French Army, 
 whose uniform I wear. For the moment the Emperor, my 
 commanding officer, has ordered me to remain here. . . . 
 I did wrong to grumble I shall do so no more!" 
 
 Straz grinned and bowed to cover his momentary con- 
 fusion. Why had he used the indigestible word? He 
 touched his buttonhole bouquet and said with a treacly 
 inflection : 
 
 "There are no violets it is not the proper season. . . . 
 Does Monseigneur remember when the purple blooms 
 reached him regularly at intervals, one timid scrap of 
 paper hiding among the slender stems? . . . And would 
 he, did he know how the sender languished for news of 
 him entrust me with one penciled message of kindness 
 that might restore the rose to a fading cheek?" 
 
 The clear-eyed, fresh face of the boy he harangued un- 
 derwent several changes during this windy apostrophe. 
 For one brief instant it flushed and brightened eagerly, 
 then it frowned with perplexity, then it twitched with the 
 evident desire to laugh. 
 
 He said, controlling his amusement with his grace of 
 good-breeding : 
 
 "Monsieur, if it was a lady who sent me those violets, 
 pray tell her that she was very good to do so, and that I 
 thank her very much. And since she asks for a message 
 perhaps this will do as well ? ' ' 
 
 He turned to the writing-table, where some sheets, cov- 
 ered with clever pen-and-ink caricatures, lay on the blot- 
 ter, and took up a rough little outline drawing of a land- 
 scape, marked with lines of dots and written over with 
 notes. He said ingenuously, offering this to the Rou- 
 manian : 
 
 "See, Monsieur, this is a mere sketch of the affair at 
 Saarbriick. I did it to send my tutor at Paris, but M. 
 Filon shall have another one. ... If the lady has sons of 
 my age, no doubt they will be able to draw far better. 
 Nevertheless, here it is!" 
 
 Under the date of August 2nd, he had signed it, with a 
 touch of boyish vanity:
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 471 
 
 "Under fire for the first time. 
 
 "your affectionate 
 
 "Louis Napoleon.'' 
 
 "What genius! what a gift! How gracious an act of 
 kindness on the part of your Imperial Highness!" 
 
 Straz grabbed the little scrawl eagerly, pressed his moist 
 scarlet lips to it with theatrical devotion made a tremen- 
 dous flourish of putting it away in a pocketbook, and be- 
 stowing this receptacle near the region of his heart. 
 
 ' ' Though the lady has no sons she is not even yet mar- . 
 ried," he hinted. "Dare I confide a secret to Mon- 
 seigneur? she is a young and beautiful girl!" 
 
 Monseigneur had been promising himself to caricature 
 Straz at the next opportunity, not forgetting to make the 
 most of his profile, hair, and beard. Young and beautiful 
 girls were no novelties to Louis Napoleon, accustomed to 
 do the honors of Versailles and Saint Cloud to the muslin- 
 clad daughters of the sparkling coquettes who frequented 
 the Imperial Circle. He began, struggling with the bore- 
 dom that began to oppress him: 
 
 "If the young girl is your fiancee, Monsieur, or your 
 daughter ' ' 
 
 The speaker broke off at the sound of hoofs and wheels 
 on the cobblestones of the Place, the bump of a carriage- 
 step let down, hitting the curb before the Prefecture. . . . 
 Someone had arrived with a message from the Emperor: 
 or perhaps it was only the Prefect's wife returning from 
 an airing. . . . Straz would have been other than himself 
 had he failed to seize the opportunity. 
 
 "Monseigneur, Mademoiselle de Bayard is not affianced. 
 She has hitherto declined all alliances proposed as ad- 
 vantageous it is said her affections are secretly en- 
 gaged! ..." 
 
 His smirk revolted even while it fascinated. He said, 
 rolling his glistening black eyes about the apartment 
 shrugging his great shoulders, laying a thick white squat- 
 nailed finger mysteriously against his carmine lips: 
 
 "Engaged since a little rencontre that took place in the 
 month of January. . . . There were disturbances in Paris 
 which the troops had been called out to quell. Eiding 
 with M. de Frossard in the Avenues of the Champs Elysees,
 
 472 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 your Highness passed close by a young girl in a cab. She 
 cried out, 'Vive le Prince Imperial!' . . . She threw a 
 knot of violets, which struck your horse on the shoulder. 
 . . . You had the flowers in your hand, Monseigneur, 
 when you rode away." 
 
 "Ah, now I remember!" The boy's blush became him. 
 ' ' Or I should say I have not forgotten. And where is she 
 now, Monsieur?" 
 
 "Where is Mademoiselle de Bayard? Your Imperial 
 Highness would like to know?" 
 
 Straz, who had thrilled with a sportsman's joy at the 
 curtsey of the float betokening a nibble, would have given 
 his soul to know himself. . . . Now, as he delayed, with 
 the air of one who momentarily holds back something 
 eagerly waited for, the equerry knocked and entered, ap- 
 proached and whispered to the Prince. 
 
 LY 
 
 "Bur surely, M. le Comte, it would please me to receive 
 these two ladies. M. de Straz has just been speaking of 
 Mademoiselle de Bayard." 
 
 And he dismissed Straz, who for once had been stricken 
 speechless; giving his hand to him and saying: "I am 
 very much obliged by your visit, Monsieur ! ' ' 
 
 The equerry retired, shepherding the unstrung Rou- 
 manian. The Prince waited, looking at the door. 
 
 He heard footsteps descending the stairs, a slight bustle 
 in the hall, or so it seemed to him. Once a raised voice 
 cried out something, drowned in the buzzing of the crowd 
 that now gorged the Place of the Prefecture. 
 
 It still rained. The brass helmets of the Fire-Brigade 
 and the black shakos of the local police strung out along 
 the edge of the pavement, showed as fringing a solid mass 
 of dripping umbrellas; there were clumps of more privi- 
 leged umbrellas in the middle of the Place, where a hack- 
 ney-carriage now stood, doubtless the vehicle that a mo- 
 ment previously had stopped before the door. The Cent 
 Gardes had their undress cocked-hats on ; their blue-caped 
 mantles, pulled out in cavalry fashion over the hindquar-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 473 
 
 ters of their tall brown horses, shed off the merciless down- 
 pour like penthouse roofs. . . . 
 
 Brr! It was chilly. Why did not Mademoiselle come? 
 Such delay was rather a breach of etiquette. 
 
 Meanwhile, there upon the blotter lay a sheet of paper, 
 with an unfinished caricature upon it masterly, consider- 
 ing that a mere boy had drawn it representing M. Thiers, 
 bald, spectacled, oracularly smiling, in the guise of a gob- 
 bling turkey-cock. 
 
 M. Thiers would keep. The Prince chose another sheet, 
 and began his portrait of the Koumanian, humming a song, 
 popular with the African infantry-regiments, in capital 
 tune and time. "Gentle Turco" had been half sung 
 through when the door opened. The crisp grizzled curls, 
 tanned soldierly face, waxed mustache, and green-and- 
 silver uniform of the equerry reappeared upon the thresh- 
 old, ushering in a small young lady. . . . D'Aure said, as 
 the boy laid down his pen, rose and came toward them : 
 
 " Monseigneur, I bring the young lady of whom I spoke 
 to you, daughter of Colonel de Bayard, 777th Chasseurs 
 of the Emperor's Guard. She has convinced me of her 
 identity by showing me a portrait, and a letter from her 
 father. . . . She begs me to assure you that she will not 
 detain you longer than ten minutes. For that space of 
 time I will return to the lady downstairs." He added at 
 the Prince 's glance of inquiry : ' ' The lady is the wife of a 
 French officer, and accompanied Mademoiselle de Bayard. 
 As I went downstairs just now with M. de Straz, we en- 
 countered both ladies in the vestibule. A giddiness seized 
 the elder, she cried out, and swooned away." 
 
 The Prince said : 
 
 "Pray give orders that the sick lady is to have every 
 attention ! ' ' 
 
 D'Aure answered that the wife of the Prefect was with 
 Madame even then. He saluted, and repeated with an 
 accent of finality : 
 
 "For the space of ten minutes, Monseigneur. ..." 
 
 Then he bowed to Mademoiselle de Bayard, and went 
 quickly out of the room. 
 
 The Prince began, with a touch of boyish pompousness: 
 
 "We have met before, Mademoiselle. My thanks for the 
 violets!"
 
 474 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 For he knew this face with cheeks so fairly rose-tinted, 
 with eyes that shone brilliant as blue jewels from their 
 covert of black lashes, with the softly-smiling mouth. The 
 dull moth shone out a butterfly in the radiance of the joy 
 that overbrimmed her. She was near her Prince Imperial, 
 Juliette de Bayard, who was not so much loyal as Loyalty 
 incarnate, to whom the tawdry figure of the Emperor was 
 invested with godlike splendor, in whose esteem the Em- 
 pire was France her France. . . . 
 
 She was attired as she had been when she left Brussels 
 with Adelaide. Only a fichu of black and white Malines 
 lace that she had brought in the handbag containing linen, 
 and toilet requisites, had been pinned about her narrow, 
 sloping shoulders, and a tiny bonnet matching this was 
 perched upon her magnificent coils of cloudy-black hair. 
 Her deft fingers had fashioned it in a few minutes out of 
 the long ends of the over-ample fichu. A bunch of 
 fragrant red roses had been pinned upon her bosom by 
 Madame. She had purchased out of her own slender re- 
 sources a fringed gray silk parasol and a pair of little 
 gray kid gloves. And in this hastily arranged toilette she 
 looked elegant, refined, exclusive as any slender aristocrat 
 of the Faubourg St. Germain. You would never have sus- 
 pected the tumult beneath her sedate composure. Yet she 
 thrilled in every fiber as she swept her stateliest curtsey 
 before the slender boy in the unassuming uniform of a 
 subaltern of infantry. 
 
 ' ' Monseigneur is too good to remember so infinitely 
 trifling an occurrence . . . more than gracious to consent 
 to receive me now ! But that my dear father is a prisoner 
 in the hands of the Prussians, I would not dare to intrude 
 upon the privacy of my Prince. Oh, Monseigneur ! of your 
 pity prevail upon the Emperor to obtain the exchange of 
 my father for some German officer of equal rank in his 
 Army! Think, oh, pray! think how I ..." 
 
 She stopped to control herself . . . felt for her handker- 
 chief to dry the tears that were blinding her . . . dropped 
 the scrap of cambric upon the Aubusson carpet gracing the 
 drawing-room of the Prefecture. The Prince picked the 
 handkerchief up as Mademoiselle hastily stooped to recover 
 it ... their heads encountered in the act. The bump was 
 a hard one Juliette could have sunk into the earth with
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 475 
 
 confusion. . . . But the Prince rubbed his forehead, 
 grinned, and called out like any other schoolboy: 
 
 "My word! that was a stunner! I do hope you're not 
 hurt? Are you, as it happens, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 "No, no, Monseigneur! But you? ..." 
 
 ' ' I am all right ! Saw lots of stars, though ! ' ' 
 
 He burst out laughing. And so infectious was the peal 
 of merriment that for one blissful moment of forgetf ulness 
 Juliette joined in. 
 
 "To laugh does the heart good," the boy assured her. 
 He went on : " Do not be unhappy, for I will telegraph to 
 the Emperor. He never denies me anything I ask him. 
 . . . Depend upon it, he will do everything in his power 
 for your father, Mademoiselle!" 
 
 She looked all thanks, saying in her voice of silver : 
 
 "I shall pray with redoubled fervor for His Imperial 
 Majesty. And for you, Monseigneur be well assured of 
 it ! Now, with all my gratitude, I will retire if your High- 
 ness permits?" 
 
 She swept her curtsey, and would have withdrawn then 
 had not Monseigneur called out eagerly : 
 
 ' ' No, no ! We have still eight of our ten minutes ! Don 't 
 go! ... I do so like the way you talk. . . . Mon Dieu! 
 What would the Empress say to me if she knew that I had 
 left a lady standing ! Pray sit down here, Mademoiselle ! ' ' 
 
 He turned round the writing-chair in which he had been 
 sitting, made her take it perched himself upon the corner 
 of the writing-table, a schoolboy of fifteen in spite of his 
 uniform, pouring out his heart to a girl older than he. 
 
 "It was horrible here until you came! ... I was so 
 lonely! Everybody looks so strange, and no news comes 
 through. It would have been better to have stayed at 
 Metz, where there is fighting. But no! We were com- 
 pelled to return to Chalons. . . . On our way we were 
 nearly caught by the German cavalry. They are terribly 
 daring . . . they even ventured into our lines at Longe- 
 ville. . . . But we got to Verdun and traveled to Chalons 
 in a third-class carriage. Frightfully dirty, and full of 
 things that bit. . . . And I washed my face in a thick 
 glass tumbler, out of which I had drunk some wine they 
 brought me. . . . Fact, I assure you! . . . But we sol- 
 diers don't mind hardships. . . . We get used to them, 
 Mademoiselle ! ' '
 
 476 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 She looked up at the brightened face with the tenderness 
 of an elder sister. He went on with increasing animation 
 and growing confidence: 
 
 "Do you see that little black box standing there in the 
 corner? That's my officer's kit all the baggage we're 
 allowed to have on Active Service. There are* other boxes 
 with other things ..." He blushed. "The valets look 
 after them. . . . But this I keep under my own eye. And 
 here ! . . . This I hold as a great treasure. Do you think 
 I would show it to everyone? . . . Non, merci! . . . Be- 
 hold, Mademoiselle!" 
 
 He took from a pocket beneath his tunic and showed her 
 a splinter of rusty iron wrapped in an envelope. 
 
 ' ' Guess what this is ! A bit of a real German bombshell. 
 ... It burst quite close to the Emperor and me. ... I 
 thought a lot of old iron was being shot out of a cart, there 
 was such a racket. . . . This should be a keepsake for the 
 friend one loves above all, should it not? Otherwise I 
 would give it you, Mademoiselle ! ' ' 
 
 She said: 
 
 ' ' Monseigneur is too generous. ... I need no token by 
 which to remember him! . . . Have I not the remem- 
 brance of the sympathy and condescension with which my 
 Prince has listened to a daughter's prayer? . . . Now, 
 indeed, I must take leave of Monseigneur! ..." 
 
 He persisted with boyish eagerness: 
 
 ' ' No, no ! M. d 'Aure will certainly return at the end of 
 our ten minutes. And I do like you so much, Mademoi- 
 selle ! . . . Will you write and tell me when the Emperor 
 obtains the release of M. le Colonel ? . . . Will you let me 
 hear how you liked the little sketch I gave M. de Straz for 
 you?" 
 
 She was puzzled, and looked it: 
 
 "Monseigneur will pardon me, but the name of M. de 
 Straz is that of a stranger. . . . Yet he has received from 
 Monseigneur a message for me? ..." 
 
 Louis Napoleon explained. She listened with a gravity 
 that chilled his amusement over the message he had sent 
 to the supposedly elderly sender of the violets. 
 
 She said, looking at him steadily with her sincere eyes: 
 
 "I sent Monseigneur no violets, with messages written 
 or otherwise. To have done so would have been presump- 
 tuous, and lacking in delicacy. ... If this M. de Straz
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 were but here. ... If Monseigneur could but describe 
 him! . . ." 
 
 Monseigneur caught up the unfinished caricature : 
 
 "Look, Mademoiselle! This is he!" 
 
 It was he. ... The Assyrian head, great torso, and 
 short legs had been grotesquely exaggerated. But the fe- 
 rocity, sentimentality, and sensuality mingling in the ex- 
 otic temperament of the Roumanian, had been conveyed 
 with a mastery of technique and a grasp of character as- 
 tonishing, considering the artist's youth. And seeing, 
 Juliette recognized the man they had encountered in the 
 vestibule. Just as he had passed them, Adelaide had cried 
 out, and sunk down helplessly in a genuine swoon. 
 
 "Ah, yes, Monseigneur, I have seen this gentleman, but 
 a few moments ago. We encountered him at the instant 
 of entering the house. But I do not know him I have 
 never before met him! Why, then, should M. de Straz 
 speak familiarly of me?" 
 
 The boy said, with a tactfulness that was ingratiating: 
 
 ' ' Never mind ! . . . He was playing some stupid trick ! 
 . . . He shall be punished if he offends you. See ! I am 
 tearing up the ugly picture!" 
 
 "Oh, Monseigneur!" 
 
 She was too late to save the drawing. He went on, toss- 
 ing away the bits : 
 
 "Meanwhile since the sketch I meant for you has been 
 given to this person, you shall have my shell-splinter, 
 though at first I meant it for Cavaignac. ' ' 
 
 He had never uttered this name, about which so many 
 lonely day-dreams clung, in the hearing of any second per- 
 son. He could hardly believe that he had done so now as 
 he went on : 
 
 "Take my souvenir, and shut your hand over it, and 
 promise me you will never part with it. If you will, I can 
 tell you about Cavaignac my friend, Mademoiselle!" 
 
 She complied with his wish, smiling at the tone of au- 
 thority. She thought, looking in the beautiful frank blue 
 eyes, that Cavaignac must be proud of his high place in 
 this princely young heart. 
 
 "He is brave, Mademoiselle, and handsome and wonder- 
 fully clever. Once he gained the second prize for Greek 
 translation at the Concours General. And Greek is hor- 
 ribly difficult. M. Edeline could never teach it me. I find
 
 478 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the grammar so dreadfully dull! And yet Alexander the 
 Great was a Greek general, and would have told me all 
 about his campaigns in the Greek language. ... I think 
 I must find it hard to study because the figures of people 
 mean more to me than letters and words ! . . . I like better 
 to draw caricatures of my masters than to listen to them ! ' ' 
 
 Juliette said, with something maternal in her accent: 
 
 "That is unwise, Monseigneur. . . . For the better we 
 learn, the sooner we part with the teacher. , do not we ? " 
 
 He said, in a tone of wounded pride rather than vanity : 
 
 "I have always attended carefully to my Military Gov- 
 ernor when he gave us lessons in scientific warfare. For a 
 Napoleon must always be a soldier and a strategist. . . . 
 Riding came easily anybody can learn to ride well! . . . 
 When I have pleased my tutors most, my reward has been 
 unless it was in July or August a day with the stag- 
 hounds at Fontainebleau, or St. Germain or Compiegne. 
 . . . The Emperor has given me two magnificent Irish 
 hunters. ..." He added with nai've boyish vanity : ' ' And 
 the uniform of our Imperial Hunt is splendid, you know. 
 . . . Gold-laced cocked hat with white plumes, green coat 
 with crimson velvet facings, white leathers and jack-boots. 
 Last night I dreamed I was hunting with Cavaignac . . . 
 the brown forest flying by as we galloped through the 
 frosty fern. . . . The sky was pale red, and a diamond 
 star hung just under the tip of the new moon of Novem- 
 ber. We were foremost of all when the stag turned to bay 
 at the Pools of Saint Pierre. . . . Then the horns sounded 
 the kallali, the Chief Huntsman offered me the knife, and 
 I said to him : f M . Leemans, you will give it to my friend, 
 M. Cavaignac!' . . ." 
 
 "And then, Monseigneur? ..." 
 
 He had told the dream with unexpected spirit and fire. 
 That gallop through the wintry forest-rides had been stim- 
 ulatingly real to Juliette. She had thrilled as the hard- 
 pressed buck had leaped into the pool, and turned with 
 antlers lowered against the ravening jaws of the pack. 
 Now, though she shrank from the thought of the spilled 
 blood she wanted to hear the rest of it. She wished 
 always to remember this story, told solely for her, by the 
 son of her Emperor. . . . 
 
 ' ' Shall I tell you ? The end is not as nice as the begin- 
 ning or the middle. ..." He hesitated, frowning a little,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 479 
 
 then took up the broken thread: "I thought I took the 
 knife and held it out to him, and he suddenly snatched it 
 and I felt the blade pierce my heart right through. . . . 
 He said, with his dark, bright eyes on mine: 'Son of my 
 father's enemyi, I slay despots, not animals!' . . . And I 
 felt the hot blood bubbling in my throat as I answered: 
 'You have killed a great faith and a great love!' ' 
 
 It was rhetoric of a bombastic, youthful kind, but not 
 without pathos. His lips quivered. He nipped them to- 
 gether, and blinked away the stinging salt moisture that 
 had risen in his bright eyes. Juliette said, aching to con- 
 sole him: 
 
 "Dreams go by contraries, according to my schoolmates 
 of the Convent. Your friendship with M. Cavaignac will 
 not be severed by the blade of a hunting-knife." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 ' ' Or rather it is by my hand that the stab will be given. 
 . . . Yet how could that be, when I like him so very, very 
 much? ... Is it not strange, I have never spoken to 
 Cavaignac, and yet I would have chosen him for my com- 
 panion above all others, before even Espinasse or Chino 
 Murat! . . ." 
 
 "I think I understand ..." Juliette said, feeling the 
 tug of his craving for affection and sympathy, realizing the 
 loneliness that had found relief in hero-worship, and 
 heartily pitying her Emperor's son. "When the heart 
 speaks, one cannot shut one's ears; one must listen al- 
 ways. . . . Among hundreds of faces there is one that 
 paints itself upon the memory . . . there is one voice that 
 makes good music when others only tire the ear. . . . 
 There is one nature that seems more open, fresh, and can- 
 did than others. . . . Without knowing that you do so, 
 you continually compare it with them. . . . And when 
 you are sad or lonely, you would wish that person to be 
 near you. . . . You remember his gray eyes with specks 
 of brown and golden in them, and the curly hair, and the 
 pleasant lips. You regret that when you met him you 
 were not more charming, more amiable. . . . You feel 
 chagrin to remember that you were neither of these things. 
 . . . You would like to hold out the hand as they do in 
 England, and say, 'Pardon, pardon, that I misunderstood 
 you, my friend ! ' : 
 
 The boy's blue eyes rounded. His fair brows puckered
 
 480 
 
 in perplexity. Too well-bred to interrupt, he listened with 
 increasing surprise. 
 
 ' ' Pardon that I regarded you as a brusque, untidy boy, 
 when you had been robbed, and were homeless, and suf- 
 fering from hunger. For Monica's sake, you hid it. And 
 I applaud that noble silence ! I admire you with all my 
 heart! . . ." 
 
 The Prince broke in: 
 
 "But Cavaignac has not been robbed, and who ever said 
 he was hungry? He lives with Madame, his mother . . . 
 they are not rich, certainly! As Madame is a widow and 
 he an only son, he is exempt from military service. He is 
 to embrace the profession of Literature he will write 
 great books or great plays, or edit a newspaper. . . . And 
 I would like to help 'him to climb to the very top of the 
 ladder. . . . Secretly because he would never accept any- 
 thing that came from me! ... Am I stupid, Mademoi- 
 selle?" 
 
 She said with warmth that covered a slight confusion, 
 caused by that slip of the tongue an instant before : 
 
 ' ' Ah, no, indeed ! but very kind and generous. Perhaps, 
 if it were possible, M. Cavaignac would be proud and glad 
 to know you were his friend. It may be that the affection 
 he inspires in you, he returns, though he does not own it. 
 There can be no harm in thinking this, at least ! ' ' 
 
 The Prince said, with animation : 
 
 LVI 
 
 "I SAW him, I am convinced, when we left Saint-Cloud, 
 outside the station near the Gate of Orleans. He stood 
 apart from the soldiers and the people. . . . He was all in 
 black, and had grown older and taller. He looked at me 
 earnestly, and slightly raised his hat as the carriage drove 
 up. I saluted in answer, and the Empress asked me : ' Who 
 is that grave young man? Do you know him?' I said: 
 *My mother, I have never spoken to him in my life!' . . . 
 You would have thought the Empress very brave, if you 
 had seen her, Mademoiselle. Nobody could have guessed 
 she had been weeping. Though the night before we left 
 for Metz . . . when she came to me in my bed ..." 
 
 His lips twitched, and one big tear brimmed over and 
 splashed on the sleeve of his piou-piou's uniform. He
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 481 
 
 flushed bright red, and whisked it off as though it were a 
 wasp that would have stung. 
 
 "She brought me a new medal to hang on the collar I 
 wear always. ' ' He slid a finger inside the edge of his stiff 
 military stock, and hooked up an inch of gold chain. "It 
 has on one side a figure of Our Blessed Lady crushing the 
 head of the serpent, and on the other there is the Cross 
 with two hearts. The Holy Father has blessed it; it was 
 sent to Rome purposely. . . . Mothers are anxious when 
 their sons are called upon Active Service. ... It is nat- 
 ural, is it not ? ' ' 
 
 Juliette 's eyes were wet with pity for the Empress. She 
 bent her head in assent. The boy*went on, shrugging his 
 slender shoulders: 
 
 "For me I like better to have soldiers about me than a 
 lot of people in embroidered tail-coats. If I had been 
 twenty, I should have been at Worth with the Duke of 
 Magenta. ... I would have died at the head of my 
 troops rather than have consented to that shameful re- 
 treat. . . . 'Over my body!' . . . that is what I would 
 have said to them. . . . 'Do you wish me to dishonor the 
 blood of Napoleon the Great?' ' 
 
 He crossed to the fireplace and stood upon the Turkey 
 hearthrug, a boyish figure reflected in the great Venetian 
 mirror that hung above the carved stone mantelpiece. 
 The outpouring had relieved the nervous tension; the red 
 flush had died out of his fair temples, the smooth forehead 
 was no longer disfigured with a scowl. 
 
 " If I might only have remained with the Army at Metz, 
 I would have asked nothing better. But instead of stay- 
 ing to fight the Prussians, we drove away when they came 
 in sight. It was ignominious. ... It made me feel hor- 
 ribly! . . . And the Emperor would not show it, but I 
 know he suffered, too. Then the camp was beastly. . . . 
 There was no pretense of discipline. Their officers could 
 hardly restrain the mobilists. There was even mutiny 
 among those who had returned from Alsace-Lorraine the 
 Algerian troops of the Army of MacMahon!" 
 
 His agitation made him stutter as the words came pour- 
 ing from him. 
 
 ' ' They wanted to be led once more against the Germans ! 
 to be avenged for all their losses and misfortunes! . . . 
 I understood why they were difficult. . . . They did not
 
 482 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 understand why we did not march at once to the northeast 
 frontier. No more did I. ... I was unreasonable, like 
 them! But now we are advancing soon, soon, you will 
 hear something! . . . We will effect a junction of our 
 Army with M. de Bazaine's, and sweep the Prussians out 
 of France!" 
 
 He was walking up and down, swinging his arms, ges- 
 ticulating, grinding his heels into the arabesques of the 
 Aubusson carpet at every turn. 
 
 "Then there will be great popular rejoicings the Em- 
 peror will receive his due there will be no more misunder- 
 standings. For the Emperor is terribly misunderstood, 
 Mademoiselle, and he is no longer young or strong. . . . 
 He has so many bitter enemies. ... I have heard him say 
 so, weeping the Emperor, Mademoiselle! ..." 
 
 11 Oh, hush, Monseigneur ! " 
 
 But he did not heed Juliette 's entreaty. 
 
 "I have heard him crying out to God in his room at 
 midnight, when he thought everyone was asleep, and he 
 was quite alone: 'My God! is this the beginning of the 
 punishment? Must the price of my success be ruin, de- 
 feat, disgrace!' . . . Then I stole away and made a prayer 
 for him and for myself, Mademoiselle. ... I say it regu- 
 larly every night since then." 
 
 His boyish pompousness, pride, and vanity had fallen 
 from him like a tinsel diadem. Chivalry and loyalty, un- 
 selfishness and devotion shone from and irradiated the 
 child. 
 
 " 'My God, if Thou dost save up happiness for me, I 
 pray Thee to take it away, and give it to my father, who 
 needs it so badly. . . . And, my God, if Thou indeed art 
 angry with him, I beseech Thee to grant him Thy pardon, 
 and punish me, instead. All I ask Thee for myself is that 
 I may know Thy Will, and obey It, that I may do my duty 
 bravely, and die when the end of my life comes without 
 dishonor and without fear!' Is that a good prayer, do 
 you think, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 Before she could command herself sufficiently to answer, 
 there was a knock at the door, and the equerry came in. 
 He looked eager and vexed, excited and disappointed. 
 Varying emotions seemed to clash in him. But he said, 
 smiling and saluting as the Prince turned toward him: 
 
 "The ten minutes are over, Monseigneur!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 483 
 
 "Ten minutes ago, Monsieur, to speak correctly," said 
 Monseigneur, with a mischievous look. Then his face 
 changed. "News!" he called out eagerly. "You have 
 dispatches from the Emperor! . . . Don't play a farce 
 with me, Count, I beg of you! when there is the telegram 
 sticking out of your cuff ! ' ' 
 
 And with the nimbleness of a gamin and the audacity of 
 a spoiled princeling, he threw himself upon the equerry 
 and captured the prize. 
 
 "From the Emperor at Rheims no! don't retire, 
 Mademoiselle! You are discreet not like women who 
 talk! . . . You shall share my good news with me. . . . 
 He says: 'There has been furious fighting at Mars la Tour. 
 Battles are raging at Flauville, Flavigny, and Vionville. 
 The Prince will remain for the present at Bethel, where the 
 Emperor will rejoin him on the 21th. As it is not consid- 
 ered advisable to effect a junction with Bazaine, the march 
 of the Army of Chalons is directed upon Sedan.' ' 
 
 The mischief died out of the dancing eyes, the mobile 
 face whitened with disappointment. He repeated, staring 
 blankly at the paper: 
 
 "For what did we leave Chalons, if not to assist Ba- 
 zaine? . . . Mon Dieu! . . . What infamy! . . . Why 
 am I not a man ? ' ' 
 
 He grew crimson and burst into a tempest of sobbing. 
 He tore the pale green paper into fragments and trampled 
 them beneath his feet. His eyes blazed through the tears 
 that streamed from them as he stammered between his 
 gasps and chokings: 
 
 "Cowards! . . . Traitors! . . . Disgraced forever! 
 ... Is there no honor left in France ? ' ' 
 
 "Come, Mademoiselle, in pity!" entreated the equerry, 
 as deadly pale as Monseigneur was red. He held open the 
 door with a shaking hand, and Juliette hurriedly quitted 
 the drawing-room. The door shut upon the sobs and out- 
 cries. The Count said, with a sigh of relief, wiping the 
 perspiration from his face: 
 
 "You will not speak of this? His Imperial Highness is 
 overwrought and excited. It will pass presently. Let me 
 conduct you downstairs ! ' ' 
 
 The hall of the Prefecture reached, a servant in the liv- 
 ery of the establishment approached the equerry. It ap- 
 peared that the lady who had accompanied Mademoiselle
 
 484 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 had recovered from her indisposition, and departed, leav- 
 ing no message for her young friend. 
 
 "Madame will have returned to her hotel," said the 
 equerry. He added: "By chance, Mademoiselle, the dis- 
 patches we have just received contain proof that your 
 friend has been misled by false intelligence. Colonel le 
 Bayard has not been taken prisoner. He is now in com- 
 mand of his regiment with the First Brigade of Cavalry 
 of General Clerambault's Division, now engaged with the 
 Third Corps in the neighborhood of Metz." 
 
 Then as Juliette turned red and pale, and looked at him 
 in breathless questioning, he added, pulling a vestibule- 
 chair from its place near the wainscot and making her sit 
 down: 
 
 "Best there one moment. ... I will speak to Colonel 
 iWatrin. He is now at mess with his officers in the Pre- 
 fect 's billiard-room. ' ' 
 
 Watrin of the Bodyguard, Chief of the Prince Imperial 's 
 escort, came clanking and jingling from his dinner to con- 
 firm the fact as stated by the equerry. The 777th Chas- 
 seurs, belonging to de Clerambault's Division of the Third 
 Corps of the Army of Bazaine, were certainly now engaged 
 in the neighborhood of Gravelotte. But as certainly they 
 had not come into contact with the enemy previously to 
 the fifteenth of the month. 
 
 The fifteenth! the very day on which Adelaide had 
 baited her trap with an imprisoned father. . . . Joy at 
 the discovery, indignation at having been so easily cajoled 
 into captivity, brought back the red to Juliette's pale 
 cheeks and the light to her sad eyes. 
 
 This strange, wayward, mysterious mother might exer- 
 cise over her daughter a certain degree of maternal au- 
 thority. The supreme obedience, the first duty was to the 
 father, that was clear. Now she was going straight to 
 him, wherever he might be. She was strong enough, for 
 his dear sake, to take whatever risks were involved. 
 
 Suppose Adelaide insisted on accompanying her? It 
 was unthinkable that even so hardy an offender should 
 venture into the presence of one so wronged. . . . Meet 
 his look! . . . Read in his face his scorn of perfidy! 
 Juliette put away the possibility from her with both hands. 
 
 We know that Madame Adelaide had contemplated this 
 very move upon occasion. But she had not met Made-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 485 
 
 moiselle de Bayard then. Since the encounter had taken 
 place she had realized that the establishment of maternal 
 influence, strong enough to make of her daughter a confed- 
 erate and ally, was a task beyond her powers. 
 
 Her grace, her charm, were lost upon this pale, frigid, 
 obstinate little being, in whom she saw her mother-in-law 
 over again. For than this girl, sprung of her own flesh, 
 whose veins were filled with her blood, nothing could be 
 more unlike Adelaide, that magnificent creature of impulses 
 and desires and appetites. . . . 
 
 Dominion over de Bayard could never be regained and 
 established 'while his daughter sat by his hearth a virgin 
 unwed. Why had Adelaide hindered her marriage to M. 
 Tessier? Pacing the Turkey carpet of the Prefect's li- 
 brary, Madame admitted that she had acted inadvisedly. 
 That the plan of bringing Juliette into contact with the 
 Prince Imperial would be discounted by the innocence of 
 the girl and the inexperience of the boy. 
 
 She could imagine the dialogue they were holding at that 
 moment, all, "Oh, Mademoiselle!" and "Ah, Monsei- 
 gneur!" . . . The girl should have been permitted to cele- 
 brate her nuptials with this dull young husband of her 
 father 's choosing. . . . Then a few years later would have 
 come the opportunity. She ground her teeth, thinking 
 how her precipitation had spoiled everything . . . thrust 
 her. . . . Ah, Heaven! how one shuddered at the recol- 
 lection, almost into the clutches of the Wielder of the Bow- 
 string, the ingenious inventor of the Ordeal of the Looking- 
 Glass. . . . 
 
 Straz. ... At the sight of him her heart had stopped 
 beating. In imagination those strangling silken folds had 
 closed, shutting out light and breath. . . . 
 
 How he had leered, rolling those fierce black eyes of his. 
 "So," his jeering smile had said, "my Sultana and her 
 slave have met again. Did I not prophesy truly, sweet 
 one, tell me? when I said you would never again look in 
 your toilette-mirror without remembering me!" 
 
 Her nerves were raveled to threads her will was weak- 
 ening. . . . Despite her hatred and her overwhelming 
 fear of the man, she knew that he was her master. That 
 if he fixed those eyes upon her and beckoned Come! she 
 would have to obey. . . . 
 
 Was he still here? The book-lined walls seemed closing
 
 486 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 in on her. The atmosphere was suffocating . . . she must 
 escape from this place or go mad. 
 
 The Prefect's wife had been called away, after kindly 
 ministrations with smelling-salts and red lavender. Ade- 
 laide opened the library door a little way, and looked 
 forth cautiously. Except the two Cent Gardes on duty at 
 the foot of the principal staircase, there was nobody 
 stirring in the hall or vestibule. 
 
 As she told herself so, a red baize-covered door at a 
 flagged rear passage-end was opened. The Prince 's equerry 
 came out with the Chief of the Bodyguard, an oblong pale 
 green paper was in the equerry's hand. Both officers' faces 
 were pale. Colonel Watrin's was livid and distorted with 
 emotion. He said to his companion in a low voice, and 
 with a despairing gesture : 
 
 ' ' It needed but this to hasten the catastrophe ! . . . All 
 is over ! . . . The Empire is lost ! ' ' 
 
 Then he went back. The red baize door shut upon him. 
 The equerry came through the passage, entered the hall, 
 and went quickly up the stairs. He was going to break to 
 the Emperor's son the news of some terrible disaster . . . 
 to say to him, as Watrin had said: "All is over! . . . The 
 Empire is lost!" 
 
 With all a woman's intuition, Adelaide leaped at the 
 truth and comprehended the situation. What did she in 
 the galley of a ruined, sinking Empire ? What advantage 
 was to be gained by reconciliation with Henri de Bayard 
 now? And with Straz in the neighborhood, what madness 
 to remain here. . . . 
 
 As for the girl, she was possessed of money. Let her 
 go to her father, or to her friends, or elsewhere. . . . 
 
 So Adelaide went out into the hall, still haunted by 
 horrible memories of the Roumanian. She found the por- 
 ter. He hailed her fiacre from its waiting-place. Madame 
 stepped in gracefully, and was jingled away, straight into 
 the jaws of Straz ! 
 
 "Mademoiselle is courageous," commented the Chief of 
 the Escort when Juliette's determination to seek the shel- 
 ter of her Colonel shaped itself in a request for a military 
 pass, a thing without which nobody could penetrate the 
 immediate area where the dreadful thing called War was 
 actually going on. The speaker resumed:
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 487 
 
 "The Cavalry Camp of the Third Corps is at present at 
 Chatel St. Germain. . . . Provided Mademoiselle gets there 
 without accident, and can endure the noise of the bom- 
 bardments Mademoiselle may be quite as safe" he 
 shrugged and twirled his imperial "there as anywhere 
 else! . . ." 
 
 A little vague, more than a little doubtful, considering 
 the huge conflict then waging, that was to wage until 
 nightfall of the morrow, between the Imperial Army of 
 Metz and the First and Second Armies of Germany. But 
 the permit was written and signed with a flourish, and 
 gracefully handed over to the keeping of Mademoiselle. 
 Then she thanked Colonel Watrin and went away, declin- 
 ing the attendance of the servant whom the officer would 
 have sent with her, and descended the steps of the Pre- 
 fecture under the raking eyes of the crowd. . . . 
 
 For, owing to a mysterious leakage in Imperial dis- 
 patches, something approaching to a panic was brewing, 
 . . . The Place of the Prefecture was packed with people 
 . . . the news of the frightful struggle near Metz was 
 buzzing from mouth to mouth. It was whispered that de- 
 feat was certain, that M. de Bismarck had a secret under- 
 standing with M. de Bazaine. . . . Later on, when peas- 
 ants who had hurried in from villages on the outskirts, 
 stragglers who had quitted the Army at the commencement 
 of its misfortunes, soldiers who had deserted from the 
 Colors in action, came flocking into the town; despite the 
 presence of the Bodyguard and the gendarmerie, and the 
 local Fire-Brigade, an attack upon the Imperial party at 
 the Prefecture was anticipated ; so threatening became the 
 attitude of the people, egged on by those among them who 
 were agents and spies of the enemy. 
 
 Perhaps the arrival of the Emperor would throw oil upon 
 the troubled waters. Perhaps it would be wiser to warn 
 him not to come. Well might the officers who guarded the 
 person of the Heir of a crumbling Empire groan under the 
 burden of their responsibilities. "Well might the Prefect 
 perspire, to the ruin of his collars and cravats. 
 
 It may be imagined that the lack of Adelaide's company 
 did not greatly depress Mademoiselle de Bayard, as, cheered 
 by her interview and armed with her permit, she tripped
 
 488 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 through the crowded streets to the Hotel of the Crown, 
 where they had spent the previous night. 
 
 "Madame had already returned," said the respectable 
 Frenchwoman in charge of the bureau. "She gave notice 
 of departure, and asked for the account. Then the gentle- 
 man arrived a handsome man with splendid eyes, brilliant 
 as carbuncles, and hair and beard my faith! what hair 
 and what a beard! Madame cried out with ravishment 
 upon his entrance, for he would not be announced he 
 went up at once. Possibly it was Madame 's husband, or 
 some near relative?" 
 
 Juliette made some ambiguous reply to the question. 
 She was intent upon the problem of rescuing her traveling- 
 bag. "Without money one could not reach Chatel St. Ger- 
 main, and in the bag was her little store of cash. Trem- 
 bling, she crept upstairs to the room she had slept in, a 
 dressing or maid's apartment, opening out of Madame 's. 
 The discovery that the door was locked and the key in 
 Adelaide's possession was appalling. She was delivered 
 from the dilemma by a chambermaid with a master-key. 
 As she stole in and seized her bag she heard voices in the 
 next room. Certainly one was Adelaide's and the other 
 male. A thickish voice, speaking with a drawl and a muf- 
 fled softness that somehow recalled the Assyrian hawk- 
 features and fierce black eyes of Straz. 
 
 "When the little Queen of Diamonds comes," the voice 
 said, "you shall present rue!" And a chuckle followed on 
 the words that made her cold. Fortunately, some noise 
 in the corridor covered her retreat with her rescued prop- 
 erty, and facilitated her departure unobserved from the 
 Hotel of the Crown. . . . 
 
 The station was near enough to be reached in a few 
 minutes. She learned there that a train would leave in ten 
 minutes for Verdun. At Verdun she would have to change, 
 provided the branch-line trains were running, or proceed 
 to Chatel St. Germain by road. 
 
 Those ten minutes expanded into hours as the girl sat 
 in the dirty station, waiting. She was escaping from even 
 greater perils than she had feared, and yet when she found 
 herself actually in the train, and the train moving out of 
 Rethel, she knew a moment of passionate regret. 
 
 She had been so happy there. . . . She would never 
 forget, even though she lived to be an old, old woman, that
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 489 
 
 half -hour spent in easy, confidential talk with her Imperial 
 Prince. 
 
 The littered third-class carriage expanded, became the 
 formal drawing-room of the Prefecture. . . . Lingeringly 
 Mademoiselle went over the interview, and the parting 
 ah, me! there had been no farewell! . . . And yet, upon 
 the step of departure, standing upon the muddy curbstone 
 of the Place, full of soldiers and scowling people, she had 
 looked wistfully up at the row of four big round-topped 
 shining windows on the balconied first floor of the Pre- 
 fecture and seen . . . 
 
 Only a boy's face, blurred and stained with crying. 
 Only a boy's hand, waved behind the pane. As she whis- 
 pered "Adieu!" looking up at him with passionate love 
 and loyalty, she wondered if ever they two would meet on 
 earth again. 
 
 It was to be never again for the boy and girl whose 
 chivalrous and noble natures had struck out, at first meet- 
 ing, the white spark that kindles to Friendship's sacred 
 flame. 
 
 What misfortunes were coming, thick and fast, upon the 
 luckless child of the Empire ! . . . What a cup of dreadful 
 judgment was to be offered to those guiltless lips! . . . 
 
 So young, so noble, so unfortunate ! The pity of it ! . . . 
 He who might have breathed new life into the dry bones 
 of the Napoleonic Legend, and given France an Emperor 
 without fear and without reproach. 
 
 What a string of waking nightmares, the days that were 
 to follow! . . . That journey by road to Mezieres . . . 
 that brief sojourn at Sedan. The sudden flight to Avesnes, 
 where the guns could be heard thundering, betokening the 
 defeat of a demoralized, dejected army, conquered almost 
 before the shock of battle, paralyzed by the premonition of 
 inevitable disaster, as much as by the perfect preparedness, 
 the masterly strategy, and the overwhelming numbers of 
 the enemy. . . . 
 
 From Landrecies to Maubeuge follow the boy sorrow- 
 fully. . . . 
 
 What an hour was that when his protectors stripped him 
 of his darling uniform, dressed him in civilian garments, 
 took him out by the hotel back-door, and smuggled him into 
 the omnibus that was to convey him to Belgian ground.
 
 490 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 His father a prisoner, his mother a fugitive, crowds 
 hustling him in their curiosity to see the son of the toppled 
 Napoleon, what wonder that the memory of that journey 
 haunted him his brief life long. 
 
 He was to attain manhood in exile. Transplanted to the 
 soil of a foreign country, he was to develop into the beau- 
 ideal of a youthful King among men. High-minded, pure- 
 hearted, excelling in manly sports and martial exercises, 
 the soul of honor, the fine flower of French chivalry. And 
 in the spring of his manhood he was to die by the assegais 
 of savage warriors, leaving nothing behind him but the 
 broken heart of a mother, some fragrant memories, and the 
 undying story of that lion's life-and-death fight among the 
 trodden grasses on the banks of the Imbazani. 
 
 LVII 
 
 FOLLOWING the devious route of narrow paths by which 
 the peasant had guided them, P. C. Breagh made his way 
 back to the battle-ground between the Bois de Vionville and 
 the Bois de Gaumont. 
 
 Prussian spade-parties had made good progress during 
 the three hours of his absence. Part of the field had been 
 cleared, long parallel trenches dug at twelve- foot intervals 
 in the soft, soaked ground, and German bodies decently 
 interred therein. Huge canvas sacks crammed with 
 identification-tags, papers and purses removed from these 
 stood ready to be carted away. Volunteers and Red Cross 
 helpers had rendered like services to dead Frenchmen. 
 And at the head of a trench, marked by a board on which 
 was chalked in awkward letters: 
 
 ' ' CHASSEUES OF HORSE OF THE IMPERIAL GUARD. 
 OFFICERS, 6 ; 
 TROOPS, 200." 
 
 a single widish grave had been dug, in which had been 
 deposited the body of de Bayard. 
 
 The place was marked by a cross made of the broken
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 491 
 
 halves of a Uhlan lance lashed with a fragment of cavalry 
 picket-rope. About the cross Mademoiselle de Bayard's 
 veil had been loosely tied, and the vertical shaft topped, 
 grimly enough, with M. le Colonel's talpack. None of the 
 heavy clay soil had been thrown back. "Waiting some hand 
 to draw Earth's rude coverlet charitably over him, de Bay- 
 ard lay, staring back in the brazen face of the sun. 
 
 His green silver-braided dolman had been torn open 
 the blood-drenched ceinture cut, showing the mortal lance- 
 thrust. The red, silver-striped pantaloons had been slashed 
 at the hips, no doubt in search of pocket-book and purse. 
 It was difficult to credit that the sternly extended right 
 arm, and the determined frown graven deep between the 
 eyebrows, did not mean that Life was extinct, but merely 
 in abeyance ; that the cold glitter of the bold dark eyes and 
 the grim setting of the pale mouth under the martial mus- 
 tache would not warm and soften and relax into a 
 smile. 
 
 He was so disdainful in his rigid silence, so much a chief 
 of men, even in death, that the disheveled scallawag who 
 dared to love his daughter winced at the cold stare of those 
 dark, glittering eyes. But for Juliette's sake P. C. Breagh 
 nerved himself to the sticking point got down into the 
 squashy clay beside de Bayard, and took his medals, and 
 Cross of the Legion of Honor, giving him Juliette 's Rosary 
 instead. 
 
 ' ' You know, sir, I don 't intend to take a liberty, ' ' he felt 
 like saying: "I'm only carrying out what I've given my 
 word to do. If I 'm not quite up to your mark, please over- 
 look it! As to being worthy of her is any man breath- 
 ing? Ask yourself the question, and the answer will be 
 No. . . ." 
 
 Save the Algerian, Crimean and Sardinian medals, and 
 the Cross, nothing of value remained upon the Colonel. . . . 
 
 Some soldier having left a spade sticking in the clay at 
 the head of an unfinished trench, P. C. Breagh possessed 
 himself of the utensil, and began to fill the grave in, though 
 the dead face looked at him so haughtily that until he had 
 covered it with the black silk veil, he boggled hideously at 
 the task. 
 
 "Winking away the tears that blinded him, and gulping 
 down the lump that stuck in his throat, he finished. Re- 
 mained but the need of a Catholic priest to read the Office.
 
 492 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 You saw the caped cloak, and the broad-brimmed hat, or the 
 cossack and biretta of the Roman ecclesiastic, working side 
 by side with the Jewish rabbi, the English Protestant 
 clergyman, and the Lutheran pastor, in these harvest-fields 
 of death. The secular priest and the tonsured religious 
 were to be found with the Red Cross Ambulance-trains and 
 in the temporary hospitals; doing their best for the souls 
 and bodies of their broken fellow-men, now that War had 
 done the worst. 
 
 To whom should one appeal? Hardly to the burly, 
 bearded Franciscan, who passed supporting a laden double- 
 stretcher at the upper end. You saw his brown robe 
 hitched up under his white girdle, and his muscular bare 
 legs, ending in boots of the elastic-sided description, stained 
 as though he had been treading out ripe grapes in the 
 press. An Army chaplain succeeded the monk, upright and 
 thin, in a dark military frock and black-banded forage-cap, 
 half leading, half carrying a French corporal of infantry, 
 who had received a bullet through both eyes. Farther off, 
 a gray-haired ecclesiastic, whose dress betokened his episco- 
 pal dignity, was administering the Viaticum to a dying 
 Mecklenburg Hussar. Even as the sublime Mystery of 
 Faith was uplifted even as the Englishman bent the knee 
 in adoration his glance fell upon the kneeling figure of 
 an old man a few yards away. 
 
 Undoubtedly a priest, the poor shepherd of some poverty- 
 stricken country parish, for the cassock that covered the 
 frail, wasted body was threadbare, green with wear and 
 heavily patched. Absorbed in devotion, his broad-brimmed 
 hat lying on the ground before him, his thin hands crossed 
 upon his sunken breast, his white head erect, his rapt gaze 
 fixed upon the Host, he remained immovable, until the 
 brief but solemn rite was at an end. Then he looked up at 
 the sky shaking back the long white hair that had fallen 
 about his peaked and meager features making three times 
 rapidly the sign of the Cross. And the serene and beauti- 
 ful peace that rested on that broad furrowed forehead,. the 
 radiant smile upon the toothless mouth, and the beaming 
 kindliness in the brilliant dark eyes that rested on P. C. 
 Breagh's, told him that here was the needed man. 
 
 Yet he hesitated to speak to the priest, who rose and 
 moved a few steps farther to where a shell-torn horse, tan- 
 gled in the rope-harness that had attached to it a smashed
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 493 
 
 t 
 
 artillery caisson, lay groaning and thrashing its long neck 
 and tortured head to and fro. 
 
 Parties of Uhlans told off for the purpose, were even 
 then shooting such hopelessly wounded victims. But no 
 merciful bullet had ended the pain of this suffering beast. 
 It groaned again, and coughed up blood as the old man 
 stopped to look at it, and fixed its haggard eyes almost 
 humanly upon his face. 
 
 The appeal went home. Stepping over the prone body of 
 its dead comrade, the old man bent over the horse and 
 gently stroked its neck. He said, and the words came 
 clearly to Carolan: 
 
 "Poor creature of God! be thy sore anguish ended. In 
 the Name of the Father ..." 
 
 As he ended the Triune Invocation, the horse's head 
 sank down heavily. A deep sigh heaved the creature's 
 sides, and exhaled in a gasp. The hind legs contracted 
 sharply toward the body, and then jerked out, heavily 
 hitting the axle of the ammunition-cart. All was over. 
 The Samaritan moved away, but P. C. Breagh followed and 
 overtook him, crying: 
 
 "My Father ..." And the old man halted and turned 
 himself, leaning for support upon a knotted ash-stick and 
 saying : 
 
 "Surely, my child. Do you need my poor assistance?" 
 
 A lisping voice, speaking with a country accent. And 
 with that smile of radiant kindness making it angelic the 
 face of Voltaire. 
 
 There were the features of the Philosopher of Ferney, 
 rendered familiar to this later age by many portraits and 
 busts. The broad and lofty brow, the great orbital arches, 
 the mobile expressive eyes, wide-winged, sensitive hawk- 
 beak, thin-lipped mouth, with the subtly-curving corners 
 and the deeply cleft humorous chin, were all there. The 
 face lacked nothing of Voltaire but cynicism and devilry. 
 In place of these imagine a Divine simplicity, and a ten- 
 derness so pure that the young man was abashed. . . . 
 
 "My Father," he got out: "in charity to the dead and 
 pity for the living, will you consent to read the Office of 
 Burial by a Catholic soldier's graveside?" 
 
 "Surely, surely, my child," nodded the wearer of the 
 threadbare soutane. And pulled out of his pocket a red- 
 cotton handkerchief, wrapped about a battered Office-book
 
 494 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 and a shabby stole, and trotted back beside the English- 
 man. Then, standing opposite to where the green and red- 
 plumed talpack topped the broken lance-shaft, he read the 
 Absolution, the Libera me, Paternoster and Collects, and 
 with a wide and sweeping gesture, solemnly blessed the 
 grave and the trenches it neighbored, saying, at the close of 
 the De Profundis that followed, with one of those rare 
 smiles that made the old face beautiful exceedingly : 
 
 "My poor prayers are for all my children. Now kneel 
 and make your confession. No one will hear you it is as 
 though we were together in my poor little church. ' ' 
 
 "But, my Father! . . ." P. C. Breagh protested. 
 
 The old man said, looking at him penetratingly: 
 
 "My child, you would tell me that not so very long ago 
 you discharged your religious obligations. But to-day is 
 the Octave of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady, and 
 you have not confessed or received Communion since Whit- 
 suntide. Will you tell me that your conscience is clear 
 enough to meet death without apprehension, when Saints at 
 the moment 'of dissolution tremble, anticipating the terrors 
 of the Divine Judgments of God ! ' ' 
 
 Tears stood in the radiant eyes, brimmed over and ran 
 down in two channels worn by that sorrowful-sweet smile 
 of his. . . . He clasped his hands entreatingly, then threw 
 them wide, crying in a very passion of pity and love : 
 
 "My poor child, with Death on every side of you, will 
 you turn from Him Who is Lord and Giver of Life ? And 
 what shall I say to Him when I stand before Him, and He 
 asks me : 'Didst thou suffer a sinner to depart whom plead- 
 ings might have won?' ' 
 
 There was no resisting that passionate entreaty. An- 
 other instant, and the barrier of pride broke down. P. C. 
 Breagh knelt in the raw, moist clay by Henri de Bayard 's 
 graveside, and poured out his full heart under the light yet 
 thrilling pressure of those thin old hands upon his head. 
 
