The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 31

"Here is St. Eustache," cried the emperor, beckoning the officer to advance.

"My dear colonel!" cried St. Eustache, embracing his old commander.

"Go on, colonel," cried the emperor, stamping his foot impatiently.

"We hung upon the flying rear of the enemy, sabring every man we overtook. Faith, I hardly know what happened afterwards," said the colonel, pausing.

"Take up the thread of the story, St. Eustache," said the emperor; "don't let it break off here."

"Well, sire," said St. Eustache, drawing, a long breath, "as the colonel and I were charging side by side, cutting right and left, separated from our men by the superior speed of our horses, a Russian officer wheeled and shot the colonel from his saddle."

"That was how it happened, Lioncourt," said the emperor. "Now go on.

Afterwards----"

"When I came to my senses, sire," resumed Lioncourt, gloomily, "I found myself in the hands of some Austrian peasants. I had been plundered of my epaulets and uniform, and they took me for a common soldier. But they carried me to their cottage, and dressed my wound, and eventually I got well."

"But where were you wounded, colonel?" asked the emperor.

"A pistol ball had entered behind my left shoulder, and came out by my collar bone."

"_Behind_ your left shoulder!" cried Napoleon. "And yet you were facing the enemy. How was that?"

"Because," said the colonel, sternly, "a Frenchman, a soldier, an officer, a disappointed rival, took that opportunity of a.s.sa.s.sinating me, and shot me with his own hostler pistol."

"His name!" shouted the emperor, quivering with pa.s.sion, "his name; do you know him?"

"Well.--It was Lieutenant Colonel St. Eustache!"

All eyes were turned on St. Eustache. His knees knocked together, his eyes were fixed, cold drops of perspiration stood on his forehead. But in all that circle of indignant eyes, the detected criminal saw only the eagle orbs of the emperor, that pierced to his very soul.

"Is this charge true?" asked Napoleon, quickly, quivering with one of his tremendous tornadoes of pa.s.sion.

St. Eustache could not answer; but he nodded his head.

"Your sword!" cried the emperor.

Mechanically the criminal drew his sabre; he had thrown off his domino, and now stood revealed in the uniform he disgraced, and offered the hilt to the emperor. Napoleon clutched it, and snapped the blade under foot. Then, tearing off his epaulets, he threw them on the floor, stamped on them, and beckoning to an officer who stood by, gasped out,--

"A guard, a guard!"

In a few minutes the tramp of armed men was heard in the saloon, and the wretched culprit was removed.

"_General_ Lioncourt," said the emperor to his recovered officer, "your new commission shall be made out to-morrow. In the mean while the lovely Leonide shall teach you to forget your trials."

The a.s.semblage broke up. Lioncourt, his wife, and her faithful brother retired to their now happy home.

The next day was fixed for the trial of the guilty St. Eustache before a court martial--a mere formal preliminary to his execution, for he had confessed his crime; but it appeared that during the preceding night he had managed to escape.

Flying from justice, the wretched criminal reached one of the bridges that span the Seine. Climbing to the parapet, he gazed down into the dark and turbid flood, now black as midnight, that rolled beneath the yawning arch. There was no star in the sky, and here and there only a dim light twinkled, reflected in the muddy wave. Daylight was beginning to streak the east with sickly rays. Soon the great city would be astir. Soon hoa.r.s.e voices would be clamoring for the traitor, the a.s.sa.s.sin, the dastard, who, in the hour of victory, had raised his hand against a brother Frenchman. Soon, if he lingered, his ears would be doomed to hear the death penalty--soon the muskets, whose fire he had so often commanded, would be levelled against his breast. All was lost,--all for which he had schemed and sinned,--the applause of his countrymen, the favor of his emperor, the love of Leonide. At least, he would disappoint Paris of a spectacle. He would die by his own act.

A sudden spring, a heavy plunge, a few bubbles breaking on the black surface, and the wretched criminal was no more!

Days afterwards, a couple of soldiers, lounging into La Morgue, the dismal receptacle where bodies are exposed for identification, recognized in a pallid and bloated corpse the remains of the late lieutenant colonel of the ----th hussars.

Lioncourt learned his fate, but it threw no shadow over his bright and cloudless happiness.

A KISS ON DEMAND.

It was a very peculiar sound, something like the popping of a champagne cork, something like the report of a small pocket pistol, but exactly like nothing but itself. It was a kiss.

A kiss implies two parties--unless it be one of those symbolical kisses produced by one pair of lips, and wafted through the air in token of affection or admiration. But this particular kiss was genuine. The parties in the case were Mrs. Phebe Mayflower, the newly-married wife of honest Tom Mayflower, gardener to Mr. Augustus Scatterly, and that young gentleman himself. Augustus was a good-hearted, rattle-brained spendthrift, who had employed the two or three years which had elapsed since his majority in "making ducks and drakes" of the pretty little fortune left him by his defunct sire.

There was nothing very bad about him, excepting his prodigal habits, and by these he was himself the severest sufferer. Tom, his gardener, had been married a few weeks, and Gus, who had failed to be at the wedding, and missed the opportunity of "saluting the bride," took it into his head that it was both proper and polite that he should do so on the first occasion of his meeting her subsequently to that interesting ceremony. Mrs. Mayflower, the other party interested in the case, differed from him in opinion, and the young landlord kissed her in spite of herself. But she was not without a champion, for at the precise moment when Scatterly placed his audacious lips in contact with the blooming cheek of Mrs. M., Tom entered the garden and beheld the outrage.

"What are you doing of, Mr. Scatterly?" he roared.

"O, nothing, Tom, but a.s.serting my rights! I was only saluting the bride."

"Against my will, Tommy," said the poor bride, blus.h.i.+ng like a peony, and wiping the offended cheek with her checked ap.r.o.n.

"And I'll make you pay dear for it, if there's law in the land," said Tom.

"Poh, poh! don't make a fool of yourself," said Scatterly.

"I don't mean to," answered the gardener, dryly.

"You're not seriously offended at the innocent liberty I took?"

"Yes I be," said Tom.

"Well, if you view it in that light," answered Scatterly, "I shall feel bound to make you reparation. You shall have a kiss from my bride, when I'm married."

"That you never will be."

"I must confess," said Scatterly, laughing, "the prospect of repayment seems rather distant. But who knows what will happen? I may not die a bachelor, after all. And if I marry--I repeat it, my dear fellow--you shall have a kiss from my wife."

"No he shan't," said Phebe. "He shall kiss n.o.body but me."

"Yes he shall," said Scatterly. "Have you got pen, ink, and paper, Tom?"

"To be sure," answered the gardener. "Here they be, all handy."

Scatterly sat down and wrote as follows:--

"THE WILLOWS, August --, 18--.