White Lies [127]
"A mighty reward," replied Raynal, with a sneer.
"You leave one thing out of the calculation, monsieur," said Edouard, trembling with anger, "that I will kill your brother-in-law at the altar, before her eyes."
"YOU leave one thing out of the calculation: that you will first have to cross swords, at the altar, with me."
"So be it. I will not draw on my old commandant. I could not; but be sure I will catch him and her alone some day, and the bride shall be a widow in her honeymoon."
"As you please," said Raynal, coolly. "That is all fair, as you have been wronged. I shall make her an honest wife, and then you may make her an honest widow. (This is what they call LOVE, and sneer at me for keeping clear of it.) But neither he nor you shall keep MY SISTER what she is now, a ----," and he used a word out of camp.
Edouard winced and groaned. "Oh! don't call her by such a name. There is some mystery. She loved me once. There must have been some strange seduction."
"Now you deceive yourself," said Raynal. "I never saw a girl that could take her own part better than she can; she is not like her sister at all in character. Not that I excuse him; it was a dishonorable act, an ungrateful act to my wife and my mother."
"And to you."
"Now listen to me: in four days I shall stand before him. I shall not go into a pet like you; I am in earnest. I shall just say to him, 'Dujardin, I know all!' Then if he is guilty his face will show it directly. Then I shall say, 'Comrade, you must marry her whom you have dishonored.'"
"He will not. He is a libertine, a rascal."
"You are speaking of a man you don't know. He WILL marry her and repair the wrong he has done."
"Suppose he refuses?"
"Why should he refuse? The girl is not ugly nor old, and if she has done a folly, he was her partner in it."
"But SUPPOSE he refuses?"
Raynal ground his teeth. "Refuse? If he does, I'll run my sword through his carcass then and there, and the hussy shall go into a convent."
CHAPTER XXI.
The French army lay before a fortified place near the Rhine, which we will call Philipsburg.
This army knew Bonaparte by report only; it was commanded by generals of the old school.
Philipsburg was defended on three sides by the nature of the ground; but on the side that faced the French line of march there was only a zigzag wall, pierced, and a low tower or two at each of the salient angles.
There were evidences of a tardy attempt to improve the defences. In particular there was a large round bastion, about three times the height of the wall; but the masonry was new, and the very embrasures were not yet cut.
Young blood was for assaulting these equivocal fortifications at the end of the day's march that brought the French advanced guard in sight of the place; but the old generals would not hear of it; the soldiers' lives must not be flung away assaulting a place that could be reduced in twenty-one days with mathematical certainty. For at this epoch a siege was looked on as a process with a certain result, the only problem was in how many days would the place be taken; and even this they used to settle to a day or two on paper by arithmetic; so many feet of wall, and so many guns on the one side; so many guns, so many men, and such and such a soil to cut the trenches in on the other: result, two figures varying from fourteen to forty. These two figures represented the duration of the siege.
For all that, siege arithmetic, right in general, has often been terribly disturbed by one little incident, that occurs from time to time; viz., Genius INside. And, indeed, this is one of the sins of genius; it goes and puts out calculations that have stood the brunt of years. Archimedes and Todleben were, no doubt, clever men in their way and good citizens, yet one characteristic of delicate men's minds they lacked--veneration; they showed a sad disrespect for the wisdom of the ancients, deranged the calculations which so much learning and patient thought had hallowed, disturbed the minds of white-haired