On the third day of August, 1870, I left Paris in search of John

Buckhurst.

On the 4th of August I lost all traces of Mr. Buckhurst near the

frontier, in the village of Morsbronn.

The remainder of the day I

spent in acquiring that "general information" so dear to the

officials in Paris whose flimsy systems of intelligence had already

begun to break down.

On August 5th, about eight o'clock in the morning, the military

telegraph instrument in the operator's room over the temporary

barracks of the Third Hussars clicked out the call for urgency, not

the usual military signal, but a secret sequence understood only by

certain officers of the Imperial Military Police.

The operator on duty therefore stepped into my room and waited while I took his place at

the wire.

I had been using the code-book that morning, preparing despatches for

Paris, and now, at the first series of significant clicks, I dropped

my left middle finger on the key and repeated the signal to Paris,

using the required variations. Then I rose, locked the door, and

returned to the table.

"Who is this?" came over the wire in the secret code; and I answered

at once: "Inspector of Foreign Division, Imperial Military Police, on

duty at Morsbronn, Alsace."

After considerable delay the next message arrived in the Morse code:

"Is that you, Scarlett?"

And I replied: "Yes. Who are you? Why do you not use the code? Repeat

the code signal and your number."

The signal was repeated, then came the message: "This is the

Tuileries. You have my authority to use the Morse code for the sake of

brevity.

Do you understand? I am Jarras. The Empress is here."

Instantly reassured by the message from Colonel Jarras, head of the

bureau to which I was attached, I answered that I understood. Then the

telegrams began to fly, all in the Morse code:

Jarras. "Have you caught Buckhurst?"

I. "No."

Jarras. "How did he get away?"

I. "There's confusion enough on the frontier to cover the escape of

a hundred thieves."

Jarras. "Your reply alarms the Empress. State briefly the present

position of the First Corps."

I. "The First Corps still occupies the heights in a straight line

about seven kilometres long; the plateau is covered with vineyards.

Two small rivers are in front of us; the Vosges are behind us; the

right flank pivots on Morsbronn, the left on Neehwiller; the centre

covers Wörth. We have had forty-eight hours' heavy rain."

Jarras. "Where are the Germans?"

I. "Precise information not obtainable at headquarters of the First

Corps."

Jarras. "Does the Marshal not know where the Germans are?"

I. "Marshal MacMahon does not know definitely."

Jarras. "Does the Marshal not employ his cavalry? Where are they?"

I. "Septeuil's cavalry of the second division lie between

Elsasshausen and the Grosserwald; Michel's brigade of heavy cavalry

camps at Eberbach; the second division of cavalry of the reserve,

General Vicomte de Bonnemain, should arrive to-night and go into

bivouac between Reichshofen and the Grosserwald."

There was a long pause; I lighted a cigar and waited. After a while

the instrument began again:

Jarras. "The Empress desires to know where the château called La

Trappe is."

I. "La Trappe is about four kilometres from Morsbronn, near the

hamlet of Trois-Feuilles."

Jarras. "It is understood that Madame de Vassart's group of

socialists are about to leave La Trappe for Paradise, in Morbihan. It

is possible that Buckhurst has taken refuge among them. Therefore you

will proceed to La Trappe. Do you understand?"

I. "Perfectly."

Jarras. "If Buckhurst is found you will bring him to Paris at once.

Shoot him if he resists arrest. If the community at La Trappe has not

been warned of a possible visit from us, you will find and arrest the

following individuals:

"Claude Tavernier, late professor of law, Paris School of Law;

"Achille Bazard, ex-instructor in mathematics, Fontainebleau

Artillery School;

"Dr. Leo Delmont, ex-interne, Charity Hospital, Paris;

"Mlle. Sylvia Elven, lately of the Odéon;

"The Countess de Vassart, well known for her eccentricities.

"You will affix the government seals to the house as usual; you will

then escort the people named to the nearest point on the Belgian

frontier. The Countess de Vassart usually dresses like a common

peasant. Look out that she does not slip through your fingers. Repeat

your instructions." I repeated them from my memoranda.

