When Valmond Came to Pontiac: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

From this hour Valmond was carried on by a wave of fortune. Before
vespers on that Sunday night, it was common talk that he was a true son
of the Great Napoleon, born at St. Helena.

Why did he come to Pontiac? He wished to be in retirement till his
friends, acting for him in France, gave him the signal, and then with a
small army of French-Canadians he would land in France. Thousands would
gather round his standard, and so marching on to Paris, the Napoleonic
faith would be revived, and he would come into his own. It is possible
that these stories might have been traced to Parpon, but he had covered
up his trail so well that no one followed him.

On that Sunday night, young men and old flocked into Valmond's chambers
at the Louis Quinze, shook hands with him, addressing him as "Your
Excellency" or "Your Highness." He maintained towards them a mysterious
yet kindly reserve, singularly effective. They inspected the martial
furnishing of the room: the drum, the pair of rifles, the pistols, in the
corner, the sabres crossed on the wall, the gold-handled sword that lay
upon the table, and the picture of Napoleon on a white horse against the
wall. Tobacco and wine were set upon a side table, and every man as he
passed out took a glass of wine and enough tobacco for his pipe, and
said: "Of grace, your health, monseigneur!"

There were those who scoffed, who from natural habit disbelieved, and
nodded knowingly, and whispered in each other's ears; but these were in
the minority; and all the women and children declared for this new "Man
of Destiny." And when some foolish body asked him for a lock of his hair,
and old Madame Degardy (crazy Joan, as she was called) followed, offering
him a pinch of snuff, and a lad appeared with a bunch of violets from
Madame Chalice, the dissentients were cast in shadow, and had no longer
courage to doubt.

Madame Chalice had been merely whimsical in sending these violets, which
her gardener had brought her that very morning.

"It will help along the pretty farce," she had said to herself; and then
she sat her down to read Napoleon's letters to Josephine, and to wonder
that a woman could have been faithless and vile with such a man. Her
blood raced indignantly in her veins as she thought of it. She admired
intellect, supremacy, the gifts of temperament, deeds of war and
adventure beyond all. As yet her brain was stronger than her feelings;
there had been no breakers of emotion in her life. A wife, she had no
child; the mother in her was spent upon her husband, whose devotion,
honour, name, and goodness were dear to her. Yet--yet she had a world of
her own; and reading Napoleon's impassioned letters to his wife, written
with how great homage! in the flow of the tide washing to famous
battle-fields, an exultation of ambition inspired her, and the genius of
her distinguished ancestors set her heart beating hard. Presently, her
face alive with feeling, a furnace in her eyes, she repeated a paragraph
from Napoleon's letters to Josephine:

   The enemy have lost, my dearest, eighteen thousand men, prisoners,
   killed, and wounded. Wurmzer has nothing left but to throw himself
   into Mantua. I hope soon to be in your arms. I love you to
   distraction. All is well. Nothing is wanting to your husband's
   happiness, save the love of Josephine.

She sprang to her feet. "And she, wife of a hero, was in common intrigue
with Hippolyte Charles at the time! She had a conqueror, a splendid
adventurer, and coming emperor, for a husband, and she loved him not.
I--I could have knelt to him--worshipped him. I"--With a little
hysterical, disdainful laugh, as of the soul at itself, she leaned upon
the window, looking into the village below, alternately smiling and
frowning at the thought of this adventurer down at the Louis Quinze.
"Yet, who can tell? Disraeli was half mountebank at the start," she said.
"Napoleon dressed infamously, too, before he was successful." But again
she laughed, as at an absurdity.

During the next few days Valmond was everywhere--kind, liberal, quaint,
tireless, at times melancholy; "in the distant perspective of the stage,"
as Monsieur De la Riviere remarked mockingly. But a passing member of the
legislature met and was conquered by Valmond, and carried on to
neighbouring parishes the wondrous tale.

He carried it through Ville Bambord, fifty miles away; and the story of
how a Napoleon had come to Pontiac reached the ears of old Sergeant
Eustache Lagroin of the Old Guard, who had fought with the Great Emperor
at Waterloo, and in his army on twenty other battle-fields. He had been
at Fontainebleau when Napoleon bade farewell to the Old Guard, saying:
"For twenty years I have ever found you in the path of honour and glory.
Adieu, my children! I would I were able to press you all to my heart--but
I will at least press your eagle. I go to record the great deeds we have
done together."