 With the murmured blessing that followed the Absolu- 
 tion the hands were withdrawn and their owner went away. 
 How he went and whither he betook himself, his penitent 
 never knew.
 
 THE MAN OF. IRON 495 
 
 LVIII 
 
 THE hamlet of Petit Plappeville lay strangely still and 
 silent in the westering sunshine. Hitherto a small oasis of 
 untouched ordinary life situated on the edge of a vast area 
 of blackened devastation, it now partook in the general 
 aspect of upheaval and ruin. The doors of the dozen cot- 
 tages forming its single street stood wide open. Household! 
 goods, furniture, clothing, broken loaves of bread, smashed 
 and empty wine-bottles were strewed upon the street and, 
 in the little, flowery front yards. All the doors stood open, 
 some that had been locked and driven in hung crookedly on 
 twisted hinges, the broken windows displayed shattered 
 splinters edging gaping holes. Not a human being showed, 
 not a fowl pecked among the litter. The hand of the ma- 
 rauder had plainly been at work. P. C. Breagh groaned 
 as he crossed the threshold of Madame Guyot's cottage, 
 such a scene of domestic chaos housed between its defiled 
 walls. 
 
 Chests of drawers and cupboards had been ransacked of 
 clothes and linen, these, hideously befouled, had been rent 
 into rags and thrown upon the floor. The fragments of the 
 Englishman's knapsack, temporarily left in Madame Guy- 
 ot's keeping, the ruins of his shaving-tackle, and some 
 stray leaves of filled note-books, deplorably appealed to 
 their late owner's eyes. But P. C. Breagh 's eyes were 
 busied elsewhere. With the ripped-up feather bed from 
 the inner chamber, where Juliette de Bayard had passed 
 the previous night. With the soiled and trampled rem- 
 nants of some delicate articles of feminine underwear a 
 lace-frilled night-robe, a filmy chemise. He took them up 
 with reverent, shaking hands looked instinctively for an 
 initial. . . . There were letters embroidered in dainty 
 Convent-taught stitchery "J. M. de B." 
 
 He would have cried out, but the cry stuck in his throat, 
 and a chilly sweat broke out upon and bathed him. He 
 had glanced toward the corner occupied by the truckle-bed 
 whereon my Cousin Boisset had lain. Covered with a sheet 
 dyed partly red, something long and stark and still lay 
 outstretched upon the palliasse. And a lance driven home 
 to the shaft stuck upright in the body, from whose drained- 
 out veins the last drops splashed heavily into a dreadful
 
 496 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 pool that slowly widened on the stone-flagged kitchen floor. 
 
 Something snapped in P. C. Breagh 's brain at that sight. 
 His under-jaw wrenched to one side and dropped idiot- 
 ically. He yelped out wildly the name of his Infanta, and 
 went on yelping, and could not stop : 
 
 "Juliette! Juliette! Where are you? What have they 
 done? ... Oh, Juliette! ..." 
 
 And then the piercing agony of his loss and the certainty 
 of a fate of nameless horror for her, were lost in an im- 
 mense relief. Underneath the bed of death something 
 moved and rustled. The slender thread of a voice replied : 
 
 "Monsieur Breagh, I am here! Do not be so alarmed, I 
 beg of you ! Terrible things have happened, but I am not 
 hurt at all!" 
 
 And the ensanguined pall was pushed aside and the little 
 figure crept out from its hiding-place. Dust and cobwebs 
 could not dim her in the eyes of her true worshiper. He 
 choked and made a dive to help her, stumbled and fell upon 
 his knees as she rose to hers. And then she was in his 
 arms, not clinging to him, but leaning against his broad 
 chest, and shivering as though she were perishing cold. 
 And through the chattering of her teeth he heard did he 
 really hear her falter: 
 
 ' ' I knew I knew that you would come ! When a priest 
 had been found to bless the grave of my father. Not 
 before! . . . You would never have returned before!" 
 
 Her faith in him filled him with a joy that was anguish. 
 He rose up, lifting her toward the light, but not at all 
 releasing her. 
 
 "I came as soon as I had done my best to keep that 
 promise. Shall I ever forget what I felt when I set my 
 foot in at the door? . . . Oh, Lord! . . . Ten million 
 times worse than when that luckless Angele poisoned me! 
 . . . Didn't I make sure you were dead or worse than 
 dead!" 
 
 "It is he who is dead!" She drew her small, cold hands 
 from his that were as icy, and went to the bed and turned 
 back the upper end of the sheet that covered the still form. 
 "Monsieur Breagh, you look upon a noble soldier, who 
 gave his life for me," she said proudly, and showed the 
 snow-white face of my Cousin Boisset. 
 
 "Wouldn't I die for you? If I got the chance! . . - 
 Don't you know it? ... No how can you know it?"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 497 
 
 Carolan clenched his hands in jealous misery, and she 
 looked back at him to say : 
 
 " I do know it ! To-day you placed yourself between me 
 and the violence of those Prussians. I have no words to 
 thank you for your courage, sir! Had I words for him" 
 she looked back at my "cousin" "he would not hear 
 
 them. . . . Nor can he be sensible of this " She 
 
 stooped and kissed the dead man's forehead between the 
 boldly arching eyebrows. "Yet with all my gratitude I 
 place it there ! ' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, flushing scarlet to his hair-roots: "I 
 would change places with him to get that and I believe 
 you know it! Cover him up and let me take you away 
 from here. ..." He added, as she looked at him in breath- 
 less questioning, "Somewhere where you'll be safe. There 
 must be somewhere ! ' ' 
 
 "Until night comes to cover us," she told him, "we are 
 more safe here than anywhere. You do not think the 
 comrades of those savage men who made this scene of deso- 
 lation would halt in passing to ravage a plundered nest?" 
 
 "But here . . . you can't stay here ... in all this 
 beastliness. ' ' 
 
 His gesture of repugnance was as forcible as the word. 
 
 She thought, and said as the outward shadows length- 
 ened, and a deep red sunset streamed through the shattered 
 window-panes : 
 
 "Behind the house there is a little cabane ... I should 
 say, 'a shed,' where Madame kept her firewood. We will 
 hide ourselves in there until the dark. For what are you 
 looking?" 
 
 He answered, stirring the debris on the flagstones : 
 
 "For a comb and a razor for choice, out of my knap- 
 sack. No! ... Except the rags of a spare jacket they've 
 left me nothing but this. ' ' 
 
 One stout clasped notebook had suffered little. He thrust 
 it into his pocket and turned to Juliette. She said, with a 
 rueful catch of the breath as she regarded the wreckage of 
 her own property: 
 
 "Me they have not left anything at all of luggage. The 
 little portemanteau and the sac de nuit I brought with me 
 from Belgium . . . behold their contents destroyed by 
 those most wicked men ! Is it not deplorable ? Pray look, 
 Monsieur!"
 
 498 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 But Monsieur, suddenly seized by an attack of ultra- 
 British prudery, had turned away to rummage in the cor- 
 ner of a cupboard, where perchance might lurk a loaf. 
 
 Nothing was there but a little knitted white shawl, which 
 Juliette recognized as her own, and claimed gladly. . . . 
 She threw it about her head and shoulders, and they passed 
 out cautiously together by Madame Guyot's back door, as 
 destitute a young couple as ever tramped. But not before 
 Juliette de Bayard had replaced the sheet over the face of 
 the dead gunner, and sprinkled it with holy water from a 
 crockery stoup that hung above the bed. 
 
 "He was so good. . . . He should now be safe in 
 Paradise. But we must always remember him in our 
 prayers! . . ." 
 
 It would not have been wise to move about, but they 
 could talk in whispers, partly buried in the heap of clean 
 dry dead leaves filling half of the lean-to. Thus P. C. 
 Breagh learned the story of the death of my Cousin Bois- 
 set, and told in return his own tale. 
 
 "You had departed, it might be one-half hour, when a 
 man came running down the street, who cried: 'Hide! 
 Run ! The Uhlans are coming ! They have plundered the 
 Chateau Malakoff, and drunk M. Benoit's eau de vie and 
 wine ! ' 
 
 "This Chateau Malakoff is the house of a rich peasant 
 whose vineyards have suffered much by the German guns. 
 You will remember Madame Guyot saying so, and M. Bois- 
 set responding, full of gaiety, 'He will get all the better 
 prices, my cousin, for the old vintages he has in store!' 
 Naturally the outcry made much confusion, one peasant 
 running this way and one that. . . . Madame Guyot 
 caught hold of me and would have forced me to accompany 
 her, saying that in the quarries beyond the village would 
 be found a refuge. But I refused to leave the house ! ' ' 
 
 He broke in : 
 
 "Think what you risked! Why didn't you escape with 
 her?" 
 
 She looked at him wonderingly: 
 
 "Why, do you ask me? . . . Had I not given you my 
 parole to stay?" 
 
 He could not speak. She went on quickly: 
 
 "So I said: 'I will remain, wearing my brassard of the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 499 
 
 Croix Rouge, and the Prussians will take me for the nurse 
 of M. Boisset.' But when Madame and the villagers had 
 gone, hearing the galloping of horses approaching and a 
 howling as of wolves, that brave soldier said to me : ' Made- 
 moiselle, when men like these are mad with wine, they care 
 nothing for the Red Cross! Cover me over with a sheet, 
 and hide underneath the bed I lie on. Thus they will think 
 me dead, and possibly go away. The good God may let me 
 save you, though I have often sinned against Him ! ' ! 
 
 A tear brimmed over and fell on her white cheek. She 
 brushed it off and went on : 
 
 "I obeyed, Monsieur; I locked the door, taking out the 
 key and hiding it. Then I covered M. Boisset with the 
 sheet, took a crucifix from the wall, and laid it on his 
 breast. Then I got under the bed, for I heard men at the 
 door. There was the 'tine' of spurs and the sound of 
 breathing. Then heavy blows struck on the door until the 
 lock gave way. . . . They entered. . . . Monsieur Breagh, 
 that noble man had said to me, 'For your life, do not make 
 a sound!' For my soul, more precious than life, I could 
 not have spoken or moved ! . . . " 
 
 Above the narrow band of black velvet that clipped it, 
 P. C. Breagh could see her little throat swelling. Her 
 tragic eyes seemed to have no room for him. He waited, 
 possessed by a strange hazy feeling that this meeting with 
 her amidst surroundings so frightful must be taking place 
 in a dream of uncanny vividness. That he must wake up 
 next moment in the clean spare bedroom of the gardener's 
 cottage, to find his garments, cleansed of soil and stain, 
 brushed and repaired by the deft hands of the charitable 
 Sisters, and a battered tin bath of genuinely hot water, 
 waiting to receive the Englishman. .... 
 
 "They came in," said Juliette, "talking in their guttural 
 language. Me, I could never learn more than ten words of 
 German at school. . . . But I comprehended that they 
 were angry at finding so little in the cupboards and closets 
 of my poor Madame Guyot. That was why they tore up 
 clothes and linen broke the dishes and glasses behaved 
 as wild beasts, rather than men. That they were drunk, I 
 knew, though I saw their boots and not their faces. The 
 smell of wine and brandy made me desire to be sick. . . ., 
 But when they approached the bed, with what anguish of 
 apprehension I waited. ... If I could have screamed, it
 
 500 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 would have been in that moment, when they pulled back 
 the sheet. ..." 
 
 Her eyelids shuddered over trembling eyeballs. Her 
 nostrils quivered with each sharply-taken breath. Her 
 tragic upper lip shut down upon its neighbor as though it 
 would never relax in smiles again : 
 
 "I heard my own heart beat so loud it was like thun- 
 der. I felt M. Boisset trying to hold the breath. ... I 
 prayed to the Mother of God to cover us with Her manteau. 
 I think she has certainly heard me when the Uhlans put 
 back the sheet. . . . Alas, how terribly I am to find myself 
 mistaken! When the Uhlan moves from the bed I believe 
 he is about to go. Then there is a savage cry ! a groan, 
 hollow and terrible. . . . The lance comes plunging through 
 the body of M. Boisset, through the palliasse through the 
 sacking that is underneath through the sleeve of my dress, 
 which is soaked with blood. . . . See ! . . . " 
 
 And she drew out a fold of the loose sleeve, and showed 
 the rent made by the steel in it and the wet red patches 
 fast drying into brownish stains. And he who saw could 
 only choke out, as his brows scowled and his yellow-flecked 
 eyes burned tigerishly: 
 
 * ' The brutes ! . . . The cowardly beggars ! Oh, if I had 
 only been there!" 
 
 "Of what use?" she said. "They would only have 
 killed you!" 
 
 "An Englishman," he blustered: "I'd like to have had 
 them try! Why, we're neutral. No Germans would 
 dare " 
 
 She said, bending her great black brows upon him, and 
 sternly drawing down her upper lip : 
 
 "Monsieur, they would have killed you, as they killed 
 my father. They have no pity, these men with panther 
 hearts. How should they, when he has none that soldier- 
 Minister whom Germany worships to idolatry. Contradict 
 me say that I am wrong to convince me would be im- 
 possible. For I read the soul of CounJ Bismarck when I 
 looked him in the face." 
 
 For the owner of the domineering voice that had roused 
 her from her stupor of misery was for Juliette de Bayard a 
 very Moloch, ravenous for flesh of men, insatiable in thirst 
 for blood. And comprehending this, P. C. Breagh put
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 501 
 
 forth no plea for a more tolerant judgment of his erstwhile 
 hero, beyond lamely saying: 
 
 "He's a great man a terribly great man, however you 
 look at him. And he do you know, he saved my life 
 once ! ' ' 
 
 She said, with her deeply cut nostrils swelling and 
 quivering : 
 
 "Our Lord will say to him upon the Day of Judgment, 
 'You saved this one. How many others have you given 
 to death?' : 
 
 Then, as P. C. Breagh winced at the brief, semi-contemp- 
 tuous ' This one, ' Juliette healed the wound with one gentle 
 glance. The delicate voice crept to his sore heart sooth- 
 ingly : 
 
 ' ' But for that rescue, I should now be quite alone in my 
 great misery. I think that God permitted it, knowing this 
 day upon its way to me. " 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, tingling all over : 
 
 "Do you really believe that? ..." 
 
 She answered simply and directly : 
 
 "If I did not, I would not say it. ... Now I will shut 
 my eyes and rest a little. I am so very tired, me ! " 
 
 And she leaned back with lowered lashes on her rustling 
 pillow of last year's dead leaves. He asked himself what 
 had she not gone through on this day, poor fragile, tender 
 child ! 
 
 Had the news of her father's death been brought to her 
 in London or Paris, there would have been closed doors, a 
 darkened chamber for the mourner, the presence of some 
 well-loved consoler, the counsel of her director, the silent 
 sympathy of understanding friends. 
 
 But here, where every custom and conventionality was 
 suspended or shattered where human life was bared to the 
 bedrock by the furious struggle of nations in "War, she 
 had sought for a wounded warrior, to find a bloody corpse 
 amidst a jumble of other corpses, and returned from that 
 overwhelming experience to sit with strangers at a peas- 
 ant's board. 
 
 No wonder Juliette was very tired. Would her reason 
 suffer from the results of this shock ? Would she droop and 
 die of the horrors undergone? Was it possible that in a 
 body so frail there dwelt an indomitable and unconquerable
 
 502 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 spirit? It had looked out of her stern eyes, it had sal 
 upon her lips when she had spoken of the Iron Chancellor. 
 
 Even as P. C. Breagh leaned toward the small white face, 
 brooding over it, breathlessly studying it, she opened sap- 
 phire eyes upon him, to say, with the suddenness of a child : 
 
 "I have been told that the Crown Prince of Prussia is 
 good and has a noble nature. Do you not think that if he 
 knew how wickedly those Uhlans have killed the poor M. 
 Boisset he would without mercy have them shot?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh, caught staring, confusedly opined so. She 
 said, her heavy eyelids weighed down with drowsiness: 
 
 ' ' They were cowards, for they took the alarm and mount- 
 ed and rode away calling that the Franzosischen were com- 
 ing. . . . Yet when they had gone and I crept out from my 
 concealment, what do you imagine is all that I view? In 
 effect, nothing more terrible than an old, bent, white-haired 
 priest in a ragged soutane, who was walking through the 
 village saying his Kosary. ..." 
 
 She went on, as P. C. Breagh pricked his ears, and 
 opened his eyes widely: 
 
 "He looked so good and like the pictures of the holy 
 Cure d 'Ars, for whose intercession I had been praying, that 
 I cried to him: 'Help, my Father! Help for one dying! 
 Help for another in misery!' But he must have been less 
 holy than he looked, or very deaf, for he passed on. Then 
 I crept back under the bed, and then at last, you came to 
 me. "What should I have done if you had not come, Mon- 
 sieur? . . ." 
 
 For once Carolan did not hear her. His thoughts were 
 busy elsewhere. He was asking himself if the old priest 
 in the patched cassock who had shown himself to Juliette, 
 could be the Cure who had read the Office at the grave of 
 de Bayard? 
 
 And if that priest were mortal man, how had he covered 
 the distance between the battlefield and Petit Plappeville, 
 and what had scared the drunken marauders from their 
 prey? And was it not strange that the resemblance to the 
 saint of Ars had appealed to both Carolan and Juliette? 
 . . . The problem must remain unsolved for all Time, it 
 might be. 
 
 Yet this fact had stamped itself on P. C. Breagh 's con- 
 sciousness, deeply as his own heavy nailed boots had bitten 
 into the clay by the Colonel's graveside. On the moist sur-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 503 
 
 face of the spot where the Servant of Heaven had been 
 standing, the clumsy iron-buckled, wooden-soled shoes had 
 left no print at all. 
 
 An interesting illusion, bred of the exaltation of the 
 senses under emotion, produced in part, says my friend the 
 Physiologist, by subconscious Memory. A significant phe- 
 nomenon, remarks my other friend, the student of Psychol- 
 ogy, testifying to the thinness of the Veil dividing the Vis- 
 ible World from the Unseen. While my Catholic terms it 
 a rare but not isolated or uncommon revelation, pointing 
 the stupendous truth contained in that clause of the Credo 
 referring to the Communion of Saints and illustrating the 
 dynamic force of Prayer. 
 
 LIX 
 
 JULIETTE breathed so evenly, and lay so long without mov- 
 ing, that P. C. Breagh believed her asleep. Twilight showed 
 nothing but a black shape, vaguely feminine, a pale oval 
 patch represented her face. - ... 
 
 Suddenly as before, her eyes opened and met his. She 
 said, following up some previous train of thought : 
 
 "It is nobler than the portraits, and yet more pitiless. 
 I speak of the face of my country's enemy. . . . See you 
 well, Monsieur Breagh ... if I were Our Lady, I would 
 never rise from my knees until Our Lord had saved 
 France! . . ." 
 
 "What would save France?" Carolan asked her. She 
 answered, turning in her rustling couch of leaves: 
 
 ' ' Death, striking the hand that slowly strangles her. . . . 
 Death, freezing the brain that plans her fall. . . . Death, 
 overtaking the merciless giver of Death to her children. . . . 
 Nothing else could now save France ! . . . " 
 
 He who heard was dumb, knowing that this harping was 
 the very note of madness. She went on, speaking with 
 somber earnestness: 
 
 "Always is it that women are accused by men of weak- 
 ness. Frenchwomen are, in addition, termed 'timid and 
 frivolous. ' Yet France has twice been saved by the courage 
 of her daughters. . . . Remember the holy Jeanne d'Arc,
 
 504 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 beloved of God and Our Lady . . . and Charlotte Corday 
 also, Monsieur! the courageous citizeness of Caen. . . . 
 At school I learned her words, spoken before the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal. . . . 'Me, I have slain one man to save a 
 hundred thousand/ . . .' Why has not France a Charlotte 
 Corday now?" 
 
 There was something in her tone that menaced like the 
 flicker of lightning, seen through a rent in stormy wrack. 
 That a creature so frail and slender should dream of heroic 
 vengeance was incredible. One would have expected it 
 from a heroine of the Krimhilde-Briinhilde type. To 
 divert her from the dangerous theme by changing the con- 
 versation was impossible. The only thing to do was to 
 feign to doze. 
 
 He yawned, stretched his aching body on the clean dry 
 litter, shut his hot and sandy eyes, seeing rings of green- 
 blue fire. Oblivion descended on him. Pretense became 
 reality. He sank into a very gulf of sleep. 
 
 Long after her comrade 's heavy respiration had told her 
 that he was wrapped in slumber, Juliette Bayard sat star- 
 ing out into the deepening dusk. Insomnia born of nerv- 
 ous strain and mental shock claimed her as a victim. She 
 was far more near to madness than Carolan had dreamed. 
 
 It was a night of chilly breathings from the northwest, 
 and violent contrasts in light and shadow; a high bright 
 moon making black silhouettes of hills and trees, and bot- 
 tomless infernos of hollows and ravines. Gigantesque 
 clouds up-piled monstrous ramparts on the southeast hori- 
 zon, others topped these with the strangest sculpturesque 
 shapes. . . . An iceberg with a veiled crouching figure on 
 it ; a mammoth with elevated trunk and great curved tusks, 
 bellowing in dumb show ; wrestling shapes of Titans prone 
 or erect; lovely children playing in meadows of asphodel; 
 vast winged shapes of genii with hidden faces, speeding 
 across unthinkable distances of cold, crystal-blue atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 But the cloud-shape that most persistently recurred was 
 that of a heavy-browed, mustached Colossus, who some- 
 times was helmed and cuirassed, and bestrode a monstrous 
 horse of war. In other vaporous pictures he addressed 
 great multitudes from a high rostrum, or from some fan- 
 tastic hill-peak urged on rushing armies; or sometimes
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 505 
 
 counseled a crowned figure that sat upon a high-placed 
 throne. 
 
 Yet whatever the giant was, there was sure to be another 
 figure, slender, weak, fragile, a mere vaporous wisp of mist. 
 And the watcher had strange cognizance that this was the 
 appointed Fate of Colossus, and that her constant presence 
 was an augury of ill for him. 
 
 He walked amid trees in a wood, and his Fate dogged 
 his footsteps, a pistol or poignard ready for her country's 
 enemy. . . . He ate at a dais-table in a banqueting hall 
 she served him. a golden cup of wine iced and poisoned. 
 . . . He lay down to sleep on a lordly bed, the frail shape 
 glided in with a torch and fired the curtains. . . . He 
 dreamed of Power on the brink of a precipice, and his tiny 
 Fate crept near unseen, and thrust him screaming down. 
 
 The moon had long southed, the cloud-shapes were grow- 
 ing vaguer, the eyes of the stars looked through their thin- 
 ning veils. The wind had fallen, the silence was profound 
 and awful. She shuddered, thinking of the battlefield. . . . 
 
 "What of de Bayard lying under his clay coverlet? 
 What of the thousands of bodies buried in the newly-dug 
 trenches? What of the myriads yet unburied, lying stark 
 and awful under the canopy of Night ? 
 
 Did they understand, the Dead, whose hand had really 
 poured red life from them, and thrown them like empty, 
 broken vessels abroad upon the trodden fields? Did they 
 curse him with their stiff, silent lips, and point at him with 
 their rigid fingers? Would they know, in Paradise or 
 Purgatory, if anyone avenged them? In Hell they would 
 be sure to know, because their murderer would be 
 there. . . . 
 
 "Ting. . . ." 
 
 What was that faint approaching sound, drawing nearer 
 and nearer through the darkness, that banished the haunt- 
 ing, dreadful images that crowded in her brain? It loosed 
 the iron band that was bound about her aching temples. 
 It melted the icy armor that was riveted about her torn 
 and sorrowful heart. . . . 
 
 " Ting-ting f" 
 
 She turned her head to the quarter whence it came, and 
 listened, breathing quickly. Again came the silvern tinkle. 
 
 "Ting-ting-ting! . . ." 
 
 Now the sound of heavy approaching footsteps came
 
 506 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 with, it, and Fear fell from her like a pall all snow-wet. 
 She rose up among the rustling dead leaves, bent, laid her 
 hand on the shoulder of the sleeper, and roused him cau- 
 tiously. He awakened, and said through the fingers she 
 laid in caution on his lips : 
 
 "Who is it? . . ." And then instantly remembered, 
 and passionately kissed the warning hand. 
 
 "Ting-ting, ting-ting! . . ." 
 
 "Do you hear, Monsieur?" she panted. 
 
 She snatched away the hand. He rose to his knees and 
 listened. . . . Dawn, creeping into the hovel, painted their 
 hands and faces gray. White teeth flashed in the gray of 
 his, as he said to her joyfully: 
 
 " It is a priest, with the Blessed Sacrament ! ' ' 
 
 No more was said. They took hands and went out of 
 the hovel, and passed round and through the little flowery 
 front yard into the littered street of Petit Plappeville. 
 
 At its upper end two black figures, encircled by the 
 yellow halo of a lantern-flame, moved toward them. Their 
 shadows were thrown sidewise upon the littered road and 
 the whitewashed garden walls. The bell tinkled, telling 
 of the coming of Him Who is the Light of the World. The 
 wheezing of someone troubled with asthma accompanied 
 the clumping of wooden-soled country shoes. 
 
 Presently came in sight an old woman in sabots, carrying 
 an immense umbrella, and a huge and antique lantern with 
 horn slides. The stout figure of an elderly priest followed 
 her, covered with a biretta, wearing a wide black mantle, 
 and walking at a slow and decent pace. 
 
 At intervals he tinkled the small hand bell he carried 
 in his left hand. His right arm was folded over his 
 breast. As Juliette sank down in the dry dust, her 
 companion hesitated an instant, then knelt down beside 
 the girl. 
 
 The priest stopped as he neared the kneeling pair, and 
 blessed them in silence. His round face looked puckered 
 and anxious. He said, as his glance took in the bareheaded 
 young man and the slender young woman, and their en- 
 vironment of ruin and desolation: 
 
 "My children, are you the only living creatures remain- 
 ing in this unhappy village ? ' ' 
 
 Juliette was praying. P. C. Breagh answered in a 
 reverent whisper:
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 507 
 
 "Yes, my Father. The Prussian horsemen came, and 
 the villagers left their houses. . . . There was a wounded 
 soldier in the cottage of Madame Guyot. He feigned to be 
 dead, and the Uhlans ran him through with one of their 
 lances. He lies within there ! May his soul rest in peace ! ' ' 
 
 The priest solemnly raised the Host, and blessed the 
 house of death. Then he said to Carolan and Juliette : 
 
 "It will be best that you should follow me to the place 
 where I am going. A person lies there in extremity, to 
 whom I carry Our Lord. Your presence will be something 
 of an additional protection, in case any of these foreign 
 soldiers should offer insult to Him I bear. ' ' 
 
 He rang the bell, and moved on along the street that 
 was cumbered with the wreckage of humble households. 
 The old woman in sabots preceded him, assiduously light- 
 ing his path. And the boy and girl came after the priest, 
 walking side by side decorously. But presently, when 
 Juliette stumbled, Carolan took her hand. 
 
 They might have been walking to the Sepulcher on that 
 earliest Easter morning, when He "Who wrought man in 
 His Own Image broke asunder the bonds of Death. The 
 air was sweet with a wonderful reviving fragrance. Their 
 pulses throbbed calmly, their blood flowed through their 
 veins smoothly as new milk. Presently the old woman who 
 walked before them began in a monotone to recite the 
 Rosary. They answered, murmuring the sacred words in 
 unison, moving on as though in a dream. 
 
 Over the smoldering villages in the southeast the August 
 
 moon was setting, hanging like a great ripe glowing fruit 
 
 against a background of translucent silvery hue. A broad 
 
 '*> band of primrose-yellow banding the purple blackness in 
 
 | the East betokened daybreak. Above, there hung one star 
 
 of blazing emerald. 
 
 When they turned out of Petit Plappeville into a lane 
 that trended upward, they could see upon the right the 
 long lines of Prussian watch fires twinkling like rubies out 
 of a mist that covered the low-lying country like a shallow, 
 milky sea. Upon the left rose the ivied stone wall of some 
 orchard or chateau garden. Steps rose to an archway in 
 which hung the fragments of a door that had been bat- 
 tered in. 
 
 "Ting!"
 
 508 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 As the priest rang his bell a bareheaded man appeared 
 in the doorway. He was very pale, his dress was dis- 
 ordered, and his eyes had a strained and anxious look. 
 He bent the knee and crossed himself, then stood aside as 
 the Cure mounted the doorsteps. His wild eyes questioned 
 the faces of the strangers who followed the lantern-bearer. 
 He seemed reassured by what he saw there, and said to 
 the priest in a muffled tone, loud enough to be heard by 
 his companions: 
 
 "Take care . . . there is broken glass strewed every- 
 where about here. Do not put out the lantern; it will be 
 safer walking with more than one light!" 
 
 Then he took up a heavy silver candlestick he had set 
 down upon a sort of rustic flower stand. The candle wax 
 had guttered all down one side, making what old women 
 call a winding sheet. He glanced at this as he took it up, 
 and then at Mere Catherine. Then he moved forward, 
 taking her place as guide, and the glass of smashed wine 
 bottles that covered the ground cracked and crackled under 
 his own boots, and the Cure's wooden-soled shoes. The 
 huge sabots of Mere Catherine made short work of the 
 splinters. Following in her Brobdingnagian footsteps, 
 Juliette's small feet took no hurt. 
 
 A long, low house rose up before them. Its rows of 
 barred basement windows indicated an extensive cellarage. 
 Many of the windows were broken, and some of the ground- 
 floor shutters had been wrenched off. Shattered furniture 
 was thrown about in confusion, shrubs and rose trees had 
 been ruined, broken bottles were here, there, and every- 
 where. And as a slight sound of astonishment came from 
 Juliette, the priest having mounted some red-brick steps 
 and entered after his guide at an open hall door, the old 
 woman, to whom silence was evidently a sore penance, 
 glanced back at the young one and said to her in a whis- 
 per: 
 
 "This is the Chateau Malakoff. Perhaps you remem- 
 ber? . . . And all those broken bottles. . . . The soldiers 
 drank the wine. ..." 
 
 Then she hung her old white-capped head, and hurried 
 after the Father, finishing the last decade of the Rosary as 
 she went. Juliette and Breagh would have waited in the 
 square hall on which the front door opened, but from tke 
 landing immediately above the master of the house looked
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 509 
 
 back frowning, and imperatively beckoned them to 
 ascend. 
 
 They went upstairs. 
 
 The door of the death chamber stood open. From within, 
 came the murmuring sound of the priest's voice. Red- 
 eyed servants knelt in prayer about the threshold. The 
 master of the house was just within the door. His square 
 black head and vigorous shoulders looked angry and wrath- 
 ful. Old Catherine whispered to Juliette as she beckoned 
 her to kneel beside her : 
 
 "It is his wife, Madame Benoit. . . . They were only 
 married a year ! ' ' 
 
 Then she clashed her great Rosary and joined in the 
 prayers vigorously, while the thin crying of a baby in an 
 adjoining chamber pierced the sudden, deep, profound 
 silence that fell upon all present when the priest elevated 
 the Host. A little later she broke down again, and hissed 
 in Juliette's ear that Madame was dying, that the baby 
 had been born too soon, because the mother had been 
 frightened by the Prussians . . . that M. le Cure would 
 give the Holy Oils after administering the Viaticum. And 
 then in a gray pool of quiet that ensued some moments 
 later, a woman's voice cried out with astonishment and 
 terror and anger in it : 
 
 "Mon mari! . . . Mon mari! . . . Au secours! . . . 
 Les Prussiens " 
 
 And the cry broke off short with a horrible suddenness ; 
 there was a momentary confusion, and then the priest 
 came out, looking stern and sorrowful. He opened the 
 door widely, beckoning in several of the women. And 
 Juliette, rising to make way for him, saw the wavering 
 flames of tapers burning on either side of a Crucifix on a 
 white-draped table, and the figure of the house master, 
 with a face of ashen grayness turned toward her, leaning 
 over a white bed, clasping something even whiter in a des- 
 perate embrace. Only two great hair plaits that flowed 
 over the bosom of the dead woman glittered like solid 
 bands of burnished copper in the wavering candlelight. 
 And Dawn crept in through the open window, with the 
 scent of the crushed and trampled roses, and the smell of 
 wine spilled and staling, and the uneasy twittering of 
 frightened birds. 
 
 And then they were picking their way over the broken
 
 510 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 glass-covered gravel walk, and the priest, released from the 
 obligation of silence, was eagerly asking for more particu- 
 lars of the death of my Cousin Boisset. 
 
 ' ' For the villagers of Petit Plappeville are hiding in the 
 quarry of Seulvent. They will not return until the Prus- 
 sians have left the neighborhood; they have learned what 
 they have to expect from these men when they are full of 
 wine. . . . We will stop as we pass, and tell them what has 
 happened. . . . Then you had better come back with me to 
 my presbytery. The soldiers have not left us much, but 
 there will be coffee and bread!" 
 
 "But for me," said Mere Catherine, clumping along 
 stoutly, ' ' there would not be even bread and coffee. But I 
 have my hiding holes of which I tell nobody. And as Mon- 
 sieur le Cure did not know, he could not say where they 
 were ! ' ' 
 
 That was a pleasant meal in the little deal-shelved study 
 that had somehow escaped when the presbytery was turned 
 upside down. It stood next the church, a little ancient 
 plain stone building with a square belfry tower and a spire 
 covered in with blackened slating, and two recumbent 
 effigies of the twelfth century, that were dear to the good 
 Cure's heart. After dejeuner he explained that he was 
 going to visit these treasured relics for the purpose of as- 
 certaining whether they had suffered damage at the Ger- 
 mans' hands. 
 
 He carried a basket with him when he trotted away on 
 his errand. P. C. Breagh, as he leaned by the open case- 
 ment of the little ground-floor study, rather wondered why 
 it should contain a corked bottle and a biggish loaf of 
 bread. 
 
 Juliette had gone to help Catherine restore order in the 
 kitchen. The young man 's hand was in his trousers pocket 
 as he wondered, staring after the stout retreating figure in 
 its cassock of rusty black. Suddenly he uttered an ex- 
 clamation, and pulled out the hand with something shining 
 in it. The piece of gold given him by Juliette. 
 
 He put a hand on the sill, and was out at the window 
 in time to see the priest unlock the heavy sunken door that 
 led into the belfry tower, and vanish into the dusk of the 
 sacred place. He followed, to find the Cure struggling 
 with a heavy ladder that led up to a trap hole in the huge- 
 beamed, plastered ceiling of the belfry a ladder that was
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 511 
 
 evidently seldom shifted from its cobwebbed place against 
 the whitewashed wall. 
 
 ' ' Couldn 't I do that ? I 'm a good deal stronger than you 
 are. . . . Halloa ! . . . Lucky I was there ! ' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh had thoughtlessly spoken in English, and 
 the priest, who had not seen him enter, had nearly dropped 
 the ladder. He said quite reproachfully, as the young man 
 caught and steadied the ponderous bit of timber: 
 
 "Why have you followed me? Is it that you wish to 
 speak to me privately? If so, pray do not do so in your 
 English, which is sufficiently like German to give me an 
 unpleasant agitation of the nerves!" 
 
 P. C. Breagh explained, exhibiting the golden coin, that 
 it had been given him by Mademoiselle to secure a Mass. 
 
 "But certainly she shall have a Mass. Though five 
 francs will be more than sufficient. Retain the coin, Mon- 
 sieur, until I can find the necessary francs of change. You 
 see, we are poor in this neighborhood ... it is to be ex- 
 pected ! ' ' The good Cure smiled, and added : "As you see 
 me, I am rich compared with many of my confreres even 
 richer than some of my superiors. Therefore, if you will 
 describe to me the features of the priest who read the 
 Office, it may be arranged with more propriety that he shall 
 offer Mass." He added, seeing the young man hesitate: 
 "Recall his features. Describe his person, if you 
 can!" . . . 
 
 P. C. Breagh recalled and described. When he had done, 
 the Cure said, in a tone of quiet conviction : 
 
 "That priest will not need Mademoiselle's five francs! 
 . . . And he is not only my superior. . . . He ranks above 
 the angels. . . . Monsieur has spoken face to face with a 
 glorious Saint of God ! ' ' 
 
 Something like an electric shock tingled from the roots 
 of P. C. Breagh 's hair down his spine, and passed out by 
 way of his heels into the worn flagstones. He tried to 
 speak, but his palate and tongue were stiff. The priest 
 went on : 
 
 "Upon earth he was the Cure of Ars. As a Catholic, 
 Monsieur has learned of him. But that he foretold this 
 War, possibly Monsieur does not know ? . . . A year before 
 his holy death. . . . Since it has happened . . . this War 
 that the holy Cure prophesied, he has revisited the earthly 
 places where he prayed and labored and suffered. . . . He
 
 512 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 has succored the wounded. . . . He has appeared, just as 
 he was when alive, to the dying, and cheered and consoled 
 them so that they have departed in joy and peace. . . . 
 In the world this will not be credited. It does not matter ! 
 . . . "What matters is, that those who perhaps asked the 
 Saint of Ars to intercede for them in their hour of des- 
 perate need have received proof that in heaven, where he 
 now dwells, he is still what he would have wished to be: 
 a worker on behalf of souls. . . . He said this to me, twelve 
 years ago, with that smile that the good God had given him, 
 to make poor doubters sure that He Himself will one day 
 smile on them in heaven " 
 
 He stopped and wiped his face with a handkerchief that 
 was unaffectedly a blue duster, and, noticing the sweat 
 that had started on the other's face, interrupted himself 
 to cry: 
 
 "But Monsieur is still holding that heavy ladder! . . . 
 How could I be so forgetful! . . . No! it is not to be re- 
 placed against the wall. It is to be attached by the rings 
 in the uprights to those hooks at the edge of that trap- 
 door. . . . Since Monsieur has been favored with a vision 
 of the Saint of Ars, he is worthy of all trust and confidence. 
 Let Monsieur but fix the ladder while I turn the key in 
 the door, and then he shall see a pigeon that I keep in the 
 belfry tower ! ' ' 
 
 And the good man bustled to the door and locked it, and 
 then came back to test the steadiness of the ladder, and 
 mounted with asthmatic wheezings and much display of 
 darned socks and venerable carpet slippers, and tapped 
 three times at the trapdoor. 
 
 It was lifted at the signal, and P. C. Breagh beheld the 
 gaunt and sunburnt face of a French Cuirassier, peering 
 down out of the gloom of the spire that was faintly lighted 
 by delicate lines of morning sunshine, gilding the upper 
 edges of the shingle boards that roofed it in. 
 
 ' ' Thanks, thanks, my Father ! ' ' the Cuirassier muttered, 
 as the bottle of coffee and the loaf were handed up into 
 his eager, shaking hands. 
 
 "Did you sleep?" the priest asked him, and the soldier 
 answered in the affirmative, adding that he had been awak- 
 ened by footsteps in the church below him at the earliest 
 break of day. 
 
 Said the Cure :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 513 
 
 "My child, it was I. A member of my parish was dying 
 I came to the church to take the Blessed Sacrament from 
 the Tabernacle. ... I forgot that you would probably 
 awaken and suppose that your presence here had been be- 
 trayed ! . . . But all is well ! and a cart of brushwood will 
 stop before the presbytery this evening and carry more 
 than its load when it is driven on. It is going to a farm 
 near Audun from there you will be able to escape into 
 Luxembourg, and from thence rejoin the Army when your 
 wounds are sufficiently healed. t It is said that the Army of 
 Chalons, with the Duke of Magenta and the Emperor, now 
 marches north from Rheims toward Sedan. ' ' He added as 
 white teeth flashed in the dark face, and the sullen eyes 
 gleamed scornfully: "You will please yourself as to serv- 
 ing again! You have already suffered greatly for our 
 country ! ' ' 
 
 The soldier said roughly: 
 
 ' ' I would die for her with a good heart ! . . . But I will 
 not fight again for this Emperor and his Marshal, by whom 
 France has been sold and betrayed ! ' ' 
 
 ""Well, well! . . . Au revoir, my child, and may Our 
 Lord protect you," said the priest, sighing and beginning 
 a puffing retreat down the ladder. "Shut the trapdoor 
 down carefully, keep perfect silence, and remember that 
 it is very dangerous to smoke. The curls of vapor can be 
 seen rising between the shingles. I observed it when we 
 had workmen here in Spring!" 
 
 Then he descended, and with P. C. Breagh's aid put back 
 the ladder, unlocked the belfry tower door, and they went 
 out into the clear bright autumn air. 
 
 "That soldier came last night," the Cure whispered, as 
 they stopped to lock the door with the heavy iron key that 
 was corroded with rust where use did not maintain its 
 brightness. "He was taken prisoner in yesterday's battle, 
 found to be wounded, disarmed, and left to shift for him- 
 self, with others in the same condition. One of them in 
 whose company this man was had concealed a pistol, and 
 had the daring to attempt the life of M. de Bismarck or 
 General Moltke I am not sure which ! But the shot missed 
 its mark, and instantly all those who had seen it fired, with 
 others who knew nothing, were massacred in cold blood. 
 This man by a miracle escaped! . . . Plow, I know not! 
 He says he fell into a pit full of dead, and lay there ex-
 
 514 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 peeling to be buried with them, until the darkness came 
 to cover his resurrection from the grave." 
 
 They went back into the presbytery. The priest went to 
 look for the fifteen francs of change out of Juliette's gold 
 piece. She came out of the kitchen, from which Catherine's 
 bedroom opened, and showed herself freshly laved, and 
 attired in spotless neatness, her face no longer swollen 
 with weeping and weariness, her superb hair brushed to 
 dull cloudy silkiness, and newly coiled upon the summit of 
 her little queenly head. 
 
 Her eyes shone brilliant and hard as blue jewels, as she 
 said to her friend in a low, vibrating tone of excitement : 
 
 "Mere Catherine says that yesterday a French prisoner 
 tried to shoot M. de Bismarck, and nearly succeeded. . . . 
 See you well, I would like to meet that man ! ' ' 
 
 "Why, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 ' ' To kiss the hand of one so brave, Monsieur ! ' ' 
 
 He regarded her in silence. She went on almost with 
 hardihood, throwing back her head, and looking at him 
 with eyes that gleamed between their narrowed lids. 
 
 ' ' See you well if I were only beautiful, I would give my 
 beauty to the man who saved France!" 
 
 Her hearer 's heart began to pound violently, and a dim- 
 ness like mist came before his sight. Through it he was 
 aware of long eyes that gleamed like wonderful azure 
 jewels, and a small red mouth that pleaded for the soul of 
 P. C. Breagh. . . . He saw that the underlip was like the 
 bud of a pomegranate, and that the curve of the upper 
 disclosed teeth as white as curd. . . . Then he heard the 
 silver voice say with a sigh in it : 
 
 "But I am not beautiful . . . not even pretty. Ah, 
 Monsieur, if I but were ! . . . " 
 
 She was hating herself as she saw his look respond to 
 hers. As the amber sparks in his gray eyes leaped into fire 
 and his under jaw thrust out savagely, she thought : 
 
 "There is something of my mother in me more than a 
 little ! How dared I scorn her I, who can speak and look 
 like this?" And she repeated with a plaintive, lingering 
 inflection : " If I were ... if I but were ! ' ' 
 
 For the primal Eve is in all women, believe me. When 
 the first Woman bowed herself in her apron of leaves to 
 strike out between the lump of iron ore and the flint flake, 
 the spark that, blown within its nest of dried moss, begat
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 515 
 
 Fire, she laughed and then wept ; for she remembered how 
 she had learned of old from the Serpent, wise Teacher of 
 guile and evil! to kindle the hot spark of Desire in the 
 hearts of men. 
 
 This knowledge would have come to Juliette as a legacy 
 from Eve, her earliest ancestress, even had she not been 
 born of Adelaide. 
 
 Meanwhile Breagh saw nothing but the little red mouth 
 with the subtly wooing smile on it ... the gleaming jewels 
 that were shadowed by their covert of black lashes. . . . 
 Her will bent heavily on his, weakened by his worship of 
 her. In another instant he would have asked what she 
 wanted him to do. 
 
 But the heavy footsteps of the priest, clumping on the 
 little crazy stair, recalled Breagh from the rapids toward 
 which he had been drifting. In another moment the Cure 
 came into the room. He had a knotted blue handkerchief 
 in his hand, which weighed somewhat heavily. He said 
 with a good-humored smile as he untied one of the knots, 
 and took out a little pile of silver: 
 
 "Here behold my savings bank! Your fifteen francs, 
 Mademoiselle ! ' ' 
 
 He was earnest to count them out and return them to 
 her, and she was as earnest that the coins should not be 
 given back. . . . But she could not deny her poverty when 
 the good man charged her with it, saying : 
 
 "Accept the return of this money as a mortification 
 salutary for the health of your soul!" 
 
 Then he tied up the handkerchief and stuffed it away 
 under his cassock, and asked them: 
 
 "Where are you journeying together, my children? I 
 have a reason for wishing to know!" 
 
 He had turned to P. C. Breagh, still thrilling with the 
 memory of that strange look Juliette had cast upon him. 
 The young man answered, glowing through his sunbrown : 
 
 "Wherever Mademoiselle de Bayard is desirous to go!" 
 
 The Cure pursed his mouth and turned to Juliette ; and 
 then sabots clumped in the passage, and a cracked voice 
 cried from the door: 
 
 " 'Mademoiselle' and 'Mademoiselle,' when she is no 
 more 'Mademoiselle' than I am! . . . Why not 'Madame'? 
 . . . Call things and folks by their right names ! ' ' 
 
 There was a terrible pause. Juliette was enduring
 
 516 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 agonies. The Cure pursed his mouth, and rounded his mild 
 eyes behind their iron-rimmed spectacles. Mere Catherine 
 went on triumphantly : 
 
 "It was her father's dearest wish that she should marry 
 his old friend's only son. She told me that when we were 
 washing up the coffee bowls, out in the kitchen there. . . . 
 When the Prussians came to France, she went to Belgium 
 with the young man's mother. 'To celebrate my mar- 
 riage/ she told me, 'because M. What's-his-name was 
 there!' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh had a sensation as of a weight of cold lead 
 in the stomach. His feet seemed shod with lead, his arms 
 hung down inertly. His tongue might have been turned 
 to lead, so impossible was utterance. "Married! . . ." 
 kept on ticking inside his head. "Married! ..." and 
 with maddening iteration, slowly as the clapper of a tolling 
 bell. "You knew it . . . She knew it . . . Married all the 
 time!" 
 
 His dull stare was set upon the face that had smiled on 
 him so wooingly. It was snow-white now, and the eyes 
 were hidden beneath their heavy fringes of black. The 
 eyebrows were knitted, the pale lips set rigidly. The Cure 
 looked at them a moment, and then asked, plump and 
 plain : 
 
 "You are really married? My good Mere Catherine is 
 not deceiving herself?" 
 
 Juliette shut down her stern upper lip upon its little 
 neighbor, and raised clear, sorrowful eyes. 
 
 "As she says, I went to Belgium to celebrate my mar- 
 riage. Now that I have returned, I shall await my husband 
 here in France. My father esteemed him highly. He is M. 
 Charles Tessier. He lives in the Eue de Provence, in the 
 town of Versailles." 
 
 Whether the good Cure scented the quibble, we are not 
 at all inclined to ask. We are concerned with P. C. Breagh, 
 whose enchanted castle had crashed into dust and brick- 
 bats. One glance at his face, sharp as a wedge of cheese, 
 and bleached under its wholesome freckles and sun-tan, 
 told his Infanta what ruin she had wrought. But if he had 
 seized and shaken her and cried: "You lie!" she would 
 have lied again, defiantly. Was she not married, when her 
 Colonel had believed so. ... She would be, from now, in 
 thought and word, the wife of Charles Tessier. Ah,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 517! 
 
 Heaven ! . . . The thought was more unwelcome than ever 
 it had been. 
 
 Ah, Heaven! if that dear dead father could but have 
 known this brave young Englishman. Would he have been 
 in such haste to break his daughter's heart? . . . And 
 ah, Heaven! again, if this burning of her boats meant 
 parting, how could one live without one 's comrade now ? 
 
 He was so simple, and Juliette adored simplicity. He 
 was so straightforward and honest, one could not guard 
 the heart. When he had thought her dead, how piteously 
 he had cried to her, ' ' Juliette ! Juliette ! . . . " When she 
 had crept from under the bed the lance had plunged 
 through, barely missing her, and Breagh had dived at her 
 and caught her up and hugged her, despite her terror and 
 misery, she had known a wonderful thrill. . . . 
 
 ' ' Mine ! ' ' those fierce young arms conveyed, as they had 
 strained her to his broad breast. Was it wicked, was it 
 unnatural in one so newly bereaved of the noblest and 
 dearest of all fathers, to have been taken by storm in those 
 moments of desolation to have dreamed since then of the 
 rapture of being able to answer: "Yes, yes! . . . Your 
 very own! . . . Never anyone's but yours. . . ."? 
 
 Alas ! if Juliette had been unnatural in yielding to such 
 thoughts, was she not now punished? She had dealt with 
 her own slight arm the blow that had shattered the fabric 
 of her dreams as well as his. . . .- She would never again 
 see that light in the eyes of Monica's brother; never 
 against all the accepted traditions ruling the pre-matri- 
 monial affairs of a young French girl of good family be 
 hugged in that rude, possessive, British way. But what 
 loneliness, what terror, what danger had driven her into 
 the arms that enfolded. . . . Besides, she would atone by 
 marrying Charles Tessier. A tepid future passed by the 
 side of the young cloth manufacturer extended before her. 
 . . . She could not restrain a shudder at the thought, even 
 while she mentally renewed her vow that, for the sake of 
 him who had planned it, she would embrace such a future 
 with resignation. ... It flashed upon her now, with blind- 
 ing clearness, that not only must the future be embraced, 
 but the man. . . . 
 
 "Tear the picture. . . . Forget the dream!" The words; 
 of de Bayard's letter came back to her.
 
 518 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Ah, well ! she had done with pictures and dreams. . . . 
 For her, realities. The comrade looked as though Reality 
 had hit him smashingly. She barely recognized his cheer- 
 ful voice as he answered to some leading question put by 
 the Cure: 
 
 "I am ready and willing to act as escort to Madame. 
 It would be risky for her to attempt to return alone to 
 Versailles. ' ' 
 
 She tried to meet his sorrowful gray eyes and succeeded. 
 She bent her little head and said with an admirable as- 
 sumption of newly wedded dignity : 
 
 "Monsieur Breagh is very amiable. I will accept his 
 offer with gratitude. When my husband learns of his great 
 goodness, he too will thank him. Alas ! at this moment my 
 poor Charles is far away ! . . . " 
 
 She sought for a tear, and found more than she had 
 expected. For a whole thunderstorm of big, bright drops 
 burst from those wonderful eyes. 
 
 She fell into a Windsor armchair polished by the worthy 
 Cure's stout person, and dropped her arms upon the table, 
 and her head on them, and sobbed, sobbed, sobbed. . . . 
 The priest beckoned Breagh from the study. They were 
 going to make arrangements for the journey. Horrible 
 Mere Catherine, cause of all the misery, came and cackled 
 over the prone, abandoned head. . . . Madame was going 
 to start early to-morrow morning. . . . Allowing for the 
 disorganization of the railway service, Madame would 
 reach Versailles by noon of the same day. The husband of 
 Madame would presently arrive to find her waiting for him. 
 Heaven would shed blessings on their joyous reunion. Let 
 Madame take her occasion of soliciting the patronage of 
 St. Christopher, patron of all travelers. The first little 
 male cherub that should bless the union of Madame and 
 Monsieur would naturally be christened by the name of the 
 good Saint. 
 
 LX 
 
 THEY drove in a country cart to Etain over roads be- 
 strewn for the most part with the debris of the falling 
 Empire, and there caught a train starting for Verdun. It 
 was crammed with wounded French soldiers lying on
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 519 
 
 straw in trucks and horse boxes. Women jostled one an- 
 other at the doors of these, to supply the poor sufferers 
 with soup and fruit, bread and coffee. The news of the 
 retirement of Bazaine upon Metz was in every mouth, al- 
 though, thanks to the cutting by Uhlans of the telegraph 
 line between Metz and Thionville, the Emperor did not 
 receive the Marshal's wire until the 22nd. 
 
 The Warlock had lost no time. Already the blockade of 
 the doomed fortress city was so far completed that only 
 the most daring French scouts were able to worm their way 
 through the enemy's investing lines. 
 
 For, even as the octopus, desirous of increasing his fam- 
 ily, throws off a spare tentacle which becomes another octo- 
 pus, from the First and Second Armies of United Germany 
 had been evolved a Fourth Army of Six Corps under the 
 command of the Crown Prince of Saxony, whose Advance 
 of Guard Cavalry were already over the Meuse. 
 
 The Army of the Prussian Crown Prince had traversed 
 the roads south of Toul and entered the basin of the Or- 
 nain. The King of Prussia, with Bismarck and Moltke, 
 had started to march on Paris through the dusty white 
 plains of Champagne. 
 
 His Great Headquarters had already reached Bar-le-Duc. 
 One of his scouting squadrons of Uhlans had captured a 
 French courier at Commercy. Thus Moltke had learned 
 that the mounted regiments of Canrobert's Corps had been 
 left behind at the Camp of Chalons, and that Paris was 
 being placed in a state of defense to resist an investment 
 expected hourly. 
 
 On this very day the vast Camp had been abandoned, 
 the Imperial pavilions, the mess houses, officers' quarters 
 and kitchens were blazing merrily, the lines of rustic 
 bar agues usually occupied by the troops were marked out 
 by crackling hedges of fire. While MacMahon, at his camp 
 near Rheims, was torn between Ministerial orders emanat- 
 ing from the Empress, insisting on the immediate relief of 
 Bazaine, and his own conviction that the order of march 
 should be back by the directest route to defend the men- 
 aced capital. 
 
 Said the Man of Iron to Koon, whiffing a huge cigar as 
 the steady downpour of rain swirled down the gutters and 
 drenched the Bodyguard on duty outside the King's 
 Headquarters at Bar-le-Duc :
 
 520 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "We barricade the straight road that leads to Metz. 
 Will the fellow face the risks of a circuitous march leading 
 him near the Belgian frontier? I should be personally 
 obliged to him to decide quickly. . . . One does not desire 
 to linger in a Capua as dismal as this." 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen brought him a telegram. He was about 
 to open it when the Warlock hastily entered the sitting 
 room that served as ante-chamber, flourishing a copy of 
 Le Temps, issued in Paris on the previous day. 
 
 "A Uhlan of the Advance has got me this paper. He 
 took it from the person of a respectable bourgeois at whose 
 house in Cligny he and his comrades called to drink a drop 
 of wine. Judging it a welcome gift to me, the brave fellow 
 rode here to bring it." 
 
 "There is wine of another kind on those pages," said 
 the Minister, pointing to the journal with a smile. 
 
 Moltke read from the blood-stained paper : 
 
 " 'The speeches delivered yesterday at the Chamber are 
 unanimous in the declaration that the French people will 
 be disgraced forever if the Army of the Rhine be not re- 
 lieved. The dispatches received during the sitting of yes- 
 terday's Privy Council, from the Prefecture of Police, the 
 Ministry of War and of the Interior, were of a nature to 
 cause apprehension of the keenest. But the disposition of 
 the people of Paris can be ascertained by any person whose 
 ears are not stuffed with Court cotton-wool. Do not these 
 shouts of "Dethronement!" these cries of "A Republic! 
 A Republic!" become louder every\ day?' ' 
 
 He added: 
 
 "This bears out the text of Palikao's intercepted wire of 
 yesterday to the Emperor; and the second from the Em- 
 press, virtually saying: 'Abandon Bazaine and Paris is 
 in revolt!' ..." 
 
 Commented the Minister : 
 
 "The Empress-Regent talks like a young woman. 
 Palikao argues like an old one the speakers in the Cham- 
 ber gabble like a pack of old gossips, not one of whom looks 
 beyond the end of her own nose. Paris was in revolution 
 at the beginning of August. She will be a full-blown Re- 
 public before Christmas, whether Bazaine be abandoned 
 or not." 
 
 Moltke said, helping himself from his silver snuffbox : 
 
 "MacMahon has not the courage to resist a consensus of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 521 
 
 quackers. He will march east and uncover the Paris road. 
 I may say I had already drawn out private tables of 
 marches which would thwart him in any case. What have 
 you there ? A wire in Secret Code ? ' ' 
 
 Bismarck answered: 
 
 ' ' It is in Russian, with which language the sender knows 
 me to be acquainted. He is an agent of our Secret Service, 
 who combines the trade of wool stapler with the profession 
 of notary, and holds the post of Sub-Prefect in the town of 
 Bethel. He communicates by private wire that the Em- 
 peror has telegraphed the Prince Imperial that the junc- 
 tion with Bazaine will not be attempted, and that the 
 march of the Army of Chalons will be directed upon Sedan. 
 He states that when he quitted Rheims to-day the Imperial 
 Headquarters had left for Tourteron. ..." 
 
 "Ei, ei! Is he trustworthy?" asked the "Warlock, put- 
 ting away the silver box. 
 
 The Minister answered succinctly: 
 
 ' ' The intelligence he supplies is usually worth the money 
 he is paid for it." 
 
 He went on : 
 
 "He has got into touch with the Roumanian Straz, who 
 has not received cash for some dirty work he did in July 
 at Sigmaringen, and who judges it advisable Napoleon 
 Bonaparte Grammont & Co. being insolvent to transfer 
 his services to the opposite firm. . . . He adds that Straz 
 possesses, or says that he possesses, free access to the Prince 
 Imperial. He appears to think our interests would be 
 served by kidnapping the boy." 
 
 "Would they?" asked Moltke. 
 
 The Minister raised his shaggy brows, and answered 
 smilingly : 
 
 "You are acquainted with the Countess's views in con- 
 nection with the youngest Bonaparte. If the Queen does 
 not want him to hand her tea and comb her lap dog, why 
 should I not take M. Lulu home as a present to my wife ? ' ' 
 
 "You are jesting!" said the Warlock, shaking the wise 
 old head in the scratch wig. "You have told this stinking 
 rogue that decent German men make not war upon women 
 or children. . . . When the time comes that we are guilty 
 of such things, United Germany will be near her fall. ' ' 
 
 "Her barometer predicts a rise," said the Minister 
 dryly, "at this particular moment."
 
 522 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "With God's help, we shall fulfill the prediction!" re- 
 turned the Warlock, going to a table where lay spread a 
 map on a comprehensive scale of an inch to a mile. "We 
 will talk over this with the King, when the Crown Prince 
 and Von Blumenthal come over from Ligny. It will be 
 wiser to delay the movement on Paris, and hit this weather 
 cock of a Marshal with all our forces. So, he marches his 
 Army on the Meuse! So' of . . ." 
 
 And he hummed a bar of the little song about the weep- 
 ing flowers and the shining starlets, as he set the mental 
 machinery in motion that resulted in the Grand Right 
 .Wheel. 
 
 LXI 
 
 THE closed shutters of the Tessier house in the Rue de 
 Provence gave that pleasant, airy, well-kept residence 
 standing behind its high garden walls of stone-faced brick, 
 festooned with autumn-tinted creepers, an unoccupied and 
 cheerless air. 
 
 Repeated rings at the bell of the white-painted gate of 
 wrought iron upon the right of the heavy porte-cochere 
 topped by the lozenged archway, elicited a caretaker in the 
 person of the wife of the gardener-coachman, who cried out 
 joyfully upon recognizing one of the ringers, and broke 
 into a spate of words: 
 
 "Mademoiselle! . . . Madame Charles! A thousand 
 pardons for the error ! But a return so unexpected. Noth- 
 ing is ready. ..." She queried, her eyes becoming circu- 
 lar as they drank in the fact that the newly-married wife 
 of her master had arrived in company of a strange young 
 gentleman in a shabby brown suit of foreign make, and a 
 straw hat decidedly the worse for wear: "Madame Tes- 
 sier has not accompanied you? ... Or Monsieur Charles? 
 . . . Nothing has happened?" Upon being assured that 
 her employers were well, and still in Belgium, she raised 
 her eyes piously, and heaved a sigh of relief. "In these 
 days such terrible things happen!" sighed the gardener- 
 coachman's wife. "No one knows who the Prussians will 
 not kill next! . . . Though, what with the soldiers that 
 have gone away regiments and regiments marching with 
 their bands ! and the guns thousands of guns rolling and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 523 
 
 rolling! one would say that France possessed enough 
 men. . . . But who knows! One can feel the fears of the 
 people like a dark cloud blackening the sky. . . . They 
 say that at Meudon the trees have been cut down and 
 trenches dug, and beautiful villas blown up with gun- 
 powder that the Germans may not live in them when they 
 come. Of what use, then, the great cannon that break the 
 windows when they fire them from the Forts of Issy and 
 Meudon, Vanvres and Mont Valerien, if they cannot keep 
 such people back?" 
 
 She had looked at the young man who accompanied 
 Madame Charles as she put her question. He answered, 
 with appreciation of the shrewdness prompting the ques- 
 tion: 
 
 "One wishes one could answer that! But it is all true 
 about the trenches and so on. ... All the main roads lead- 
 ing north and west and east from Paris have been cut up 
 in the same way. And the bridges have been mined but 
 they will not blow them up yet. They will wait until the 
 Prussians come!" 
 
 "Grand Dieu! And all our hospitals here are full of 
 wounded soldiers. They arrive in trains or wagons every 
 hour. . . . People wait at the railway stations and at the 
 barriers in crowds to see them. Sometimes one cries out: 
 'My 'brother!' or 'My husband!' or 'My son!' . . ." 
 
 The wide mouth of the little woman widened in a 
 grimace of misery. She gulped and sniffed, and the tears 
 began to tumble from her beady black eyes. "My brother 
 Michel has been killed ! . . . My sister has received an 
 official letter that says so. Also my husband's nephew, 
 Jean Jacques the dear youth who served Madame Tessier 
 so faithfully. . . . Madame Charles must remember him 
 going about the house in his striped jacket, cleaning the 
 silver and sweeping and polishing the parquet. . . . And 
 now my poor Potier, whom Madame Charles cannot have 
 forgotten. ... At fifty years of age, he has been called to 
 serve again!" 
 
 Her poor Potier was even then marching with Mac- 
 Mahon's hundred thousand toward Montmedy by Mezieres, 
 and the end that was to meet him there, as the little woman 
 dried her eyes with her blue apron, and bestirred herself to 
 welcome one whom she firmly believed to be her young mas- 
 ter's wife.
 
 524 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ' ' No luggage ! Madame has returned without luggage ! ' r 
 she commented mentally, as the driver of the hack vehicle 
 that had brought Madame and her companion from the 
 station was paid and jingled away. 
 
 Then as she shut the outer gate and locked it she realized 
 that the companion of Madame Charles was a foreigner. 
 She could hear the pair conversing in an unknown jargon 
 as they stood together near the terrace steps. Upon which 
 the perplexity of honest Madame Potier was banished by 
 an effort of simple reasoning. The strange young man 
 would be a Belgian an employee of M. Charles. M. 
 Charles had determined, all the world knew, to engage a 
 resident bookkeeper. This must be the Belgian bookkeeper 
 who had accompanied Madame. For his manner was hum- 
 ble to dejectedness, as became a dependent, and he looked 
 at Madame with extreme wistfulness. He was actually say- 
 ing: 
 
 "This means good-bye, I suppose, doesn't it? . . ." 
 
 Juliette returned, with her heart wavering in her like a 
 wind-blown taper flame : 
 ; "If you desire it, Monsieur, of course it is good-bye!" 
 
 He perused the gravel walk with an appearance of great 
 interest. 
 
 It was extraordinary that neither he nor Madame had 
 brought any luggage. . . . Madame Potier fairly writhed 
 with curiosity to learn the reason why. She could restrain 
 herself no longer. She cried, madly clashing the gate 
 keys: 
 
 "But the luggage, Madame! . . . The carriage has 
 driven away without depositing it. "What of the trunks, 
 imperials, portmanteaux, bonnet boxes that Madame pos- 
 sessed when she went away? ..." 
 
 She was a little, voluble, excitable Frenchwoman, with 
 shiny black hair, bright, snapping black eyes, and a hectic 
 spot in the center of each cheek. As yet her environment 
 had not brought home to her what War meant in reality. 
 When she had wept for her brother and her nephew by 
 marriage, and at parting with her husband, she had re- 
 lapsed into her accustomed round of duties, not unpleas- 
 antly varied by her newer responsibilities as guardian of 
 her mistress's empty dwelling. Like many other excellent 
 women of her type, she could not read or write, and relied 
 on local new r s imparted by her gossips and bits of intelli-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 523 
 
 left by the baker with his bread rolls, or served by 
 the woman who brought the morning 's milk. 
 
 Now Madame Charles turned to her and told her : 
 
 "The boxes and imperials are left behind in Belgium, 
 dear Madame Potier. As for the articles I brought with 
 me, they have been torn to pieces by the lancers of M. de 
 Bismarck. Also the luggage of this gentleman, who has, 
 like myself, nothing left but the clothes that he is wearing. 
 Thank him, for had he not protected me, I should never 
 have reached this house ! ' ' 
 
 "Great Heaven!" Little Madame Potier threw her 
 hands and eyes heavenward. "What wretches! What 
 terrible dangers Madame has surmounted ! . . . What hor- 
 rors one hears of! what miseries and sufferings! . . . 
 Death is everywhere. . . . One would say it was the end 
 of the world! But still there is hope, is not there, Ma- 
 dame? . . . Our glorious Army ..." 
 
 Juliette turned a snow-white face upon the eager woman, 
 and lifted a little, tragic hand. She said, and in that tone 
 and with that look most feared and dreaded by the man 
 who loved her : 
 
 "Our glorious Army has been betrayed and massacred! 
 With these eyes I who speak to you have seen vast tracts 
 of country covered with the slain ! ' ' 
 
 Madame Potier winced and drew herself together. Her 
 black eyes glared. The red spots sank out of her sharp 
 face. And Juliette went on : 
 
 "I traversed one of these huge fields of carnage. Many 
 Germans were there but most of the dead were our 
 French soldiers. . . . And in the silence you heard their 
 blood running, and the earth lapping it like a great thirsty 
 dog! . . ." 
 
 In the throat of the other woman, listening, an hysterical 
 knot began growing. You could see it working as her dry 
 lips twitched. She held her breath as though to keep back 
 a scream. 
 
 "I sought among all these dead men for my father," 
 said Juliette. "And I found him! . . . His dead hand 
 beckoned me from a mountain of corpses. ... I would 
 have known it without the ring that he always wore. . . . 
 And I went to him and sat beside him, and asked God to 
 let me die also. . . . And a sword seemed to cut my soul 
 from my body. ... I grew cold and all was blackness
 
 526 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 about me! ... I felt no more ... I breathed no more 
 ... I thought: 'This must be death!' Then a voice spoke 
 to me. ... I was too far away to answer. It called me 
 loudly and I came to life again. ... I rose up. ... I 
 saw the face of the man who had called me. . . . And then 
 I knew why I must not die just yet ! " 
 
 She laughed, and so strangely that Madame Potier cried 
 out in terror. She would have rushed at the girl and 
 clutched her but for Breagh's strong interposing hand. 
 He said in her ear in the bad French she took for Belgian : 
 
 "Madame has traveled many miles, fasting, and she has 
 suffered a great bereavement. . . . Do not question her, 
 but go and make ready her apartment, and prepare food 
 for her. Hot soup she needs that before all!" 
 
 The little woman addressed looked sharply at the 
 speaker, then mounted the two steps leading to the terrace, 
 scuttled across it in front of the shuttered windows of the 
 drawing-room and billiard-room, descended the steps upon 
 the other side, and vanished in the direction of the base- 
 ment kitchen door. 
 
 Then P. C. Breagh, wondering at his own daring, 
 stretched out a hand and touched Juliette's. It was very 
 cold. He lifted it gently and led her unresisting down the 
 ivy-bordered path that led into the pleasance. 
 
 For she must not be left alone in this mood, and the 
 garden was still, and scented, and beautiful in the noonday 
 sunshine. Its beds of autumn flowers blazed from their 
 setting of smooth and still verdant turf. The great wis- 
 taria on the stable buildings was magnificent in trails of 
 fading purple blossoms. The oaks were browning, the 
 chestnuts shedding their yellow fans. The stately limes 
 were bleached pale golden, the tall acacias were already 
 stripped quite bare. 
 
 It was not yet the season of song for thrush and black- 
 bird, but the robin's sweet shrill twitter came from the 
 heart of a hawthorn, marvelously laden with gorgeous 
 crimson fruit. The breast of the bird, not yet attired in 
 fullest winter plumage, showed orange as japonica berries 
 beside th'e ripe haws' splendid hue. 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh, trying to speak lightly and naturally : 
 
 "Look at him! What a pretty little beggar! Nobody 
 ever told me you had robins in France ! . . . " Then as 
 the bird cocked his round bright eye and hopped to a
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 527 
 
 higher twig, and Juliette's pale face remained unchanged, 
 and her fixed stare blankly ignored him, her sorrowful 
 friend cried out in a passion of entreaty: 
 
 "Juliette! Juliette, take care! For the love of God, 
 don't yield to this! Oh, Juliette! have pity upon others, 
 even if you have none on yourself ! ' ' 
 
 The cry touched a chord that responded in vibration. 
 The stiff waxen mask softened, and became the face he 
 knew. She looked at him, and her eyes were no longer 
 fixed and glassy. She asked in wonder: 
 
 ' ' What do you want me to do ? " 
 
 Trees hid them from the house with its closed slatted 
 shutters. They were near a rustic seat that was under the 
 great tulip tree. Breagh led her to the seat, made her sit 
 down, and sat himself beside her. He made no effort to 
 retain the little hand. "It is not mine," he said to himself, 
 as he looked at it, and then his heart jolted, and stood 
 still. . . . Where was her wedding ring? . . . Didn't 
 French married ladies wear the plain gold circlet? Of 
 course they did! Then why? . . . Came her faint, sad 
 voice again: 
 
 "What is it I might do and do not do, for myself and 
 others? Tell me, Monsieur, for I do not like to be un- 
 kind!" 
 
 He said, trying to speak clearly and unemotionally : 
 
 "It is because you love so greatly those who are near 
 you that I ask you to be kind to these and to yourself. 
 You have suffered a great loss, you brood upon it to your 
 injury. . . . You dream of revenge upon a man, high- 
 placed and powerful, whom you accuse of having brought 
 about the War." 
 
 She had taken off the black silk veil that she had worn 
 as head covering. A dry leaf fluttered down from the 
 tulip tree and crowned her splendid coils of mist-black 
 hair. Her thin arched brows were drawn together and 
 frowning; from the dark caverns that Grief had hollowed 
 round them looked eyes that were cold and hard and bril- 
 liant as blue diamonds. She asked in almost a whisper : 
 
 "And if I dream . . . and accuse . . . am I not justi- 
 fied? . . . Because he saved your life, do you take his 
 part?" 
 
 Breagh answered ber with a sudden spurt of anger : 
 
 "I take no part. I speak for your own good. If a
 
 528 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 woman as frail and sensitive as you are yields to the 
 promptings of a hate so overwhelming, a time comes when 
 she cannot, if she would, control them or rule herself. . . . 
 When voices sound in her ears, urging her to deeds of 
 violence, and she cannot silence them by any prayers. . . . 
 Then she goes away into a strange dim country peopled 
 with shadows lovely or queer, strange or awful. And 
 that is the country of Madness, where live the insane. . . . 
 Even those who love her as I as your friends and your 
 husband love you ! can never reach her there ! ' ' 
 
 The pleading seemed to touch her. Two great tears over- 
 brimmed her pure pale underlids and fell upon her shabby 
 black gown. She said, trembling a little : 
 
 ''You are very good to have so much solicitude for me. 
 I thank you very humbly. It is true that I have sustained 
 a terrible wound, and that it rankles is that the right 
 word? My nature is not gentle not amiable! I long to 
 strike back when I am wounded. . . . When those I love 
 are hurt ..." She stopped and controlled herself with a 
 visible effort, then resumed: "I have it in me to be piti- 
 less! See you well, there is something of my mother in 
 me!" 
 
 "Of your mother? . . ." 
 
 He echoed the words in dismay that was almost lu- 
 dicrous. . . . He had never asked whether Juliette pos- 
 sessed a mother or not. Now he looked to the house, ex- 
 pecting one of the shuttered French windows to open, an- 
 ticipating the appearance of a middle-aged lady arrayed in 
 mourning crape and weepers, and Juliette followed and 
 understood his look. She said, with sorrowful meaning : 
 
 ' ' Where friends of my father live, Monsieur, you do not 
 find my mother. She is very beautiful, but not good, not 
 noble, as he! ... She left him many years ago, when I 
 was an infant. See! I could not have been higher than 
 that!" She measured with her hand above the turf the 
 height of the baby of five years, with hair that had been 
 silky and yellow as newly hatched chickens' down. She 
 said, her clear, transparent face darkening with the shadow 
 that swept across her memory: "Before I encountered 
 you at Gravelotte I had passed through a terrible experi- 
 ence. This lady of whom I dread to speak ! was thrown 
 across my path. She did not reveal to me that she was my 
 mother, when I quitted Brussels in her company. . . . She
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 529 
 
 represented herself as the wife of an officer who had been 
 wounded. She told me that my father was a prisoner in 
 the hands of the Prussians. She took me to Rethel, that I 
 might lay my case before the Prince Imperial, and beg him 
 to obtain my father 's release. ' ' 
 
 P. C. Breagh looked at her doubtfully, fearing what he 
 most feared for her. She said, drawing a folded envelope 
 from the bosom of her black school dress : 
 
 "Never shall I forget how graciously Monseigneur re- 
 ceived me. Here is a little keepsake he gave me with his 
 own hand. . . . You shall hold it in yours, because you 
 are my friend, and Monseigneur would permit it. ... No 
 one else, because no one deserves it save you ! ' ' 
 
 And she exhibited with dainty pride the splinter of 
 rusty scrap iron. The envelope bore a small Imperial crown 
 in gold, with the initial "E" beneath. ... It was directed 
 in violet ink and in a handwriting pointed and elegantly 
 feminine, to S. A. the Prince Imperial, with the Great 
 Headquarters of the Imperial Army, at the Prefecture of 
 Metz. 
 
 "He is so brave! . . . He wanted to join M. de Bazaine 
 and fight the Prussians. He stamped ... he wept . . . 
 he suffered such chagrin when the telegram came from 
 the Emperor. . . . No ! I must not tell you of the telegram. 
 . . . My Prince said : 'Mademoiselle shall hear it because 
 she is discreet!' . . ." 
 
 She folded away her treasure in the envelope that bore 
 the Empress's handwriting, and hid it away again in its 
 sweet nest close to her innocent heart. Life and vivacity 
 were hers again as she descanted upon the graces and gifts 
 of her Imperial princeling, and P. C. Breagh listened, 
 grateful for the change in her. The shadow came back 
 for a moment as she told him : 
 
 "And when I descended to the vestibule, Madame had 
 gone away. . . . She had been seized with faintness in the 
 moment of our arrival, when she had encountered a 
 stranger passing through the hall. . . . Then I went back 
 to the hotel, and crept up to my room quietly. Madame 
 whom I had discovered to be my mother! was engaged 
 with a visitor. ... I do not know at all who he was. But I 
 heard him say, on the other side of the door that was be- 
 tween us ... 'When she conies, you shall present me to 
 the little Queen of Diamonds!' And he laughed. . . . Mon
 
 530 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Dieu! how strange a laugh ! ... It made me feel cold. It 
 makes me cold even now to remember it. ... But I do not 
 think I have been really warm since the night upon which 
 I found the portrait, and my mother said : 'The discovery 
 ivas inevitable! Now, with your leave, I am going to 
 sleep!' 
 
 With such truth did she render the very tone of the 
 sumptuous Adelaide's languid irony that P. C. Breagh 
 started as though he had been stung. Somewhere he had 
 met someone ... a woman who spoke like that ? . . . Who 
 was she? Where had they encountered? . . . He beat his 
 brains to evoke some reply, in vain. And Juliette went on : 
 
 "It does me good to tell you this, Monsieur, though I 
 thought at first I would not. You will understand how 
 terrible it was to discover in this lady, who had deceived 
 me, the mother whom I have believed dead until a few 
 months ago. There was something in her very beauty, and 
 ah! she is so beautiful! that made me regard her with 
 terror. . . . See you, I prayed to Our Blessed Lady for aid 
 to overcome that terror. Then at the daybreak, I rose and 
 went to her bed. When I saw her sleeping, I think I 
 feared her more than ever. The face can reveal so much, 
 Monsieur, in sleep. And hers was a sleep uneasy, and 
 troubled by visions. . . . Without waking she said a thing 
 so strange. . . . 'Only a woman of fashion would be guilty 
 of such infamy!' . . . What made you start so violently, 
 Monsieur ? ' ' 
 
 For P. C. Breagh had jumped as though he had been hit 
 by a bullet. His mouth screwed itself into the shape of a 
 whistle, his eyes rounded unbecomingly. He remembered 
 when and where he had heard that utterance in the res- 
 onant accents of the Man of Iron, and addressed to the 
 adventurous beauty encountered at the Foreign Office in 
 the Wilhelm Strasse, Berlin. 
 
 What were the words that had preceded the sentence, 
 scathing in their irony, terrible in their implied contempt? 
 
 "It would have required fewer scruples and more tough- 
 ness than Agamemnon possessed to have offered up an only 
 daughter to Venus Libertina. . . . Only a woman of fashion 
 would be capable of such infamy. . . . Pardon! but you- 
 have dropped your parasol!" 
 
 And an English boy had picked it up, and seen the 
 devastating change wrought in that softly tinted mask of
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 531 
 
 sensuous beauty, by Conscience, roused to anguish by the 
 vitriol splash of scorn. 
 
 So the Duessa of the Wilhelm Strasse was Madame de 
 Bayard! How strange the chance encounter that had 
 brought them together in that house ! What was the bar- 
 gain she had hoped to drive with Bismarck? What had 
 she intended when she had taken her daughter to Rethel? 
 Who was the man who had been waiting to be presented to 
 the little Queen of Diamonds? . . . And how true had 
 been the instinct that had warned the girl of danger, whose 
 nature her Convent-bred innocence made it impossible for 
 her to conceive ? 
 
 She was speaking: 
 
 "Do not think me wicked or insensible, Monsieur. I am 
 deeply sensible of all your goodness ! . . . I know very well 
 that there is truth in what you say! . . . You are noble, 
 candid, magnanimous. . . . You do not comprehend what 
 it is to hate so that it is torture . . . like fire burning here, 
 here, and here! ..." 
 
 She touched her slight bosom and her throat with the 
 joined finger-tips of her small hands, shielded her eyes and 
 forehead with them an instant, then swept them wide apart. 
 A curious gesture, and notable, in its suggestion of surging 
 overwhelming emotion, and the dominance of an impulse 
 obsessing in its evil strength. 
 
 ' ' Here where it is so quiet I shall recover in a little. . . . 
 I shall become calmer. ... I shall learn to sleep again. 
 . . . You cannot imagine how much I wish to sleep, Mon- 
 sieur ! . . . But when I lie down it is as though great doors 
 in my brain were thrown wide open. There is music . . . 
 and processions of people come pouring, pouring through. 
 . . . There are voices that make great clamor there are 
 hands that wave to me and beckon. But I clench my own 
 hands and lie still so very still ! I pray to Our Lord that 
 one figure may not pass among the others, for then I know 
 I shall have to get up and follow him. ... I cry to Our 
 Lady to cover my eyes with Her cool hands, that I may not 
 see if he does come. But always he passes; walking or 
 driven in a chariot riding a great horse, or borne upon 
 the shoulders of guards. And then I resist no more, for 
 it is useless ! I wake ! and I am standing in the middle of 
 my room ! ' ' 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh, comprehending the situation: "In a
 
 532 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 word, you are suffering from overstrain and consequent 
 insomnia. And I wish I were a full-blown M.D., because I 
 think I should know what to do. But you will let me pre- 
 scribe the doctor, if I may not undertake the case, won't 
 you ? What 's that ? Who 's there ? ' ' 
 
 Something like a gurgling laugh had sounded behind 
 them, and Juliette glanced round, and back at Carolan 
 with something of the old gayety in her eyes. 
 
 "It is the Satyr of the pool, where Madame Tessier 
 grows her water plants. He laughs like that when the 
 water bubbles in his throat. ' ' 
 
 She rose and followed a little path leading through a 
 shrubbery of lilac and syringa. Beyond rose the ivy-hung 
 and creeper-covered eastern boundary wall of the pleas- 
 ance. From the grinning mouth of the Satyr mask 
 wrought in gray stone the slender spring spouted no longer. 
 It trickled from a hole in the pipe behind the mask, and 
 yet the laugh sounded at intervals as of old. The wall 
 below the mask was wet, and green with a slimy moss- 
 growth, fed by the dampness; the ferns that bordered the 
 pool, the water plants that grew in it, had suffered from 
 the diminution of their supply. The brook had diminished 
 to a slender trickle winding among stones crowned with 
 dry and withering mosses. Juliette cried out at the spec- 
 tacle in sheer dismay. 
 
 What would Madame say if she knew how spoiled was 
 this, her cherished bit of sylvan beauty? Never mind. 
 When she returned all should be found in order of the best. 
 The kitchen garden, perforce neglected since the departure 
 of M. Potier, should be weeded diligently. The dead roses 
 should be snipped off with loving care, the withered blos- 
 soms pulled from the sheaths of the flaming gladioli. . . . 
 The place needed a mistress, that was plain to Mademoiselle 
 de Bayard 's order-loving eye. 
 
 ' ' We will work here ! . . . " she said, and almost clapped 
 her hands at the thought of the pleasant labor waiting 
 them. "Me, I adore gardening! And you also do you 
 not, Monsieur? ..." 
 
 Could P. C. Breagh deny? He cried with a hot flush of 
 joy at the thought of long days of sweet companionship: 
 ' ' Indeed I do ! ... and of course I will, Madame ! ' ' 
 
 " 'Madame! . .' "
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 533 
 
 She had nearly betrayed the truth, but she nipped her 
 stern upper lip close down upon its rosy fellow. . . . Was 
 she not married? Nearly, if not quite. . . . 
 
 So nearly that until M. Charles appeared with Madame, 
 she would maintain the character of a recent bride. It 
 would be better not to rekindle in the gray eyes of Monica's 
 brother that fire that had blazed there so fiercely a few 
 hours before. 
 
 LXII 
 
 How strangest of the strange, to love a person so nearly a 
 stranger! . . . What had Monica's brother been thinking 
 of? In January they had met, and parted coldly ... in 
 August they had met again, and had spent together not 
 quite three days. . . . But what days ! to brand themselves 
 upon the memory. After that morning on the bloody field 
 of Gravelotte that night spent in the woodshed behind the 
 cottage of Madame Guyot that gray dawn when they had 
 walked, hand clasped in hand, behind the bearer of the 
 Blessed Sacrament, could He and She be ever anything but 
 friends? . . . Close friends . . . dear comrades, linked by 
 indissoluble bonds of memories ... of perils shared, of 
 experiences unforgettable by both. . . . What would Life 
 be like when one had to face it shorn of the sympathy and 
 companionship of Monica's brother? . . . Juliette did not 
 dare to question. The thought of such loneliness was 
 enough to freeze the heart. 
 
 Meanwhile, here was Madame Potier, heated and trium- 
 phant, proclaiming Madame served with the best that 
 could be got. A lentil soup an omelette with ham, coffee, 
 and fruit from the garden. One would do better later, let 
 Madame only wait. . . . The apartment of Madame Tessier 
 had been got ready for Madame . . . the small room usual- 
 ly occupied by M. Charles might be prepared for the Bel- 
 gian gentleman. . . . Or since that room was dismantled 
 for cleaning purposes, and Madame Potier herself occupied 
 the apartment adjoining . . . would Monsieur mind sleep- 
 ing at the garden cottage? She would guarantee there 
 cleanliness and more than comfort. . . . Was not the bed- 
 room hers and her poor Potier 's? . . . Had they not slept 
 in that bed for ten years past ? . . . Ah, wherever her poor
 
 534 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Potier might now be sleeping, he would never find the 
 equal of his own bed. . . . 
 
 The proposal, possibly prompted by discretion on the 
 part of the excellent Madame Potier, was gratefully ac- 
 cepted by Breagh. And from that hour, under the shel- 
 tering wing of the hectic little caretaker, began a little 
 idyll of happiness for two young people, who asked noth- 
 ing better than that it should last. 
 
 It was exquisite autumn weather. They rose early, and 
 passed out of the iron gate together, and so through the 
 quiet streets to Mass at the great church of Notre Dame 
 in the Rue St. Genevieve. Or they would attend it at the 
 Chapel in the Convent of Carmelites that is now the Petit 
 College in conjunction with a colossal Lycee. Then they 
 would come back to dejeuner, laid on a table under the 
 trees on the lawn, and afterward they would work in the 
 garden, or read, or talk. But they read no newspapers, 
 and for the best part of two months they never exchanged 
 a word about the War. 
 
 It was the treatment devised by P. C. Breagh, who had 
 failed of his practicing degree in Medicine, and under this 
 regime the shadow that had rested upon Juliette lifted day 
 by day. He had taken Madame Potier into his confidence, 
 and she entered into a conspiracy for the better nourishing 
 of one whom she firmly believed to be the wife of her mas- 
 ter. She dragooned Juliette into drinking a vast quantity 
 of milk, and the girl's haggard outlines began to fill out, 
 and her dreadful dreams ceased to haunt her. Sleep re- 
 turned, strength revived, her grief for the lost father, un- 
 assuaged, became less poignant. She could look back upon 
 the happiness of their old life together without the anguish 
 that rends the heart. 
 
 Daily she doled out to Madame Potier the small sum 
 necessary for housekeeping. Under the able management 
 of the hectic little woman, a very little money went a long 
 way. Such butter, such cheese of Brie, such excellent 
 bread, milk and cream, such country chickens, such fruit, 
 and vegetables from the garden, were daily set upon the 
 table, that a honeymooning Prince and Princess could not 
 have been better served. The reward of Madame Potier 
 was to see her handiwork vanish under the combined on- 
 slaughts of Madame Charles and Monsieur. . . . She
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 535 
 
 waited upon them at table, and joined in their conversa- 
 tion, after the inconvenient habit of her simple kind. 
 
 As, still after the habit of her kind, she conceived an 
 affection for her young mistress, she developed cunning of 
 a wholly lovable sort. The first time she heard her idol 
 laugh, she clapped her hands with rapture. Another day, 
 in pursuance of a stratagem she had elaborated, she placed 
 upon the dinner table a dish, with the blatant boast : 
 
 "My poor Potier used to declare by all that is sacred 
 that no living woman could cook ragout of veal except his 
 wife!" 
 
 She whipped off the cover. Madame Charles helped 
 Monsieur in silence, and unwittingly P. C. Breagh played 
 into Madame Potier 's hands. For he sniffed approval, and 
 said, as she set his sizzling hot plate before him : 
 
 "M. Potier was quite right! If the woman lives who 
 can cook a better ragout, I 've never met her, Madame ! ' ' 
 
 Juliette's eyes sent forth blue sparks as she sat erect at 
 the head of the table. Her sloping shoulders sloped ter- 
 ribly, her upper lip was preternaturally long. She helped 
 herself to a very little of the dish before her, and began to 
 eat without perceptible enthusiasm. Madame Potier stood 
 back and watched her, her red hands on the hips that were 
 embraced by her apron of blue stuff. She said : 
 
 ' ' Madame Charles will perhaps have forgotten the menus 
 she used to prepare for Madame Tessier and M. le 
 Colonel." She crossed herself at the mention of the dead 
 man's name. 
 
 Juliette's blue eyes filled, and the stiffness went out of 
 her. She laid down her knife and fork. P. C. Breagh 
 scowled savage rep'roof at Madame Potier. But Madame, 
 at first overwhelmed, recovered herself. She went on, as 
 though she had never broken off : 
 
 "Menus composed of excellent but excellent dishes! 
 . . . "What a pity to think that Madame Charles cannot 
 make them now ! Look you, to cook well is an art that may 
 be easily forgotten! . . . Hey, Madame is not eating to- 
 day!" 
 
 Madame said in accents that were dignified and frigid : 
 
 "There is a little too much sugar in the ragout, dear 
 Madame Potier; otherwise it is, as Monsieur says excel- 
 lent!"
 
 536 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 " 'Sugar.' . . . But one doesn't put sugar " P. C. 
 
 Breagh was beginning, when both the women turned on 
 him and rent him, figuratively. 
 
 ' ' Who does not put sugar ? Will Monsieur answer me ? " 
 
 The piercing shriek was Madame Potier's. And the 
 silvery accents of Madame Charles took up the burden, 
 saying : 
 
 "Dear Monsieur Breagh, the delicate brown of coloring 
 that pleases you the suavity that corrects the sharpness 
 of the salt these are due to sugar burnt and added at 
 the last moment. But one should use it with delicacy, or 
 the effect is absolutely lost ! ' ' 
 
 "Can you really cook?" he asked, in his senseless, mas- 
 culine fashion, smiling rather foolishly and staring at her 
 with his honest gray eyes. 
 
 And Juliette answered with a trill of delicate, airy 
 laughter : 
 
 "Do you find it so incredible? Well, I will not boast 
 now, but presently you shall see ! " 
 
 Next morning, when Madame Potier returned from mar- 
 ket, with an unusually heavy basket, Madame Charles 
 donned a stuff apron of the good woman's, and vanished 
 with her into the kitchen, whence their voices could be 
 heard chattering as though a particularly shrill-voiced 
 pea-hen were singing a duet with a reed warbler or crested 
 wren. The twelve o 'clock dejeuner was memorable, the five 
 o'clock dinner a marvel, from the croute au pot to the sole 
 au gratin, and from the sole to the filet aux champignons! 
 There were beignets afterward crisp, adorable, light as 
 bubbles. P. C. Breagh ate hugely, and praised, while the 
 excellent Potier chuckled. Her work, she told herself, sat 
 at the head of the table, in this slender creature with the 
 wild-rose cheeks and the beaming, sparkling eyes. 
 
 Juliette had found in a trunk full of garments that had 
 been committed by her to Madame Tessier's keeping a 
 simple dinner dress of thin filmy black. Jet gleamed in 
 the trimming of the skirt and polonaise, and upon the 
 elbow sleeves and about the V-shaped neck of the bodice, 
 the somber gleam of it threw into marvelous relief the 
 ivory whiteness of the young, fresh skin. Her dainty slim- 
 ness was emphasized by the absence of all ornament. Her 
 marvelous black hair, fine as cobweb, silky without glossi- 
 ness, crowned her chiseled temples with its dusky coils.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 537 
 
 When she lifted a slender arm to thrust in a hairpin more 
 firmly, the sunset reflection from the sky caught the fragile 
 hand and reddened the delicate palm of it, and the tiny 
 nails that shone like rosy, polished shells. 
 
 She did not look as though she had been toiling in a 
 kitchen among casseroles and stew pots. Rather an elfin 
 Queen of Faerie a Titania robed in cobweb and moon- 
 beams, whose smile sent a breeze of happiness flowing 
 through the sad, empty places in one's heart. For the 
 heart of the young man who loved her grew the emptier 
 the more her sweetness filled it, and realized its own sorrow 
 the more she showed herself to be naturally a daughter of 
 joy. 
 
 She belonged to Charles Tessier, and all these sparkling 
 looks and lovely flushes, these sweet, unconscious provoca- 
 tions of gesture and tone and inflection were for him and 
 no other man. . . . This remembrance was always alive in 
 Breagh to rear a barrier between him and his Infanta. . . . 
 And other knowledge, too, was his, held in common with 
 Madame Potier and many thousands of other people, that 
 he had not dared to share with Juliette. 
 
 But to-night he had realized that the truth could no 
 longer be kept from her. She was cured. There could 
 hardly be a relapse into the old conditions, even when she 
 learned the dreadful truth. And even if risk there were, 
 she must be told that truth by him to-night, or hear it from 
 the lips of some stranger. It was a miracle that she had 
 remained so long in ignorance of the fate of France her 
 beloved France. 
 
 ' ' For seven weeks we have played together like two chil- 
 dren on the brink of an open grave!" he said to himself. 
 ' ' Have I been right or wrong ? Only Time can tell ! ' ' 
 
 Madame Potier had clattered out of the room, and across 
 the hall, and down the kitchen stairs to make the coffee. 
 Behind those little black beady eyes of hers she hoarded 
 the knowledge of well-nigh unspeakable things. She had 
 been faithful in guarding them from the knowledge of 
 Juliette. But now she had said to P. C. Breagh: "You 
 must speak to-night, Monsieur! We have done our best, 
 but we two cannot keep from the poor little lady that to- 
 day the King of Prussia will enter Versailles ! ' ' 
 
 She had given him a look as she had left the dining room 
 that had said : ' ' Remember ! " P. C. Breagh, nerving him-
 
 538 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 self to the ugly task, felt like one who seethes the kid in its 
 mother's milk. 
 
 As he pondered, something cool and fragrant struck him 
 on the forehead. He picked up the red carnation that had 
 fallen upon the dessert plate before him. He inhaled its 
 fragrance lingeringly, holding it so as to hide his mouth. 
 Over it his troubled gray eyes scanned the face that was all 
 alight with sparkling gayety. Why had Juliette thrown the 
 flower ? Why had she challenged him ? She, who had up to 
 this moment been decorous and reserved almost to stiff- 
 ness. Was it true that in every woman lives a coquette ? 
 
 She was asking herself the same question, pierced by the 
 conviction that her grandmother would have been horrified. 
 But it had been impossible not to hurl the perfumed missile 
 at the brooding face with its smear of dark-red meeting 
 eyebrows, and the short, square nose and the pleasant lips. 
 
 He had on the shabby suit of brown, for his funds did 
 not permit of a visit to the tailor. His new linen was 
 spotless, and under the narrow turned-down collar he wore 
 a loose-ended black silk tie. The bow was pulled out upon 
 one side so much longer than upon the other that Made- 
 moiselle's feminine fingers itched to adjust it. How care- 
 less he was in matters of dress, this adorable young Eng- 
 lishman ! 
 
 She was restless this evening. He had aroused her curi- 
 osity. Some hours after she had retired upon the previous 
 night she had risen, and stolen barefooted to the open win- 
 dow that looked upon the moonlit garden, and parted the 
 thin curtains that hung before it, and peeped out. . . . 
 
 There was not a breath of air to bring the autumn leaves 
 down. A white dew sparkled on the turf that Breagh kept 
 closely cut. The countless clocks of the white town of 
 royal palaces tinkled and chimed and belled and boomed 
 out the witching hour of two. 
 
 Her room was on the east front, facing the garden. . . . 
 A downward glance showed her that Breagh was pacing 
 there. 
 
 Up and down, backward and forward, leaving black 
 prints of footsteps upon the lawn that was all be-gemmed 
 with dewdrops. The presence of so many reservoirs makes 
 Versailles more than a trifle damp. 
 
 How rash! . . . How unwise! Did the young man de- 
 sire a fever? Juliette, accustomed of old to subject her
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 539 
 
 Colonel, for his health's sake, to a daughterly surveillance, 
 had a lecture ready on the tip of her tongue. She might 
 have spoken, had not the patroling figure come to a stand- 
 still, and looked up wistfully at her shrouded window, and 
 said something in a low, dogged, dejected tone, and shaken 
 his head and gone away. 
 
 " I 've got to tell ! and I don 't want to tell ! and I don 't 
 know how to tell, that 's the bother of it ! ... Give it up ! 
 . . . For another night ! ' ' 
 
 Without the muttered words, the glance and the head- 
 shake would have conveyed his doubt and his perplexity, to 
 the subject of his sore reflections, returning in a flutter of 
 strange, sweet wonder, and expectation, to her recently 
 vacated couch. 
 
 You may imagine how she tossed and turned, seeing his 
 miserable gray eyes looking at her out of the shadows in 
 the corners. Those eyes could blaze in tigerish fashion 
 when he was angry, for she had seen. . . . When she had 
 crept from under my Cousin Boisset's death bed, they had 
 flamed with a wonderful light of joy and triumph, and 
 when he had caught her fiercely to his breast. . . . 
 
 Oh! to be snatched again into those strong young arms, 
 and held against the heart that shook one with its beating. 
 . . . Was it wicked to feel that one hated Charles Tessier? 
 Was it unnatural, in these days of mourning, to think of 
 anyone except her lost Colonel? . . . Was it not exceed- 
 ingly unmaidenly to determine that Monica's brother 
 should say whatever it was he had got to say, and did not 
 want to say, and did not know how to say, no later than the 
 following night ? . . . 
 
 True she had purposefully conveyed to him the impres- 
 sion that she was married, but she would explain that she 
 had meant that she would be by and by. . . . Alas! what 
 would her grandmother, that sainted woman, have said re- 
 garding this lapse from the way of truth? 
 
 LXIII 
 
 BUT she certainly had not planned to throw the carnation. 
 The missile hurled, she had been seized with paralyzing 
 fright. The shade of her grandmother seemed to rise, ap-
 
 540 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 palling in its shocked propriety. One could almost hear 
 her saying: "My unhappy child, you have become more 
 like your mother than I could have believed, had I not 
 seen! . . ." 
 
 Now in sheer desperation she mocked on, dissembling 
 her terror. 
 
 "What is the matter? Why are you so dull and dis- 
 trait? Are you tired of living shut up in a garden? An- 
 swer me, I pray you, Monsieur ! ' ' 
 
 He looked at her, and his cleft chin squared itself, and 
 his broad red eyebrows lowered into a line of determina- 
 tion. He said doggedly: 
 
 ' ' The happiest time of my life has been spent shut up in 
 this garden! I believe you know that very well!" 
 
 She burst into silver laughter and cried to him teasingly : 
 
 "But you did not look at all happy when I peeped at 
 you in the night from my window. See! Thus, with the 
 hands miles deep in the pockets, and the shoulders elevated 
 to the tips of the ears!" 
 
 She jumped up and mimicked the slouching gait of the 
 midnight cogitator, brilliantly and with fidelity, parading 
 between the dinner table and the long windows that opened 
 toward the lawn. He recognized himself, and reddened, 
 while he laughed with vexation. He had never before seen 
 her in this mood of Puck-like mischief. He had yet to be- 
 come acquainted with another phase of Juliette. 
 
 "Did you learn to act so well at your Convent?" he 
 asked her, and she answered with sudden gravity: 
 
 "Acting can never be learned, Monsieur. ... It is a 
 gift, of the good angels or the bad ones, which can be 
 brought to perfection by use. To 'make' an artist of the 
 stage is not possible. He or she is born . . . and that is all 
 I know. ..." She added: "When I make my appear- 
 ance at the Theatre Francais, they shall send you a billet 
 de faveur. Then you shall see acting. I promise you !" 
 
 She was more like Queen Titania than ever as she held 
 up her fairy finger, and smiled and sparkled at the bewil- 
 dered young man. 
 
 "For example, if MM. les Directeurs assign to me the 
 part of a grandmother of sixty, do you think I shall put 
 on wrinkles with paint? . . . Non, merci! The true artist 
 says to herself, 'I am old!' and she is old. ... '7 am ugly!*
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 541 
 
 and she becomes hideous. '/ am wicked!' See here! . . . 
 Is this a face to regard with love, Monsieur?" 
 
 The last sentence had been croaked, rather than spoken. 
 No Japanese mask of a witch could well have been more 
 furrowed, puckered, scowling, or malignant than the face 
 that had been Titania's a moment back. Breagh called 
 out in protest, half angry, half amused, wholly fascinated ; 
 and Oberon's bright Queen came back again to say: 
 
 "Or I can be stupid, very stupid if that will please 
 you! . . . Gentlemen sometimes admire stupid girls. . . . 
 "We had one at the Convent your countrywoman and a 
 great heiress. Miss Smizz the daughter of Smizz and Co., 
 Tea Merchants, of Mincing Lane." 
 
 She banished all expression save a smile of absolute 
 fatuity, puffed out her cheeks, narrowed her eyelids, per- 
 mitting her eyes to twinkle through the merest slits. She 
 giggled inanely, and said, combining the consonantal thick- 
 ness of catarrh with the gobbling of a hen-turkey . . . 
 
 ' ' All the eggstras. . . . Whad does expedse battere whed 
 you've got a Forchud to fall bag od? Besides, Ba says I 
 bust barry iddo the Beerage, ad accoblishbeds are dod 
 usually expegded of a doblebad 's wife ! ' ' 
 
 She added, in her own voice, summarily banishing Miss 
 Smith, her expectations, and her splutter : 
 
 "Do not be vexed with me, Monsieur Breagh, I beg of 
 you! ... I am perhaps a little excited. There is some- 
 thing strange in the air. ... I have a humming in my ears 
 as though great crowds of people were talking very softly. 
 . . . What is it?" she asked in bewilderment, pressing the 
 fine points of her small fingers into her temples. "What is 
 the matter with me to-night ? . . . " 
 
 Then P. C. Breagh spoke out, in a tone that hurled a 
 challenge to Destiny: 
 
 ' ' There is nothing the matter with you ! . . . That is the 
 glory of it ! You were ill, and now you are well. . . . You 
 can laugh again, and sleep again, and cook a dinner and 
 help to eat it. ... You have made capital use of your 
 time ! . . . For we came here on the twenty-first of August, 
 and this is the fifth of October. We have been shut 
 up in a garden, as you say yourself, for more than six 
 weeks! ..." 
 
 "Can it be possible?"
 
 542 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 She looked at him intently and realized his earnestness. 
 He answered with a glow of pride in his work : 
 
 ' ' Fact ! And in all the time you have never seen a news- 
 paper or asked a question about the War. Even when you 
 have heard the great guns firing from the forts below Paris 
 Issy and Vanves and Montrouge and the rest you never 
 said a word that showed you noticed. . . . Do you know 
 why? . . ." 
 
 His voice wavered exultantly. She looked at him and 
 slightly shook her head. 
 
 "No! . . ." 
 
 "Because I willed you to. By George! there are times 
 when I believe that even yet I'd make a doctor. Mental 
 suggestion was the line I took with you. ..." He rubbed 
 his hands. "Not that I could have done anything without 
 the help of Madame Potier first-class little woman ! regu- 
 lar brick that she is ! ... You see, your brain had sucked 
 up all the trouble it was capable of holding. You wanted 
 rest. . . . Well, you've had it, thank God! Night after 
 night I 've walked up and down, backward and forward, on 
 the lawn, just as you saw me doing last night, saying: 
 * Sleep ! Forget ! You have my orders to ! ' ' 
 
 The tone of mastery thrilled, even while the muscles of 
 her mouth twitched with repressed laughter. He was 
 beautiful in her eyes as he leaned forward smiling at her. 
 She said, repressing her tears, and concealing her admira- 
 tion: 
 
 ' ' But last night you did not say ' Sleep ! ' but something 
 else, Monsieur. ..." 
 
 There was a swift change in him, telling her that for 
 once he was not listening. His eyes were alert, his ear 
 eagerly drank in a sound composed of many sounds that 
 grew louder as they came more near. Now the whole room 
 was full of the trampling of horses and the fainter clink of 
 spur and scabbard and bridle. . . . Cavalry were passing 
 up one of the great avenues south of the Rue de Provence 
 not the Avenue of St. Cloud probably the Rue des Chan- 
 tiers there was a distant roar of cheers. . . . Then in 
 one little oasis of silence came the rolling of carriages, and 
 then the walls shivered with the roaring of lusty lungs : 
 
 "Hoch der Konig! Hoch der Kronprinz!" and the 
 shouts were drowned in a great burst of martial music, and
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 543 
 
 the trampling of men and horses, mingled with the beat of 
 drums and the blare of trumpets, rolled on tumultuously 
 again. 
 
 The blood ebbed from Juliette's cheeks and lips to her 
 heart as she listened. Then the double doors of the dining 
 room were butted open with the corner of a wooden coffee 
 tray, and Madame Potier appeared with a steaming pot 
 and two cups. She was pale round the hectic patches that 
 blazed in her thin face. Her black eyes leaped to Breagh 's 
 with an eager question in them . . . "Have you told her?" 
 . . . and he answered with an almost imperceptible shake 
 of the head. 
 
 Then before either of them knew, Juliette had risen. She 
 went to the little woman and kissed her on the cheek. She 
 said, taking one of the gnarled work-worn hands in one of 
 hers and holding out the other to Carolan : 
 
 "Dear friends, to whom I owe so much, tell me now 
 what in your great compassion you have kept from me. 
 For I think the time has come when I must hear ! ' ' 
 
 The time had come, indeed, with the ring of Prussian 
 cavalry hoofs upon the ancient cobblestones, and the roll 
 of the carriages that came with them. And before either 
 of those the girl addressed could speak in answer, the res- 
 onant sound of a Prussian trumpet pierced their silence : 
 
 "Clear the way! Clear the way! Here comes the King!" 
 
 And followed a cry, pitiful as the wail of a hare in a gin 
 trap: "Those are Prussians!" . . . and another scream, 
 shrill and thin and clear. . . . Then a crash! . . . Ma- 
 dame Potier had dropped her coffee tray. . . . Before the 
 hot steam of the spilled liquid rose up from the Tessier 
 carpet, the small hand Breagh had clasped was suddenly, 
 violently snatched from him. He sprang to his feet, but 
 Madame Potier had been quicker than he. She had caught 
 the girl round the waist, and now wrestled with her. . . . 
 The silent, desperate strife was horrible. The slender 
 black-clad figure writhed for freedom like a snake. . . . 
 Then all at once the life seemed to go out of it. ... They 
 carried her to the sofa and laid her down. . . . 
 
 "Monsieur should have told her!" Madame Potier said 
 angrily. "Why leave it to the Prussians to break the 
 news? ..." Tears were running down her cheeks as she 
 unfastened the girl's dress, and rubbed the limp hands,
 
 544 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 while Breagh dropped Cognac between the little teeth, a 
 drop or two at a time. 
 
 And presently Juliette was looking at them, not wildly, 
 and Madame Potier was answering: "It was nothing! 
 . . . Madame was startled into an attack of faintness when 
 I was so clumsy as to drop the coffee tray. Now I shall go 
 and get more, and Monsieur will talk quietly to Madame 
 as she lies there. She must hear everything that we have 
 kept from her. . . . Yes, yes ! that is quite understood ! ' ' 
 
 And she clumped away, with a backward glance of dis- 
 dain directed at the masculine boggier, and Breagh drew a 
 chair near the sofa where his wan Infanta lay, and sat 
 down and told her all. 
 
 Red sunset flooded the autumn garden as he talked. Not 
 a leaf stirred, hardly a bird uttered a nooning note. But 
 the strange sound that had haunted not only the ears of 
 Juliette went on incessantly. It was the sighing and whis- 
 pering and muttering of the vast crowds that had filled the 
 Rue des Chantiers behind the lines of troops to witness 
 the entrance of the conquerors, and now gorged the great 
 Place of the Prefecture (above whose entrance flaunted 
 the standard of the Hohenzollerns) filled the upper end 
 of the Avenue de Paris and surged over the vast expanse 
 of the Place d'Armes, beating in black and restless human 
 waves against the lofty blue and golden railings of the 
 Royal Chateau, above whose golden dome floated the black- 
 and-white Prussian Standard and the white Flag with the 
 red Geneva Cross. 
 
