The Maids of Paradise
Page 3On 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
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
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
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?"