When the gossip came to Lagroin, as he sat in his doorway, babbling of
Grouchy and Lannes and Davoust, the Little Corporal outflanking them all
in his praise, his dim blue eyes flared out from the distant sky of youth
and memory, his lips pursed in anger, and he got to his feet, his stick
fiercely pounding the ground.

"Tut! tut!" said he. "A lie! a pretty lie! I knew all the
Napoleons--Joseph, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Caroline, Eliza, Pauline--all!
I have seen them every one. And their children--pah! Who can deceive me?
I will go to Pontiac, I will see to this tomfoolery. I'll bring the
rascal to the drumhead. Does he think there is no one? Pish! I will spit
him at the first stroke. Here, here, Manette," he cried to his
grand-daughter; "fetch out my uniform, give it an airing, and see to the
buttons. I will show this brag how one of the Old Guard looked at Saint
Jean. Quick, Manette, my sabre polish; I'll clean my musket, and
to-morrow I will go to Pontiac. I'll put the scamp through his
facings--but yes! I am eighty, but I have an arm of thirty." True to his
word, the next morning at daybreak he started to walk to Pontiac,
accompanied for a mile or so by Manette and a few of the villagers.

"See you, my child," he said, "I will stay with my niece, Desire Malboir,
and her daughter Elise, there in Pontiac. You shall hear how I fetch that
vagabond to his potage!"

Valmond had purchased a tolerable white horse through Medallion. After a
day's grooming the beast showed off very well; and he was now seen riding
about the parish, dressed after the manner of the First Napoleon, with a
cocked hat and a short sword at his side. He rode well, and the silver
and pennies he scattered were most fruitful of effect from the martial
elevation. He happened to be riding into the village at one end as
Sergeant Lagroin entered it at the other, each going towards the Louis
Quinze. Valmond knew nothing of Sergeant Lagroin, so that what followed
was of the inspiration of the moment. It sprang from his wit, and from
his knowledge of Napoleon and the Napoleonic history, a knowledge which
had sent Monsieur Garon into tears of joy in his own home, and afterwards
off to the Manor House and also to the Seigneury, full of praise of him.

Catching sight of the sergeant, the significance of the thing flashed to
his brain, and his course was mapped out on the instant. Sitting very
straight, Valmond rode steadily down towards the old soldier. The
sergeant had drawn notice as he came up the street, and people came to
their doors, and children followed the grey, dust-covered veteran, in his
last-century uniform. He came as far as the Louis Quinze, and then,
looking on up the road, he saw the white horse, the cocked hat, the white
waistcoat, and the long grey coat. He brought his stick down smartly on
the ground, drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and said: "Courage,
Eustache Lagroin. It is not forty Prussians, but one rogue! Crush him!
Down with the pretender!"

So, with a defiant light in his eye, he came on, the old uniform sagging
loosely on the shrunken body, which yet was soldier-like from head to
foot. Years of camp and discipline and battle and endurance were in the
whole bearing of the man. He was no more of Pontiac and this simple life
than was Valmond himself.

So they neared each other, the challenger and the challenged, the
champion and the invader, and quickly the village emptied itself out to
see.

When Valmond came so close that he could observe every detail of the old
man's uniform, he suddenly reined in his horse, drew him back on his
haunches with his left hand, and with his right saluted--not the old
sergeant, but the coat of the Old Guard, to which his eyes were directed.
Mechanically the hand of the sergeant went to his cap, then, starting
forward with an angry movement, he seemed as though he would attack
Valmond.

Valmond sat very still, his right hand thrust in his bosom, his forehead
bent, his eyes calmly, resolutely, yet distantly, looking at the
sergeant, who grew suddenly still also, while the people watched and
wondered.

