صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

"Delphine," I continued, taking the fan, "tell me frankly which of these two men you prefer the marquis or his excellency."

"The marquis? He is antiphlogistic-he is ice. Why should I freeze myself? I am frozen now-I need fire!"

Her eyes burned as she spoke, and a faint red flushed her cheek. "Mademoiselle, you demonstrate to me that life has yet a value to you." "I find no fire," she said, as the flush fell away.

"The baron?"

"I do not affect him."

"You will conquer your prejudice in Vienna."

"I do not comprehend you, monsieur; you speak in riddles, which I do not like."

"I will speak plainer. But first let me ask you for the diamond." "The diamond? Is it yours? How am I certified of it? I find it on the floor; you say it was in my mother's salière; it is her affair, not mine. No, monsieur, I do not see that the thing is yours.'

[ocr errors]

Certainly there was nothing to be done but to relate the story, which I did, carefully omitting the baron's name. At its conclusion, she placed the prize in my hand.

"Pardon, monsieur," she said; "without doubt you should receive it. And this agent of the government-one could turn him like hot iron in this vise who was he?"

"The Baron Stahl."

All this time G had been waiting on thorns, and, leaving her now, I approached him, displayed for an instant the treasure on my palm, and slipped it into his. It was done. I bade farewell to this Eye of Morning and Heart of Day, this thing that had caused me such pain and perplexity and pleasure, with less envy and more joy than I thought myself capable of. The relief and buoyancy that seized me, as his hand closed upon it, I shall not attempt to portray. An abdicated king was not freer.

The marquis dcparted, and I, wandering round the salon, was next stranded upon the baron. He was yet hardly sure of himself. We talked indifferently for a few moments, and then I ventured on the great loan. He was, as became him, not communicative, but scarcely thought it would be arranged. I then spoke of Delphine.

"She is superb!" said the baron, staring at her boldly.

She stood opposite, and, in her white attire on the background of the blue curtain, appeared like an impersonation of Greek genius relieved upon the blue of an Athenian heaven. Her severe and classic outline, her pallor, her downcast lids, her absorbed look, only heightened the resemblance. Her reverie seemed to end abruptly, the same red stained her cheek again, her lips curved in a proud smile, she raised her glowing eyes and observed us regarding her. At too great distance to hear our words, she quietly repaid our glances in the strength of her new decision, and then, turning, began to entertain those next her with an unwonted spirit.

"She has needed," I replied to the baron, "but one thing-to be aroused, to be kindled. See, it is done! I have thought that a life of cabinets and policy might achieve this, for her talent is second not even to her beauty."

"It is unhappy that both should be wasted," said the baron. "She, of course, will never marry."

"Why not?"

"For various reasons."

"One?"

"She is poor."

"Which will not signify to your excellency. Another?"

"She is too beautiful. One would fall in love with her. And to love one's own wife-it is ridiculous!"

"Who should know?" I asked.

"All the world would suspect and laugh."

"Let those laugh that win."

"No-she would never do as a wife; but then as".

[ocr errors]

"But then in France we do not insult hospitality!"

The baron transferred his gaze to me for a moment, then tapped his snuffbox, and approached the circle round Delphine.

It was odd that we, the arch enemies of the hour, could speak without the intervention of seconds; but I hoped that the baron's conversation might be diverting the baron hoped that mine might be didactic.

They were very gay with Delphine. He leaned on the back of a chair and listened. One spoke of the new gallery of the Tuileries, and the five pavilions-a remark which led us to architecture.

"We all build our own houses," said Delphine, at last, "and then complain that they cramp us here, and the wind blows in there, while the fault is not in the order, but in us, who increase here and shrink there without reason." "You speak in metaphors," said the baron.

"Precisely. A truth is often more visible veiled than nude."

"We should soon exhaust the orders," I interposed; "for who builds. like his neighbor?"

"Slight variations, monsieur! Though we take such pains to conceal the style, it is not difficult to tell the order of architecture chosen by the builders in this room. My mother, for instance-you perceive that her pavilion would be the florid Gothic.'

"Mademoiselle's is the Doric," I said.

"Has been," she murmured, with a quick glance.

And mine, mademoiselle?" asked the baron indifferently.

"Ah, monsieur," she returned, looking serenely upon him, "when one has all the winning cards in hand and yet loses the stake, we allot him un pavillon chinois"-which was the polite way of dubbing him court fool.

The baron's eyes fell. Vexation and alarm were visible on his contracted brow. He stood in meditation for some time. It must have been evident to him that Delphine knew of the recent occurrences that here in Paris she could denounce him as the agent of a felony, the participant of a theft. What might prevent it? Plainly but one thing: no woman would denounce her husband. He had scarcely contemplated this step on arrival.