There was a pause, then click! click! the instrument gave the code

signal that the matter was ended, and I repeated the signal, opened my

code-book, and began to translate the instructions into cipher for

safety's sake.

When I had finished and had carefully destroyed my first pencilled

memoranda, the steady bumping of artillery passing through the street

under the windows drew my attention.

It proved to be the expected batteries of the reserve going into park,

between the two brigades of Raoult's division of infantry. I

telegraphed the news to the observatory on the Col du Pigeonnier, then

walked back to the window and looked out.

It had begun to rain again; down the solitary street of Morsbronn the

artillery rolled, jolting; cannoneers, wrapped in their wet, gray

overcoats, limbers, caissons, and horses plastered with mud. The slim

cannon, with canvas-wrapped breeches uptilted, dripped from their

depressed muzzles, like lank monsters slavering and discouraged.

A battery of Montigny mitrailleuses passed, grotesque, hump-backed

little engines of destruction. To me there was always something

repulsive in the shape of these stunted cannon, these malicious metal

cripples with their heavy bodies and sinister, filthy mouths.

Before the drenched artillery had rattled out of Morsbronn the rain

once more fell in floods, pouring a perpendicular torrent from the

transparent, gray heavens, and the roar of the downpour on slate roofs

and ancient gables drowned the pounding of the passing cannon.

Where the Vosges mountains towered in obscurity a curtain of rain

joined earth and sky. The rivers ran yellow, brimful, foaming at the

fords. The semaphore on the mountain of the Pigeonnier was not

visible; but across the bridge, where the Gunstett highway spanned the

Sauer, gray masses of the Niederwald loomed through the rain.

Somewhere in that spectral forest Prussian cavalry were hidden,

watching the heights where our drenched divisions lay. Behind that

forest a German army was massing, fresh from the combat in the north,

where the tragedy of Wissembourg had been enacted only the day before,

in the presence of the entire French army--the awful spectacle of a

single division of seven thousand men suddenly enveloped and crushed

by seventy thousand Germans.

The rain fell steadily but less heavily. I went back to my instrument

and called up the station on the Col du Pigeonnier, asking for

information, but got no reply, the storm doubtless interfering.

Officers of the Third Hussars were continually tramping up and down

the muddy stairway, laughing, joking, swearing at the rain, or

shouting for their horses, when the trumpets sounded in the street

below.

I watched the departing squadron, splashing away down the street,

which was now running water like a river; then I changed my civilian

clothes for a hussar uniform, sent a trooper to find me a horse, and

sat down by the window to stare at the downpour and think how best I

might carry out my instructions to a successful finish.

The colony at La Trappe was, as far as I could judge, a product of

conditions which had, a hundred years before, culminated in the French

Revolution. Now, in 1870, but under different circumstances, all

France was once more disintegrating socially. Opposition to the

Empire, to the dynasty, to the government, had been seething for

years; now the separate crystals which formed on the edges of the

boiling under-currents began to grow into masses which, adhering to

other masses, interfered with the healthy functions of national life.

Until recently, however, while among the dissatisfied there existed a

certain tendency towards cohesion, and while, moreover, adhesive

forces mutually impelled separate groups of malcontents to closer

union, the government found nothing alarming in the menaces of

individuals or of isolated groups. The Emperor always counted on such

opposition in Paris; the palace of the Tuileries was practically a

besieged place, menaced always by the faubourgs--a castle before which

lay eternally the sullen, unorganized multitude over which the

municipal police kept watch.

That opposition, hatred, and treason existed never worried the

government, but that this opposition should remain unorganized

occupied the authorities constantly.

Groups of individuals who proclaimed themselves devotees of social

theories interested us only when the groups grew large or exhibited

tendencies to unite with similar groups.

Clubs formed to discuss social questions were usually watched by the

police; violent organizations were not observed very closely, but

clubs founded upon moderate principles were always closely surveyed.

