The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII.
DRIFTING.
"To that new land which is the old."
IVAN recovered slowly from his severe and painful wound. He had just risen from his bed one day, and was sitting, pale and languid, near the table trying to read, when he heard some one inquiring for him. He had received frequent visits from his comrades in the Guards, and from other friends in the army; but now he turned gladly to welcome one whom he had not seen since the night of the assault.
"Michael Ivanovitch!" he exclaimed; "I am delighted to see you."
Michael returned his greeting with respectful and affectionate warmth, and they sat down to talk over all that had happened. The change in Ivan's appearance shocked and grieved his old playfellow.
"You look so pale and worn, Barrinka," he said. "Have they been good to you here?"
"Most kind and good," said Ivan. "I have had the best of care and nursing. But oh, Michael, I have been longing to tell you the luck the bandage brought me which you placed on my wound. It was wonderful!" And he told the story of his acquaintance with the De Talmonts. "Nothing can exceed their kindness to me," he said. "They insist upon my becoming their guest—or rather, I suppose I should say, the guest of the aged relative with whom they live. They are good enough to tell me she is eager to make my acquaintance. So I go to them to-morrow; indeed, it was with difficulty I contrived to put it off so long, but I could not bear to burden them with a helpless invalid."
"Ah, Barrinka, you make friends everywhere!"
"These friends were made for me, first by you, then by the Czar, who has put all loyal Frenchmen under infinite obligations. But tell me, Michael, what do you think of Paris? I have not been there yet, you know."
"Well, Barrinka," said Michael meditatively, and with the air of an old traveller, "I do not think much of it after all. I would not compare it for a moment with St. Petersburg, not to speak of holy Moscow. I never saw holy Moscow until just before the fire,—and that was like seeing a lovely face with the hand of death upon it,—but this city of the Frenchmen is nothing to it—nothing! To what it was, I mean," he added with a sigh. "Where do you see anything like the great beautiful houses, painted red and green and purple and yellow; like the roofs of burnished lead, all shining as if they were on fire; like the gilded domes and crosses on the tops of our churches? Napoleon himself had the wit to admire them, and to know he had nothing half so good in his own country, so he got the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides gilt to look like one of ours,—a Frenchman told me that himself.—Curse those Invalids!" said Michael, with a sudden change of manner and a look of gloom and ill-humour.
"And why so? What harm have the poor old fellows done to you?" asked Ivan, half laughing.
"Great harm, Barrinka. Think of their having got hold of our own Maria Ivanovka and taken her for themselves!"
"Your—who?"
"Our Maria Ivanovka, who was with us from the day we left St. Petersburg until we entered this same city of Paris—which is no great things of a city, as I shall always say. Poor dear Maria Ivanovka! She may have been rather old, I don't deny it,—and she had a droop in her upper lip, which they say is a bad sign, besides being frayed about the mouth in a sort of general way. But the Invalids will never love her and take care of her as we used to do."
A momentary stupefaction had fallen upon Ivan; he wondered hazily whether Michael was speaking of a hospital nurse or of a favourite sutler. But he prudently held his peace, and Michael went on: "Before the war she used to take care of the Winter Palace,—there are some that say she stood in front of it for fifty years, but that I can't believe. However, not a fight have we had since we left St. Petersburg that she has not borne a part in and done her business well, though it is I who say it. At Leipzig her carriage was broken; but we mended it with a cart wheel, which answered famously."
Ivan understood now. "You don't mean to say," he exclaimed, laughing heartily, "that the Invalids have got your gun! How came that about?"
"It is no laughing matter, Barrinka. They have got her; and it was the Czar's own doing. He went to see the poor old Frenchmen, and found them sorely cast down and sorrowful, breaking their hearts over their country's disgrace and their Emperor's defeat."
"That was natural," Ivan interrupted. "Think what you and I would have felt, Michael, had this war gone against us. And if we were old and worn out, unable to strike a blow for our country and our Czar, we would have felt it all the more."
"The Czar seems to have thought like you, Barrinka; for he spoke kindly to the poor old fellows, and tried to cheer them. And when he found they were grieving over the loss of their guns, the trophies of their old victories that they used to be so proud of, he told them to be comforted; they should have their trophies back again. The Allies had carried off those guns of theirs when they came into the city, so what must he do but send them twelve of ours, Maria Ivanovka being one of them—to my sorrow."
