"Hush! young man, hush!" replied Desaix, "you are bitter and sad, and I understand it, for the horizon is dark for you, and offers you no cheerful prospect; but a million francs is a good thing notwithstanding, and one day you will know how to prize it. This million of francs makes you a rich man, and a rich man is a free and independent man. If you do not wish to live longer as a soldier, you have the power to give up your commission and live without care, and that is something. My next business will be to assure you your fortune against all the uncertainties of the future, which are the more to be guarded against, as we are soon to advance into Italy again for the next campaign. I can, therefore, not put your property and your papers into your hands, for they constitute your future, and we must deposit them with some one with whom they shall be safe, and that must be with a man of peace. Do you know who this man is?"
"I know no one, general, excepting yourself," replied Louis, with a shrug, "whom I should dare to trust."
"But, fortunately, I know an entirely reliable man; shall I tell you who he is?"
"Do so, I beg you, general."
"His name is Fouche."
Louis started, and a deathly paleness covered his cheeks.
"Fouche, the chief of police! Fouche, the traitor, who gave his voice in the Convention for the death of King Louis--to him, the red republican, a man of blood and treachery, do you want to convey my papers and my property?"
"Yes, Louis, for with him alone are they secure. Fouche will protect you, and will stand by you with just as much zeal as he once displayed in the persecution of the royal family. I know him well, and I vouch for him. Men must not always be judged by their external appearance. He who shows himself our enemy to-day, lends us to-morrow, it may be, a helpful arm, and becomes our friend, sometimes because his heart has been changed, and sometimes because his character is feeble. I cannot with certainty say which of these reasons has determined Fouche, but I am firmly convinced that he will be a protector and a friend to you, and that in no hands will your property and your papers be safer than in his." [Footnote:
Desaix's own words--See "Memoires du Due de Nonuandie," p. 61.]
Louis made no reply; he dropped his head with a sigh, and submitted.
On, in the new century, rolled the victorious car of Bonaparte, down the Alps, into the fertile plains of Italy. The conqueror of Lodi and Arcole meant to take revenge on the enemies who had snatched back the booty--revenge on Austria, who had broken the peace of Campo Formio. And he did take this revenge at Marengo, where, on the 14th of June, he gained a brilliant victory over Austria, and won all Italy as the prize of the battle.
But the day was purchased at a sacrifice. General Desaix paid with his death for his impetuous onset. In the very thick of the fight, mortally wounded by a ball, he fell into the arms of his adjutant Louis, and only with extreme peril could the latter, himself wounded, bear the general away from the melee, and not. be trampled to death by the horses of his own soldiers.
Poor Louis Charles! He now stood entirely alone--the last friend had left him. Death had taken away every thing, parents, crown, home, name, friends. He was alone, all alone in the world--no man to take any interest in him, no one to know who he was.
Sunk in sadness, he remained in Alessandria after the battle of Marengo, and allowed his external wound to heal, while the internal one continued to bleed. He cursed death, because it had not taken him, while removing his last friend.
And when the wound was healed, what should he do?--under what name and title should he be enrolled in the army? His only protector was dead, and the adjutant was reported to have died with him. He put off the uniform which he had worn as the soldier of the republic which had destroyed his throne and his inheritance, and, in ******, unpretending garments, he returned to Paris, an unknown young man.
Desaix was right; it was, indeed, something to possess a million of francs. Poor as he was in love and happiness, this million of francs made him at least a free and independent man, and therefore he would demand his inheritance of him whom he formerly shunned because he was one of the murderers of his father.
Fouche received the young man exactly as Desaix had expected. He showed himself in the light of a sympathizing protector; he was touched with the view of this youth, whose countenance was the evidence of his lineage, the living picture of the unfortunate Louis XVI., whom Fouche had brought to the scaffold. Perhaps this man of blood and the guillotine had compunctions of conscience; perhaps he wanted to atone to the son for his injuries to the parents; perhaps he was planning to make of the son of the Bourbons a check to the ambitious consul of the republic; perhaps to humiliate the grasping Count de Lille, who was intriguing at all the European courts for the purpose of raising armies against the French republic. The son of Louis XVI. could be employed as a useful foil to all these political manoeuvres, and subsequently he could either be publicly acknowledged, or denounced as an impostor, as circumstances might determine.
At present it suited the plans of the crafty Fouche to acknowledge him, and to assume the attitude of a protector. He put on a very respectful and sympathetic air to the poor solitary youth; with gentle, tremulous voice he called him your Majesty; he begged his pardon for the past; he spoke with such deep emotion and so solemn a tone of the good, great, and gentle Louis XVI., that the heart of the son was powerfully touched. And when Fouche, with flaming words of enthusiasm, began to speak of the noble, unhappy Queen Marie Antoinette, when with glowing eloquence he celebrated her beauty and her gentleness in time of good-fortune, her greatness and steadfastness in ill-fortune, all the anger of the young man melted in the tears of love which he poured out as he remembered his mother.