The Marquis Makes Himself Agreeable

"No," said Jack, gently.

"Well, when my brother was alive, our family lived in Paris. That is all I know, except that my brother died shortly before the empire was proclaimed, and papa and mamma came to our country-place here, where I was born. René's--my brother's--death had something to do with my father's hatred of the empire, I know that. But papa will never speak of it to me, except to tell me that I must always remember that the Emperor has been the curse of the De Nesvilles. Hark! Hear the troops passing. Why do they never cheer their Emperor?"

"They cheered him at Saarbrück--I heard them. You are not eating; are you tired?"

"A little. I shall go with Marianne, I think; I am sleepy. Are you going to sit up? Do you think we can sleep with the noise of the horses passing? I should like to see the Emperor at table."

"Wait," said Jack; "I'll go down and find out whether we can't slip into the ballroom."

"Then I'll go too," said Lorraine, rising. "Marianne, stay here; I will return in a moment;" and she slipped after Jack, down the broad staircase and out to the terrace, where a huge cuirassier officer stood in the moonlight, his straight sabre shimmering, his white mantle open over the silver breastplate.

The ballroom was brilliantly lighted, the gilded canapés and chairs were covered with officers in every conceivable uniform, lounging, sprawling, chatting, and gesticulating, or pulling papers and maps over the floor. A general traced routes across the map at his feet with the point of a naked sword; an officer of dragoons, squatting on his haunches, followed the movement of the sword-point and chewed an unlighted cigarette. Officers were coming and going constantly, entering by the hallway and leaving through the door-like windows that swung open to the floor. The sinister face of a police-spy peered into the conservatory at intervals, where a slender, pale-faced boy sat, clothed in a colonel's uniform, writing on a carved table. It was the Prince Imperial, back from Saarbrück and his "baptism of fire," back also from the Spicheren and the disaster of Wörth. He was writing to his mother, that unhappy, anxious woman who looked every day from the Tuileries into the streets of a city already clamorous, already sullenly suspicious of its Emperor and Empress.