The Sword of Honor Part 59

"You hear that, brigadier!" commented the sentry to an under-officer who had come up. "The old rascal calls for a general to make revelations to!"

"I'll go see the Provost about it," said the brigadier. The few moments he was gone the Jesuit utilized to confer in whispers with his G.o.d-son.

The brigadier quickly returned, went up to the post to which the reverend was tethered, and said to him:

"Off to General Donadieu. But look out for yourself if your confidences are a sham!" And seeing that little Rodin made ready to follow the prisoner, the soldier added: "Has this brat also revelations to make?

Has he got anything to do with you?"

"The child will attest, by his tender candor, the sincerity of my communications, and will complete them in case of gaps in my memory."

General Donadieu, commandant of a brigade of light cavalry in the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, had just finished reading the order he had received, when one of his aides-de-camp informed him that a spy, condemned to be shot at sunrise, asked for an audience to give him information of the utmost importance, but requested that the interview have no other witness than the child who would accompany him.

"I do not accept the scoundrel's proposal," replied the General to his aide-de-camp. "His condition is compromising. Send him in, and stay here yourself."

Accompanied by his G.o.d-son, the Jesuit appeared. Both were calm. The General looked the spy over from head to foot, and said to him sharply:

"You pretend to have important matters to disclose to me, which, you say, concern the army? I shall listen to you. But be brief. Do not abuse my patience."

"When we are alone," replied the Jesuit, glancing at the aide-de-camp.

"Our interview must be in secret."

"My aide is my second self. He may hear all. Speak, then. Speak at once, or go to the devil!"

"I shall speak, then, General, since you command it. The day after the battle of Watignies a cavalry colonel in the republican army was taken prisoner. He was marched to headquarters--"

"Wait a moment!" cried General Donadieu, visibly troubled at these opening words of the Jesuit's. "You hope to obtain a suspension of sentence as the price of your revelations?"

"More than that. I must be set at liberty."

"I can grant you neither delay nor liberation without the authority of the Representatives of the people. Captain, find Citizen St. Just at once, and ask him whether I may suspend the execution of this man if his revelations seem worthy of it."

"At your orders, General," replied the aide, as he left the room.

The General, at last overcoming the uneasiness which the Jesuit's first words caused him, now resumed, haughtily:

"As you were saying, the day after the battle of Watignies a cavalry colonel--"

"General Donadieu," came imperiously from the Jesuit, "your moments are numbered. If, before your aide returns, you have not contrived a way to set me at liberty, you are lost. Think it over. A prisoner at the battle of Watignies, you were conducted by the Count of Plouernel before Monseigneur the Prince of Conde, who received you most flatteringly. You admitted to him that it was with regret that you served in an army so lacking in military pride as to submit to the yoke of the Representatives of the people. You added--still speaking, be it remembered, to the Prince of Conde--these words, literally: 'Monseigneur, my dignity as an officer is so outraged by subjection to the tyranny of these bourgeois pro-consuls, that, without the slightest scruple of conscience, I would offer you my sword and serve on your side.'"

"Ah, indeed? So I said that to the Prince of Conde, did I? And perhaps you have proofs of what you say?"

"The proofs are inscribed in a certain register kept in the Prince's staff headquarters. In that register are kept the names of all the officers in the republican army on whom, in case of need, the royalist party thinks it can call. The fact which concerns you was related to me by the Count of Plouernel, former colonel in the French Guards, who was present at your interview with Monseigneur the Prince of Conde; which interview was continued by his Most Serene Highness in these words: 'My dear colonel, remain in the republican army. You will there be able to serve the cause of our rightful King most efficaciously by spurring your regiment to rebel at the proper moment in the name of military honor, against these miserable bourgeois pro-consuls. Be sure, my dear colonel, that the day the good cause triumphs you will be rewarded as you deserve. Until then, keep snug behind your republican mask.' So,"

continued the Jesuit, "you have so well worn your mask that after being returned to the army in the exchange of prisoners, you were first promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, then to Division General--"

"Enough, stop," cut in Donadieu in a sardonic tone of complete rea.s.surance. "What now is your project? You intend to make your disclosures to others besides me, if I do not at once enable you to escape?"

"Aye, General, that is my intention."

"There is only one obstacle--"

"And that is, General? Have the goodness to make it known to me. We will find a way around it."

"Eh!" replied Donadieu, moving towards the door, "It is that I shall call the mounted patrolman who brought you hither, order him to shoot you on the spot, and your secret dies with you. The solution is swift and simple."

"And St. Just, to whom you have just applied for permission to remit my sentence? You have forgotten that detail."

