Part 6 (1/2)

Beauchamp, the journalist, sat at his desk in his editorial sanctum early one bright morning in the autumn of 1841. He had gone to work long before his usual hour, for important movements were on foot, the political atmosphere was agitated and Paris was in a state of feverish excitement; besides, Beauchamp had that day printed in his journal a dispatch from Algeria that would be certain to cause a great sensation, and, with the proper spirit of pride, the journalist desired to be at his post that he might receive the numerous congratulations his friends could not fail to offer, as the dispatch had appeared in his paper alone.

The sanctum had not an attractive look; in fact, it was rather dilapidated, while, in addition, the disorder occasioned by the previous night's work had not been repaired, and all was chaos and confusion.

Beauchamp was busily engaged in glancing over the rival morning papers when Lucien Debray entered and seated himself at another desk. The Ministerial Secretary smiled upon the journalist in a knowing way, and the latter, nodding to him with an air of triumph, silently pointed to the pile of journals he had finished examining. Lucien took them up, and without a word began scanning their contents.

”Glorious news that from the army in Algeria!” cried Chateau-Renaud, rus.h.i.+ng into the sanctum.

”Glorious, indeed!” replied the editor, looking up from the paper over which he was hurriedly skimming. On the huge table at his side, as well as beneath it, and under his feet and his capacious arm-chair, nothing was to be seen but newspapers.

”Take a chair, Renaud, if you can find one, and help yourself to the news. You see I have Lucien similarly engaged yonder.”

The Ministerial Secretary glanced up from his papers, returned his friend's salutation and resumed his reading. He was dressed with his customary elegance and richness, but his form and face were fuller than when last before the reader, and his brown hair was besprinkled with gray.

”I congratulate you, Beauchamp, on being the first to give the news,”

continued Chateau-Renaud. ”Not a paper in Paris but your own has a line from the army this morning.”

”Rather congratulate me and my paper on having a friend at court.”

”Ha! and that explains the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that an opposition journal has intelligence, which only the Bureau of War could have antic.i.p.ated! Treason--treason!”

The editor and the Secretary exchanged significant smiles.

”Oh! I don't doubt that your favors are reciprocal,” continued the young aristocrat, laughing. ”I've half a mind to be something useful myself--Minister--editor--anything but an idler and a law-giver--just to experience the exquisite sensation of a new pleasure--the pleasure of revealing and publis.h.i.+ng to the world something it knew not before. Why, you two fellows, in this dark and dirty little room, are the two greatest men in Paris this morning--or were, rather, before your paper, Beauchamp, laid before the world what only you and Lucien knew previously. Oh! the delight, the rapture of knowing something that n.o.body else knows, and then of making the revelation!”

”And this news from Algeria is really important,” remarked the editor.

”Important! So important that it will be before the Chambers this morning,” replied the Secretary.

”So I supposed,” said the Deputy, ”and called to learn additional particulars, if you had any, on my way to the Chambers.”

”We gave all we had, my dear Lycurgus, and for that were indebted to an official dispatch, telegraphed to the War Office, and faithfully re-telegraphed to us by our well-beloved Lucien.”

”It's true, then, as I have sometimes suspected, that the wires radiate from the Minister's sanctum to the editor's?” was the laughing rejoinder.

”It must be so, or there's witchcraft in it. There's witchcraft, at any rate, in this new invention. Speed, secrecy, security and surety--no eastern genius of Arabian fiction can be compared to the electric telegraph; and how Ministers or editors continued to keep the world in va.s.salage, as they always have done, without this ready slave, seems now scarce less wonderful than the invention itself. Instead of detracting from the power of the press, the telegraph renders it more powerful than ever.”

”But affairs in Algeria--is not the news splendid!” cried the editor.

”Why did we not all become Spahis and win immortality, as some of our generals have?”

”As to immortality,” said the Secretary, ”we should have been far more likely to win the phantom as dead men than as living heroes.”

”Debray was at the raising of the siege of Constantine,” said Beauchamp laughing, ”and knows all about the honors of war.”

”Yes, indeed, and all about the raptures of starvation, of cold and hunger, after victory, and the ecstatic felicity of being pursued by six Bedouins, and after having slain five having my own neck encircled by the yataghan of the sixth!”

”And how chanced it that you saved your head, Lucien?” asked the Count.

”Save it--I didn't save it; but a most excellent friend of mine--a friend in need--galloped up and saved it for me.”

”Yes,” replied Beauchamp, ”our gallant friend, Maximilian Morrel, the Captain of Spahis--now colonel of a regiment, and in the direct line of promotion to the first vacant baton--eh, Lucien? A lucky thing to save the head of one of the War Office from a Bedouin's yataghan. Up--up--up, like a balloon, has this young Spahi risen ever since.”