Part 19 (1/2)

”Monseiur le Baron!” he cried excitedly, with a dull light in his eyes that made a man of him, and no servant. ”Has Monsieur le Baron heard the news--the great tidings?”

”No--we have heard nothing. What is your news?”

”The King of Prussia has insulted the French Amba.s.sador at Ems. He struck him on the face, as it is said. And war has been declared by the Emperor. They are going to march to Berlin, Monsieur!”

As he spoke two groups of men swaggered arm in arm along the street.

They were singing ”Partant pour la Syrie,” very much out of tune.

Others were crying ”a Berlin--a Berlin!”

Alphonse Giraud turned and looked at me with a sudden rush of colour in his cheeks.

”And I, who thought life a matter of coats and neckties,” he said, with that quick recognition of his own error that first endeared him to me and made him the better man of the two.

We stood for a few minutes watching the excited groups of men on the Boulevard. At the cafes the street boys were selling newspapers at a prodigious rate, and wherever a soldier could be seen there were many pressing him to drink.

”In Berlin,” they shouted, ”you will get sour beer, so you must drink good red wine when it is to be had.” And the diminutive bulwarks of France were ready enough, we may be sure, to swallow Dutch courage.

”In Berlin!” echoed Giraud, at my side. ”Will it end there?”

”There or in Paris,” answered I, and lay no claim to astuteness, for the words were carelessly uttered.

We drove through the noisy streets, and Frenchmen never before or since showed themselves to such small advantage--so puerile, so petty, so vain. It was ”Berlin” here and ”Berlin” there, and ”Down with Prussia” on every side. A hundred catchwords, a thousand raised voices, and not one cool head to realize that war is not a game. The very sellers of toys in the gutter had already nicknamed their wares, and offered the pa.s.ser a black doll under the name of Bismarck, or a monkey on a stick called the King of Prussia.

It was with difficulty that I brought Alphonse Giraud to a grave discussion of the pressing matter we had in hand, for his superficial nature was open to every wind that blew, and now swayed to the tempest of martial ardour that swept across the streets of Paris.

”I think,” he said, ”I will buy myself a commission. I should like to go to Berlin. Yes--Howard, _mon brave_, I will buy myself a commission.”

”With what?”

”Ah--mon Dieu!--that is true. I have no money. I am ruined. I forgot that.”

And he waved a gay salutation of the whip to a pa.s.sing friend.

”And then, also,” he added, with a face suddenly lugubrious, ”we have the terrible business of the Vicomte. Howard--listen to me--at all costs the ladies must never see _that_--must never know. Dieu! it was horrible. I feel all twisted here--as when I smoked my first cigar.”

He touched himself on the chest, and with one of his inimitable gestures described in the air a great upheaval.

”I will try to prevent it,” I answered.

”Then you will succeed, for your way of suggesting might easily be called by another name. And it is not only the women who obey you. I told Lucille the other day that she was afraid of you, and she blazed up in such a fury of denial that I felt smaller than nature has made me. Her anger made her more beautiful than ever, and I was stupid enough to tell her so. She hates a compliment, you know.”

”Indeed, I have never tried her with one.”

Alphonse looked at me with grave surprise.

”It is a good thing,” he said, ”that you do not love her. Name of G.o.d!

where should I be?”

”But it is with Madame and not Mademoiselle Lucille that we shall have to do this afternoon,” I said hastily.