"I shall tell St. Just that your revelations were rubbish, and I let the execution take its course. St. Just is not the man to reproach me for hastening the death of a counter-revolutionist. So, then," continued General Donadieu, taking another step toward the door, "you will be shot at once. Our conversation in over."

"And me?" piped up little Rodin, who had so far kept himself motionless and silent in a dark corner of the room. "And me? They won't shoot me, I'm very sure. I am hardly eleven. So then, if you send my good G.o.d-father to the angels, I shall tell everyone what I have just seen and heard."

"Whence it follows, General," chimed in the reverend, "that you have no other safe course than to shut your eyes to our flight, and if you are wise, accompany us, and carry the plan of to-morrow's battle to the Austrian headquarters with you."

"This low window opens on the ground," volunteered Rodin, examining the casing. "We will be able to clear out through it, General, before your aide-de-camp comes back. The rest--G.o.d will care for."

"The light will help us to avoid your picket lines, among whom we fell last night," added the prelate, in turn approaching the window, whence he beheld the first grey streaks of dawn. Then to Donadieu, who stood paralyzed with fear, he added: "Come, General, loose me of my bonds. I must have this place far behind me when your aide returns."

"What shall I do?" stammered the bewildered General. "My aide will return with St. Just's orders. The prisoners' escape will be the end of me--I shall be suspected of having a.s.sisted in it--and suspicion is death!"

"Good G.o.d-father," cried Rodin, who had been ferreting around the room and had just opened a door leading into a neighboring apartment, "listen, the General does not wish to fly with us--he will let us escape. He will say to his aide-de-camp that while he was in the next room a minute or two, we profited by his momentary absence to cut the cords on your wrists and to vanish by yonder window."

"What presence of mind!" exclaimed the Jesuit; and, turning to the General, "My G.o.d-son is right. There is nothing else left for you to do.

You will be accused of negligence; that is grave. But you will at least have a chance of averting suspicion."

"All the more, seeing that if the General had had the intention of letting us escape he would not have sent his aide to St. Just for orders," judicially added Rodin. "You have every chance not to be molested because of our escape, General. But if you have my G.o.d-father shot, I shall denounce you to St. Just."

This reasoning commanded prompt action. General Donadieu chose of the two evils the lesser. Hurriedly whipping off the prelate's bonds he said: "Fly, quick. You will find a clump of trees a hundred paces off, within our picket line. Hide there; and lie close till you hear the cannon, which will announce to you the battle is on. Then you will have nothing more to fear. Now go!" cried the General, flinging open the window, "Go, quickly!"

"I shall not prove an ingrate," promised the Jesuit as he pa.s.sed towards the opening the other had made for him. "When I see the Prince of Conde, I shall report to him that he may always count on you."

The prelate's G.o.d-son slipped like a serpent through the window, and was gone. The Jesuit followed suit.

"Ah, well," said General Donadieu to himself. "If St. Just suspects me, over I go to the enemy. We soldiers know how to serve or mis-serve according as our interests or safety demand. If I carry the plans of the battle to the Austrians, I shall at least have saved my life and general's commission. Devil take the Republic!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

BATTLE OF THE LINES OF WEISSENBURG.

Towards eight o'clock on the morning of the 6th Nivose, year II (December 26, 1793), under cover of a thick fog, St. Just and Hoche began their advance. The two leaders walked their horses side by side, close behind a squad of cavalrymen detailed as scouts. A short distance to the rear of the Representative of the people and the Commander-in-chief followed a group of aides-de-camp and artillery officers.

Gradually, in the teeth of a stiff north wind, the fog began again to lift. The gallop of an approaching horse was heard, and one of Hoche's aides loomed out of the thinning haze, made straight for his commander-in-chief, and said, as he reined in his mount:

"Citizen General, our scouts just encountered a party of Uhlans. We charged them and reached the enemy's advance guard near enough to make out a considerable body of cavalry."

The north wind continued to blow, clearing away the mists, and soon, from the rising ground where they had taken their station, St. Just, Hoche, and their staff were able to sweep with their eye the field of the approaching battle. Before them, from northwest to southeast at the extreme edge of the horizon, stretched the regular outline of the "Lines" or entrenchments of Weissenburg, parallel to the course of the Lauter, a rapid river which served as moat to these fortified works. To the right, the now leafless fastnesses of the forest of Bienvalt, which also bordered on the Lauter over which the remnants of the fog still hung, reached away till they lost themselves in the distance toward Lauterburg, a town situated in one of the bends of the Rhine, now the headquarters of the army of Conde.

With his gla.s.s Hoche examined the position of the Austrian army, and said to St. Just: