The Czar A tale of the Time of the First Napoleon 15

The Czar A tale of the Time of the First Napoleon 15

“_Even me?_” said Feodor, nestling close to him and putting his arm

caressingly about his neck. But Petrovitch did not answer.

 

“The people were willing,” even beyond their power, so that three days

afterwards the Czar published a ukase, not to ask for gifts, but to

limit their amount. “The nobles literally gave him Russia,” wrote the

Sardinian ambassador to his sovereign. “They melted into tears; in

short, sire, there never was anything like it. The merchants have given

him ten million roubles, and lent him fifty or sixty million.”

 

But the mass of the people--peasants, mujiks, serfs, who tilled the

soil--what part had they in this splendid outburst of loyal and

patriotic enthusiasm? Napoleon expected that these “oppressed and

degraded slaves” would hail him as a deliverer--would rise everywhere

in revolt, and massacre their tyrants. Very different was the fact.

When the time came for the serfs voted by the nobles to be levied from

their estates, and when the vast crown lands had also to contribute

their proportion of recruits, there was weeping and wailing in the

izbas of every village from the Neva to the steppes of Tartary. But

it was not, as in other days, the conscript who mourned his hard lot,

and his mother, his sister, his betrothed who made sore lamentation

over a separation probably life-long. It was the one _not_ chosen who

mingled his tears with those of his friends and parents, because he

might not go and shed his blood for the Czar and holy Russia. Glad

was the young recruit as he donned his simple uniform--a gray caftan,

with loose trousers and a crimson sash; and proudly did he wear on the

front of his gray cap the imperial badge, “a brazen cross surmounting

a crown over the letter _A_.” First and highest the cross, symbol of

the Christian faith; beneath that, the imperial crown of Russia; again

beneath that--Alexander.

 

But although putting himself, as he was wont to do, in the lowest

place, and when possible out of sight altogether, the strong personal

love with which Alexander had inspired his subjects counted for more,

in that hour of a nation’s conflict and agony, than the traditional

religious veneration of the Russian for his country and his Czar. Well

was it for Russia, and for Europe also, that the Czar God had given

her was Alexander Paulovitch. It was not only that he had been, since

the beginning of his reign, “perfectly just as emperor, singularly

generous as man;”[21] not only that he was richly endowed with all

those brilliant and fascinating qualities which take the eye and win

the suffrage of the multitude. The secret of his influence lay deeper.

God had given him a gift more precious still. He had touched his heart

with “the enthusiasm of humanity.” This autocrat of fifty millions

“loved his brother whom he had seen,” even when as yet he knew not the

divine Father “whom he had not seen.” The hand that toiled so hard to

bring back the perishing mujik from his death-like swoon was well used

to deeds of beneficence. Of these a hundred stories might be told: at

that time they _were_ told, not only in the salons of St. Petersburg,

but beside the stove in the izbas of many a country village. Everywhere

the mujiks said, “Our lord the Czar loves us.” And everywhere, as long

as the world lasts, love will win love.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

CLEMENCE.

 

“Vive, vive le Roi!

A bas la République!”--_Vendéan War-Song._

 

 

It is the fair and pleasant land of France--a land of corn-fields and

orchards and sunny garden-plots, where quiet villages nestle in shady

nooks, and old châteaux stand proudly amidst their sheltering woods.

You feel everywhere that this land has been for many a century tilled

and cared for by the hand of man; that generation after generation

sleeps in peace beneath the shadow of its gray old churches. Long ages

of toil and civilization have left their impress here, and the present

is the heir of a glorious and venerable past.

 

Yet, perhaps no country has ever suffered more. War after war has

swept over it; cruel oppression made the Revolution a terrible

necessity; and, again, the excesses of the Revolution made men forget

the crimes of the despotism that engendered it. And in the days of

which we write there brooded over all the portentous shadow of another

despotism--almost crushing enough to recall the worst days of Louis,

falsely called the Magnificent, and of his thrice-accursed successor.

 

Still, even in those evil times many a secluded nook seemed to be

hidden in the hollow of His hand, so quietly did it slumber throughout

all--escaping not indeed occasional suffering, but anything like

general ruin.

 

One such nook--a little pastoral village not a hundred miles from

Paris--had in its immediate neighbourhood a spot yet more secluded,

where a noble family of the “old _régime_” who otherwise might have

wandered homeless exiles from their native land, found a welcome

refuge. The simple four-roomed cottage, with the vine trained over its

tiny porch, would have been an unpretending dwelling for the village

smith or carpenter. Yet few could have looked on it attentively, even

from the outside, and none could have entered it, without feeling sure

that its inmates inherited the traditions of centuries of refinement

and cultivation.