As Valmond looked, a soft light passed across his face, relieving its
theatrical firmness, the half-contemptuous curl of his lip. He knew well
enough that this event would make or unmake him in Pontiac. He became
also aware that a carriage had driven up among the villagers, and had
stopped; and though he did not look directly, he felt that it was Madame
Chalice. This soft look on his face was not all assumed; for the ancient
uniform of the sergeant touched something in him, the true comedian, or
the true Napoleon, and it seemed as if he might dismount and take the old
soldier in his arms.

He set his horse on a little, and paused again, with not more than
fifteen feet between them. The sergeant's brain was going round like a
top. It was not he that challenged after all.

"Soldier of the Old Guard," cried Valmond, in a clear, ringing voice,
"how far is it to Friedland?"

Like a machine the veteran's hand again went up to his cap, and he
answered:

"To Friedland--the width of a ditch!"

His voice shook as he said it, and the world to him was all a muddle
then; for Napoleon the Great had asked a private this question after that
battle on the Alle, when Berningsen, the Russian, threw away an army to
the master strategist.

The private had answered the question in the words of Sergeant Lagroin.
It was a saying long afterwards among the Old Guard, though it may not be
found in the usual histories of that time, where every battalion, almost
every company, had a watchword, which passed to make room for others, as
victory followed victory.

"Soldier of the Old Guard," said Valmond again, "how came you by those
scars upon your forehead?"

"I was a drummer at Auerstadt, a corporal at Austerlitz, a sergeant at
Waterloo," rolled back the reply, in a high, quavering voice, as memories
of great events blew in upon the ancient fires of his spirit.

"Ah!" answered Valmond, nodding eagerly; "with Davoust at
Auerstadt--thirty against sixty thousand men. At eight o'clock, all fog
and mist, as you marched up the defile towards the Sonnenberg hills, the
brave Gudin and his division feeling their way to Blucher. Comrade, how
still you stepped, your bayonet thrust out before you, clearing the
mists, your eyes straining, your teeth set, ready to thrust. All at once
a quick-moving mass sprang out of the haze, and upon you, with hardly a
sound of warning; and an army of hussars launched themselves at your
bayonets! You bent that wall back like a piece of steel, and broke it.
Comrade, that was the beginning, in the mist of morning. Tell me how you
fared in the light of evening, at the end of that bloody day."

The old soldier was trembling. There was no sign, no movement, from the
crowd. Across the fields came the sharpening of a scythe, the cry of the
grasshoppers, and the sound of a mill-wheel arose near by. In the mill
itself, far up in a deep dormer window, sat Parpon with his black cat,
looking down upon the scene with a grim smiling.

The sergeant saw that mist fronting Sonnenberg rise up, and show ten
thousand splendid cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, with a king and a
prince to lead them down upon those malleable but unmoving squares of
French infantry. He saw himself drumming the Prussians back and his
Frenchmen on.

"Beautiful God!" he cried proudly, "that was a day! And every man of the
Third Corps that time lift up the lid of hell and drop a Prussian in. I
stand beside Davoust once, and ping! come a bullet, and take off his
chapeau. It fell upon my drum. I stoop and pick it up and hand it to him,
but I keep drumming with one hand all the time. 'Comrade,' say I, 'the
army thanks you for your courtesy.' 'Brother,' he say, 'twas to your
drum,' and his eye flash out where Gudin carved his way through those
pigs of Prussians. 'I'd take my head off to keep your saddle filled,
comrade,' say I. Ping! come a bullet and catch me in the calf. 'You hold
your head too high, brother,' the general say, and he smile. 'I'll hold
it higher,' answer I, and I snatch at a soldier. 'Up with me on your
shoulder, big comrade,' I say, and he lift me up. I make my sticks sing
on the leather. 'You shall take off your hat to the Little Corporal
to-morrow, if you've still your head, brother'--speak Davoust like that,
and then he ride away like the devil to Morand's guns. Ha, ha, ha!" The
sergeant's face was blazing with a white glare, for he was very pale, and
seemed unconscious of all save the scene in his mind's eye. "Ha, ha, ha!"
he laughed again. "Beautiful God, how did Davoust bring us on up to
Sonnenberg! And next day I saw the Little Corporal. 'Drummer,' say he,
'no head's too high for my Guard. Come you, comrade, your general gives
you to me. Come, Corporal Lagroin,' he call; and I come. 'But, first,' he
say, 'up on the shoulder of your big soldier again, and play.' 'What
shall I play, sire?' I ask. 'Play ten thousand heroes to Walhalla,' he
answer. I play, and I think of my brother Jacques, who went fighting to
heaven the day before. Beautiful God! that was a day at Auerstadt."