For a moment Ivan wondered silently, "Was there ever such a knight in friendship or in war" as his Czar, Alexander Paulovitch? Then he said: "I think you need not grudge your gun to the poor old Frenchmen. Do you know how many of their cannon they left behind in our country, for us to show as trophies of what our arms—no, rather of what our God has done?"
"No, Barrinka, I have never heard exactly; but I am sure they must be many."
"Not counting those they contrived to bury, or lost in the rivers they passed over, we have captured of their cannon—nine hundred and twenty and nine!"
"Great St. Nicholas!" cried Michael, lifting up his one hand in amazement.
"Shall we not show our gratitude for this marvellous deliverance by gentleness and kindness to our enemies, whom God cares for, even as he does for us? That is what the Czar thinks. He has refused to break down the bridge of Austerlitz,—a standing monument of the old triumph of the French over us,—or even to change its name. 'It is enough,' said he, 'that I have passed over it with my armies.'"
"Can that be possible, Barrinka? Then no wonder every one is saying now that the Czar is taking the part of Napoleon and of his family."
"And if he is? What is a brave man's duty when a foe has fallen? Should he not think, 'How would I wish to be dealt with if the case were mine?' My friend Tolstoi tells me that as the Czar was entering Paris in triumph, he looked up and saw the statue of his great enemy on the top of the column in the Place Vendôme. 'If I had been placed so high,' said he, 'my head would have been turned.' Surely he was not thinking of the lifeless statue on its pinnacle of stone, but of the living man on the proud summit of this world's dominion and glory."
"Barrinka, the Czar is there now, and his head is not turned."
"Thank God; for it is his grace that keeps him safe. Michael, my friend, do you remember the oath we swore that morning in the camp at Tarovtino, with the explosion still sounding in our ears that laid half the Kremlin in ruins?"
Michael's eyes kindled and his dark cheek glowed. "How could I forget it, Barrinka?" he said. "Did we not swear to take such vengeance on Napoleon and the French as the world has never heard of yet? Woe is me! we have had the chance and lost it."
"Not lost it—used it nobly. Do you not see, Michael, that the Czar has indeed taken such vengeance as the world never heard of before? To comfort and help our enemies, to give back good for evil, is not indeed the world's way, but it is the way of Christ; and perhaps in the end even the world may come to see it is the best."
The day after this conversation took place Ivan became the guest of Madame de Salgues. It was a happy change for him. Now, for the first time in his life, he was thrown into the society of good, refined, and noble-hearted women. He enjoyed its pleasures with keen appreciation; though, as it happened, the beginning of his acquaintance with Madame de Salgues was not particularly promising. When the ceremony of presentation was over, the old lady began to compliment him upon the magnanimity of his sovereign in restoring to France her rightful monarch.
"Madame," answered Ivan, who was anxious in his turn to say something agreeable, "the Czar has only been desirous of consulting the wishes of the French people. He and his Allies would have given their approbation to any settled government the nation had been pleased to appoint, excepting that of Napoleon or a member of his family. But Louis Dix-huit appears to be the choice of France."
Madame de Salgues stirred uneasily in her chair. "My dear young friend," she exclaimed in a slightly irritable tone, "do you not see that is as much as to say that if a man takes a purse of gold from the hands of a robber, he is at liberty to give it to whom he pleases? Not so;—he must restore it to its owner, else he himself is a robber also."
Ivan had a dim perception of the fact that France did not belong to the Bourbons in at all the same sense that a purse of gold belongs to its owner, but it was scarcely clear enough to express in words; and had it been otherwise, courtesy would have admonished him to decline an argument with his hostess. So he dexterously changed the subject; and Madame de Salgues afterwards observed to her niece, "That young man is certainly very well bred, and a perfect gentleman. But I fear his principles are rather unsettled. I hope he will not influence Emile."
Madame de Talmont could not suppress a quiet smile at the idea of the scapegrace Emile suffering contamination from Ivan. As days passed on, the young Russian proved a very pleasant addition to the little household, and brightly and swiftly the period of his convalescence glided by. When the weather improved, he often sat in a summer-house in Madame de Salgues' little garden; and here the ladies would bring their embroidery and bear him company, or comrades from the city would come to visit him.
He had one visit from Michael, who was fêted and made much of by the De Talmonts for Henri's sake. He said afterwards to Ivan, "Who would have thought French people could be so good and gentle? May the Virgin bless the young lady's sweet face! If she would just get one of our priests to baptize her into the true orthodox faith, I should like well enough to see you lead her up the church, a little farther than the font, Barrinka. I think she is almost good enough."