 We know what he had to tell her. . . . The false step of 
 MacMahon, the unavailing attempt of Bazaine to break out 
 of Metz, the conflict on the Meuse, ending in defeat and 
 the loss of 7,000 prisoners with guns and transport. The 
 flight and escape of the Emperor to the fortress city of 
 Sedan. . . . The battle between the ill-led, unfed, dispirited 
 French forces and the Three Armies. The taking of 20,000 
 French prisoners, the wound of MacMahon, leading to his 
 resignation of the chief command into the hands of General 
 Wimpffen, summoned from his command in Algeria in time 
 to capitulate. The pitiable surrender of the Emperor's 
 sword to the King of Prussia. His transport into Belgium 
 as a prisoner of War. The flight of the Empress from the 
 Tuileries. The formation at Paris of the New Government 
 of National Defense. The entry of the King of Prussia
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 545 
 
 into Rheims, and the arrival of the First and Third Armies 
 in force before Paris. The fight upon the heights of Cha- 
 tillon the defeat of Ducrot by a Bavarian Division the 
 German advance upon Nemours and Pitiviers the invest- 
 ment of the capital, now encircled with an iron ring. 
 
 For three days the Crown Prince had been established 
 with his Staff at the Prefecture. This day had seen 
 the Great Headquarters of the Prussian King removed 
 to Versailles, from Baron Rothschild's Castle of Fer- 
 rieres. . . . 
 
 Truly it had been time to break the news to Juliette. 
 She lay still during the recital, only quivering now and 
 then. She drank the coffee when Madame Potier brought 
 it, and thanked the faithful soul affectionately. "When the 
 gas lamps were lighted, and the shutters shut, she bade 
 P. C. Breagh good night in a faint whisper, and gave him 
 both hands, saying with a liquid glance : 
 
 ' ' Tliank you, my friend ! . . . " 
 
 He whispered as he kissed the little fingers : 
 
 "You will sleep to-night, will you not? ..." 
 
 And she nodded in assent. But when he had gone to 
 his bed at the cottage, the old terrible thoughts came 
 crowding back. 
 
 That electrifying blast of glorious sound from the silver 
 instrument of the Great Staff trumpeter had wakened and 
 brought them like hornets buzzing and stinging about her 
 ears. . . . She longed for her friend, but he had departed. 
 And the loneliness was too terrible to bear. 
 
 She caught up a little white shawl that she had brought 
 with her, and often wore when walking in the garden upon 
 chilly evenings, or going to Mass in the early mornings, 
 before the sunshine had warmed the air. One turn of the 
 wrist draped it faultlessly about her head and body. Thus 
 shielded, she went into the hall, and laid her hand upon the 
 lock of the door. 
 
 As she did so, cavalry horses ridden at a sharp trot came 
 clattering down the cobbled street. They were pulled up 
 outside the Tessier mansion. There was an imperious tug 
 at the gate bell. She waited for the opening of the kitchen 
 door. 
 
 Then she heard it unlocked, and the clatter of Madame 
 Potier 's clogs upon the terrace. Klop klop Jclop! they 
 crossed the leads, descended the three steps that led to the
 
 546 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 gravel walk, and went on to the iron gate. It was locked, 
 as always, in the absence of Madame Tessier. Presently 
 the keys clashed, the lock scrooped back from the mortise, 
 and the hinges uttered a protesting cry. . . . 
 
 Then the harsh tones of a man, speaking French with a 
 frightful German accent, turned the listening girl to ice. 
 There was an exclamation from. Madame Potier, a rejoinder 
 in the stranger 's gutturals. A horse trampled. The rough 
 voice of the rider swore at the brute in German. Then 
 there was a clatter of boots upon the pavement, with a 
 great clinking of spurs and scabbard, and the now-dis- 
 mounted rider said in his infamous French jargon : 
 
 "Go you before and open! His Excellency is coming 
 in!" 
 
 Terrified, Madame Potier obeyed . . . scuttling across 
 the terrace like a frightened beetle. Juliette, paralyzed 
 with horror, heard the heavy spurred footsteps crunch and 
 jingle up the gravel walk and ascend the steps to the hall 
 door. Almost directly, as little Madame Potier darted 
 panting up the stairs from the kitchen, the hall doorbell 
 clanged a deafening peal. 
 
 A carriage had rolled down the Rue de Provence, and 
 stopped before the smaller gate, ere the doorbell's iron 
 echoes had ceased shouting through the house of the Tes- 
 siers. There were other voices at the gate, other footsteps 
 upon the gravel. . . . They mounted the steps. A res- 
 onant, unforgotten voice said to the ringer in Ger- 
 man : 
 
 "The Herr Intendant General may spare himself the 
 trouble. ... I will interview the people of the house my- 
 self!" 
 
 The person addressed replied in the harsh tones that 
 had terrified Madame Potier : 
 
 "But supposing Your Excellency be met with some in- 
 solence? ..." 
 
 The resonant voice answered with a smile in it: "In 
 that case, Herr Intendant General, my Excellency will take 
 the risk. There are only women in the house, and should 
 they offer violence, I have Count Hatzfeldt and Count Bis- 
 marck-Bohlen here ! . . . " 
 
 There was a laugh gay, mellow, and careless and a 
 young man 's voice answered : 
 
 "Your Excellency may safely rely on our protection ! "
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 547 
 
 There was another laugh. Under cover of it, Madame 
 Potier hissed into the head folds of the white shawl : 
 
 "They have quartered the Prussian Chancellor and the 
 Foreign Office upon us. That is what the sacred brute in 
 the big boots and spectacles shouted, when I Avent down 
 to open the front gate. . . . What is the Prussian Foreign 
 Office?" 
 
 From the white folds of the shawl a sibilant whisper 
 hissed at her: 
 
 "It is a man. They call him Count Bismarck. Now 
 if you love me, be quiet, and watch and listen. He shall 
 ring the bell with his own hand. . . . Then I open the 
 door! . . .." 
 
 "But, Madame! ..." whispered the distracted care- 
 taker. 
 
 No verbal answer. . . . The white shawl pulled closer, 
 shrouding round the slender form and girlish features. A 
 little hand, firm and unfaltering, ready upon the latch of 
 the door. 
 
 Poor Potier whimpered. . . . 
 
 "Madame Charles. . . . My child! my treasure! for the 
 love of Christ and Mary ! . . . Tell me what you are going 
 to do!" 
 
 The bell rang again, with a new and imperious hand 
 upon it. She well knew whose was. the hand. And the 
 snow-water in her veins became liquid fire. She threw 
 open the hall door and stepped back to admit the Man of 
 Iron. 
 
 He stood upon the doorsteps like the house's master, a 
 huge dominating figure, dressed as she had seen him on 
 the battlefield of Gravelotte, in his high black, pewter- 
 buttoned military frock and white peaked Cuirassier cap, 
 riding cords, and great black jack-boots with long steel 
 spurs. He was powdered with dust as a man newly come 
 off a journey, though his boots were clean, for he had 
 driven in a carriage from FerriereS. Upon the step below 
 him stood Count Hatzfeldt, his First Secretary, a man of 
 thirty, tall, broad-shouldered, and debonnaire, wearing, as 
 did Bismarck-Bohlen, the semi-military Foreign Office un- 
 dress. The lean trap-jawed personage in a dark uniform 
 with velvet facings, whom we must recognize as the Inten- 
 dant General, waited in the background, glaring through 
 his spectacles at the tardy portress in the white shawl, and
 
 548 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the peaked face and flaring black eyes of little Madame 
 Potier, who stood beside her mistress as ready to spit 
 and scratch for her sake as a pussy cat to defend its 
 young. 
 
 There was no pause. The dominating figure stepped 
 into the hall. His great Cuirassier sword clanked on the 
 threshold. He touched the peak of his cap with his bare 
 right hand, and said, looking down from his great height 
 upon the women: 
 
 ''This is the house of the Famille Tessier?" 
 
 One of the women, who was swaddled in a white shawl, 
 dropped him a stiff little middle-class reverence. Behind 
 her, the other bobbed a serving woman's curtsy. He went 
 on, addressing White Shawl as the superior : 
 
 "This house, Madame, has been selected as the official 
 residence of the Prussian Foreign Office. We shall pay 
 you an adequate sum for our accommodation, and remain 
 here some weeks . . . possibly three." 
 
 He glanced at Hatzfeldt, and said with a flicker of sar- 
 donic humor playing in his heavy blue eyes, and about the 
 corners of the deeply cut mouth that was masked by the 
 heavy iron-gray mustache: 
 
 " Though the actual duration of the visit depends not 
 upon ourselves but upon the decision of the United Ger- 
 man Powers, and the position which they shall decide to 
 take up with regard to Conditions of Peace. We are not 
 the invited guests of France, whose stay can be cut short 
 because our manners do not prepossess our hostess. We 
 came because we thought it advisable ... we will go when 
 it is convenient to depart ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' If Jules Faure could hear Your Excellency ! . . . " said 
 Bismarck-Bohlen, grinning. 
 
 "He would cast up his fine eyes more tragically than he 
 did at Ferrieres, " said Hatzfeldt, "when the three words, 
 'Forfeiture of Territory,' drew from them so many patri- 
 otic tears. ..." 
 
 "He is a weeper," said the Minister, pulling off his left 
 glove, "and Wimpffen was a posturer, with his 'Moi, soldat 
 de I'Armce Franqais' and the Duke of FitzJames is a 
 manufacturer of bugaboos. . . . Our German caricaturists 
 should draw him as a pavement artist, holding the hat be- 
 side a horrible red-and-yellow chalk picture of our atro- 
 cious cruelties in Bazeilles."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 549 
 
 LXIV 
 
 know that Bazeilles had been on the thirty-first of 
 August a town of 2,000 inhabitants, mostly weavers, gath- 
 ered about the ancient chateau that sheltered the boyhood 
 of the great Turenne. Bazeilles had not observed the 
 Law of the Neutrality of the non-combatant. The village 
 had formed the extreme right of the French position on the 
 day of the Battle of Sedan. Lebrun's Corps had occupied 
 it, and its inhabitants had been seized with the fighting 
 fever, and had helped to hold back a Bavarian Division for 
 nearly six hours. Elderly civilians armed with antiquated 
 rifles had displayed desperate bravery. One old woman, 
 possessed of an ancient horse pistol, is said to have shot 
 down three of the enemy. The men, their women and 
 children, were now cinders mixed with heaps of calcined 
 brickbats. The grim lesson had been taught very thor- 
 oughly. Bazeilles served as an object-lesson on Prussian 
 methods throughout the remainder of the War. 
 
 "I will remember Bazeilles!" had flashed through the 
 young head that was swaddled in white woolen. "My 
 friend shall not forget to tell me what was done there!" 
 
 But the imperious hand of the Minister was upon the 
 door of the billiard room. She saw it summarily thrown 
 open. He went in, followed by Hatzfeldt, Bismarck- 
 Bohlen at their heels. 
 
 "Capital!" he said to them. ""We will have this ar- 
 ranged as a Bureau for the Councilors, the dispatch secre- 
 taries, and the cipherers. What is this ? ' ' He went to the 
 glass door that led into the winter garden, looked through, 
 and commented : ' ' One could smoke a cigar here after din- 
 ner in wet weather ; very well, it seems to me ! " 
 
 The owner of the quick ears sheltered by the shawl of 
 white woolen understood but little German, as she had 
 previously said to her absent comrade. But what slight 
 lore she had in the abhorred tongue had been gained in 
 conversation with a Prussian mistress. She found that, 
 thanks to the enemy's clear, melodious diction, she had no 
 great difficulty in comprehending the substance of what 
 he said. 
 
 His long heavy strides carried him next into the drawing-
 
 550 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 room, that apartment destined to become famous in history 
 as the seat of the various negotiations which led to the 
 treaties with the States of South Germany, the proclama- 
 tion of the King of Prussia as German Emperor, and later, 
 to the surrender of the City of Paris, and the settlement of 
 the Conditions of Peace. The simply furnished, medium- 
 sized room boasted a few mediocre oil paintings, a cottage 
 piano, a sofa, some easy-chairs, and wall mirrors framed in 
 handsomely wrought ormolu. Upon a little table against 
 the wall stood an old-world timepiece, surmounted by a 
 bronze figure with fiendish attributes, which engaged his 
 attention curiously. His great laugh burst out, as he con- 
 templated the grotesque. 
 
 "Now," he said, his voice still shaken by amusement, 
 ' ' if that malignant little demon be a model of the guardian 
 spirit of the Famille Tessier, the Socialists and Ultra- 
 montane will be of opinion that I have come to the right 
 shop!" 
 
 The young men laughed at the jest uproariously. He 
 joined them, crushing down their lighter merriment with 
 a mirthful giant's thunderous "Ha, ha! . . ." Then the 
 double doors of the drawing-room opened. He came out 
 with his followers into the hall place, demanding of little 
 Madame Potier in fluent French whether gas was laid on in 
 the rooms above: 
 
 "I think it probable, for you are a luxurious people in 
 your habits, even down to the bourgeoisie and peasantry of 
 France. At home, I am accustomed to go to bed with a 
 candle, and blow it out when I get between the sheets. But 
 here in Gallia I shall do as the Gauls ! ' ' 
 
 "There is gas in the bedrooms, Monseigneur ! " shrilled 
 White Shawl. 
 
 "So!" He looked down from his great height upon the 
 speaker. She caught up a box of matches from the hall 
 table and thrust it into Madame Potier 's shaking hand. . . . 
 
 "Go up quickly. Light the gas in the bedrooms. Mon- 
 seigneur wishes to examine them all!" She added in her 
 shrill voice : ' ' They are in use at the moment, but can be 
 vacated and got ready for the occupation of Monseigneur 
 in something less than half an hour!" She broke off to 
 shriek to the ascending Madame Potier. . . . "Quicker, 
 Jeannette! Thou art always as slow as a tortoise! . . . 
 But I come myself! ..." And with a halting, shuffling
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 551 
 
 gait which made Count Bismarck-Bohlen grin, and even 
 the polished Hatzfeldt put up his eyeglass, she jerked 
 across the beeswaxed parquet of the hall, and mounted the 
 gray-and-red drugget-covered stairs. 
 
 What virtue lies in contrasts ! When Juliette de Bayard 
 walked, you learned what poetry could be in simple motion. 
 Her skirts had a rhythmic swing and flow. Those little 
 feet of hers made twenty steps to the stride of an ordinary 
 English girl. At Mass, when folded in her white School 
 veil, she advanced to the Communion rail to receive the 
 Blessed Sacrament, she swam, she rocked as though up- 
 borne on waves of buoyant ether. Watching her, you 
 would have said that thus Our Lady must have glided 
 onward, bearing the gracious burden of her Divine Child. 
 
 This peacock-voiced creature who hid under a white 
 shawl what the men who sneered at her dimly felt must 
 be a countenance ugly to repulsiveness, had one shoulder 
 thrust upward and forward, reaching nearly to the ear on 
 that side. ... A palpable curvature of the spine caused 
 the curious gait, and possibly to this deformity might be 
 attributed the voice that was so harsh, raucous, and tortur- 
 ing to the ear. 
 
 "Do not laugh. ... It is pitiable rather than ridicu- 
 lous," she heard her enemy say, in his own tongue. 
 
 Hot wrath, fulminating indignation, mingled in Juliette 
 with the pride of the comedian who has made an effective 
 exit. ... To be pitied by him, and for a second time! 
 That liquid flame that circulated through her veins, illumi- 
 nated her brain in its every cell and convolution. By its 
 lurid light she saw her own intention in all its ugliness. 
 Was she to blame, who had fled from this her destiny ? Had 
 she sought for her vengeance ? Of his own will had he not 
 come, this world-shaking Colossus, to find his Fate waiting 
 for him ? 
 
 And Breagh. What of her promise to her comrade? 
 The thought was a knife-keen stab compelling a shriek. 
 She stifled it in the folds of the shawl, bent down her head, 
 and with an exaggeration of the grotesque gait, scuttled 
 upstairs with the agility of an escaping spider, provoking 
 a guffaw from the Twopenny Roue, a laugh from the well- 
 bred Hatzfeldt, even a deep chuckle from the Enemy. Let 
 him laugh! As she fled from room to room, and the gas 
 jets leaped up flaring and shrieking under her small, fierce
 
 552 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 hand, like little Furies and Vengeances, and tell-tale ar- 
 ticles of feminine attire and use were caught up and thrust' 
 into a small portmanteau, she bade him laugh as much as he 
 would. As she opened a cupboard by the chimney-piece 
 where Madame Tessier had kept medicine and cosmetics, 
 and took from the shelf a flat-topped, wide-mouthed chem- 
 ist's vial, and thrust it within her dress, deep into her 
 bosom, she told herself that France should laugh before 
 long ! 
 
 Meanwhile, her enemy and France's waited, chatting in 
 the hall at the foot of the stair. When she descended, he 
 went up with Hatzfeldt and Bismarck-Bohlen, and made a 
 brief inspection of the rooms. His own choice was made 
 with the least delay possible. Opening from the square, 
 skylighted landing at the head of the main staircase, was 
 a room, some ten paces long and seven broad, lighted by 
 one window on the right side of the main front, looking 
 toward the stables, and commanding a view of the pleas- 
 ance and shrubbery from two more windows in the east- 
 ward wall. This apartment, which was partly above the 
 dining room, and had been occupied by Madame Charles 
 Tessier, the Minister appropriated to his own use. A second 
 room, communicating with this, and looking on the pleas- 
 ance, and boasting also a glass window door leading out 
 upon the iron bridge topping the conservatory on the south 
 side, he set apart for Bismarck-Bohlen. 
 
 A somewhat better-furnished room looking upon the 
 Eue de Provence would serve, as would the drawing-room 
 upon the ground floor, for the reception of strangers and 
 guests. Privy Councilor Abeken would occupy the bed- 
 room next to this, also with an outlook upon the Rue de 
 Provence. A tiny cell near the back stairs, only big enough 
 to hold a bed, chest of drawers, and washstand, was set 
 apart for Secretary Bolsing. Upon the second floor Dr. 
 Busch or Privy Councilor Bucher would occupy the best 
 bedroom, the two Prussian body servants from the Wil- 
 helm-Strasse sleeping in the attic overhead. The two re- 
 maining chambers on the second floor small, angular, ill- 
 ventilated places the women of the house were free to 
 move into, and retain, if they desired. "Only in that 
 case," said the masterful voice, "they must contribute their 
 services toward keeping the house in order. Where I 
 live, there must be no idlers. That is understood!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 553 
 
 Below in the hall, White Shawl and Madame Potier 
 heard his strong laugh echoing amid the empty chambers 
 and his heavy stride shaking the rafters above their heads. 
 
 "I am pleased with my room, though it has a window 
 opening toward the stables, where the detachment of troops 
 supplying the sentries will be quartered for the present, 
 with my orderly and coachman and the two grooms. But 
 common sights do not annoy me, any more than common 
 noises, and there are two other windows overlooking the 
 park. The trees in their autumn coloring will remind me 
 of my own woodlands at home. Altogether the place has 
 been chosen intelligently. A more roomy and better-fur- 
 nished house might afford spiteful people an excuse to 
 accuse the Chancellor of the Confederated States of luxury 
 the love of which has never been a besetting sin of mine. 
 True, I must have a table supplied well, punctually, and 
 generously. . . . That is always an understood thing. A 
 sine qua non, in fact. . . . The King is quite aware of this. 
 ... I told him again yesterday, . . . 'Sire, I must be fed 
 properly if I am to make proper terms of peace!' ' 
 
 His great laugh sounded again as he came trampling 
 downstairs, bringing with him a masculine perfume of 
 Eussian leather and cigars of super-excellent quality. And 
 Hatzfeldt was saying in his languid, well-bred accents: 
 
 "With Your Excellency's permission, I will now take 
 leave of you I must go and see the place where I am 
 quartered. It is at No. 25, Avenue St. Cloud." 
 
 "So, then. ... A pretty good distance from the Chan- 
 cellor of the Confederation, should he require at some un- 
 usual hour the services of his First Secretary. . . . You 
 will have to find the Count more convenient lodgings." 
 The Minister turned to the Intendant General, who barked : 
 
 "At Your Excellency's honorable orders, the change 
 shall be immediately made ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, for Heaven's sake, not to-night!" expostulated 
 Hatzfeldt, with graceful peevishness. ' ' I am horribly done 
 up with the heat and the dust we had on our way here. 
 "Why should the King have dragged us to Choissy-le-Roi, 
 in order to see the troops? Cannot he see troops every 
 hour of his existence ? Ah, by the way ! Did Your Excel- 
 lency notice that at Villeneuve St. George the bridge of 
 boats had been blown up ? " 
 
 The Minister shrugged :
 
 554 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Who can understand this destructive mania? It is a 
 national disease peculiar to the French. Since the begin- 
 ning of the war, they have destroyed bridges and railways 
 to the tune of millions for the sheer pleasure, one would 
 suppose, of building them up again. "Well, good night!" 
 He held out his hand pleasantly to Hatzfeldt. "Good 
 night to you, Herr Intendant General ! ' ' 
 
 The Intendant saluted stiffly and barked in his peculiar 
 style : 
 
 "I wish a very good night to Your Excellency!" Then 
 he clanked down the steps after Hatzfeldt and over the 
 gravel walk to the front gate. 
 
 "I know what Count Paul has it in his mind to do," 
 chuckled Bismarck-Bohlen, looking after them. "He will 
 take a bath and dine at the Hotel des Reservoirs. ' ' 
 
 "It would not be a bad plan to follow his example," said 
 the Minister, "since some of the Foreign Office fourgons 
 may be late in getting here. Unless Madame Tessier is 
 prepared to supply us with a dinner upon the spur of the 
 call?" 
 
 He added: 
 
 "Come, shut the hall door. I see they have already 
 placed sentries. The grooms and Niederstedt will bring 
 in the luggage by the back door and up the servants ' stair- 
 case. ' ' He continued as Bismarck-Bohlen obeyed : ' ' They 
 are particular about such matters in French houses, where 
 there is so much wax polishing of the floors and woodwork. 
 Where are the women? . . . There were two. A bonne and 
 her mistress, the proprietress. ..." His powerful glance 
 fell upon them standing near the doorway of the dining- 
 room. He motioned them to enter, and followed them in. 
 
 "Madame Tessier!" he began, taking as by right the 
 chair at the head of the long shining dinner table, upon 
 which the tapestry cloth had not yet been replaced. He 
 looked at White Shawl. The shrill voice cackled : 
 
 "Madame Tessier is in Belgium. ... I am Madame 
 Charles Tessier, the wife of Monsieur, her son ! ' ' 
 
 He said in his excellent French, laying on the table the 
 flat white Cuirassier cap he had removed on entering : 
 
 "I congratulate M. Tessier! Can your servant cook, 
 Madame?" 
 
 The shrill voice responded :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 555 
 
 "Monseigneur must be judge of that when he has tried 
 her dishes. She does her best the excellent Jeannette ! But 
 if Monseigneur is to be served as befits his state and conse- 
 quence ... I should prefer to cook for him myself!" 
 
 "So!" He leaned one elbow on the table, meditatively 
 regarding the speaker, and the lambent blue flame of humor 
 danced and flickered in his eyes : ' ' Since we do not require 
 you and your domestic to leave the house only to confine 
 yourselves to the two smaller bedrooms on the second floor 
 it may be as well that you should assist to a degree in 
 the kitchen. . . . But for all that does not require women 
 we have our servants you understand? And the chef at- 
 tached to the service of the Prussian Chancellery is ex- 
 tremely competent. He is rather a personage in his 
 way!" 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen sniggered in his characteristic fashion. 
 
 White Shawl shrilled, gesticulating with a hand that re- 
 sembled a claw: 
 
 "If your Prussian cooks better than I do or even the 
 chef of our gredin of an Emperor, he may call me a Bona- 
 partist and I will not slap his face ! ' ' 
 
 The Minister drew his well-shaped sunbrowned hand over 
 his mustache, perhaps to hide a smile at the epithet. 
 He asked with his powerful glance intent upon Madame 
 Charles Tessier: 
 
 ' ' So, then, you are not a lover of the Bonapartes ? What 
 is your party? Are you Republican or Monarchist?" 
 
 She shrieked with raucous energy : 
 
 ' ' I am a patriot, and a citizeness of the French Republic ! 
 All my life I have execrated the Bonapartes. See you well 
 I do not love Prussians! . . . But you have humiliated 
 and dethroned this sacred pig of a Napoleon. . . . And for 
 that I could kiss the hand that received his sword ! ' ' 
 
 The person to whom the shrill tirade was addressed lis- 
 tened with imperturbability, although Bismarck-Bohlen, 
 standing on the other side of the table, between the win- 
 dows, involuntarily clapped his hands to his sorely sacri- 
 ficed ears. 
 
 Now the Minister said in his suavest French accents : 
 
 ' ' The hand was not mine, Madame, I beg to assure you, 
 but that of the King of Prussia, who is hardly likely to 
 pay us a visit here. . . . Should His Majesty elect to do so,
 
 556 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 your ambition may be partially gratified. You will see 
 the monarch who has paid your Imperial bugbear so thor- 
 oughly well in his own coin. ' ' 
 
 Here Bismarck-Bohlen broke in. ... "Excellency! . . . 
 talking of coin . . . you told me ta remind you of what 
 happened the other day. ..." 
 
 "Ah, so I did!" said he. "It is a mere coincidence, but 
 worth remembering. . . . Upon leaving the weaver's hovel, 
 near the village of Donchery, outside which you and Lever- 
 strb'm waited while I discussed the terms of the capitula- 
 tion with Napoleon in a garret containing a table, a bed, 
 and two rush-bottomed chairs, the French Emperor pre- 
 sented five pieces of gold to the weaver, which Leverstrb'm 
 afterward told me he vainly endeavored to buy of the man. 
 His stupidity or the weaver's, we will not say now which 
 was the greater ! . . . But the coins displayed in unbroken 
 sequence the portraits of five rulers of France. There 
 was Napoleon I., imperially wreathed, on a fine fat piece of 
 1820 ; a Louis XVIII., inane and aristocratic ; a Charles X., 
 with the knob in his nose ; a Louis Philippe, looking like a 
 'bourgeois, and Napoleon III., Emperor of Ready-Made 
 Plebiscites. ..." He broke off to say: "And now, ^la- 
 dame, what news of this dinner? Can you supply it, or 
 must we go elsewhere ? Decide. I am always an economist 
 of time!" 
 
 And the penetrating glance shaded by the shaggy eye- 
 brows of the Minister questioned the meager peaked coun- 
 tenance of which merely a wedge showed between the cur- 
 taining folds of the white shawl. . . . Lover of good cheer 
 as he was, he was perhaps asking himself whether a crea- 
 ture so mean and pinched-looking could set before him the 
 nourishing, well-flavored, well-cooked dishes, calculated to 
 restore energy to his giant's frame. She was studying the 
 face revealed in the circle of light cast downward by the 
 shaded lamps of the gasalier above the dinner table, half 
 loathing, half fascinated by the tremendous personality 
 now revealed. 
 
 How much the published portraits of the man lacked, she 
 realized now, clearly. What mental and physical power, 
 and force, and energy were indicated in the lines of the 
 great domed skull and the astonishing frontal development. 
 What audacious courage and ironic humor were in the 
 regard of the full blue eyes that rested lightly upon her
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 557 
 
 own insignificance. . . . What deeply cut, pugnacious nos- 
 trils he had ; what a long stern upper lip the full gray mus- 
 tache curtained ! He had a cleft in his chin that reminded 
 her of a friend she loved. . . . 
 
 This last and the other characteristics of the visage that 
 confronted her were fuel to her roaring furnace of hate. A 
 baleful light blazed in the eyes she curtained from him. 
 Her heart seemed a goblet brimmed with intoxicating, 
 poisoned wine. And then a little thing tamed the snake in 
 her. It drew in its quivering, forked tongue, covered the 
 fangs that oozed with venom, lowered its hooded head, and 
 sank down, palpitating among its cold and scaly coils. 
 
 With all its power, the profound weariness of his face 
 had suddenly come home to and arrested her. He looked, 
 as was indeed the fact, like a man who had not known a 
 good night's rest for weeks. There were sagging pouches 
 of exhaustion under the masterful eyes, and the lines about 
 the forehead and mouth and jaws were deeply trenched 
 with fatigue and anxiety. With pain, too, for he was suf- 
 fering from facial neuralgia brought on by nervous strain 
 and overexposure, and divers galls and blisters, the result 
 of days spent in the saddle by an elderly heavy-weight. 
 Now he yawned and leaned back in his creaking chair, and 
 suddenly was no despot helmed with terrors, armed with 
 power, mantled with ruthlessness, but a man fagged out, 
 and tired and hungry, athirst for rest and the comforts of 
 home. 
 
 He had a wife living, she knew, and sons serving in the 
 Prussian Army. Perhaps he had a daughter who loved 
 him, too. . . . Perhaps she was thinking of him . . . pray- 
 ing for his return in safety. . . . Oh, God ! . . . The dread- 
 ful thought was not to be tolerated. ... It must be driven 
 away . . . banished from the mind, if one was to carry out 
 the plan. . . . 
 
 All these thoughts volted through the brain under the 
 white shawl in the passing of an instant. The next, she 
 heard the shrill voice say: 
 
 " It is for Monseigneur to decide ! . . . There is no diffi- 
 culty about dinner that is, provided Monseigneur can eat 
 a good soup of artichokes made with cream? ..." 
 
 His startlingly blue eyes laughed. He acquiesced, seem- 
 ing to snuff the air with his deeply cut nostrils. 
 
 "There is nothing better than puree of artichokes pro-
 
 558 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 vided it serves as the prelude to a solid, sustaining, and 
 well-cooked meal." 
 
 White Shawl shrilled: 
 
 "There might follow a six-pound trout, boiled, with 
 sauce a la Tartare. . . . One came in this afternoon, fresh 
 to a miracle, a fish from the Gauche near Montreuil." 
 
 He said to Bismarck-Bohlen : 
 
 "The trout of the Gauche are capital eating . . . espe- 
 cially those caught in the upper part of the stream, a mile 
 below Parenty. "What else, Madame?" 
 
 She proclaimed in the raucous voice that made Bismarck- 
 Bohlen grimace and shudder: 
 
 "A dish of cutlets and a ragout of partridges with little 
 cabbages. It is now upon the fire, simmering in the cas- 
 serole I meant it for next day ! ' ' 
 
 Like the trout, it had been designed for P. C. Breagh's 
 delectation. 
 
 She added: 
 
 "And there are a cold ham, a peach tart, and a jelly of 
 Maraschino, and I could toss up a savory omelette to fol- 
 low the sweet dishes. As for dessert . . . we have pears 
 and plums from the garden. . . . But, Monseigneur ..." 
 It was greed that made the woman 's strange eyes glitter so 
 intolerably "I shall be well paid for the excellent food 
 and all my trouble, shall I not, Monseigneur ? ... In good 
 French money not in Prussian notes ? ' ' 
 
 Under the heavy mustache he showed his sound, even 
 teeth in a laugh of enjoyment. 
 
 "In good French money. You have my promise. So 
 you do not like our Prussian notes ? ' ' 
 
 White Shawl screamed: 
 
 ' ' They are good where they come from, it may be, Mon- 
 seigneur! . . . But here the people would as soon take 
 dead leaves for pay! ..." 
 
 He thrust his hand in his breeches pocket, pulled out a 
 gold Napoleon, and threw it ringing on the shining table. 
 Her eyes snapped. The little clawlike hand darted from 
 the folds of the enveloping white shawl and pounced on the 
 gold piece. She curtsied like an elder-pith puppet to the 
 great figure sitting at the table head, and with the extraor- 
 dinary gait that combined a hitch, twist, and shuffle, hob- 
 bled out of the room, shrilling as the door closed behind 
 her:
 
 THE MAN OF IROX 559 
 
 "Jeannette! Jeannette! Monseigneur will dine here! 
 Make you up the kitchen fire ! I will go myself to the cel- 
 lar and get the fruit. . . . And the wine . . . Monseigneur 
 will certainly require some wine ! Later on you must help 
 me get ready the bedrooms. Put out sheets and pillow 
 cases to air ! ' ' 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen was saying, as he followed his great 
 relative into the drawing-room, and extended himself upon 
 the green plush sofa, as the Minister selected the largest 
 armchair, and lighted one of his huge cigars: 
 
 ' ' YVhat a woman ! What a voice ! ' ' 
 
 The other laughed through the fragrant smoke rings : 
 
 ' ' You could say no more and no less of an operatic diva, 
 had you recently fallen a victim to her charms. My land- 
 lady pleases me. My tastes, as you know, are somewhat 
 peculiar. . . . But you need not feel anxious on the 
 Countess's behalf. My sentiments in this instance are 
 highly platonic." He added, smoking and speaking almost 
 dreamily: "If in cookery Madame 's performance equals 
 her promise, what with trout, and partridges aux petit 
 choux cold ham to fall back on, and a savory omelette, we 
 ought not to do badly at all! . . . With half a dozen bot- 
 tles of that champagne we brought from Rheims, and a 
 little of the Epernay ..." 
 
 He added, yawning and stretching his great limbs: "I 
 am not usually poetical, but I have a fancy with regard to 
 the deep blue, green-fleshed grapes of the country, that 
 their color affects the river into which the hillside vine- 
 yards drain. The Marne water is as brilliant and green 
 as though it were made of melted emeralds. And the must 
 from those grapes yields the best champagne of Rheims 
 and Epernay. ..." He yawned again and went on: 
 ' ' There is something in surroundings ! In this house I feel 
 that I can work comfortably. The view of old trees, and 
 bushes and flower beds from the room I have chosen as a 
 bedroom and study will make one feel almost at home. Two 
 of my servants shall sleep upstairs in the attics of which 
 there are several, and my coachman Niederstedt who was 
 my porter at the Wilhelm Strasse, shall have a shakedown 
 somewhere belowstairs. He is as strong as Goliath and as 
 sharp as a needle. An unusual combination of qualities, 
 because giants are supposed by little people to be dull- 
 witted and easily taken in ! "
 
 560 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 He sent out a long column of fragrant blue vapor, and 
 added, looking at the antique bronze clock surmounted by 
 its grotesque bat-winged shape : "A fallacy, since I my- 
 self belong to the family of the Anakim. Do you observe 
 that my landlady 's familiar spirit appears to be winking at 
 what I have just said? . . . Kobold or gnome, there is a 
 family resemblance between his countenance and Madame 's. 
 I must get her to sell him to me, to carry home to Berlin. ' ' 
 
 LXV 
 
 P. C. BREACH had gone back to his bedroom at the garden- 
 er's cottage, under the garret where had slumbered the 
 unlucky Jean Jacques Potier. The pet rabbits of the young 
 man were even now in a hutch in the stable yard, and his 
 striped house jacket and the green baize apron he used to 
 wear when cleaning the Tessier silver hung on a hook in 
 Madame Potier 's closet, with the civil integuments of M. 
 Potier, now deceased. 
 
 It was too early to go to bed. He pulled off jacket and 
 waistcoat, filled and lighted the venerable briar root, and, 
 sitting on his bed, re-perused by the light of his tallow 
 candle a letter in headings, and bearing the date of Sep- 
 tember 23rd, which may be reproduced as written, here : 
 
 288 GREAT CORAM STREET, 
 
 LONDON, W.C. 
 ''Mr DEAR YOUNG MAN! 
 
 I WAS SURPRISED AND GRATIFIED 
 
 To Receive Letters dated respectively July 28th, 31st, 
 August 4th, llth, 26th, Sept. 5th, 19th, from : 
 
 ONE WHO HAD VANISHED 
 
 SWALLOWED ALIVE 
 
 BY THE ROARING WHIRLPOOL OF WAR. 
 THEY ARE SLAP-UP AND NO MISTAKE ! 
 
 ROBUST TO BRUTALITY ! 
 THEY HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED 
 
 PUBLISHED AND PAID FOR ! 
 
 BY THREE SUBURBAN EDITORS 
 
 SIMULTANEOUSLY. 
 
 A NEW IDEA
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 561 
 
 * 
 
 LONG CHERISHED 
 
 BY SOLOMON KNEWBIT. 
 
 A MAN BORN BEFORE HIS AGE ! 
 
 THE BOSS OF A FLEET ST. WEEKLY 
 
 IS NOW NIBBLING AT 
 
 'BANG ! 
 
 A DOG'S TALE.' 
 
 Thue I Have Recovered My Fifteen Shiners And Have 
 
 Cash in Hand 
 For My Young Swell 
 
 WHEN HE COMES MARCHING HOME! 
 
 MARIA SAYS 
 YOU HAD BETTER LOOK SHARP ! 
 
 AN IMPORTANT CLUE 
 
 DISCOVERED ! 
 MYSTERY OF LOST FORTUNE 
 ABOUT TO BE CLEARED UP ! 
 
 ABSCONDING TRUSTEE 
 HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED IN ECCENTRIC LODGER 
 
 BY THE LANDLADY ! 
 PROOFS IN A SEALSKIN WAISTCOAT ! 
 
 BE READY ! 
 AT ANY MOMENT THE SUMMONS MAY COME ! 
 
 I remain, 
 My dear young man, 
 
 Truly and faithfully yours, 
 
 SOLOMON KNEWBIT." 
 
 At the bottom of the last page was written in a curious 
 up-and-down handwriting : 
 
 "Dr mr Breagk, 
 
 "yu kno How mr Knewbit Has a Way of Pitting Things 
 queer ~but it Wold be Best For you To Come Home it Realy 
 Wold. There Is a Pore Siner only Wating To maik Amens 
 wick Is Mind must alwais Have Bean weak and People 
 Puting There Afares in the Hands of sutch a Trustea Can 
 ixpect Nothing but T ruble, mr Chown of Furnival's Inn 
 is To Be let kno If He Gives Warning to Leeve the House 
 wich i think never will Drink being got Hold of him to 
 sutch an xtent dear mr Breagh you have thought you were
 
 562 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Pore. But your Fortune of 7,000 Ibs was only took awai 
 by the Almighty Goodness to Be Given back again, trust 
 and beleive. I am Dr mr Breagh, 
 
 "Respectfully and afexnly 
 
 "Maria Ling." 
 
 P. C. Breagh folded up the pregnant pages owing to 
 Mr. Knewbit's professional predilection for capitals and 
 spacings, the double letter covered a good number and 
 put them away and began to think. 
 
 Would it not be best that Juliette should return to her 
 husband in Belgium, since M. Tessier gave no sign of re- 
 turning ? And whether she agreed with the notion of leav- 
 ing Versailles or not, was it wise of P. C. Breagh to stay ? 
 
 He loved her. He would love her always. There were 
 times when her eyes had tenderness in them for him. Those 
 unforgettable days passed together . . . those strange and 
 dreadful sights seen in common, those perils mutually en- 
 countered had made a bond between them that might never 
 be broken now. 
 
 But was it wise to remain near her, breathing her atmos- 
 phere, drinking in her rare, delicate, exquisite beauty, and 
 growing more besotted in his worship of it with every day ? 
 He knew that it was not. By the anguish the mere thought 
 of leaving her cost him, he realized how deeply the love of 
 Juliette Tessier had taken root in his heart. 
 
 His nature, as simple as hers was complex, made it easy 
 to hold her blameless in all. She had not led him on. They 
 had been flung together by force of circumstances. That 
 there was something guileful in her very guilelessness never 
 suggested itself to Breagh. 
 
 The gate bell pealed as he sat ruminating, causing him 
 nearly to leap out of his skin. That M. Tessier had re- 
 turned was the possibility that instantly suggested itself. 
 He knelt by the window of the low-ceiled cottage chamber 
 and leaned out into the deepening dusk. 
 
 German voices at the gate, the stamping of horses, and 
 the clinking of bridles. . . . The grinding of heavy boots 
 on gravel, the jingle of spurs and the sound of scabbards 
 scraping against the ground, rapping against the steps. A 
 pause and a voice he knew said clearly and resonantly : 
 
 "The Herr Intendant General may spare himself the 
 trouble. I will interview the people of the house myself!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 563 
 
 A loud voice barked out something unintelligible to the 
 listener, ending with "insolence." The voice of the Man 
 of Iron returned: 
 
 "In that case, my Excellency will take the risk. There 
 are only women in the house, and, should they offer vio- 
 lence, I have Count Hatzfeldt and Count Bismarck-Bohlen 
 here." 
 
 If there were any further words, the listener missed 
 them, so deafeningly loud was the drumming of the blood in 
 his ears. . . . The door was opened. There was a gleam 
 of something white in the dusky hail place. And He en- 
 tered and the other men followed him. . . . What did they 
 there ? What was it best to do ? . . . 
 
 Now one by one the upper rooms were illuminated. The 
 house door was opening. Two men came out and descended 
 the steps. One who walked lightly and hummed a tune 
 between the whiffs of his cigar passed away, still humming, 
 toward the Avenue St. Cloud. The second who trailed a 
 clanking sword gave harsh-voiced orders in the staccato 
 tone of Prussian military authority to some persons in the 
 street outside, mounted a charger held by an orderly, and 
 rode jingling away toward the Boulevard de la Reine. His 
 helmet and his orderly 's could be seen bobbing over the top 
 of the wall that screened the Tessier house from the Rue 
 de Provence, and the dark silhouettes of the heads and 
 bodies of men who crowded the double box seats of two 
 private luggage vans that waited beyond the porte-cochere 
 under an escort of cavalry. No doubt they were fourgons 
 sacred to the traveling Foreign Office of the Minister, bear- 
 ing, besides the material of diplomatic labor, a working 
 staff of Chancery clerks. Other vehicles were waiting, and 
 videttes of cavalry were posted at each end of the quiet 
 street. The trampling of their horses could be heard dis- 
 tinctly, with certain gruff admonitions, presumably ad- 
 dressed to pedestrians desirous of using the thoroughfare. 
 
 Now the leaves of the porte-cochere were being opened 
 and hooked back by the dusky silhouettes of a couple of 
 men. Liveried grooms, because of stray gleams of light 
 flashed back from buttons and cockades. Light thrown by 
 the blazing yellow lamps of a large, empty, traveling lan- 
 dau that rolled in under the lozenged archway, at the heels 
 of a splendid pair. The horses smelt of dust and sweat, 
 and whinnied as they whiffed the stables. They were driven
 
 564 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 by a huge coachman, and a second carriage followed, piled 
 with luggage, and containing three persons, who might have 
 been secretaries or body servants, one could not decide. 
 Four led horses followed, guided by orderlies of Cuiras- 
 siers. These did not follow the carriages, as they turned up 
 the short avenue and pulled up at the hall door. The 
 orderlies, quite as though they knew the place, rode down 
 the longer gravel drive that ended at the gates of the stable 
 yard. One trooper got down and opened the gates, and the 
 eager horses were conducted in. 
 
 Tramp, tramp, tramp! . . . 
 
 A detachment of infantry, marching down the Rue de 
 Provence. Turning in under the archway of the carriage 
 entrance, an eighth company belonging to a regiment im- 
 possible to specify, because of the enfolding, deepening 
 dusk. They also smelt hot and dusty and tallowy. A sub- 
 altern was in command of them, and an under officer. 
 They halted, marked time while they posted a sentry at 
 each of the gates, then tramped on toward the gardener's 
 cottage, and turned into the Tessier stable yard. They 
 were going to bivouac there. It was all clear and plain and 
 simple. It was as fascinating as a shadow play but for 
 the tragic element that mingled in. Now the servants and 
 grooms were unloading the luggage from the carriages and 
 marvelously deft and noiseless they seemed at the work. A 
 little later and both carriages turned from the house, and 
 were driven into the stable yard. You could hear the 
 grooms and the big coachman hissing as they unharnessed 
 the weary horses, and the horses snorting recognition as 
 they scented their stable mates. And then P. C. Breagh 
 became aware that the venerable pair of ponies that drew 
 Madame Tessier 's basket carriage were not to be permitted 
 to remain in their comfortable loose boxes. . . . He could 
 hear the elderly man who groomed and fed and exercised 
 the ponies vainly protesting at the summary eviction of 
 his charges, and the officer who commanded the detachment 
 of infantry Green Rifles, as it turned out answering his 
 complaints : 
 
 "Find the beasts another stable, and the rent and forage 
 will be paid for. But remember! if you grumble, His 
 Excellency will have you shot!" 
 
 And the ponies were led away in search of new quarters, 
 as the Foreign Office fourgon, with its escort of Uhlans,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 565 
 
 ground over the trampled gravel and pulled up at the 
 terrace steps. One could hear the voice of Madame Potier 
 and the creaking of the Venetian shutters. Then the bil- 
 liard-room windows threw broad stripes of light across the 
 terrace toward the wall. They were going to carry in the 
 dispatch boxes and light traveling safes, the copying 
 presses and letter books and the rest of the Foreign 
 Office impedimenta by way of the long windows. . . . One 
 guessed whose idea that had been. 
 
 A dominating, transforming spirit had invaded the quiet 
 house in the Eue de Provence, bringing with it this pur- 
 poseful, orderly bustle, this disciplined irruption of ele- 
 ments strange and new. 
 
 Of all these servants and attendants, some would cer- 
 tainly take up their abode at the gardener's cottage. Would 
 P. C. Breagh, like the Tessier ponies, be presently turned 
 out to seek cover elsewhere ? 
 
 And Juliette. . . . The thought of her roused all his 
 stinging apprehensions. He told himself that presently, 
 when the house should have resumed something of its nor- 
 mal quiet, he would steal across the lawn in the shadow of 
 the trees and borders, and lie in wait for a glance . . . for 
 a word. . . . 
 
 He would force her to leave at once for Belgium. She 
 must not remain in the house with all these men. . . . The 
 time crept by with maddening slowness as he waited. Dark 
 shadows moved in lighted rooms, passing across the blinded 
 windows. . . . The whole house was flaring with gaslight 
 now. 
 
 How long. . . . The slatted Venetian shutters of the 
 dining-room were now unbarred and thrown open. He 
 could not see into the room by reason that it faced east 
 toward the pleasance, while the window from which he 
 watched looked southward, immediately commanding the 
 hall door. But broad beams of light were thrown down the 
 steps and across the grass plot. Tall shadows moved across 
 the streaks at intervals. There was the clatter of china, 
 glass, and cutlery, a smell of cooking delectably savory. 
 The Man of Iron was dining, and Hate had spread the 
 board. 
 
 A shudder went through Breagh, and a cold perspira- 
 tion bathed him. His hair seemed to rise and stiffen upon 
 his creeping scalp. A sound broke from him . . . perhaps
 
 566 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 a groan, perhaps an exclamation. There was a soft step in 
 the darkness under his window and a whisper like a sigh. 
 
 "Monsieur Breagh. . . . Do not descend! It will be bet- 
 ter that I mount the stairs to you!" 
 
 His first impulse was to reassume the discarded coat and 
 waistcoat. Then he remembered that it was dark. The 
 floor creaked under his stealthy footsteps as he reached the 
 landing and crept on stockinged feet down the narrow 
 stairway. She had pushed back the unlatched door and 
 passed into the tiny passage. He met her almost on the 
 threshold, felt for and seized her little hands. How fever- 
 ishly hot they were ! He pressed them as he whispered : 
 
 "I guessed what had happened! ... I know who has 
 come here ! . . . For hours I have been waiting my chance 
 to get a word alone with you. I was just coming when I 
 heard you under the window ! ' ' 
 
 She whispered and, although her hands burned in his, 
 they trembled and her teeth chattered : 
 
 ' ' Monseigneur de Bismarck desired to dine here. Every 
 day one does not entertain a guest so noble. See you well ! 
 I have cooked for Monseigneur with my own hands a dinner 
 worthy of himself! He has devoured like an ogre the 
 trout a la sauce Tartare, and the cutlets, and is now en- 
 gaged upon a ragout of partridges. When it is time to fry 
 the savory omelette that follows, Madame Potier will ring 
 the little bell, and I shall run back to the house." 
 
 The sentence ended in a stifled titter. An ugly sound 
 that sickened Breagh as he heard it. He pressed the small 
 hands, whispering entreatingly : 
 
 "Don't laugh! You must not laugh. Go back and get 
 what you need for a journey. Tell Madame Potier I am 
 taking you to Belgium. Back to your husband ! . . . your 
 place is where he is! You shall not stay here . . . you 
 must not, I forbid you! ..." 
 
 She ceased to laugh and pulled her hands away from his. 
 Her answer came : an inflexible utterance to be breathed so 
 softly : 
 
 "I remain here, Monsieur, until my husband comes!" 
 
 He panted the old prayer : 
 
 "Juliette, for the love of God . . . ! You don't know 
 what terrible danger you are risking! ..." 
 
 The reply fanned past his cheek like the velvety wing of 
 some great night moth:
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 567 
 
 ' ' Monsieur, I remain here, until the arrival of M. Charles 
 Tessier. Although you will do wisely to depart while you 
 may unseen ! ' ' 
 
 He said between his gritted teeth, while the pounding 
 of his heart choked him : 
 
 ' ' I shall stay here ! . . . I decline to be sent away ! . . . " 
 
 She seemed to cogitate. Then came the mere breath of 
 an utterance. 
 
 "Will you swear to be secret and faithful?" 
 
 He said hoarsely : 
 
 "Juliette, I must first know what you intend to do." 
 
 She whispered, and her voice set his blood rushing and 
 the fragrance of her maddened him. 
 
 "Stoop! . . . Why are you so tall? Bend down your 
 head!" 
 
 He stooped from his majestic altitude of five feet nine 
 inches and a bittock, and two little hands that scorched 
 him clasped his neck about. Light and soft as the touch 
 of a flower was the contact of the mouth that whispered : 
 
 ' ' I will tell you. . . . There is a line of one of your Eng- 
 lish poets I forget his name but the words run like 
 this. . . . 
 
 "'Throw but a stone the giant dies!" 
 
 He gasped: 
 "I hear you!" 
 
 She whispered, still with her mouth against his cheek : 
 ' ' See you well ! for the deliverance of my country, it is 
 I who am going to throw that stone ! ' ' 
 
 He panted through the shuddering that had seized him : 
 "Do you know what will happen, whether you succeed 
 or fail? You will be led out placed with your back 
 against this wall perhaps and shot!" 
 
 He felt her lips smile against his cheek as she answered : 
 
 "And what of that! It will be the fortune of War! 
 
 But you ..." She sharply drew her face away, and the 
 
 slight hands thrust him from her. "I will have you leave 
 
 this place to-night!" 
 
 A weakness seized him. He sank down upon his knees 
 and stretched his arms out, in the darkness, to the dimly 
 outlined silhouette of the slight elfin creature standing on 
 the threshold, and the scents of rose and jasmine came to 
 him in gusts from the night-veiled garden with another
 
 568 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 fragrance that had no name. He whispered, driven beyond 
 himself : 
 
 ' ' I will not go ! I love you ! ' ' 
 
 She said: 
 
 ' ' I have nothing to do with Love who have consecrated 
 myself to vengeance. And your presence here might ruin 
 all. . . . He knows M. Breagh, the Englishman. . . . Have 
 you not told me over and over that once he . . . " 
 
 She broke off there. But the intolerable stab brought 
 Breagh to his feet. He snarled at her through his clenched' 
 teeth. 
 
 "He may know Breagh, the Englishman, but he doesn't 
 know Jean Jacques Potier. Tell Madame that I shall wear 
 her nephew's clothes and take his name, and do his work 
 about the house and garden. All his duds are in the cup- 
 board up in my room there, and his apron and clogs and 
 so forth. ..." 
 
 Appalling triviality of the sex feminine. The conjured 
 picture evoked a titter. She breathed, and he was stung 
 with rage to know her shaken with irresistible mirth : 
 
 "But you do not know how to sweep and clean, and how 
 can you conceal your very red and curly hair? French 
 servant men have not such hair ! You will be betrayed by 
 it, Monsieur! ..." 
 
 His blood boiled, and he thundered in a whisper : 
 
 ' ' I shan 't ! . . . Call it what color you like to-night. It 
 won't be there to-morrow! There are clippers in the cup- 
 board, and I shall have it off." 
 
 A distant bell rang. She was gone like a bat in the dark- 
 ness. His word was given. He was pledged now to follow 
 her wherever fate should lead. 
 
 LXVI 
 
 VERSAILLES, always a town of martial music. Royal or Im- 
 perial fanfares of brass, and welcoming salutes of deep- 
 voiced cannon, had been since a day early in October, 
 when the girdle of iron and steel had closed about Paris 
 resonant with Prussian bugle calls and throbbing with 
 Prussian drums. 
 
 From dusk to dawn the electric search ray now mounted
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 569 
 
 on the summit of the Arc de Triomphe, as the broad wheel- 
 ing beams from Vanves, Issy, Mont Valerien, and the whole 
 ring of forts that guarded the great, magnificent, menaced 
 capital, whitened earth and sky in token of the unsleeping 
 vigilance of the Parisians, and their ceaseless expectation 
 of a German night attack, even as the long indicatory fin- 
 gers of brilliant blue-white light, stretching from the ridge 
 of St. Cloud and from the heights of Clamart, from Marly, 
 Vanesse, Epinal, Noiseau, Choisy, and Bourget no less 
 than the formidable battery of big guns on the Place 
 d'Armes, with their muzzles placed so as to sweep the ave- 
 nues radiating from the Chateau betokened the invaders' 
 anticipations of yet another sortie. 
 