"Soldier," said Valmond, waving his hand, "step on. There is a drum at
Louis Quinze. Let us go together, comrade."

The old sergeant was in a dream. He wheeled, the crowd made way for him,
and at the neck of the white horse he came on with Valmond. As they
passed the carriage of Madame Chalice, Valmond made no sign. They stopped
in front of the hotel, and Valmond, motioning to the garcon, gave him an
order. The old sergeant stood silent, his eyes full fixed upon Valmond.
In a moment the boy came out with the drum. Valmond took it, and, holding
it in his hands, said softly: "Soldier of the Old Guard, here is a drum
of France." Without a word the old man took the drum, his fingers
trembling as he fastened it to his belt. When the sticks were in his
hand, all trembling ceased, and his hands became steady. He was living in
the past entirely.

"Soldier," said Valmond in a loud voice, "remember Austerlitz. The
Heights of Pratzen are before you. Play up the feet of the army."

For an instant the old man did not move, and then a sullen sort of look
came over his face. He was not a drummer at Austerlitz, and for the
instant he did not remember the tune the drummers played.

"Soldier," said Valmond softly, "with 'the Little Sword that Danced' play
up the feet of the army."

A light broke over the old man's face. The swift look he cast on Valmond
had no distrust now. Instantly his hand went to his cap.

"My General!" he said, and stepped in front of the white horse. There was
a moment's pause, and then the sergeant's arms were raised, and down came
the sticks with a rolling rattle on the leather. They sent a shiver of
feeling through the village, and turned the meek white horse into a
charger of war. No man laughed at the drama performed in Pontiac that
day, not even the little coterie who were present, not even Monsieur De
la Riviere, whose brow was black with hatred, for he had watched 'the
eyes of Madame Chalice fill with tears at the old sergeant's tale of
Auerstadt, had noticed her admiring glance, "at this damned comedian," as
he now called Valmond. When he came to her carriage, she said, with
oblique suggestion:

"What do you think of it?"

"Impostor! fakir!" was his sulky reply. "Nothing more."

"If fakirs and impostors are so convincing, dear monsieur, why be
yourself longer? Listen!" she added. Valmond had spoken down at the aged
drummer, whose arms were young again, as once more he marched on Pratzen.
Suddenly from the sergeant's lips there broke, in a high, shaking voice,
to the rattle of the drum:

          "Conscrits, au pas;
          Ne pleurez pas;
          Ne pleurez pas;
          Marchez au pas,
          Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas!"

They had not gone twenty yards before fifty men and boys, caught in the
inflammable moment, sprang out from the crowd, fell involuntarily into
rough marching order, and joined in the inspiring refrain:

          "Marchez au pas,
          Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas!"

The old man in front was charged anew. All at once, at a word from
Valmond, he broke into the Marseillaise, with his voice and with his
drum. To these Frenchmen of an age before the Revolution, the
Marseillaise had only been a song. Now in their ignorant breasts there
waked the spirit of France, and from their throats there burst out, with
a half-delirious ecstasy:

          "Allons, enfants de la patrie,
          Le jour de gloire est arrive."

As they neared the Louis Quinze, a dozen men, just arrived in the
village, returned from river-driving, carried away by the chant,
tumultuously joined in the procession, and so came on in a fever of vague
patriotism. A false note in the proceedings, a mismove on the part of
Valmond, would easily have made the thing ridiculous; but even to Madame
Chalice, with her keen artistic sense, it had a pathetic sort of dignity,
by virtue of its rude earnestness, its raw sincerity. She involuntarily
thought of the great Napoleon and his toy kingdom of Elba, of Garibaldi
and his handful of patriots. There were depths here, and she knew it.

"Even the pantaloon may have a soul," she said; "or a king may have a
heart."

In front of the Louis Quinze, Valmond waved his hand for a halt, and the
ancient drummer wheeled and faced him, fronting the crowd. Valmond was
pale, and his eyes burned like restless ghosts. Surely the Cupid bow of
the thin Napoleonic lips was there, the distant yet piercing look. He
waved his hand again, and the crowd were silent.