In the faubourgs, where every street had its bawling orator, and where

the red flag was waved when the community had become sufficiently

drunk, the government was quietly content to ignore proceedings,

wisely understanding that the mouths of street orators were the

safety-valves of the faubourgs, and that through them the ebullitions

of the under-world escaped with nothing more serious than a few vinous

shrieks. There were, however, certain secret and semi-secret

organizations which caused the government concern. First among these

came the International Society of Workingmen, with all its

affiliations--the "Internationale," as it was called. In its wake

trailed minor societies, some mild and harmless, some dangerous and

secret, some violent, advocating openly the destruction of all

existing conditions. Small groups of anarchists had already attracted

groups of moderate socialistic tendencies to them, and had absorbed

them or tainted them with doctrines dangerous to the state.

In time these groups began to adhere even more closely to the large

bodies of the people; a party was born, small at first, embodying

conflicting communistic principles.

The government watched it. Presently it split, as do all parties; yet

here the paradox was revealed of a small party splitting into two

larger halves. To one of these halves adhered the Red Republicans, the

government opposition of the Extreme Left, the Opportunists, the

Anarchists, certain Socialists, the so-called Communards, and finally

the vast mass of the sullen, teeming faubourgs. It became a party

closely affiliated with the Internationale, a colossal, restless,

unorganized menace, harmless only because unorganized.

And the police were expected to keep it harmless. The other remaining

half of the original party began to dwindle almost immediately, until

it became only a group. With one exception, all those whom the

police and the government regarded as inclined to violence left the

group. There remained, with this one exception, a nucleus of

earnest, thoughtful people whose creed was in part the creed of the

Internationale, the creed of universal brotherhood, equality before

the law, purity of individual living as an example and an incentive to

a national purity.

To this inoffensive group came one day a young widow, the Countess de

Vassart, placing at their disposal her great wealth, asking only to be

received among them as a comrade.

Her history, as known to the police, was peculiar and rather sad: at

sixteen she had been betrothed to an elderly, bull-necked colonel of

cavalry, the notorious Count de Vassart, who needed what money she

might bring him to maintain his reputation as the most brilliantly

dissolute old rake in Paris.

At sixteen, Éline de Trécourt was a thin, red-haired girl, with rather

large, grayish eyes. Speed and I saw her once, sitting in her carriage

before the Ministry of War a year after her marriage. There had been

bad news from Mexico, and there were many handsome equipages standing

at the gates of the war office, where lists of killed and wounded were

posted every day.

I noticed her particularly because of her reputed wealth and the evil

reputation of her husband, who, it was said, was so open in his

contempt for her that the very afternoon of their marriage he was seen

publicly driving on the Champs-Élysées with a pretty and popular

actress of the Odéon.

As I passed, glancing up at her, the sadness of her face impressed me,

and I remember wondering how much the death of her husband had to do

with it--for his name had appeared in the evening papers under the

heading, "Killed in Action."

It was several years later before the police began to take an interest

in the Comtesse Éline de Vassart. She had withdrawn entirely from

society, had founded a non-sectarian free school in Passy, was

interested in certain charities and refuges for young working-girls,

when on a visit to England, she met Karl Marx, then a fugitive and

under sentence of death.

From that moment social questions occupied her, and her doings

interested the police, especially when she returned to Paris and took

her place once more in Royalist circles, where every baby was bred

from the cradle to renounce the Tuileries, the Emperor, and all his

works.

Serious, tender-hearted, charitable, and intensely interested in all

social reforms, she shocked the conservative society of the noble

faubourg, aroused the distrust of the government, offended the

Tuileries, and finally committed the mistake of receiving at her own

house that notorious group of malcontents headed by Henri Rochefort,

whose revolutionary newspaper, La Marseillaise, doubtless needed

pecuniary support.

Her dossier--for, alas! the young girl already had a dossier--was

interesting, particularly in its summing-up of her personal

character:

"To the naive ignorance of a convent pensionnaire, she adds an

innocence of mind, a purity of conduct, and a credulity which render

her an easy prey to the adroit, who play upon her sympathies. She is

dangerous only as a source of revenue for dangerous men."