 Ah, why had there been no sortie earlier than that 
 abortive effort toward Chevilly on the thirtieth of Septem- 
 ber? There were, at the beginning of the Investment, no 
 more than 180,000 German troops of the Crown Prince's 
 Army encircling Paris. Up to the tenth of October what 
 a triumphant turning of the tables might have been ef- 
 fected by a vigorous sally, effectively carried out ! 
 , Huge German forces were engaged in the sieges of Metz 
 and Strasburg, Belfort and Soissons, Schelsstadt and 
 Verdun. General von der Tann was engaged with the 
 Army of the Loire near Artenay. The stubborn resistance 
 of Orleans kept an Army Corps of the Red Prince extreme- 
 ly busy. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, with the right 
 wing of the Prussians' covering army south of Paris, was 
 actively engaged with the French at Dreux and Le 
 Mans. 
 
 And there were 55,000 troops of the Line within the 
 walls of Paris ; there were 105,000 Mobiles not fighters to 
 be sneezed at. There were 30,000 National Guards per- 
 haps too soft in muscle and well-developed in the region of 
 the corporation to be very effective pitted against such 
 seasoned warriors as Schmidt, Klaus, Kraus, and Klein. 
 But add to these, 25,000 Marines, Douaniers, Gardes-Cham- 
 petres and Forestiers, and there you had a force of 485,000 
 trained Frenchmen, asking nothing better than to sally out 
 by St. Denis, Villejuif, and Charenton, cut the line of in- 
 vestment north, clear the blocked road south, effect a junc- 
 tion with the Army of the Loire, destroy the Warlock's 
 subtlest combinations, promptly raise the Siege of Paris, 
 and deliver France from the invader.
 
 570 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 What was Trochu, Military Governor of Paris, thinking 
 about ? What were MM. Ducrot and Vinoy doing, to delay 
 until the garrison and fortress of Strasburg were surren- 
 dered, until the Capitulation of Metz on the twenty-seventh 
 of October, and the fall of Verdun on the seventh of No- 
 vember, had released the main Army of the Ked Prince for 
 the strengthening of that steel and iron girdle that lay 
 outside the defiant ring of forts? The tentative sally of 
 the twenty-ninth of November was foredoomed to failure 
 from the outset. No wonder Trochu and his plans fur- 
 nished hungry Parisians with abundant food for mockery, 
 when the Specter of Famine brooded over the City on the 
 Seine. Narrow-eyed and tight-lipped, cold, sinister, and 
 mysterious, the man was a mere bag of wind, when all was 
 said and done. 
 
 Meanwhile, the great bronze muzzle-loaders of the Forts 
 of Mont Valerien, Issy, Montrouge, Vanves, and Charenton, 
 St. Denis and its twin sisters, roared at intervals through- 
 out each day, raining common shell, chain shot, solid ball, 
 and shrapnel into the lines of the investing host. But the 
 trenching and battery-making went on steadily; the high- 
 walled farmyards and gardens of country houses in the 
 environs were being converted into emplacements for artil- 
 lery of the largest caliber. Already several of Krupp's 
 stupendous siege-howitzers, with muzzles cocked at angles 
 of forty-five, demonstrated the possibilities of the bombard- 
 ment for which the German Press daily shrieked. 
 
 "Not for the reduction of the military defenses, but to 
 produce by the exercise of sheer terror, bodily suffering, 
 and destruction of private property, such an effect upon 
 the unarmed multitudes subjected to a hail of incendiary 
 shells within their encircling ring of walls and fortresses 
 as to compel the chiefs of the Government and garrison to 
 come to terms at command of the popular voice." 
 
 Thus the leader-writers of the Berliner Zeitung and other 
 journals peaceful-looking, stout men, with full beards and 
 short-sighted eyes behind spectacles wrote, as though they; 
 longed to dip their quills in newly shed French blood. 
 
 "It is sad, very sad, ' ' said the Warlock, vexed for once, ' 
 "that the siege trains conveyingmore than 100,000 hundred- 
 weights of flmnn.mit.ioTi cannot be brought over a single line 
 of rails with sufficient quickness to gratify these excellent 
 gentlemen. . . . Yet for the present we can do no more
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 571 
 
 than invest the place and wait for the means of attacking it. 
 The process of starving out is, as the mighty fortress of 
 Metz has shown, a very slow one. But as the loud voices of 
 one hundred and one guns have already proclaimed to our 
 Berliners the empty stomach triumphs over the most ob- 
 stinate resistance. We now require an army to guard 
 300,000 prisoners of War ! Since the Babylonian Captivity 
 the world has not heard the like! And yet the chamber 
 prattlers and the journalists accuse us of tardiness. Al- 
 ready from several anonymous quarters have reproachful 
 or ridiculing letters reached me. One even contains a 
 villainous comic verse, which I am told is sung in the music 
 halls in Berlin." 
 
 And the great tactician read, with the expression of one 
 who savors the bouquet of sulphureted hydrogen or asa- 
 f etida : 
 
 "Outer MoltTce, gehst so stumm? 
 Immer um das Ding herum: 
 Bester Moltke, sei nicht dumm, 
 Mach' doch endlioh: Bumm, bumm, bumml" 
 
 And he tore up the rude verses in indignation and threw 
 them into the waste-paper basket of the Prussian Great 
 Headquarters at the Palais de Justice, on the right of the 
 Prefecture, and strode downstairs, too much out of tune 
 to hum. 
 
 To have been called slow and stupid, and affectionately 
 urged to hurry up and make an end of things with bang, 
 bang, banging ! . . . He was almost glad that his departed 
 Mary was not alive to know of the humiliation inflicted by 
 these scurrilous rhymesters on her beloved old man. 
 
 It was an unfortunate moment chosen by a new junior 
 assistant aide-de-camp upon the Chieftain's personal staff, 
 for tendering a request for leave of absence until the fol- 
 lowing day. 
 
 "What, what? ... You have barely entered upon your 
 new and important duties, the wine in which your comrades 
 of the Guard pledged you is still bubbling in your veins. 
 i. . . Is it another congratulatory banquet, or a supper 
 tete-a-tete? . . . Am I right?" The Warlock's keen 
 glance glittered between his lashless eyelids at the tall, fair- 
 headed young officer standing rigidly before him. "Prut! 
 that reminds me! . . ." he added. ^ "In whose company
 
 572 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 did I see you lunching only yesterday at one of the little 
 round tables in the ante-chamber of the dining salle at the 
 Hotel des Reservoirs ? ' ' 
 
 Said Valverden, his blue eyes meeting the sharp gray 
 glance with a charming candor: 
 
 "Excellency, the lady is the recently married wife of a 
 'Roumanian noble. Her name, if Your Excellency desires 
 to know it, is Madame de Straz." 
 
 Said the Field Marshal with an acute look and a dry 
 intonation : 
 
 ' ' In Berlin, not so long ago, she called herself something 
 else!" 
 
 Valverden answered, with a conscious side glance at the 
 twist of silver braid that marked his rank of Captain : 
 
 "Her first husband was killed in action with his regi- 
 ment at Gravelotte. She is now legally married to M. de 
 Straz." 
 
 Moltke took snuff and said laconically: 
 
 "She has not taken long in changing her state." 
 
 Valverden began, rather lamely: 
 
 "Madame had virtually been separated from M. de 
 Bayard " 
 
 Like a bayonet thrust came the retort : 
 
 ' ' Since your Cousin Max ran away with her from Paris, 
 fourteen years ago ! The woman is an adventuress, whom 
 you will be wise to avoid." 
 
 Valverden answered, with his disarming look of frank- 
 ness: 
 
 "Your Excellency, I was applied to by the person you 
 mention for advice in a matter of serious urgency. Ma- 
 dame de Straz has unhappily lost all trace of the where- 
 abouts of her daughter, Mademoiselle de Bayard. . . . She 
 has entreated me to solicit for her an audience with Your 
 Excellency, in the hope that you might aid her to recover 
 the young girl." 
 
 The War Eagle croaked, ruffling his feathers with indig- 
 nation : 
 
 "Does the woman suppose that I have got the unfortu- 
 nate young creature in my pocket? Or does she suspect 
 you of knowing where she is to be found?" 
 
 Valverden said, hastily and flushing: 
 
 "Your Excellency, upon my honor, I have never seen 
 the girl!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 573 
 
 The Warlock tucked away his snuff box and pointed 
 the terrible withered finger at the left side of the young 
 man's bosom, where hung upon a broad black, white-bor- 
 dered ribbon a cross of dark metal, edged with a narrow 
 line of silver, and bearing a crown and the letter "W." 
 A terrible grating voice said, and with all his cool effron- 
 tery Valverden quailed at the words and the stern look 
 that accompanied them: 
 
 "To you, young man, upon whom the Second Class of 
 the Iron Cross has been conferred by the hand of your 
 Crown Prince, for daring and gallantry upon the war field 
 no more I say than this: Do nothing to disgrace the 
 wearer of that decoration which should be sacred in your 
 eyes. ..." He added: "The leave you ask is granted. 
 Until twelve noon to-morrow, Captain von Herding will 
 take your place." 
 
 And His Excellency the Field Marshal returned his 
 aide-de-camp's salute and wheeled sharply, and had taken a 
 couple of strides across the vestibule, when he halted to 
 ask: 
 
 ' ' This girl you speak of how came she lost ? . . . " 
 
 Said Valverden, hesitating slightly: 
 
 "According to Madame her mother, the ladies were on a 
 visit to Rethel during the time when the Prince Imperial 
 of the French was staying at the Prefecture. They had 
 obtained an audience of the Prince. . . . Madame de Straz 
 was prevented by illness from accompanying her daughter. 
 . . . The young lady Mademoiselle Juliette de Bayard 
 has never been seen since." 
 
 The lean neck and spare features of the greatest of 
 strategists became suffused with indignant scarlet. He 
 said: 
 
 ' ' The mother is a trollop of the very first water. She 
 took the girl to the Prefecture why did she contrive an 
 interview? She sends her up alone she declares that she 
 has never since seen her. . . . Pfuil . . . The affair, in my 
 nostrils, fairly stinks of vulgar intrigue. Have no more to 
 do with it though the unlucky girl is no doubt to be 
 pitied. ... I will speak to His Excellency, Count Bis- 
 marck, who has agents in Rethel." 
 
 And he steamed across the marble vestibule of the great 
 hall of the Palais de Justice, crossed the Place des Tribu- 
 naux, and vanished into the Prefecture, over whose en-
 
 574. THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 trance hung the Hohenzollern banner and the Prussian 
 standard, that was very soon to show a stripe of red beside 
 the black and white. . . . 
 
 For the hitherto recalcitrant States of Baden and Hesse 
 had joined the Bund. The King of Saxony had signed, 
 Wiirtemburg would sign the treaty of Federation shortly. 
 There were prospects of a definite settlement with the King 
 of Bavaria. The ambition of the Man of Iron was shortly 
 to be realized. . . . Bismarck was to rule a German Em- 
 peror ! 
 
 You might have seen him, upon this bland November 
 morning that had succeeded a night of shrieking northerly 
 gusts and driving pelts of sleety rain, walking with the 
 Count Hatzfeldt in the garden of the Tessier mansion in 
 the Rue de Provence. The house immediately opposite 
 had now been converted into a guard post. Sentries in the 
 uniforms of the Green Jaegers were on duty at the gates. 
 Over the principal entrance hung the black and white 
 Prussian standard. 
 
 The sky was deep blue, with argosies of white clouds 
 sailing toward the northeast. The leaves that yet remained 
 upon the elms and poplars shone in the sunshine like newly 
 minted gold. Those that the gale had stripped lay in wet 
 drifts upon the grass and gravel, though the three oak trees 
 on the pleasance yet retained their suits of crisping russet 
 brown. 
 
 To the right, at the rear of the house, a young man 
 servant was sweeping away the leaves that adhered to the 
 narrow terrace of steps running round three sides of the 
 building. The swish of his birch broom punctuated the 
 sentences of the newspaper article being read by Hatzfeldt 
 to his Chief. 
 
 It was the continuation of the article in the Berliner 
 Zeitung that had roused the ire of the "Warlock a little 
 while before. 
 
 "Unanimously," it concluded, "and in the interests of 
 Humanity, we demand that this measure be taken at once. 
 We reprehend in the sternest terms, not only those military 
 commanders who are in favor of procrastination. We cry 
 in the ears of the Chancellor-and-Minister-President, Count 
 Bismarck himself, who is credited with being the main fac- 
 tor in this policy of delay : M ene t mene, tekel upharsint
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 575 
 
 'Thou art weighed in the balance, and found to want!' ' 
 
 Said the Man of Iron to Hatzf eldt : 
 
 "Did I not know that my wife regards women who 
 enter the lists of journalism as unsexed, and outcasts 
 beyond the hope of redemption, I should be inclined to 
 believe she had written this." He added: "I have often 
 been accused of inhumanity, but to be reproached for an 
 excess of tenderness is something quite new to me. How 
 shall we reassure these excitable gentlemen? Buschlein" 
 he referred to his Press article- writer, the rotund author of 
 the famous "Recollections" "Buschlein shall write that 
 he has authority from Count Bismarck to state that his 
 universally credited predilections for slaughter have not 
 been blunted by recent experiences, and that he much ap- 
 proves of the bombardment idea, but that he has no control 
 over those high military functionaries who command His 
 Majesty's investing forces, and is not accustomed to be 
 consulted by them. ' ' 
 
 He spat and resumed : 
 
 "Private correspondents worry me to know whether I 
 am. really averse to the bombardment, and why I won't 
 allow firing into the town? What pernicious rubbish! 
 They will be blaming me next for all losses during the in- 
 vestment. Which are not small; for in little skirmishes, 
 and during the short time occupied by those abortive 
 sorties, we have lost more troops than we should have done 
 had we regularly stormed the place." 
 
 He added, looking humorously at Hatzfeldt, whose hand- 
 some, debonnaire countenance invariably fell at any refer- 
 ence to a bombardment : 
 
 "By the way, another balloon has been taken with let- 
 ters from Paris, some of which I have already read, and a 
 Figaro of yesterday's date. It has been decreed by the 
 French Government that all wine and provisions are to be 
 taken away from private people, as the poorer classes 
 have already begun to fricassee their dogs and pussy cats. 
 So your American father-in-law will have to look out for 
 his cellar an excellently stocked one, as I have heard from 
 you. And your wife 's famous mouse-gray ponies will prob- 
 ably be made into cutlets a pretty piece of intelligence for 
 your next letter to Madame ! ' ' 
 
 "Ah! . . . for Heaven's sake, Your Excellency!" cried 
 Hatzfeldt, with ruefully elevated eyebrows, "I implore
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 [you not to conjure up the image of my wife's indignation 
 jand despair. Every letter I receive from her begins and 
 ends with her precious ponies." 
 
 The Minister appended: 
 
 "Her mother, father, and her brother, Henry, who is 
 living at their estate of Petit Val, near Marly I think you 
 told me being sandwiched in between the little beasts." 
 
 They were pacing the garden paths. The Chancellor had 
 recently risen, and seemed inclined to be in a jesting mood. 
 He continued, throwing away the butt of a finished cigar : 
 i "I must be careful, or the Countess will send me no 
 more pate of pheasants, or sausages. Pray tell her, with 
 my compliments, that both were excellently fresh and good. 
 . . . Did you notice written on my table card that the 
 Mayor of Versailles is to have a ten-minute interview before 
 M. Thiers arrives at half -past twelve? If I have not pol- 
 ished off the Republican official before Thiers toddles up 
 the doorsteps with his portfolio under his short arm, and 
 his gold spectacles twinkling, engage him in conversation 
 below here for an instant do not send him up straight- 
 way to the torture cell." Thus the Minister had chris- 
 tened the small room adjoining his private apartment. He 
 went on : " I do not want him to go down to Sevres with his 
 white flag and his escort, and meet Jules Favre with a 
 string of tales about our orgies and revelings, of the enor- 
 mous expense of which the Mayor is coming to complain. ' ' 
 
 ' ' What insolence ! ' ' commented Hatzf eldt. 
 
 "It seems," continued the Minister, "that we all cost 
 the town too much to keep, the chief offenders being the 
 grand ducal and princely personages at the Hotel des 
 Reservoirs. Of course, one knows that the Tinsel Rabble 
 eat and drink a great deal more than they require, and 
 waste much more than they consume. But to a Frenchman, 
 one cannot admit as much. So I shall tell the Mayor that 
 he must apply to the French Government at Tours for 
 permission to raise a substantial money loan, and as M. 
 Thiers has only just come from there, he would naturally 
 buttonhole the old gentleman if he encountered him. 
 Which as our plump, neatly shaved old Professor is as 
 timid as a hare and as soft as a baby would discompose 
 him very horribly. ..." He continued: "He is dying to 
 make peace with us, because there will soon be famine in 
 Paris. Imagine how I caught him out when I told him yes-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 577 
 
 terday: 'Monsieur, you have only visited the city for a few 
 hours. We know better about the contents of its magazines 
 than you do. They have ample provisions to last until the 
 end of January. . . . ' "What a look of incredulity ! I had 
 only been feeling his pulse, as it were. . . . His amazement 
 told me what I most wanted to know. What a man to 
 make a bargain about an armistice, an invalidy civilian, 
 who cannot conceal his feelings ! Who lets himself be put 
 out of countenance and pumped! actually pumped!" 
 
 He turned aside to cough and hawk and expectorate 
 copiously. . . . "There!" he said, wiping his mustache 
 vigorously with a large white cambric handkerchief. ' ' You 
 see what it is to have a stomach as sensitive as mine is. ... 
 That injustice done me in the Berliner Zeitung with refer- 
 ence to the bombardment has caused an overflow of bile, 
 by which I was already incommoded. Thiers will be cer- 
 tain to remain closeted with me for two hours. He is noth- 
 ing if not expansive and flowery, and redundant. I shall 
 not be able to get on horseback before three o'clock, and we 
 dine at six." He went on, punctuating the sentence with 
 more coughs and hawkings: "And as our table is to be 
 graced tchah! by a huge trout pasty, a love gift to the 
 Chancellor of the hah! Confederation, from a Berlin 
 restaurant keeper who throws into the bargain ahah! a 
 cask of Vienna March beer and his photograph, taken with 
 his wife and brr'r!" 
 
 He turned aside and spat vigorously, before ending, re- 
 suming, as he used the big white handkerchief : 
 
 ' ' One would desire to do justice to a gift so welcome. . . . 
 More bile! ... I spat like this half the night through. 
 . . . Decidedly I am not as well as when we galloped along 
 the highroads with the Great Headquarters Staff. ... I 
 have wondered : Do I eat too much ? Does this sedentary 
 life conduce to indigestion ? ' ' He spat again, and answered 
 himself : ' ' How can it be so, when I breakfast on a couple 
 of eggs with dry toast, and a cup of tea without milk? I 
 don't lunch lunch is a mockery of a meal but in the 
 evening I make a hearty dinner. With beer and champagne 
 in plenty, and wash all down with half a dozen cups of 
 tea. Then I go to bed as you know, never before mid- 
 night. There's a doze and I waken up with my brain as 
 bright as daylight all sorts of things running through it, 
 and my mouth full of this bitter faugh!"
 
 578 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Your Excellency will need a fresh handkerchief," said 
 Hatzfeldt, slightly shuddering, as the Chancellor vigorously 
 crumpled the soiled cambric into a ball. "Shall I send 
 Your Excellency's servant to fetch another?" 
 
 "No, no! As it happens, I have sent Grams out. And 
 Engelberg is busy. There is Madame Charles 's factotum ! ' ' 
 He called in French: "Hola, Jean Jacques! Approach, 
 my brave young man ! ' ' 
 
 His full blue eyes, their whites now red-veined and 
 biliously injected, had turned to where the strongly built 
 young male servant was still sweeping the steps of the rear 
 of the house. Cropped to the scalp, you saw the fellow 
 attired in a well-worn morning jacket of striped linen, a 
 blue waistcoat and tight blue cloth trousers, yellow piped 
 at the side seams. Summoned by an imperative word and 
 gesture, he knocked the damp leaves off his broom, stood 
 it up against the side of the conservatory, and shambled 
 to where the Chancellor was standing, muttering with a 
 downcast air and a furtive, sulky look : 
 
 "Quiche, Monseigneur f . . . What is it Monseigneur 
 desires ? ' ' 
 
 Said the Minister, with a smile that curved the great 
 mustache and showed the white, square teeth that a young 
 man might have envied : 
 
 "Monseigneur desires that without delay the brave Jean 
 Jacques would betake him to the kitchen, and desire Ma- 
 dame Charles Tessier of her goodness to favor Monseigneur 
 with a clean handkerchief. . . . Perhaps two would be 
 better. . . . Ask for two, Jean Jacques, and compel thy 
 legs to rapid motion, for to croquer le marmot is not a fa- 
 vorite pastime with Monseigneur ! Comprehend you ? ' ' 
 
 Jean Jacques replied in his extraordinary patois, with a 
 bow of the clumsiest: 
 
 "Quiche, Monseigneur I" 
 
 "De quel pays sont vousf" asked Hatzfeldt curiously. 
 
 Jean Jacques responded with sulky unwillingness: 
 
 "La Suisse, Monsieur!" 
 
 Hatzfeldt said, as the young man returned to the scene 
 of his abandoned labors, picked up his broom, and went 
 round the end of the conservatory toward the kitchen 
 quarters : 
 
 "There are Frenchmen who call themselves Belgians or 
 Swiss because they are too funky to fight!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 579 
 
 Said the Minister : 
 
 "Madame Charles Tessier, who knows all about this 
 fellow, describes him as a native of Neufchatel. Here she 
 comes herself, bringing my handkerchiefs. Thank you a 
 thousand times, Madame! But why inconvenience your- 
 self?" 
 
 Madame Charles, whose black hair, heavily streaked with 
 white, was crowned with a dreadful lace cap with lappets, 
 parted in the middle, and brushed down in two old-fash- 
 ioned festoons on either side of her haggard white wedge 
 of a face, shrilled in her raucous voice that it was no 
 trouble whatever. . . . The laundress's basket with Mon- 
 seigneur 's clean linen had but that moment come in. 
 
 Madame Charles wore a gray poplin gown of rich, stiff, 
 antique material, trimmed with black gimp upon the gores, 
 round the bottom of the expansive skirt, and upon the 
 sleeves and waist. It had been discovered in a wardrobe 
 belonging to the mother of M. Charles Tessier. She had 
 on one of Madame 's black silk aprons, a pair of her black 
 silk mittens, and the black chenille net adorned with steel 
 beads that confined her back hair had housed the iron gray 
 curls of her respected mother-in-law. Over her narrow 
 shoulders hung the inevitable white woolen shawl. 
 
 She curtsied deeply to the Chancellor and slightly to 
 Count Hatzfeldt, and went on into the garden, and disap- 
 peared round the corner of the ivy-bordered path. Seen 
 thus in the searching daylight, the elevation and forward 
 thrust of the left shoulder that lent her gait its unpleasant 
 peculiarity, and the curvature in the lower part of the 
 spine were even more painfully apparent. It occurred to 
 her as she moved away from the two men, whose eyes, re- 
 luctantly or curiously, were following her, that to ape this 
 deformity so persistently might be to bring it in reality 
 upon herself. 
 
 She shivered a little, despite the bland warmth of the 
 November sunshine. Bound the corner of the green glass 
 conservatory, well out of sight of those who walked in the 
 garden, Jean Jacques Potier was shivering, too. 
 
 When the Chancellor had coughed and spat and spat 
 again, the knees of Jean Jacques had shaken beneath him. 
 His heart had sunk like a leaden plummet, and the sweat of 
 terror had started on his skin. 
 
 He was afraid horribly afraid. Not for himself, bnt
 
 580 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 for another. There was no knowing. The thing he feared 
 might happen at any time. 
 
 "Throw but a stone the giant dies! ..." 
 
 He could hear now the very voice in which she had 
 added: "See you well, it is I who am going to throw that 
 stone!" 
 
 He had expended all the eloquence he possessed with the 
 object of turning Juliette from her purpose. He did not 
 know whether he had succeeded. She would give him no 
 promise. She was sphinxlike, inscrutable. . . . You 
 could never feel sure that in the middle of the night there 
 would not be a cry and then a commotion of running feet 
 upon the stairs, and then the arrest, and the accusation. 
 He had made up his mind to say, when that happened: 
 "It was my doing. She knew nothing about it. It was I 
 who put poison in the food of this man!" 
 
 Then he would be taken out and shot. It would be done 
 instantly, whether the owner of the life that had been 
 attempted died or got well. Perhaps the man would not 
 die ? He had an iron constitution and the frame of a Titan. 
 But sometimes he looked weary and haggard and bilious. 
 And when he spat as just now, and pulled wry mouths 
 over the bitter stuff he expectorated, the heart of P. C. 
 Breagh would sink to the pit of his stomach, and his legs 
 would shake under him, as they were shaking now. 
 
 LXYII 
 
 MEANWHILE, the Man of Iron had commented to Hatzf eldt : 
 "Our landlady is going for a little promenade . . . she 
 does not fear damp, that is quite plain . . . see how she 
 trails her skirts over the wet grass. Now, if she were to 
 show her feet, should we be grateful, or the reverse ? ' ' 
 
 A light of cynical amusement flickered in his blue eyes 
 as he noted Hatzf eldt 's disgust of the creature of whom he 
 spoke. He went on: 
 
 "Ugly women have sometimes pretty feet, and hands 
 that are exquisite. Have you ever looked closely at the 
 hands of Madame Charles? If not, I recommend them to 
 your notice. They are well worth looking at. " He added,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 581 
 
 ignoring the shudder that convulsed the dandy: "I pro- 
 pose that we follow her discreetly and at a distance. I 
 have still a few minutes before the Mayor arrives. ' ' 
 
 He led the way. They crossed a portion of the lawn and 
 turned into a gravel walk, damp and miry and drifted over 
 with wet and rotting leaves. The shining patent-leather 
 boots of Hatzfeldt suffered by their contact. The Chan- 
 cellor, observing this, said: 
 
 "Never mind. . . . You can have them cleaned! My 
 man Niederstedt polishes boots capitally!" 
 
 Hatzfeldt returned plaintively : 
 
 "I can have them cleaned, as Your Excellency observes. 
 But never again will they be the same after a wetting. 
 And they are made by the only man in the world who 
 knows how to make boots. ' ' 
 
 The Minister said brutally: 
 
 ' ' Order another pair of the fellow ! ' ' 
 
 Hatzfeldt returned with a shrug and ?, rueful look : 
 
 "He lives in Paris Rue de Lafayette. And Your Ex- 
 cellency is going to have Paris bombarded ! ' ' 
 
 Said Bismarck, his great frame shaken by internal 
 laughter : 
 
 "The fellows who write the newspaper articles out of 
 their own heads know a great deal better than that. . . . 
 According to them, I am a humanitarian altruistic to im- 
 becility." 
 
 "But we, who only write to Your Excellency's dictation, 
 know Your Excellency better than they ! ' ' 
 
 The injury to his immaculate foot coverings, and the im- 
 pending destruction of his bootmaker's establishment, in- 
 censed Hatzfeldt to the point of an imprudent retort. 
 
 The granite face turned. The heavy regard rested upon 
 him. With his characteristic stutter a signal as warning 
 to those who knew him as the rattle of the crotalus hidden 
 in the brake, the Minister said: 
 
 "So I am not a philanthropist, or a or an apostle of 
 light and sweetness. I would prefer to build an Empire 
 with the fallen towers of the modern Babylon? ..." 
 
 Hatzfeldt bowed with the grace inherited from the Rus- 
 sian Princess, his mother. The Minister went on in a 
 lighter tone : 
 
 "As a boy, I always preferred the apples that hung on 
 the highest branches. They were bigger and sweeter and
 
 582 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 rosier than the others, though in stealing them I risked 
 both my breeches and my neck. Well ! To be plain, there 
 are two apples just now that I particularly covet: the 
 Bombardment and the Proclamation of the Emperor of 
 Germany from the Tuileries. ..." He added: ''The via 
 media is not the surest road to an arrangement that shall 
 be lasting. The most convincing arguments are uttered by 
 the iron mouths of big guns ! " 
 
 They had emerged from the shrubbery at the bottom of 
 the garden. The patch of green still spread upon the 
 eastern boundary wall, where the water trickled down. 
 The aquatic plants had been weeded, and the tiny pond 
 cleaned out by Breagh under the supervision of his In- 
 fanta, but the pipe remained unsoldered because the 
 plumber's men had gone to the War. Thus the Satyr's 
 mouth remained dry, though the chuckle still sounded in 
 the Satyr's throat. 
 
 Madame Charles had been standing near the mask as the 
 Minister and his courtly First Secretary stepped into the 
 open. She started slightly, glanced round, bent her head, 
 and limped painfully away. 
 
 Said the Chancellor, barely glancing after the awkward, 
 misshapen figure : 
 
 "I hope that it has not occurred to Madame Charles to 
 look over the garden wall!" 
 
 Hatzfeldt's eyebrows went up in mild surprise. He 
 objected : 
 
 "It would hardly be possible. The wall must be eight 
 feet high, and how in the world could a woman, elderly and 
 with that distressing deformity " 
 
 The laugh that shook the great figure beside him puz- 
 zled as much as the utterance. 
 
 "She is a daughter of Eve and it would be possible, by 
 putting a toe in the jaws of yonder grinning gentleman, 
 to ascertain that I have had two sentries posted on the 
 other side of this wall. Listen! ..." 
 
 He rapped on the masonry with the walking stick he 
 habitually carried, and an answering rap came from the 
 other side. 
 
 "There is a good large garden there, belonging to an 
 unoccupied house," he added. "And ranged along the 
 wall are bushes, behind which my two men stand well 
 screened."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 583 
 
 "Did Your Excellency apprehend danger from that 
 quarter?" inquired Hatzfeldt. 
 
 "Hardly," said he, "though it is as well to be on the 
 safe side, and Versailles is pretty well packed with people 
 by whom I am rather particularly detested. But as a fact, 
 I placed the soldiers for the purpose of catching Madame 's 
 postman. You did not perceive as we stepped out of the 
 shrubbery that she slipped an envelope into this creature's 
 mouth?" 
 
 Hatzfeldt answered, in some astonishment : 
 
 "Why, no, Your Excellency. I saw nothing of the 
 kind!" 
 
 The Minister said, shaken with the internal, secret 
 laughter : 
 
 "And yet you have good eyes, better than mine for 
 seeing some things at a distance. ... A pretty face behind 
 a thick veil ... a graceful figure concealed by a shawl. 
 Possibly the friend who communicates with Madame 
 Charles with the aid of this grinning fellow admires her. 
 . . . There is no accounting for tastes. ..." 
 
 Hatzfeldt asked in a tone of disgust : 
 
 "Who is Madame Charles's friend? Is it possible that 
 misshapen creature has a lover?" 
 
 The Minister answered with a curious grimace: 
 
 "A lover who is apparently a Franc-tireur." 
 
 Hatzfeldt returned with acrimony: 
 
 "One of those marauding free shooters who wear a 
 black cloth uniform, and carry a black standard with a 
 skull above a pair of crossbones. Perhaps his lady-love 
 sat for the picture of the Death's head?" 
 
 The Minister returned, with a look of amusement: 
 
 "Possibly she did. . . . Though there have been mo- 
 ments when, under Madame 's extraordinary coiffure with 
 the black lace lappets, I have seen peeping at me imagine 
 what?" 
 
 "I cannot imagine. . . . Hatred, possibly?" said Hatz- 
 feldt. 
 
 "Hatred, blazing from two extraordinarily blue 
 eyes. ..." The Minister went on : " But not only hatred. 
 . . . Youth, and prettiness. Now, look here, and for I 
 am perfectly convinced that you believe me bewitched by 
 our landlady behold my rival's ~billei-douxl ..." 
 
 Hatzfeldt could scarcely speak for laughter. The Min-
 
 584 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 ister put his hand into the Satyr's mouth and extracted 
 therefrom a little envelope, inscribed in a bold, black, inky 
 scrawl. 
 
 "To My Adored Wife." 
 
 The Satyr chuckled almost humanly as the Minister held 
 the superscription under his Secretary's eyes, and calmly 
 proceeded to open the envelope. . . . Hatzfeldt, at first 
 crimson, and writhing with repressed merriment, became 
 graver as the Minister read aloud: 
 
 " What of thy husband? dost thou ask in the nights that 
 are sleepless and solitary. Credit, my little one, that thy 
 Charles is often near. In the thought of thy husband, if 
 not in person, he rests upon thy heart so faithful and 
 fond." 
 
 Hatzfeldt spluttered. The reader continued: 
 
 "We Francs-tireurs attacked a squadron of Schleswig 
 Hussars the other day at the village of Hably. . . . We shot 
 down many of the Prussian marauders and killed their 
 horses. Only eleven escaped with life. They returned later 
 and "burned the village, committing unexampled brutali- 
 ties, and murdered several of the inhabitants. It is well! 
 We have another cause to feed our roaring furnace of hate. 
 
 "All means of revenge are good, for ours is a holy war 
 waged upon a merciless invader. We number nobles, peas- 
 ants, citizens, criminals in our armed and organized ranks. 
 Each man will kill as he knows best. The rifle, the knife, 
 the scythe, or the cudgel, the gardener's shears, the chem- 
 ist's drugs, and the barber's razor are weapons lawful to 
 be used against the enemies of France. We will dig wolf- 
 traps for these Prussian foes of ours, who plunder by 
 method and wreck scientifically. We will tumble them 
 down wells, drown them in rivers, burn the huts they are 
 sleeping in over their heads. And our sisters f our wives f 
 They are united with us in our solemn compact of destruc- 
 tion. They will embrace to strangle. They will smile and 
 stab! They will cook savory dishes for Messieurs les 
 Prussiens, and the dogs will eat of them and die. 
 
 "These kisses on thy sweetest eyelids. These for thy 
 two little hands. Dost thou love me f Till death and after, 
 
 "Thine and thine only, 
 
 "Charles Tessier."
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 585 
 
 There was a silence. The Minister broke it with a grim 
 sentence : 
 
 "When this fine fellow is not murdering Prussians, he 
 is making love to his spitfire of a wife. A fine breed of 
 young criminals should spring from such a union ! ' ' 
 
 The Satyr's mocking chuckle sounded like a comment 
 on the speech. The Minister had deftly opened the en- 
 velope without tearing the flap, which was still moist. He 
 now refolded and slipped back the sheet into the envelope, 
 wet his finger in the little jet that gurgled from the hole 
 in the pipe behind the mask of the Satyr, and reclosed the 
 envelope. He drew out his watch and consulted it, as the 
 clocks of Versailles struck the half hour, and said to Hatz- 
 f eldt, replacing the watch : 
 
 ' ' Half -past twelve. . . . Do you know, I read something 
 by Felix Pyat very like this" he slightly waved the dry- 
 ing envelope "in a copy of the Petit Journal that was 
 brought me the other day. . . . Now, my Mayor is due, and 
 M. Thiers is certain to arrive on his heels. ... I must 
 return to the house; but I should prefer that you stayed 
 here." 
 
 "Here, Excellency!" 
 
 The Minister laughed in the amazed face of the Secre- 
 tary. 
 
 "I want you," he said, "to play the part of Leporello. 
 . . . Frankly, I cannot understand why Madame Charles 
 herself placed this letter in the gape of the mask. ... I 
 am curious to know who will fetch it away from there. 
 ... I am going to ask you to hide in the shrubbery and 
 find out." 
 
 Hatzfeldt glanced dubiously at the wall. The Minister 
 nodded. 
 
 "My two men are not sufficiently sharp-eyed to see 
 through these bricks. Really, I must ask you to stay here 
 and oblige me. Von Keudell must keep M. Thiers in play 
 instead of you. . . . Why, you are quite pale! ..." 
 
 Hatzfeldt gulped and admitted : 
 
 "That letter gave me an unpleasant sensation. I am 
 regularly shaved by a Frenchman, you understand! . . . 
 And these Francs-tireurs seem to be everywhere. Really, 
 it is horrible ! ' ' 
 
 The Minister's brow became thunderous. The lines
 
 586 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 about his mouth hardened to granite. He said in his grim- 
 mest tone : 
 
 "They should be hanged whenever found ! And not cut 
 down, but left hanging, for a salutary warning to other 
 rascals. . . . Do you know that the Combat the organ 
 edited by that blackguard Felix Pyat wishes to get up a 
 subscription for the purchase of a gold-mounted rifle to be 
 given to the scoundrel who 'succeeds in removing the 
 Prussian King.' . . . Doubtless they have set their price 
 upon the heads of Moltke, and the arch enemy Bismarck. 
 Well Auf Wiedersehen! Ride out with me after lunch to 
 the aqueduct of Marly, and tell me what I want to know. ' ' 
 
 And the great figure strode away, leaving the First Sec- 
 retary to his unwelcome task. 
 
 "After lunch . . ."he said mentally, as he insinuated 
 his graceful figure between a lilac and a lauristinus, and 
 the rich soil, rendered marshy by the overflow of the lily 
 pool, squashily gave way beneath his once immaculate 
 boots. "Why, good Heaven! . . . the woman to whom 
 that monstrous epistle was addressed actually assists the 
 Foreign Office chef with the cooking! The Chief swears 
 by her ragouts and her omelettes and her beignets. They 
 are certainly excellent. ... I must avoid them for the 
 future. A young married man with a family must be care- 
 ful. I wonder, if anything unpleasant happened, whether 
 Touti would marry again?" 
 
 The bushes were wet with rain. Little cold showers 
 sprinkled the dandy's head and shoulders. His boots sank 
 deeper as the wet trickled down his neck. What a degrad- 
 ing task for a First Diplomatic Secretary! With what 
 shrieks of laughter his lively American Countess would 
 read his written description of his experiences as a spy I A 
 corn began to shoot. He sneezed. This meant influenza 
 to a certainty. Even while he devoted Madame Charles, 
 her bloodthirsty spouse, and all her countrymen to the 
 hottest corner of Tophet, he kept a bright lookout. And in 
 another five minutes or so he saw the person for whom he 
 lay in waiting coming down the mossy gravel path that 
 wound through the shrubbery. 
 
 It was Jean Jacques, the clumsy foot boy, whose mis- 
 takes and blunders kept the Prussian Chancery attendants 
 in a continual eruption of abusive German epithets, and 
 whose patois, proclaimed to be Swiss, was so extremely
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 587 
 
 puzzling that Hatzfeldt, who had piqued himself upon an 
 exclusive knowledge of the French of the Tyrol, could only 
 assign the youth to a canton of his own. He thrust his 
 hand into the Satyr's toothed gape and pulled out the 
 letter, twisted a wry mug as he regarded it, and said, with 
 an admirable English accent: 
 
 "Oh, damn! . . ." 
 
 Then, at the urgent tinkle of a bell from the kitchen 
 regions, he thrust the missive into the pocket of his striped 
 cotton jacket and scampered back to the house. 
 
 You will remember that when Juliette had consented to 
 marry the unknown Charles Tessier, she had, for her dear 
 Colonel 's very sake, adorned the faceless one with features, 
 a complexion, shoulders, muscles, and so on. She had even 
 boasted to Monica's brother of the swordsmanship of the 
 worthy but unromantic young cloth manufacturer, whose 
 most sportsmanlike accomplishment was the shooting of 
 thrushes and sparrows, which he would bring home to the 
 Rue de Provence in triumph, to be converted by his ador- 
 ing mother into savory pies. 
 
 Now, during these days of tension and anxiety, perhaps 
 to relieve the strain of an otherwise unbearable situation 
 possibly with the desire of inflicting on her unfortunate 
 adorer the torturing pangs of jealousy, or possibly to create 
 and maintain in herself a fictitious interest in the suppositi- 
 tious husband, she had begun anew to expatiate upon his 
 gifts and graces, and, having begun, could not leave off. 
 Her Charles had not red hair and yellow gray eyes, a blunt 
 nose, and a square chin with a dent in it. He was pale, 
 with melancholy black eyes and a high brow. His jetty 
 mustache was waxed, his imperial finished in a point of 
 the most elegant. . . . He quoted poetry in a deep voice, 
 and was capable of torrential outbursts of passion. He 
 was altogether a perfect specimen of the type of Balzac's 
 beautiful young man. 
 
 Surfeited with these perfections, P. C. Breagh had be- 
 come restive, to the point, one day, of being clumsily sar- 
 castic on the immunity of widows' only sons from the obli- 
 gation of military service, and so on. 
 
 That afternoon Madame Charles had received a mysteri- 
 ous communication to the effect that her lord had secretly 
 quitted Belgium, penetrated in disguise into France, passed 
 through the Prussian lines in a series of hairbreadth
 
 588 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 escapes, and joined a corps of Francs-tireurs. Since when, 
 letters containing tirades inspired by the most flaming 
 patriotism, sanguinary descriptions of adventure, and pas- 
 sionate protestations of devotion, had been found at inter- 
 vals by Madame Charles in the mouth of the Satyr mask. 
 Of late, since she had developed nervousness about fetch- 
 ing the letters herself, Jean Jacques had sulkily performed 
 the office. And when she did not, with due precautions, 
 declaim these effusions for the benefit of her victim and 
 fellow conspirator, his was the task inconceivably repul- 
 sive to a young man suffering the stabs of jealousy, of read- 
 ing them aloud to Madame Charles. Hence the expletive 
 which had betrayed his British nationality to Count Hatz- 
 feldt, standing disconsolate in his squelching patent 
 leathers under the dripping lilac and syringa trees. 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 FROM Tours, chief town of the Department of the Indre et 
 Loire, 120 miles southwest of Paris as the crow flies, where 
 Cremieux, Minister of Justice, and rather too doddery to 
 be of efficiency at this crisis, had established the Adminis- 
 trative of the Provisional Government of the new French 
 Republic ; whither M. Leon Gambetta, Minister of the In- 
 terior, Member of the Board of National Defense, had 
 recently betaken himself, escaping from the besieged cap- 
 ital to Montdidier as a passenger in the car of a balloon 
 whither the veteran Garibaldi had now arrived to offer his 
 services in the cause of Liberty from Tours had come 
 the famous diplomat and man of letters, contemptuously 
 dubbed "Professor" by Count Bismarck, with the object 
 of carrying out the peace negotiations in whose conduct 
 the tragic patriarch Favre had broken down. 
 
 You saw the famous Minister and author of the Histoire 
 du Consulat et de I' Empire, as a little, stocky, black-clad 
 old gentleman with a square gray head, round, clean-shaven 
 face, and bright, round eyes, looking through gold-rimmed 
 spectacles. . . . Above all, a patriot, heart and soul de- 
 voted to France, the position of this famous French states- 
 man of seventy-five, newly returned, empty of all but fair 
 words and vain courtesies, from a pilgrimage to the Courts
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 589 
 
 of various neutral Powers, was horrible and painful beyond 
 words. 
 
 Sad, distracted, anxious little gentleman, charged with 
 the mission of obtaining those needed terms of peace, or at 
 least an armistice from the conqueror upon the threshold, 
 can you see him, in the shadow of the magnificent Temple 
 erected by the Sun King, toiling and moiling with his 
 secretary, the younger M. Eemusat, in preparation for 
 those anguish-fraught interviews with the German Chan- 
 cellor. 
 
 The tables of his sitting-room at the Hotel des Reservoirs 
 were piled with books and papers papers covered with 
 abstruse calculations dealing with the most urgent need 
 the provisioning of Paris papers dealing with the question 
 of the Elections papers dealing with the General Census 
 papers of every imaginable kind. And with these, from 
 dawn till midnight, the little, grief-worn man wrestled 
 while the Tinsel Rabble and their staffs of German officers 
 reveled in the dining-saloons, and trampled and shouted 
 and clanked and jingled up and down the corridors, and 
 in and out of the bedrooms ; and the roar of the guns from 
 the forts of the beleaguered city shook the windows from 
 time to time. 
 
 Now and then he would lie back exhausted in his chair, 
 or lie down and sleep, if sleep ever visited him. He took 
 his frugal meals in a private cabinet opening out of the 
 great dining-hall of the restaurant. Since the thirtieth of 
 October he had been engaged in this wise, save when, 
 having been first compelled to apply to Count Bismarck 
 for a pass and a military safe-conduct, he would meet and 
 confer with Favre, or one of his other colleagues, at some 
 chosen spot without the walls of the beleaguered capital. 
 
 Only the previous day he had trundled down in a little, 
 shaky, hired brougham to the half -ruined and wholly de- 
 serted suburb of Sevres, preceded by an officer of Uhlans 
 with a White Flag on a pole. 
 
 Day after day the little brougham had drawn up before 
 the modest house in the Rue de Provence, and the little 
 gentleman, whose head seemed to whiten perceptibly, had 
 stepped out with his portfolio under his arm, as now. 
 Day after day the Chancery footmen would open the door 
 to him, and Madame Charles Tessier, hovering in the back- 
 ground, would drop the representative of suffering France
 
 590 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 her lowest curtsey, and sometimes gain a brief word with 
 his unfailing bow and smile. To-day, as Major von Keudell 
 appeared in the doorway of the drawing-room the Chan- 
 cellor being closeted in his private interviewing-room 
 upstairs with the Eepublican Mayor of Versailles the 
 little gentleman said simply, offering his hand to the 
 eccentric-looking person in the cap with lappets and the 
 white shawl: 
 
 ' ' The sympathy that is expressed in looks and by silence 
 can be very eloquent and very touching. From my heart 
 I thank you for yours, Madame ! ' ' 
 
 And as she had burst out sobbing and kissed the hand, 
 he had drawn it away with a murmured protest, and had 
 passed on into the drawing-room where Von Keudell was 
 to hold him in conversation until the Mayor had been 
 polished off. 
 
 But M. Thiers had endured the ordeal with a courteous 
 kind of resignation, only looking at his watch from time 
 to time, or glancing at the clock over which presided the 
 horned, bat-winged, cloven-hoofed and tailed figure that 
 tickled the fancy of his oppressor so much. 
 
 "His Excellency expected me," he said. "There has 
 been no mistake about the time of the appointment 
 named by himself at our previous interview. The great- 
 ness of the interests concerned are apprehensible by His 
 Excellency!" 
 
 The mild sarcasm rebounded pointless from Von 
 Keudell 's bluff rejoinder: 
 
 "No, no mistake at all. His Excellency has merely 
 shifted the hour. From half-past twelve to a quarter to 
 one His Excellency found it more convenient." 
 
 "What boors are these Germans I" thought the angered 
 diplomat, writhing, as some medieval victim, condemned 
 to undergo torture by rack and fire, might have writhed at 
 the delay of the hideous ordeal. 
 
 And then the door opened. The Chief Torturer looked 
 in with the salutation: 
 
 "A pleasant day! I am quite at your service now, if 
 you will come up to me. . . . You know the way, I 
 think? . . ." 
 
 And the great figure vanished, and the heavy footsteps 
 thundered up the drugget-covered stairs. 
 
 Did the sorrowful visitor know the way to the torture-
 
 THE MAX OF IRON 591 
 
 chamber? Surely malice must have prompted the query 
 addressed to the unfortunate plenipotentiary of France. 
 
 The room he had so loathed had one window looking 
 out on the Rue de Provence, and another at the south side 
 of the house, where stood the pine-tree and the turtle- 
 backed green glass conservatory with the wrought-iron 
 bridge above it. It had a figured gray carpet, a green 
 hearthrug with red edges, dark green stuff curtains, and 
 various oil-paintings and steel engravings hung upon the 
 walls, which were painted coffee-tinted cream. It was 
 furnished with a writing-table, on which were a terrestrial 
 globe, a celestial one, and a tellurion, a large gray marble- 
 topped chiffonier, a sofa covered with chintz, pattern red- 
 and-gray birds-of-paradise on a background with palm- 
 leaves; two cane chairs and a round center-table, upon 
 which lay a platter of wood containing the colored glass 
 marbles with which one plays the game of solitaire. 
 
 It was a game of solitaire which was played in that stiff, 
 primly-furnished apartment, in one corner of which stood 
 a mahogany bedstead of Empire pattern, with an obsolete 
 drapery of green-figured brocade. Such a game as may be 
 played by a grim, greedy, gray-mustached Grimalkin with 
 a plump, bright-eyed, feebly-palpitating mouse. 
 
 M. Thiers had been gravely imperiled by the shell-fire 
 of the French guns in the act of returning from Sevres on 
 the previous day, a mischance which had increased the 
 palpitations which were caused by his heart disease, and 
 wounded his feelings cruelly. Commented the Chancellor, 
 to whom he unwisely related the episode : 
 
 "Fortunately the cab-horse was too ill-fed to bolt, but 
 the window was broken, and you were mud-splashed all 
 over. . . . Not exactly the first time that your country- 
 men have treated you in that way ! . . . " 
 
 And this first scratch of the claw that never failed to 
 draw blood was followed by the query whether M. Thiers 
 were provided with full powers for carrying on the nego- 
 tiations ? 
 
 The Minister added, enjoying his victim's start and look 
 of horrified astonishment : 
 
 "My people in Paris tell me that there has been prac- 
 tically a Revolution, and that a new Government is coming 
 into power. On the Place before the Hotel de Ville there 
 were yesterday 15,000 persons assembled, most of them
 
 S92 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 I 
 
 National Guards from the Faubourgs, disarmed and cry- 
 ing: 'Vwe la Commune! . . . Point d' Armistice!' " 
 
 He went on, unheeding the writhing of the sufferer, 
 whose dignity had been so cruelly wounded : 
 
 "It appears that the Mayors of Paris had been sum- 
 moned by Arago, and were in one room conferring, while 
 in the other was the Government. Mobiles guarded the 
 doors, but were thrust back by the insurgents. General 
 Trochu came out and confronted them. He could only 
 mouth and gesticulate in a sort of dumb Crambo. Cries 
 of 'A. bos Trochu/' drowned his voice. There was a rush. 
 . . . One does not know how, but Trochu finally escaped 
 out of their clutches got out by a back door and cut his 
 lucky to the Louvre. . . . Here is one of the slips of 
 paper that were thrown from the windows of the Hotel. 
 . . . They have 'Commune decretef. Dorian President!' 
 upon them. There was a scene of confusion peculiar to 
 your nation, in the midst of which M. Felix Pyat and other 
 virtuous citizens proclaimed the Commune, and constituted 
 themselves into a Government embracing Blanqui, Ledru- 
 Rollin, Delescluze, Louis Blanc, and Flourens. . . ., 
 Flourens got upon a table made himself heard, it seems, 
 finally calling upon the Members of the Government of 
 National Defense to resign. M. Jules Favre refused . . ., 
 was arrested with the old Government the new Govern- 
 ment reigned until two o'clock in the morning, when some 
 battalions of Mobiles the 106th and 90th, under Picard 
 closed in upon the Hotel and ejected them. Trochu was 
 there with his staff. . . . Since, a general sort of agree- 
 ment appears to have been arrived at. A decree signed by 
 Favre was placarded yesterday, announcing that on Thurs- 
 day next a vote is to be taken whether there is to be a 
 Commune or not. . . . What I relate happened the day 
 before yesterday. Now, if Your Excellency saw M. Jules 
 Favre at Sevres yesterday afternoon, he must have told 
 you of the turn things were taking. Oblige me with a plain 
 answer to a plain question. . . . Did he tell you, or did 
 he not?" 
 
 The humiliated gentleman bowed his head assentingly. 
 The hot sweat of a mortal agony stood upon his broad fore- 
 head, and flushed and working features. His glasses were 
 dimmed with the reek of his torment and his shame. The 
 Enemy knew all. There was no concealing anything from
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 598 
 
 one so well served by spies and informers. Probably the 
 cruel interview with his fellow-Minister had been listened 
 to, from its beginning to its end. 
 
 Thiers and Favre had sat on two iron chairs at a gayly 
 painted little iron table, before one of the wrecked cafes 
 that boasted the sign of La Belle Bouquetiere. No one had 
 been near except a haggard, absinthe-sodden wretch, who 
 lay in a drunken stupor upon the pavement, close under 
 the broken window of the deserted restaurant. Perhaps 
 that drunken man had been his spy. . . . What was he 
 saying in the harsh, bullying tones that grated so? . . . 
 
 "The mob who rode roughshod over General Trochu, 
 and his Council of lawyers and orators, appear to be actu- 
 ated by the desire of fighting things out with us. They 
 burn for a chance, it appears, to pit their undisciplined 
 courage against the Army of United Germany. They are 
 hardly to be blamed for accepting literally the theatrical 
 bombast with which they have been fed by Favre ! ' ' 
 
 He laughed, and said, with a galling imitation of the 
 rhetorical manner of the Democratic barrister of Lyons : 
 
 " 'Not a stone of our fortresses' do you remember? 
 ' Not an inch of our territory ! ' have you forgotten ? . . . 
 When it was in the power of the person to whom he boasted 
 to have said to him : Every inch. Every stone! . . ." 
 
 He rose up, towering over the unhappy personage who 
 sat opposite to him, in a little wicker easy-chair that would 
 have suited a child. His greedy vitality physically sucked 
 energy from his victim. The stare of his great eyes op- 
 pressed, the roughness of his speech had a wounding 
 brutality. 
 
 "Which Party governs France? The Blue Republicans 
 or the Reds, answer me ? Can one treat with a State that 
 has no responsible heads?" 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte!" screamed the personage thus 
 cruelly prodded. "Do you not know that you are insult- 
 ing me ? " 
 
 He had grown deadly pale, and now flushed red, making 
 a passionate gesture as though to strike himself on the 
 forehead, as the other asked him with bitter irony : 
 
 "Is the truth so offensive to you as all that? ... If 
 you did not wish to hear it, you have come to the wrong 
 shop. The day for compliments and flatteries has passed 
 with the tinsel Empire of your Napoleon, unless you compel
 
 594 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 us to bring him back and set him up again at the Tuileries. 
 Believe me, he has contemplated this eventuality ! has his 
 carpet-bags ready packed, and his eagle in a traveling-cage. 
 . . . And certainly we could discuss the military questions 
 at issue better with him than with you civilian gentlemen, 
 who do not understand the language of War." 
 
 It was not possible to get a word in edgeways. . . . The 
 rasping voice tore the nerve-fibers as with a saw-edge, the 
 towering figure overwhelmed, the powerful stare fascinated 
 and terrified as the pitiless gaze of the snake when fixed 
 upon a frog or a bird. 
 
 And Bismarck went on, deliberately lashing himself into 
 a passion : 
 
 ' ' Are you and your colleagues aware that I suffer in my 
 reputation for these procrastinations? It is said at home 
 in Germany that I am over-lenient toward the French, 
 our treacherous enemies . . . that I delay to reap for 
 United Germany the glory and profit for which she has 
 paid so terrible a price in blood. Yourself with MM. 
 Ducrot and Favre have considered my terms for an armis- 
 tice inadmissible. ... In return I tell you you have for- 
 feited the right to criticize any terms that I may propose. 
 . . . You would hold the elections even in those provinces 
 of France which we hold as conquerors ! You would repro- 
 vision Paris and her fortresses ! We should be hellish un- 
 practical if we listened to you! . . . What the big devil! 
 . . . Are we to permit the levies, and the recruiting by 
 which the French Eepublic may hurl against us a new 
 army to shoot down? Himmelkreuzbombenelement! . . . 
 Do you take us for sheep 's heads ? ' ' 
 
 The unhappy Minister protested in a faint voice : 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, I do not even comprehend the 
 meaning of the term!" 
 
 "Ah, by God!" thundered the terrible voice, "you are 
 ignorant indeed of German words and German meanings, 
 and the word that you understand least of all when applied 
 to yourselves is WAR ! Silk gloves are not our wear in War, 
 and therefore the iron gloves with which we have handled 
 you have pinched your soft flesh and made you squeal. 
 We might complain of your Francs-tireurs, who hide in 
 woods and houses, and shoot our soldiers unawares ; and of 
 the inhumanity of your mitrailleuses which cut red lanes 
 through whole regiments. But no ! You are the sufferers
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 595 
 
 you are to be pitied even for the injuries you wreak 
 upon yourselves. ..." 
 
 He struck with his clenched fist the top of the chiffonier 
 near which he stood, and the dull shock of the contact of 
 that sledge-hammer of muscle and bone with the solid 
 marble, made the pictures shake upon the wall, the win- 
 dows rattle in their frames, and the bewildered listener 
 leap as if he had been shot. 
 
 "I rode over to St. Cloud yesterday," he went on, "to 
 look at the palace you have set on fire with your shells 
 from Mont Valerien. It is burning still, as I don't doubt 
 you know. A well-dressed French gentleman stood looking 
 at the smoldering ashes of the conflagration. Near him 
 was a French workman in a dirty blue blouse 'C'est 
 I'&uvre de Bismarck!' said the gentleman to the plebeian, 
 little dreaming who was near. . . . But the cad in the 
 
 blouse only said to him: 'Why, our gunners did that 
 
 themselves!' That workman had more sense in his pump- 
 kin than the whole lot of you!" 
 
 M. Thiers revived under the fresh insult sufficiently to 
 plant a sting : 
 
 "It is said, Monsieur, and on excellent authority, that 
 the Imperial Palace was sacked by German troops before 
 it was set on fire." 
 
 The Chancellor lowered his heavy brows and demanded 
 almost menacingly: 
 
 "Do you assert that His Majesty the King or the Crown 
 Prince of Prussia were parties to a crime of this kind ? ' ' 
 
 * ' No, Monsieur, not for an instant ! ' ' 
 
 The Chancellor said with a short laugh that had no mirth 
 in it: 
 
 "That is fortunate, otherwise I should have been com- 
 pelled to break off, and finally, our negotiations with regard 
 to this question of an Armistice, and deal only with the 
 question of the territory to be added in addition to the 
 fortresses on the right bank of the Rhine and those six 
 thousand millions of francs that we shall certainly take 
 from you!" 
 
 The thrust caused M. Thiers to leap to his feet, gal- 
 vanized into a feverish energy. He screamed, raising his 
 clenched hands and sweeping them downward and out- 
 ward: 
 
 ' ' It cannot be, Monsieur I it is outrage robbery ruin I
 
 596 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Europe will intervene if you persist in such a demand!" 
 
 "Ha, ha, ha!" The great jovial giant's laugh set the 
 crystal drops upon the mantelshelf-vases and the wall- 
 mirror girandoles tinkling, and reached the hearing of 
 Hatzfeldt and von Keudell in the drawing-room, and the 
 decipherers in the Bureau below. It vibrated through the 
 joists and planks and spaces above the plastered ceiling, 
 and made Madame Charles start where she lay upon the 
 floor of her bedroom listening, with her ear pressed to the 
 uncarpeted boards. 
 
 "My good sir, you are making game of me. . . . You 
 have visited the Courts of the Powers we know to what 
 profit. . . . You have solicited intervention to be told 
 what both of us knew very well before ! . . . The British 
 Lion may lash and roar, but will not do more, that is cer- 
 tain. England has not sufficiently recovered from the war 
 of the Crimea from the further drain of men and gold 
 caused by the Indian Mutiny. . . . Austria, in spite of 
 creeds and bias with her German-speaking population and 
 her Germanized institutions may be regarded as a power- 
 ful German State. Italy lies under the heel of Austria. If 
 the Russian Bear elect to hug, the hugging will be done 
 upon our side. For it is inconceivable that Germany 
 should ever be at war with Russia. Our interests are and 
 have always been one. ..." He laughed again, and said, 
 laughing : 
 
 "And, knowing this, you threaten me with the inter- 
 vention of European Powers. . . . You will hear nothing 
 with respect to forfeiture of territory ! . . . You refuse to 
 contemplate the question of the Gold Indemnity! . . . 
 Wait ! " he said ' ' wait until the bombardment is a month 
 old and the bread-basket is empty. . . . Then we shall hear 
 you sing to a different tune ! ' ' 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte! ..." 
 
 The old man tottered to his feet. He was ashen in hue, 
 and trembling. His blue lips hung breathlessly apart, his 
 eyes had a lack-luster stare behind their gold-rimmed 
 glasses ; he pressed a hand over his left breast as though to 
 repress a pang of pain. 
 
 " M. le Comte ... I have suffered too much. ... I find 
 myself unable to continue our interview. . . . With your 
 permission . . . to-morrow ? . . . " He bowed and took his 
 hat and cane, and repeated weakly: "To-morrow?"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 597 
 
 "With pleasure!" said the Man of Iron, escorting him 
 to the door. 
 
 And the old, humiliated, fallen King-maker, the great 
 literary genius, the polished orator tottered away out of 
 the presence of the conqueror. 
 
 He was to return upon the morrow, and for many days 
 thenceafter, to be played with and tortured, to be tan- 
 talized and mocked. 
 
 He was to return flushed with futile hope, only to be 
 crushed and retire discomfited. He was to furnish an inex- 
 haustible source of amusement for the delectation of his 
 implacable enemy. 
 
 He was to return after a prolonged absence within the 
 walls of the beleaguered capital, he and others, faint with 
 famine, broken by anxiety, shattered by suspense and 
 sleeplessness, forced by sheer hunger to sit and partake at 
 the groaning board of their merciless foe, compelled by his 
 arrogance to listen to his jestings, moistening the food 
 they placed between their livid lips, with the stinging salt 
 of tears. 
 
 LXIX 
 
 THE center of a small but lively group, composed of ad- 
 mirers and listeners, Prussian officers known in Berlin, 
 their Bavarian and Hessian friends and acquaintances, 
 American and English Press Correspondents, and a travel- 
 ing Oriental or two you might have observed Madame de 
 Straz a full-blown Comtesse now, in virtue of the patent 
 of nobility asserted by her husband in the restaurant of 
 the Hotel des Reservoirs not always accompanied by her 
 Assyrian-featured lord. 
 
 Adelaide had not grown younger since the adventure of 
 the Silk Scarf. Her bold and striking beauty had suffered 
 gravely, though her figure, set off by its fashionable and 
 well-chosen dress, was as supple and graceful as of yore. 
 She looked like some gorgeous fruit that the wasps had 
 ravaged, and to conceal this she made up heavily and wore 
 thicker veils. What she now lacked in loveliness she en- 
 deavored to make up in espieglerie and easy-going good- 
 fellowship. Not a few officers responded with enthusiasm 
 to her pressing invitations to breakfast or lunch at the little
 
 598 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 country villa she and M. de Straz had rented, at Maisons 
 Lafitte beyond St. Germain. 
 
 One need hardly say that there was play on these occa- 
 sions, besides excellently prepared dishes and a liberal flow 
 of the champagne, besides the cognac and liqueurs of which 
 Madame drank a good deal. 
 
 To quiet her nerves, raveled by the unhappy situation 
 of her beloved country, she declared, for it suited her to be 
 a Frenchwoman now. 
 
 She would have dearly liked to inveigle a Duke, Grand or 
 Hereditary, or even a Prince Regnant, to her roof -tree and 
 her baccarat-board, but these personages, bestarred and 
 beribboned, furred, jack-booted, buck-skinned and long- 
 spurred, were as shy as the hares and partridges in the 
 forest, that were incessantly cracked at by hungry pot- 
 hunters. Wherefore the sumptuous Adelaide must per- 
 force be contented with Counts and Barons, whose purses 
 were less lengthy than their pedigrees, as a rule. 
 
 "A solitary nest and too remote, it may be. ... But 
 for a bride and bridegroom, solitude and remoteness have 
 their advantages!" had proclaimed M. de Straz, with a 
 shrug of infinite meaning, and suggestive glances of his 
 black Oriental eyes. Certainly the guests of Madame and 
 Monsieur, even when conveyed to the destination in hired 
 broughams and victorias, were wont to find the road, run- 
 ning through abandoned villages and by deserted chateaux, 
 unexpectedly barricaded with felled timber and scarred 
 with unfinished trenches, more than a trifle long. 
 
 The nest of these love-birds, half a mile from the sacked 
 railway station and the broken bridge of Maisons Lafitte, 
 was enclosed in private grounds. The villa Laon how or 
 from whom acquired, nobody ever thought of questioning 
 was a cottage with Swiss gables and East Indian verandas 
 standing in gardens adorned with glass arcades and Italian 
 pergolas, their vines and roses stripped and shuddering in 
 the bitter wintry winds. There were also Chinese bridges 
 crossing pieces of ornamental water, aviaries of finches and 
 canaries, and wired enclosures once well stocked with silver 
 pheasants, now, thanks to the nocturnal ravages of mys- 
 terious marauders, depopulated in a manner painful to 
 behold. 
 
 "You pretend," said Valverden teasingly to Adelaide, 
 "that the neighbors creep out at night and annex the
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 599 
 
 pheasants, or that our cavalry pickets take them for the 
 mess-pot, or that they are stolen by Francs-tireurs. Francs- 
 tireurs there are in plenty in the neighborhood every 
 hour some honest German soldier gets his death at the 
 hands of one of these scoundrels! but as far as concerns 
 the vanished inmates of the pens and cages, I believe you 
 and M. de Straz have eaten them yourselves." 
 
 He stretched his long spurred legs out over the brocade 
 of an Empire sofa gracing Madame 's boudoir, and leaning 
 back his handsome head, looked up at her teasingly. 
 
 "With my assistance, for that salmis we had for break- 
 fast was of home production I am certain. Come, own 
 that I have guessed as well as Mariette can cook at a 
 pinch." 
 
 Adelaide frowned and bit her lip. But she let her gaze 
 dwell lingeringly on the upturned face of the handsome 
 Guardsman, and said, seeming to search for her own sulky, 
 splendid image in the blue eyes with which Adonis made 
 play: 
 
 "If you were less like Max I believe I should detest 
 you! ..." She added, after an instant: "And if you 
 resembled him more than you do, you would find no wel- 
 come here. ' ' 
 
 "Beyond salmis of pet pheasants, and stewed carp out 
 of your landlord 's fish-ponds. ' ' His red lips rolled back in 
 a grin that showed the strong white teeth, the fuzzy ends 
 of his fair mustache sparkled as though the hair had been 
 sprinkled with gold-dust. "Who is your landlord? I am 
 dying to know. Do you rent the place of the gardener, or 
 that pompous-looking butler who has not got the key of 
 the cellars, but nevertheless can produce champagne of 
 Comet brand and excellent Roussillon. Or is it a specula- 
 tive partnership? Some of us have dropped a good deal 
 of money here in play lately. . . . They are beginning to 
 grumble noisily particularly that little black-haired aide- 
 de-camp of the Duke of Coburg, and von Kissling of the 
 squadron of Blue Dragoons quartered here at Maisons 
 Lafitte. . . . What's in the wind I don't pretend to know, 
 but they might get you turned out of here they might 
 even obtain an order from Headquarters for the return of 
 their lost cash I ..." 
 
 ' ' Bernhard ! ' ' Her ringed white hands tenderly caressed 
 his forehead. "You will protect me from them! you will
 
 600 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 stand my friend ! Oh ! how horrible it is to want money 
 always money!" 
 
 Valverden said, neatly biting off the end of a cigar and 
 spitting the nipped-off end through the open glass-doors 
 leading out upon the veranda: 
 
 "Has not M. de Straz got any money? And did not 
 my Cousin Max give you enough? . . . You used to seem 
 uncommonly flush of the ready when one saw you queening 
 it among the gay cocottes of Berlin." 
 
 His tone cut like a whip. But Adelaide was growing 
 used to take insults with outward meekness. She swal- 
 lowed her wrath and even tried to smile. 
 
 It was horribly true that she had need of money. Even 
 before she had fallen into her present state of servitude, 
 she had known that a day was coming when she would be 
 penniless. 
 
 Like all other women of her sensuous tastes and clam- 
 orous predilections, Adelaide devoured money as a pussy- 
 cat crunches up small birds. Her dead lover had spent 
 upon her lavishly, had provided that an income should be 
 paid her out of his private estate. But it was not sufficient 
 for a woman so extravagant, and Adelaide had supple- 
 mented it in various ways. Firstly, by obtaining informa- 
 tion for the Prussian Secret Intelligence Bureau. Sec- 
 ondly, by tapping the bank-balances of admirers of the 
 wealthier order. Thirdly, by signing Bills of Exchange 
 and Promissory Notes for cash at ruinous rates of interest. 
 When she had conceived the idea of obtaining a recon- 
 ciliation with Henri de Bayard, the prospect of incarcera- 
 tion in a debtor's prison had loomed very near. 
 
 The cunning fable of her riches that had been devised to 
 tempt him to his ruin, had failed through the very white- 
 ness of the man's integrity. Ah, Adelaide! The way to 
 have triumphed over the Colonel would have been to have 
 crept in tatters as a beggar to his door. 
 
 But she had never understood the man. Let us hope 
 that generous soul of his was spared knowledge of the 
 degradation of the woman he had worshiped, as Valverden 
 went on, barely deigning to hide his contempt of her, or to 
 modify even slightly the insolence of his tone: 
 
 "You have asked me to protect you. I have no objec- 
 tion to doing so. My sympathy is not at all with the losers 
 who squeal. Even when I was as poor as a church-mouse
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 601 
 
 I had the gift of being plucked without wincing. Besides, 
 I won money that night when Von Kissling dropped such 
 a lot. . . . And of course my testimony would be worth 
 something. ..." 
 
 His tone of bargaining was unmistakable. Adelaide 
 flushed a dusky-red, through which the fading streaks of 
 Straz 's love-gift showed plainly, and her dark eyes gleamed 
 covetously as she bent over the young man. She whis- 
 pered with her hot lips almost touching the diagonal white 
 band of forehead above his soldierly sunburn: 
 
 "What, Bernhard? Tell me what it would be worth to 
 you. ..." 
 
 His long blue eyes laughed up into hers, lazily. He said, 
 feeling for the silver case in which he carried his fusees : 
 
 "Shall we say ... a little information regarding the 
 whereabouts of Mademoiselle Titania. . . . M. de Straz has 
 piqued my curiosity, you will observe." 
 
 "So! . . ." 
 
 She reared above him like a furious Hamadryad, whis- 
 pering thickly, for rage dried up her tongue : 
 
 " So it is of my daughter you and Nicolas have been talk- 
 ing apart together, both here and at the Hotel des Reser- 
 voirs. Are you both mad? For a pale, plain, dull school- 
 girl ... a peaky, undeveloped, mincing doll ! ' ' 
 
 He raised himself to a sitting posture, and answered her 
 coarsely : 
 
 "Women like you cannot realize what is or is not pleas- 
 ing to men of my standard. The Prince Imperial must 
 have seen a good many pretty women, young as he is, yet 
 he found your daughter charming, I am told. . . . M. de 
 Straz, who is a judge, admires her excessively. ... If my 
 curiosity is tickled, the fault is your own, for it was you 
 and not M. Straz who first engaged my interest in that 
 quarter. . . . Did I not speak to Count Moltke at your 
 request of Mademoiselle ? Well, he did though at first he 
 scouted the notion sound Count Bismarck on the subject, 
 when he called to congratulate him on his First Class of 
 the Iron Cross, and be complimented on his own Order 
 Pour Le Merit e." 
 
 He folded his arms on his broad chest and dropped the 
 words out lingeringly, relishingly, his blue eyes gloating 
 over the changes in her tortured face : 
 
 "And the Chancellor answered him: 'Do not you trouble
 
 602 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 yourself 1 All is well with the pretty young daughter of de 
 Bayard, by that disreputable old woman who played the 
 mistress of Count Max in '67. ' ' 
 
 She screamed, and struck with her clenched hand at the 
 fair, flushed, grinning face as though she would willingly 
 have battered out its beauty. He caught her wrist with a 
 fencer's quickness, and prisoned the other in the twinkling 
 of an eye. He went on, holding her immovable, leisurely 
 enjoying the changes upon her tortured face : 
 
 "As a good German I do not interfere with my superiors. 
 His Excellency knows where the girl is, and does not at 
 present choose to tell. But you, Werte Frau, have the 
 right to question His Excellency, whose answer was re- 
 peated to me by my Chief, Count Moltke. Do not forget, 
 however, that you lay claim to the disrepute as well as the 
 daughter when you present yourself at the Foreign Office 
 ... in the Rue de Provence. . . ." 
 
 She panted breathlessly: 
 
 "I shall not go! No one shall compel me!" 
 
 "Oh, in that case," said Valverden, rising and releasing 
 her, ' ' I can only leave you to the arguments of M. de Straz. 
 He is coming now I can hear his voice in the garden. Auf 
 Wiedersehen!" He said over his shoulder, as he lounged 
 out of the cottage : "In the affair of Von Kissling, do not 
 count on my assistance. It is only given on condition you 
 fall in with our views." 
 
 So he and Straz were in league. . . . Rage stung her to 
 the mad imprudence of rebellion the proud sultana whom 
 a thousand freakish cruelties on the part of her swarthy 
 master had taught to be a trembling slave. 
 
 The Roumanian, we know, was nothing if not subtle. 
 When Adelaide flatly refused to call at the Foreign Office 
 in the Rue de Provence in the character of a bereaved and 
 yearning mother, he smiled on her, almost tenderly. He 
 kissed the wrists Valverden 's grip had bruised. 
 
 "Queen Rose of my Garden of Delights," he said, "why 
 did you let the girl go in the beginning? You recognized 
 her value even when you did not know that she has money 
 in her own right." 
 
 Money. ... A new light began to break upon Adelaide. 
 The fear of a sudden and violent death no longer stiffened 
 her muscles. She moistened her lips, pale under their rose- 
 tinged salve, and lifted her eyebrows inquiringly.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 603 
 
 "Money, soul of my soul," said Straz, who had almost 
 reverted to the original gushing and poetic Nicolas of Ade- 
 laide 's remembrance, the lover whom in pre-Sigmaringen 
 days she had cajoled and despised and betrayed. "Not a 
 large fortune certainly, but between her grandmother's 
 estate and her father's savings she has a sum of 80,000 
 francs invested in the Belgian cloth manufactory and 
 dyeing works of M. Charles Tessier. Not a fortune, but not a 
 sum to be at all despised. ' ' He added : "I have obtained this 
 information from a person formerly a clerk in the employ- 
 ment of the Versailles firm of solicitors who enjoyed the 
 confidence of M. le Colonel and his sainted mother." The 
 quirk of his lips and the roll of his eyes as he made this 
 reference, so unsavory in the ears of Adelaide, cannot be 
 described. "From this retentive person I refer to the ex- 
 clerk I have purchased the intelligence I now divide with 
 her who has the right to share the secrets of my heart." 
 
 Adelaide had previously seated herself, at a motion of 
 his finger. She looked up now as he thrust a hand between 
 his vest and shirt-bosom. Their glances met. He said to 
 her with a snap of his thick white fingers : 
 
 "No! Put that out of your head, ma cocotte! Not a 
 sou of de Bayard's will ever come his widow's way." 
 
 This uncanny faculty of the Roumanian for reading her 
 unspoken thoughts was one of the secrets of his power over 
 Adelaide. She shuddered now, encountering his look. 
 
 "Don't you know," he was demanding, "that with her 
 unique beauty Mademoiselle would be a fortune in our 
 pockets even were she penniless? What! you doubt the 
 justice of my taste which placed on you the seal of ap- 
 proval when your own charms were at their perihelion. 
 You who have paid the price for those supreme moments 
 when celestial flames enveloped you when you knew your- 
 self nearest to the bosom of the Sun." 
 
 Were all the men in league with this man to taunt and 
 mock and torture her? A fierce surge of blood rushed to 
 her brain. She heard his thick chuckle as she loosened, 
 with shaking hands, the lace about her throat. 
 
 "Why do you not kill me outright?" she cried to him, 
 as the tide rushed back to her heart, and left her livid. 
 "Are you not yet weary of playing this hideous farce of 
 marriage? Why murder me by inches? . . . Will you 
 never set me free ? . . "
 
 604 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 He said, combing his clubbed beard with his thick yellow- 
 white finger-tips: 
 
 "When you have helped to get back Mademoiselle, I 
 will think about providing you an honorable retirement. 
 Come ! Be pliant. . . . You have my word that you shall 
 be free. But without funds," he shrugged, "who can do 
 anything? And Mademoiselle has these expectations . . . 
 and beyond these I have certain definite arrangements with 
 a certain personage who is content to pay handsomely 
 for an introduction to her." 
 
 She cast caution to the four winds and shrieked at him 
 furiously : 
 
 " 'De Bayard's daughter by that disreputable old 
 woman! . . .' Ah, for that he shall indeed pay hand- 
 somely!" 
 
 For though the sentence quoted by Valverden bore the 
 unmistakable stamp of the Iron Chancellor's mintage, the 
 tone in which the words had been repeated, the icy glance 
 of contempt that had accompanied them, rankled in the 
 flesh of the unhappy woman, like barbed thorns. 
 
 The venom wrought in her still, even to hardihood and a 
 courage bordering on effrontery, when a few days later her 
 hired carriage drew up before the sentried gate of the 
 Tessier mansion in the Rue de Provence, early in the fore- 
 noon of a December day. 
 
 LXX 
 
 ONE of the black-garbed Chancery attendants opened the 
 yellow-painted hall-door. ,Madame tendered him a card, 
 and said in her most musical tones, plying the archery of 
 her fine eyes: 
 
 "Madame de Straz, formerly de Bayard. By appoint- 
 ment to see His Excellency the Chancellor. ' ' 
 
 Von Keudell looked out of the drawing-room and sig- 
 naled. The Chancery attendant caught his eye. Madame, 
 borne upon a gale of costly perfume, swept her velvets and 
 Russian sables over the Foreign Office threshold, and 
 amidst the tinkling of lockets, and charms, and bracelets 
 innumerable, was ushered into the drawing-room. 
 
 As the door shut, and the Chancery attendant resumed 
 his bench and his German newspaper, Jean Jacques Potier,
 
 THE MAN OF. IRON 
 
 who had been polishing the hall parquet with a flannel 
 clout on one foot and a brush strapped on the other, re- 
 sumed his labors with a very red face. Madame Charles 
 Tessier, who had been watering the ferns and pot-plants on 
 the console-tables, wrapped in the woolen shawl that 
 seemed parcel of her individuality, might have struck the 
 young man, when he furtively glanced at her, as being 
 whiter than her shawl. 
 
 But the deadly whiteness passed, and the rigor of terror 
 could add little stiffness to the gait that was a compound 
 of a limp and a shuffle, as the Twopenny Roue's bugbear 
 climbed the back-stairs to her second-floor room. 
 
 Madame Potier slept in the next. One could hear her 
 making beds on the first-floor beneath one. Judging by 
 the sounds, she was sweeping the Chancellor's sleeping- 
 room. Knock-knock! went her busy broom every instant, 
 against the furniture or the wainscot. Flip-flap! That 
 was the duster, being shaken out of the window. "When 
 the Minister was unwell, and kept his room, Madame did 
 not sweep, but merely dusted and made the bed. And he 
 lay on the sofa, pulled near the fire and lengthened with a 
 settee, or worked with his back to the window, at a table 
 in the middle of the room. There were two great black 
 leather dispatch-boxes on the table, and a great many 
 maps of France, covered with marginal annotations; and 
 the brass-handled mahogany bureau near the washstand- 
 alcove was piled high with boxes of long, strong Bremen 
 cigars. And by the bed was the night-table, with the 
 framed photographs of his daughter and Countess Bis- 
 marck, his traveling candlestick, a supply of hard wax can- 
 dles in a box, matches; a volume of Treitschke's "Heidel- 
 berg Lectures," with several little good books, in cloth 
 bindings, "Daily Readings for Members of the Society of 
 Moravian Brethren, ' ' and ' ' Pearls from the Deep of Scrip- 
 ture, ' ' as well as a bottle of patent medicine and a box of 
 pills, both of which nostrums were renewed constantly, 
 and neither of which seemed to do him any good. 
 
 For he coughed and hawked and spat bile continually. 
 Rarely was he silent before two o'clock in the morning, and 
 then it might be that one ceased to hear him, because one 
 had succeeded in wooing sleep for oneself. Something 
 ailed him. Those who knew him best gave no name to his 
 ailment. Others whispered of catarrh of the stomach.
 
 606 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Yet others were oracular upon the subject of dyspepsia of 
 the acute kind. 
 
 Whatever the indisposition, it was fostered by the indis- 
 criminate generosity of his admirers, who continually for- 
 warded from all parts of the German Fatherland huge 
 consignments of delicacies solid and fluid for the delecta- 
 tion of their Chancellor. 
 
 Choice wines, rare cigars and fine tobacco, liqueurs and 
 old corn-brandies, cold punch in barrels, beer of Berlin 
 and Leipzig, and the brunette drink beloved of Bava- 
 rians. Smoked Pomeranian goose-breasts, cakes, sau- 
 sages of every variety, fresh salmon and sturgeon, pickled 
 tunny, herrings and caviar, game of all kinds, smoked 
 hams of bear, deer, mutton, and pig. Magdeburg sauer- 
 kraut and Leipzig pastry, preserves and fruit, fresh 
 and candied, gorged the capacious storerooms and cellars 
 of the Tessier mansion, which would have been found in- 
 adequate to accommodate all these mountains of good 
 things, had not each Privy Councilor, Secretary and de- 
 cipherer of the Chancellor's perambulating Foreign Office 
 possessed a capacity for gorging only inferior to the 
 Chief's. 
 
 In truth, this great Minister, so pitiless in his mockery 
 of the idiosyncrasies and weaknesses of others, habitually 
 overate himself; showing as little mercy toward his stom- 
 ach as the staff of the Berlin Chancellery displayed toward 
 the gorged and replete leather dispatch-bags that came to 
 him by every post. He was horribly greedy, and drank a 
 great deal, and his stomach-aches, like himself, were on the 
 colossal scale. More than once Madame Charles had minis- 
 tered to their assuagement with infusions of carbonate of 
 soda and peppermint. 
 
 "One should check the appetite when one suffers thus 
 from overindulgence," she had once said to him, stirring 
 her dreadful infusion with an ivory measuring-spoon. 
 
 "The French climate does not suit me. . . ." he had 
 answered her. "In Germany I can eat a great deal more 
 than I do here. Not that I eat much really, because my 
 dinner is my only meal." 
 
 "But, just Heaven! Monseigneur! what a meal!" she 
 had screamed at him in horror. And the room had re- 
 sounded to his giant's Ha, ha, ha! 
 
 "Without a head and stomach of iron," he told her,
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 607 
 
 i 
 
 "such as we Bismarcks inherit from our ancestors, and 
 Gottingen has helped to render more tough, it would have 
 heen impossible in my young days to get on in the Diplo- 
 matic Service. "We drank the weaker men under the table, 
 then lifted them up, propped them between chairs, and 
 made them sign their names to all sorts of concessions 
 which they would not have dreamed of making other- 
 wise. ... To this day I can toss down the strongest wines 
 of the Palatinate like water with my dinner. Champagne 
 I need, and the bigger glasses I get it in the more it agrees 
 with me. . . , Port, such as the English sip with dessert, 
 I prefer as a breakfast- wine. Corn-brandy, such as our 
 Old Nordhausen, is indispensable for the oiling of my, 
 machinery ; and I derive benefit from rum, taken after the 
 Eussian fashion, with my eight or nine cups of after- 
 dinner tea." 
 
 He added, sipping Madame Charles's fiercely-smelling 
 nostrum : 
 
 "Not that anything I have drunk or eaten mars my 
 capacity for cool reflection and close argument. . . . "When 
 I and one or two others are laid by, men will only peck and 
 sip. There will only be chatter about eating and drinking. 
 . . . Grosser Gottf What things I used to do in that line 
 when I was young!" 
 
 And he tossed off the contents of the tumbler, and 
 mouthed at it, and set it down upon the little tray she held 
 and dismissed her with a nod of thanks. 
 
 But Madame Charles carried away with her an idea of 
 him as he had been in those old days, huge, loud, voracious, 
 powerful, tempestuously jovial or ironically grim. She 
 crowned the domed head with thick waving locks of brown 
 hair, lightened the shaggy brows, and gave the blue eyes 
 back their youthful fire ; smoothed the deep lines from the 
 florid face, restored his long heavy limbs their shapeliness, 
 and reduced the girth of his waist. And it was impossible 
 to despise the finished picture, because the man was so 
 much a man. 
 
 Day by day, while the "War went on, and Paris lay 
 raging and spitting fire within her impregnable, impassable 
 girdle of human flesh and steel and iron to this house 
 where he sat solid and square at his table in his bedroom- 
 study, reading over documents vomited by the great dis- 
 patch-boxes, or letters and papers captured with balloon-
 
 608 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 posts, or driving the pen with that tireless hand of his over 
 sheets to be conned by Monarchs and rulers of States 
 came the Crown Prince of Prussia, handsome and debon- 
 naire, or the dry, withered gentleman who bore the great 
 name of von Moltke, or the War Minister von Roon, or M. 
 Thiers, or the Saxon Minister von Friesen, or the Grand 
 Dukes of Weimar or Baden, or the Duke of Coburg, or the 
 Representatives of Austria-Hungary and Bavaria, or the 
 English Ambassador, who had recently come upon a Mission 
 to Versailles. Night after night, other and stranger foot- 
 steps crossed the threshold. Sometimes blindfolded officers 
 in stained and weatherbeaten French uniforms had been 
 led upstairs to that mysterious room where he sat, weaving 
 his huge web of diplomacy, or manipulating with deft, 
 capable touches the threads that moved both men and 
 Kings. 
 
 Everyone came to this house on the quiet by-street of 
 Versailles, that had become the throbbing center of the 
 world. . . . From the greatest to the smallest, from the 
 worthiest to the vilest. Now, last of all came Adelaide 
 de Bayard. 
 
 And with her came the question: How much he sus- 
 pected. There had been one or two moments when Juliette 
 had been temporarily thrown off her guard. Could one 
 really deceive him, who was so subtle, watchful, observant? 
 . . . Past master in cunning, ripe in diplomacy. . . . 
 
 She heard his heavy footstep on the staircase as she held 
 her bosom and listened. Madame Potier had finished his 
 bedroom, and taken her broom and dustpan to the next. 
 Madame de Bayard had been shown into the smaller inter- 
 viewing-room, where the Brussels carpet had been paced 
 into threadbare alleys by the feet of men who were topped 
 by aching responsibilities where the Crown Prince of 
 Prussia smoked his big painted pipe of Latakia as he 
 chatted with the Chancellor where M. Thiers sat through 
 long ordeals of torture in the little wicker arm-chair. 
 
 Would the mother of Juliette de Bayard sit in that 
 chair? Her daughter knew how superbly she would rise 
 and sweep her reverence to the Minister. How smoothly 
 she would pour forth some false and specious tale. . . . 
 
 The Minister strode in upon Madame, carrying his cap 
 
 and riding- whip. His heavy countenance had the healthier 
 
 .' flush of exercise, his great spurred boots were plastered
 
 THE MAN OF. IRON 609 
 
 with clayey mud. He had but just returned from an early 
 ride with Count Hatzfeldt, taken at this hour "To escape," 
 as he had explained to that elegant functionary, "the 
 detestable clattering and knocking of that female Kobold, 
 whose day it is to sweep my room. ' ' 
 
 "Why let her sweep?" Hatzfeldt had asked, and his 
 principal had answered : 
 
 "I approve domestic cleanliness. And a room that is 
 used as bedroom and study somehow harbors both spiders 
 and dust. And I abhor spiders nearly as much as cock- 
 roaches. Those long-waisted insects that swarm in the 
 conservatory here give me almost a sensation of sickness 
 when they scuttle away from my boots. I find a physical 
 relief, actually, in crushing them." 
 
 He experienced something of that nausea and its result, 
 ing impulse toward extermination, meeting the bold eyes 
 and the false ingratiating smile of the still beautiful Ade- 
 laide. He said, standing huge and adamantine between 
 the woman and the window: 
 
 ' ' Be seated, Madame. . . . No . . . not that chair ! Pos- 
 sibly I grow old, but I find that I can best deal with cer- 
 tain persons when the morning light is on their faces." 
 
 ' ' As you will, Monseigneur ! ' ' 
 
 Adelaide mentally execrated his coarse brutality as she 
 bit her lip, pulled down her flowered veil more closely, and 
 prepared to sink into the little wicker chair. 
 
 "No!" he said, stopping her, "not that chair! take 
 the other. To my idea the seat you at first selected repre- 
 sents at present the Throne of France, or at least the Presi- 
 dential fauteuil. M. Thiers occupies it when he comes to 
 see me. . . . And he is a person whom I hold in much 
 respect. ' ' 
 
 She winced at the side-thrust. 
 
 "I regret, Monseigneur, to have forfeited your good 
 opinion. ' ' 
 
 " I do not usually bestow my good opinion, ' ' he told her, 
 "upon ladies of your reputation, even though I may have 
 reason to praise their sharp wits. Now pray state your 
 business here. My time is limited." 
 
 She half rose up with a pained stare of wounded feeling, 
 thought better of it, sank down again amidst her velvets 
 and sables, and recited her lesson as taught by Straz. 
 
 The Roumanian, by dint of diligent, patient inquiry,
 
 610 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 had collected and pieced together with marvelous clever- 
 ness, the information gathered, correlative to the move- 
 ments of Juliette. Her departure from the Prefecture at 
 Kethel, her frustrated journey to the Camp at Chatel St. 
 Germain her halt at the village of Petit Plappeville, her 
 search for the Colonel upon the battlefield, were all pieces 
 in a mosaic miraculously restored. M. de Straz knew that 
 Count Bismarck had seen and spoken to the young lady 
 had ordered separate burial for the body of de Bayard. 
 He could even name a soldier of the German burial-party, 
 who had helped to dig the grave. Subsequently Made- 
 moiselle had been seen in company with a young English- 
 man . . . she had returned with him to Petit Plappeville. 
 The village had been raided and sacked by Prussian cavalry. 
 Since when, Mademoiselle, with the young Englishman, 
 had returned to Versailles. . . . She was occupying the 
 Tessier mansion up to the moment of the arrival of the 
 Chancellor with his Foreign Office Staff. And by a most 
 curious and deplorable coincidence, from that psychological 
 moment to the present, all trace of Mademoiselle had been 
 lost. . . . 
 
 ' ' Consequently, ' ' Adelaide wound up her well-conned les- 
 son, "myself and M. de Straz have no resource but to apply 
 to Your Excellency. Naturally M. de Straz desires that 
 the daughter of M. de Bayard and myself should be extri- 
 cated from a compromising position and placed under our 
 joint guardianship. He takes such chivalry is innate in 
 his nature a parental interest in the poor young girl ! ' ' 
 Said the Minister, smiling with cynical amusement: 
 "Therefore in the interests of Chivalry and Morality 
 you call on me as proprietor of the seraglio in which you 
 suppose Mademoiselle to have been hidden away. . . . You 
 demand" he struck the riding-glove he had removed upon 
 the palm of the right hand it had covered "and the hint 
 of such a demand is a menace do you hear ? a menace 
 that I should render the girl up to you, or pay through 
 the nose for what I once declined to buy. You think at 
 this epoch in the history of Germany when the search-ray 
 of international interest is turned upon the doings of that 
 fellow Bismarck at Versailles that I should not care to be 
 classed with the Minotaurs who devoured youths and vir- 
 gins. Madame, they were French monarchs, I am only a 
 Pomeranian squire. . . . "
 
 THE MAN OF, IRON 611 
 
 He rose up, towering over the quaking woman, and 
 strode across the shaking floor and pulled the green silk 
 bell-rope by the fireplace. It came down in his hand, top 
 ornament, wire and all, and he said as he looked at it and 
 tossed it from him: 
 
 ' ' That is a suggestion on the part of your Fate which I 
 shall not adopt, though I could hang you and your para- 
 mour. ..." 
 
 He added, speaking loudly as Von Keudell opened the 
 door, and the wretched woman rose and tottered toward 
 him: 
 
 "Did I hold the secret of your daughter's hiding-place, 
 I would not betray her to you. . . . Adieu, Madame de 
 Bayard. . . . You observe that I do not add, 'and au 
 revoir!' " 
 
 . The great resonant voice had sounded through the whole 
 house like a beaten war-gong. Lying upon the floor of 
 her room, straining her ears to catch some fragments of 
 their colloquy, it broke over Juliette in waves of thunderous 
 sound. 
 
 Jean Jacques, below in the hall, was told by Von Keudell 
 to "see the lady to her carriage," which, in virtue of her 
 appointment, had been admitted through the Tessier porte- 
 cochere. The Swiss youth obeyed with even a clumsier 
 grace than usual, the polishing-brush being still strapped 
 about one instep, and the clout still swathed about the other 
 foot, as he hobbled down the shallow doorsteps to open the 
 brougham-door for Madame. As she stepped in and took 
 the seat, her strained eyes leaped at his face suddenly. 
 As he leaned in arranging the rug about her knees what 
 was it he heard her say : 
 
 "You are the English boy I saw in July at the house of 
 M. de Bismarck. Do not attempt to deny ; I never forget 
 a face! When can you come and see me? ... I must 
 speak to you! I swear to you that I mean no harm to 
 Mademoiselle Juliette de Bayard!" 
 
 Her lips were ashen under their rose-salve. The ringed, 
 bare hand she laid on his rough paw burned like fire. He 
 muttered in the weird patois that passed as Swiss with 
 some German occupants of the Tessier mansion: 
 
 ' ' Madame will pardon. . . . One does not understand ! ' ' 
 
 She gave a disjointed, unmusical peal of laughter, that 
 rattled the brougham windows.
 
 612 
 
 "Droll boy! But you will come, whether you under- 
 stand or not. The Villa Laon, Maisons Laffitte, near St. 
 Germain. . . . Night-time will be best to-night or to- 
 morrow night." She added, looking at him over the 
 lowered window as he shut the door upon her: "Ask for 
 Madame de Straz. I shall be waiting for you. Do not 
 forget! ..." 
 
 The carriage drove on. He stood upon the lowest door- 
 step staring after it, for only privileged vehicles were 
 admitted by the porte-cochere. A hand fell heavily on his 
 shoulder, startling him hideously. A terrible grating 
 voice said in his ear, speaking in the Minister's excellent 
 English : 
 
 "So, Madame Delilah has been trying her sorceries, has 
 she? Come this way, my young English friend. ... I 
 want two words with you ! ' ' 
 
 LXXI 
 
 IN the Tessier drawing-room, where the carpet was thread- 
 bare with the traffic of the feet of Princes and plenipoten- 
 tiaries, and the brocade furniture was soiled with the con- 
 tact of muddy breeches, and ragged with the rowels of 
 spurs; where the bronze, bat- winged figure presided over 
 the ancient clock of ormolu and malachite that had marked 
 the passing of so many hours in this the death-struggle of 
 bleeding France, Jean Jacques Potier stood up to give an 
 account of himself, while just without the doorway waited 
 a brace of muscular Chancery attendants, and the gigantic 
 East Prussian coachman, Niederstedt, patrolled the ter- 
 race outside. 
 
 "You have not forgotten him! He used you somewhat 
 roughly at the Foreign Office in the Wilhelm Strasse. Nor, 
 as it happens, has he forgotten you. Come! what have 
 you admitted to that "Witch of Endor, la veuve Bayard? 
 You are no friend to her daughter if you have told the 
 woman that Mademoiselle is here, under this roof. ' ' 
 
 "So you know? . . ." 
 
 P. C. Breagh had gasped the words out before he could 
 stop himself. The Minister's flashing blue eyes lightened 
 in laughter as they met the appalled stare of the young
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 613 
 
 man with the cropped head and the green baize apron. 
 He said, lisping a little as was his wont: 
 
 "I know, and I have known almost from the beginning. 
 Everything must be known in this house. Did you suppose 
 I had left my Prussian Secret Service at home in Berlin? 
 Here ! This belongs to you ! ' ' 
 
 He was standing on the hearth, his great back to the 
 wood fire that blazed on the steel dogs. One of a brace of 
 letters that he pulled from his breeches pocket, and tossed 
 to the culprit under examination, fell at that wretch's feet. 
 
 "Pick it up, Mr. Patrick Carolan Breagh," he said. 
 "You will find it a more-than-ordinarily interesting epistle. 
 It was brought me something over an hour ago. Your 
 legal friend, Mr. Chown, of Furnival's Inn, Holborn, Lon- 
 don, advises you to go back there without procrastination. 
 Your absconding trustee, Mr. William Mustey, Junior, has 
 been found in Bloomsbury lodgings, the "War having ap- 
 parently frightened him out of France. Odd, because the 
 scent of battlefields proves attractive to birds and animals 
 of the predatory order. Mustey is dead, but luckily for 
 you he has left nearly all of your property behind him. 
 Some 500 of your inheritance of 7,000 seems to be miss- 
 ing. I daresay you will be willing to let the deficit go. 
 What are you saying ? ' ' 
 
 His victim, with lips screwed into the shape of a whistle, 
 had murmured : 
 
 " The Post Office. . . . Gee-whillikins ! . . . they've given 
 me away! ..." 
 
 "Given you away! . . . You are a pretty conspirator!" 
 The masterful eyes flickered with humor. There was 
 amusement, suppressed, but evident, in the lines about the 
 grim mouth hidden by the martial mustache. "Where 
 should my blue Prussian bees gather intelligence, if not at 
 the Post Office? Did you not give yourself away, as you 
 term it, when you employed the time not occupied in 
 smearing silver plate with whitening, and bedaubing pol- 
 ished boards most execrably with beeswax, in acting as 
 a voluntary assistant dresser at the auxiliary Military Hos- 
 pital that has been established under the Red Cross at the 
 Convent of the Sisters of the Poor ? When a young Swiss 
 who is supposed to be ignorant of any language save his 
 own extraordinary gibberish betrays a more than super- 
 ficial knowledge of French and German surgical terminol-
 
 614 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 ogy, and evinces a degree of skill in bandaging and so 
 forth, such as you have permitted yourself to display, the 
 German authorities, while they avail themselves of the 
 young gentleman's service, are to be pardoned for suppos- 
 ing him to be other than he appears ! Come, it is time this 
 farce of yours and Mademoiselle's ended. I am going to 
 ring the bell, and send for her, and tell her so now! ..." 
 The imperious hand went out to the bell-rope of faded red, 
 and he stayed his summons to add: "Then you and she 
 must pack up and betake yourselves to England. ... I 
 will furnish you with a permit to travel by railway and a 
 laissez-passer. You will return to me a certain half-sheet 
 of Chancellery notepaper which I gave you in the Wilhelm 
 Strasse last July! Further I have no advice to give you 
 except that you would be wise not to select the theatrical 
 profession for your next venture. You have not a gift for 
 the stage, unlike Mademoiselle. . . . As for her, the vixen ! 
 you would do well to marry her promptly. Nothing else 
 will cure a young man of the stupidity of being in lovel" 
 
 There was something horrible in the mere fact of being 
 taken so lightly, when one had waited in tense agony for 
 the ominous flurry in the daytime expecting in sleepless 
 anguish the cry in the night. . . . The relief that mingled 
 with the horror caused the muscles of the mouth to relax 
 in a smile of imbecility, made one stutter and gulp because 
 of the choking in one 's throat. . . . 
 
 The life of this man, who was meant when the great ones 
 of the earth now referred to Germany, had been in hourly 
 peril for months past. Now it was safe. She had not bent 
 one's will, ineffectually, to the effort of restraining an- 
 other's. One had not kept watch and put in one's word 
 for nothing, remembering the debt one owed to that power- 
 ful ruthless hand. Not unheard had one prayed in an 
 anguish of supplication that the woman loved beyond all 
 Ideals, however heroic and overwhelming, might be saved 
 from the fate of occupying a red-stained niche in History. 
 
 ' ' Marry her promptly ! ' ' 
 
 He repeated the words, with the flicker of a laugh play- 
 ing in his eyes and about his heavy facial muscles. His 
 tortured victim, blood-red to his cropped scalp, groaned 
 out: 
 
 "She is married already, Sir!" 
 
 "Quatsch!" said the Minister, laughing: "Married she
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 615 
 
 is not. Oh, she has been married as the American canvas- 
 back ducks are roasted. She has been carried on a dish 
 through the kitchen of matrimony, and taken out at the 
 opposite door." 
 
 "But my God, sir! I have seen her husband!" cried 
 the young man desperately. 
 
 ''When did you see him?" asked the resonant, com- 
 pelling accents. The answer came, bringing down his 
 frown. 
 
 ' ' I cannot tell you ! ' ' 
 
 Came, curiously lisped, the words : 
 
 "I fear I must compel you. All this may lead to some- 
 thing more serious than I have thought. ..." 
 
 P. C. Breagh snarled, knitting the broad red eyebrows so 
 industriously sooted: 
 
 "Twice. . . . There can be no harm in my saying so." 
 
 "And how recently?" The grating voice scooped into 
 one's brain like a dentist's burred scraper. P. C. Breagh 
 shook his head, saying: 
 
 "I can't tell you that!" 
 
 "Why not, if there is no harm in telling?" The voice 
 was almost pleasant. "Was it as recently as three days 
 ago?" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "Was it as recently as two days? ... as twenty-four 
 hours? . . . Will you not answer for your own sake?" 
 
 The stubborn head was shaken resolutely. The Minis- 
 ter's voice said, blandly, persuasively: 
 
 "You may, for all you know, be answering for hers!" 
 
 There was a stubborn silence. The Chancellor said, 
 with his suave, but warning lisp more perceptible than 
 usual: 
 
 "Be good enough to touch that bell upon the table near 
 your hand. ..." 
 
 P. C. Breagh obliged. Grams and Engelberg presented 
 themselves. The Minister said, looking at them over the 
 head of his sacrifice: 
 
 "One of you will convey my compliments to Madame 
 Charles Tessier, and request her to speak to me here and 
 now. ' ' 
 
 The stalwart, black-clad pair retired. The Minister 
 pulled his cigar-case from his breeches-pocket, selected a 
 cigar, bit off the end, and looked for a match. Meeting
 
 616 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 the burning stare of the gray-yellow eyes under the broad 
 sooted eyebrows, he did not fulfill his intention of lighting, 
 but restored the cigar to its place. 
 
 As he thrust the case back into his breeches-pocket the 
 door opened. Madame Charles came in, wrapped in her 
 white shawl, and moving with her characteristic limp and 
 shuffle. Her glance went to the broad-shouldered, lean- 
 flanked figure of the young man standing at attention a 
 little to the left hand of the Minister. She was aware of 
 the huge shape of the watchful Niederstedt keeping guard 
 outside the terrace-windows. She heard the steady crunch- 
 ing of booted feet upon the graveled stone flags of the 
 conservatory, recalling the fact that the two officers of the 
 guard of Green Jaegers were now quartered there. And 
 she said to herself, even as she made her curtsey before the 
 Chancellor : ' ' The hour of discovery has come. Am I sorry 
 or glad?" 
 
 The heavy stare met her desperate eyes as she raised 
 them from the carpet. The grim voice began, and she 
 strung her nerves to hear: 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Bayard, I have just closed an inter- 
 view with your lady-mother, who is desirous to reestablish 
 over your person the maternal authority she once resigned. 
 . . . That I have not betrayed to her your presence here 
 I think you are aware already. I had a pretty shrewd 
 suspicion that you were listening when I spoke to her 
 loudly just now upon the stairs. Am I right, Mademoi- 
 selle?" 
 
 She said, meeting his heavy, powerful stare with eyes of 
 burning sapphire, steadily under leveled brows of jetty 
 black : 
 
 "It is not for me to contradict a person of Monseigneur's 
 eminence. Might I ask why Monseigneur is pleased to 
 designate me as 'Mademoiselle'? Madame Charles Tessier 
 is my name in this house." 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Bayard," he said, ignoring the inter- 
 ruption as a man may when an infant has tugged him by 
 the coat-tail, "I have to congratulate you upon your gift 
 of grotesque character-impersonation, no less than your 
 companion, whose Swiss-French patois, spoken with a 
 British accent, has never since the first instant succeeded 
 in deceiving me. But as one of my more amiable weak- 
 nesses is a liking for children, I must own to having found
 
 THE MAN OF IROX 6IT 
 
 infinite amusement in the spectacle of Missy and Master, 
 dressed up for grandpapa's benefit, playing the game of 
 'Guess Who I Am!' ..." 
 
 He was laughing now, unmistakably. He said, smooth- 
 ing the heavy mustache with a hand that twitched a little : 
 
 "But the performance ends here. So we may lay aside 
 the cosmetics, costumes, and properties. The hero's green 
 baize apron, crop-wig, and blackened eyebrows, the flour 
 with which the heroine sprinkles her black hair, and the 
 stockings and towels with which she disguises her charming 
 shape. It will not seem surprising to you that a person 
 of my dubious character should be learned in the secrets 
 of stage disguises. . . . My early researches in femininity 
 have led me into queerer places than actresses' dressing- 
 rooms. But where did a Convent schoolgirl gain her 
 knowledge of make-up ? ' ' 
 
 His mockery was intolerable. Her hate and scorn rose 
 up in arms to meet it. She would be silent only for an 
 instant longer, then she would speak and tell him all. 
 
 He was going on: 
 
 "I have here a letter, brought me some days back by 
 the Prussian official who is in charge at the General Post 
 Office here in Versailles. It is addressed to Mademoiselle 
 Juliette de Bayard, 120, Eue de Provence. It is dated* 
 from Mons-sur-Trouille, in Belgium, and is written and 
 signed by M. Charles Tessier. ... I will not disguise from 
 you that I have mastered the contents." 
 
 He showed her the letter. Monster! he had opened it. 
 Her blazing eyes dwelt on him with a contempt he did not 
 seem to feel. She had let the white shawl drop from about 
 her head and shoulders. Now she straightened her slight 
 form (as though an artist needed the adventitious aid of 
 towels and stockings!) and thrust back with a superb 
 gesture of both hands the heavy loops of white-streaked 
 hair that masked her forehead and curtained her small 
 face, whose cheeks, previously pale, now burned with 
 angry fire. 
 
 He said, and as he withdrew the letter from its envelope* 
 a small, square enclosure wrapped in white paper, slipped 
 from the interior and dropped near his spurred boot : 
 
 "I have not only read this, but I am going to read it 
 aloud to you. For the sake of one present whose fidelity to 
 you deserved a confidence you seem to have withheld."
 
 618 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 She caught one sharp breath, dropped her slender arms 
 at her sides and stood immovably before him. Her clenched 
 hands, tense lips and tragic brows, with that fierce flame of 
 hatred and scorn burning beneath their shadow, betrayed 
 the test of her self-command as he read : 
 
 "BASSELOT & TESSIEE. 
 
 "WHOLESALE MERCHANTS, 
 "WEAVERS AND DYEBS OF WOOLEN FABRICS. 
 
 ' ' MONS-SUR-TROUILLE, 
 
 ' ' BELGIUM. 
 
 "December 20, 1870. 
 
 "MADEMOISELLE: 
 
 "Relying on your good sense and amiability, permit me 
 to make you a confession. 
 
 "Torn between the urgent commands of filial duty, and 
 the dictates of ardent affection, I have yielded to the irre- 
 sistible promptings of Love. 
 
 "Wedded to her I adore the name of Mademoiselle 
 Clemence Basselot can hardly be strange to you I offer 
 you the calm devotion of a brother. My mother is resigned 
 to this alliance, at one time repugnant to her maternal 
 feelings. She desires me to say that your luggage, taken 
 on by her from the Hotel de Flandre, Brussels, shall be 
 forwarded to you at the Rue de Provence, or any other 
 destination you may choose to indicate. Need I say that 
 Madame Charles Tessier and myself regard you as our 
 benefactress that you will confer upon us the greatest 
 obligation by consenting to remain beneath our roof. 
 
 "I would add that the capital of 80,000 francs invested 
 by your regretted father upon your behalf in the business 
 of myself and M. Basselot can remain at the interest it at 
 present commands (some 7 per cent, of annual profit), or 
 be transferred to your credit at any agents or bankers you 
 may choose to designate. 
 
 "Receive, dear Mademoiselle, with my regrets and ex- 
 cuses, the affectionate souvenirs of myself and my wife. 
 My Clemence encloses some wedding-cake, after the touch- 
 ing fashion of England. She made it, she assures me, with 
 her own hands. 
 
 "Respectfully and sincerely, 
 ' ' CHARLES JOSEPH TESSIER. ' '
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 619 
 
 The reader added, as he looked about him: 
 
 "Where is the wedding-cake? that white thing! . . . 
 thank you ! ' ' 
 
 For P. C. Breagh had picked the little parcel up and 
 restored it to his hand. He took it, returned it to the 
 envelope with the letter, and said with unsmiling gravity, 
 striking a finger on the envelope : 
 
 "In the face of this are you married, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 She answered him dauntlessly: 
 
 "No, Monseigneur ! " 
 
 "Th-then," he asked, with his portentous lisp, "wh-why 
 on earth did you did you pretend to be?" 
 
 She answered with surprising quietude : 
 
 "To make my place in this house more secure." 
 
 " Ah ! Might one ask why ? ' ' 
 
 He put the question with irony. She answered with 
 astonishing composure and dignity: 
 
 "Because at that period I desired to gain the oppor- 
 tunity to kill you, Monseigneur!" 
 
 A sound came from Breagh 's throat like a curse or a 
 groan or a sob, or all together. Her clear gaze was troubled 
 for a moment, she caught her breath in a fluttering sigh. 
 
 * ' To kill me ? . . . " said the resonant voice of the great 
 figure that upreared its bulk before the dancing hearth- 
 blaze that threw broad lights and shadows upon the ceiling 
 and walls of the darkly-papered drawing-room. It was a 
 bitter, wintry day of sickly white sunshine, and smileless 
 skies of leaden grayness. Freezing sleet-drops rattled on 
 the terrace-windows, outside which the giant ex-porter of 
 the Wilhelm Strasse waited, blowing from time to time 
 upon his chilly knuckles and beating his great arms upon 
 his vast chest to keep them warm, but never removing the 
 sharp little piggish eyes under his low red forehead from 
 the figure of P. C. Breagh. . . . 
 
 ' ' To kill me ! " said the Chancellor, as a springing hearth- 
 flame threw a giant shadow of him upon the double doors 
 that divided the drawing-room from the billiard-room, 
 where the staff of clerks and decipherers labored from early 
 morning until far into the night. 
 
 In the silence that his voice had broken, his keen ear 
 heard a quill pen buck upon" a page. He imagined the 
 splash of ink upon the thick creamy Chancellery paper, 
 that had evoked the "Tsch!" of the dismayed clerk, even
 
 620 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 as he queried : ' ' Might I ask why ? It would be interesting 
 to know." 
 
 The firelight was full upon Juliette as she answered: 
 ' ' Because you have made this War ; because through it 
 I have been orphaned and made desolate; but chiefly be- 
 cause you are the merciless enemy of France. These mil- 
 liards you would wring from her veins . . . these groans 
 torn from her heart . . . these indignities to all she holds 
 most sacred ! . . . Your scorn and contempt of these great 
 men Chiefs of her Government who have stooped to beg 
 from you consideration . . . for these things, see you well 
 you have been accursed in my eyes. I have said to 
 myself a thousand times, that to kill you would be to save 
 my country, and not a sin unpardonable in the eyes of 
 Almighty God! ..." 
 
 "Your theology is as defective," said the Chancellor, 
 "as your sentiments are patriotic. ..." He surveyed the 
 small slight figure before him rather ogreishly from under 
 his shaggy brows. "And so," he said, with his wounding 
 irony, "you thought to play the part of a Judith to my 
 Holof ernes a little skip o' my thumb like you. . . . My 
 good young lady, had you succeeded in murdering me, how 
 was it your intention to evade summary justice ? For you 
 could not have escaped detection. . . . You must be aware 
 of that!" 
 
 She said with her quiet dignity, one hand upon her slight 
 bosom, her clear eyes upon the angry, powerful stare that 
 would have crushed another woman down: 
 
 "I should not have tried to escape, Monseigneur ! " 
 He commented sarcastically: 
 
 "Fanatics are the most dangerous of conspirators. Life 
 has no value Death has no terrors for them. They believe 
 themselves superior to all laws, both human and Divine. 
 And how, may one ask, would you have done my business ? 
 To have dispatched me by poison would have been easiest, 
 for you have assisted our Foreign Office cook. Yes ! Pos- 
 sibly it would have been poison?" 
 
 She said between her close-set teeth, hissingly : 
 "It should, Monseigneur, but for one thing! ..." 
 His powerful glance rested on her curiously: 
 "Ah, Fury!" he said, and with her wild black disheveled 
 locks, her eyes that darted vengeful blue fire, the gloomy 
 brows that frowned over them, the long upper lip
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 621 
 
 pinched down over the little closely-set white teeth, hers 
 was not unlike the mask of a Medusa, wrought in onyx 
 by the hand of some Greek master dead a thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 "Ah, Fury! and what was that one thing? To what 
 fortunate breakage of pots in the kitchen will the Prussian 
 King owe it that he has still a Chancellor, when he is 
 crowned Emperor of Germany in the Palace of Versailles 
 at the beginning of the New Year ? ' ' 
 
 Here was news. So the recalcitrant States had at last 
 been ringed in. So the sensitive objections of His Majesty 
 the King of Bavaria had been by some means overcome. . . . 
 P. C. Breagh drew a sharp breath at the hearing. The 
 speaker flashed upon him a cynical look. 
 
 "There," he said, "is a tit-bit for some enterprising 
 Editor, were it possible to get a wire through to Fleet 
 Street. You see what comes, Mr. Breagh, of being false 
 to one's principles. A few months ago you said to me 
 I have an excellent memory for such utterances : 'It would 
 Toe better to caxL^z in the dustbins for a living than make 
 money out of information gained by trickery.' Yet you 
 have not scrupled to live in this house disguised as a com- 
 mon servant. Eeally, to one who is aware of your ambi- 
 tions, the whole thing has a kind of stink ! ' ' 
 
 The prodded victim uttered an incoherent exclamation. 
 Juliette cried indignantly: 
 
 "It is not true ! How can you wrong him so ? If you 
 do not know what you owe to him, I will tell you. It is he 
 who has saved your life!" 
 
 She flamed out all at once into a rage and cried, seeming 
 to tower to twice her stature : 
 
 ' ' Because you have robbed me of my father, and because 
 you are the great enemy of France I would have killed you. 
 I tried to hide this from him, and he found it out. He 
 stayed here at what risk you know! for my sake and 
 for your sake. . . . How often has he not said to me : 'You 
 shall not do it. He once saved me! ... You shall not 
 do it because he has a daughter, by whom he is beloved, 
 perhaps, as your father was by you! . . . You tell me 
 that her portrait stands by his bedside. Go and look at 
 it, and you will never be able to do this hideous thing!' 
 And I went and looked at her portrait, and it was as he 
 had told me. . . . That night I threw away the poison and
 
 622 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 swore an oath upon the Crucifix, that, come what might, 
 I would never seek your life! ..." 
 
 "Halt, there!" he bade her, in his rough, masterful 
 manner. "Touch that bell upon the table near you!" he 
 said to Breagh. As Breagh obeyed and von Keudell en- 
 tered by the door leading from the hall, shutting it upon a 
 glimpse of the stalwart Grams and the athletic Engelberg, 
 "Fetch me that bottle," he said, "that was picked up by 
 the sentry in the adjoining garden. I gave it to you to 
 lock away for me. ' ' 
 
 Von Keudell vanished. In the interval that elapsed 
 before his reentrance the Minister turned his back upon 
 Mademoiselle and her comrade, rested a hand upon the 
 mantelshelf, and said, as he kicked back a burning billet 
 that had tumbled out of the heart of the red fire : 
 
 "All that about my daughter's portrait is quatschl" 
 He suddenly wheeled upon Mademoiselle, thundering: 
 "You were frightened. That is why you seized an oppor- 
 tunity to pitch away your witches' sauce. . . . Confess! 
 Be candid ! Have I not read you ? Were not your fine 
 heroic frenzies all assumed to impress him?" He indi- 
 cated P. C. Breagh by an overhand thumb-gesture. ""Was 
 it not for this spoony fellow's benefit you wrote yourself 
 letters from an imaginary Franc-tireur full of bombastic 
 vaporings and bloodthirsty denunciations borrowed from 
 the columns of Parisian rags ? ' ' 
 
 "Monseigneur! ..." 
 
 She was taken aback. She faltered, flushed, whitened, 
 conscious of the reproachful stare of Breagh 's honest gray 
 eyes. 
 
 "Did I not tell you? everything is known to me! . . . 
 Not only have I read those letters you hid in the mouth of 
 that grinning Pan in the garden but here is the bottle 
 you threw away! ..." 
 
 He took it from von Keudell and showed it her a squat, 
 wide-mouthed chemist's ounce vial, half full of whitish 
 powder, and read from the label : 
 
 "ARSENIC: (Poison.) 
 
 "The powder as prescribed, to be diluted with 
 Three Parts of Milk, and applied as directed, 
 for clearing the complexion and freshening 
 the skin."
 
 THE MAN OF. IRON 623 
 
 Crash! . . . 
 
 A turn of his wrist, and the corked-up vial flew into the 
 fireplace, smashing on the chimney-bricks and raising 
 showers of crimson sparks from the billets blazing there. A 
 rich incense of scorching wool arose from the Brussels 
 carpet. P. C. Breagh stamped out one red-hot cinder, 
 Von Keudell darted in pursuit of a remoter danger. The 
 Minister himself was fain to extinguish another by vigorous 
 stamps of his heavy spurred riding-boots. 
 
 ' ' Take warning, ' ' he said to Juliette, a little breathed by 
 his exertions, and wiping his high-domed forehead and 
 florid cheeks with a large white handkerchief, carried, in 
 military fashion, in the cuff of his coat. "In this way 
 dangerous, high-flown emotions should be repressed in 
 young girls, by sensible parents. In what a false and 
 perilous position have your hysterical notions placed 
 you. . . ." 
 
 He coughed and hawked, and wiped his mouth with the 
 big white handkerchief, put it away and said, as though 
 trying to lash himself into a rage: 
 
 "Foolish child! Silly girl! . . . Little coquette! pre- 
 tending to be married to torture a sweetheart; vaporing 
 of murder acting the heroine to take a gaby's breath 
 away! . . . What you want is a decent, sensible mother 
 to administer a good whipping. . . ." 
 
 A shudder convulsed her slight body. In the firelight 
 her face looked rigid and drawn. 
 
 He might have pursued, had not the gaby to whom he 
 had unceremoniously referred stopped him by crying: 
 
 ' ' Be silent ! I will not stand by and listen to such lan- 
 guage ! I will not permit you to speak to her so ! " 
 
 "So!" He surveyed the crop-headed, red- faced young 
 man in the green baize apron, with grim incredulity. ' ' You 
 will not permit me to speak! You will silence me? . . . 
 How?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh said desperately: 
 
 "I do not know how but I will somehow silence you! 
 . . . Perhaps by reminding you that Mademoiselle de 
 Bayard is helpless and unprotected. That she has no 
 stronger champion and no better advocate than a gaby like 
 myself." 
 
 "Retire to your room, then!" he said to her grimly. 
 "Henceforth you do not meddle in the kitchen, Mademoi-
 
 624 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 selle. You cook capitally, your beignets are worth a belly- 
 ache, but just at this moment I am indispensable to Ger- 
 many. . . . Observe! You will remain entirely in your 
 room upstairs, until I decide what is to be done with 
 you!" He added, less roughly: "Madame Potier will 
 attend on you and bring you your meals. And in compli- 
 ment to your unflinching candor I will ask you to give 
 me your parole not to attempt to escape! ..." 
 
 She put up both hands to her eyes, and they were trem- 
 bling. When she took them away there were tears upon 
 her face. 
 
 " Monseigneur, I thank you. I give my parole not to 
 run away." 
 
 "So be it!" he said, and slightly acknowledging her 
 deep curtsey, motioned to Von Keudell to open the door. 
 
 LXXII 
 
 SHE passed out of the room. Von Keudell held open the 
 door for her. As he did so, he glanced toward his Chief 
 for instructions. The Minister said, answering the inter- 
 rogation in the look: 
 
 "No. I prefer to extend to Mademoiselle the semi- 
 liberty of the parole." He added: "Exceptional cases 
 must be treated exceptionally. Upon a different kind of 
 young woman I should promptly turn the key. Tell Grams 
 and Engelberg that they are released from duty outside 
 there. And Niederstedt. ..." 
 
 He whistled, and the great red face and huge unwieldy 
 figure of the East Prussian ex-door porter filled up nearly 
 the whole width of one of the long windows. The red face 
 disappeared as the steam of its owner's breath dimmed the 
 glass, and the effect was so quaint that the Minister laughed 
 irresistibly as he opened the window and relieved the im- 
 peccable guard, saying: 
 
 "Why, my good Niederstedt, you are frozen you smoke 
 like a volcano. Go down to the house-steward tell him 
 to give you some old corn-brandy, hot, with sugar and 
 pepper. That will thaw you inside as well as out ! . . . " 
 
 He shut the window, and came back to the fireplace, 
 pushed forward the great green brocade armchair, and 
 threw himself into it, saying as he stretched his long legs 
 out to the glowing billets :
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 625 
 
 "You may go, Mr. Breagh; there is no cause for detain- 
 ing you. But while you remain here, revert to your own 
 dress, and leave it to more experienced hands to polish the 
 floor and balusters, to which I adhere like a fly who has 
 walked upon treacle, half-a-dozen times in a day. Remem- 
 ber I see no reason for denying you reasonable access to 
 the society of Mademoiselle de Bayard unless she objects 
 to your visits, in which case she will probably notify 
 
 me! " He added more genially: "Sit down. Take 
 
 that chair opposite me. . . . You need no longer stand in 
 the attitude of a suspected criminal. Indeed, I rather 
 think you have repaid a small service I was enabled to 
 render you in pulling you out of a Berlin crowd, last July. 
 Ah, that reminds me. I must ask you for the return of 
 that paper. ..." He watched with a slight expression of 
 amusement as P. C. Breagh produced the shabby note- 
 case from a pocket inside his livery waistcoat, comment- 
 ing: 
 
 "Had you been searched, those papers would have be- 
 trayed you instantly. One more skilled in the art of dis- 
 guise would have carried nothing that could afford infor- 
 mation. That is a very elementary rule." 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, meeting the powerful eyes fully: 
 
 "I have already had the honor to explain to Your Ex- 
 cellency that my disguise was not assumed for any purpose 
 but that of remaining near Mademoiselle de Bayard." 
 
 He rose and offered the folded half -sheet of Chancellery 
 note to the Minister, who took it, unfolded and glanced at 
 the black upright characters above the signature, then tore 
 the paper to pieces, and, leaning forward, dropped it into 
 the heart of the fire. Then he kicked back a charring log 
 with the toe of his great riding-boot, and said, leaning back 
 in the green armchair : 
 
 "Credited as to your statement about the reason of 
 your impersonation. You should see to it that Mademoi- 
 selle rewards such chivalry. As regards the pass I have 
 just cremated did you find it useful or otherwise?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh said: 
 
 ' ' The one and only time I did use it, it proved of service 
 to me. But later " 
 
 "Speak frankly," said the Chancellor. "I have no dis- 
 relish for candor, you are aware." 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, flushing to the temples :
 
 626 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Later, the accidental discovery that I possessed it, 
 exposed me to the accusation of being a spy. ' ' 
 
 "So you chose to do without it?" 
 
 "I thought," said P. C. Breagh, "that I would try to 
 do without it. And upon the whole I managed better 
 than I expected to. . . ." 
 
 "To put it baldly," commented the resonant voice of 
 the Minister, "you preferred to travel in blinkers and with 
 hobbles on for the sake of a scruple of the genteel kind. 
 That is your Celtic blood. . . . You remind me of the 
 story I think it hails from Dublin, of the little old spin- 
 ster lady of high family, who was reduced for a living to 
 hawking pickled pig's-trotters in the streets. She accepted 
 the money to buy the license, with the basket and the first 
 Installment of trotters, and went forth into the streets to 
 sell them but beyond this, as a gentlewoman her feel- 
 ings did not permit her to go. So she cried, in a whisper : 
 ' Trotters ! who '11 buy my trotters ! Only a penny ! Pickled 
 trotters ! Please God, nobody hears me ! ' . . . and nobody 
 did hear her, so that was the end of her. ..." 
 
 He had told his absurd tale with one of those comic 
 changes of face and voice characteristic of him. Now he 
 reverted to gravity, and said, as P. C. Breagh rose to with- 
 draw : 
 
 "Go! but remain here as my guest for the present. 
 You are not under surveillance. But there is one question 
 I must again put to you. What of this mysterious per- 
 sonage who represented himself to you as M. Charles 
 Tessier? You must now be convinced that Mademoiselle 
 knows nothing of him? Well, then, I will repeat the 
 simple questions which you refused to answer just now. 
 Where did you first see him ? how long ago ? and how many 
 times have you encountered him?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh had been first addressed by the stranger 
 when returning from an errand in the character of Jean 
 Jacques. Putting it roughly, about a fortnight back. Since 
 then, he had been twice spoken to by the same man. Inter- 
 rogated as to the appearance of the stranger, he ruminated 
 a moment, then answered: "The man was of middle 
 height, but broad and tremendously muscular. He was 
 remarkable to look at, very dark; with great black eye- 
 brows, and a profile like that of an Egyptian hawk-prod. 
 No! . . . He was more like those curly-bearded man-bird-
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 627 
 
 bulls Layard dug up in the mounds of Babylonia and 
 Assyria. ' ' 
 
 Said the Minister: 
 
 "You have answered all my questions in that simile. . . . 
 The man is Straz the Roumanian, who is supposed to have 
 married Madame de Bayard. "What was it she said to you 
 this morning when I had the ill-manners to break upon the 
 lady's confidences?" 
 
 Said Breagh, with a pucker between the broad eye- 
 brows that would be red when he had washed off the 
 soot: 
 
 "Whatever she is, she is Mademoiselle de Bayard's 
 mother, and I would ask Your Excellency to remember 
 it too." 
 
 "Quatsch!" said His Excellency roughly. "Mademoi- 
 selle de Bayard for whom I have a sneaking sort of kind- 
 ness, in spite of her avowedly bloodthirsty intentions 
 toward myself! has no worse enemy than that adven- 
 turess-mother of hers, and you should be aware of it by 
 this time. In plain words, she visited me in the Wilhelm 
 Strasse upon an occasion you will remember, to offer to 
 sell me Mademoiselle as bait for the better catching of an 
 Imperial fish. I did not take the high horse with her, but 
 refused her simply as declining an unsuitable business 
 proposal." He laughed and added: "These good ladies 
 have conveniently short memories. Imagine her coming 
 to appeal to me to-day, in the character of a bereaved 
 mother with a yearning heart! . . . "Well, now she has 
 asked you to go to see her? Have I not hit it?" 
 
 Answered Breagh: 
 
 "She told me that I was English, and that she remem- 
 bered having seen me at Your Excellency's. She asked 
 me where her daughter was, and then when I pretended 
 stupidity she laughed, and insisted that I must visit her 
 to-night or to-morrow night. How late did not matter. 
 She seemed certain that I would come." 
 
 "Well, you will go to her," said the Minister, "but 
 not to-night, I think! To-morrow night would be prefer- 
 able! ... If you appeared to-night, she would think that 
 you are to be easily got over, and she would not show her 
 hand to you. Go to her late. Twelve o'clock will not be too 
 late for her. Women of her type are usually night-birds 
 and, besides, most people sit up on Christmas Eve. Re-
 
 628 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 port direct to me at whatever hour you may get back. I 
 myself am not likely to turn in before daylight, because 
 the Crown Prince and the three Bavarian Envoys dine 
 here." He added, looking quizzically at the young man: 
 "Now you are saying to yourself, 'That has something to 
 do with the scheme for the accession of the South German 
 States to the North German Confederation. . . . An agree- 
 ment has been definitely arrived at. That is why Bismarck 
 let that fat plum drop about the New German Empire just 
 now.' " 
 
 He laughed outright as P. C. Breagh reddened, but made 
 no effort to deny the charge, and went on: 
 
 "Baden and Wiirtemburg have come to terms. You 
 cannot use the intelligence before it will be known by 
 everyone in London, so I risk nothing by telling you. Our 
 chief stumbling-block has been the King of Bavaria, who 
 suffers from gumboils, and considers that in turning the 
 Palace of Versailles into a military hospital, we have out- 
 raged the shades of Louis XIV., Madame de Montespan, 
 Louis XV., Madame de Pompadour, and Queen Marie 
 Antoinette." He added curtly: "There! be off, and tell 
 Grams to send word to the stable that I am ready for the 
 horses. I ride with Count Hatzfeldt another hour to- 
 day. And change those clothes, if you would have me 
 cease to address you as a footboy. . . . Clothes cannot 
 make a man, but the lack of them can mar him if they 
 make him appear a clod. ' ' 
 
 The horses came, and he rode out with Hatzfeldt. There 
 was a piercing northeast wind and a spatter of freezing 
 sleet, much resented by the Diplomatic Secretary and his 
 thin-skinned thoroughbred, and even displeasing to the 
 Chancellor's great brown mare. 
 
 The iron lions of Mont Valerien were growling and 
 spitting shell down into the surrounding valleys, thickly 
 wooded with trees, now stripped all save the firs and 
 pines of leaves, and glittering-white with frost. The 
 lakes in the parks were frozen. Hundreds of thrushes 
 drifted like leaves before the icy gale, toward the low- 
 growing coverts of ivy and brushwood. A balloon rose 
 within the Bois de Boulogne, soared, and traveled south- 
 west. 
 
 Reaching the Aqueduct of Marly, they dismounted, for 
 the purpose of taking what the Minister termed "a peep
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 629 
 
 at Paris from the platform," and, leaving their horses to 
 the care of the grooms, transferred themselves there. 
 
 Behind the Forest of Marly the red sun of December 
 was sinking over the frosty landscape. The Minister 
 glanced casually through his glasses at the ruined houses 
 of Louveciennes in the foreground, sheltered amidst their 
 clumps of whitened trees; and sweeping over the villages 
 of La Celle and Bougival, looked long toward Fort Mont 
 Valerien, where the great stronghold sat perched on its 
 height with its many windows glowing like furnaces in 
 that fierce reflection from the crimson west. 
 
 The line of the Eennes and Brest railway running from 
 Courbevoie through the Park of St. Cloud and Versailles 
 showed strongly held by Prussian outposts. Beyond, be- 
 tween banks dotted with damaged hamlets, and bordered 
 on the north side with fanged ice sheets, the silver-gray 
 Seine wound, flowing sluggishly about her islands, wrin- 
 kling her lips in disgust at the jagged buttresses of the 
 bridges that had been blown up. Farther south, over the 
 lopped trees of the Bois de Boulogne, rose the great shin- 
 ing dome of the Invalides, bathed in that ominous ruddi- 
 ness, looking like a great cabochon ruby studding a shield 
 of silvery-green bronze. For Paris from this point of 
 view is shield-shaped, crossed with the bar-sinister of her 
 historic river; backed with her fortifications as by the 
 enamel-and-silver work of a cunning jeweler; set with 
 points of diamond where the bayonets of a column of 
 marching infantry moved out from the ramparts along the 
 road toward Fort Vanves. 
 
 It was frightfully cold. Said Hatzfeldt, stamping to 
 recover the circulation in his numbed feet, and beating his 
 gloved hands vigorously upon his sides : 
 
 "How cold! ... I can smell more snow. Heaps of it, 
 coming ! ' ' 
 
 The Chief turned an eye toward the speaker without 
 lowering the glasses through which he was looking. He 
 completed his survey before he said, restoring the binocu- 
 lars to their case, and speaking with a jarring note of anger 
 in his voice that made the Secretary arch his eyebrows : 
 
 "I do not smell what I should like best to smell, and 
 that is, the smoke of a German bombardment ! ' ' He added : 
 "We have to thank women and priests, and Jews and Free- 
 masons, if our operations are not conducted as energeti-
 
 630 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 cally as they should be. To begin with, Monsignor Dupan- 
 loup has Augusta by the apron string the Crown Prince, 
 cajoled by his wife and bullied by Victoria, his mother-in- 
 law is ready to give up the command if I insist that 
 we begin. . . . Do you know how many weeks it has taken 
 me to get our Most Gracious to consent that the siege 
 train should be moved from Villa Coublay and placed in 
 position? And then Moltke and the generals asserted that 
 we had not ammunition enough. . . . Given three hundred 
 powerful siege guns ninety of them howitzers with fifty 
 or sixty mortars, and five hundred rounds of ammunition 
 for each could not we pour sufficient shell into the city 
 to bring her to reason? Give me the post of Commander- 
 in-Chief for twenty-four hours and I will take it upon 
 myself! . . ." 
 
 Hatzf eldt said mentally : 
 
 "Ah, the devil! wouldn't you and with a vengeance!" 
 
 The Chancellor went on, deep lines of anger and vexa- 
 tion digging themselves into his gloomy face : 
 
 "Never were two men more reluctant to reap the fruits 
 of a great victory than our Most Gracious and his Heir 
 Apparent who in this matter, as in some others, needs a 
 candle to light up his head ! . . . " 
 
 His face took on a sullen cast. He stamped his foot 
 upon the ground, and bayed out like some deep-mouthed 
 bloodhound : 
 
 "If they have no ambition of their own these Hohen- 
 zollerns do not they owe something to mine ? ' ' 
 
 He ended, breaking into his great laugh, evoked by 
 something in the expression of his Secretary : 
 
 "Here am I applying to you for sympathy, who are 
 just as petticoat-ridden by your Countess as the King and 
 Prince Fritz by their respective better halves. Have you 
 not your mother-in-law and your millionaire papa-in-law 
 shut up there in the Rue de Helder to say nothing of 
 your wife's pet pair of pony cobs?" 
 
 Hatzf eldt returned, shrugging ruefully: 
 
 "I had another letter from my wife about the cobs 
 this morning. Heaven knows whether they are still 
 alive!" 
 
 The Minister said with a touch of malice: 
 
 "It is quite certain that there has been no fresh meat in 
 Paris now for some time. Except ass and mule flesh at
 
 THE MAN, OF, IRON 631 
 
 fifteen francs a pound. Dogs and cats are getting scarce, 
 consequently ragout de lievre has become the staple dish at 
 all the restaurants. ..." 
 
 Hatzf eldt rejoined with a sigh : 
 
 "I am not quite sure that a little starvation would not 
 be good for myself personally, and one or two others of the 
 Prussian Foreign Office staff. For there is no denying we 
 eat a great deal too much. Your Excellency knows there 
 are few nights when we spend at the dinner table less than 
 two hours and a half." 
 
 The answer came : 
 
 "You should eat little for breakfast, and nothing in the 
 middle of the day; then your stomachs would neigh and 
 prance at the dinner call as mine never fails to do. Some- 
 times you see me dine twice without ill results as when I 
 am going to the King, who keeps a bad table and find it 
 necessary to fortify myself beforehand. ..." 
 
 He broke off speaking to cough and expectorate, and 
 Hatzf eldt, noting the deep yellow hue of his jaws and 
 temples and forehead, and the sagging pouches under the 
 great eyes, and the caves that his anxieties and labors had 
 recently dug about them, said to himself that the Chief's 
 health was not what it had been; that any fool could see 
 with half an eye he was terribly liverish; that he slept 
 little and spat bile continually, and that his superhuman 
 capacity for work, in combination with his superhuman 
 powers of eating and drinking, were maintained at high 
 pressure by a remorseless vanity that proved him no 
 stronger or wiser than other men. 
 
 What was he saying in tones tinged with mockery, for he 
 had probably taken that reference to the excess of luxury 
 at the Foreign Office in the Rue de Provence as a thrust 
 directed at himself: 
 
 "If you would really like to try high living after the 
 latest Parisian style, I have at home among some letters 
 taken from a balloon captured yesterday the menu of a 
 dinner given at Voisin's on the twenty-first by some rich 
 Americans: Potage St. Germain. . . . Cotelettes de loup 
 chasseur. . . . Chat garni des rats rotis, sauce poivrade. 
 Rosbif de Chameau. . . . Salade de legumes. Cepes a la 
 Bordelaise. Dessert, none at all. ... I gathered from the 
 same source that the Government are going to take over all 
 private stores of provisions, and that the edible animals
 
 632 THE MAN OF, IRON 
 
 confined in the Jardin des Plantes are to be shot and cut 
 up for sale." 
 
 "Good-bye to poor Touti's ponies, then," said the Secre- 
 tary, with resignation, "and possibly farewell also to my 
 hopes of a sturdy son and heir." 
 
 "Ah ! if things are as serious as that," said the Minister, 
 "you had better telegraph to the Countess. Prince Witt- 
 genstein, Clarmont, and little Desjardin, Secretary of the 
 Belgian Legation in Paris, left there yesterday morning by 
 special permit from General Trochu. All three packed 
 into a coupe belonging to Prince Croy these equine treas- 
 ures of your wife's were harnessed to the vehicle. They 
 were to spend the night at Villeneuve St. Georges and 
 you will probably find them in Versailles when we get 
 back." 
 
 He added as the Secretary thanked him with effusive- 
 ness: 
 
 "As regards the family in the Eue de Helder and your 
 bootmaker the only man in the world who can turn you 
 out properly ! you may tell them, if you are in communi- 
 cation with them, that until the twenty-seventh of Decem- 
 ber they may sleep in peace. ... As to-morrow is Christ- 
 mas Eve, that means four unbroken nights of slumber. 
 After that the Deluge ; not of water, but of fire and steel 
 and lead." He added, ignoring the Secretary's start and 
 half-suppressed exclamation : ' ' Call to Reichardt to bring 
 up the horses. I find it chilly let us be getting back!" 
 
 LXXIII 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE came with an unloading of all the count- 
 less tons of snow that had lain pent up behind those skies 
 of leaden grayness. The Seine froze in thin crackling 
 patches, Paris and the surrounding country lay under two 
 feet of snow. Kraus, Klaus, Schmidt, and Klein of the 
 Army of United Germany told each other gleefully that it 
 was going to be a real German Christmas, after all. Nearly 
 every man had packed up and sent a French clock or a 
 porcelain vase as a seasonable gift to his family in Ger- 
 many, or some article of furniture of a bulkier kind. Now 
 upon the side of the senders of these love gifts was a great
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 633 
 
 unpacking of strongly smelling parcels directed in well- 
 known characters, and containing cakes, sausages, pudding, 
 loaves of black bread, cheeses, barrels of Magdeburg, sauer- 
 kraut, and salt meat to eat with it, sweets, tobacco, cigars, 
 and pipes. Each hospital and barracks, camp and quarters 
 displayed elaborate preparations for merrymaking; the 
 most distant outpost wore a festive air. Wagonloads of 
 holly, ivy, and mistletoe creaked over the snow. Minia- 
 ture forests of fir trees, large and small, had been cut down, 
 and set up in tubs of earth for the festival. 
 
 French eyes regarded these preparations upon the part 
 of their foes with curiosity. For Catholics there would be 
 Midnight Mass at the churches by consent of the German 
 authorities ! Holy Communion and some sort of supper 
 possibly none this War Christmas upon the return from 
 Church. But this setting out of tables of presents under the 
 fir-branches adorned with colored tapers hung with child- 
 rejoicing trifles such as gilt nuts and gingerbread, apples 
 and sugar plums; this singing of carols; Luther's " Euch 
 ist ein Kindlein heut geboren," with "Der Tannenbaum," 
 and "Stille Nackt, Heilige Nacht," the frequent references 
 to Santa Glaus and his sack, and the Christkind appar- 
 ently regarded as a benevolently disposed Puck or 
 Brownie, was to the adult non-German inhabitants of Ver- 
 sailles excessively puzzling, unless they happened to be 
 English Protestants. 
 
 Of these honest Britons there was a fair sprinkling, the 
 majority of them being exceedingly depressed and out-at- 
 elbows refugees from Paris, whose exodus from the city in 
 the previous month of November had been achieved under 
 the auspices of the British Government, and the personal 
 superintendence of Lord Henry Fermeroy, Secretary of 
 Lord Lyons 's Embassy at Paris, armed with a safe conduct 
 from General Trochu. 
 
 Despite his low-bosomed vests, Imperial, and French ac- 
 cent, this sprig of British nobility behaved like a man. 
 From the old lady who brought a tin bonnet box full of 
 jewelry and a case containing a stuffed pug, with the prayer 
 that these heirlooms might be taken care of at the Em- 
 bassy, and the courtesan, Cora Pearl, who requested formal 
 permission to carry on business, during the siege, under 
 the protection of the British Flag, as from e.ach individual 
 unit of the army of distressed Britishers who flocked to
 
 634, THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 seek his aid or counsel, Lord Henry earned gratitude, and 
 praise, and good-will. 
 
 When the provisions and money subscribed to the Fund 
 for the aid of the many destitute English residents in Paris 
 were at an end, he did not hesitate to dip his hand into 
 his own breeches pocket. His shining patent-leather boots 
 carried him not only into the attics and cellars where grim 
 Starvation crouched on a bed of damp straw. They tripped 
 over the Aubusson carpets of the drawing-rooms where 
 Genteel Famine sat sipping hot water out of Sevres cups, 
 wherewith to quell its gnawing pangs, and retired, without 
 having trodden upon a single corn during the accomplish- 
 ment of their owner's charitable errand. He bombarded 
 Count Bismarck with official Notes, until he had obtained 
 permission from that grim Cerberus for his little army of 
 refugees to pass the Prussian lines. 
 
 Of his dreary three days' journey in charge of the string 
 of country carts containing the exiles, who were permitted 
 to travel to Versailles via the Porte Charenton, Brie-Comte- 
 Robert, and Corbeil, Lord Henry afterward penned a Nar- 
 rative. Which literary effort, printed, bound in cloth of a 
 soothing green, and adorned with a Portrait of the Author, 
 the young man bestowed upon his friends. 
 
 Perhaps you can see the blue eyes of Juliette peering 
 between the frost flowers encrusting the window of her 
 bedroom on the second floor, which commanded a view of 
 the garden of the Rue de Provence. 
 
 She had, upon the previous evening, received an intima- 
 tion from the Minister that she would be permitted to take 
 exercise regularly in the garden between the hours of nine 
 and ten. Thus with a throbbing heart, she dressed the 
 shining tresses so long concealed under Madame Charles 
 Tessier's chenille net and white shawl, and arrayed herself 
 in the plain black silk skirt and bodice that we have seen 
 once previously looped over a cloth petticoat of the same 
 mourning hue. She sought for, found, and put on the 
 gray velvet jacket trimmed with Persian lambskin, and 
 the little gray toque that matched it, despoiled of its azure 
 feather. These things, with many others, had been packed 
 away in a trunk and stowed in the attic now occupied by 
 Madame Potier, when Mademoiselle had departed for Bel- 
 gium under the charge of Madame Tessier. 
 
 She wound a white silk scarf about her throat, tied on a
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 635 
 
 veil, and found herself wishing for a knot of violets to 
 brighten the pale, somberly clad reflection in the looking- 
 glass. . . . Color . . . and her Colonel's grave lying under 
 the first-fallen snow. . . . She blushed deep rose for very 
 shame of her own vanity, and then in all conscience the 
 picture was bright enough. 
 
 The pleasance, like the rest of the world, lay under a 
 mantle of sparkling whiteness. The orderlies and grooms 
 had already cleared and scraped the paths in the vicinity 
 of the house. The ring of the shovels and the swish of the 
 brooms might be heard in the distance. Mademoiselle 
 sighed, thinking of Jean Jacques Potier. 
 
 Then timidly she stole down by the back staircase and 
 passed through the hall door into a world all glittering. 
 The keen air was as exhilarating as champagne. It breathed 
 on her cheeks, and renewed the roses that had bloomed 
 there when she had frowned at the girl in the mirror. The 
 frost kissed her eyes, and they sparkled like sapphire- 
 tinted icicles. She tripped down the short curved avenue, 
 passed the gardener's cottage, and turned into the kitchen 
 garden. Not that she was looking for anybody there. 
 
 All through the autumn and winter in a sheltered corner 
 had bloomed a large standard rose tree of the hardy, late- 
 flowering kind. The storms of October had passed over 
 and left its fragrant pink blooms unscathed, the bitter 
 winds and night frosts of November had done no more than 
 brown the edges of an outer petal. The tree in its fra- 
 grance and beauty, and its strange immunity from hurt of 
 wind and weather, had been an unfailing source of pleas- 
 ure to Juliette. When an overblown flower shed its leaves, 
 she had gathered up and kept them. When a new bud 
 plumped and bravely unfolded, her heart had known a deli- 
 cate thrill of joy. 
 
 So Mademoiselle went on into the kitchen garden, whose 
 paths had not been cleared of snow. There was her tree 
 standing in its corner, but buried to the lower branches in a 
 drift that had formed in this sheltered angle of the south- 
 ward wall. 
 
 The roses had met their match at last. Drooping and 
 yellow, sodden and heavy, they had no more courage or 
 hope to give away. Juliette kissed both her hands to 
 them, in farewell, and turned to encounter P. C. Breagh. 
 
 The green baize apron and other integuments of the late
 
 636 
 
 Jean Jacques Potier had been replaced by the old brown 
 Norfolk suit so often mentioned in these pages. It had 
 been sedulously brushed and his linen was scrupulously 
 white, and he had bestowed infinite pains upon the knot 
 of the black silk, loose-ended tie. His cropped hair would 
 grow again, and his broad red smear of eyebrow was echoed 
 on his upper lip by a young but decidedly red mustache 
 with rather fuzzy corners. The pleasant lips smiled at sight 
 of her, and a hot flame leaped into the gray-and-amber eyes. 
 Her own could not be likened to sapphire icicles now. 
 They were tender, and her long upper lip was haunted by 
 flying smiles that came, and vanished, and came again. 
 
 "It is you! Ah, my friend," she said, "I am so glad 
 I am so glad!" 
 
 He caught the gloved hands she stretched out to him, 
 and held them in his, that were reddened with Jean Jacques 
 Potier 's labors, and kissed them eagerly. The little gray 
 gloves were not buttoned his warm lips feasted unchecked 
 upon each blue-veined wrist, until she told him breath- 
 lessly : 
 
 "No more! there must be no more! . . . Pray cease, 
 my friend!" 
 
 She had withdrawn her hands. . . . He said with a catch 
 in his breath and with eyes that implored her : 
 
 "I do not offend you? . . ." 
 
 She looked at him full and drew off one glove and laid 
 the bare hand in his extended palm. Warm and soft, it 
 seemed incredibly small as it lay there. The touch of it 
 infused a melting sweetness; a thrill went through the 
 man from head to foot. Perhaps the thrill was communi- 
 cated, for she drew her hand away quickly. She said: 
 
 ' ' You are very generous to one who has so often deceived 
 you. . . . How many times I have condemned myself for 
 my wickedness, thinking : ' Of all those noble deeds I have 
 described in the letters, not one has been really performed 
 by M. Charles Tessier. . . . All are invented to make a 
 good face ! ' : 
 
 He said in a whisper: 
 
 "I could forgive you for making even a worse fool of 
 me now I know you never were married! It was your 
 telling me that knocked me out of time. . . . Nothing else 
 mattered much afterward. . . . You said to Monseigneur 
 yesterday that it was to retain your place in this house you
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 687 
 
 pretended to be the wife of its master. But why did you 
 pretend it in the first place to me?" 
 
 She began to change color from pale to red, and tried 
 to free her hand. It was impossible. He said : 
 
 "I mean to know. ... I have the right to know! . . ." 
 
 She faltered: 
 
 "See you well, Monsieur, I cannot explain. ..." 
 
 He said doggedly: 
 
 "Then I shall explain it for you. You told me that to 
 make me jealous ! Now, did you not ?" 
 
 She winced. 
 
 "Monsieur . . . not then! . . . Upon my faith, I assure 
 you. . . . See you well, I had promised my father that 
 M. Charles should be my husband. ... I would have kept 
 that promise a tout hasard . . . had M. Charles not mar- 
 ried Mademoiselle Basselot. And so I told you I was mar- 
 ried, not then to make you jealous . . . that came after. 
 But to make it ... possible to be true ! ' ' 
 
 He almost reeled under the sudden shock of the terrible, 
 exquisite confession. He would have given a year of life 
 to let himself go with the sweet roaring current that tum- 
 bled foaming through his veins and sent its red sparkling 
 bubbles to his brain. But there were steps and voices on 
 the other side of the high laurel hedge that divided the 
 kitchen garden from the pleasance. He recognized Bis- 
 marck-Bohlen's snigger and Hatzfeldt's lazy, well-bred 
 accents telling an anecdote of the Minister one could not 
 doubt. The languid voice reached their ears distinctly. It 
 said : 
 
 "He was an officer of French Imperial Hussars, who had 
 been taken prisoner at Sedan, and had broken his parole. 
 He had been taken again in arms against us, fighting under 
 General Chancy at Le Mans. So she comes post-haste to 
 Versailles, lays siege to the King, who will not see her to 
 the Crown Prince, who will not see her and finally to 
 Moltke, who will not see her, because all three of them are 
 cowards at the sight of a woman's tears. Finally the Chief 
 consents to receive her. ... It was yesterday, in his room 
 at the Prefecture. She comes in all in black, which to a 
 blonde of her type is very suitable, full of hope at not 
 being made to croquer le marmot for long. She reels off a 
 long tale about her Frederic, his bravery, and his excellent 
 heart. The Chief listens sympathetically, looking at the
 
 638 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 clock from time to time. Again the heart is pressed upon 
 his notice. It is heavy with grief at the thought of a life 
 parting from Madame, who is Frederic's mistress, by the 
 way and not his wife ! ... It is weighed down with sus- 
 pense at the delay of the Prussian Kriegsrath in answering 
 the loved ones his prayer. . . . She gets so far, when the 
 Chief looks up at the clock, and says, touching his table 
 bell : ' Madame, that excellent heart of your client is even 
 heavier than it was five minutes ago. . . .' 'How, Mon- 
 seigneur?' cries Madame. 'He was shot,' says the Chief, 
 'just now when I looked up at the clock. And, as a rule, 
 seven out of the ten bullets shot off by the firing party are 
 found to have lodged in the region of the heart.' So the 
 poor woman screamed and fainted. They carried her past 
 me with her teeth set and all her fine hair hanging 
 down. ..." 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen 's snigger greeted the denouement. The 
 footsteps grew fainter. Juliette and Breagh exchanged 
 glances. She said with white lips : 
 
 "Monseigneur can be merciless! And yet, when I heard 
 him tell my mother that did he know of my hiding place, 
 he would not betray it, I said to myself: 'How you have 
 misjudged this man!' ' 
 
 Her comrade had started at the reference to Madame de 
 Bayard, remembering the rendezvous to be kept that night. 
 Juliette went on, with a liquid look : 
 
 "Monsieur, I have a favor to ask of you. . . . All those 
 weeks when I struggled with that purpose from which you 
 tried so faithfully to dissuade me, I did not once dare to 
 set foot in Our Lord 's House. But when I threw away that 
 wicked bottle, I found that I could pray once more. . . . 
 I went to the Carmelite Fathers and made my confession. 
 ... I received Our Lord in the Holy Communion . . . and 
 my scul began to be at peace again. Now it is Christmas 
 Eve and I should much like to attend the Midnight High 
 Mass, or the Second Mass at daybreak, and I had intended 
 to ask you to take me, but I am upon parole. . . . 
 Therefore, I entreat of you pray for me when you 
 make your own Communion. How much I need Divine 
 pardon and guidance . . . even you can hardly 
 know. ..." 
 
 His conscience stung. He had not intended to evade 
 the sacred obligation, yet he had wavered as to when he
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 639 
 
 should comply with the command of the Church. He 
 said: 
 
 "It shall be as you ask. I shall attend High Mass at 
 the Church of the Carmelites at midnight. Afterward, I 
 have an appointment at a place some distance from here. ' ' 
 
 "So late, Monsieur?" 
 
 Her glance had not only surprise in it, but fear for him. 
 He said lightly: 
 
 "Very late. ... I may not get back until some time 
 near the second breakfast. . . . Madame Potier will have 
 some hot coffee ready for me. ..." 
 
 She flushed and knitted her small hands together anx- 
 iously. She asked: 
 
 "Could you not could you not take me into your confi- 
 dence?" 
 
 He said bluntly : 
 
 "Not without myself committing a breach of confi- 
 dence. ..." He added, holding out his strong hand: 
 ' ' Try to trust me. If it were possible to tell you, I would 
 do it, you must know. ' ' 
 
 "I know it, and I trust you, Monsieur, always. ..." 
 
 There was faith in her eyes. He kissed her hands and 
 released them, and turned with her silently. . . . They 
 walked back together as far as the house. 
 
 LXXIV 
 
 AT six o'clock, when the snow had ceased falling and the 
 old moon of December glowed redly through a thinning veil 
 of frost fog, the Crown Prince arrived to dine with the 
 Minister. 
 
 The Heir Apparent of Prussia came with an escort of 
 Dragoons of the Bodyguard, driving with one of his aides- 
 de-camp in a closed sledge belonging to the exiled Empress, 
 an exquisite vehicle, finished like an enameled bonbon- 
 niere, supplied with a great white Polar bearskin, and 
 drawn by two superb black Orloffs, whose glossy coats had 
 the burnish of old Italian armor in the ruddy light of 
 torches held by orderlies and grooms. 
 
 The Minister, followed by Hatzf eldt and his Chief Privy 
 Councilor, went down bareheaded, between a double row
 
 640 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 of Chancery attendants, dressed in their new dark-blue 
 liveries, with black velvet facings, to welcome his Crown 
 Prince. The broad breast of "Unser Fritz" displayed the 
 Order Pour la Merit e, with the First- Class of the Iron 
 Cross, and the Red Eagle, with an English Order, bestowed 
 by Queen Victoria upon her son-in-law. He sported new 
 shoulder straps, distinctive of his newly conferred rank as 
 Field Marshal, and cut a very gallant figure, as may be 
 supposed. 
 
 Perhaps you can see him at the head of the long table in 
 the dining-room of the Tessier mansion, his Chancellor and 
 host upon his left hand. Upon his right sat the Bavarian 
 plenipotentiary, Count Maltzahn. Count Holnstein, an- 
 other Bavarian Minister, newly arrived from Munich with 
 a letter from his King, and the Bavarian Minister of War, 
 Von Pranky, were severally disposed according to their 
 degrees. Prince Putbus was there, and a certain Herr von 
 Zadowski, a large red-faced man in a green Hussar uni- 
 form, wearing a white patch with a red Cross, the badge 
 of the Knights of St. John, and the Iron Cross, was also 
 present, and the Secretaries and Privy Councilors filled 
 the lower end of the board; sporting the new Foreign 
 Office uniform of dark blue, with black velvet side stripes 
 to the trousers, and a black-velvet-collared, double-but- 
 toned military frock. Sword belts and black-hilted swords 
 with gold knots caused the more stout and elderly among 
 the Councilors infinite discomfort, to the secret but acute 
 delight of Bismarck-Bohlen and Count Hatzfeldt. The 
 dinner, composed of love gifts from admiring German 
 patriots to their Chancellor, was of a quality, quantity, 
 lusciousness, and length calculated, as Privy Councilor 
 Bucher piously whispered to a neighbor, "to make a guest 
 imagine himself a banqueter in Abraham's bosom before 
 the time." 
 
 Long before his table companions had reached the zenith 
 of their sensuous enjoyment, the Crown Prince had fin- 
 ished his temperate meal. The Chancellor commented men- 
 tally, glancing at the clear, rather set features of the great 
 golden-bearded figure seated beside him : 
 
 "Fritz is endeavoring to impress myself and these Ba- 
 varians, with whom it rests to decide whether he is Em- 
 peror or no Emperor, par la fermete de son attitude with 
 regard to the pleasures of the table, and by the Spartan
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 641 
 
 simplicity of his habits and tastes. How I should like to 
 offer him black broth and barley bread in a special wooden 
 bowl and platter. But that, I suppose, would be Use 
 majeste." 
 
 And closely emulated by Von Holnstein and Von 
 Pranky, he gave free reign to his Gargantuan appetite, 
 taking twice of nearly every course, and washing the huge 
 meal down, as was his habit, with floods from Rheims and 
 ifipernay. 
 
 "When the cloth was drawn and fresh relays of wine ap- 
 peared, the Prince accepted but a single glass of fine cham- 
 pagne with his coffee. When the costly cigars were of- 
 fered, he pulled from his pocket a porcelain pipe bearing 
 his crest and monogram, painted and sent him by his Eng- 
 lish wife as a Christmas present, and said : 
 
 ' ' I should prefer to smoke this, if Your Excellency does 
 not mind." 
 
 Dinner over, His Royal Highness, with the Bavarians 
 and the Minister, repaired to the salon. Overhead, Made- 
 moiselle de Bayard, lonely in her prison bedroom on the 
 second floor, heard their voices deep, sonorous bass, shrill 
 tenor, and penetrating, resonant baritone engaged in dis- 
 cussion or joining in argument. At ten o'clock the Prince 
 took leave, attended to his vehicle as previously by the 
 Chancellor, to whom he said, in a low tone, as he pressed 
 his hand : 
 
 ' ' We are now no longer North Germans, but Germans. I 
 shall urge upon my father the speedy proclamation of the 
 Empire with all external state. Names, arms, titles, colors 
 place us before the world in a proper light. I have never 
 coveted a Crown Imperial. I denounce the idea of a bom- 
 bardment as brutal and unnecessary. But I am willing 
 to reap all the honors and advantages that can be gained 
 from our victory. Impress this upon my father, who 
 treats pomp and solemnity with indifference. As to de- 
 manding the old crown of Charlemagne from Vienna, I do 
 not at all see the necessity for that. I shall write to my 
 wife to-night ! ' ' 
 
 And Unser Fritz got into the exquisite sledge that had 
 been given to the beautiful Empress by the Third Na- 
 poleon, and was whirled away in a glittering dust of snow, 
 kicked up by the fiery Orloffs' heels. And the Chancellor, 
 recovering from his deep, ceremonious bow, wheeled and
 
 642 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 went back up the steps, with his bald head glittering in 
 the ruddy torchlight. . . . None might guess what savage 
 triumph swelled the heart beating under his white full- 
 dress uniform, upon this the night that set upon the 
 fabric of the man's colossal labors the copingstone of 
 Success. 
 
 The Bavarian plenipotentiaries took leave within ten 
 minutes. Count Hatzfeldt had been summoned to the 
 salon a few moments previously. When the unseen bustle 
 of their departure had subsided, the Secretaries and Coun- 
 cilors, smoking and drinking tea in the dining-room, were 
 unexpectedly joined by the Minister. 
 
 All rose up as he suddenly opened the folding doors, 
 thrust in his head and shoulders, and surveyed them, 
 smiling. Behind him was Hatzfeldt, pale and excited, and 
 with eyes that seemed dancing out of his head. There was 
 a silence of expectation, then the great figure moved to 
 the table, and men scattered to make space for him as 
 though his contact might have slain. 
 
 He wore full-dress White Cuirassier uniform, without 
 the steel cuirass, and the First and Second Classes of the 
 Iron Cross, and the Bed Eagle, with the peculiar depora- 
 tion that he always sported, and which had been given him 
 in his young manhood for saving life. His bald forehead 
 and great domed cranium were studded with shining drops 
 of perspiration, under his tufted brows his blue eyes blazed 
 with a triumph almost fearful ; his straight-bridged, snub- 
 ended nose, thick cheeks, and bulldog jowl were crimson 
 and dripping. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped 
 them and the hand that held the linen palpably shook. 
 
 He said to them all, and they held their breath to listen : 
 
 "Gentlemen, the Bavarian business is settled, and every- 
 thing signed and sealed. We have got our German Unity 
 and our German Empire ! ' ' 
 
 There was a deep silence for a moment, broken by 
 Busch's request to be allowed to take the pens with which 
 the treaty had been signed. He got permission. 
 
 "That little Busch," said the Minister, "will never lose 
 anything for want of a tongue. If he thinks to find there 
 the gold pen set with brilliants, that was sent me by the 
 Hamburg jeweler, he is mistaken. Come!" he added, 
 ' ' this is a great occasion ! ' ' and bade Hatzfeldt ring for a 
 servant and order up more champagne.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 643 
 
 The wine was brought and opened. He said to the serv- 
 ant who officiated: 
 
 "Let the house steward know that some wine is to be 
 sent to the clerks and decipherers in their room. The 
 servants also are to have what they like best for drink- 
 ing I fancy Niederstedt will choose Old Nordhausen. 
 But short of my best liquor, let what each likes best be 
 given to him. No! not that glass. I will drink out of 
 my biggest goblet ! ..." 
 
 With the fizzing bumper in hand, he waited until all had 
 been served, looking, as he reared his great bulk at the 
 head of the full table, the biggest man, mentally and physi- 
 cally, who had ever served the Hohenzollern. In his most 
 powerful tones, he called the toast : 
 
 "Hock! to His Imperial Majesty, our Kaiser Wilhelm!" 
 
 Every man there strained his lungs to the utmost, but 
 the great bull voice of the Chancellor drowned every other 
 there. 
 
 He talked a little more: ""We should never have hooked 
 the King of Bavaria, but for the pluck of Holnstein, who 
 set off from Munich to tackle His Most Gracious at his 
 Palace of Neuschwanstein, and there being no railway 
 made in six days a journey of eighteen German miles on 
 foot and on horseback over mountain passes, agreeably 
 diversified by forest tracks and timber roads." 
 