"Hold thy peace, Michael!" cried Ivan, half pleased, half angry, and blushing deeply. "How little you understand! I am not good enough to kiss her feet, or to take up the glove she has dropped and give it back to her."
At an early stage of their acquaintance Ivan discovered Clémence's little store of theological books, and asked leave to study them. It was now nearly a year and a half since he had begun to read his Bible with attention and interest; but books about religion were still quite new to him. He began their study eagerly, hoping to find a solution for some difficulties which had occurred to him; but, instead of this, fresh perplexities were awakened in his mind. He found that he had plunged into a labyrinth of words and ideas absolutely strange to him. It is true that the shallow scepticism of his youth had long since given place to the only real belief he ever knew. The flames of Moscow, the study of the New Testament, the living faith of the man whom he supremely admired and venerated, had been God's way of leading him into a simple, child-like dependence upon Himself, and a genuine desire to serve and follow Him. But of the deeper mysteries of spiritual experience he was still almost wholly ignorant.
One afternoon Madame de Salgues was slumbering in her easy-chair, and Madame de Talmont had been called away; so he found himself practically alone with Clémence. The opportunity was too precious to be lost. He took from his pocket a little book, "Les Pensées de Pascal," which he had been studying with deep and rather mystified attention. Showing her a passage her own hand had marked carefully, line by line, he asked,—
"Mademoiselle, what does that mean? I confess I cannot understand it."
She read—"'I see my abyss of pride, of curiosity, of sin. There is no connection between me and God, or the holy Jesus Christ. But he has been made sin for me; by his wounds we are healed. He has healed himself, and therefore assuredly he will heal me. I must place my wounds upon his, must give myself to him, and he will save me with himself.'"
Clémence paused a while. "I think it means," she said at last very reverently, "that the Lord Jesus Christ has taken our sins upon him, and put himself in our place. We should be quite overwhelmed when we come to see the 'abyss' of sin that is within us, if we did not know he had done so. But he has taken our sin and bound it about him like a robe, that we may take his righteousness and stand before the Father robed in that." This, however, was a height beyond the range of her own ordinary spiritual experience. So she added presently, with an involuntary sigh, "If only we are numbered amongst his redeemed."
"It is very wonderful," answered Ivan thoughtfully. "Of course I always knew the blessed Lord died for our sins," he added, crossing himself; "but I never felt that there was any 'abyss' of sin within me. Do you think, mademoiselle, that one must feel that in order to be really religious?"
"I think we cannot know the grace of Christ without knowing our own sin," Clémence answered. "But, monsieur, look at these words also; I think you will find them easier to understand." She turned to another page of the book, and read—"'Console thyself; thou wouldst not be seeking Me, if I had not already found thee.'"
Ivan pondered. "Found thee?" he repeated. "As the shepherd in the gospel found the lost sheep? But perhaps the sheep never knew how far he had wandered; certainly he never was able to tell. That is a comfort. I like, too, to think of one of the proverbs of my country: 'The babe does not know God, yet God loves it.' But I fear I am deplorably ignorant, and in every way very far from what I ought to be."
It was not often that the talk of these young people glided into channels so profound. The bright and varying experiences that lay near the surface of their lives furnished far more frequently the daily bread of their intercourse.
When Ivan grew stronger, his friends urged him to go and see the wonders of Paris, which the elder ladies vaunted to him, exerting all their powers of description to depict them in glowing colours. They had of course already done the honours of Versailles, with its splendid palace dedicated "to all the glories of France." Ivan was far too polite to tell them, as Michael would have done, that he was sure Paris could not equal Moscow before the conflagration: but he seemed less anxious to see Paris than to bring his friends to see the Czar. At last an expedition was arranged for an early day in May. A carriage was engaged, in which Madame de Talmont, Clémence, and Ivan were to drive together to the city, where Emile was to meet them, and a long day of sight-seeing was to follow.
Ivan, all this time, was like one who floats dreamily on the calm expanse of a tropic sea. Now and then a bright land-bird skims by, or a blossom borne from afar sleeps on the surface of the still, clear water. He is drawing near the shore of a new, undiscovered country; but as yet he has not seen, has not dreamed of it. His "eyes are holden," until he feels the coral grate beneath his keel; then suddenly he looks up—and behold, in one glorious moment all is changed! Palm trees wave above him, green grasses kiss the water's edge, gorgeous plants trail their luxuriant wealth of flowers, and for him there is a new world created.