It was from her salon that young Victor Noir went to his death at

Auteuil on the 10th of January; and possibly the shock of the murder

and the almost universal conviction that justice under the Empire was

hopeless drove the young Countess to seek a refuge in the country

where, at her house of La Trappe, she could quietly devote her life to

helping the desperately wretched, and where she could, in security,

hold council with those who also had chosen to give their lives to

the noblest of all works--charity and the propaganda of universal

brotherhood.

And here, at La Trappe, the young aristocrat first donned the robe of

democracy, dedicated her life and fortune to the cause, and worked

with her own delicate hands for every morsel of bread that passed her

lips.

Now this was all very well while it lasted, for her father, the

choleric old Comte de Trécourt, had died rich, and the young girl's

charities were doubled, and there was nobody to stay her hand or draw

the generous purse-strings; nobody to advise her or to stop her. On

the contrary, there were plenty of people standing around with

outstretched, itching, and sometimes dirty hands, ready to snatch at

the last centime.

Who was there to administer her affairs, who among the generous,

impetuous, ill-balanced friends that surrounded her? Not the

noble-minded geographer, Elisée Réclus; not the fiery citizen-count,

Rochefort; not the handsome, cultivated Gustave Flourens, already

"fey" with the doom to which he had been born; not that kindly

visionary, the Vicomte de Coursay-Delmont, now discarding his ancient

title to be known only among his grateful, penniless patients as

Doctor Delmont; and surely not Professor Tavernier, nor yet that

militant hermit, the young Chevalier de Gray, calling himself plain

Monsieur Bazard, who chose democracy instead of the brilliant career

to which Grammont had destined him, and whose sensitive and perhaps

diseased mind had never recovered from the shock of the murder of his

comrade, Victor Noir.

But the simple life at La Trappe, the negative protest against the

Empire and all existing social conditions, the purity of motive, the

serene and inspired self-abnegation, could not save the colony at La

Trappe nor the young châtelaine from the claws of those who prey upon

the innocence of the generous.

And so came to this ideal community one John Buckhurst, a stranger,

quiet, suave, deadly pale, a finely moulded man, with delicately

fashioned hands and feet, and two eyes so colorless that in some

lights they appeared to be almost sightless.

In a month from that time he was the power that moved that community

even in its most insignificant machinery. With marvellous skill he

constructed out of that simple republic of protestants an absolute

despotism. And he was the despot.

The avowed object of the society was the advancement of universal

brotherhood, of liberty and equality, the annihilation of those

arbitrary barriers called national frontiers--in short, a society for

the encouragement of the millennium, which, however, appeared to be

coy.

And before the eyes of his brother dreamers John Buckhurst quietly

cancelled the entire programme at one stroke, and nobody understood

that it was cancelled when, in a community founded upon equality and

fraternity, he raised another edifice to crown it, a sort of working

model as an example to the world, but limited. And down went

democracy without a sound.

This working model was a superior community which was established at

the Breton home of the Countess de Vassart, a large stone house in the

hamlet of Paradise, in Morbihan.

An intimation from the Tuileries interrupted a meeting of the council

at the house in Paradise; an arrest was threatened--that of Professor

Réclus--and the indignant young Countess was requested to retire to

her château of La Trappe. She obeyed, but invited her guests to

accompany her. Among those who accepted was Buckhurst.

About this time the government began to take a serious interest in

John Buckhurst. On the secret staff of the Imperial Military Police

were always certain foreigners--among others, myself and a young man

named James Speed; and Colonel Jarras had already decided to employ us

in watching Buckhurst, when war came on France like a bolt from the

blue, giving the men of the Secret Service all they could attend to.

In the shameful indecision and confusion attending the first few days

after the declaration of war against Prussia, Buckhurst slipped

through our fingers, and I, for one, did not expect to hear of him

again. But I did not begin to know John Buckhurst, for, within three

days after he had avoided an encounter with us, Buckhurst was believed

to have committed one of the most celebrated crimes of the century.

The secret history of that unhappy war will never be fully written.

Prince Bismarck has let the only remaining cat out of the bag; the

other cats are dead. Nor will all the strange secrets of the Tuileries

ever be brought to light, fortunately.