"My children," said he, "we have begun well. Once more among you the
antique spirit lives. From you may come the quickening of our beloved
country; for she is yours, though here under the flag of our ancient and
amiable enemy you wait the hour of your return to her. In you there is
nothing mean or dull; you are true Frenchmen. My love is with you. And
you and I, true to each other, may come into our own again--over there!"

He pointed to the East.

"Through you and me may France be born again; and in the villages and
fields and houses of Normandy and Brittany you may, as did your
ancestors, live in peace, and bring your bones to rest in that blessed
and honourable ground. My children, my heart is full. Let us move on
together. Napoleon from St. Helena calls to you, Napoleon in Pontiac
calls to you! Will you come?"

Reckless cheering followed; many were carried away into foolish tears,
and Valmond sat still and let them kiss his hand, while pitchers of wine
went round.

"Where is our fakir now, dear monsieur?" said Madame Chalice to De la
Riviere once again.

Valmond got silence with a gesture. He opened his waistcoat, took from
his bosom an order fastened to a little bar of gold, and held it in his
hand.

"Drummer," he said, in a clear, full tone, "call the army to attention."

The old man set their blood tingling with the impish sticks.

"I advance Sergeant Lagroin, of the Old Guard of glorious memory, to the
rank of Captain in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as
such."

His look bent upon the crowd, as Napoleon's might have done on the Third
Corps.

"Drummer, call the army to attention," fell the words.

And again like a small whirlwind of hailstones the sticks shook on the
drum.

"I advance Captain Lagroin to the rank of Colonel in my Household Troops,
and I command you to obey him as such."

And once more: "Drummer, call the army to attention."

The sticks swung down, but somehow they faltered, for the drummer was
shaking now.

"I advance Colonel Lagroin to the rank of General in my Household Troops,
and I command you to obey him as such."

Then he beckoned, and the old man drew near. Stooping, he pinned the
order upon his breast. When the sergeant saw what it was, he turned pale,
trembled, and the drumsticks fell from his hand. His eyes shone like sun
on wet glass, then tears sprang from them upon his face. He caught
Valmond's hand and kissed it, and cried, oblivious of them all:

"Ah, sire, sire! It is true. It is true. I know that ribbon, and I know
you are a Napoleon. Sire, I love you, and I will die for you!"

For the first time that day a touch of the fantastic came into Valmond's
manner.

"General," he said, "the centuries look down on us as they looked down on
him, your sire--and mine!"

He doffed his hat, and the hats of all likewise came off in a strange
quiet. A cheer followed, and Valmond motioned for wine to go round
freely. Then he got off his horse, and, taking the weeping old man by the
arm, himself loosening the drum from his belt, they passed into the
hotel.

"A cheerful bit of foolery and treason," said Monsieur De la Riviere to
Madame Chalice.

"My dear Seigneur, if you only had more humour and less patriotism!" she
answered. "Treason may have its virtues. It certainly is interesting,
which, in your present gloomy state, you are not."

"I wonder, madame, that you can countenance this imposture," he broke
out.

"Excellent and superior monsieur, I wonder sometimes that I can
countenance you. Breakfast with me on Sunday, and perhaps I will tell you
why--at twelve o'clock."

She drove on, but, meeting the Cure, stopped her carriage.

"Why so grave, my dear Cure?" she asked, holding out her hand.

He fingered the gold cross upon his breast--she had given it to him two
years before.

"I am going to counsel him--Monsieur Valmond," he said. Then, with a
sigh: "He sent me two hundred dollars for the altar to-day, and fifty
dollars to buy new cassocks for myself."

"Come in the morning and tell me what he says," she answered; "and bring
our dear avocat."

As she looked from her window an hour later, she saw bonfires burning,
and up from the village came the old song, that had prefaced a drama in
Pontiac.

But Elise Malboir had a keener interest that night, for Valmond and
Parpon brought her uncle "General Lagroin," in honour to her mother's
cottage; and she sat and listened dreamily, as Valmond and the old man
talked of great things to be done.

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