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Page 42
A rambling desultory tale. And there were reminiscences of such and
such a great lady's _salon_; the flight from Moscow; the day of the
Bastille; the poor fool of a Louis who donned a red-bonnet and wore the
tricolor; some new opera dances; the flight of his cowardly cousins to
Austria; Austerlitz and Jena; the mad dream in Egypt; the very day when
the Great Man pulled a crown out of his saddle-bag and made himself an
emperor. Just a little corporal from Corsica; think of it! And so on;
all jumbled but keyed with tremendous interest to the listeners and to
Laura herself. It was the golden age of opportunity, of reward, of
sudden generals and princes and dukes. All gone, nothing left but a
few battle-flags; England no longer shaking in her boots, and the rest
of them dividing the spoils! No! There were some left, and in their
hands lay the splendid enterprise.
Quietly they had pieced together this sum and that, till there was now
stored away two-million francs. Two or three frigates and a corvette
or two; then the work would go forward. Only a little while to wait,
and then they would bring their beloved chief back to France and to his
own again. Had he not written: "Come for me, _mon brave_. They say
they have orders to shoot me. Come; better carry my corpse away than
that I should rot here for years to come." They would come. But this
year went by and another; one by one the Old Guard died off, smaller
and smaller had drawn the circle. The vile rock called St. Helena
still remained impregnable. On a certain day they came to tell him
that the emperor was no more. Soon he was all alone but one; these
brave soldiers who had planned with him were no more. An alien, an
outcast, he too longed for night. And what should he do with it, this
vast treasure, every franc of which meant sacrifice and unselfishness,
bravery and loyalty? Let the gold rot. He would bury all knowledge of
it in yonder chimney, confident that no one would ever find the
treasure, since he alone possessed the key to it, having buried it
himself. So passed the greatest Caesar of them all, the most brilliant
empire, the bravest army. Ah! had the king of Rome lived! Had there
been some direct Napoleonic blood to take up the work! Vain dreams!
The Great Man's brothers had been knaves and fools.
"And so to-night," the narrator ended, "I bury the casket in the
chimney; within it, my hopes and few trinkets of the past of which I am
an integral part. Good-by, little glove; good-by, brave old medal! I
am sending a drawing of the chimney to the good Abbe le Fanu. He will
outlive me. He lives on forty-centime the day; treasures mean nothing
to him; his cry, his eternal cry, is always of the People. He will
probably tear it up. The brig will never come again. So best. Death
will come soon. And I shall die unknown, unloved, forgotten. _Bonne
nuit_!"
Mr. Donovan alone remained in normal state of mind. 'Twas all
faradiddle, this talk of finding treasures. The old Frenchman had been
only half-baked. He dumped his tools into his bag, and, with the
wisdom of his kind, departed. There would be another job to-morrow,
putting the bricks back.
The others, however, were for the time but children, and like children
they all talked at once; and there was laughter and thumping of fists
and clapping of hands. The admiral had a new plan every five minutes.
He would do this, or he would do that; and Fitzgerald would shake his
head, or Breitmann would point out the feasibility of the plan. Above
all, he urged, there must be no publicity (with a flash toward
Fitzgerald); the world must know nothing till the treasure was in their
hands. Otherwise, there would surely be piracy on the high-seas. Two
million francs was a prize, even in these days. There were plenty of
men and plenty of tramp ships. Even when they found the gold, secrecy
would be best. There might be some difficulty with France. Close
lips, then, till they returned to America; after that Mr. Fitzgerald
would become famous as the teller of the exploit.
"I confess that, for all my excitement," said Fitzgerald, "I am
somewhat skeptical. Still, your suggestion, Mr. Breitmann, is good."
"Do you mean to say you doubt the existence of the treasure?" cried the
admiral, something impatient.
"Oh, no doubt it once existed. But seventy-five or eighty years!
There were others besides this refugee Frenchman. Who knows into what
hands similar documents may have fallen?"
"And the unknown man who worked in the chimney?" put in the girl
quietly.
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