Still, at this time, there is no reason why it should not be generally

known that the crown jewels of France were menaced from the very first

by a conspiracy so alarming and apparently so irresistible that the

Emperor himself believed, even in the beginning of the fatal campaign,

that it might be necessary to send the crown jewels of France to the

Bank of England for safety.

On the 19th of July, the day that war was declared, certain of the

crown jewels, kept temporarily at the palace of the Tuileries, were

sent under heavy guards to the Bank of France. Every precaution was

taken; yet the great diamond crucifix of Louis XI. was missing when

the guard under Captain Siebert turned over the treasures to the

governor of the Bank of France.

Instantly absolute secrecy was ordered, which I, for one, believed to

be a great mistake. Yet the Emperor desired it, doubtless for the same

reasons which always led him to suppress any affair which might give

the public an idea that the opposition to the government was worthy of

the government's attention.

So the news of the robbery never became public property, but from one

end of France to the other the gendarmerie, the police, local,

municipal, and secret, were stirred up to activity.

Within forty-eight hours, an individual answering Buckhurst's

description had sold a single enormous diamond for two hundred and

fifty thousand francs to a dealer in Strasbourg, a Jew named Fishel

Cohen, who, counting on the excitement produced by the war and the

topsy-turvy condition of the city, supposed that such a transaction

would create no interest.

Mr. Cohen was wrong; an hour after he had recorded the transaction at

the Strasbourg Diamond Exchange he and the diamond were on their way

to Paris, in charge of a detective. A few hours later the stone was

identified at the Tuileries as having been taken from the famous

crucifix of Louis XI.

From Fishel Cohen's agonized description of the man who had sold him

the diamond, Colonel Jarras believed he recognized John Buckhurst. But

how on earth Buckhurst had obtained access to the jewels, or how he

had managed to spirit away the cross from the very centre of the

Tuileries, could only be explained through the theory of accomplices

among the trusted intimates of the imperial entourage. And if there

existed such a conspiracy, who was involved?

It is violating no secret now to admit that every soul in the

Tuileries, from highest to lowest, was watched. Even the governor of

the Bank of France did not escape the attentions of the secret police.

For it was certain that somebody in the imperial confidence had

betrayed that confidence in a shocking manner, and nobody could know

how far the conspiracy had spread, or who was involved in the most

daring and shameless robbery that had been perpetrated in France since

Cardinal de Rohan and his gang stole the celebrated necklace of Marie

Antoinette.

Nor was it at all certain that the remaining jewels of the French

crown were safe in Paris. The precautions taken to insure their

safety, and the result of those precautions, are matters of history,

but nobody outside of a small, strangely assorted company of people

could know what actually happened to the crown jewels of France in

1870, or what pieces, if any, are still missing.

My chase after Buckhurst began as soon as Colonel Jarras could summon

me; and as Buckhurst had last been heard of in Strasbourg, I went

after him on a train loaded with red-legged, uproarious soldiers, who

sang all day:

"Have you seen Bismarck

Drinking in the gay café,

With that other brother spark--

Monsieur Badinguet?"

and had drunk themselves into a shameful frenzy long before the train

thundered into Avricourt.

I tracked Buckhurst to Morsbronn, where I lost all traces of him; and

now here I was with my orders concerning the unfortunate people at La

Trappe, staring out at the dismal weather and wondering where my

wild-goose chase would end.

I went to the door and called for the military telegraph operator,

whose instrument I had been permitted to monopolize. He came, a

pleasant, jaunty young fellow, munching a crust of dry bread and

brushing the crumbs from his scarlet trousers.

"In case I want to communicate with you I'll signal the tower on the

Col du Pigeonnier," I said. "Come up to the loft overhead."

The loft in the house which had now been turned into a cavalry

barracks was just above my room, a large attic under the dripping

gables, black with the stains of centuries, littered with broken

furniture, discarded clothing, and the odds and ends cherished by the

thrifty Alsatian peasant, who never throws away anything from the day

of his birth to the day of his death. And, given a long line of

forefathers equally thrifty, and an ancient high-gabled house where

his ancestors first began collecting discarded refuse, the attic of

necessity was a marvel of litter and decay, among which generations of

pigeons had built nests and raised countless broods of squealing

squabs.

