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Page 67
He found in the kitchen a jar of honey that he had overlooked, and he
resolved to use a part of it for breakfast. Europeans did not seem able
to live without jam or honey in the mornings, and he would follow the
custom. Not much was left in the other rooms, besides some old articles
of clothing, including two or three blue blouses of the kind worn by
French peasants or workmen, but on one of the walls he saw an excellent
engraving of the young Napoleon, conqueror of Italy.
It showed him, horseback, on a high road looking down upon troops in
battle, Castiglione or Rivoli, perhaps, his face thin and gaunt, his
hair long and cut squarely across his forehead, the eyes deep, burning
and unfathomable. It was so thoroughly alive that he believed it must be
a reproduction of some great painting. He stood a long time, fascinated
by this picture of the young republican general who rose like a meteor
over Europe and who changed the world.
John, like nearly all young men, viewed the Napoleonic cycle with a
certain awe and wonder. A student, he had considered Napoleon the great
democratic champion and mainly in the right as far as Austerlitz. Then
swollen ambition had ruined everything and, in his opinion, another
swollen ambition, though for far less cause, was now bringing equal
disaster upon Europe. A belief in one's infallibility might come from
achievement or birth, but only the former could win any respect from
thinking men.
It seemed to John presently that the deep, inscrutable eyes were gazing
at him, and he felt a quivering at the roots of his hair. It was young
Bonaparte, the republican general, and not Napoleon, the emperor, who
was looking into his heart.
"Well," said John, in a sort of defiance, "if you had stuck to your
early principles we wouldn't have all this now. First Consul you might
have been, but you shouldn't have gone any further."
He turned away with a sigh of regret that so great a warrior and
statesman, in the end, should have misused his energies.
He returned to the room below, blew out the lamp and opened the window
again. The cool fresh air once more poured into the room, and he took
long deep breaths of it. It was still raining, though lightly, and the
pattering of the drops on the leaves made a pleasant sound. The thunder
and the lightning had ceased, though not the far rumble of artillery.
John knew that the sport of kings was still going on under the
searchlights, and all his intense horror of the murderous monarchies
returned. He was not sleepy yet, and he listened a long time. The sound
seemed to come from both sides of him, and he felt that the abandoned
cottage among the trees was merely a little oasis in the sea of war.
The rain ceased and he concluded to scout about the house to see if any
one was near, or if any farm animals besides the horse had been left.
But Marne was alone. There was not even a fowl of any kind. He concluded
that the horse had probably wandered away before the peasant left, as so
valuable an animal would not have been abandoned otherwise.
His scouting--he was learning to be very cautious--took him some
distance from the house and he came to a narrow road, but smooth and
hard, a road which troops were almost sure to use, while such great
movements were going on. He waited behind a hedge a little while, and
then he heard the hum of motors.
He had grown familiar with the throbbing, grinding sound made by many
military automobiles on the march, but he waited calmly, merely
loosening his automatic for the sake of precaution. He felt sure that
while he stood behind a hedge he would never be seen on a dark night by
men traveling in haste. The automobiles came quickly into view and in
those in front he saw elderly men in uniforms of high rank. Nearly all
the German generals seemed to him to be old men who for forty or fifty
years had studied nothing but how to conquer, men too old and hardened
to think much of the rights of others or ever to give way to generous
emotions.
He also saw sitting erect in one of the motors the man for whom he had
felt at first sight an invincible repulsion. Prince Karl of Auersperg.
Young von Arnheim had represented the good prince to him, but here was
the medieval type, the believer in divine right, and in his own
superiority, decreed even before birth. John noted in the moonlight his
air of ownership, his insolent eyes and his heavy, arrogant face. He
hoped that the present war would sweep away all such as Auersperg.
He watched nearly an hour while the automobiles, cyclists, a column of
infantry, and then several batteries of heavy guns drawn by motors,
passed. He judged that the Germans were executing a change of front
somewhere, and that the Franco-British forces were still pressing hard.
The far thunder of the guns had not ceased for an instant, although it
must be nearly midnight. He wished he knew what this movement on the
part of the Germans meant, but, even if he had known, he had no way of
reaching his own army, and he turned back to the cottage.
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