The guests were again scattered in groups round the room. I examined an engraving on an adjacent table. Delphine reclined as lazily in a fauteuil as if her life did not hang in the balance. The baron drew near.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "you allotted me just now a cap and bells. If two should wear it?—if I should invite another into my pavillon chinois? If I should propose to complete an alliance, desired by my father, with the ancient family of St. Cyr? If, in short, mademoiselle, I should request you to become my wife?"

"Eh, bien, monsieur—and if you should?" I heard her coolly reply. But it was no longer any business of mine. I rose and sought Mme. de St. Cyr, who, I thought, was slightly uneasy, perceiving some mystery to be afloat. After a few words, I retired.

Archimedes, as perhaps you have never heard, needed only a lever to move the world. Such a lever I had put into the hands of Delphine, with which she might move, not indeed the grand globe, with its multiplied attractions, relations, and affinities, but the lesser world of circumstances, of friends and enemies, the circle of hopes, fears, ambitions. There is no woman, as I believe, but could have used it.

The next day was scarcely so quiet in the city as usual. The great loan had not been negotiated. Both the Baron Stahl and the English minister had left Paris-and there was a coup d'état.

But the baron did not travel alone. There had been a ceremony at midnight in the Church of St. Sulpice, and her Excellency the Baroness Stahi. née de St. Cyr, accompanied him.

It is a good many years since. I have seen the diamond in the Duchess of X's coronet, at the drawing-room, often-but I have never seen Delphine. The marquis begged me to retain the chain, and I gave myself the pleasure of presenting it, through her mother, to the Baroness Stahl. I hear, that, whenever she desires to effect any cherished object which the baron opposes, she has only to wear this chain, and effect it. It appears to possess a magical power, and its potent spell enslaves the baron as the lamp and ring of Eastern tales enslaved the Afrites. The life she leads has aroused her. She is no longer the impassive Silence; she has found her fire. I hear of her as the charm of a brilliant court, as the soul of a nation of intrigue. Of her beauty one does not speak, but her talent is called prodigious. What impels me to ask the idle question, If it were well to save her life for this? Undoubtedly she fills a station which, in that empire, must be the summit of a woman's ambition. Delphine's Liberty was not a principle, but a dissatisfaction. The Baroness Stahl is vehement, is Imperialist, is successful. While she lives, it is on the top of the wave; when she dies-ah! what business has Death in such a world?

As I said, I have never seen Delphine since her marriage. The beautiful, statuesque girl occupies a niche into which the blazing and magnificent intrigante cannot crowd. I do not wish to be disillusioned. She has read me a riddle-Delphine is my Sphinx.

As for Mr. Hay, I once said the antipodes were tributary to me, not thinking that I should ever become tributary to the antipodes. But such is the case; since, partly through my instrumentality, that enterprising individual has been located in their vicinity, where diamonds are not to be had for the asking, and the greatest rogue is not a baron.

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822-1909)

August 15ttholt veed, fin casual traders of, the New the Deaths, the SUPPOSE that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of

announcement:

"NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, Philip Nolan."

I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission-House in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not choose to come, and I was devouring, to the very stubble, all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in the Herald. My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had chosen to make it thus: "Died, May 11th, 'The Man Without a Country'." For it was as "The Man Without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had any name at all.

There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story. Reason enough there has been until now, ever since Madison's Administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the esprit de corps of the profession and the personal honor of its members, that to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown — and, I think, to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at Washington to one of the Crowninshields who was in the Navy Department when he came home he found that the

-

From The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1863. Republished in the volume, The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales (1868), by Edward Everett Hale (Little, Brown & Co.).

department ignored the whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a Non mi ricordo, determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know. But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.

But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his story, by way of showing young Americans of today what it is to be

A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

PHILIP NOLAN was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Legion of the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year barrack-life was very tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed of the permission the great man had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician the time which they devoted to Monongahela, sledge, and high-low-jack. Bourbon, euchre and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came down the river not as an attorney seeking a place for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated I know not how many district attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how many Weekly Arguses; and it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him. It was a great day his arrival to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to show him a cane-brake or a cottonwood tree, as he said - really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not know it, he lived as "A Man Without a Country."

What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came. and Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is today, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and, to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for spectacles, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the list, little Nolan, against whom, heaven knows, there was evidence enough that he was sick of the service. had been willing to be false to it, and would have obeyed any order to march.

« السابقةمتابعة »