 

The morning sun of one of the earliest days of 1812 was streaming

into the little porch. The weather was mild and beautiful--unusually

so for the season. One person was enjoying it thoroughly--a lad of

about seventeen, who reclined in the porch, intent upon a book, while

the sunshine streamed brightly over him, and the breeze gently lifted

his soft brown hair. The __EXPRESSION__ of his face was rather sweet than

strong--his forehead was good, his eyes large and dark, his mouth

well-formed and sensitive, but lacking as yet the look of resolution

that might come with riper manhood.

 

So absorbed was he in his book that he did not hear an approaching

footstep; but then it was a very light one. The young girl who came

out from the parlour to join her brother was his senior by a year, and

looked even more. She was tall, but her slight figure was well formed

and graceful. Her eyes were dark, like her brother’s; and her hair a

glossy brown, very fine and soft. It did not wave or float, but was

neatly coiled about a head which might have served a sculptor for his

model. There was no weakness in the delicate lines of her face, though

there was much tenderness. Her complexion was pale; but there was in

her cheek a hint of possible colour, which came and went with every

passing emotion. No one thought of calling Clémence de Talmont pretty,

but in the eyes of the few who loved her she was beautiful as the

dream of a poet.

 

“Henri,” she said, in a gentle but decided voice--“Henri.”

 

He looked up slowly, and said with a reluctant air, “Surely it is not

time for breakfast.”

 

“Mother has had her coffee, and yours is ready whenever you wish for

it. It is not _that_--”

 

“I had rather wait,” said Henri, ignoring her last words. “I want to

see the end of Pizarro’s expedition;” and he turned over a page of his

book.

 

“What are you reading?” asked Clémence, suppressing something like a

sigh.

 

“Les Incas de Marmontel--a beautiful book,” he added, rousing himself.

“Those old heathen monarchs, who lived for their people, tried to make

others happy, placed their glory in being loved, not feared, _ought_ to

have had a better fate.”

 

“I think _you_ might find a better book,” returned his sister, with a

slight tinge of asperity. “Marmontel was a friend of the Revolution--a

philosopher, a deist.”

 

“Ah, sister mine, you would rather see me reading the Confessions of

St. Augustine,” said Henri with a good-humoured laugh. “But there is a

time for all things; and I cannot think ill of books that make me love

God, and his beautiful world, and the creatures he has made.”

 

“True, brother,” said Clémence earnestly and with a rising colour;

“only take care that the God you love is the God of the Bible and the

Church, not the God of the philosophers and the _savants_. But”--after

a pause, and with a change of tone--“but, Henri, will you not run down

to the village before our mother leaves her room, and see whether there

is any placard on the Mairie?”

 

Henri closed his book and stood up, the anxiety in his sister’s face

reflecting itself, though faintly, upon his. “Why such haste?” he

asked.

 

“Babette told me this morning that she hears there is a new ‘senatus

consultus.’”

 

Henri’s thoughts turned rapidly from the mild sway of the Incas, of

which he had been dreaming, to the iron despotism of Napoleon, for

him no dream, but a stern and terrible reality. “If there were twenty

conscriptions,” he muttered hastily, “you know I am under age.”

 

“I do _not_ know it,” Clémence answered. “The curé says he fears all

are liable who will complete their eighteenth year in 1812. That is why

I want you to go and see whether the placard is there, before we alarm

our mother. But take your coffee first, brother. I will bring it to

you, if you like.”

 

She brought him a cup of fragrant café-au-lait, and a fresh roll,

prepared that morning by her own hands. He had just begun to eat and

drink when a voice from an adjoining room--like her own, gentle and

musical, but decided--called, “Clémence.”

 

“Don’t delay about the Mairie,” she said as she hastened in. “I will

tell our mother you are going for a walk.”

 

Grave, sweet, and dignified was the lady who stood at the table in the

little parlour. Her face was worn and pale; the hair that appeared

beneath her snowy cap was slightly silvered; and in her demeanour

something of antique stateliness combined with the peculiar and

inimitable grace of the old _régime_.

 

A dress of purple brocade, rich and stiff, lay on the table before her.

“Come here, Clémence,” she said; “I want to make this dress fit you.”

 

But Clémence shrank back. “Oh no, no, mother!” she said, with an air of