Into this attic we climbed, edged our way toward a high window out of

which the leaded panes had long since tumbled earthward, and finally

stood together, looking out over the mountains of the Alsatian

frontier.

The rain had ceased; behind the Col du Pigeonnier sunshine fell

through a rift in the watery clouds. It touched the rushing river,

shining on foaming fords where our cavalry pickets were riding in the

valley mist.

Somewhere up in the vineyards behind us an infantry band was playing;

away among the wet hills to the left the strumming vibrations of wet

drums marked the arrival of a regiment from goodness knows where; and

presently we saw them, their gray overcoats and red trousers soaked

almost black with rain, rifles en bandoulière, trudging patiently up

the muddy slope above the town. Something in the plodding steps of

those wet little soldiers touched me. Bravely their soaked drums

battered away, bravely they dragged their clumsy feet after them,

brightly and gayly the breaking sun touched their crimson forage-caps

and bayonets and the swords of mounted officers; but to me they were

only a pathetic troop of perplexed peasants, dragged out of the bosom

of France to be huddled and herded in a strange pasture, where death

watched them from the forest yonder, marking them for slaughter with

near-sighted Teutonic eyes.

A column of white cloud suddenly capped the rocks on the vineyard

above. Bang! and something came whistling with a curious, bird-like

cry over the village of Morsbronn, flying far out across the valley:

and among the pines of the Prussian forest a point of flame flashed, a

distant explosion echoed.

Down in the street below us an old man came tottering from his little

shop, peering sideways up into the sky.

"Il pleut, berger," called out the operator beside me, in a bantering

voice.

"It will rain--bullets," said the old man, simply, and returned to

his shop to drag out a chair on the doorsill and sit and listen to the

shots which our cavalry outposts were exchanging with the Prussian

scouts.

"Poor old chap," said the operator; "it will be hard for him. He was

with the Grand Emperor at Jena."

"You speak as though our army was already on the run," I said.

"Yes," he replied, indifferently, "we'll soon be on the run."

After a moment I said: "I'm going to ride to La Trappe. I wish you

would send those messages to Paris."

"All right," he said.

Half an hour later I rode out of Morsbronn, clad in the uniform of the

Third Hussars, a disguise supposed to convey the idea to those at La

Trappe that the army and not the police were responsible for their

expulsion.

The warm August sunshine slanted in my face as I galloped away up the

vineyard road and out on to the long plateau where, on every hillock,

a hussar picket sat his wiry horse, carbine poised, gazing steadily

toward the east.

Over the sombre Prussian forests mist hung; away to the north the sun

glittered on the steel helmets and armor of the heavy cavalry, just

arriving. And on the Col du Pigeonnier I saw tiny specks move, flags

signalling the arrival of the Vicomte de Bonnemain with the "grosse

cavalerie," the splendid cuirassier regiments destined in a few hours

to join the cuirassiers of Waterloo, riding into that bright Valhalla

where all good soldiers shall hear the last trumpet call,

"Dismount!"

With a lingering glance at the rivers which separated us from German

soil, I turned my horse and galloped away into the hills.

A moist, fern-bordered wood road attracted me; I reasoned that it must

lead, by a short cut, across the hills to the military highway which

passed between Trois-Feuilles and La Trappe. So I took it, and

presently came into four cross-roads unknown to me.

This grassy carrefour was occupied by a flock of turkeys, busily

engaged in catching grasshoppers; their keeper, a prettily shaped

peasant girl, looked up at me as I drew bridle, then quietly resumed

the book she had been reading.

"My child," said I, "if you are as intelligent as you are beautiful,

you will not be tending other people's turkeys this time next year."

"Merci, beau sabreur!" said the turkey-girl, raising her blue eyes.

Then the lashes veiled them; she bent her head a little, turning it so

that the curve of her cheeks gave to her profile that delicate

contour which is so suggestive of innocence when the ears are small

and the neck white.

"My child," said I, "will you kindly direct me, with appropriate

gestures, to the military highway which passes the Château de la

Trappe?"




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