 He drank and went on : 
 
 "He arrived, to find His Majesty nursing his toothache 
 in absolute solitude, invisible to human eyes, save those 
 belonging to the dentist, his valets and fiddlers and grooms. 
 At first the King refused to receive him, but Holnstein was 
 clever enough to gain over the dentist to deliver a letter 
 from his own hand, and incidentally one written by my- 
 self. . . ." 
 
 He went on, with a smile that curved the great mustache 
 into lines of gayety : 
 
 "Knowing myself particularly detested by King Ludwig, 
 I had taken pains to make my letter acceptable. I said in 
 it that my family had enjoyed the patronage of his family 
 a trifle of five hundred years ago. I mentioned that rein- 
 stitution in the Wittelsbach good graces had been the ob- 
 ject of my whole life's labors. I incidentally pressed the 
 claims of the King of Prussia to be made Emperor of 
 Germany. I enclosed, with many apologies, the draft of a
 
 644 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 letter which expressed the concurrence of Bavaria. 'Your 
 Majesty has only to copy this and sign it,' I added, 'and 
 the troublesome business is closed.' What a prospect to a 
 monarch afflicted by an obstinately throbbing gumboil! 
 There was no paper or pen at hand with which to answer, 
 so the dentist presented his patient with a sheet out of his 
 pocketbook, and the patent ink reservoir pen with which 
 he writes his prescriptions. King Ludwig sits up in bed, 
 scrawls a copy of my draft reply, and the German Empire 
 is made. . . . The Festival of the Orders and the Proc- 
 lamation of the Emperor will come off in the Great Hall 
 of Versailles upon a certain date not far off. ... I will 
 leave you to guess what the date is likely to be ! . . . " 
 
 In the midst of a deafening tumult of joyful outcries and 
 congratulations, he turned his great eyes upon one excited 
 face after another, and drained his capacious glass and set 
 it down. 
 
 "And with all this, gentlemen, our hopes might have 
 foundered. . . . The Royal sign manual might have availed 
 us nothing ! . . . the Treaty might never have been signed ! 
 . . . Everything has depended upon a question as trivial 
 and ridiculous as indeed are most of our human vanities. 
 Imagine the gravity of the question at issue ! . . . Whether 
 the Bavarian officers are in future to wear the marks of 
 their military rank upon their collars as heretofore, cr on 
 their shoulders, like us North Germans? . . . Upon that 
 the German Empire has dangled, do you hear ? Ah ! how 
 many times," he said, "I have been tempted to break out 
 and tell those fellows in the devil's name to sew their stars 
 and badges on the seats of their breeches. But I com- 
 forted myself with the old adage : Politeness as far as the 
 last step of the gallows, but hanging for all that!" 
 
 They roared with laughter. He called : 
 
 "Fresh bottles! A little excess may be pardoned, upon 
 this of all the nights in the year. Really, I need a buck-up 
 after all that I have suffered, what with this Bavarian 
 business, with Gortchakoff's Note, and the bumptiousness 
 of the English, who, without knowing why or wherefore, 
 are bellowing for war. All that danger has been avoided 
 by the exercise of a little diplomacy. . . . But how can 
 we expect to be taken seriously by the Powers when we 
 procrastinate in the matter of the Paris Bombardment 
 which ought to begin at once!"
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 645 
 
 There "was a hubbub of acquiescence, from which only 
 the voices of Hatzfeldt and Abeken were missing. 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen begged leave to propose a toast. The 
 Minister asked, tolerantly regarding his young relative, 
 who vibrated with suppressed hiccups, and was palpably 
 unsteady upon his long legs : 
 
 ' ' What is this toast we are to drink ? ' ' 
 
 Bismarck-Bohlen, in labor with speech, got out with a 
 final effort: 
 
 ' ' The hie I bombar hie I ment ! Big hie I potar- 
 roes for Paris ! ' ' 
 
 "Ah, as God lives!" he said to them, "I must drink 
 that toast!" 
 
 It went round. Hatzfeldt followed with : 
 
 "Our glorious Chancellor!" 
 
 ' ' Our glorious Chancellor ! Our great, ineffable, power- 
 ful Kaiser-maker! Hoch! the Fiirst von Bismarck-Sehon- 
 hausen, Imperial Germany's master-mind!" 
 
 Sobs mingled with their acclamations. Their faces were 
 now purple red with the exception of Hatzfeldt 's, which 
 was ghastly, and Bismarck-Bohlen 's, which presented a 
 combination of shades, in which pea green and orange pre- 
 dominated, as, bathed in tears, he staggered to embrace 
 his august relative. He was turned off with a single jerk 
 of the Minister's wrist, to fall weeping on the bosom of 
 Privy Councilor Abeken, who, shocked at finding himself 
 involved in something approaching to an orgie, was in the 
 act of escaping from the room. 
 
 "My thanks for the toast!" said the resonant voice in 
 their dulled and singing ears, ' ' but pray all remember that 
 I am no longer the North German Chancellor, or even the 
 Chancellor of the Germanic Federation, but Chancellor of 
 the German Empire, which has a better sound ! And this 
 is now, or will be by the New Year the Imperial German 
 Chancellery, and Foreign Office, while you, my friends, are 
 Imperial Privy Councilors, Secretaries, and so on. We will 
 baptize your green honors in a fresh round of champagne, 
 and then I must leave you. I have yet before me some 
 hours of hard work, and must keep my head clear and 
 cool." 
 
 He held his great glass to the now drunken servant to 
 be filled up. 
 
 "Prosit!" he said, and lifted the capacious vessel high,
 
 646 THE MAN" OF IRON 
 
 and tossed off the wine and dashed the costly goblet into 
 the fireplace, where it exploded in crystal fragments and 
 sparkling dust. Had they tried, his satellites could not 
 have followed his example. Their leaden arms could only 
 lift the wine to their dribbly lips. They drank and one 
 by one each toper collapsed and buckled as though the 
 solid oak floor had given way under his boneless feet. 
 Hatzfeldt sank prone across a chair. Bismarck-Bohlen 
 had rolled under the table some moments previously, where, 
 judging by the ominous nature of the sounds that asserted 
 his presence, Madame Tessier's Brussels carpet was suffer- 
 ing for his excess. Similar noises, stertorous snores were 
 reechoed from other quarters as the Minister surveyed his 
 fallen warriors : 
 
 "Men cannot drink in these days!" he commented, and 
 left the room. 
 
 LXXV 
 
 HE threw on his cap and his great white cavalry cloak 
 lined with Russian sables and passed out by the front door 
 into the still white night. The snowstorm was over, the 
 fall had lessened to the merest sprinkle. The bitter north- 
 erly wind no longer drove the blizzards screaming before it, 
 each tree stood immovable under its burden, the overloaded 
 evergreen bushes lay flat upon the ground. And the moon 
 sailed high, drifting away eastward. Through the tatters 
 of the frost-fog shone the great blazing jewels of the stars. 
 
 Twelve o'clock struck near and far, and from the great 
 Cathedral of the Place St. Louis, as from every bell-graced 
 tower and steeple in Versailles, rang the Christmas car- 
 illon. Many voices broke upon the piercing, windless quiet. 
 Many footsteps were passing through the snowy streets. 
 Catholics were going to their Midnight Mass and Com- 
 munion to be celebrated by permission of the Prussian 
 Minister. He pictured the crowds that would flock to the 
 great churches of Paris how Notre Dame would be packed 
 to the doors, and Ste. Marguerite, also the great Church of 
 the Carmelites, and the ancient church of the Augustine 
 Fathers in the Place des Victoires. . . . 
 
 He imagined the flower-decked High Altars in the 
 churches and chapels of Versailles thronged about with
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 647 
 
 war-weary, famine-bitten refugees and residents. German 
 Catholics would mingle with them the conqueror and the 
 conquered kneeling side by side. Wounded soldiers of 
 both nations would help each other to limp to the Com- 
 munion rail; the atmosphere of the hushed, crowded sanc- 
 tuaries would throb and vibrate with prayer. . . . 
 
 For what boon would all these suppliants entreat High 
 Heaven most fervently? Pacing in and out of the snowy 
 garden alleys, his giant shadow passing over the moveless 
 tree shadows, he asked himself the question. There was 
 but one reply: 
 
 For Peace. . . . They would pray to GOD for Peace . . . 
 that Bismarck was not going to give them yet a while. 
 Under the icicles that had formed on his great mus- 
 tache he laughed. And a Satanic pride swelled within him 
 as he told himself that this was his crowning hour of life. 
 
 The wild sweet frenzy of the bells was dying down. 
 Distant refrains of sturdy German carols came from the 
 military quarters and the barracks. The bells stopped, 
 wavered, broke out again, grew faint, and were still. And 
 it seemed to the man standing in the chill silence of the 
 snowy garden as though he heard the Spirit of France and 
 the Spirit of Germany communing in the depths of this 
 Christmas Night. 
 
 It was the voice of France that wept : 
 
 "Alas! miserable that I am, what hast thou done to me? 
 Why have thy fierce hordes rolled down upon me from the 
 strange Pagan lands in the inclement East? Was it my 
 fame, or my wealth, or my beauty that tempted thy Hun- 
 nish warriors, the yellow-haired footmen, with hard, 'blue- 
 eyed faces and huge hairy limbs, and the uncouth, fierce 
 tanned horsemen, who ride as though they were one with 
 their "beasts? Woe is me! for my white "breasts that were 
 kissed by the conquering Roman! must I yield them again 
 to be bruised by the ravishing Frank f A curse on iheel 
 thou treacherous, deep-flowing, swift river, that hast again 
 proved no barrier to the Prussian invader! I am fallen a 
 prey to the Confederation set up by the Corsican upon the 
 Rhine. Oh! hard as the nether millstone! Wilt thou un- 
 pitying, behold Famine devour my beauty? See, the white 
 limbs that show through my tattered garment are fieshless! 
 No man who looks upon me would desire me more! For 
 what hast thou dug a pit about me and set up thy terrible
 
 648 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 war engines? Was I not willing to make terms with thee, 
 as the conqueror f" 
 
 It was the Voice of Germany that answered : 
 
 "0 Gaulish Queen! thou wert willing, but not for the 
 conquered 'is it to appoint the sum of the ransom, or hold 
 parley with the victors regarding the price of 'blood! Hear- 
 est thou, fallen one? I withdraw my triumphant legions 
 ivhen it pleases me. This is a land where the wine and the 
 women are luscious. When we have drunken deep enough, 
 we shall load ourselves with spoil and treasure and go. 
 Yet ere I withdraw, I shall have known thee as a lover, 
 whose desire is kindled the fiercer because of thy hate. 
 Death shall be the priest who celebrates our espousals. 
 He shall unite us with a ring of steel and fire. Then I 
 depart, leaving thee to the enemies of thine own house- 
 hold, who shall wreak thee greater ruin than thy foes. But 
 a child shall be born of thy long resistance and my fierce 
 triumph and our brief mingling, who shall be called Peace! 
 Hearest thou, France?" 
 
 He listened, standing on the hard-frozen, white-pow- 
 dered garden path between the swept-up snow mounds. 
 There was no answer. He returned, stamping the snow 
 from his clogged spurs, to the house. 
 
 The door stood open as he had left it. The even tread 
 of the sentries came from the Rue de Provence. He had 
 heard the guard being changed at the entrance gates and 
 beyond the wall at the bottom of the garden. Those with- 
 out were vigilant if those within were not. He remem- 
 bered, noting the absence of the usual Chancery attendant 
 from the hall bench, that he had given permission to the 
 servants, without distinction, to make merry upon this 
 night. He could hear no clinking of glasses and bottles 
 belowstairs. Perhaps sleep had overtaken them as it had 
 the revelers in the dining-room. He softly opened the 
 double doors of that apartment. A stench combined 
 of stale tobacco, spilled wine, and alcoholic humanity of- 
 fended his nose, and he withdrew it. But not before he 
 had ascertained that with the exception of Abeken, who 
 had left early, and Count Hatzfeldt, who must have been 
 taken home the Staff slept there. 
 
 He looked into the drawing-room. The fire lay in gray 
 ashes between the fire dogs. On the table lay the signed 
 Treaty with Bavaria. He picked it up and rolled it, looking
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 649 
 
 at the mantelshelf, where the bat-winged bronze demon 
 brooded over the ormolu clock. 
 
 The room, whose hearth was cold, whose windows, closely 
 shuttered, bolted and blinded, had the curtains drawn close 
 over them, was lighted by a yellow ray shining through the 
 glass door opening into the conservatory. He crossed to 
 this door and looked through. Commendably sober, the 
 two officers of the guard of Green Jaegers who were quar- 
 tered here sat chatting in whispers and smoking by the 
 stove. Between them on an upturned tub bottom stood a 
 little, twinkling, taper-lit Christmas tree. 
 
 "VonUslar! Bleichroder! ..." 
 
 The Minister opened the glass door and looked in. The 
 officers sprang to their feet and stood saluting him. He 
 smiled at the little tree, and asked, nodding at the door at 
 the end of the conservatory, leading to a room where the 
 library of the late M. Tessier had peaceably moldered until 
 the clerks and decipherers of the Prussian Foreign Office 
 had been assigned it for their quarters : 
 
 ' ' Have those fellows yet gone to bed ? ' ' 
 
 And even as he queried he knew by the peculiar smile 
 upon the faces of Captain von Uslar and his subaltern, 
 that the scene in the dining-room was repeated here. He 
 said with a shrug : 
 
 "Oh, well! . . . They had my permission to make a 
 night of it. One would like to be sure, though, that there 
 are no candles to upset!" 
 
 The junior officer moved to the library door and opened 
 it, setting free a puff of hot air laden with wine fumes, and 
 a chorus of snores ranging from piping alto to deep bass. 
 Nothing could be seen except the vague outlines of pros- 
 trate bodies, revealed by a pale gleam of moonlight that 
 made its way down the chimney and shone upon the dead 
 ashes of the hearth. 
 
 "Shall I wake anybody?" queried the lieutenant's look. 
 The Minister made a sign in the negative, bade a pleasant 
 good night to the two officers, and withdrew, shutting the 
 glass door. He quitted the drawing-room, went into the 
 hall, tried the fastenings of the hall door, and crossed to 
 the hatchway under the main staircase that led to the 
 kitchen quarters. A gas jet was flaring in a draught at 
 the bottom of the staircase. He went down, regulated the 
 light as he passed to a safer volume, and tried the handle
 
 650 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 of the door leading to what had been a housekeeper's par- 
 lor, and was now used by the house steward and the 
 Chancery attendants as an upper servants' hall. A gasa- 
 lier of flaring jets revealed five persons in here, wrapped 
 in the heavy sleep of drunkenness. One, the house steward, 
 snored, recumbent on a sofa; Grams and Engelberg, those 
 monuments of rigid respectability, reposed with their heads 
 and shoulders resting on the table, appropriately deco- 
 rated with empty bottles and upset glass beakers, and in 
 the center of which stood a great china bowl. 
 
 The Minister peeped into this vessel curiously. Apples 
 stuck with cloves, and cinnamon sticks left high and dry at 
 the bowl bottom testified to the Yuletide correctness of 
 the punch, brewed by the skilled hand of the Foreign Office 
 cook. He, the artist responsible for the dinner which had 
 astonished the three Bavarian plenipotentiaries, leaned 
 back, slumbering profoundly in a high-backed armchair. A 
 china pipe, gayly tasseled and painted, drooped from one 
 side of his relaxed mouth. His feet rested upon the sprawl- 
 ing back of the gigantic Niederstedt, who had gone to sleep 
 upon a sheepskin rug in front of the wood stove. His huge 
 right hand still grasped an empty bottle that had contained 
 his favorite Old Nordhausen. He opened one eye as the 
 Minister stooped to inspect him uttered a stertorous 
 snort, and relapsed again into his hoggish Nirvana, leaving 
 the Minister, as he deliberately turned out the gas and 
 quitted the steward's room, to realize that, save himself, 
 the two officers smoking in the winter garden, and the 
 women presumably sleeping on the second floor, the house 
 whose outer precincts were so vigilantly guarded, did not 
 contain a sober head. 
 
 "Well, well! A bout of drunkenness may well be con- 
 doned in the servants when the master himself gave the 
 signal for revelry!" 
 
 He told himself so, smiling as he made the round of the 
 basement house doors. Nothing had disturbed his equa- 
 nimity saving the discovery that Niederstedt was inca- 
 pable of speech or movement. For with his strange char- 
 acteristic mingling of audacity and caution, the Minister, 
 while leaving Mademoiselle de Bayard practically free 
 within the house limits, had insured by private orders that 
 the giant East Prussian should sleep henceforth outside 
 his master's bedroom door.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 651 
 
 Again, as the master's long strides carried him upstairs 
 to the hall again, and he took his bedroom candle from the 
 row on the Empire console, he knew a moment of inward 
 f rst. There was nobody to help him undress, and put away 
 his clothes. Wherever Fate and the Intendant General 
 had assigned the Minister's sleeping quarters, the deft 
 Grans, or the attentive Engelberg had always appeared 
 or, failing these, the stolid Niederstedt to render these 
 and other personal services, the lack of which after long use 
 is keenly felt. 
 
 Is; was a hellish nuisance to a middle-aged man to have 
 to get himself out of his full-dress uniform. One grew hot 
 at the mere thought of unfastening the shoulder belt and 
 sword belt, collar hooks, buckles, swivels, and so on. Last, 
 but not least, the final wrestle with the polished, spurred 
 jack boots. . . . 
 
 ''God be thanked, I am not wearing the cuirass!" he 
 said to himself devoutly, as he laid hand upon his bedroom 
 door. 
 
 It swung back, and then his vexation passed from him. 
 On a little table near the hearthside, where yet some embers 
 of a fire glowed redly, stood a little gayly-caparisoned 
 Christmas tree. Under its branches, adorned with red-and- 
 white tapers as yet unlighted, lay the gifts that came from 
 home. 
 
 He crossed the room in two long steps and stood smiling 
 before the little fir tree. The purplish redness died out of 
 his great cheeks and jowl, the congested veins no longer 
 stood out like ropes upon his throat and temples. The 
 great eyes that had blazed with Satanic pride softened into 
 tenderness, as he picked up the gifts one by one and looked 
 at them. 
 
 "From His Daughter to Papachen," said an embroidered 
 tobacco pouch. "From Bill" and "From Herbert" a gold 
 fusee box and a smoker's knife were respectively labeled. 
 "From thy wife Johanna" was written on a slip of paper 
 attached to the case that contained a handsome cup of Tula 
 ware. He turned the cup in his hands many times before 
 he returned it to its outer husk. He said fondly, famil- 
 iarly, as though the giver were standing beside him : 
 
 ' ' Little thou carest, thou good heart ! whether thou art 
 wife to a Chancellor of the North German Confederation, 
 or the Chancellor of the German Empire. One object in
 
 652 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 life thou hast and that is to get the old man home again ! '' 
 After a moment he added, pitching the Bavarian Treaty 
 on the center table, unhooking and removing his sword belt, 
 and throwing it on the couch: "Babel must be bombarded, 
 or thou wilt not be pleased with me . . . am I not a good 
 pupil, to have learned my lesson so well ? ' ' 
 
 The shoulder belt came off with a slight degree of tvist- 
 ing and fumbling. He laid it aside, and moved to the slav- 
 ing glass, and by its aid unfastened from his collar swivel 
 the Iron Cross. "Good!" he commented, and laid it on 
 top of a dispatch box on the center table. Then he began 
 slowly and methodically to unfasten the other Orders from 
 his breast. As he pricked a finger with the pin of one in 
 wrenching at it angrily, it occurred to him that it would 
 have been perfectly feasible to have removed his dress tunic 
 with all its decorations, and this discovery stung him to 
 wrath. 
 
 "Kreuzdonnerwetter! am I, then, such a sheep 's head ? ' ' 
 he said angrily to himself. Something dropped upon the 
 floor with a tinkle and rolled away merrily under a chair, 
 leaving its owner with the thick silver pin that had secured 
 it gripped between his finger and thumb. It was the medal- 
 lion bestowed upon him in '42 for an act of gallantry, the 
 obverse a shield of silver on a circle, bearing a red-enam- 
 eled Prussian eagle, and on the reverse the inscription: 
 "Fur Eettung aus Gefahr." 
 
 The pin remained in his hand. Cursing his own clumsi- 
 ness, he took the lighted candle he had placed upon the 
 center table upon entering, and stooped to recover the 
 evasive prize. Both hands were required for the task, that 
 was quickly apparent. Half unconsciously he reverted to* 
 a habit for which his wife had often playfully scolded him 
 nipped the broken silver pin between his teeth and bent 
 down to resume his search upon the floor. 
 
 As he stooped, the detonation of a driving charge and 
 the deafening roar and shriek of a huge shell were followed 
 by an ear-splitting explosion. His practiced ear told him 
 that the shell had been fired from the Fortress of St. Va- 
 lerien. Half a dozen others followed in rapid succession. 
 No alarm trumpet sounded. Dogs barked, near and far, 
 the echoes of the cannonade rattled among the woods and 
 high grounds, then died out. He said to himself: 
 "Those sugar plums have done damage somewhere near
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 653 
 
 St. Germain. . . . Now, then, where is this runaway 
 medal?" 
 
 As he queried, a sudden spasm of the windpipe shot him 
 to the perpendicular. He coughed and hawked as he had 
 never done before. With a hand upon his side, he coughed, 
 straining horribly. With streaming, starting eyes he 
 coughed, clutching at his throat. 
 
 And then, with a sudden stab of pain beneath the uvula 
 and a strangling access of coughing, he realized that a 
 familiar home prediction had been fulfilled : 
 
 "Otto, you will certainly swallow that pin! . . ." 
 
 He could almost hear the voice of his wife speaking. 
 How absurd! he thought, and laughed; and the agony in 
 his lacerated gullet brought on a fit of choking worse than 
 those that had gone before. He seized the candle and held 
 it to his face before the shaving mirror, opening his power- 
 ful jaws to their widest and straining his eyes that were too 
 blind with tears to see his own swollen, discolored features. 
 He spat furiously, ejecting showers of saliva streaked with 
 blood, but not the obstacle that was choking him. . . . 
 He thrust his hand into his mouth, and groped as 
 far down his throat as his fingers could reach all to no 
 avail. . . . 
 
 "Help! . . ." 
 
 He gasped the word, realizing that if no help came, he 
 was a dead man. And he seized the bell rope and rang 
 furiously, until the rope came down in his hand as had 
 that of the reception-room a day or so previously, followed 
 by a long trail of rusty wire that, when tugged, evoked no 
 metal clang below. 
 
 ' ' Help ! For the love of God ! " he croaked, and whirling 
 vertigo seized him. Whooping with a dreadful croupy 
 intake, he tripped over a footstool, and fell upon his hands 
 and knees, and struggled up again in a last strangling 
 effort, and staggered to the door. 
 
 The door handle seemed to stick, or could it be that his 
 grasp had lost its power? In the light of the gas and his 
 yet flaring candle, he looked at his knuckles and saw that 
 they were turning blackish blue. ... A wave of blackness 
 rose and fell, swamping consciousness. He emerged from 
 drowning waters, and found himself upon the landing, 
 gripping some round object that proved to be the wrenched- 
 off door handle, and moaning in the whisper that he 
 thought a shout :
 
 654 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "Help, help, help! ..." 
 
 Bismarck, the man whom Kings and Emperors meant 
 \vhen they spoke of Prussia the great Minister who had 
 made three Wars was dying. Would no one come? Not 
 one of those who loved the man would ever know the true 
 story of his sordid, solitary ending. . . . Not one of those 
 who hated him but would hear every ugly detail of it, and 
 recount it for others, smiling at its grim, grotesque absurd- 
 ity 
 
 Choked by a pin! . . . An end rather less noble for a 
 great Chancellor than being run over by a donkey cart or 
 smothered in a midden pit full of liquid manure. . . . 
 
 Someone was groaning horribly, close beside him. Deep 
 ruckling, gasping groans with a rattle and a catch midway. 
 Were they his own death groans? What was this? The 
 walls were melting and vanishing. Clear, vivid, definite, 
 there unrolled before his filming eyes a picture of Varzin, 
 his Pomeranian country home. It was Spring. The dark 
 pines about the house shone as though newly varnished. 
 The larches were caparisoned with tassels of pale green. 
 The blue sky was vivid as Persian turquoise. He saw his 
 daughter in a white dress step out from the low wide porch 
 and stand smiling upon the terrace. She had a bunch of 
 primroses in her belt, and his great hound Tyras had fol- 
 lowed her and was rubbing his great head against her 
 sleeve. 
 
 "Dying!" he tried to say to her. "Help your father!" 
 . . . But it seemed to him that he uttered nothing but a 
 groan. There was a thundering in his ears like the noise of 
 a field battery. His great bulk reeled toward her. . . . He 
 pitched forward and fell heavily. . . . 
 
 He heard a scared voice crying: " Monseigneur ! ..." 
 and knew no more. 
 
 LXXVI 
 
 JULIETTE had not gone to bed, this snowy night of the Noel. 
 She had said her Rosary and waited until the Christmas 
 carillon. Then she knelt and prayed for her own pardon, 
 for light and guidance, for a blessing upon those living 
 friends she held most dear, for the souls of the beloved 
 departed. And then she had waited, pacing solitary in her
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 655 
 
 bedroom or sitting by her fire, for the sound of Breagh's 
 return. 
 
 Madame Potier had gone to the Midnight Mass at the 
 Cathedral. There would be crowds of communicants she 
 might not reach home before three. And in her absence 
 had Juliette wished to sleep, sleep would have been ban- 
 ished by the sounds of revelry going on in the regions 
 belowstairs. 
 
 Those first shouts for the Kaiser had been followed by 
 others for the Chancellor. Even in her remote eyrie she 
 could hear the clinking of glasses and the popping of corks. 
 Then after a wild outburst of cheering she had seen, peep- 
 ing between the frost flowers on her window into the 
 snowy, moonlit garden, the great figure in the white Cuiras- 
 sier cloak move down the path between the snow-laden 
 trees. 
 
 She was possessed by a great sense of loneliness, and a 
 vague unreal sensation of living somebody else's life, and 
 not the life proper of Juliette Bayard. She locked her 
 door and built up the fire to a cheerful hearth blaze, and 
 sat upon the rug in her white dressing gown, combing and 
 brushing her glorious hair. 
 
 Never again need those superb waves of jet-black spun 
 silk be confined in the chenille net of Madame Charles 
 Tessier. One could be charming if one chose there was 
 no grim reason for being ugly, thought Mademoiselle, as 
 she brushed and brushed. . . . 
 
 What was that? 
 
 So strange a sound from below that she dropped comb 
 and hairbrush and sprang to her feet quivering. . . . She 
 had heard such a groan uttered when the lance of the 
 Uhlan had plunged through the body of my Cousin Bois- 
 set. . . . 
 
 Again! . . . the sound of a door thrust violently open. 
 Heavy footsteps thudded on the gaslit landing of the next 
 floor, and a muffled voice cried out as though for help. 
 
 A man's voice. . . . Again it cried. No voice sounded 
 in answer. She unlocked her door, and set her foot upon 
 the stairs. 
 
 A few steps down. . . . Then she saw him, the tottering 
 giant with the distorted, blue face, and the open mouth 
 that trickled with saliva and blood. What had befallen 
 Juliette's enemy and France's pitiless oppressor? His
 
 656 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 huge staring eyes were fixed on her. Tears rolled from 
 them as the deep groans issued from his gaping mouth and 
 his broad chest heaved and labored vainly for air. 
 
 "Choking! Help!" his gesture seemed to say to her, 
 and a terrible shudder convulsed her as the huge body 
 crashed down prone at her feet. 
 
 With a strange mingling of pity and aversion she knelt 
 down beside him and looked at him closely by the light 
 of the flaring gas jet that illuminated the landing and 
 stairs. 
 
 He had turned a little in falling. His blackening face 
 and staring, agonized eyes spoke to his desperate condi- 
 tion. . . . What was to be done? . . . The obstruction in 
 the throat must be removed somehow. . . . She rose up and 
 went into the empty room upon her left hand, and felt in 
 the darkness for the bell. There was none. The bell rope 
 had been pulled down by the hand of the Minister, for 
 this was the torture chamber, where M. Thiers underwent 
 his periodical ordeal of thumbscrew and rack. 
 
 Air. ... He must have fresh air. She desperately 
 flung both the windows open, admitting a gush of piercing 
 cold. He still groaned, but more faintly. The man was 
 dying. Was not this the Judgment of Heaven ? 
 
 In the hour of his triumph the sword had fallen. France 
 would be saved there would be no bombardment of 
 Paris if the enemy were to die to-night. This she told 
 herself, standing in the sharp draught from the open 
 windows, and knew a thrill of intolerable triumph, think- 
 ing: 
 
 "Our Lord has delivered him into hands as weak as 
 mine!" 
 
 Ting! . . . 
 
 Her heart leaped and stood still. She looked breath- 
 lessly from the window. Along the middle of the snowy 
 Eue de Provence, where pedestrians must walk to avoid the 
 dangers of the frozen sideways, a lantern moved, carried 
 by a squat, muffled shape. A taller figure followed, moving 
 steadily. 
 
 Ting-ting-ting! . . . 
 
 A shock and thrill of mingled awe and terror passed 
 through her. To some dying Catholic, saint or sinner, in 
 the dawn of this day of the Christ-birth, the Body of the 
 Virgin-born was being conveyed. . . . Was it not to aid a
 
 THE MA1ST OF IRON 657 
 
 soul in dire temptation two souls, it might be that He 
 had bidden His minister pass this way? 
 
 She bent the knee and made the Sign of the Cross, trem- 
 bling, then rose and sped back to the suffocating man. 
 With a strength that she could not have believed herself 
 possessed of, she raised his discolored head upon her lap. 
 . . . His great jaws were wide open. She thrust the tiny 
 hand within them. Shuddering, sickening, she probed with 
 her slender fingers, thrusting them down into the contract- 
 ing, gulping throat. 
 
 Something bright projected beneath the swollen uvula, 
 wedged firmly into the membrane, blocking the orifice of 
 the trachea. She nipped the projecting end in the little 
 fingers and pulled. It yielded. He gave a gulp of relief. 
 As the big teeth snapped together, she plucked the little 
 hand from peril, bringing with it the broken silver pin. 
 
 LXXVII 
 
 HE was instantly, tremendously sick, as an overeaten ogre 
 might have been in an Eastern story. When he had fin- 
 ished vomiting, he heaved up his huge, shuddering bulk. 
 She put her slight shoulder under the groping hand, and 
 guided him. With this slight aid he reached his room. The 
 couch stood drawn forward at an angle toward the fire- 
 place. He staggered to it, let himself drop upon it, and 
 said, in a groan: 
 
 "Drink! . . ." 
 
 He pointed to the night stand at his bedside. When she 
 poured from the jug that stood there into the glass and 
 brought it to him, he gulped the contents greedily. 
 
 "Barley water . . . good for the throat!" he gasped, 
 giving the glass back. She filled it again, and again he 
 emptied it. 
 
 His sweat-dabbled face was regaining a more natural 
 color. She went to the washstand, filled a small shaving 
 basin with cold water from the hand jug, and brought it 
 with a fine clean towel to his side. She dipped the towel 
 in the water and laved his face and forehead. That he 
 experienced relief and refreshment from this she saw by 
 the placid air with which he submitted, leaning his head 
 back against the pillowed sofa end, and closing his eyes.
 
 658 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 She dried his face, and suddenly the great eyes opened. 
 The voice of the Chancellor said : 
 
 "There. . . . That will do!" 
 
 From the passive victim he had suddenly reverted to 
 the master; potent authoritative. . . . 
 
 "Go to bed, Mademoiselle de Bayard, and sleep," he 
 told her. ' ' I am comfortable ... I shall do well enough ! ' ' 
 
 She replaced the basin and towel in silence, bent her 
 head to the figure sitting upright on the sofa, and moved 
 noiselessly to the door. As she touched the broken handle, 
 he said to her abruptly: 
 
 "You will be silent upon the subject of to-night's mis- 
 adventure? ..." 
 
 She answered: 
 
 "I will be silent, Monseigneur ! " 
 
 He said, lifting a finger to detain her yet another instant : 
 
 "Do not err in supposing me ungrateful. I know very 
 well that you have saved my life!" 
 
 A shudder passed through her slight figure. She averted 
 her eyes, remembering. . . . He finished : 
 
 "I lunch with the King at the Prefecture to-morrow. I 
 will see you before I leave the house." 
 
 "As you will, Monseigneur!" 
 
 He added with something like a twinkle : 
 
 "With regard to all that . . . debris upon the landing 
 ... it will not be the first time Niederstedt has been guilty 
 in that way. Good night, Mademoiselle or, rather, good 
 morning. . . . Hark! Was not that the bell of the house 
 door?" 
 
 "I am not sure, Monseigneur!" she said, in hesita- 
 tion, for so ragged and weakly a peal had been evolved by 
 the ringer that the sound might have passed unnoticed by 
 ears less keen than his. 
 
 "They are all asleep or drunk belowstairs ! " He began 
 to raise himself stiffly from the sofa. "I will go down. ..." 
 
 "No; I will go!" she said. 
 
 And she left the room. He let himself sink back on the 
 sofa. "Grosser Gott!" he said to himself. "How near a 
 thing! . . . And that the little Fury should have stopped 
 the brand from quenching. . . . Well, now, at this rate, I 
 may live another thirty years. Not that I should find 
 much zest in a prolonged spell of power and authority. 
 The King-Emperor in the ordinary course must die before
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 659 
 
 long. My master in that event would be a good-natured 
 booby, who in assuming the supreme dignities of Imperial 
 authority would value the stage setting beyond anything 
 else!" 
 
 He quoted with acerbity increased by recent suffering : 
 
 " 'Pomp and solemnity' . . . 'The ancient Crown of 
 Charlemagne from Vienna' ... 'I shall write to my wife 
 to-night' . . . Pray do! ... And while Your Royal High- 
 ness is about it you had better consult little Prince Wil- 
 liam, who would probably give you as valuable advice." 
 
 His thoughts reverted to the fair-haired, puny-limbed 
 eleven-year-old urchin in kilt and plaid of Royal Stuart 
 tartans. . . . "Now," said he, "what sort of a future Em- 
 peror may be enclosed in that husk 1 . . . That the boy has 
 a crippled left arm, and a capital set of sharp teeth, which 
 he uses on the calves of his Military Governor and tutors, 
 is practically all I know of him. . . . Come in ! " 
 
 He had been so lost in thought as to miss the sound 
 of chains undone and bolts drawn back, though he had 
 shivered unconsciously as the opening of the hall door had 
 admitted a volume of fresh, piercing air to the heated 
 house. Now he reared himself upright upon the sofa, 
 stared for a moment at the figure that responded 
 to his gruff "Come in!" and burst into an irresistible 
 laugh. 
 
 "Quite right, Mr. Breagh!" he said, in his clear and 
 fluent English. "I told you to come up to me at whatever 
 hour you might get back. But I forgot that you would 
 naturally visit Madame de Bayard in the costume proper 
 to Jean Jacques Potier, to whom I suppose that extraordi- 
 nary overcoat and the wolfskin cap must have belonged. 
 Frankly, I did not recognize you. . . . The condition of 
 your clothes, and that bandage on your forehead are re- 
 sponsible, more than my lapse of memory. You certainly 
 look rather shaken. Let me hope you have sustained no 
 serious hurt?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh grinned mirthlessly, and looked ruefully 
 down at his snowy boots and trousers, from which the 
 melting snow was beginning to drip in little rills upon 
 the carpeted floor. By the light of the two gas lamps 
 depending above the table, it could be seen that the gory 
 bandage surmounting his pale face had been applied by an 
 experienced hand. He needed no immediate surgical aid.
 
 660 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 But his blue lips and drawn and pallid features betrayed 
 him exhausted. The Minister, noting this, pointed to a 
 chair. 
 
 ' ' Sit down, ' ' he said, ' ' and rest before you speak ! There 
 is brandy in that flask that stands upon the bureau. . . . 
 But something hot would be better for you that is what 
 you most need." 
 
 There was a sound upon the landing ... a faint tap 
 upon the door panel. 
 
 ' ' See who it is ! " said the Chancellor. 
 
 As Breagh rose, the door opened, wide enough to admit a 
 little tray bearing two steaming coffee cups. 
 
 "Capital!" said His Excellency, addressing the unseen 
 cup-bearer. ' ' Now, that I call an excellent thought ! ' ' 
 
 He took a cup from the tray Breagh offered, bidding 
 him: 
 
 ' ' Sit down and drink the other. I should have got none 
 except for you!" When the steaming cup was empty, 
 "Proceed," he said, ignoring the gray daylight outlining 
 the curtain poles and filtering between the drawn curtains. 
 
 "At what hour did you get to Maisons Lafitte? For I 
 presume you did get there?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh said: 
 
 "I got there at about two o'clock. ... I had an ap- 
 pointment at the Cathedral, otherwise I should have started 
 before." 
 
 "I hope she was pretty!" said the Minister, smiling. 
 
 P. C. Breagh went on, as though he had not heard : 
 
 "The snow was beginning to freeze. It was not such 
 bad walking, but that hill of St. Germain was a winder, and 
 in the Forest I lost my way. ... If a party of men peas- 
 ants in sheepskin caps and jackets forest keepers possibly 
 had not turned out of an avenue and kept marching 
 ahead, I might never have got as far as the Seine 
 road. . . ." 
 
 "The men were marching, and not walking," commented 
 the Minister, and his great brows scowled, and his bulldog 
 jowl hardened as he added: "And they carried guns, or 
 you would not have taken them for keepers. ... I have 
 no doubt that they were Francs-tireurs. " 
 
 ' ' I lost them where the road winds by the Seine, "P. C. 
 Breagh continued. ' ' And then I had a real stroke of luck. 
 I came across a hack cab from Versailles at a regular
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 661 
 
 standstill. The snow had balled in the wretched horse's 
 feet, and the driver was as drunk as David's sow. The 
 fare was asleep inside, but he woke as I opened the cab 
 door and flashed one of the lamps in his face, and then he 
 said" the narrator unconsciously gave the tone and ac- 
 cent of the Doctor " 'By the piper that played before 
 Moses, my boyo! I was dreaming of you, and here you 
 are."' 
 
 The Minister broke in: 
 
 ' ' That man was the English correspondent of The Times 
 newspaper. He is of the same surname, though no relative 
 of Odo Russell, the English Envoy, who has been sent out 
 here upon a Mission to our German Court. . . . Ill-natured 
 diplomatists whisper that Great Britain is jealous of the 
 great successes of Prussia, and does not welcome the pros- 
 pect of a United Imperial Germany. Au fond, we Ger- 
 mans have a kind of sentimental regard for your nation. 
 She is an offshoot of the great Germanic stem it is impos- 
 sible that we should not regard her as nearer to us than 
 others. . . . Though, should we ever seriously quarrel, it 
 may be found that the bitterest variance may exist be- 
 tween those of the same blood. . . . And so you have never 
 confided to your friend the secret of your presence in Ver- 
 sailles ! Reticence in the young is an unusual gift. Pos- 
 sibly he gave you a lift in his vehicle ? ' ' 
 
 " Till the unlucky Rosinante gave out," acquiesced 
 
 Breagh, "and we had to leave her with her Jehu at the 
 wreck of the railway station, and then the Doctor stopped 
 at the diggings of the friends he was on the way to look up, 
 a half squadron of Barnekow's Hussars who are quartered 
 in a deserted chateau. They gave me some sandwiches and 
 beer, and then I went on by myself to the Villa Laon where 
 Madame de Bayard ' ' he stopped and added in a low voice 
 "used to live." 
 
 Something in the tone attracted the attention of the 
 Chancellor. He repeated : 
 
 ' ' Used to. ... Does she not, then, live there now ? Has 
 she gone with M. de Straz the pair of love birds to- 
 gether? ..." 
 
 Said P. C. Breagh, seized with a shudder that knocked 
 his knees together, and speaking in a low voice : 
 
 "I I beg of Your Excellency to spare her your irony. 
 . . . Madame de Bayard is dead ! ' '
 
 662 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 "So! . . ." 
 
 The Minister's ejaculation was followed by the order: 
 
 "Now the details! . . . Has she died naturally, or by 
 accident or by a murderer's hand?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh said, lowering his voice apprehensively : 
 
 "She was killed by a shell. There was a bombardment 
 from Mont Valerien. ... It broke out at about a quar- 
 ter past two this morning just as I reached the Villa 
 Laon. . . ." 
 
 "Ah! now I understand how you got that love token on 
 your forehead ! ' ' said the Minister. 
 
 Breagh nodded, and wiped his wet forehead with a 
 blood-stained handkerchief, and shuddered and went on : 
 
 "Nobody had gone to bed when I got to the villa. The 
 blinds of what I could see was a dining-room were drawn 
 up and the curtains all drawn back. The room was bril- 
 liantly lighted, lots of mirrors and crystal girandoles. It 
 was like a scene on the stage, looking at it from the snowy 
 garden. Shin-deep in snow, because the paths had not 
 been cleared. . . . You could not tell where the paths 
 were, in fact, so I steered my course by the big shining 
 window. Then I saw him, moving before me " 
 
 Queried His Excellency : 
 
 "By him, you mean whom? . . ." 
 
 "A man," said P. C. Breagh, "whom I saw moving along 
 before me, taking cover behind snowy bushes and clumps 
 of frosted prairie grass. When he stood up, I saw that he 
 was short in figure and had immensely broad shoulders. 
 I was quite sure that I had seen the fellow before. In 
 fact " 
 
 "In fact," the Minister sharply interrupted, "you rec- 
 ognized him as the man who posed as M. Charles Tessier, 
 and who can have been nobody but M. Straz. Now tell 
 me, whom was he watching? Madame and a companion, 
 I venture to guess?" He added, as P. C. Breagh assented : 
 "What was the man? A civilian or an officer?" 
 
 P. C. Breagh answered, repressing another shudder: 
 
 ' ' A tall, fair officer of the Prussian Guard Infantry. He 
 and Madame were at supper, or they ha'd just finished. He 
 had opened a fresh bottle of champagne and was leaning 
 over to fill Madame 's glass when I noticed the short man 
 standing still, watching them closely. He seemed to have 
 his right hand in his pocket. He drew it out and then
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 668 
 
 I don't know very well what happened. There was the 
 heavy boom of a big gun, and a shell came shrieking like 
 an express train. ... I remember how the spitting flare of 
 the fuse lit up the sky. And there was a terrific crash 
 and something hit me on the head a bit of masonry, it 
 must have been for when I came to myself other shells 
 were hurtling, and hitting, and bursting. . . . One smashed 
 the stables of the chateau where the Hussars are quartered, 
 and another has dug a crater, they tell me, in the side of 
 the Terrace of St. Germain. The flashes made everything 
 show up clear like lightning, and I picked myself up. . . . 
 The blood was running down into my eyes, blinding me. 
 But I'm not likely to forget what I saw. It was ... so 
 awfully stagey ... so like a picture of the sensational, 
 blood-curdling, highly colored kind." 
 
 "Goon!" 
 
 ' ' It was like this. The upper story of the Villa had been 
 shaved off simply. There was the interior of the dining- 
 room before me, all color and mirrors and gilding and 
 twinkling wax candles in crystal girandoles. The French 
 windows had been shattered, and there was a great hole in 
 the ceiling. On the mantelshelf, just in front of me, be- 
 tween two Sevres candlesticks, was a clock, the hands point- 
 ing to half-past two. There were Sevres figures on each 
 side of the clock I have seen them here in the shop win- 
 dows, 'Pierrot qui rit' and 'Pierrot qui pleure.' The cry- 
 ing Pierrot had been smashed by the shell splinter that 
 shivered the mantel mirror, but the laughing Pierrot was 
 untouched. He seemed to be holding his sides and scream- 
 ing at Valverden sprawling across the table with his skull 
 shattered, and Madame de Bayard sitting stone-dead in her 
 chair. She had the cigarette in her fingers, still alight. 
 ... It must have been painless. . . . There was only a 
 small blue hole in her temple just here." 
 
 The Minister was repeating : 
 
 "Valverden! . . . Are you clear that you mean Count 
 Max Valverden ? . . . But of course you are ! There is no 
 other officer of that name in the Prussian Guard Infantry. 
 How you came to be acquainted you shall tell me to-mor- 
 row." He laughed harshly, looking at the clock upon the 
 mantel. "I should say to-day, at a somewhat later hour." 
 He added, as Breagh rose: "Have you told anything of 
 this matter to Mademoiselle de Bayard? Then, I advise
 
 664 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 you, do not enlighten her at all. Or, if you must do so, tell 
 her after you are married ! ' ' 
 
 He drove the sentence home with another that left the 
 listener gasping: 
 
 "For of course you will marry, you are capitally suited 
 to one another. The mother exists no longer and M. Straz 
 if he escaped, which is most likely, will not be able to in- 
 terfere. Let me recommend you to get some rest. You 
 will require it. For at twelve you leave Versailles with 
 Mademoiselle de Bayard en route for England. Now 
 go! . . ." 
 
 LXXVIII 
 
 P. C. BREACH and Juliette met upon the morrow in the 
 same spot near the rose tree that had borne pink blossoms 
 undismayed through the bitter wintry months. 
 
 "You have bestowed upon me no Christmas present, 
 Monsieur, ' ' Juliette said to him gravely. ' ' Now I will have 
 you gather one of those roses and give it to me. ..." 
 
 He strode into the drift, mid-leg deep, and cut a bud that 
 was upon the sheltered side next the wall. 
 
 "Be careful of the thorns, lest they prick you!" Juliette 
 cried to him. "Do not cut your fingers! Do not get 
 wet!" 
 
 "You shall not have this rose," he said, withholding the 
 frozen flower, "until you have given my Christmas gift 
 to me!" 
 
 Her blue eyes rose, brimming, to meet his. 
 
 "Ah! what is there I can give you? Tell me, my 
 friend!" she said softly. 
 
 He got out, blushing, and swallowing a lump that rose in 
 his throat: 
 
 "We have been through so much ... we have seen 
 strange and terrible things together ! . . . "We have shared 
 dangers ... we have seen a great nation in the death 
 throes. . . . Nothing could ever make* us strangers what- 
 ever came to pass. . . . But now we are going back to 
 England. Before we leave this garden where we have been 
 so happy " 
 
 "It is true. . . . We have been happy here!" she an- 
 swered.
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 665 
 
 Winged smiles were hovering about her mouth. Jeweled 
 gleams played between the -black fringes of her eyelashes, 
 as though fairy kingfishers were diving for some new joy in 
 those sapphire depths. She asked demurely, as the clumsy 
 male creature choked and boggled: 
 
 ''What do you seek, Monsieur? Some souvenir. . . . 
 Some token of friendship?" 
 
 He said, in a low, dogged voice: 
 
 ' ' I have never asked mere friendship from you. But if 
 
 you if you " He got it out with a desperate effort: 
 
 "Before we leave this ... if you would kiss me 
 once . . ." 
 
 She drew back. A terrible dignity vested her sloping 
 shoulders. Modesty veiled her eyes. He was going miser- 
 ably away, when she beckoned to him, with that splendid 
 sweep of the arm that might have belonged to Krimhilde- 
 Briinhilde-Isolde-Britomart and the whole covey of Ro- 
 mance Ideals. . . . He returned. . . . She spoke, and her 
 eyes were wavering under the eager fire of his : 
 
 ' ' See you well, Monsieur, a young lady cannot bestow a 
 gift of that kind. It is for the gentleman, having obtained 
 consent, to take ..." 
 
 Breagh caught her to his broad breast and snatched the 
 coveted guerdon. He cried to her in wonder and triumph : 
 
 "You love me! ... A fellow like me? . . . And you 
 will be my wife? We are not going to England to be 
 parted ! I am not a beggar any more ! I will try again for 
 my practicing degree in Medicine, and get it ! I will write 
 books and make a name for myself in Literature. But not 
 unless you '11 marry me ! . . . Oh, Juliette ! say when you 
 will marry me ? " 
 
 She said, with downcast eyelids that veiled laughter, 
 though the rose flush had dyed her very temples, and the 
 beating of her heart shook her slight frame: 
 
 "Monsieur, my grandmother would have answered: 
 'Under the circumstances, the marriage cannot take place 
 too soon. . . . Once a young girl has been kissed, she must 
 fie married/ And" the smile peeped out "I was taught 
 always to obey my grandmother. ..." 
 
 "Admirably spoken!" said the Chancellor. 
 
 He had come upon the lovers, of set purpose it may have 
 been. Now he stood surveying them in an ogreish, yet not 
 unamiable fashion, as they stood before him hand in hand.
 
 666 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 He said, and the resonant tones were veiled by a painful 
 hoarseness, of which the reason was known to Mademoiselle 
 alone : 
 
 ' ' Mr. Breagh, Count Hatzfeldt has the necessary papers 
 of which I spoke to you. You will find him in the drawing- 
 room waiting to complete some slight formalities in- 
 separable from the granting of passports in time of 
 War. . . . Good-bye to you, good luck and all happiness. 
 I am on the point of departure for the Prefecture, so I 
 shall not again see you. For a moment I detain Mademoi- 
 selle." 
 
 As Breagh bowed to Juliette and His Excellency and 
 hastened toward the house, the Chancellor said to Juliette : 
 
 "It is too cold to stand here ... it will be wiser to 
 walk a little. There is a path that leads us out near the 
 wall at the bottom of the shrubbery. ' ' 
 
 It was where the mask of the Satyr, now with long icicles 
 hanging from his eyebrows and goat-beard, jutted from the 
 ivy of the boundary wall. 
 
 The little spring had not frozen, the ferns and grasses 
 round its margin were still quite green. A few pinched 
 violets peeped from among their broad leaves. Juliette 
 stooped and gathered one or two of the faintly-fragrant 
 blossoms and a leaf of fern and a sprig of ivy. As she 
 slipped them into the inner pocket of her jacket, the Chan- 
 cellor spoke: 
 
 "Mademoiselle, I have to thank you for my life 
 
 Now, last night " He squarely confronted her, his 
 
 powerful eyes looking down upon the little figure so frail 
 and slender. "Now, last night," he repeated, "had you 
 really believed that my death meant the salvation of your 
 country. . . . Well ! . . . Did you not hold me in the hol- 
 low of your hand ? ' ' 
 
 She met his stern regard with a look that was clear as 
 crystal. She said in her silver tones: 
 
 "It is true, Monseigneur. Our Lord granted me my 
 wish. You so great, so strong, so powerful, were helpless 
 as an infant. ... I had only not to put out my finger 
 and you were a dead man! The power of Life and Death 
 was mine, yet I could not let you perish, for Almighty 
 God would not permit it. ... He willed that you should 
 not die. . . . Crush France or spare her, you will not be 
 carrying out the wishes of Count Bismarck. You will do
 
 THE MAN OF IRON 667 
 
 what God permits you to do no more and no less! But 
 when you are most strong and most powerful . . . when 
 you play with Kings and Emperors like pawns, then I 
 ask you to remember Juliette de Bayard!" 
 
 She quivered in every limb, but she went on reso- 
 lutely : 
 
 "You are not a good man, Monseigneur! . . . Hard, 
 subtle, arrogant, cruel and unscrupulous, God made you to 
 be the Pate of France. One day she will lift up her face 
 from the mire into which you have trodden it, and the star 
 will be burning unquenched upon her forehead. Y7e may 
 both be dead before that day dawns. But rest assured 
 that when next your armies cross the Rhine they will not 
 gain an easy victory ! . . . We shall be prepared and ready, 
 Monseigneur, when the Germans come again!" 
 
 He looked at her and listened to her in silence, perhaps 
 in wonder. She seemed the Spirit of France incarnate, a 
 pale reed shaken by prophetic winds from Heaven. 
 
 "It may be so," he said to her gravely. "And now, 
 Mademoiselle de Bayard, I shall ask you to give me your 
 hand at parting!" 
 
 ' ' Take it, Monseigneur, ' ' she bade him. 
 
 He held it in his an instant, saying in his clear-cut 
 French : 
 
 "I desire no evil to France when I say that I wish that 
 every Frenchman had a daughter like you! ..." He 
 added: "Thanks for the beignets. ... I shall always re- 
 member you when I am served with them. . . . And for 
 last night again thank you! . . . Farewell and all happi- 
 ness attend you, Mademoiselle ! ' ' 
 
 His heavy footsteps crunched the snow. He was gone, 
 and she had almost called after him : 
 
 "Monseigneur, I do not hate you so much as I have 
 said. ..." 
 
 On the morning of the 27th of January eighteen French 
 guns on Fort Montrouge had been keeping up a brisk 
 cannonade of the German investing-works. Meeting no 
 response their thunder ceased. There, upon the east and 
 north of beleaguered Paris with a simultaneous uprush 
 of fierce white flame from the muzzles of seventy giant 
 howitzers, with the detonation of driving-charges, and the 
 piercing scream and deafening crash of the percussion of
 
 668 THE MAN OF IRON 
 
 Krupp's huge siege-projectiles, the bombardment of the 
 doomed Queen City of Cities had begun. . . . 
 
 A few moments before, as Juliette de Bayard and her 
 lover set foot upon the steamer-pier at Dover, an aged 
 French lady, who had stopped Count Bismarck on the steps 
 of the Prefecture, had imploringly said to him : 
 
 "0! Monseigneur, donnez nous la paix!" 
 
 And the Iron Chancellor had replied to her almost 
 smilingly : 
 
 "Dear lady, it is with a peace as with a marriage, there 
 must be two parties willing to conclude the contract. . . . 
 I am ready to make peace, but the other side is not!" 
 
 THE END
 
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